Sondheim's Company a charming time piece

Quicky version

Company is a series of vignettes about five New York City couples circa 1970 who are not friends themselves but are all friends of a bachelor, Robert, who is turning 35. The show was a break-out piece for songwriter-lyricist Stephen Sondheim whose work putting words to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story music was his previous stage high note.

Presented randomly, the vignettes depict couples whose relationships are in varying states of development, dishevelment or outright disarray, if only momentarily. And yet each couple tries to convince their bachelor buddy Bobby to "Jump in! The water's fine!" in the marriage pool. Lovable but aloof, the phlegmatic Bobby prefers casual, desultory relationships with three part-time girl friends instead. Only at show's end does he decide, precipitously, he may take the plunge albeit mate unknown.

What is remarkable about this play are Sondheim's songs and the lyrics that populate them, not the storyline that is derived from some 11 individual playlets written by George Furth. Musical comedy fans who want some flashback moments about what couples' influences were at play a half-century back will find lots to chuckle at as well as be moved by Sondheim's sure grip on songwriting.

Wordy version

From the footlights : Prior to Company, live theatre on Broadway in New York generally dealt with the travails of the upper-middle-class, all Gatsby-esque machinations and clutter. Sondheim's show featuring five separate striving middle class couples with marriages in various stages of development, dishevelment or outright disarray, put to music, was new in design and theme. Sort of Stephen Sondheim underscoring tunes to dialogue-bits by Edward Albee and Alice Munro and Harold Pinter and Neil Simon.

Through 15 songs, the lives of Bobby's friends and girlfriends are revealed in all their day-to-dayness from those vastly more innocent times, fully three decades before 9/11 changed the New York landscape for good. While complex-ish, these are stylistic moments of angst for sure. Such as when Joanne (thrice married) sings slightly sardonically about the ladies she lunches with : "Here's to the girls on the go / Everybody tries / Look into their eyes / And you'll see what they know / Everybody dies." (In 1965 Boomers had already got bent on Bob Dylan's early rap-piece "Subterranean Homesick Blues" : "Short pants, romance / Learn to dance / Get dressed, get blessed / Try to be a success." To such as these, Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" surely rings as 50's quaint.)

But not to sound or be cynical in the least. As Dooley Wilson put it so pointedly to Humphrey Bogart's Nick in Casablanca, the "it" in human relationships never really changes. It truly still is the same old story as time goes by.

How it's all put together : Structurally the play has Bobby invited to dine and party with each of the five couples to celebrate his 35th. Also individual scenes with each of his girlfriends. Two acts, two hours for these meetings plus the "company" chorus numbers that really make the show.

With each couple, there's a hook or quirk that's explored starting with Sarah (Jennifer Suratos) and Harry (Jacob Woike). She's a chocolate-loving chub in calorie withdrawal. He's a twice-busted DD trying to avoid booze. Their schtick is to nag one another about their addictions with Bobby in the middle blithely swilling bourbon and mediating. 

From this one of the show's funniest one-liners : Sarah proclaims "Sara Lee is the most phenomenal woman since Eleanor Roosevelt!" After a provocative tease from Harry about "all those fat broads in her wrestling class", the scene collapses lit.& fig. during a clever karate sequence, followed by the song lyric : "It's the little things you do together / That make marriage a joy."

Next up come Peter (Peter Monaghan) and Susan (Amy Gartner) who announce gaily and with verve that they're about to go to Mexico to get a quicky divorce that later boomerangs on them. 

Marijuana made the scene in USA on college campuses around the time the Beatles and the Stones burst onto the rock stage. Thus a charming giggle of a scene involving toke-ups with David (Mark Wolf) and Jenny (Cassady Ranford) on their NYC balcony. David says he's "potted", proof positive Sondheim, 40 at the time he wrote Company, wasn't there. A lyricist's ear brought that forth, surely, not a toker who lived it. 

Sondheim circles back repeatedly to the marriage theme to tie these vignettes together. After proclaiming "I'm not avoiding marriage, it's avoiding me", Bobby's three girl friends Marta (Cecilly Day), April (Morgan Chula) and Kathy (Brianne Loop) direct a delightful put-down piece at him a trois : "You could drive a person crazy!" they proclaim, and ultimately he loses them all.

While slowish to develop, Act I ends crisply. Easily my favourite chart of the night was Cecilly Day leading the others in "Another Hundred People" about the 100's and 100's of people arriving in NYC by the hour. These are some of Sondheim's most compelling lyrics of all. 

"Some come to stare, some to stay / And every day / The ones who stay / Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks / By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks / And they walk together past upholstered walls with crude remarks / And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never know."  Listening to Day's poignant delivery of that refrain again-&-again, how could the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" not come to mind.

Then the show's possibly single-best comic performance, from Amy (Leah Ringwald). She is all dressed to marry Paul (Xander Williams) and she suffers the most compelling neurotic case of buyer's remorse ever staged. Sheer utter delight. Only when the pleasingly dull Robert offers his hand to Amy as a stand-in for Paul does Amy exit upstage centre quite happily with bouquet-in-hand to go through the nuptials with Paul after all.

Ending Act I is what turns out to be Sondheim's theme for the entire piece when the likeable duffus Robert sings "Marry Me A Little" : "Someone... / Marry me a little / Love me just enough / Warm and sweet and easy / Just the simple stuff / Keep a tender distance / So we'll both be free / That's the way it ought to be / I'm ready!" Reminds me of a contemporary bachelor friend, twice divorced, who announced just prior to Divorce #2 : "I'm fine with marriage, but only for about three days a week...!"

Final number that really struck home was the troupe's kick-off to Act II, "Side By Side By Side". A vaudeville / follies routine strutted with canes and bowler hats that champions The Bob : "What would we do without you / Should there be a marital squabble / Bob will be there / How could we ever get through / What would we do without you?" The blocking and costumes and timing and staging were all crisp, tight, visually and aurally a delight. Fun fun fun indeed.

What the show brings to the stage : As the head atop this review suggests, Company is a charming time piece of musical theatre that is lovingly resurrected by the United Players of Vancouver under Director Brian Parkinson. The lyrics of Stephen Sondheim strike the audience more compellingly than his tunes which, while Tony Award winning, generally-speaking do not create the ear worms of an Andrew Lloyd Webber piece [whether one loves or loathes ALW notwithstanding].

The subject of heterosexual marriage ("Love and marriage / love and marriage / go together like a horse & carriage" -- Frank Sinatra) is not au courant. A quick visit to Commercial Drive in EastVan, for example -- the neighbourhood where we lived for a decade -- reveals numerous lesbian couples, many with children, often enough mixed-race families. 

But the concept of "lifelong commitment" to another human being is what Company brings back to the fore that will ever be relevant, regardless whether straight or some aspect of LBGTQ. Giving up a large chunk of personal independence is always the trade-off for mutual comfort, support and intimacy beyond the cheap thrills of a one-night-stand. (In Company, both of those ideas are played out a bit : Bobby's one-nighter with April that they both enjoyed, but when she agrees to drop her stewardess flight to Barcelona the next day to loll around Bobby's bed a bit more, all he can respond is "Oh gawd!" Also there's the curious bit of Susan's husband Peter wondering if Bobby would be up for a little male-on-male tumescence. Bobby is utterly nonplussed at the prospect and leaves Peter on the porch drooping.)

Acting pin-spots :  Strong performances throughout among the 14 cast, no question. Precisely and delightfully selected to a person by Director Brian Parkinson. The actors who most engaged me and my family, consensus tally, were Jacob Woike (Harry), Leah Ringwood (Amy), and Cecilly Day (Marta). Nick Fontaine as Robert / Bobby was steady and strong, with a marvellous singing voice, but his staging by Mr. Parkinson was a bit too laid-back, nonchalant, and emotionally detached. One imagines a slightly more energized aloofness would work somewhat better for contemporary audiences. 

The individual voices, particularly Amy Gartner's stupendous soprano and Caitlin Clugston's hefty alto profundo as the middle-age dipsomaniac Joanne ("The Ladies Who Lunch") also stood out among the others already cited.

Production values of note : Clever functional Laugh-in knock-off set (without the doors) by Brian Ball. Utterly suggestive of NYC apartment window walls. No adornment necessary. The multipurpose rectangular boxes for chairs and loveseats and the boudoir scene worked neatly. 

Choreographer Julie Tomaino crafted some intricate footwork among the cast in their chorus numbers that was first-rate : clipped, variegated, tightly wound, but used the whole stage at the same time. Brava! 

Musical Director Clare Wyatt's team threw great chops at the charts before them. Enticing sounds with interesting cadences and minor tune nuances.

Who gonna like : As noted repeatedly, this is delightful time-piece stuff. Folks who want a TDML of what was once thought to be utterly avant-garde musical theatre will giggle and chortle and clap with enthusiasm. Sunday's matinee featured a handful of 20-somethings, most of the crowd however both of junior-senior and senior-senior pedigree. That's because the central conceit of the show -- "Is marriage worth it?" -- is a subject that time has created countless variances of and convolutions thereto. Thus a 1970 cut at it in the pre-9/11 heterosexual universe of the time freezes the photo (Snap!) in a still-frame f1.4 close-up. No matter. This is a tight and well-rehearsed and completely robust group of actors that brings Company together. Just for the numbers I highlighted above I would happily go again.

Particulars : Produced by United Players of Vancouver. Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.  Book by George Furth. At the Jericho Arts Centre 1675 Discovery Street, through February 14. Run-time 120 minutes, with intermission. Phone 604.224.8007 for schedules and tickets or on-line @ www.unitedplayers.com.

Production team : Director Brian Parkinson.  Executive Producer Andree Karas (Artistic Director United Players).  Production Manager Fran Burnside. Technical Director Neil Griffith.  Assistant Directors Barbara Ellison, Jordon Navratil. Musical Director Clare Wyatt.  Choreographer Julie Tomaino.  Assistant Choreographer Nicol Spinola.  Dance Captain Brianne Loop.  Set Designer Brian Ball.  Lighting Designer Randy Poulis.  Costume Designer Jordon Navratil.  Sound Effects Designer Sean Anthony.  Properties Designer Linda Begg.  Stage Manager Becky Fitzpatrick.   

Performers : Francis Boyle (Larry).  Morgan Chula (April).  Caitlin Clugston (Joanne).  Cecilly Day (Marta).  Nick Fontaine (Robert).  Amy Gartner (Susan).  Brianne Loop (Kathy).  Peter Monaghan (Peter).  Cassady Ranford (Jenny).  Leah Ringwald (Amy).  Xander Williams (Paul).  Jacob Wolke (Harry).  Mark Wolf (David).

Musicians :  Jeremy Orsted (Trumpet).  Gordon Roberts (Drums / Percussion)  Jennifer Williams (Reeds).  Clare Wyatt (Piano).

-30-

  

MoFo With The Hat is serious soap comedy

Quicky version

Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis admitted to Harry Haun of Playbill that he would easily have been persuaded to change the title of his comic sizzler The Motherfucker With The Hat to something more marketable. Because as George Carlin noted in 1972, the "mofo" word is one of seven that wouldn't pass the censor's click at NBC even on the irreverent "Tonight Show" of Johnny Carson. Didn't then, wouldn't now nearly 45 years hence.

Fact is it's a throwaway line repeated countless dozens of times about a bunch of beautiful losers in New York who do or did drugs, who do or did love their mates, and ultimately confess they do or want to or did one another along the way. Can an ex-con still trust his AA sponsor once he learns the smooth-talking "clean" guy slept with his girlfriend whom he's loved, deliriously, since high school? Where is trust, where is faith, where is release from life's impulses and scams both external and inside us?

This show is like David Mamet meets Lewis Black meets Spike Lee : intense, visceral, layered, profane, silly, riddled with stupid human tricks. If you like comic drama that gives nods to truthiness about human nature, Firehall's production that continues through Saturday is definitely for you.

Wordy version

From the footlights :  The Firehall Theatre stage in DTES Vancouver is the perfect venue for a show about druggies, past and present, and the co-dependencies they thrive on with one another. The title that is routinely censored with asterisks is intentionally spat in your face, designed purposely to make you wonder how an object as simple as a man's summer hat would ever link to such a profane subject & noun.

Fact is playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis admitted to Harry Haun of Playbill that he would easily have been persuaded to change the title of his comic sizzler The Motherfucker With The Hat to something more marketable. Because as George Carlin noted in 1972, the "mofo" word is one of seven that wouldn't pass the censor's click at NBC even on the irreverent "Tonight Show" of Johnny Carson. Didn't then, wouldn't now nearly 45 years hence.

What Guirgis manages is to cluster a bunch of lovable low-life together in the heart of New York City. They venture out of their walk-ups in search of coke or quicky sex or maybe some Kentucky Fried, when what they really are looking for is a beacon to point them to new horizons away from the sketchy lives they lead.

Ex-drug dealer Jackie (Stephen Lobo) has just been paroled from prison after 26 months and has scored a labouring job with FedEx. Sobriety is his main hope, along with quickly bedding long-time girl friend Veronica (Kyra Zagorsky) who still has a jones for cocaine. Earnest to achieve the second objective, he spots "the hat" and launches into a tirade about which "mofo" it belongs to that he should mess up. The guy downstairs is chief suspect. 

Jackie's AA sponsor is RalphD (John Cassini), 15 years off the sauce and into veggie juices and body-builder powders he sells. His wife Victoria (Lori Triolo) finds all this has become tedium and tether. She knows he's been unfaithful (those tell-tale MasterCard onion skins!) and she's desperate to be fulfilled once more, casting lusty eyes at Jackie. Rounding out the bunch is cousin Julio (Francisco Trujillo) who is Jackie's life coach, b.s. detector, and wannabe macho defender like Jean-Claude Van Damme.

How it's all put together : A homegrown New Yorker with an Egyptian dad and an Irish mom, Guirgis likes catchy grabby titles with religious, racial and/or colloquial-ethnic NYC hooks. Previously was Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, followed by Our Lady of 121st Street, a very popular bio-uptake on the New Testament's baddest dude The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, also an intriguing slap at p.c. called Dominica the Fat Ugly Ho that he mounted as artistic director of LAByrinth Theatre troupe whose company co-founder and periodic director was the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The sting and bite of sardonic humour are always part of Guirgis's stylistic action. In MoFo the show opens with Veronica rolling a dollar bill and snorting coke while she cleans her apartment and yaks with Mom on the phone. Mom is also strung out on coke, it seems, or perhaps abuzz on booze, or both. Veronica feels the need to give her some daughterly advice in dialogue that only an exceptionally acute and sensitive ear could ever imagine :

"Ma? O.K., look, for the last time, my opinion, you are still a good-looking' woman with a huge, loving' heart and you're not hard to please -- clearly -- but you're dating a fuckin' big-time loser with a head like a actual fuckin' fish!...O.K., like, please, alls I'm gonna say, Ma, when you see him tonight take a moment. Take a breath. Take a real good look and just ax yourself in all honesty, 'Do I wanna fuck him or fry him up with a little adobo and paprika and feed him to da barracuda?' O.K., ma, gotta go!"*

Shortly Veronica confesses that she's been seeing someone while Jackie's been in stir after Jackie spots the hat and does a snifferoo worthy of a CSI send-up. "The pillow smells like Aqua Velva and the bed smells like dick!" he rants. They have the first of uncountable blow-ups. "Maybe I overreacted because you questioned my integrity... Look at me, I would rather kick a 3-legged cat down the stairs than say 'I love you'," Veronica retorts.

Turns out the part-time lover (six sex events over two years) is none other than RalphD. But the onion skins wife Victoria tells Jackie about reveal much more than just the odd motel jiggery for sure. Jackie toggles between murderous and mesmerized by befuddlement. In her head, Veronica bellows -- a la Saul in Henderson The Rain King -- "I want! I want! I want!" but is instantly all mental muddle when trying to understand just the "what" is of that pained and insistent urge. Maybe it was that 2-bedroom house in Yonkers and the Dick-&-Jane kids Jackie promised her before he became a drug dealer. But that likely wouldn't have been enough either.

Rehab, recovery, release from dynamic demons of all sorts, these are the questions Guirgis poses poignantly, tellingly, loudly, profanely. And love, too, can be just such a demon, he suggests, as tenacious and futile as booze and drugs. From its grip many never succeed at liberating themselves even after 12 steps or another dozen or more.

What the show brings to the stage : As noted infra, this script of Guirgis brings to mind David Mamet meeting Lewis Black meeting Spike Lee : intense, visceral, layered, profane, silly, riddled with stupid human tricks. RalphD preaches the clean life : French classes, archery, surfing, flossing his teeth. He claims in perfect AA lingo how Veronica is stuck "in a cycle of self-sabotage". 

When confronted at last by Jackie -- shortly before they exhaust themselves in a fight-to-a-draw -- Ralph tells him "If you need money for rehab, or an exorcism, get in touch." Victoria probably nails it by telling Jackie, who spurns her come-on, "Ralph is not your friend, Ralph always wanted a dog and now he has one, you!"

Jackie muses : "Funny how people can be more than one thing..." 

The Veronica he says he loves he labels a "psycho, nasty, twisted, damaged heartbreaker" while cousin Julio reminds Jackie he's no saint either : "You startled me with your bad manners and your stupidity and your ego!" he says.

Pace, cadence, street vernacular, "like" and "bro" and the "man's code", MoFo is a poetry slam, an extended rap in staccato, contemporary free verse with power and verve that bespeak a man (Guirgis) utterly in touch with his times. Like Phillip the Bastard in WS's King John, I came away thinking "Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words!"

Acting pin-spots :  It would be unfair writ large to deny any of the five principal actors a shout-out in this review. 

Obviously the tortured and torturous love affair between Jackie and Veronica was the chief focus for Guirgis. Stephen Lobo positively thrilled with his crescendos both happy and (mostly) angry, but his sad tremolos too. Kyra Zagorsky was equal measure word-for-word, gesture for gesture. Director Brian Markinson deserves unchecked kudos for what talent he drives these two characters to deliver. Verbal hits to the solar plexus and the heart from both all night long.

As the invidious RalphD, John Cassini oozes the kind of smug self-congratulatory faux-wisdom a genuine AA sponsor might in fact 

offer up. His cynical self-indulgent worldview is currently on display in the U.S. presidential sweepstakes. 

Lori Triolo, however, caught this reviewer right in the throat in her confessional monologue to Jackie when her disgust and revilement for RalphD were revealed, and why. My oh my what a moment of sheer pathos.

The ironic, comic commentary of Francisco Trujillo as Cousin Julio was priceless. Somewhere astride "bi" and not-so-ambiguously gay, his acting as conscience for his cousin Jackie was top-rung stuff.

Production values of note : Between scenes Eric Banerd popped and slapped some street bongos and drummed a set of laundry soap pails down stage right. Crisp, precise pieces one and all. Bravo! performance by Banerd and a clever visual / audio interjection designed by the creative team.

Laughlin Johnston as props and set designer pulled off intriguing interconnected contrasts between Veronica's bedroom, Julio's spotless kitchen chromeware and Victoria's aging living room. Better Sally Ann choices could not be made. Costumes by Beverley Huynh were spot on, particularly Veronica's ultimate sexy singlet that proclaimed "Let's Get Lost".

Who gonna like : If profanity ain't your gig, miss this. But if the rhythms and patois of a contemporary blue collar immigrant NYC Puerto Rican barrio sound like they might be worth a listen, MoFo is for you. These humans' touching fretful attempts to find love and meaning and purpose ring true to the heart. For 100 minutes of non-stop energy and yearning and rue and grace, you've got just four nights left to reward yourself this indulgence.

Particulars : The Motherfucker With The Hat.  Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis.  Produced by Firehall Arts Centre in association with Haberdashery Theatre Company. At 280 East Cordova Street (corner of Gore), until January 30, 2016. Box Office 604.689.0926 for nightly & matinee performances.

Production Team : Director Brian Markinson.  Producer Donna Spencer (Artistic Producer Firehall Theatre).  Props & Set Designer Lauchlin Johnston.  Costume Designer Beverley Huynh.  Lighting Designer Gerald King.  Percussion Eric Banerd.  Stage Manager Kelly Barker.  Assistant Producer Jenn MacLean Angus.  Props Coordinator Yasu Shimosaka.  Technical Director Jamie Burns.  Production Assistant Kayla Heselwood.

Performers :  John Cassini (RalphD).  Stephen Lobo (Jackie).  Lori Triolo (Victoria).  Francisco Trujillo (Cousin Julio).  Kyra Zagorsky (Veronica). 

* Not having a script, my thanks to Hilton Als of The New Yorker 110425 for much of this extended quotation.

-30-

"BOOM" is made real virtually + genuine fun!

N.B. BLR gives readers a Quicky version that features a few paragraphs that sum up my overall take on the show. Readers who want more back-story & production details can read the expanded review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky version

As an original BOOM-er born six short weeks after Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I am of a generation that loves to revisit its youth. Its images, its sounds, its anthropological markers (e.g. macho doctors gaily smoking Camels), its politics, its entire zeitgeist are all there for nostalgic plunder in actor / impressionist Rick Miller's original BOOM : A Multimedia Spectacle to Define a Generation.

"Spectacle" it certainly is : 25 years are crammed into a multimedia docu-drama via one man's impersonations through 115 minutes of news clips, ad snippets, rock anthem covers and home movies that are projected onto a centre tubular scrim in the middle of a raked ring-stage. Primary acting conceit finds Miller impersonating each and every voice from dozens of characters that range from Joni Mitchell to Jawaharlal Nehru to Walter Cronkite to Trudeau pere. To mimic their persona, he dons and doffs costumes and props with blithe abandon.

Notionally the story is told from three perspectives, Miller's mom Maddie from Cobourg, ON; a black Chicago bluesman draft dodger Laurence, and a WWII immigrant Rudi from Vienna. Eventually their separate tales link up as the show ends with the echo-BOOM of the Apollo 11 moon landing and David Bowie's iconic epitaph chart "Space Oddity" rounding out the show.

In media, WYSIWYG Marshall McLuhan presciently told us, and BOOM is just that. Ambitious and courageous writ large, driven by humble honest hubris, it brings to life a generation's many-told tales carried off dizzyingly by Miller and his team whose techie artistry and engineering are simply stunning.

Wordy version

From the footlights :  As an original BOOM-er born six short weeks after Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I am of a generation that loves to revisit its youth. Its images, its sounds, its anthropological markers (e.g. macho doctors gaily smoking Camels), its politics, its entire zeitgeist are all there for nostalgic plunder in actor / impressionist Rick Miller's original BOOM : A Multimedia Spectacle to Define a Generation.

"Spectacle" it certainly is : 25 years are crammed into a multimedia docu-drama via one man's impersonations through 115 minutes of news clips, ad snippets, rock anthem covers and home movies that are projected onto a centre tubular scrim in the middle of a raked ring-stage. Primary acting conceit finds Miller impersonating each and every voice from dozens of characters that range from Joni Mitchell to Jawaharlal Nehru to Walter Cronkite to Trudeau pere. To mimic their persona, he dons and doffs costumes and props with blithe abandon.

But the "Define" piece BOOM aims at? Well this stage of Miller's Apollo rocket can't help but fizzle. Because to "define" a generation would imply that Boomers Billary Clinton and George W. Bush come from a common politico-cultural community instead of from distant planets. But I digress.

How it's all put together :  Notionally the story is told from three perspectives, Miller's mom Maddie from Cobourg, ON; a black Chicago bluesman draft dodger Laurence, and WWII immigrant Rudi from Vienna. Eventually their separate tales link up as the show ends in Yorkville to the echo-BOOM of the Apollo 11 moon landing on t.v. and David Bowie's iconic epitaph chart "Space Oddity" rounding it all out sublimely.

Screen-dweebs of all generations who are accustomed to the medium's sight-&-sound instantania will be wildly entertained. Also taught the inherent truth of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum : "The medium is the message."

In media, WYSIWYG McLuhan presciently told us, and BOOM is just that. Ambitious and courageous writ large, driven by humble honest hubris, it brings to life a generation's many-told tales carried off dizzyingly by Miller and his team whose techie artistry and engineering are simply stunning.

What the show brings to the stage :  This is my first taste of impersonator / actor / musician / educator Rick Miller whose mash-up of The Simpsons with Shakespeare in a one-hander show called MacHomer ACT staged in 2000. MacHomer ultimately enjoyed a 17-year run that played in 175 cities at home and abroad. 

To open the show, Miller, 46 this year, monologues that he set out to understand Mom and her "sheltered, small world where we were not sure what was going on". He does this by conducting extensive interviews with her and the two others. While videos of them roll, Miller impersonates their voices. Or when there's no vid to show, he acts their parts. Mom is always in a 50's woman's casual smoker's pose -- right arm up perched on the left underneath. Laurence is angular laid-back, the better to give voice to his constant ironic belly laughs. Rudi is an upright Euro, a two-legged parlour Steinway.  Early on Miller hints at what we'll learn : "By becoming my parents I'll be a living, breathing time capsule," he says.

While the characters' monologues proceed, news footage and family album shots and photo-shopped images are flung fleetingly on the scrim and the ring-stage. Maps, logos, slogans, Wiki facts spelled out from each year 1945-1969 hit the eye like a cross between ticker-tape and Powerpoint. The technical artistic prowess of Projection Designer David Leclerc and Lighting Designer Bruno Matte is astonishing to witness. Their handiwork replicating Peter, Paul and Mary at the August, 1967 MLK "I have a dream!" speech at the Washington monument rally that Miller impersonates was theatric creativity of the highest magnitude so-far witnessed on Vancouver stages during BLR's 3-year blogsite run. Bravo! indeed all three of you. 

Acting pin-spot : Rick Miller is a tour de force theatrical event. Covering a host of 50's and 60's singers he does with mixed success. Not so embracing a Perry Como who comes out sounding like Bing Crosby suffering stuffed sinuses. Neither so compelling a Nat King Cole or a Tony Bennett. But his Glenn Gould, Frankie Avalon, Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction"), Little Eva ("Locomotion") and Janis Joplin squibs were quite good, all-in-all. And a pretty good Joni, too. But good, bad or indifferent, full marks to Miller for even trying to sound like all those separate folk. 

Where Miller truly shines, however, is in his capture of the three principals, Maddie, Laurence and Rudi. Particularly Laurence. That characterization was off-the-charts. For a white Canadian Gen X kid to get inside black Laurence Davis's blues-blowing Chicago heart-&-soul and bring out compellingly Davis's dark ironic wisdom about how life is a continuum -- doubt; anger; pushback; rebellion; co-optation, ultimately -- this is acting of the first order.
Miller's Davis mimicking The Beach Boys and all the values of the surfer crowd while it was blacks mostly doing the dying in Vietnam was absolutely superb. 

Who gonna like : Quite frankly, as one of them,  I am tired of Boomer re-runs. Our generation has been damn near hopeless in solving world problems. That is my greatest regret, my piece of collective guilt, as I reflect back during these early days of my 8th decade of life. Henceforth I shall heed Mrs. Malaprop : "Our retrospectives shall be all on the future!"

But Rick Miller's theatrical depiction of all the sturm und drang 
of my generation's formative years -- the transformation from crooners to rockers, from go-along / get-along types to masses of noisy rebels, then our round-about-back-again traipse to the drum of conformity due to $$-lust -- this truly is a Must see! evening for lovers of live theatre.

BB Gen's will get the most out of it to give context to their upbringings. Gen X's and Gen Y's will learn much about the influences that informed their privileged and enabled parents' lives. 

Millennials? Aside from the zippity-do-dah visuals, BOOM's structure of a year-by-year recitation of events -- that the majority of Millennials probably know very little about and couldn't care less -- the show will likely not be grabby enough to sustain them. 

But any characters in your realm who show a bit of quizzery at all why we privileged Boomers have the idiosyncrasies and goofy attitudes we do, certainly it is Rick Miller and his team that will dazzle them with lights and tunes and thoughts to take home and wrestle with.

Particulars :  Produced by Kidoon and WYRD in collaboration with the PUSH International Performing Arts Festival and the Arts Club Theatre.  At ACT's Granville Island house. On thru February 13th. Run-time 115 minutes plus intermission. Box office www.ArtsCentre.com or by phoning 604.687.1644.

Production team :  Writer / Director / Performer Rick Miller.  Executive Producer Jeff Lord.  Projection Designer David Leclerc.  Lighting Designer Bruno Matte. Composer and Sound Designer Creighton Doane.  Set / Costumes / Props Designer Yannik Larivee.  

Performer : Rick Miller.

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In A Blue Moon : love lost, love found in family

Synopsis & serendipity :  A dad dies young. Just 40, from diabetes complications largely self-inflicted. With his passing, Mom and daughter can't afford Vancouver anymore. They hie off to a Kamloops farmhouse on 10 acres Dad left them, his childhood family home. They find his brother Will there basically claiming squatter's rights to the otherwise vacant homestead. Understandably a lot of tension arises at first. But thanks to the daughter, these three become, over time, a new kind of family. So. Not an astonishing plot line -- probably a more frequent occurrence than a blue moon in such fractious and unsettled family times as these -- but in this case heightened by knowing parts of all this mimic real life to a T.

Fact is Mom Ava is played by Anita Wittenberg Tow, and daughter Frankie is played by 17-year-old Emma Tow. The poignant connection is this : for three years the late Jeremy Tow collaborated with Western Canadian Theatre in Kamloops and then was its artistic director before brain cancer claimed him in September, 2010. The draw between his wife and daughter as IABM's cast in this fictional script is, therefore, a magnetizing and touching phenomenon. Director Daryl Cloran refers to the Tows as "a cherished local family" whom he lauds as regular performers at WCT each season. Emma, meanwhile, also choreographed the script and is honoured in a recent interview by playwright Lucia Frangione as being "my muse" thanks to all her various music and dance and thespian skills.

But back to the script. To round out the 3-hander is Uncle Will (Brett Christopher), a freelance itinerant photographer who's not taken much interest in his brother's family over the years and even skipped his brother's Celebration of Life down in Vancouver. Now, however, 6-year-old Frankie finds a role model in him even as she tries to process the recent death of her dad Peter. Dad is brought back into the mix both through the memories that each of Ava and Frankie and Will share, also through family photographs from over the years. "Family matters" are two words that parse immediately as adjective-noun but take on a more subtle and vast importance as noun-verb.

From the footlights : The script fundamentally toggles between Frankie fresh off Dad's death at age six and Frankie as a precocious arty-smarty 14-year-old on warpath footing with her vegan namaste Mom who preaches and practices the 5,000 year old Indian traditions of Ayurveda, or whole life natural healing. 

Along the way Uncle Will acts as a buffer between Frankie and her mom and as a reality anchor for sister-in-law Ava so she won't lose the farm. He talks her into chickens, eggs and beef cattle despite her vegematic mindset : "You can buy them organic feed, smooth their frontal lobes and sing them Kumbaya," Will kids her. Ava acquiesces. The homestead thrives and Ava builds up a successful "yogi wu-wu spa", as Will calls it, despite the farmgate clinic being located miles out of Kamloops at Monte Lake.

Viewers expect Will will woo Ava out of what he calls her widow's role as a new age nun : one who "drinks a lot of green tea and lets her moustache grow" he teases Frankie. And he does in a way. But then there's on-again off-again GF Evelyn to contend with. Mostly Will charms Frankie and becomes surrogate dad to her. Of Mom's morning smoothie, Will quips "It smells like a cross between bullfrog and baby poo." Frankie, ever-clever even at six, ripostes : "It's mashed-up berries and cow snot!" Clearly such early camaraderie will lead to a close close bond between them. 

What the show brings to the stage : This is a charming piece of work. Quite delightfully wrought. The jump-shifts between Frankie at six and Frankie at 14 occur seamlessly. To create a convincing pair of Will and Ava to thrust and parry as in-laws and potential lovers and Frankie's parents, both real and stand-in, required considerable skill on Ms. Frangione's part. She credits long-time ACT dramaturge Rachel Ditor for her constancy to finally pull the play off over a period of some eight years of writing & hacking & smoothing & refocusing the piece yet again. 

Most Boomers have witnessed family events quite similar to what occurs with the Armitage family here. Death. Aloneness. Regret. Anger. Blame. Bitterness. Wonder. Fright. Angst. And much as we warm to the concepts of forgiveness and acceptance so richly captured in the expression "Don't push the river!", our reach usually exceeds our grasp. We ache and we strive and we urge ourselves on but often without full release, just "some". And In A Blue Moon embraces all that tenderly and touchingly and tellingly. 

Particularly impressive was Frangione's capture of Ava's unrelenting, unrequited anger at her late hubby Peter for what she considers his self-indulgent demise from diabetes due to compulsive bad diet and no exercise. Visceral, disquieting dialogue there indeed, proof positive how love and hate are often married. 

Acting pin-spots : Emma Tow is sheer delight as Frankie. She is indeed a talented performer with a future whose fiddle chops and ballet prowess are given broad exposure at play's end. But it is her hopping-&-skipping and finger-pointing and dancing about as the fidgety fussy Frankie-the-6-year-old that grab our grins the most. A Brava! performance indeed.

The electricity, both positive and negative, between Will and Ava had terrific wiring back to real life. Sparks will naturally result when family folk are thrust into new-life roles under the same roof. Their dynamics struck this viewer from experience as an energy very true and honest and accurate. 

As the needy but proud and determined Ava, Anita Wittenberg was full mettle. And with his stentorian baritone, Brett Christopher's Will was commanding : his yin-yang struggle for independence and self-fulfillment finally succumbs to the yang cohort, not surprisingly, but yin visits him and his new family on occasion, too.

Production values of note : Drew Facey's set of bleached-out barn board on tiered platforms worked well indeed for staging. The barn board fridge, however, was a stretch : a droopy-eared 1950's Coldspot would have worked better. The ginormous backdrop moon that was screen for Conor Moore's projected photo shots was spot-on. And John Gzowski's ear for a mix of contemporary guitar riffs and soft drones behind deserves note.

Who gonna like : As suggested above, this is a show for folks who've lived through some real-life tough emotional times and struggled with how doubt and fear and hope and determination shadow-box each other daily. Not designed with the easy comforting repartee in mind that Friends fans rely on, IABM instead wants viewers to taste and savour the dialogue of existential pain and anger and hope that playwright Frangione has worked so skillfully to produce. To say it again : In A Blue Moon is tender and touching and telling.

Production : Script by Lucia Frangione.  Producers Arts Club Theatre in association with Western Canada Theatre (Kamloops) in their 40th Anniversary season & 1000 Islands Playhouse (Gananoque, ON).  Director Daryl Cloran (Artistic Director, Western Canada Theatre). Assistant Director Randi Edmundson.  Dramaturg Rachel Ditor.  Set Designer Drew Facey.  Costume Designer Marian Truscott.  Sound Designer John Gzowski.  Choreographer Emma Tow.  Stage Manager Allison Spearin.  Assistant Stage Manager Rachel Bland.  Apprentice Stage Manager Madison Henry.  Tour Technician Alberto White.  

Performers : Brett Christopher (Will).  Emma Tow (Frankie).  Anita Wittenberg (Ava).

Venues, dates & phone ticket office contact numbers :

Surrey Arts Centre,  January 13-23,  604.501.5566

Clarke Theatre,  Mission,  January 25,  1.877.299.1644

Evergreen Cultural Centre,  Coquitlam, January 26-20,  604.927.6555

Pavilion Theatre, Kamloops,  April 28-May 7,  250.370.5483.

1000 Islands Playhouse, Gananoque, Ontario,  August 12-28,  1.866.386.7020.

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The Rivals a jaunty riff on passion & trust

N.B. BLR gives readers a Quicky version that features a few paragraphs that sum up my overall take on the show. Readers who want more back-story & production details can read the expanded review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky version

Only a society built on class distinctions and their inherent hubris is capable of producing the kind of satire about sexual passions and social foibles that Richard Brinsley Sheridan scripted in 1775. For Blackbird Theatre's 10th anniversary in 2015, meanwhile, director Johnna Wright's cut at it sparkles with cheeky merriment at love's labours lost and won and abandoned along the way. 

The play is fast-forwarded to the Edwardian epoch to catch Downton Abbey fans, presumably. Lydia Languish is a bookish romantic whose guardian is her dowager aunt Mrs. Malaprop who frets and fusses over her mercilessly, applying the same badger ferocity with which she attacks the English language. Lydia falls for a lovable lout called "Ensign Beverly" who is actually Captain Jack Absolute in masquerade. When "Beverly" is unmasked, Lydia rejects the captain abruptly for his duplicity. By way of counterpoint to these lovers' squabbles are Faulkland who is hyper-jealous of his faithful Julia, Lydia's sensible cousin. He is forever doubting and fretting how to test and re-test Julia's fidelity, which drives her to distraction if not outright despair.

No question, whenever eros meets neuros there's always much to snigger at regardless of the age or locale. But poignance is possible in the piece, too, particularly in light of our social-media-infected world : "Who can you trust?" is a motif 100% current. But that is decidedly second fiddle to the chorus of giggly nonsense primarily at play here. 

The two chief characters of the play are Mrs. Malaprop whose mangling of the mother tongue spawned the word "malapropism". Is she a grotesque buffoon or just a repressed middle-age wannabe lover herself? Yes. Particularly in the way her role is captured by Gabrielle Rose -- utterly engaging & endearing. Opposite in risible bluster is Sir Anthony Absolute, Jack's aging [50-something...] tyrannical dad played with joyous bombast and rocketing blood pressure by that perennial Bard favourite Duncan Fraser.

Wordy version

From the footlights :  Only a society built on class distinctions and their inherent hubris is capable of producing the kind of satire about sexual passions and social foibles that Richard Brinsley Sheridan scripted in 1775. For Blackbird Theatre's 10th anniversary in 2015, meanwhile, director Johnna Wright's cut at it sparkles with cheeky merriment at love's labours lost and won and abandoned along the way. 

The play is fast-forwarded to the Edwardian epoch to catch Downton Abbey fans, presumably. Lydia Languish is a bookish romantic whose guardian is her dowager aunt Mrs. Malaprop who frets and fusses over her mercilessly, with the same badger ferocity with which she attacks the English language. Lydia falls for a loveable lout called "Ensign Beverly" who is actually Captain Jack Absolute in masquerade. When "Beverly" is unmasked, Lydia rejects the captain abruptly for his duplicity. By way of counterpoint to these lovers' squabbles are Faulkland who is hyper-jealous of his faithful Julia, Lydia's sensible cousin. He is forever doubting and fretting how to test and re-test Julia's fidelity, which drives her to distraction if not outright despair.

No question, whenever eros meets neuros there's always much to snigger at regardless of the age or locale. But poignance is possible in the piece, too, particularly in light of our social-media-infected world : "Who can you trust?" is a motif 100% current. But that is decidedly second fiddle to the chorus of giggly nonsense primarily at play here. 

How it's all put together :  Many of the play's elements with its one plot and two or three sub-plots are taken straight out of Sheridan's rowdy youth including the famous duel-that-wouldn't-die scene, an elopement plot, a brash and scheming Irishman being swoon'd over, social pretenders of all stripe and costume.

The two chief characters of the play are Mrs. Malaprop whose mangling of the mother tongue spawned the word "malapropism". Is she a grotesque buffoon or a striving middle-age wannabe lover herself? Yes, particularly in the way her role is captured by Gabrielle Rose -- utterly engaging & endearing. Opposite in mirth and bluster is Sir Anthony Absolute, Jack's aging tyrannical dad played with joyous bombast and rocketing blood pressure by that perennial Bard favourite Duncan Fraser.

Originally the play ran to five acts, and on opening night 2 1/2 centuries back it was booed and hissed at. At one point even a half-eaten apple was hucked at the actors by the angry audience. The show closed immediately. But the clever ambitious Sheridan managed a massive gutteral re-write in just 10 days. When the new tailor-made and vastly tightened version re-opened, it was greeted gustily with guffaws and congrats and soon became a favourite at court. Its subsequent successes at the box office were so substantial Sheridan was able to buy the famous Drury Lane Theatre from his profits.

What the show brings to the stage :  The values Sheridan satirizes and pricks with his deft needling diction would not pass muster at any of today's "safe space" universities. The "trigger words" fly fast and furious from the characters' mouths and while generally "polite", they promote the usual patriarchal sexual stereotyping common through all Western history. Telling son Jack of his impending conditional inheritance, Dad reveals that "the fortune is saddled with a wife, but that shouldn't make a difference..."

Woman are seen as wont to frivolous diversion and to have one primary purpose (as the men see it) : to "marry well" and "keep their place". But Sheridan also had sufficient insight to embellish and burnish the role of the romantic, the rogue, the defier of straitjacket tradition, too. Lydia, given to reading dime novels named The Innocent Adultery and The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, dreams of eloping with a poor foot soldier. She schemes how she will scandalize her aunt and earn the envious scorn of readers from a few newspaper paragraphs that dutifully announce her defection. 

Called "a deliberate simpleton" and a "stubborn little vixen" by Aunt Mal, she is also derided by Sir Anthony : "Thought does not become young women." Their thinking he blames on the traveling library that visits the district regularly.  "The girl's mad, her brain's turned by reading. She's bedlam!" he croaks. 

What makes a play such as this work in 2016? The cleverness not of the plot, surely, but of the characters whose duplicitous and confused interplay make for antic manic tomfoolery cut loose. There are many "rivals" for affection here. 

"Ensign Beverly" is a rival of real-life Jack Absolute (Martin Happer) for the affections of Lydia (Emma Slipp), both of whom are rivals to Bob Acres (Kirk Smith) who's a nerdish dandyish chappy. 

Mrs. Malaprop (Gabrielle Rose) is a rival to a fictional "Delia" she's created who in breathless notes is made out to be someone much younger by the horny Irishman Lucius O'Trigger (Scott Bellis). 

Faulkland (John Emmet Tracy) is his own rival for Julia (Luisa Jojic) due to his impuissant self-pitying ego needs. Maid Lucy (Jenny Wasko-Paterson) promotes all this rivalry by being double-agent provocateur in delivering and withholding the others' various love letters back-&-forth.

It's the dialogue that's sick : Political correctness considerations aside, Sheridan's dialogue is "sick" as the Millennials might say. Never mind Mrs. Malaprop's use of "alliterate" when she means "obliterate". Or "laconically" when she means "ironically". Or "supercilious" when she means "superficial", "malevolence" when she means "benevolence" &c. &c. This repeated goofiness, one might suggest to Mr. Sheridan's dust, is done to a fault lit.&fig. Still, perhaps her best line was "Our retrospectives shall be all on the future!"

But also this. How to top Jack's description of his friend, the lachrymose and sulky Faulkland : "You are a tedious, captious, incorrigible man who suffers a farrago of doubts, fears, hopes, wishes and all that flimsy furniture." This is buzzkill from a buddy that would shame anyone with a tit of insight. 

The character Bob Acres has determined that forthright profanity wins no friends in polite circles. So instead of ejaculations such as "Balls, man!" or "Bollix you bunt!" or "Sod you!" he dresses his curses up with quasi-panache : "Odds, spots and flames!" he belches, or "Odds, triggers and hilts!" Quite fun, this.

Acting pin-spots : As noted, clearly the Sheridan script hi-lites the characters Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony. But both my wife and I from this production found the stage work of Kirk Smith as Bob Acres absolutely show-stealing. His initial exchanges with Mr. Tracy as Faulkland were clever enough, but the bandaged foot sequences to start Act 2 and his pusillanimous poseur piece as Prince Valiant before the impending duel were simply riotous. 

Great eye-batting along the way from Ms. Slipp as Lydia, while Luisa Jojic as her taken-for-granted heartbroken cousin was a treat to watch. As Faulkland, Mr. Tracy managed to wring every ounce of meaning possible from the words "but" and "yet" to great comic effect as he waffled about whether Julia was true to him for real or not. Good Cockney knock-off, consistently, by Ms. Wasko-Paterson as the cross-dressed manservant David. 

Duncan Fraser's lascivious and slavering descriptions of Lydia to his son Jack were comic turns of the highest order despite how hoary they might sound to the 2016 ear.

Who gonna like : Lovers of the English language that is spit out and spun forth with ironic twists and turns at nearly every single word are the folks this show is designed for. Not surprising, it was largely a sea of white heads at last night's performance, not more than a handful of college kids or high schoolers anywhere in sight. Bard on the Beach fans were in abundance and chortling mightily at all the silly palaver being diddled back and forth. This reviewer is one of the "folks this show is designed for". Johnna Wright's blocking and staging of the characters and their zip-gun repartee were all sheer delight to behold. (And not to forget how much Sheila White's costumes are a rich & sumptuous treat to feast one's eyes on, too!)

Particulars :  Produced by Blackbird Theatre [Artistic Director John Wright] in collaboration with The Cultch.  At the Historic Theatre,  1895 Vennables. On thru January 23rd. Run-time some 140 minutes with intermission. Box office 604.251.1363 -or- via the internet at tickets.thecultch.com. 

Production team :  Playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.  Director Johnna Wright.   Set Designer David Roberts.  Costume Designer Sheila White.  Lighting Designer Alan Brodie. Production Manager Jayson McLean. Production Assistant Ariel Martz-Oberlander. Composer Bruce Ruddell. Stage Manager Joanne P.B. Smith.

Performers : Scott Bellis (Lucius O'Trigger). Duncan Fraser (Sir Anthony Absolute). Martin Happer (Jack Absolute).  Luisa Jojik (Julia Melville). Gabrielle Rose (Mrs. Malaprop). Emma Slipp (Lydia Languish). Kirk Smith (Bob Acres). John Emmet Tracy (Faulkland). Jenny Wasko-Paterson (Lucy/David).

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