Twelfth Night delights fans at Vanier Park

Overview : Critics and academics over the centuries have tried too hard to make too much out of Shakespeare's goofy Twelfth Night. All Billy Bard was trying to do was give the clever patrons and the cheap-seat-rabble at The Globe lots of shenanigans to tittle and guffaw at. TN is like a Hallowe'en party on speed -- scads of silly people playing games in costumes sewn not just of thread but of thought and deed as well. Mistaken identities, disguises, romantic fantasies, cozening capers, songs, drunk scenes, homoerotic dilly-dallying, omg what a swillery of good cheer. Indeed, maidservant Fabiana captures Shakespeare's intent in her ironic observation : "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."

Funny, this. Because even Director Dennis Garnhum falls for the traditional academic conceits over the script.  Viz., from his program Notes : "I noticed that at the beginning of the play we are introduced to many characters at a crossroad in their lives. It seems that everyone is blocked or struggling with tragedy or neglect. Love is not being reciprocated. Feelings are being held back. Everyone here is looking for guidance, or direction, or a path to reveal itself." Really now. Really? Naw, say I -- it's none of that new-agey stuff at all. No disrespect to Mr. Garnhum but i.m.o. it's nothing but farce and slapstick and riotous good fun without a scintilla of The Serious about it in the least. And I think WS intended it precisely that way.

First impressions : Despite my disagreement with Mr. Garnhum on the purported theme of the piece, his execution of the script is why we go to theatre, starting with his setting the play in 1913 in the ragtime era at a sumptuously tricked out spa and resort. He writes : "As luck would have it, the true inspiration for this production was ignited while reading the play on a lounge chair at a glorious resort in Southern California. As I alternated between sipping on my glass of Chardonnay, looking at all the beautiful people lounging about and reading these delightful words, I couldn't help but wish that these characters (Olivia, Viola, Orsino and all) would jump from the pages and join me, poolside, for a much needed rest." His production has these characters do precisely that -- "jump from the pages" -- much to the fun, sport and amusement of the actors themselves and us participants in the giddy opening night (ON) audience. The "much needed rest" part will have to await the run's end.

Plotline: A long, long time ago in a land far, far away called Illyria, Duke Orsino pines piteously over the lovely Countess Olivia. She meanwhile is in grief over the recent deaths of both her father and her brother and proclaims she will grieve for seven years. She thus refuses Orsino's advances utterly. Enter Viola who is plopped unceremoniously onto Illyria's shores thanks to a wild storm at sea that takes her twin brother Sebastian from her. Viola hears the local gossip and decides she would like to work as servant to Olivia, but is certain the woman behind the black veil would reject her in her grief. So instead she dresses herself in the kind of no-nonsense manly get-up her twin brother might sport, re-brands herself as the young buck "Cesario", and succeeds to be hired as Orsino's "manservant". This initial act of cross-dressing sets in motion all of the play's hijinks. Admits Viola to herself : "Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness, Wherein the pregnant enemy does much."

When Orsino (Todd Thomson) dispatches "Cesario" (Rachel Cairns) to plead with Olivia (Jennifer Lines) to reciprocate Orsino's swooning of her, it takes Olivia a nanosecond -- well maybe a New York minute -- to feel twitches of "love" for the cross-dresser, and immediately throws herself at "him" in spite of her grief.  Meanwhile Cesario, for "his" part, finds his lovesick boss Orsino quite a buff hunk and dreams of winning his heart, but of course s/he can't without blowing his/her cover. Enter Olivia's puritanical manservant Malvolio, who entertains thoughts of winning his mistress Olivia's heart and her wrenching him from service to become her hubby and a Count. It's Downton Abbey's upstairs, downstairs and all the landings in between.

The play is riddled with comic riffs, most notably by Olivia's bibulous cousin Sir Toby Belch (Bill Dow), his buffoon sidekick Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Richard Newman), and Olivia's fool Feste (Jonathon Young). Feste is a classic verbal trickster but also chief barkeep and spinner of 78's for the ever-besotted Belch and for Aguecheek -- aptly named for a man nervous of his own shadow. As with all fools in WS scripts, their insight and wisdom drive the humour they speak. Enter Olivia's maidservant Maria (Naomi Wright). Cheeky and pissy at Malvolio (Allan Zinyk), she conspires with Belch and Aguecheek and Fabiana (Barbara Pollard) to trick him into believing Olivia truly does have the hots for him -- his alternate universe granted reality status -- if only he'll dress like a nerd and smile at her unceasingly until his parchment skin cracks. Major Uggghhh! reaction from Olivia. Declared "mad", Malvolio is dungeoned, only released as part of the denouement.

And so we have everyone "loving" someone other than anyone they might succeed in winning over. Misery loves company. Until twin brother Sebastian (Daniel Doheny) shows up at the end having been saved from drowning by naval officer Antonio (Craig Erickson). Can't go unnoticed -- Antonio's "love" of Sebastian smacks of more than just dadly benevolence. But I digress. Sebastian arrives en scene dressed identically to Viola/Cesario. This "coincidental" occurrence is the catalyst for the heterosexual coupling-up that typically occurs in Elizabethan romantic comedy. It all finally happens and everyone goes away happy except poor abused Malvolio, i.e. Olivia dumps "Cesario" ker-plop! and immediately weds-&-beds Cesario's twin Sebastian. Proof positive this is slapschtick, not messagy-stuff. Further in this drift, Billy Bard would be fully aware of the Latin roots in Malvolio's name that bespeak the playwright's intent with this character : a man who comports himself poorly and with intention in doing so. No question. Malvolio is a comic character pure-&-simple, not a "cause" at all. 

Characters -- good, bad & ugly : Potential playgoers will be happy to note none of the cast is either bad or ugly! in their performances. Judging by ON reaction at curtain, Jonathon Young's Feste stole the show for a bunch of folks, with Dow's Belch nipping at his heels and Newman's Aguecheek chasing closely after his, or maybe vice-versa for those two. Bard newcomer Cairns as Viola/Cesario wins kudos for her skill as a s/he fending off Olivia. The blocking and stage business between Viola and Olivia as Viola arches her back incessantly to avoid Olivia's groping hands discovering s/he has breasts are terrific.  Well-conceived and well-wrought action staged by Director Garnhum and superbly delivered by Cairns and Lines. For their parts Young and Dow were neck-&-neck heading into the final turn for excellence in voice projection and diction, with Young in the end maybe beating Dow by a mere half-length or so.  Malvolio : Allan Zinyk's take on the part is superb.  It's without a hair's breadth of "take me serious" at any point -- all hyperbole and exaggeration throughout. His reading of Maria's fake letter ostensibly from Olivia was one of the...

Best scenes : Toss-up between Malvolio's letter-reading and the drunken revelry scene with all the frat-rat tennis boys, including the Sea Captain (Duncan Fraser) whose deft dodge of Malvolio's grab at his drink was choreography and timing as tight as anything recently seen. Both of these scenes alone are worth the shell-out of ducats to see.

Production values : ON winner in this category was without a doubt False Creek in the backdrop with its lovers hand-in-hand, twinkling West End lights, the odd Mayor Moonbeam cyclist wandering by. But scenery designer Pam Johnson did her damndest on-stage to compete with God's grandeur outdoors. The all-white spa set was marbly and steamy and richly decked out with cathedral doors, schmancy concierge reception, well-stocked bar, chandaliers. Costume designer Nancy Bryant balanced the suit-y stuff with the swim-y stuff and the shipwreck-y stuff right smartly. The ragtime motif by sound designer Jeremy Spencer kicked off with great promise but seemed to this ear to fizzle thereafter. Final Hey-Ho! number, however, was sheer delight. 

Who gonna like, who gonna not : Shakespeare aficionados of course will certainly do (unless perhaps they're purists who think Malvolio is a "wronged" man, bullied, and thus a bit "tragic" who are looking for some "dark" and "deep" layers to the play.  I obviously share not that cut at this script).  Newbies to Billy Bard will find much to like -- while they may struggle with the lingo and Elizabethan idioms and metaphors -- likely they'll find the sheer force of the comedy will sweep them along. Pre-teens and social media wonks, uhh, don't waste your money buying tix for them, but engaged high school lit. students for sure should go.

50 words or less : This is puppy-love stuff, not the stuff of Romeo and Juliet.  No amount of academic preening will change my mind about that. Go. Get silly. Get horny. Laugh. All while looking out at False Creek and the West End under a circus tent. Tell me what's wrong with this picture. 

http://www.bardonthebeach.org/2013/twelfth-night

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Dreamgirls is lively Motown song-&-dance

Sung-dialogue in quasi-lite-opera-mode was popularized in the 70’s by the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar; Cats; Evita; Phantom of the Opera etc.). The genre’s most notorious variant was a 1-year Stephen Bochko t.v. show in 1990 called Cop Rock where guys and gals in blue broke out into song at homicide scenes. (I'm not kidding, lol.)

ACT’s final mount of the season, Dreamgirls, is where Superstar meets Cop Rock in a Motown music review / revue. And the Stanley Theatre show is equal to the challenge : a glitzaria of song, choreography, set, lighting, costumes and orchestra that will gladden the hearts and ears and eyes of audiences from six to 96.

Written originally in 1981 by Tom Eyen with music by Henry Krieger, it achieved mega-hit status with the 2006 movie version featuring American Idol winner Jennifer Hudson as Effie Melody White, for which she won best supporting actress awards from both the Golden Globes and Oscar. That fact is relevant to this stage re-mount because the movie extended the appeal of the show. Indeed, the opening night crowd on Granville Street had a substantial number of young people hooting and cheering along with their Boomer parents.

 

Backdrop : The late 50’s and early 60’s found  North American popular music awash in various influences, from Frank Sinatra to Johnny Mathis to Andy Williams to Elvis to the Kingston Trio to the Everlys and The Beach Boys. We also suffered through Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee, Fabian, and Frankie Avalon.

What mainstream North Americans generally did not hear was the rhythm and blues of such originals as Big Momma Thornton and Little Willie John.  Along come three young women promoted by Motown genius Berry Gordy and The Supremes burst onto the stage with a whole new schtick based on glamour, glitz, and slick bodies in sequins. It’s the rise-&-fall of The Supremes and Motown that is the basis for Dreamgirls.  N.B. The music is all original. No Supremes covers at all. 

 

But the play does a good job as well of highlighting the tension between “pure” rhythm-&-blues music that sprang from fevered gospel roots and was being performed at iconic rooms like the Apollo Theatre in Harlem -vs- the Las Vegas showgirl stuff that Berry Gordy was pushing. “Making music” in any kind of pure creative sense was less important to him than securing pop-chart placements. If it took payola to promote his stuff or stuff the competition, those practices were rampant in the radio rock’n’roll industry.

Plot :  A New York trio, the Dreamettes, are fronted by Effie Melody White (Aurianna Angelique) and backed by Deena Jones (Karen Holness) and Lorell Robinson (Starr Domingue). They are given a break to back-up Jimmy “Thunder” Early (Hector Johnson) when Cadillac car salesman and hustler Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Daren Herbert) greases the skids. Taylor outmuscles the Dreamettes’ current manager Marty (Alvin Sanders) to become the group’s impressario, but keeps peace by bringing White’s brother C.C. (Ian Yuri Gardner) along as songwriter and mediator among these febrile personalities. 

Robinson falls in heat with “Thunder”, who’s married. For her part Effie swoons over Taylor, who beds her early on but shortly turns his affections to Deena, whom he ultimately marries. The show on this level is pure soap opera, toggling between upstage song-&-dance numbers and backstage melodrama mapping the personal politics between the performers as people and as professional players. These flips from on-stage to back-stage worked crisply at the Stanley thanks to the set and choreography.

Ejected from the group toward the end of Act 1 as overweight and too “Apollo” -- not enough “Top 10” for Taylor -- Eppie is punted for another slim performer Michelle Morris (Crystal Balint) as back-up to Deena -- in case you'd not guessed, Deena's the “cross-over” voice and sexy showgirl who is the Diana Ross clone. She has nowhere near Eppie's singing depth or power, but is competent and breathy -- values Taylor applauds more than raw singing talent. Act 2 reveals Eppie’s resurrection from rejection, her rise to personal stardom herself with a rich R&B number as "soul" starts to poll, and ultimately the reconciliation of all of these fallen-out parties to cough up a happy ending. The irony is this happens even as the reconstituted group The Dreams breaks up so all these characters can pursue their own dreams instead of a made-up one as a group.

Cast credits  : Between acts on opening night I wrote : “This is a show to go to to recall the glitz and brilliant ‘showiness’ of Motown music in its heyday.”  The plot and character development are incidental to the rock-and-roll, the dance, the “show”. Viewers will not come away with an emotional investment in any of the characters, probably, though Johnson as the James Brown knock-off “Thunder” and Domingue as his love interest Lorrell almost make us believe they’re people and not just performers. And to this viewer it is those two actors who deserve highest marks – along with Angelique as Effie – for their emotional investment on stage. 

Capable and journeyman performances by the balance of the cast and ensemble, certainly, with one curious caveat : the Curtis Taylor, Jr. character depicted by Daren Herbert. Taylor is the mover-&-shaker of these singers -- a hustler, a promoter, a bit of a racketeer with his payola shenanigans. On stage a more wooden, stiff, unblocked, unchoreographed and nearly immobile characterization so unlikely for a persona such as Taylor I could not imagine. But oh what a voice – rich, resonant, impassioned when wooing or swooning -- then unremarkable and flat when sing-talking, as if to match his stickperson immobility on stage. A real stand-out puzzler this one.

As the twice-rejected Effie – rejected both as lover and as performer – Aurianna Angelique gives power and richness bar-for-bar in all her songs, dialogue and arias, reminiscent of the gospel origins of much R&B with depth and trills and chills up the spine. Her “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” is breathtaking in its pain and defiance at being dumped, the number one crowd-pleaser, surpassing even her excellent “One Night A Week” poignant showstopper in Act 2.  Oh oh oh.

Production values : ACT's version of Dreamgirls would be worth a 2^nd or 3^rd look for the production qualities alone. This is a “wowser”, not a “thinkster”. This is a go-see, go-hear, go-feel bonanza where Director Bill Millerd wrung absolutely every ounce and nuance of talent he could from Ted Roberts’ extraordinary set of swiveling vertical 20-foot rectangles that variously feature klieg light bars, concert posters, and spangled show backdrops. Marsha Sibthorpe’s lighting blasted against this clever set created catchy dizzle-dazzle effects of alternating reds and blues and greens. Sheila White’s costumes were thread-perfect. Favourite montage was the opening scene of Act 2 where the slinky dresses of The Dreams and the white tux slacks of the four men beneath their lime, yellow, teal and purple satin blouses were ace. Sound designer Andrew Tugwell’s mic-ing of the cast was flawless – every lyric caught without straining. Valerie Easton’s choreography was perhaps even more creative in this than it was in last season’s High Society that I adored. Brava indeed! particularly in the noted favourite montage kicking off Act 2. And last but not least, Ken Cormier’s musical direction. Tight. As noted with Easton and her gifts to last season’s High Society, Cormier’s ensemble jelled-&-excelled once again. Percussionist Graham Boyle’s performance particularly struck my ear impressively – not one single stroke sounding like a hatchet whacking up kindling that many drummers fall prey to. Terrific chops by all in the pit.

Summary : This is go-see stuff. A bit hokey & histrionic & sketchy in character, sure, but forget the storyline. These are see-hear-smell Motown moments that appeal to the viscera, not the cranium. Go just for the impact on your senses to take you out of your head for a couple of hours.

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Dateline Ashland, OR :

Streetcar Named Desire is perfect tale in today's world

(N.B. Writing via wi-fi on an i-Pad from California. How this transmits to blog remains to be seen.)

The famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) produces repertory plays from Winter through Autumn every year. But Billy Bard is not all they produce. Also many other scripts from various epochs and genres, including A Streecar Named Desire by American playwright Tennessee Williams first performed in 1947 that won a Pulitzer plus other notable awards.

Lead antagonist Stanley Kowalski (Danforth Comins) sums up the gist of the play in his condemnation of his sister-in-law Blanche Dubois (Kate Mulligan) near the plays's climax : "Your life is nothing but imagination, lies, conceits and tricks." Ouch. Tough stuff. Another way of putting the theme more universally might be : "We all have stories we believe in about ourselves. If we cleave to them too hard, we become neurotic. No story should become virtually all there is of us ."

Watching OSF's production of Streetcar Sunday reminded me of a comrade Southerner of Williams, Kentucky novelist Walker Percy. His indelible line from Love Among The Ruins put me to tears when first I read it and does so again: "What must be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past -- the past that is gone and grieved over and never made sense of."  This is what Streetcar is all about, I think.

Blanche Dubois is the older sister of Stella Kowalski (Nell Geisslinger). Blanche has fallen on hard times. She is forced to decamp the family estate Belle Rive in Laurel, Mississippi and sets out to visit her long-distant younger sister in N'Awlins, LA where she lives with her husband Stanley in post-WW II America.

Blanche is a spinster southern belle who subscribes to the mythology of plantation life as described in Gone With The Wind. And claims such as birthright. Trouble is, Blanche is 90% phony in this respect : in truth she is a bewildered and bemused emotional waif ever since her first love of some 40 years back turned out to be a gay poet. Upon learning that Blanche has witnessed him making love to another man -- she tells him she now finds him disgusting -- he promptly runs outside the roadside dance hall they're partying at and blows his head off.

Blanche's response is to repress-repress-repress. She lands a job as a school teacher, but really her work is to take local soldiers encamped in Laurel, Mississippi to bed -- some presumably for money, others just buck shee.  Her closing comment in the play of "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" takes on considerably more poignance in light of this info that emerges during the play. Including the fact that her teaching career ended abruptly when she tried to seduce a teen-age pupil.

To appreciate ASND, one needs to celebrate how much irony, paradox and ambiguity inform human conduct. Not only is it the case that "nothing is as it appears", but also that much of Western human conduct is predicated on projection  -- claiming objectionable behaviour by others that really is little more than denying their own self-same shortcomings. There's also the fecundity of Southern writing : one surely feels that culture through Williams's well-wrought words, but we also smell, it, touch it, taste it as only Bourbon Street life can induce. "Thinking" about life in the manner of, say, a Philip Roth (Portnoy's Complaint) is a wholly secondary experience if it occurs with these folks at all.

As well, Streetcar is the perfect antidote for today's social media phenomena that rely on "instantaneity" for entree to life's meaning. Not this script. It's 150 minutes of investigation, development and expansion -- psychologically -- of people who, serially, are victim-believers of their times, their genders, and their moral confusion.  Good luck trying to discuss such stuff with your typical teen-age Facebook Twitterer in 2013.

Backstory:  Elder sister Blanche has lost the family plantation due to misfeasance thus foreclosure. She has also been ushered out of Laurel due to the myriad johns she has enticed into the semi-respectiable Flamingo Hotel where she's taken  up lodgings -- all this unknown to sister Stella until Stanley's "acquaintances" cough up this up late in the play. Meanwhile Blanche has parachuted herself into Stella and Stanley's flat in NO as if she's on a short furlough, is all.  Immediately Stanley and Blanche magnetize in their dislike of one another : he thinks her cheap; she calls him Polak though he's 1st generation proud and swaggering, beer-swilling poker-playing WW II vet.

Blanche exposes herself and her simple complexity with these kinds of statements : "People have to tolerate each other's habits, I guess." "Money is the way out." "Who knows what the dark march is toward whatever it is we're approaching." "When people are soft they have to shimmer...I'm fading now, I don't know how much longer I can turn the trick." "I don't want realism, I want magic." "I had many intimacies with strangers -- it was all I was able to fill my heart with."  "Death's opposite is desire." Blanche flirts with everything, be it pants, mirror, or memory.

Mulligan succumbed to a bit of shrill predictability in Act 1 scolding her sister and parading her false southern belle persona, but she became progressively more convincing in her dreamscape delusions in the 2nd an 3rd acrs. A gutsy performance indeed.

As Stanley, Danforth Comins was just the right mix of macho grunting over card games with his buddies to his pushy insistences with Blanche to his crude tumescence with willing wife Stella. His rape of Blanche  -- or possibly co-seduction -- as his wife gave birth to their daughter was, of course, shocking but hardly a surprise given Tennessee Williams' character portraits.

Suitor Mitch (Jeffrey King) played the Mr. Sincere Naive role with nuance and great sensitivity. Convincing and capable support by the rest of the Streetcar entourage, too.

But it was Geisslinger as Stella who stole this reviewer's heart with her action as the younger sister always having to apologize for and protect and accommodate her older impaired but still-lovable sibling, the delusional and alcoholic Blanche. At curtain call -- after just finishing a most heart-rending scene with repeated eruptions of "What have I done to my sister?" as Blanche is taken away to an asylum that caught my throat and heart and eye -- Geisslinger came on stage wiping a tear from her face. I don't think it was sweat. She had just aced a dramatic climax that she lived, not merely "acted" a la the Meryl Streep school.

On the production values side of the ledger, Director Christopher Liam Moore wrung from each actor every ounce of blood, sweat and tears he was able and all to good effect. Set and lighting by scene designer  Christopher Acebo include a clever and impressionistic rendition of New Orleans iron railing lanais and spiral staircases that adorn even the most humble walk-up flats, with mood-lighting to suit perfectly.

The backdrop of sharp brass and muted coronet riffs by composer/sound designer Andre J. Pluess  captures nicely the jazzy NO soundscape, but quite frankly the periodic steam-engine chug-a-chug-a interpolations between certain Stella/Blanche scenes fretted my aural nerve quite painfully. Ashland being this close to San Francisco, where-oh-where was the familiar clank-rattle-clang of streetcar clatter instead -- in keeping literally and figuratively with the Tenessee Williams script, motif and theme? A real puzzler that lapse.

That closing quibble aside, folks traveling through Cascadia this season will enjoy a profound theatrical evening with Streetcar in Ashland that is worth every ducat. To take some moments to reflect on what the personal stories we inflict and insist upon in life -- and what role they play in our destiny -- is always worthwhile.

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Craigslist Cantata  is a refreshing hit of bubbly

Cyber-ad snippets from Craigslist thrust into a crisp and bubbly cabaret motif is what you see and what you get in ACT’s 2013 re-mount of last year’s PuSh Festival hit Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata (CC).

CC is a show offbeat and quirky and wholly original with music and acting vignettes to match : the standing ovation it received opening night was genuine and spontaneous, not one of those valentine candy hearts Vancouverites hand out ritually.

It’s the creation of Bill Richardson, noted CBC radio host, along with local indie composer Veda Hille who prides herself on scripting “eccentric musicals”.  In the current production Marguerite Witvoet takes her place; she thumps the baby grand on stage and sings gustily just like my a cappella teacher used to do.

CC features some 40-odd song-bites taken directly from or inspired by actual Craigslist want ads, the majority source being the “Missed Connections” link under the “Personals” category off that site. All of the material ranges from the curious to the obscure and plain perverse, like the guy offering to look after peoples’ pets once Jesus “raptures” them.

During the closing medley of one-liners a choir of posters identify themselves or the object of their desire – such as “You were the one who threw up on Skytrain” (?!). The natural rhetorical question from Missed Connections is then posed : “What’s the chance you’ll read this, and if you do you’ll say ‘Who needs this…’!”

All the tunes are performed by four actors who rhyme off the mini-stories Richardson anthologized and Hille put her musical magic wand to. Strongest performances opening night were from Bree Greig whose big voice and snappy footwork keep her in primary focus. Her number enumerating the qualities the new roommate she seeks must not have was a true crowd-pleaser. But fact is the newcomer to the current production, Jessie-winning Josh Epstein, gives as good as Greig in both voice and stage action. His bit as an Eastern Euro reaching out to the black-black lady whom he swoon-dances to was choreographed wonderfully – utterly tight and true bit of cabaret the crowd cheered over.

J. Cameron Barnett turns in many poignant takes, particularly in two bits, one where he writes to a clown in stilts he saw downtown: “I was the guy who took your picture, I am single, living mid-town, I’d like to take you out to dance, and more…” though the slapstick dry hump stage direction was just wrong. In another bit he reaches out into the cybervoid to find a man “to get together and drink coffee and hug – in our underwear – I’m not gay or anything – it’s sort of a male-bonding thing.” This one he milks of its every campy, wincing ounce.

Selina Martin’s husky voice turned in a touching story of the woman trying to find new homes for 14 hats she’d made over the years for her cherished cat Snowman, who’d just died. Martin also riffs nicely on electric guitar as well as taking a violin bow to a carpenter's saw in one number with haunting effect. Her singing and guitar in “looking for a metal-head roommate for a metal-head house” was big sound and big laugh both.

Director Amiel Gladstone exploits his cast wonderfully well. The quick-step blocking and pirouette staging envelop the intimate Revue Stage room. Resident set designer Ted Roberts suspends a variety of lamps and lampshades above the stage, mostly 70’s macramé and parchment paper balls plus ersatz Victorian chandeliers, all of which symbolize how styles tend to recycle. Costumes by Darryl Milot could be Commercial Drive either 1969 or 2013, effective eclectics, more recycling. Lighting by John Webber was very cleverly designed to highlight individual performers on isolated squidges of stage at a time.

Noteworthy is that the title of the piece is really just the last half of a couplet that is reprised wistfully four or five times throughout the night : “God I want what you have – do you want what I have got…?” What these anonymous cyber-adsters reveal is primarily what they “have got” is the human condition rampant in today's first world : lifestyles that are goofy and weird and superficial and largely innocent, much of the time. 

But the ache of what French sociologist Emile Durkheim termed back in fin de siecle 19th century as anomie – peoples’ longing and desperation and disorientation in a world where competition is god and social isolation is almost epidemic. This existential ache is a lingering afternote in every song and lyric Hille and Richardson produce. 

Nevermind what it might have been 100+ years ago in the industrial revolution before women had the vote. Take to-day's "advances" on all that through technology. Everyone knows there is no soul in cyberspace – but somehow a lot of folks just can’t stop looking for it there anyway. Their virtual lives crave virtual love and that's all they get –if they're "lucky". A bit melancholy all this stuff for sure, even with its  instances of ironic humour. 

But the big picture is that CC is clever writ very large indeed, one of the most refreshing and effervescent evenings of Vancouver theatre BLR has enjoyed in the year-plus this blog has run. And run you should, too, to take this in – quick-quick-quick – in the short month it’s here. Until May 18th. 

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A game trip down memory lane on Granville Island

My Turquoise Years [MTY] is Marion Farrant's stage adaptation of her 2004 memoir of the same name. It recounts what life was like for her living in Cordova Bay outside Sidney, BC with her aunt and uncle -- her surrogate parents -- because her Australian mother Nancy ditched her dad and her when Marion was five to seek romance and live the fast life on cruise ships, which she did to a fault. 

It's 1960, Marion [Bridget Esler] is 13 and beginning to bud. The play acts out the memories she has of that time taken from the diary Farrant kept religiously. Dramatic tension is occasioned by two influences : Marion's warm but edgy relationship with her demanding Aunt Elsie, certainly, but even more by the omnipresent spook Nancy. Now eight years later with no contact but some tardy and tasteless birthday gifts, Nancy wires that she is coming to BC to visit Marion et al in a week. Angst levels inflate and magnify.

Chief protagonist of MTY is Elsie [Wendy Noel] who is a classic blue collar mom of the times : utterly direct, pushy, to the point, full of "bloody" this and "bloody" that, frumpy in her housedress, no thought not worth verbalizing. Noel aces Elsie's persona. She carries the play almost single-handedly from her diaphragm. Elsie proves how you don't choose family; family are what you get. And how good what you get is just fate.

Quickly we're introduced as well to Elsie's sister Maudie [Dawn Petten], her son Kenny [Michael Rinaldi] who's a layabout; Elsie's newly-married elder daughter Doreen [Georgina Beaty]; Dad Billy [David Marr] whose job keeps him in Vancouver but he faithfully ferries over to visit Marion every other week-end; Marion's uncle and week-day dad Ernie [Peter Anderson]; and, importantly, Marion's "bosom buddy" Jenny, also played by Beaty. Marion and Jenny's best-friend beach scenes are wonderful snapshots of kids greeting with secret hand-slaps, doing gobs of tell-all, imagining aloud what sex is all about and plotting a whack of goofy schemes and plots. 

Director Rachel Ditor's blocking and staging of the numerous women-kibitzing-with-women pieces, particularly, were terrific. Family secrets, bits of gossip, grievances about their hubbies (current, former, alive, dead), menopause onset, raising kids, fears for the future, jibes at perpetrators of ill-will, recipes and Rx's to deal with infidelities and affairs -- as stage pieces these bits work juicily. Brava! to all.

MTY highlights the roles men and women played at that time when "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" and the women meekly submitted. Not to forget Ozzie & Harriet. Betty Frieden's breakthrough challenge to all this stylized role-playing -- The Feminine Mystique -- was still three years away from hitting book stores.

MTY's intimate scenes of interplay among Marion's adoptive family are like a Stuart Maclean Vinyl Cafe sketch except more earthy. The idioms of the day -- "Cross my heart and hope to die"; "Krikey!"; "She'll brain me"; "She wears, you know, 'falsies'!"; "Jeez, for real ?"; "Wild horses couldn't make me..."; "Go all the way?"; "Old people 'doing it' -- how icky can you get?"; "You smell to high heaven" -- these are all note-perfect from 1960, for sure. Via such great lines Act 1 ends abruptly with everyone's continued mad-dash responses over the spook's soon-to-come arrival.

Farrant gives readers a hint of foreshadowing about Act 2 in the playwright's program notes. And sure enough, the wacky-yakky but intimate dialogue of Act 1 stops abruptly. Farrant explains why: "...I have added 'flesh' in the name of theatricality to make the memoir work better onstage." 

The second act's "theatricality" comes in two forms: a switch to slapstick schticks, and the interjection of a couple of song-&-dance routines. It starts with an over-made-up hairdresser replete with pillowed derriere Rae-Ella (Dawn Patten), whose every syllable is highlighted with wildly overstated gestures and melodramatic voice crescendos and wide-eyed double-takes. Not one scintilla of realism here, either intended or in fact.

Then come the men -- Billy, Ernie and Kenny -- doing an ersatz Elvis number with accompanying soft-shoe. Next we find Ernie and Elsie making nice and making time with choreographed slap-butt antics in the kitchen.

While the audience seemed to enjoy the second act shenanigans -- particularly the ballad "If you really want to love me treat me nice" -- all this artificial "theatricality" I felt detracted from the central catharsis Marion was working through. (My companions last evening did not 100% agree with me on that.)

Playing Marion, Bridget Esler [a senior at Little Flower Academy] has a difficult task: how to dramatize pages of a diary. Her delivery often sounded more like a reading than true acting, particularly in her many explanatory monologues. Better were the scenes of her listening to her elders or eavesdropping on them all the while madly scribbling notes in her diary -- these scenes were well thought out and delivered. The ingenue writer as camera and sponge. And not to forget the beachside duet she and dad Billy did (naturally, not "theatrically") at the end of Act 1 -- "Don't Fence Me In"-- as a bedtime lullaby. Truly poignant. Esler has sweet sweet pipes. 

As Ernie, Anderson played the part of "victim" husband convincingly. Dawn Petten as Elsie's sister Maudie not so much because of flawed blocking: her quick-step giddy-ups to accommodate son Kenny's every want and demand seemed over-contrived. Michael Rinaldi as Kenny came across strangely disengaged and aloof even for a layabout.

Costume designer Christine Reimer deserves a Jessie nomination for the spot-on garb the characters sported: Elsie's housedresses; Ernie's highwater pants and plastic pencil pocket; Kenny's Elvis get-up; Marion's shorts and turquois-y swim suits.

Alison Green's set was clever but a bit over-cluttered in concept and execution. Kudos for the screen-door'd 1950's kitchen and nearby living room with its black-&-white rabbit-ears t.v. -- they worked extremely well. Also the large 3-D crashing wave behind all this symbolically links birth-mom in Oz with real-Mom in Cordova Bay -- a cool touch -- as were the downstage beach logs that brought everyone up close and personal. 

MTY offers up much creativity, energy and insight into the foibles and mores and stereotypes of the times. Somewhat uneven as a script and in delivery, it nevertheless rewards viewers with some heart-touching moments of what life seemed to be like 50 years back.

P.S. Did Nancy ever arrive? Not as announced. Later. Of course. As with the earlier birthday presents, "tardy and tasteless". Arrives with new husband Stan on a cruise ship. Marion follows Nancy to her stateroom to chat, but because she had been in the ship's bar into the wee hours singing and carousing, in short order she slides onto her bunk and falls asleep mid-sentence. Marion tells all this in a touching soliloquy at the end of the play. It is clear Marion has learned the lesson earlier noted that Elsie has tried to teach her : you don't choose family; family are what you get. And how good what you get is just fate.

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Go for a spin with SPIN : not dizzying and very clever

The spin on SPIN playing through Saturday at the Cultch Historical room is this : creator Evalyn Parry spins a nice factoidal yarn about when bike spins were all the rage 120 years back before Model A Fords drove them off the road. More than that : the subject is women and how bikes and bloomers and suffragettes and temperance and advertising all met at the intersection of late 19th century America.

Parry does so primarily in song, but also through free verse poetry, black-&-white psychedelia screen projections and a bike -- her muse -- that’s hung on a mechanic’s rack and ingeniously mic’d up for Brad Hart to thrum and strum and percuss with fervor.

Parry likes double entendre and homonyms a lot for their wordplay, starting right off with a number that says what's about to come is “Two-Wheeled Words To Wield Words”. A bit arch, that. Still, the history lesson to daughter and me last night was clearly a case of  “Who knew…?”

Entering the theatre, we were drawn to a backlit screen that features a Sarah Bernhardt quote which did some quick turns in our heads : “The bicycle is on the way to transforming our way of life more deeply than you might think. All these girls and women who are devouring space are refusing domestic family life,” she said in 1896. Women "refusing domestic family life" in 1896...?!

From there the story pedals forward quickly to the primary subject of the evening’s drama, one “Annie Londonderry”, who famously circumnavigated the earth in 1894-1895 in 15 months. This she did reportedly in response to a wager between two Bostonian rakes whether a (“mere”) woman could do this. The prize was to be $10,000, a swack of dough back in the day.

And how did Annie fund her around-the-world slog on a one-speed ? Selling advertising she pinned to her cycling outfit – word-spins to finance the bike-spins. Even her name morphed from Anne Cohen Kopcovsky to Annie Londonderry because she got $100 from the Massachusetts-based Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company to sport their advert on her bike and change her name to promote their product.

The tale Parry tells is a case of Around The World In 80 Days meets Annie Get Your Gun and its signature song, Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better. Decades later when he caught wind of this unusual branch in the family tree, grandnephew Peter Zheutlin did the research on Annie and reported thus in the Christian Science Monitor in August, 2006 :

“…[T]he bicycle was Annie’s means of escape from a life constrained by 19^th-century expectations of women. By age 18 she was married and had one child; when she left to cycle the world in 1894, she had three young children and a job selling ads for several Boston newspapers. Her husband, Max, was a devout Jew who made a modest living as a peddler. The bicycle, she hoped, would also be her ticket to fame and fortune. For a woman of that era to leave her husband and young children was unimaginable; to do so to bicycle the world was utterly radical…A consummate self-promoter, and a skillful creator of her own myth, Annie became a global celebrity, her adventures reported by newspapers from San Francisco to Saigon and Chicago to Shanghai. Her genius was to seize on the major social phenomenon of her day. The 1890’s was the height of a bicycle craze in the US and Europe [BLR note: 2 million bikes were sold in USA in 1897, one in 30 Americans owned one.]. The women’s movement was in full force, and the bicycle, said Susan B. Anthony, ‘has done more to emancipate women than anything else in history.’”

To tell this story on stage, Parry and Hart worked assiduously to morph Hart’s 1972 CCM Galaxie that he years before had retired to Parry’s basement into a musical instrument to accompany Parry on her electric guitars. Enter the world of piezos thanks to sound designer Anna Friz -- electronic gizmos to generate vibrations that kick to a mixer and make the CCM’s spokes, pedals, saddle and frame a one-man band of intriguing electro-sound even stranger but as clever as anything one might hear on Laurie Brown’s CBC show The Signal.

Over the course of the 80 minute performance Parry’s yarn links a history of women’s clothing and the expression ‘bloomers’ from one Amelia Bloomer, a publisher, in 1850;  how suffragette and temperance advocate Frances Willard came to write a book on cycling techniques for women wannabes;  how cycling allowed women back then “to be free to move their political legs”;  how "Sex sells! " was jumped at : e.g. in 1896 via the new printing artform of lithographs the Gladiator Cycle company of Montmartre, Paris featured nude women with racy red hair flying with their bikes -- 90% of which were bought by men of course. (A celebrant of her own and others' "queer" orientation as she calls it, Parry wonders aloud whether Willard was a "pre-outed gay".)

Because life imitates art, just as art imitates life, Parry shills her CD’s and T-shirts shamelessly about 2/3 the way through the show. But no matter, to this ear : so did Annie, and the fact is artists always have to market their creativity to live. “We are the merchandizing overlords of our own merchandizing world in a phantasy of freedom,” Parry monologues. She then closes the show and links these various musings by quoting a letter written to her by Annie’s granddaughter Mary.  

Mary states that Annie’s leaving her three young children with their dad Max all due to the reported “wager” was not championed by the family. Parry surmises more likely the wager angle to justify her jaunt was simply “the first story Annie told just to get out of the house”.  Mary relates that the emotional impact of Annie's round-the-world adventure on Max and the kids and later the grandkids was not healthy, even after Annie "re-nested" and moved the family to New York upon returning from her trip. For a short time thereafter she wrote features for the N.Y. World promoting her "new woman" values, but Wiki reports Annie died unheralded and “in obscurity” in 1947. Still, Parry’s closing song asserts her own abiding worldview regardless : “Don’t give up on anything / One might miss the miracle.”

Director Ruth Madoc-Jones orchestrates tight sequencing in the theatrical montage that SPIN is. Projectionist / lighter / production designer Beth Kates pulls terrific technical values together : the 19th century women cycling in full dresses and corsets around pylons was worth more than 1,000 words. Production manager and technical director Charissa Wilcox earned every shekel keeping the production moving along apace. Brad Hart had thrilling riffs playing the Galaxie. Parry's voice and lyrics and spoken poetry bounce well off the Cultch walls to engaged ears.

This show will appeal, obviously, to cyclists; to historians interested in the connect between bloomers and bikes and the dream of emancipation a century back; and to folks who relate to clever stories spun out with head and heart and humour. 

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God and the Indian is very timely viewing

How does one parse evil? What the Oxford Compact Thesaurus differentiates as villainy, degeneracy, and immorality -vs- barbarity, atrocity, monstrosity.  The Canadian residential schools nightmare -vs- Eichmann’s death camps. One “may”, but one “can’t” win that debate. Without saying so expressly, that is one subtext of Drew Hayden Taylor’s play that had its international premiere last night at the Firehall Arts Centre. Evil is as evil does. It does not parse.

The plot is simple. Rev. George King, an Anglican priest, has been promoted to Assistant Bishop in an urban diocese. The morning after the party celebrating his annunciation he stops at a downtown Tim Horton’s for a cup of  coffee. There he is spotted by “Johnny Indian”, a native panhandler who follows him back to his offices. Johnny confronts King and accuses him of being the teacher from St. Mark’s Residential School who sexually abused and raped her, repeatedly, when she was just 12.

The play proceeds in the manner of an intervention : Johnny (Tantoo Cardinal) attempts to get King (Michael Kopsa) to confess to his 40-year-old crimes, which for 120 minutes he denies, then confesses, obliquely, sort of – always as a churchy fellow, not a person. Married, teen kids, loving wife, this is an ugly and visceral confrontation. George hasn't faced anything like it in his life. That he perhaps is guilty of causing equal or worse pain to another years back he refuses to face. 

The dialogue flips back-&-forth between the two with Assistant Bishop King rhyming off institutional cant and stock denials of any personal complicity or guilt. Johnny, by contrast, wants to optimize this chance meeting, have it lead to her healing. When ABK asks her who she is in the opening moments, she responds : “Who I am today, that is quite a question…!”  The depth of her meaning is lost on the man of the cloth.

Indian is directed by Renae Morriseau, herself of aboriginal stock, who says the play “…takes us on a journey of layered meaning where compassion, reconciliation and the boundaries placed upon forgiveness are explored and developed.” Taylor’s script certainly does just that for the viewers, and the result as a play is very successful, rewarding and relevant. The meta-play between Johnny and King doesn’t achieve resolution, however, because words cannot band-aid experiences. Abuse is not a boo-boo.

King : “I know it’s in vogue to sue the Church for all sorts of wrongful actions, but there has to be some basis of truth and evidence involved. We’re not handing out blank cheques or apologies to whoever walks in the door.”  Johnny : I don’t want any money. Or an apology. No, acknowledgement…that I’m me. Me! I’m Sammy’s sister. I am my parent’s child. I don’t want to be a ghost anymore. I want to exist. To be seen. To be noticed. To be acknowledged. By you and what you’ve done.”  King :  I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

At this point, Johnny pulls a gun out of her bag and aims it at King. Obviously frightened he tells her to put the gun down : “If you do that, I will erase this whole thing from my memory, and you can go on your way. No harm done.”  Johnny : “’No harm done.’ You have a bad habit of picking the wrong phrases. Actually you had a lot of bad habits. Oh I know you tried to ‘save the child by killing the Indian’, but I think some of it managed to hide out somewhere, behind my brown eyes, under my black hair, or beneath my thick skin. Killing an entire people can take a lot of time. I guess 10 years wasn’t long enough.”  Some might argue the “no harm done” line a bit convenient and ham-handed, but in the context of a completely failed communication between "patriarch" and "supplicant", I say it works.

For the balance of the play we see Johnny agonize whether to commit suicide with the pistol and its one bullet she claims it has, or to kill King. In the end, King disarms Johnny by abusing her anew with a direct sensory memory of oranges, oranges that were used at St. Mark’s as Christmas gifts or bribes for sexual favours. Johnny relinquishes the gun and sighs heavily, despondently. She grasps once more what has been her lifelong intuitive wisdom : “There’s nothing for me here.” As for the lost chance to end either King’s life or her own, she adds, resignedly : “Wanting and having are two different things.”

No, how to reconcile Jesus’s challenge of “Suffer the little children to come unto me” with the church’s history of harming and abusing children in the name of Christ will never happen between Johnny and Assistant Bishop King. It can’t. Because words will never deconstruct acts. The diktat of the Christian religion has always debased what the Jew carpenter stood for and meant spiritually, symbolically and existentially, Taylor suggests forcefully.

This play works. It is convincing and compelling on many levels. With the First Nation Truth and Reconciliation Commission winding up its mandate to hear from abused former school residents and their elders, children and children’s children, God and the Indian is a poignant reminder of the reality of residential schools’ 140 year run in Canada at the hands of organized religion (Catholic, Anglican, United and its predecessors) as well as at the hands of parliament through The Gradual Civilization Act [sic] of 1857 and subsequently the Indian Act and amendments thereto.

Doubly compelling a play for Vancouver because of the recently released findings of the Oppal Commission into the slaughter of dozens of missing DTES women, many aboriginal, at the hands of Robert Picton and the role, or lack thereof, of the various suburban police bureaucracies to end the killing spree years earlier. That Firehall Arts Centre is situated right in the heart of DTES at Gore and Cordova where sex trade workers continue to ply the streets makes the juxtaposition all the more poignant. 

The set and lighting design by Lauchlin Johnson are very effective for the diminutive Firehall stage : Assistant Bishop King’s office with backlit projections of a stark residential school bed all amuss; wooden snow shoes; large first-growth birch trees; crates of oranges. Costumes designed by Alex Danard capture well the disconnect between the “man of God” from the church and the “woman of spirit” who lives off the street. The soundscape by Morriseau and Marcos Amaya-Torres is a clever blend of Anglican hymn, Indian drumbeats, and innocent children playing.

As Johnny, Tantoo Cardinal – a Cree/Metis and veteran of some 80 credits from “Dancing With Wolves” to “Black Robe” to “North of 60” to “Moccasin Flats” – turns in a nuanced and idiosyncratic portrayal of a 50-something street person wracked by physical and spiritual torment with just the right shakiness of voice and hand and awkward limp one would expect from a woman suffering her traumas. Assistant Bishop King by Michael Kopsa is nearly 100% objectionable in his unctuous persona – which demonstrates his complete grasp of the role including both its physical and spiritual arthritis.

This is a trenchant, timely, and terrific take on the gulf between members of alienated aboriginal communities and the contemporary commercial world of all us "others". You will come away satisfied that Artistic Director Donna Spencer's challenge to viewers in the program notes has been achieved : "Enjoy, question, and consider !"

Background note #1 :  From University of Manitoba précis highlighting its Leah Carritt Collection on the Brandon Indian Residential School (1936) :

The Canadian parliament administrated the enculturation of Indigenous peoples across Canada with compulsory attendance for children aged 6 to 15 and Christian based curriculum which forbade traditional knowledge and languages. This process of enculturation has been largely referred to as “Killing the Indian, saving the child”. Due to major under-funding from churches and the federal government, the upkeep and subsistence of the residential school depended on the forced labor of students. The compulsory residential school system lasted until 1948 and official closings of residential schools occurred into the 1990s. Residential schools varied in their corporal treatment towards the students, which has culminated in mixed emotions about individual experiences, though overwhelmingly the residential school program has been condemned by Indigenous people and regretted by portions of the Canadian government. The first official state apology to Indigenous peoples over the abuses incurred at residential schools was made in 1998, followed by an open inquiry into individual and community experience through a Truth and Reconciliation program beginning in 2006.

Background note #2 :  From the University of British Columbia’s Indigenous Foundations website :

The residential school system is viewed by much of the Canadian public as part of a distant past, disassociated from today’s events. In many ways, this is a misconception. The last residential school [in BC] did not close its doors until 1986. Many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of today’s Aboriginal communities are residential school survivors. There is, in addition, an intergenerational effect: many descendents of residential school survivors share the same burdens as their ancestors even if they did not attend the schools themselves. These include transmitted personal trauma and compromised family systems, as well as the loss in Aboriginal communities of language, culture, and the teaching of tradition from one generation to another.

According to the Manitoba Justice Institute, residential schools laid the foundation for the epidemic we see today of domestic abuse and violence against Aboriginal women and children. Generations of children have grown up without a nurturing family life. As adults, many of them lack adequate parenting skills and, have only experienced abuse, in turn abuse their children and family members. This high incidence of domestic violence among Aboriginal families results in many broken homes, perpetuation the cycle of abuse and dysfunction over generations.

Many observers have argued that the sense of worthlessness that was instilled in students by the residential school system contributed to extremely low self-esteem. This has manifested itself in self-abuse, resulting in high rates of alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide. Among First Nations people aged 10 to 44, suicide and self-inflicted injury is the number one cause of death, responsible for almost 40 percent of mortalities. First Nations women attempt suicide eight times more often than other Canadian women, and First Nations men attempt suicide five times more often than other Canadian men. Some communities experience what have been called suicide epidemics.

Note on the playwright : Drew Hayden Taylor billboards himself as "the blue-eyed Ojibway". Originally from Curve Lake First Nations in central Ontario decades back, Taylor considers humour his primary metier as playwright, essayist and speaker promoting aboriginal issues and causes. Asked at Opening Night by this reviewer why he deviated from his usual humour to write God and the Indian, he replied : "As a challenge. A friend asked whether I had it in me to write something serious, so I decided to tackle the most serious subject involving Canadian aboriginal people that I could think of. Residential schools. That's it." 

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