Imagine a place out of time, where the flora and fauna stretch to the sky in a wondrous display of natural beauty. Adam Paolozza’s Last Landscape does just that: imagines the beauty of our world on a massive scale. With each scene created right before your eyes, and yet not a word spoken throughout, Last Landscape is a unique and visually stunning experience.

Last Landscape very purposefully doesn’t have a real plot line to speak of; part of the organic nature of the piece was to create something that didn’t have to follow traditional narrative structure. Rather, audiences witness a series of vignettes, created from scratch. The opening scene has an all-too familiar feel – a man gets home, takes off his many layers of outerwear before taking off his many layers of masks and settles into the horrors being reported on the news. Even going as far as to use hand sanitizer on the food packaging he just brought home, this first scene is a clear reminder of those early pandemic days. Yet when the workers enter and burst through his world, we enter into the realm of imagination.

This non-linear and non-verbal mode of storytelling, paired with the grandeur of the sets and puppetry, creates a simultaneously familiar and foreign environment which the audience explores with the workers. Because there’s no real time and place, the audience is therefore asked to be purely in the moment: to witness the making of these scenes and marvel at them in and of themselves. Once they’re established, these transportive scenes create a sense of calm and wonder, and then the play within them begins. Having SlowPitchSound at the side of the stage to do the turntablism provides another layer of spontaneous creation within the production. Again, part of the beauty lies in witnessing the creation itself, and for the auditory experience to also be a part of that wonder truly completes the ambiance of the show.

The other element which makes this production unique, winning them the Ray Ferris Innovation and Sustainability Grant, is the up-cycled, or borrowed items used in the play. It gives a whimsical quality to everything – like the way children can make the most simple of boxes into something more extraordinary. Hopefully this marks a more conscious move towards sustainable theatre practices; to be able to create vivid images and exciting worlds doesn’t have to mean shiny new objects. Part of the joy in this production is seeing what everything’s made out of and how they’re going to put it to use in the scene. It brings an extra level of creativity to what they’ve made and the evidence of that ingenuity is felt throughout the show.

Paolozza makes appearances at the top of both halves of the production: as the man at the beginning, and as a mystical Janus-type figure just after intermission (very fitting for a January world premiere). The workers are comprised of Nada Abusaleh, Nicolas Eddie, Gibum Dante Lim, Annie Luján and Kari Pederson. These five performers do everything from changing light filters to raising backdrops, puppeteering to physical comedy. And they do it all without a comprehensible word. A personal favourite example of their extraordinary abilities comes when all 5 performers form a tree together, and take us through the life cycle of that tree: from the spring where everything is still growing and becoming, to the summer where all is still yet slightly swaying in the breeze, to the fall where the leaves tumble to the delight of awaiting children, to the winter when the biting wind can cause limbs to fall off. The sequence is masterful, to say the least, and is emblematic of the ingenuity and talent which has been endowed into this piece.

Last Landscape is a genre-defying, awe-inspiring piece of live performance which merely asks the audience to be present, and to wonder at the world along with the performers. This simple ask provides space for creativity, excitement, and delight, all of which Last Landscape has in spades.

Last Landscape runs at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre until January 26. For more information and tickets, visit: https://buddiesinbadtimes.com/show/last-landscape/

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Cover Photo: The cast of Last Landscape. Photo by Fran Chudnoff.

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