Trina Davies’ The Romeo Initiative will break your heart this Valentine’s Day – and it’ll put it right back together to start the second half of this season at Persephone Theatre.
Kristi Frank gives a bravura performance as Karin, the trusting, sweet and unassuming secretary who meets a man who seems too good to be true while on a vacation from her job as a secretary in the West German government’s finance department.
Set mostly in Bonn, the capital of West Germany during the Cold War era, the action moves quickly as Markus’ (Mackenzie Dawson) brief visits between increasingly longer absences leads her to worry that he is seeing someone else.
Playing the spoiler is Lena — performed with zeal by Jenna Berenbaum — who is having an affair with Karin’s boss, but whose eagerness to help Karin with documents at work and her relationship with Markus is also too good to be true.
If part one is about building to a stunning twist, then part two is about putting the pieces together, reliving events from a different point of view. If you’ve read John Fowles’ The Collector, you may be familiar with this style of storytelling, however, the ending here is satisfying to watch.
Jonathan Seinen directs a tight story in the first half on a three-set stage, which feels like a romance-comedy except for the well-placed dangling threads as Karin questions her fairytale romance with Markus, but less so her newfound friendship of opposites with Lena.
The second half moves almost too briskly, featuring a rotating stage, several wardrobe changes, inter-scene music, a six-month time jump and reveals. Don’t let the two-hour run time (plus intermission) fool you — this show does not have a lull.
Frank’s Karin is authentic, from her awkward “aw gosh” innocence at a beachfront cafe where she meets Markus, to the final scene where she runs through a range of emotions and can no longer be dismissed as a “mouse.”
There’s a moment where Karin gets the answer to the question she’s been waiting to hear, the pain so devastating that she’s left jaw agape momentarily frozen and unable to sob. You don’t just see it, you feel that heartbreak as if it were your own.
Hanne Loosen has a keen eye for detail in the sets and wardrobing, choosing pieces, designs and colours that evoke the “mod” era so well.
The story is inspired by an actual East German spy program used during the Cold War, which saw Romeos romance West German women who had access to information and who they could beguile into sharing said knowledge.
The story is, however, relevant in our times, when we have to discern what is too good to be true daily out of the constant stream of images and video that seems all too real and might not be. The heartbreak of broken trust, too, is timeless. And it’s worth the watch.
The Romeo Initiative runs until Feb. 15 at Persephone Theatre. Tickets can be purchased online at persephonetheatre.org.
