A simple change can lead to something major down the line: a butterfly’s wingbeats can indirectly cause weather phenomena, and Ashton Kutcher’s well-intentioned actions lead to unpredictable and undesirable – Wait, wrong show.
Quantum Taxis is an interesting play based on two things we are familiar with: friendly cabbies, and scientific laws being misapplied to common sense. The novelty here is that the two are combined rather seamlessly. And all this fits inside a single taxicab.
A shaky sign separates two storylines: in one, the sign tips in one direction, with no effect. In the other, it knocks the phone from a passenger’s (Herpeet Minhas) hand, leading her to take a different taxi, engage in a different conversation, and make different decisions. Decisions? Yes, boy troubles. This unnamed heroine is brash, bossy, and clearly not amused. In storyline 1, the cabbie (Steve Hetherington) keeps her in line with existentialism. In storyline 2, after dropping her phone, she creates no chemistry with Red, the reggae-loving cabbie (Romaine Waite). Meanwhile, the first cabbie (Hetherington) is occupied with a second heroine (Laurel Morgan), who finds nothing interesting to say. At least she’s not talking about Beatles conspiracy theories – until Waite, in the first timeline, enters a dialogue about music. His charisma carries the scene in the end, but Morgan’s overcalculated performance and unfortunate tangent leaves a sour taste.
The two storylines interact with one another in interesting ways, but in the end neither conclusion is satisfying. Perhaps this is the point, and if so, it’s an interesting one: if you had to choose which direction the sign tipped, which one would it be?
There are some good moments in the play. Hetherington creates moments of tension and pensiveness, and Waite provides comic relief and smooth songs. Both provide a different perspectives to the existential questions that plague us all: Hetherington adds pessimism to his nihilism, and Waite ‘goes with the flow’, satisfied with simply holding the wheel in a car that can go anywhere. Sadly, the script separates these moments of substance far apart with the trivial, and passengers act like they’re being taken for the ride.
Nearly as static as its stage-bound titular vehicle, Paul Steinsland’s Quantum Taxis is a play that has ambitions to explore ideas of determinism, free will, quantum physics, and, most prevalently, karma, but which is ultimately undone by the rigid structure of its concept, as well as a maddeningly obvious script and some eerily flat performances. Staged in the Honest Ed’s parking lot, the piece opens by introducing its audience to an unnamed taxi driver (Steve Hetherington) with an unexpectedly posh British accent, who picks up a charmless, irritable woman (Herpreet Minhas) who is perpetually glued to her blackberry. As the two slowly, awkwardly delve into conversation, we learn that the driver is an ex-physicist who is convinced of the unpredictable, uncontrollable nature of the universe, and that before he gave up teaching, he may have been responsible for the death of his wife (we also learn that the passenger is fighting with her boyfriend and is debating leaving him for another man). The two discuss relationships and what we are responsible for or think we are responsible for, before the audience is then treated to a rewind; we go back to the first moment of the play, where a small stumble on the part of the driver means he misses picking up Minhas’s passenger, and instead picks up another woman (whom the program names, unlike the previous two characters).
Morgan (Laurel Morgan) is a much more relaxed, conversational passenger, who works in an outreach program, and is a firm believer in the paybacks of karma. We are then taken back to the first timeline, and this time we watch as Morgan’s character instead hails a different cab, this one manned by the energetic, optimistic and charismatic Red (Romaine Waite). A Rastafarian, Red spends his off-time making music with his friends, and is a thorough believer (in contrast, surprise, to Hetherington’s outlook) that life is determined for us, and we just have to go with the flow, accepting what comes along. The play reveals itself to be V-shaped; we watch Red pick up Minhas’s character in the second timeline, then jump back to his drive with Morgan, before finishing Morgan’s story with Hetherington and finally wrapping up where we began, with Hetherington and Minhas.
The taxi itself is a vintage make whose left side faces the audience, meaning we are treated to the profile of driver and passenger for the entire play. This nearly unchanging compositional element might be more engaging if Steinsland were exploring Beckett-inspired stylistic monotony, or the fractured connections that we can sometimes achieve with strangers, but because the script is so overwritten and blunt in its thematic point-ratcheting, that interpretation isn’t really plausible. Still, at around the forty-five minute point, there is something hypnotizing and oddly watchable about the barely moving actors and their unnaturally articulate dialogue unfolding monotonously before us, particularly when it comes to Morgan’s passenger. Morgan the actress chooses a polite, sleepily engaged approach to her character, and sticks to it unchangingly throughout the entire show, to the point that watching her deliver great swaths of text in the exact same tone, as if she were retrieving the words from a memory card, is almost fascinating (almost). Minhas is simply flat, locked into a bored derisiveness that is far less interesting to watch. The drivers fare better: Hetherington could have more fun with the incongruity of his accent and demeanour with his static, ostensibly uninteresting job, but he at least manages to display changes in mood. The real saviour though, is Waite, who manages to actually expand his physical performance to below his neck; gesticulating, grooving around, and exhibiting facial variation far beyond the means of his co-stars, Waite’s performance is responsible for any vibrancy the play finds in its particularly repetitive middle section.
There’s potential in Steinsland’s script for real exploration of its themes; sticking a crew of poorly matched actors into an unmoving taxi in a dank parking garage for ninety minutes is not the optimal method for such discovery.
Quantum Taxis. Written and directed by Paul Steinsland. Performing during the Toronto Fringe at Honest Ed’s Underground Parking Lot
This show is one of many Fringe shows that feature an interesting concept not quite executed to its full potential. After getting your ticket for this show, you’re led by a Fringe volunteer down to the underground parking lot of Honest Ed’s. The play takes place in a sectioned off area with seats and a genuine retro taxicab in the performance area.
The action of the show goes without saying. There are two taxi drivers (played by Steve Hetherington and Romaine Waite) and two passengers (Herpreet Minhas and Laurel Morgan), with multiple scenes where drivers and passengers alternate. All four characters have consistent stories and relay them differently to each of their counterparts. Conversely, the advice that they get and dole out depends on who they’re interacting with. Indeed, the characters involved are all quite different. The first driver – who goes unnamed – is a proper, slightly stand-offish Englishman while the second driver named Red is an easy going Islander from St. Kitts. One of the passengers also goes unnamed, and is portrayed as a young, uptight power business woman. The other is named Morgan, and is an even tempered woman employed at a community outreach centre.
The overarching theme of the story is that small decisions, and seemingly insignificant moments have the potential to make a massive impact on our lives. The ways in which this is conveyed in the script is certainly one of the primary strengths of the show. The very concept of the show – the act of hailing a cab – is entirely contingent on chance. Further, there are a lot of interesting and multi-faceted ways in which this idea of conveyed. These include malfunctioning cell phones, traffic gridlock, quantum physics (as the name suggests) and musings on the life of Paul McCartney. The script certainly leaves a lot to ponder on after the show.
Unfortunately the performance and direction don’t quite do the script justice. This could potentially be pinned down to the fact the writer is also the director – a phenomenon that often leads to an end product that’s either very good or more often, very, very bad. It’s also worth noting that Laurel Morgan was also the producer for this show. After the first half hour or so I felt quite disengaged from the show and felt that it tended to drag on. The dialogue in the script could have easily been truncated to 60 or 75 minutes rather than the tedious 90 it clocked in at.
What was also not entirely successful in this production was the overall quality of the acting. On the one hand, Hetherington and Waite as the two contrasting taxi drivers were both engaging, enjoyable to watch and it was clear that some independent thought had been put into their interpretations of their characters. In particular, Waite was incredibly likeable and also managed to curtail the potential stereotypes that had been written into his character.
On the other hand, both Minhas and Morgan both gave cliché performances in regards to their characters; Minhas came off as melodramatic in an attempt at being high strung. While trying to convey a relaxed disposition, Morgan was deadpan and towards the end, unbearably boring to watch. Additionally, Morgan stumbled over her lines on numerous occasions (and made it very obvious that it was case) and was unable to project. The only way that I could hear what she was saying was because I sat right in the front row; I can’t imagine that anyone sitting towards the back of the 100-seat space could hear her at all.
What concerned me the most about this script, however, were the numerous stereotypes played out across the characters. Between the two cab drivers there’s a presented dichotomy between the “enlightened” Westerner who’s in the profession as a last resort and the “laid-back” (i.e. lazy) Caribbean who doesn’t feel a need to pursue any other vocation. In terms of the women, we have another problematic dichotomy of a selfish bitch vs. the nurturing and self-sacrificing woman. The ways in which these characters are represented unfortunately overshadowed the positive elements of the script.
As stated in the beginning of this piece, Quantum Taxis is certainly an interesting idea and having the performance take place in an underground parking lot lends itself well to the play. The central theme of the show is executed well in the script, but the overall performance and development of characters leave much to be desired.
Intermission Toronto 
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