Friday 27 November 2015

Social Studies is family drama with a refugee

N.BBLR gives readers a Quicky version that features three sections of six or so paragraphs that sum up my take on the show : From the footlights, Acting pin-spots & Who gonna like. Enthusiasts with time who want more back-story & dialogue quotations & production details as well as ticket specifics can read the entire review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky Version

From the footlights : Promo materials from Firehall Arts Centre describe the play thus : "This heart-warming comedy by Trish Cooper about a South Sudanese 'Lost Boy' adopted by the well-intentioned Wilson family of Winnipeg, yields hilarious result when it takes on Canadian values and differences. With characters so full of contradictions we are reminded of ourselves. Social Studies highlights family connections and the desire to do good in the world." I fully expected a comedy modeled along the lines of CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairies sit-com. It is, decidedly, not. At maybe only one point did I find a scene "hilarious". But that is not necessarily criticism.

Cooper, 40-something, is a Winnipeg comic actress and playwright. She got the nub of her script idea not from the CBC show but from personal experience she and her mom had with a refugee Sudanese foster brother named Thon. The plot of her play involves a peacenik-y United Church lay minister mom who often presides at gay marriages. She adopts a Lost Boy named Deng at the very moment elder daughter Jackie boomerangs back home when her 7-year marriage implodes. The show's title comes from Grade 10 younger daughter Sarah who decides to do her socials project on Deng's experiences in order to generate better understanding of the tortuous conditions in his homeland. 

Director Donna Spencer has corraled a very talented cast of women to skate on such ice. A winter's tale of deep-seated cultural clashes in 2006 Winnipeg could be tricky indeed to pull off. I am pleased to report that Firehall's production enlightens audiences in both senses of the word, and does so with zing and panache.

Acting pin-spots :  It is the dynamic interaction between McFarlen, Moon and Beaudoin that carries the play. Cooper's script is embraced compellingly by Director Donna Spencer. Her blocking of these women and the hand and facial stage business she has them act out to punctuate their personalities is first-rate. The physical closeness between them as they interact is sheer spot-on family stuff. Both McFarlen and Moon quite caught my attention in their respective roles in Miss Shakespeare, and they didn't disappoint for a nano-second last night. And maybe it's because she reminds me so much of one of my teen-age granddaughters, but Lili Beaudoin (who originally smote me in Sister Judy) did it all over again in this piece. She is a truly sharp and clever character actor with a huge future. 

Deng's character being reprised by Diggs from his 2013 debut at the Prairie Theatre Exchange is depicted as a genuinely shy fellow who wants really only two things from his new Canadian life : joy & happiness. The joy emerges from his gentle spirit. His quest for happiness leads him down many of the same bad choice,  debt-entrapping paths most Canadians tread in pursuing material comforts and public show : "I wish to be as good as you want me to be!" he cries pathetically to his Wilson family at play's end.

Who gonna like : From all the pre-reading I did in prep for the show, I confess to being surprised at how it struck me, ultimately. While playwright Cooper might have thought she was mounting a comedy ("hilarious") about the foibles of uptight white Canadians, what she accomplished most successfully was a script about three women in a family coming of age together. The immigrant / refugee factor emblemized by the character Deng was a muted characteristic, I felt -- he was made out mostly to be a foil for the women in this family whose gustily voiced dialogue was priceless to behold.  Previously in the week I mentioned Antony Holland in Family Matters at the Cultch three or so decades ago. If family matters are matters that matter to you, you will find much to relate to in this performance. The refugee conversation under way across the land only heightens the play's relevance.

Wordy Version

From the footlights : Promo materials from Firehall Arts Centre describe the play thus : "This heart-warming comedy by Trish Cooper about a South Sudanese 'Lost Boy' adopted by the well-intentioned Wilson family of Winnipeg, yields hilarious result when it takes on Canadian values and differences. With characters so full of contradictions we are reminded of ourselves. Social Studies highlights family connections and the desire to do good in the world." I fully expected a comedy modeled along the lines of CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairies sit-com. It is, decidedly, not. At maybe only one point did I find a scene "hilarious". But that is not necessarily criticism.

Cooper, 40-something, is a Winnipeg comic actress and playwright. She got the nub of her script idea not from the CBC show but from personal experience she and her mom had with a refugee Sudanese foster brother named Thon. The plot of her play involves a peacenik-y United Church lay minister mom who often presides at gay marriages. She adopts a Lost Boy named Deng at the very moment elder daughter Jackie boomerangs back home when her 7-year marriage implodes. The show's title comes from Grade 10 younger daughter Sarah who decides to do her socials project on Deng's experiences in order to generate better understanding of the tortuous conditions in his homeland. 

Director Donna Spencer has corraled a very talented cast of women to skate on such ice. A winter's tale of deep-seated cultural clashes in 2006 Winnipeg could be tricky indeed to pull off. I am pleased to report that Firehall's production enlightens audiences in both senses of the word, and does so with zing and panache.

WYSIWYG : The dramatic power of the play comes from the dialogue written for the three Wilson women : Mom Val (Susinn McFarlen), Jackie (Erin Moon), and Sarah (Lili Beaudoin). Their age spread across four or more decades sets the stage for some punchy exchanges as they try to sort out the what, the why, and the how to create an ersatz family for a 22-year-old Lost Boy (Richie Diggs) who hails from a decidedly chauvinistic, machocentric culture of constant fight-or-flight impulses, truly a "kill or be killed" world. (Estimates are that the 23-year civil war resulted in 2 million deaths and 20,000 refugee children of both sexes.)

A month earlier, Val unilaterally offered up daughter Jackie's vacant bedroom to Deng who was bunking down with five other Lost Boys in an apartment. When Jackie asks Sarah why she did it, young Sarah explains Deng's plight with empathic Grade 10 nonchalance and insight : "They're not getting tortured anymore but they're alone and broke and shit." For her part, Jackie is explosively angry at soon-to-be ex-husband Mark, and camping on the chesterfield while Deng sleeps on her flowery duvet amuses her very little. When Deng observes that the movie she's watching is a gay male love story, he squirms and protests how wrong that conduct is in his home culture.

Sarah interviews Deng for her socials project. She finds him attractive. But when he reveals he has an "ugly" girl hiding in the basement -- meaning she's not his true girlfriend -- Sarah explodes : "I never thought of you as being a dick, but you are being so dick-ish right now!" When he rebuffs her later bid to sneak a kiss from him after a beer, the dramatic tension in the Wilson house mounts inexorably for the balance of the play.

Matriarch Val watches and rants as her daughters play out their respective hissy-fits. When Jackie says she's depressed, Val shoots back : "Oh, please, depression is a first world invention not to be confused with self-pity!" Jackie harbours not only grudges but fears. Claiming Sudanese culture is misogynist, she prattles to Sarah one night : "He could just erupt in anger and start choking us! Don't you think it's insane to have a stabby timebomb living in our home?"

Against Val's regular reminder of first-world privilege that is at the centre of Canadian culture, Jackie protests and fights back saying "I am not being an asshole by asking some relevant questions" about whether Lost Boys can truly assimilate into mainstream Canadian life. Perhaps her best and most telling line is when she invites Mom to watch The Milagro Beanfield War with her : "There is so much injustice and poverty in this movie, you will love it!" 

That line captures wonderfully the fact that for most Canadians, self-included, their experience with 3rd world folk is limited to what the media present in their inherently subjective ways. Or what we absorb collaterally from the safety of the t.v. screen. Then there's the "chattering classes factor" to add into the mix. Folks in coffee shops and pubs and around the dinner table voicing their fears, usually over personal safety concerns. Pundits love to call this either racism or xenophobia or both, but it probably isn't i.m.o. It's just real base-line emotions playing themselves out. 

Complicated, all of this, by the fact that often refugees, like the Sudanese, are ghettoized in the cities they migrate too, partly by choice, mostly by economic & cultural diktat. As seen in Belgium and France of late, this tendency can potentially lead to horrific consequences. Canadians are neither wrong nor exempt from such concerns. But true-to-form, our better selves will and do win out in the end. Both in Cooper's play and in our real-time address of the horror that (today) is Syria.

In Cooper's characterization, Deng carries a Bible and goes to church regularly. He's a bit of a Puritan. Sarah challenges him "Oh you're upset that Canadian girls drink and swear, talk back and have their own money?" Without confessing it straight up, he clearly doesn't disagree with Sarah's cut at the cultural divide between them. (N.B. South Sudan immigrants to Canada are roughly 50% Muslim, 50% Christian.)

Acting pin-spots :  It is the dynamic interaction between McFarlen, Moon and Beaudoin that carries the play. Cooper's script is embraced compellingly by Director Donna Spencer. Her blocking of these women and the hand and facial stage business she has them act out to punctuate their personalities is first-rate. The physical closeness between them as they interact is sheer spot-on family stuff. Both McFarlen and Moon quite caught my attention in their respective roles in Miss Shakespeare, and they didn't disappoint for a nano-second last night. And maybe it's because she reminds me so much of one of my teen-age granddaughters, but Lili Beaudoin (who originally smote me in Sister Judy) did it all over again in this piece. She is a truly sharp and clever character actor with a huge future. 

Deng's character being reprised by Diggs from his 2013 debut at the Prairie Theatre Exchange is depicted as a genuinely shy fellow who wants really only two things from his new Canadian life : joy & happiness. The joy emerges from his gentle spirit. His quest for happiness leads him down many of the same bad choice,  debt-entrapping paths most Canadians tread in pursuing material comforts and public show : "I wish to be as good as you want me to be!" he cries pathetically to his Wilson family at play's end.

Production values of particular note :  She may have retired from UBC, but Alison Green hasn't slept in or lost one iota of excellence. The angled and articulated house interior with its early antique kitchen round table (nice symbolism for family connectivity), even the stained glass leaded window in the front door -- all of it just perfect for the FAC intimate stage. Matt Frankish's lighting designs worked well indeed given all the fade-ins and black-outs the scriptwork calls for scene-after-scene. The continuous rheostat'd table lamps circling the set were just right.

Who gonna like : From all the pre-reading I did in prep for the show, I confess to being surprised at how it struck me, ultimately. While playwright Cooper might have thought she was mounting a comedy ("hilarious") about the foibles of uptight white Canadians, what she accomplished most successfully was a script about three women in a family coming of age together. The immigrant / refugee factor emblemized by the character Deng was a muted characteristic, I felt -- he was made out mostly to be a foil for the women in this family whose gustily voiced dialogue was priceless to behold.  Previously in the week I mentioned Antony Holland in Family Matters at the Cultch three or so decades ago. If family matters are matters that matter to you, you will find much to relate to in this performance. The refugee conversation under way across the land only heightens the play's relevance.

Particulars :  Written by Trish Cooper. At the Firehall Arts Centre, southwest corner of Cardero at Gore in DTES. Run-time 160 minutes including intermission. On through December 5th. Information and tickets via FirehallArtsCentre.ca or by phoning 604.689.0926.

Production team :  Director Donna Spencer.  Set Designer Alison Green.  Costume Designer Sabrina Evertt.  Lighting Designer Matt Frankish.  Props Yasu Shimosaka.  Stage Manager Emma Hammond.  Technical Director Jamie Burns.  Production Assistant Teresa Nelson. 

Performers :  Lili Beaudoin (Sarah).  Richie Diggs (Deng).  Susinn McFarlen (Val).  Erin Moon (Jackie).

-30-




Wednesday 25 November 2015

Rapture, Blister, Burn is rom-com feminism fun


N.BBLR gives readers a Quicky version that features three sections : From the footlights, Acting pin-spots & Who gonna like. Enthusiasts with time who want more back-story & dialogue quotations & production details as well as ticket specifics can read the entire review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky Version

From the footlights :  Notionally RBB is the story of a fast-track professor, writer and t.v. pundit whose career focus for 15 years has been how feminism has played out since the days of Betty Frieden. At its core the show is a check-in how first-world women continue to butt up against more complexity in their efforts to fulfill themselves than men seem to face. The very subject was approached by my mid-40's daughter this week in forwarding an article from CNN she'd recently run into "Why is 'having it all' just a woman's issue?" Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose is, apparently, the short answer. Playwright Gina Gionfriddo offers up some kale and collard greens along with the pizza-&-beer that are regular fare throughout her piece : happiness, she says, always has two components, the "what"and the "how". RBB reminds us there are fat & carbos galore along with nutrition in each slice of life's pie that's up for grabs. 

Acting pin-spots : What Director Aaron Craven achieves best in the piece is not only his casting but his dialogue timing, emphasis, and emotional draw. From the get-go his conception of the script was spot-on : "In our fair city of Vancouver, the cost of living dictates a two income household. Local families with advanced educations struggle to fit career fulfillment, child rearing, romance, bill paying and 'me time' into a 24 hour day. Empowered young singles populate the new condos and bars while the dating scene...continues to be viewed through the matrix of 'stuck up' women and 'weird metrosexual' men...As our social paradigms shift faster than ever, our age-old quest for happiness remains."

To single out any of the five superb actors might be a tad unfair, so let's hi-lite them all. Moya O'Connell as Catherine absolutely aced her role from minute one to minute 120. Lori Triolo's emotional explosion at the start of Act 2 was sublime : "If you reject the sphere of family and home you may not like it. If you give up being a homemaker, you better be sure it was all worth it!" she yells at Catherine who is now clearly an adulterer right in Gwen's back yard. Courtney Shields as the youthy provocateur in the piece was a hoot, while impish Mom Anna Hagan was just plain fun. C- slacker & wanker & toker Robert Moloney was the character every red-blooded male I know fears he could become if he weren't vigilant. When men stop working at turning toward their mates rather than toward their computer screens, bewarethe result, gentlemen. A clever well-finessed performance. 

Who gonna like : In a week when as a reviewer I've lived through the emotion of dementia demise by Rubyslippers at the Cultch, and now self-actualization confrontations by Mitch and Murray Productions at Studio 16, I confess to a wee bit of emotional whack-out. At the end, Rapture, Blister, Burn is more rom-com than serious gritty grab-you-by-the-throat drama that a David Mamet script almost always is. Still, this is small-stage excellence of a recurring intimate theme in our society : as Even Cowgirls Get The Blues novelist Tom Robbins famously said, "Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that, and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon." You can't miss getting a hint of what the purpose of this week's full moon is if you go see this stunning production. 

Wordy Version

From the footlights :  Notionally RBB is the story of a fast-track professor, writer and t.v. pundit whose career focus for 15 years has been how feminism has played out since the days of Betty Frieden. At its core the show is a check-in how first-world women continue to butt up against more complexity in their efforts to fulfill themselves than men seem to face. The very subject was approached by my mid-40's daughter this week in forwarding an article from CNN she'd recently run into "Why is 'having it all' just a woman's issue?" Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose is, apparently, the short answer. Playwright Gina Gionfriddo offers up some kale and collard greens along with the pizza-&-beer that are regular fare throughout her piece : happiness, she says, always has two components, the "what"and the "how". RBB reminds us there are fat & carbos galore along with nutrition in each slice of life's pie that's up for grabs. 

How it's all put together : Sometimes for discussion to work writers need to resort to extremes or stereotypes to make their points. Much as the not-so-lamented but late Sex And The City scripts featured in the late 90's. In RBB the new stereotype is media sizzler Catherine (Moya O'Connell) -- apparently liberated, envied -- she shattered the glass ceiling. Catherine holds forth on CNN and is championed "the hot doomsday chick" by Bill Maher. She likes to draw deadly linkages between pop culture and porn's allure on the internet. But Catherine worries that once Mom dies she will face a future devoid of love : she has never married, no kids, serial hook-ups nothing more. Oh crap. Just a cliff and an abyss ahead of me?

Catherine's mom Alice (Anna Hagan) has just had a heart attack. Catherine returns to her hometown to nurse mom (who's wry and wise and lovingly waspish). Same town where her ex-college roomie Gwen (Lori Triolo) lives. With her hubby Don (Robert Moloney). Coincidence alert : Don and Catherine were paramours at grad school. Don and Catherine and Gwen hung out at taverns and slugged back copious bottles of Bud. Then Catherine hied off to London town "for a year" to pursue academia. Don, miffed and hurt, snags Catherine's ex-BFF Gwen in matrimony. Gwen is now a 10-year AA member with two kids a decade apart. She is equally and oppositely unhappy, she thinks, as Catherine. Never graduated, never a career, a stay-at-home mom 100%.

Formerly a grad school uebermensch, Don now prefers to laze away his days with pot and late-nite porn titillation. He's been shuffled off the academic porch and made into a dean who counsels troubled students. He helps Catherine mount a Fall course on feminism at his "4th-rate college". Coincidence alert #2 : A trial seminar is set up for the summer semester : only Gwen and her ex-babysitter Avery (Courtney Shields), enrol. 
Avery's a pre-med drop-out who's now a reality t.v. maker with some lout named Lucas.  The class is held in Alice's living room. Alice pops in at 5 p.m. each day with a tray of martinis and lots of Phyllis Schlafly opinions.

You guessed it. Don and Catherine revive their hots. Gwen is hurt, but she's currently so unhappy in marriage to Don she decides to take teen son Julian back to New York for the summer for the two of them to go to school. Four-year-old son Devon remains behind with Don. And Catherine. A summer of role reversal is put into play -- Gwen tries on an academic gown while Catherine plays surrogate mommy for Devon between all-nighters with Don doing films, beer, pizza and sex. Avery acts as the play's fool, 2015 style : she's glib and chippy and full of cyber-fed "knowiness". In a truly fun turn of events, Avery winds up siding with Alice, old enough to be her Grandma, in setting everything back to their inevitable pathways by play's end.

Clever script humour, attempts at 'seriousity' : Gionfriddo is intent to examine lifestyle choices. "Time and perspective have changed," she told L.A. Magazine two years ago, "but the dilemma of whether you can have two high-achieving partners in one relationship...hasn't been sorted out." (Don was once a potential "high achieving" academic : now he's apparently content with his misfit counselor mediocrity : "What does he know better than drinking and failing?" Gwen asks early on.) 

Gionfriddo expected little male uptake on her theme about women's struggles : "I thought women would 'respond' and men would 'be polite'. My brother said it's the only play of mine he 'responded' to." Maybe this is the heart of it : Catherine describes what she identifies as her existential despair : "In a relationship between two people you can't both go first. The question is is the other person willing to sacrifice and follow you? Maybe men aren't hard-wired to follow women."

Or, as highlighted in the program, another cut at it from Catherine : "Feminism asserted that women have a right to the same opportunities as men. What feminism has arguably left unfinished is how two empowered people are supposed to negotiate all this fantastic equality."

Avery challenges : "Isn't having a family a recipe for misery?" she asks. "Your husband could leave you and your kids grow up and leave, and then you're fucked." She adds a telling observation : "So, you can have a career and be lonely and sad or you can have a family and be lonely and sad...?"

Throughout Gionfriddo's script there are examinations how film themes have morphed in response to feminist and anti-war impulses afoot in America. E.g. slasher films as male producers' reply to the liberation of women. By play's end young Avery posits : "I like the slasher films where the final girl in those movies, the girl who fights for her life and wins -- where the guy won't come in anymore and save her -- but she'll be okay." That, it turns out, is about the extent of "progress" women can seem to expect in current society, Gionfriddo suggests : a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. 

Acting high-lights X5 : What Director Aaron Craven achieves best in the piece is not only his casting but his dialogue timing, emphasis, and emotional draw. Clearly from the get-go his conception of the script was spot-on : "In our fair city of Vancouver, the cost of living dictates a two income household. Local families with advanced educations struggle to fit career fulfillment, child rearing, romance, bill paying and 'me time' into a 24 hour day. Empowered young singles populate the new condos and bars while the dating scene...continues to be viewed through the matrix of 'stuck up' women and 'weird metrosexual' men...As our social paradigms shift faster than ever, our age-old quest for happiness remains."

To single out any of the five superb actors might be a tad unfair, so let's hi-lite them all. Moya O'Connell as Catherine absolutely aced her role from minute one to minute 120. Lori Triolo's emotional explosion at the start of Act 2 was sublime : "If you reject the sphere of family and home you may not like it. If you give up being a homemaker, you better be sure it was all worth it!" she yells at Catherine who is now clearly an adulterer right in Gwen's back yard. Courtney Shields as the youthy provocateur in the piece was a hoot, while impish Mom Anna Hagan was just plain fun. C- slacker & wanker & toker Robert Moloney was the character every red-blooded male I know fears he could become if he weren't vigilant. When men stop working at turning toward their mates rather than toward their computer screens, beware! the result, gentlemen. A clever well-finessed performance. 

Who gonna like : In a week when as a reviewer I've lived through the emotion of dementia demise by Rubyslippers at the Cultch, and now self-actualization confrontations by Mitch and Murray Productions at Studio 16, I confess to a wee bit of emotional whack-out. At the end, Rapture, Blister, Burn is more rom-com than serious gritty grab-you-by-the-throat drama that a David Mamet script almost always is. Still, this is small-stage excellence of a recurring intimate theme in our society : as Even Cowgirls Get The Blues novelist Tom Robbins famously said, "Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that, and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon." You can't miss getting a hint of what the purpose of this week's full moon is if you go see this stunning production. 

Particulars :  Playwright Gina Gionfriddo. Produced by Mitch and Murray Productions. On thru November 28th at the Studio 16 on West 7th at Fir. Run-time 120 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. Phone 604.872.0075. 

Production team :  Director Aaron Craven.  Co-Producer Anne Marie Deluise. Assistant Director / Publicist Chelsea Turner. Stage Manager Christie Maxson.  Set Designer David Roberts.  Lighting Designer Gerald King.  Communications / Production Assistant Kate Isaac. Front of House / Productions Manager Michael Coen Chase.  

Performers :  Anna Hagan (Alice).  Robert Moloney (Don).  Moya O'Connell (Catherine).  Courtney Shields (Avery).  Lori Triolo (Gwen). . 

Addendum #1 : Upon exiting the theatre, I chanced upon CISL 650 AM on my truck radio. Appropriately & coincidentally they were playing the 1968 haunting ballad by the Scot, Mary Hopkin, who had just that summer signed on as Apple Records' first solo artist (Paul McCartney's label). Her lyrics in "Those Were The Days My Friend" were profoundly prescient of the Gionfriddo script that came along some 45 years later :

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we could do?

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd life the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.

Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If by chance I'd see you in the tavern
We'd smile at one another and we'd say

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd life the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days, la, la, la.

Just tonight I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me?

Those were the days my friend

We thought they'd never end

We'd sing and dance forever and a day

We'd life the life we choose

We'd fight and never lose

Those were the days, oh yes those were the days, la, la, la.



Through the door there came familiar laughter

I saw your face and heard you call my name

Oh my friend we're older but no wiser

For in our hearts the dreams are still the same.



Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd life the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days, la, la, la.

Addendum #2   As reported in the earlier-cited L.A. Magazine, "The play's title comes from the lyrics of 'Use Once and Destroy', a song penned by Courtney Love when she was in the band Hole. Gionfriddo, who describes herself as a fan of both Kurt Cobain and Love, says that music plays a huge role in her creative process. 'An important way to generate ideas is to pound the pavement listening to my iPod. There are songs that lead to ideas and characters. This was a song I had known for many years, and the chorus kept popping up for me as having relevance to this story.'" The song "Use Once And Destroy" was recorded in 1998 by Love on her 3rd album, Celebrity Skin, four years after the suicide death of her soulmate & chief poet of the grunge rock wave, Cobain. The album was nominated for a Grammy award.

It's the emptiness that follows you down
It's the ached inside when it all burns out
It's poisonous, if muscles it aches
It's everything you had when it breaks.

It's the emptiness that's all you have left
Too terrified of your frozen breath
It's a bitter mouth, it's buttered and knifed
It's the awful truth you fight for your life
It might as well, it might as well hurt
It might as well, it might as well

I went down to rescue you
I went all the way down
Fill your hungry wretched life
Here they come it's closing time.

It's the bitter root, it's twisted inside, 
It's the heart you used to have when it died
It's the emptiness, it poisons, it lies
It's everything that you'll never find
It might as well, it might as well hurt
It might as well, it might as well

I went down for the remains
Sort through all your blurs and stains
Take your rapture blister burns
Stand in line it's not your turn

All dressed in red
Always the bride
Off with her head
All dressed in white
Off with her head

I went down to rescue you
I went all the way down
I went down for the remains
Sort through all the blurs and stains

Ooo ooo I will follow you
Anytime, anywhere
Ooo ooo and I'll come for you
Just say you don't care, ahhh.


-30-
























Friday 20 November 2015

You Will Remember Me is unforgettably touching

N.BBLR gives readers a Quicky version that features three sections : From the footlights, Acting pin-spots & Who gonna like. Enthusiasts with time who want more back-story & dialogue quotations & production details as well as ticket specifics can read the entire review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky Version

From the footlights : It is said we all die twice. Once when we breathe our final breath and a second time when the last person to remember us dies. But along the way there are many stages. And as we live longer, considerably more Alzheimer-like conditions will confront us. From ancient times dementia was recognized as real : the Chinese character translates literally as "foolish old person". 

But as Boomers themselves become "foolish old people" the issue takes on enhanced prominence with respect to social practice & public policy. Should diseased elders be warehoused? Should families bear the burden of ultimate responsibility down through the generations? When and how do decisions get taken to end the growing misery a loved one suffers? 

These questions are debated, often with humour, in Bobby Theodore's You Will Remember Me translation of the Francois Archambault original script Tu te souviendres de moi. Whether metaphor for how society treats its various discards past their best-by date or more simply just a story, YWRM will touch you, shake you, move you off centre, no question. 


Acting pin-spots : Like Antony Holland's performance from decades ago, Kevin McNulty's representation as Edouard will live in memory as long as mine might survive. Utterly stupendous. 

Full credit to the Archambault / Theodore script for demonstrating the subtlety of progressive dementia -- "Do I know you? What was your name again? I wish you'd wear a name tag so I can remember it!" Edouard says over-&-over again -- but it is McNulty's power that grabs : he evinces a full and total appreciation of his character's slow but ineluctable slide. An astonishing and completely heart-rending performance. No question here. 
McNulty's acting is absolutely must-see for power, nuance, and visceral honesty.

As Madeleine, Patti Allan was breathtaking at moments in the complete believability of her role as the emotionally abused wife always struggling for dignity under the shadow of the bright social intellectual powerhouse her husband cast. Her bottled throttling rage was immense in its delivery.

Kudos to "the children", each and all, in the performance too. Together and singly they revealed characters who were never one-dimensional despite parts written to perhaps make them seem so at first blush. 

Who gonna like : YWRM is small-stage theatre at its best. The themes that are pursued and examined are absolutely au courant. Intimacy. Loyalty. Career. History. Now. Then. Next? Cast delivery was completely equal to the excellence of the Archambault / Theodore script. Production details were precise, calculated, and pleasing. 

Blocking the numerous exits / entrances from every possible angle contributed to the feel of "This play is everywhere!" intended by the playwright. An intense & completely! rewarding night of theatre. How YWRM confronts so compellingly a future many of us will face is nonpareil live theatre that is Ruby Slippers trademark. The production is both challenging & disquieting, but a triumph : a fully personal individual grab at the heart. Brava! Bravo! 

Let me be clear. Not an offhand pip-pip Good show! recommendation here -- for its excellence in extremis do, truly Go!


Wordy Version

From the footlights : It is said we all die twice. Once when we breathe our final breath and a second time when the last person to remember us dies. But along the way there are many stages. And as we live longer, considerably more Alzheimer-like conditions will confront us. From ancient times dementia was recognized as real : the Chinese character translates literally as "foolish old person". 

But as Boomers themselves become "foolish old people" the issue takes on enhanced prominence with respect to social practice & public policy. Should diseased elders be warehoused? Should families bear the burden of ultimate responsibility down through the generations? When and how do decisions get taken to end the growing misery a loved one suffers? 

These questions are debated, often with humour, in Bobby Theodore's You Will Remember Me translation of the Francois Archambault original script Tu te souviendres de moi. Whether metaphor for how society treats its various discards past their best-by date or more simply just a story, YWRM will touch you, shake you, move you off centre, no question. 

How it's all put together : Edouard Beauchemin (Kevin McNulty) is, ironically, a professor of history who is losing his grip on memory. Not the minutiae of historical epochs. For that his brain still fires on all cylinders. But the day-to-day, moment-by-moment stuff, more each passing minute. 

Wife Madeleine (Patti Allan) struggles against three forces : the simple fact of Edouard's disease; the increasing alienation she has felt from him who throughout their marriage has used his mind as a weapon against her (not to mention serial sexcapades with his students); then there's the guilt she feels about abandoning Edouard, now, when he's been cut adrift from his life's moorings. 

Madeleine wants daughter Isabelle (Marci T House) to take Edouard on with the same zest and vehemence she devotes to her t.v. reporter work. Have Edouard live with her. But of course for Isabelle, work is a means to escape the shackles of family. Into the mix comes new boyfriend Patrick (Craig Erickson). He's a bit of a layabout on U.I. who enjoys nothing so much as nights out with the lads to play poker. 

Likeable Patrick has a teenage daughter, Berenice (Sereana Malani) who is chippy, flip, and full of attitude and who Isabelle has no time for. Edouard, who hates all the values of her Gen Y group, ultimately finds Berenice to be his true angel of mercy. 

Zippy dialogue gets laughs : Not only a professor, Edouard has long had his own radio program. He's a regular go-to interviewee on t.v., an unrepentant Quebec nationalist, a politico activist for whom Rene Levesque is still his hero. But the current cyber-world is utterly unnerving to him : "This is a pitiful time for ideas," he declares. "The current climate depresses me so much I almost miss Pierre Elliott Trudeau!" He drips with sarcasm at how social media have besieged the public consciousness, dismissing it en masse : "It's the democratization of human stupidity!" he seethes. Lots a chortles from an appreciative and identifying audience in all that rant. 

But in the end the brilliance of the Archambault / Theodore script is its grasp of zeitgeist, the focus on mindfulness that's all the rage, the head-butt of the instant against any past event : "The mark you left yesterday doesn't mean anything?" Berenice challenges him near the end. "Hmnn," a momentarily lucid Edouard reflects, "that's a good question. That's the question." 

Recall of a much earlier Cultch script : Decades back on the original Cultch church stage, Studio 58 founder Antony Holland starred in a little potboiler of a play entitled Family Matters. Like everyone else, I interpreted it as the adjective "family" modifying the noun "matters". But only when Holland explodes in a rage at one of his disrespectful kids "Family matters!" did the show's real meaning emerge. 

Similarly here. In both senses, YWRM is a show about family matters. One can't help but conjure Count Leo Tolstoy's opening line to his epic novel Anna Karenina : "Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

Despite her anger at her husband at whom she seethes and taunts and disparages noisily, Madeleine softens, too, kisses him good-bye, lets him lie in her lap while she strokes his hair. Angry and defensive Isabelle sneaks dad away for a restaurant meal one night. They get schnockered on two bottles of wine, arriving home all giggly and merry. Berenice becomes a surrogate daughter to Edouard on a couple of different levels. Endeared to him and he to her, she helps him work through various truths of his life now filtered through a glass darkly. 

Numerous times during the show I found myself reaching for kleenex as the pain of these kinds of exchanges struck their target in me. Ruby Slippers Artistic Director Diane Brown, who directed the show, said it perhaps best : "Like (Archambault's) other work, this play is startlingly honest, funny, intimate and expansive. As our protagonist is stripped of his identity, his history, his memory, his ego, the play evokes a kind of humanity that demands attention, and reminds us that life is bigger." 

Acting pin-spots : Like Antony Holland's performance from decades ago, Kevin McNulty's representation as Edouard will live in memory as long as mine might survive. Utterly stupendous. 

Full credit to the Archambault / Theodore script for demonstrating the subtlety of progressive dementia -- "Do I know you? What was your name again? I wish you'd wear a name tag so I can remember it!" Edouard says over-&-over again -- but it is McNulty's power that grabs : he evinces a full and total appreciation of his character's slow but ineluctable slide. An astonishing and completely heart-rending performance. 

Nothing better from Julianne Moore in the recent Alzheimer-themed movie Still Alice, or earlier, what Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent did in Sarah Polley's Away From Her script (based on -- my favourite! -- Alice Munro, whose short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" is AM at her peak of writing + insight). No question here. McNulty's acting is absolutely must-see for power, nuance, and visceral honesty.

As Madeleine, Patti Allan was breathtaking at moments in the complete believability of her role as the emotionally abused wife always struggling for dignity under the shadow of the bright social intellectual powerhouse her husband cast. Her bottled throttling rage was immense in its delivery.

Kudos to "the children", each and all, in the performance too. Together and singly they revealed characters who were never one-dimensional despite parts written to perhaps make them seem so at first blush. 

Production highlights : Director Diane Brown put together a team whose performance for the tight Historic Stage at the Cultch was spot on. Particular mention of Heidi Wilkinson's tier'd set of a wicker settee and slat-backed rocker surrounded by monster weed stalks that worked well indeed. But it was Corwin Ferguson's projected images on the backstage wall -- a sort of oversize sheet of hospital gauze with random bandages or post-it notes stuck on it -- these tied the set together cleverly, richly. Whether from Quebec or my favourite Cariboo here in B.C., the projected birchbark trees and the birds -- coupled with the overlays of Edouard's  demented scribblery -- the effects worked 100% or more. 

Who gonna like : YWRM is small-stage theatre at its best. The themes that are pursued and examined are absolutely au courant. Intimacy. Loyalty. Career. History. Now. Next? Cast delivery was completely equal to the excellence of the Archambault / Theodore script. Production details were precise, calculated, and pleasing. 

Blocking the numerous exits / entrances from every possible angle contributed to the feel of "This play is everywhere!" intended by the playwright. An intense & completely! rewarding night of theatre. How YWRM confronts so compellingly a future many of us will face is nonpareil live theatre that is Ruby Slippers trademark. The production is both challenging & disquieting, but a triumph : a fully personal individual grab at the heart. Brava! Bravo! 

Let me be clear. Not an offhand pip-pip Good show! recommendation here -- for its excellence in extremis do, truly Go!

Particulars :  Produced by Ruby Slippers Theatre (Vancouver) in collaboration with The Cultch. On thru November 28th at the Historic Theatre on Victoria @ Venables. Run-time 90 minutes sans intermission. Box office 604.251.1363. Or via the internet @ tickets.thecultch.com. 

Production team :  Director Diane Brown.  Stage Manager Lois Dawson.  Set & Props Designer Heidi Wilkinson.  Lighting Designer John Webber.  Composer & Sound Designer Joelysa Pankanea.  Costume Designer Jessica Oostergo.  Projection Designer Corwin Ferguson.  Assistant Stage Manager Melissa McCowell.  Assistant to the Director Julian Legere.

Performers :  Kevin McNulty (Edouard).  Patti Allan (Madeleine).  Marci T House (Isabelle).  Craig Erickson (Patrick).  Sereana Malani (Berenice).

Addendum : From About the Company notes on Ruby Slippers Theatre in the program:

Multi-award-winning Ruby Slippers Theatre produces, creates, and presents provocative text-based theatre from the vanguard of the English and French Canadian canon. We tell stories that illuminate diverse perspectives and social issues, inspiring independent critical thought and communion. www.rubyslippers.ca

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