Dark Sky

What would the theatre season be without a show performed in a house kitchen, with women's panties hanging overhead, an exposed stovetop gas flame and a character who throws corks at you?

Wit In Love is described as a performance installation based on one chapter of Sky Gilbert's novella about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. You won't learn a lot about the Austrian-British thinker. This is no bio play, but it's lots of fun.

The experience begins in the front room of DNA's semi-detached building where co-designer/director Magdalena Vasko meets you, hands you a sheet full of instructions ("Don't touch the performer, unless he touches you," etc) and then, at an appointed time, shepherds groups of three or four into the performing space, whispering, "Just don't get hurt!"

Those words resonate, because one of the first things you encounter are a dozen sharp kitchen knives plunged into a counter, looking like they could topple and fall.

There's also danger in Hillar Liitoja's unnamed character, who sits at a kitchen table like some abandoned elf and proceeds to tell a meandering story about Schopenhauer, bad haircuts and his one remaining brother who hasn't committed suicide.

The production (love the snatches of Ravel heard as if through a wall, and the claustrophobic feel) is stronger than the text, which feels like warmed-over Poe or Kafka.

Liitoja's intense presence helps Wit In Love take the chill off a cold night.

Glenn Sumi

NOW Magazine, December 10 - 16, 2009

DNA Theatre - Wit in Love

Hillar Liitoja continues to be the most eccentric man of theatre in Toronto. His latest venture is Wit In Love adapted from Sky Gilbert's eponymous novel. "Wit" is the iconic 20th century analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who forever changed the world view of logic, mathematics and language.

The show is a performance installation that takes place in Liitoja's kitchen, with Liitoja acting both parts of Wit and his musical brother Paul. As conceived by Liitoja and collaborator Magdalena Vasko, symbolism is anchored in women's panties festooning a criss-cross of clotheslines, while a table, behind which Liitoja sits, is embedded with 21 knives.

Wit is visiting his brother, and perhaps the most poignant undertone of the dialogue is that even great philosophers must cope with dysfunctional families. Brother Paul, it seems, knows how to push Wit's weakness buttons, but Wit also finds inner strength by the end.

The intriguing Wit In Love continues in the kitchen at DNA Theatre / Liitoja's house until Dec. 13.

Paula Citron

Classical 96.3, December 7, 2009

The DNA experience: Uncomfortable, stimulating, provocative

You've never tried a DNA Theatre production? Well, let me tell you, it is an experience.

A case in point is Wit In Love, a "performance installation" now playing at 133 Bathurst St.

You assemble on the porch of an ordinary house and are shown in by a young woman who gives you a list of dos and don'ts which you have to promise to obey. (No touching the performer, unless he touches you. No treading on the book on the floor, that sort of thing.)

Pleasant as she is, she is not particularly forthcoming and you end up being slightly uncomfortable and off-balance (a familiar DNA tactic).

You are divided into small groups, then shown into a small room where a man, dressed in tails, a white shirt, a short kilt and red tights is scribbling away at a table.

There's plenty to look at as you wait for him to speak. One half of the table is covered with about 20 knives, stuck point first into the table top. The other half contains, among other things, a broken wine glass, a bottle of gin and a desk light. Photos are plastered over the ceiling. Pairs of women's briefs hang from a series of clotheslines, strung at odd angles. One burner on gas stove is on full. It is warm.

The man is the hugely influential 20th century philosopher Wittgenstein and this excerpt from Sky Gilbert's novella concentrates on the relationship between him and his only remaining brother, a pianist. (The other two brothers, we are told, have committed suicide.) While not a conventional relationship, it is loving, in its way.

While the piano music of Ravel plays in the background, Wittgenstein muses about Schopenhauer and Freud.

Hillar Liitoja's Wittgenstein is a compelling character, tossing corks across the room into a bowl, using scissors to snip pieces off the wine glass or lying full-length on the floor contemplating his brother's almost inevitable suicide.

In a program note, Liitoja thanks Gilbert for his "glorious, complex, convoluted, contradictory, tormented text" and it's hard to be sure what this excerpt amounts to. But it never fails to be stimulating and provocative - and that's another consistent DNA trait over the years.

Robert Crew

Toronto Star, December 4, 2009