Spamalot is idiotic feel-good song-&-dance  

Quicky prologue & overview : Popular web-poet C.L. Thornton reminds us in "A Short History of One's Life" :

Life is always fatal.

It begins pre-natal

and continues undiminished

until finished.

Undiminished, that is, only if one is capable of spontaneous silliness on occasion. How else to offset the cynicism brought about by current phenomena such as social media infestation, "reality t.v." or the mass kidnapping of hundreds of teen girls in the name of God. Yes, being able to LOFAO occasionally without booze or drugs or tickle-torture is a salubrious yoga pose we need to slide into more often. And Monty Python co-founder Eric Idle created the barmy & daft musical Spamalot for precisely that purpose.

Co-written with composer and partner John Du Prez, Spamalot started out as a musical stage version of the Python crew's first full-length film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The movie's purpose was to satirize English royalty / Camelot myths, organized religion, and middle class / sensible conduct codes with over-the-top silly playfulness. Can Black Death corpses be fun? What about gleefully hacking an enemy's arms and legs off? Or a knight executing a bride's family and wedding party? Fun? You bet. The stage-play knock-off Spam hams it up further with some hilarious swipes at Broadway middlebrow musicals that take the world by storm and whole industries are spawned from.  Folks fork over countless dozens of ducats to stand in line for them and buy the T-shirt, CD, DVD and such. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera is perhaps the prime example here.

There is no narrative or dramatic arc in Spam, even less than in the movie Grail. Just a series of comic sketches that are loosely strung together telling a tall tale of King Arthur, his rag-tag clutch of Round Table Knights, orders from the Almighty to find-&-fetch the Holy Grail, and a host of madcap encounters along the way. Giants, tricksters, one exquisitely sardonic French soldier plus a jeezly-sharp-fanged-carnivorous white rabbit (like none Gracie Slick could ever imagine) all stand between this gaggle of goofs and their cherished chalice. And all of the carrying-on is smothered in irreverent and silly song, dance, kick-lines, tap, plus a passel of jolly good chases. 

WYSIWYG :  The movie was mostly a backdrop for the trademark absurd and slightly insane Python banter. Its characters to a person reveal a sublime awareness how ridiculous all of their shenanigans are. In the 30-year-later Spamalot, meanwhile, dialogue is often somewhat lost amidst all the "irreverent and silly song, dance, kick-lines, tap, plus a passel of jolly good chases" just noted. But that observation is not criticism. Just a fact. And, according to some viewers overheard at half-time at the packed Stanley house opening night, that makes Spam a whole heckuvalot more accessible to them than Grail ever was.

The best original bits are retained, thank goodness. The coconut shells clapped together for hoofbeats while the actors mime their imaginary steeds. The effect now, as before, is hilarious each second -- it never grows stale. And there's a glitzy overlay of Vegas and Camelot that is priceless : the castles don neon roof-lines; the ensemble kick-line is bling'd out richly; there's a chorus (Laker girls) whose antics are straight out of Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri's Saturday Night Live iconic Spartan cheer squad routines.

Messrs. Idle and Du Prez obviously wanted to skewer Broadway musical theatre : snide reference to ALW; take-offs on Fiddler On The Roof and Streisand in Yentl; a song "You Won't Succeed On Broadway" without any Jews; the spoof "The Song That Goes Like This" -- a drawn-out ballad mid-show that is reprised ad nauseam. But the Vegas scene also gets jibed. The Celine Dion parody in silver-sequins was spot on as was the old Stardust-like marquee that descends from the desert heavens.

Then there's the schmaltz. Idle and Du Prez cannibalize Python's Life of Brian for a remount of "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" that Arthur's sherpa, the eponymous Patsy, croons him with in Act 2 and the Company closes the curtain with. In Brian it was sheer satire : Brian is condemned to a long and painful death and is "serenaded" with the song to lift his spirits. In Spam the irony gets lost in all the funnery. Irony resurfaces, however, when Arthur moans "I'm All Alone" to Patsy who's been there all along and arches an eyebrow repeatedly at his clueless master. "Because I'm working class I'm just the horse's ass!"

Cleverest sequence of all was Lancelot's coming out to the nearly-betrothed Prince Herbert who loves Rufus Wainwright-y lugubrious music. His bullying father positively hates the stuff and repeatedly orders the orchestra to "Stop playing!" The colourful gay spangles of the men's dance troupe when celebrating ol' Lance having joined their ranks, replete with a Village People "YMCA" riff as a rainbow shimmery chorus line, was simply a sight to behold. "Lancelot's in tight pants alot who likes to dance alot..."

Production values : To this viewer the primary take-aways most folks will remember from director Dean Paul Gibson's show will be the ever-so-clever castle and Vegas sets by designer Marshall McMahen that serve as great backdrops for Rebekka Sorensen-Kjelstrup's riot of colour and texture and pizzazz in the ensemble's various dance routine costumes, particularly. Together they're a delicious eyeful. But choreographer Lisa Stevens' work is but a step-ball-change away from stealing top honours as well, with lots of kick and spunk and pirouettes and tap and twirl to delight eyes and ears both. 

As Sir Robin and the French Taunter, both, Josh Epstein gets highest huzzahs and bravos for his breathless and artful night. Jonathan Winsby as Gallahad was inspired in his eager bravado and ironic social commentary both. As Prince Herbert and Not Dead Fred, Scott Perrie tore into his roles -- as laughably infectious as a group of stoners lying head-to-tummy playing Ha! Ashley O'Connell as Galahad's mother then shrub-monger was a nifty piece of work. These were the stand-outs. But full-mark efforts by the rest of the company too, no question, who scampered and sang and giggled themselves all across the Stanley stage with enthusiasm and wonderful endeavour. 

Two minor hiccups : In absolutely every depiction I have ever seen in drawing, paint, sculpture and film, Arthur's famed sword Excalibur is h-u-g-e -- a wondrously long and wide implement of domination that invites endless Freudian and patriarchal comparison. Here the sword is smaller even than the Black Knight's, more a long knife than The Sword of the Ages. Howcum?

French Taunter needs to retard his delivery a bit so the audience gets all his wonderful original idiotic metaphors that are so pure-Pythonesque. While the penis-helmet-rubs and horking at Arthur were great sight gags, the genius writing of Idle in this schtick needs to be heard without straining to be fully appreciated. (See Favourite Quotes below for a close-approximation.)

Who gonna like : This show pulses with nonsense, verve and vigour that might, just might, meet Artistic Director Bill Millerd's prediction during his Intro on opening night that Spamalot "will become the stage hit of the summer" in Vancouver in 2014. It's riotous, inane, and serves no useful purpose other than to deliver laugh-a-minute asininity by a highly energized pack of performers.

Favourite quotes :

Dennis Gallahad : What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an inferior!

Arthur : Well, I am king!

Dennis : Oh king, eh, very nice. And how d'you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By 'anging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society...

[Moments later Arthur explains about the Lady of the Lake handing him the sword Excalibur, which prompted this exchange]

Dennis : Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Arthur : Be quiet!

Dennis : Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Arthur : Shut up!

Dennis : I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Arthur : Shut up, will you. Shut up!

*  *  *  *  *

God : Arthur! Arthur, King of the Britons! Oh, don't grovel! One thing I can't stand it's people groveling.

Arthur : Sorry.

God : And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's 'sorry this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'... and stop looking up my skirt, I'm God you tit, Jesus!

*  *  *  *  *

French guard (at castle) : You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs. Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thppppppt! Thppt! Thppt!

Gallahad : What a strange person.

Arthur : Now look here, my good man--

French guard : I don't want talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Monsieur Arthur King you have the brain of a duck, you know, you son of a window-dresser.  I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second hand electric donkey-bottom biters.

*  *  *  *  *

Brother : And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--

Arthur : Skip a bit, Brother.  [Brother skips in place.]

*  *  *  *  *

Arthur : Where are we going to find a shrubbery?

Patsy : Maybe we can build one out of cats.

Arthur : Arggh, where are we going to find the cats?

-30-

RIP! needs to rip through its riffs, not wander

Quicky overview : Axis Theatre's RIP! A Winkle in Time at the Waterfront until May 17 is an energetic pastiche of various stage actions lumped together and captured by what a stage-play lexicon would likely call "physical theatre". Its primary design feature is all its vigorous blocking, choreography and, telle surprise, the very physicality of the actors mounting the event. Dialogue in physical theatre is often thrown in as a bit of an add-on or afterthought. Not so in the Axis production, however. Words chase words here faster than Laurel could chase Hardy.

Riffing on Washington Irving's famous Rip Van Winkle story, this Rip (Randall Irving Parson) has been asleep for the last 117 years, not just 20, and the action's set in Canada's Gold Rush Yukon Territory not New York's Catskills. To escape his "battle-axe" wife Flora for awhile, Rip goes hunting for fauna in 1897 outside his Yukon town of 500 souls. He meets up with ghosts from the ill-fated Arctic Franklin Expedition of 50 years previously who entice him with a potion from an oak keg and promptly (well, slowly...) huck him into an ice cave after a too-long pilates-ish dance sequence to get him there. He slumbers on until 2014 when suddenly he awakens to Hoo-boy! a brave new world indeed. Biggest comic hook to signal the time-lapse focuses, of course, on an iPhone, its photo-capabilities, selfies and such -- Rip thinks it's a cigarette case people are talking into.

The words of co-directors Wayne Specht and Kathryn Bracht explain why the group known as the RIP! Creative Collective both aimed-&-shot somewhat long-&-wide of their artistic target for this script. Mr. Specht says that playwright KC Brown "took what became a bushel of images, musings, outrageous speculation and much more and wrote us a play that explores the 'What if' [theme] in a very unusual way." We agree on that. Bushels of stuff were stacked on top of one another, no question. For her part, Ms. Bracht says "It has been a crazy journey and I've found the trip to be wildly inventive, messy, and ultimately gratifying." On the first two adjectives we're in sync, not so much on the last. 

Admire as I always do the creativity and verve of stage folks, RIP! brings to mind the old comic of the convoluted schoolyard jungle gym designed by bureaucrats. It juts out willy-nilly in all directions up-down-over-around and would surely kill some poor bloke if used. All the schoolmarm asked for, meanwhile, was a truck tire at the end of a rope. 

Analogously, at 110 minutes of run-time, RIP! needed to rest in peace after 80-90 minutes max. Having said that, however, know that there are scads of redeeming moments and comic brilliance in the piece that drew giggles and guffaws aplenty from the appreciative albeit sparse Tuesday night crowd.

WYSIWYG : RIP! brings you Cirque du Soleil-ish acrobatics, puppeteering, dance, shadow play, slapstick schticks, silent film snippets, vaudeville, and music hall revue. Frankly these stage antics all worked out quite well indeed -- if a bit messy and chaotic at times -- thanks to the raw talent of their performers. But it was the prologue and exposition during what seemed an endless first act that needed not just snipping but wholesale amputation. 

The play opens with a Cirque trope : the stacking of opera chairs downstage left, up the actor proceeds to climb, nimbly, and cap it with a handstand. In RIP! the prop-purpose is to get the show's narrator, Moon (Annette Devick) to perch near a stylized full moon just above her head. Given the historic role of the moon in drama and the arts (lunar : lunacy : muse inspiration), the bit would have been fine thematically without the superfluous handstand. 

F.w.i.w. here's how I would have done that scene and carved off maybe 15 minutes in the process, to no ill-effect (to this viewer's eyes and ears anyhow).

After mounting the chairs, Moon would say, simply : "This is a story you know well but have never seen nor heard before. It's a modern-day Rip van Winkle take-off set in the Yukon in both 1897 and 2014 and has some wonderfully creepy Freudian moments of a 20-something bar hostess falling in love with a 147 year old man. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here...".

Then through further clip-it dialogue we would learn that Rip's original land claim for gold in fin de siecle 19th century Yukon -- that great-great-grandson Rip IV now stewards in the 21st century -- has never been mined. That would involve watercourses, sluice boxes, sand screens. As with Irving's character, seems the generations of RvW's continue to be lovable laggards and sloths.

Meanwhile, in 2014, the Evergreen Corporation (hah, hah) wants to squeeze oil's black gold out of the claim instead of Au. And so the notional climate change / environment-slagging theme becomes the contempo thin thread that loosely stitches the 2014 story back to the original 1897 tale.

As both Moon and movie director Frankie, Devick turns in a stellar performance. Her training at the National Circus School in Montreal and recently in Russian clowning (apparently that's not a Putin oxymoron) show through every moment she's in the spotlight, particularly her rope-&-chase sequence pursuing Rip I. She's madly trying to snatch his wallet and capture its original claim-stake documents. If she sells the stake to Evergreen, they've promised her a culture centre and film studio for Parson City for her to be Creative Director of. She and Parson City will be on TripAdvisor and Yelp! and rich and famous and ohmygoshmygolly!

As Rip I, Stefano Giulianetti has just the right blend of Aw shucks Mr. Nice Guy, honour-driven values and affection for his faithful dog Wolf. Speaking of whom, Tara Travis is Wolf's puppeteer, but way more : her Lil / Lillian barkeep turns were utterly fun, as was her stage business stomping to keep her frozen feet warm. Her lines were sheer hokeyness. Simon Webb as Rip IV -- who is now both older and younger than his great-great-grandfather Rip I whom Lil is smitten by -- Webb gives folks a believable run at this somewhat baffled and bemused character. 

Production values : Naomi Sider's set, props and costumes all worked cleverly together, mixing the two epochs the action takes place in quite nicely. The upstage right 3-tier platform with saloon-y accents was a clever piece from which much of the action ran up-&-down. Choreographer Marlise McCormick must still be breathless from all the work she had her people do -- particularly during Devick's chase scenes -- but also the dance hall Parson City Follies routine that was pure fun to watch, as was most of the second act. Bob Buckley's mix of Bonnie-&-Clyde banjo with a singing-saw underscore pleased the ear nicely. Lighting designer Darren Boquist pulled off the moody Yukon landscape convincingly on the painted back-lit scrims. Except for the static northern lights at the end : if you've seen them in real-time you know they wave and roll and whoosh. Surely today's scenic technology could have managed to import such an effect for this show. 

Who gonna like : This is one for diehard fans of physical theatre and loyal Axis (Mime) Theatre patrons over the past four decades under the soon-to-retire Wayne Specht's guidance and inspiration. Knowing now the rough-cut plot, if a person were to attend only the 2nd act starting about 9:10 or so they'd no doubt come away quite entertained and feeling they'd got more than 50% of their money's worth. 

-30-

Kim's Convenience teases, tickles & touches

There are a couple of life truths. We die twice. Once when we ourselves die, and again when the last person who remembers us dies. When we immigrate, we are born again twice. Once in the new culture that we must adjust to ourselves. And again within our families as old world values clash with those of our children's brave new world.

Two decades along, Kim's Convenience does with endless humour tracks what Spike Lee did with biting sarcasm in his 1991 genius movie Do The Right Thing. Lee's film featured (among others) a feisty Korean convenience store shopkeeper in the largely black ghetto of Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy they call it there) in New York City.

In playwright Ins Choi's break-out script KC, by contrast, the setting is Regent Park in Toronto. Nevermind Spike Lee's New York. There's a checklist of similarities between the Regent Park experience of to-day and the Gastown/Strathcona neighbourhoods in DTES Vancouver. Gentrification is not just creeping in, it's on roller skates. Real estate roller skates. The "renoviction" roller derby willy-nilly elbows ethnics and welfare folk out of their SRO (single room occupancy) units by the dozens each month. A similar horde of maniacs is racing through Old Toronto's late-40's social housing projects a few blocks up from Corktown at Dundas.

Plot-&-theme stuff : The Kim family patriarch Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) wants 30-year-old daughter Janet (Chantelle Han) to take over the family biz. She's a professional "picture taker", he calls her, who lives up top the store. Grabbing freebie food on her way out the door is as far as she wants to involve herself in the 25-year old family business. Half-a-life earlier elder brother Jung (Ins Choi) vanishes after stealing cash from the store safe following a violent family falling out. A quick slide down the slope into drugs soon brought jail, now he's out and a bitter, lonely rental car agent in Parkdale whose friends own Beemers while he rides TTC trolleys.

Appa and matriarch Umma (Jane Luk) are being pressured to accept a big-ticket check from a developer for their property. Their Korean-Christian church has already been sold off for $3.9M. But they want to keep KC all in the family, their fractured and fractious family. The clash between generations, the calls to "duty" -vs- the psychic scream for "self-actualization" -- reminiscent of ACT's earlier A Brimful of Asha -- are the set-up here. Selling out would give Appa his "pension plan", but that's it. Just money.

Appa was a history teacher back in Korea. He has encyclopedic knowledge of his country whose significant events and datelines he throws at his kids every spare moment. He also displays a full monty of DNA-hatred for the Japanese stemming from Japan's 1904 invasion and subsequent occupation of Korea and the subjugation of its people until fin de guerre 1945. Such a knee-jerk hatred that if your Honda happens to park by the Convenience store loading zone, TO Police get a 9-1-1 summons off Appa's mobile. 

(Aside: This is Canada. It's okay for ethnic racial stereotypes to stereotype other ethnics. Which is why Little Mosque on the Prairie played so successfully. And okay, too, to laugh at all this paradox. Oh. The Honda? Owned by the developer who's trying to buy KC's shop out, one Mr. Lee whom Appa describes tongue-in-cheek as "that black guy with the Korean last name". One more delight : Appa rails over-&-over at lotto customer Rich that his new beverage on the counter is not bloody ginseng -- that's the disgraceful Japanese word for it -- no, it's Korean insam instead -- so hear me, get it right and call it that, Appa blusters.)

Like dairy farming, convenience store shopkeeping is as much lifestyle as it is a job. In a recent interview, Choi related how setting up a corner store was a relatively easy thing for offshore immigrants with faint English skills to do. (Says Umma of Appa : "His-a English is-a very no good!") Not huge profit margins in shops, but enough to live on when it's the family who're pushing the store's stash of snack foods, smokes, newspapers and lotto tix across the counter. But symbiosis can also occur : Appa says he won't sell because his customers need him. Or is it because he needs his customers -- the kids who graduate from bubble-gum and slurpies to cigarettes and Red Bull, and then their kids in their footsteps.

He tells Janet in a truly poignant scene 2/3 the way through : "What is my story? Hmmnnn... What is story of me, Mr. Kim? My whole life is this store. Everybody know this store, they know me. This store is my story. And if I just sell store, then my story is over. Who is Mr. Kim? Nobody know that. You take over my store, my story keep going." [On a personal note I've always thought the words I've written over 40 years have been my "story". Ins Choi's script forces me to reflect quietly and sincerely and skeptically on that belief. Now that kind of impact is successful play-writing.]

But the script is much more universal than just a Korean-immigrant story launched during the 1980's rush of ethnic groups to Canada. Fact is all parent-child relationships go through growing pains, have stresses and fractures, harsh words that don't reflect the genuine love that underscores the conflicts.

Production values :  Kudos as noted, again, to Ins Choi for a very clever stage text. Hard to believe it's his virgin script. As Appa, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee riffs off a very believable aging arthritic papa whose gruff and abrupt staccato belches of dialogue mask The Dad lurking underneath. His refrain of "OK! OK! Out! Out!" made me laugh each time. And his use of the ejaculative "a" (pron. "uh") at the end of most words -- as when he accused Honda-dealer Mr. Shim of "pimping the Jesus-a" -- made his Korenglish patois believable. Playwright Choi doing the role of prodigal son Jung had some very rich moments of pain, anomie and angst. He is a skilled character actor. As sister Janet, Chantelle Han's bitchy shortness with Appa will prove v-e-r-y convincing dialogue to contemporary parents accustomed to being dissed by their kids. Jane Luk as Umma turned in a nuanced night as Appa's dutiful "slave", the kids' mom and god-fearing Christian believer. For his part, Andre Sills cracks off four roles, each one believably, though my favourite was Mike-the-stealer. 

This is an on-tour remount by Toronto's Soulpepper group (theatre training academy and professional stage, both). Resident designer Ken MacKenzie replicates a convenience store wonderfully well, though I wonder whether Toronto's Korean shops were as meticulously neat and orderly -- almost o.c.-so -- as MacKenzie would have us believe. Still, I felt I was back in the Soo or Howe corner markets in White Rock from when I moved there in 1968 : I could smell the creased & weathered linoleum and got whiffs of the tins of Black Cat baccy. 

Lighting designer Lorenzo Savoini's fluorescents were spot-on. Sound director Thomas Ryder Payne's opening streetscape backdrop was choice -- I just wish it had crept in each time the shop door opened and its electro-dinger chimed. 

And I would be remiss not to mention fight director Sean Baek for his convincing bits of gongkwon punishment Appa metes out for stealers and suitors both. Writer Choi and Director Weyni Mengesha had great fun playing with those pieces of stage business.

Slight problem :  Primary problem for this viewer was Director Mengesha's blocking, particularly for Han as Janet. In my household when we're snarking at one another, no one stands stock still -- we twitch and roll our eyes and pirouette-in-place. When Janet and Appa are in full-flight-screech-&-grunt at one another -- as they are quite often -- they're nearly rooted to their spots on stage. Curious! And the charming flirt-scene between Sills as Alex-the-TO-cop and former-teen-age heart-throb Janet was positively statuesque, in the worst sense. It was Choi's brilliant "What kind of food you like?" verbal flippery between Alex and Janet that saved that scene. And Alex. Note-to-file. Smooch! Janet big-time triumphantly! while she gongkwon's her groaning and submissive dad Appa, don't peck her like a brother, mon. But these are mere quibbles.

Who gonna like : As many before me have noted, this is an instant-classic-Canadiana-immigrant-coming-of-age script that is worth the entry ducats to hear, nevermind see. Ins Choi captures remarkably the taste-feel-smell-sound-look of every non-caucasian corner mom-&-pop store you've ever wandered into (called a "convenience" or a "variety" back east, more commonly a "market" or a "grocery" here in B.C.) Too-static pace at times to accompany too-static blocking at times do not detract fatally from a charming and idiosyncratic snapshot of an immigrant's corner shop from the inside out.

Comic drama modeled after t.v. sitcoms, there are one-liners aplenty to make us guffaw, but some sentimental tear-jerk moments as well such as the inevitable reconciliation scene of the prodigal son Jung with Pops Appa at the end. (Again! some wonderfully clever Choi dialogue driving that exchange.) More than one critic has said those years-long grievances between the two were dispensed with too quickly and conveniently. Well, to them I say just look at all the drama Billy Bard crammed into the Montague and Capulet households in just a few minutes more...

Kim's Convenience touched me. An immigrant myself, though without the language roadblock, I relate to wholesale relocation, resettlement and reinvention of self. This is moving clever stuff drama fans in BC's multi-clectic social arena just shouldn't miss.

Until May 24th at Granville Island Stage. 

-30-

Watching Glory Die is a grief poem & elegy

Quicky overview :  Playwright Judith Thompson's 75-minute one-woman show Watching Glory Die at The Cultch through May 3rd is a quiet poem of a play that moves viewers' hearts and minds through nuance, shade and subtle character colours. Directed by Ken Gass, it is not screed, sermon nor angry tirade against the bureau known as Correctional Services Canada (CSC) that it condemns. Thompson plays three interconnected women all linked by the futility and victimhood of their circumstances : a teen prisoner fashioned after Ashley Smith who died in prison by ligature suicide; her helpless adoptive mom on the sidelines; and the teen's primary jailer who demonstrates a soupcon of empathy for her but is mostly a cynical "screw" who takes the system's code of revenge against its captives as a given. Thompson's script is clear : Ashley Smith deserved a huddle of mental health folks wrapping their arms around her in loving embrace to help her grow. Not the prison torture she got.

Real-life backdrop :  The death of 19-year-old Ashley Smith on October 26, 2007 at Ontario's Grand Valley Institution was an event that shook Canada viscerally. Particularly once it was learned that Ashley had been in various jails continuously since age 14, most of it in solitary confinement. In fact, CP reports that Ashley was trussed up and bounced around 17 times among nine institutions across five provinces in just one year, her last. But worst of all was this revelation : despite being on suicide-watch, her CSC guards had been instructed to not enter her cell under any circumstances unless she stopped breathing. Although witnessing her suicide occurring directly and personally in front of them, only when Ashley actually stopped breathing 3/4 of an hour later did the six guards watching go "assist" her : nought to do but cut the ligature from her blue-black head and cover her in a shroud. Like soldiers across the ages, they were "just following orders" lest they lose their jobs in a job-poor market.

It took the elapse of five years for a 5-woman jury to hear from some 80 witnesses over 11 months before they concluded Ashley's death was what it in fact it had been -- a homicide --  i.e. a preventable death occasioned by an act or an omission by some other(s). Among the jury's 104 recommendations, a particular one is like a needle that punctures the eye : "Prison staff at all levels are to be personally responsible for everyone's right to life."  Really? Does this truly need to be spelt out? In Canada-the-Good? In the 21st century? 

It could be that Ashley had an active personality disorder. Or maybe just deficient DNA. Or she may have suffered the neurosis known in DSM-IV as oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) that is pretty close to self-explanatory. From hucking crabapples at a postie at 14 to telling her guards to eff-off constantly to nudging them in the ribs when she was just funnin' -- Ashley's original six months sentence in a juvie remand facility turned into 2,239 days being "tacked on" to her original sentence by dint of 500 prison administrative penalty charges -- usually 60 additional days' incarceration for each charge -- arising from the 800 incident reports filed against her. 

To restrain her, teen-age Ashley was pepper-sprayed, straight-jacketed, Taser'd and otherwise physically subdued. No question : Thompson's sympathetic exploration of the Ashley Smith story demonstrates how powerful are the forces in society that demand conformity. Particularly when they act outside the focus of public eye.

The show :  Thompson wears one primary outfit for all three characters -- a drab prisoner's dress that is highlighted by a guard's jacket and clogs when playing jailer Gail; a shawl and sandals when playing the Mom Rosellen; barefooted when playing Glory. But it is Thompson's ability to create different voices that gives the play its layered poetic moods : Fargo-ish Frances McDormond when Gail the guard; Nova Scotian hobby farmer when Mom; ironic in-your-face push-back ego when Glory.

Were this expository drama, we would expect tantrum rages from Glory. They never come. Mom would be blustery indignance. She seldom goes there. Jail-guard Gail would be officious sarcasm. She is flatly matter-of-fact-ish instead.

The action shifts from Glory's solitary confinement cell to the prisoners' catwalks to Mom's kitchen. Thompson cycles through these planes one-by-one as her characters act out their sad tales of how hopeless the revenge / conformity / power-centric penal system in Canada is, even (especially?) for wee teens -- what Gail characterizes "an un-wipe-able stain" of suppression and grief. 

Slight wonder surfaces : Mom Rosellen claims she will "Howl!" to free her daughter. But the script reveals no evidence that she in fact does so with her MLA or MP or the media. Apparently it occurred only in her own heart and head. Still Mom did try, repeatedly and desperately, to visit her daughter just to discover she'd once again been shuffled to a different prison somewhere else in the land. Not being judgmental, but I just can't help but wonder how more aggressive whistle-blowing and advocacy might have helped out here in the actual Ashley Smith scenario. Perhaps that's part of Judith Thompson's message : personal agency at this time was likely quite futile in the CSC closed-door universe no one was paying attention to.

Production values :  The spare set, the lighting both harsh and muted, the sound-&-visual projection designs* join the intimate Cultch historic stage to contribute to Thompson's evocative script and her understated deliverance that belies her outrage as a citizen and artist at what Ashley Smith suffered at the hands of her "guardians". 

Most poignant pieces :  Glory blames her birth-mom for her basic plight as a rebellious and bellicose teen. She imagines birth-mom as a crocodile from the swamp : "She is in the swamp, the swamp you don't see and I don't see but I feel under me, moving, wet and waiting. Can you smell it? I can smell it now, all the time. Smells like dead mice and dog food and a baking cake." [Were any child of mine to conjure such imagery, I would hope the system would steer them toward mental health providers -- not send them, criminally, to the folks who listen poorly and talk loudly with handcuffs and truncheons and Tasers.] Looking up at the omnipresent cell CCTV, Glory hisses : "I'll report you to God and my crocodile!" 

Gail enjoys a moment of insight when she observes that all the jailers "...have a sickness -- they treated her reputation, not her."  

Glory and her friend Renee who's also in solitary, one cell over, talk through the walls and share stories and poetry. Glory's Tuesday poem goes :

I am the girl

In your storybook swirl

On Friday it was a fiery wreck

And now I have 

A lovely green ribbon

Around my neck --

Can you guess why?

Rosellen's end-game soliloquy : "Every child born is born to all of us. We are all responsible. These things go on in the shadows, the dark and the wings, and we don't even know until they affect us in some way. And when we see these things we are astonished!"

For her part, playwright Thompson (a member of the Order of Canada and twice recipient of the Governor General's award for playwriting**) told TorSun interviewer Colin Perkel for Canadian Press this week that she was "...absolutely haunted and devastated by what happened to [Ashley]. When there's something I don't understand and I'm outraged, the only way I can express it is through writing a play. I was compelled to address the horror that Ashley Smith endured. I owe it to Ashley. I want to give her what I can."

The play as poetry, poetry as play. Here is what Irish poet icon Dylan Thomas once offered up that applies both to Thompson's original script and to her acting in a dynamic and utterly engaging performance :

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the things around him."

Who for :  Judith Thompson has made an indelible "contribution to reality" about Canada's treatment of teens in the penal system, about the system's unilateral "justice" decisions, about dark-side secret ops by institutions we as taxpayers fund and are morally responsible for. Watching Glory Die almost guarantees CSC can never be the same again. WGD is painful but accessible. It will surely open every viewer's mind-&-heart. And that is the stuff of good poetry and good play-writing both.  

* Astrid Janson, Set and Costume Designer

   Andre du Toit, Lighting Designer/Producer

   Debashis Sinha, Sound Designer

   Cameron Davis, Projection Designer

** G.G. awards for White Biting Dog (1985) and a collection The Other Side of the Dark (1989)

This Canadian Rep Theatre production moves from The Cultch to Toronto's Berkeley Street Theatre, premiering May 17, runs to June 1st. 

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Bomb-itty of Errors is zany good fun

Quick snapshot : What do rap / hip-hop lyrics have to do with Shakespeare? Everything! At least in the saucy, cheeky production Bomb-itty of Errors now at the Granville Island Revue Stage until May 10th.

Based on Shakespeare's early slapstick giggler The Comedy of Errors that is all about mistaken identites, Bomb-itty is a fest of rap, rhyme and songs that re-tells the Bard's story about two sets of twins, parted at birth, and how their identities criss-cross one another while a DJ spins hip-hop music behind them.

Director Catriona Leger sums it up best : "This play has everything I love in the theatre : Love triangles! Revenge! Mistaken identity! Mischief! Dancing! Crossdressing! Music! And, of course, Shakespeare."

The identity criss-cross is assisted nicely by the "coincidence" of each set of twins having been given the same forename by their worn-out mom who'd dropped her "litter" in the maternity ward before disappearing into the night. Thirty years later we find we're dealing with Antipholus from Ephesus and his manservant Dromio. Their respective twins, from Syracuse, are Antipholus and Dromio, too. So when the lads from Syracuse visit Ephesus, identity mix-up and madcap antics roar out of the starting gate. (Hereafter initials will i.d. who's who in this zany zoo.)

To add to the hilarity, there are some 20 characters in the piece -- many of them cameo -- but all of them are played by just four actors. And it's the same four who reprise their 2012 Jessie Award-winning production done then by the Temporary Thing troupe via Twenty Something Theatre under Artistic Producer Sabrina Evertt. These talented lads are Brian Cochrane, David Kaye, Niko Koupantsis, and Jameson Matthew Parker, joined in the redux gig by DJ Oker Chen. Watching these guys gleefully sporting stockings-&-boobs to play their twins' spouses, I thought I was right back in the thick of John Irving's current novel In One Person that celebrates the narrator's cross-dresser actor Grandpa plus a host of contemporary transgender'd souls.

The Bard's original Comedy was built on puns, wordplay, sight gags and plot shenanigans involving countless dubious and dimwitted characters from the shady side of town, huffy insultees who hiss, ditzes &c. &c. All these types were created by "MC Willy Shakes" -- as Director Leger muses he might be known today -- to entertain holiday-time beer-swilling Elizabethan law students from Inns of Court in fin de siecle 16th century. So when a quintet of New York University Department of Drama students* decided to adapt a Bard script in 1999 in the "rap" mode of that epoch, they chose just the right one and aimed it at the same "target demographic" -- just a Y2K version instead of a 16th century one.

Oh yeah. A "bomb" in millennial-speak is "heavy sick". And "sick", don't you know, is big-time good. So if you are wearing "sick" jeans they are tres, tres cool. Thus they wanted to emphasize that this contemporized version of "Errors" is considered a major whack-o-jolly-good story. A bomb-edy of a com-edy, just re-spelt contempo -- got it?

Plotline sketch :  The plotline is simple. Unmarried S.Antipholus quickly meets up with E.Dromio and thinks him the S.Dromio instead, while E.Dromio acts as if this Antipholus is his married boss. Therefore the two of them think each other is addled or stupid or just obstreperous when they confuse each other's roles, relationships, and activities in town centre Ephesus. Flip that scenario over to the other two twins and you've got quadruple mix-ups occurring serially.

Now add E.Antipholus's wife Adriana and her airhead sister Luciana into the mix. Adriana can't figure out why S.Antipholus, her "man", is acting so aloof from her. And meanwhile S.Antipholus develops the hots for Luciana, who is scandalized that her "brother-in-law" could come on to her, but charmed as well. Along the way throw in MC Hendelberg (Jewish jeweler rapper), a scatology obsessed keystone cop, spaced out Bobby the tone-deaf bike courier, rastafarian naturopath Dr. Pinch and a Nike nun -- oh lordy! no end of Bard-like busy-ness to challenge and tickle the 21st century brain.

Production values :  Even 15 years after its conception and first steps, this play-cum-breakdance-cum-musical-cum-slam-poetry-jam is a marvel in its imagination and high-kilowatt energy. The opening prologue reveals these four brothers are two sets of twins from the same Mom whose drug dealer Dad suicided in prison. Their orphan history is simple : "Grew up in the world of hip-hop / Surrounded by the 1-2-3 don't stop!" They tell the audience this ain't comedy, this ain't tragedy, "It's a new style, it's whatever we want it to be!" But mostly it's comic. When E.Dromio thinks S.Antipholus is his married boss, S.A. answers right smartly : "I have no mistress / I have no maid / It's been months / Since I've been laid!"

Nevermind the mistaken identity schticks. The cross-dresser turns of Niko Koupantsis as Lew-chee-ann-a! are nothing shy of brilliant. It looked to me like he enjoyed that role even more than his straight E.Dromio one. Jameson Matthew Parker as Adriana is equal to the x-dress challenge, too, but the part is just not as LMFAO as Koupantsis's. David Kaye dancing about as Dr. Pinch gets top footwork marks. Throughout Brian Cochrane as both S.Antipholus and as MC Hendelberg elicited great guffaws.

Words are stretched to achieve forced rhymes -- "Ephesus" somehow rhymes with "breakfast is" early on. Hip-hop patois and rhythms abound as in the sing-songy "Dro-me-oh-oh-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh", while break-dance riffs command centre stage attention constantly. Messrs. Koupantsis and Kaye are superb in that regard, particularly at the end when Brothers Dromio meet each other again for the first time. Choreographer Joel Sturrock has executed his challenge remarkably, not just the dancing but also the nanosecond costume changes required of the cast. Costume designer Vanessa Imeson pulls off harlequin-esque costumes for the four principals wonderfully well. The cameo costumes for the in-drag parts were goofy good fun each one. Ian Schimpf's West Side Story-ish brightly coloured brick-&-corrugated iron doors graffiti motif was perfect for the tight Revue stage. 

Who gonna like ? : Let me repeat what Director Catriona Leger said at the top : "This play has everything I love in the theatre : Love triangles! Revenge! Mistaken identity! Mischief! Dancing! Crossdressing! Music! And, of course, Shakespeare." Throw in hip-hop rhythms and original music (by Anami Vice) to boot, and you've answered the question. In the zone on all those planes? You'll come away delighted. 

Meanwhile Shakespeare purists, people who figure "rap" is missing the letter "c" at the front, and folks who like their tunes in musicals to be hummable on the way home -- well, this one maybe ain't exactly the one you're gonna want to stand in line for. 

For the rest? Bomb-itty is just so irreverent and clever and imaginative and low-brow-brilliant it's time well wasted as Comedy Central puts it. You can't help but hiccup & giggle.

* Playwrights from NYU : Jordan Allen-Dutton, Jason Catalano, Gregory Qalyum, Jeffrey Qalyum and Erik Weiner.

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Redux : Proud spoofs boring ol' Canadian politics

Below is the review from BLR published on April 13, 2014. In light of the major characters doing a reprise of their roles in 2015 -- commencing the very day the Sen. Mike Duffy court case puts the Conservative ethos directly in the spotlight -- I thought it appropriate to re-circulate the 2014 review as I will be unable to take in this year's performance. 

An unlikely premise behind it all :  Actor/playwright Michael Healey's Proud is a turn at what American comedian Stephen Colbert might call "Stephen Harper spoofiness". No wonder. Harper set himself up perfectly as Canada's satiric alter ego to Richard Nixon when in 2006 he delivered 10-year-old son Ben and 7-year-old daughter Rachel to their Ottawa school and promptly shook each of their hands (!) to the amazement and joy of the omnipresent paparazzi. Viewed as aloof and calculating, Harper's way of saying "Have a nice day, kids!" became as trademark as Nixon famously flashing his fake-double-V finger salutes while chirping "I am not a crook!"

But Proud is more than tittle and tattle about SH's time in Ottawa. And the Healey script is more than the kind of one-dimensional hoo-hah that comedian Rich Little mastered in eviscerating the perpetual 5-o'clock-shadow-and-over-eyebrow'd Nixon. Healey insists his purpose, believe it or not, is to engage Canadians in just what it is they want and expect from the solons running the country in far-fetched Ottawa. And so his depiction of SH, delivered engagingly by Andrew Wheeler, is broader and richer and subtler and more nuanced than Handshake Dad has shown himself publicly to be capable of.

The set-up :  The storyline is built on "truthiness" as well as "spoofiness". It's 2011. SH has commandeered victory not only in ROC, he's also taken the Quebec seats actually won in 2011 by Jack Layton's Orange Horde. No longer required to seek the consensus he needed when he was a minority PM, Harper now has free rein. The play's set-up is how he tries to manipulate a pup of an MP from small-town Quebec, one Jisbella Lyth (Emmelia Gordon) and how she outmaneuvers and outwits him due to his overweening hubris. The other primary character in the piece is Harper's Chief of Staff Cary (Craig Erickson) who clearly is not based on the real life uber-confident but fatally flawed Nigel Wright -- he who paid off Senator Mike Duffus's $90,000 phony expenses and got fired once exposed. 

Script's notorious history :  From Y2K forward, Healey was playwright in residence for Toronto's Tarragon Theatre that prides itself as being "a leading Canadian company for the development, creation and encouragement of new work" (sic). From the get-go Healey had planned a trilogy of plays, two of which Tarragon in fact did produce : Generous (2007) and Courageous (2009), which explored those two themes of human conduct. Then came the rough draft of Proud. Hold on a minute here, cautioned Tarragon's artistic director Richard Rose. After reading it he forsook both of those qualities -- generous and courageous -- and, ironically, donned the proud masque instead. Seems a nervous and silly board member had warned Rose : "Handshake Harper might sue us for libel!" Rose refused to mount the show. "Bollix!" bellowed Healey. He promptly resigned his playwright commission. 

With his wife's encouragement they borrowed against their household line of credit to mount the show themselves. Then they and friends staged a series of readings across the land to fund-raise and pay the Healeys' LOC back, which they did. A Toronto competitor, the Berkeley Street Theatre, mounted the show. Guess what. No libel suit from 24 Sussex Drive.

Plot quicky :  SH wants to consolidate power after all those years as a minority PM. How to do that? First give your grasp at power the tumescent title The Harper Government. Then move to distract the press. Frosh MP Lyth stumbles into Chief Cary and PM Steve plotting the day's next moves. She's hot for a condom because she wants to "do" CBC's Evan Solomon who's on The Hill to interview her in her new office. Neither Steve nor Cary has one in their wallet, nor act as if they know what one is, even. But let's use this sexy ditz, Steve muses, to propose a bill criminalizing abortion after 20 weeks. That'll get the progressive rabble rabbling. And while the chattering classes are distracted by her anti-abortion proposal, hey, we can gut the Liberal-leaning Privy Council and the press won't even notice. And meanwhile we won't support her bill in any event -- being both practical and cynical -- but it'll keep the rednecks in our base quiet at least. 

Everyone goes through the motions, but Lyth finds eagerness and power from her proposal as it progresses through the House and gathers unexpected momentum. And now the antics between the PMO and the upstart MP can proceed apace. But all the while infused with comic flashes and flushes that drive the endless political monologues forward. (Bias : Based on my 40 years' experience as a B.C. public servant, all too seldom are politics "dialogue" -- more often just "serial monologues" between entrenched adversaries. Ever notice how the word "ideology" appears to stem from "idiot"...?)

Playwright's cut at it : In an Artsmania interview 18 months back, Healey revealed his modus operandi : "This was never intended to be a documentary or a straight-up biography. It's a heavily fictionalized depiction, but the aspects of (Harper's) personality that I've seized on are the ones that create the engines in the play that ask the questions that I want to ask about our politics... [T]here's an enormous amount of comedy available when you explore politics because what's said and what people intend are often two very different things, there are secrets galore, there are enormous power differences among people. All of these things contribute to comedy and make for a fun night in the theatre."

Firehall performance values :  No question the 43 souls who witnessed Sunday's matinee -- and in doing so sacrificed a delicious sunny playday outside -- found much to chortle at in this Donna Spencer-directed effort. 

It helps to have even a vague notion of Canadian national politics and current events. If like the silent majority you'd be even more apathetic if only you could bother, this clever but flawed script ain't for you. Here's what it's not : it's not a critique of The Harper Government. SH is just the excuse, the vehicle, the means to Healey's end of talking up political ideas both macro and micro. More than once the SH character talks of what "ideal" Canadian government looks like : long-term boring stability and security. Sort of like the 2006-2011 Harper minority rule when sleeping with the enemy whether PQ, Liberal or NDP at any given moment made sense to Harper to prevent a non-confidence vote.

As Steve, Andrew Wheeler turns in a steady performance : at various times bombastic, blustery, babbling, awkward, forceful and/or bemused. His endless buttoning/unbuttoning of his blue serge suit jacket as he blathered forth was bang on. But it is Emmelia Gordon as the Frosh MP Jisbella who is the most rounded and engaging player in the piece. Her bubbly stream of f-word utterances and coquettish power-sluttery -- completely stereotyped, not one iota of p.c. here at all -- nevertheless make the viewer want to have a beer and a giggle with her. Craig Erickson's Chief of Staff Cory struck me as not edgy enough -- I wanted more of Nixon's Bob Haldeman than Obama's schmoozy flakmeister Jay Carney. Oddest character was Jisbella's grown-up son Jake (Scott Button). He provides a soliloquy of Healey's last words about politics in a superfluous (and pedantic) anti-climax to end the play. Odd business, this.

Theme-ish stuff : The script's attempts to discuss "beliefs"-vs-"feelings" and "strategies"-vs-"tactics" on The Hill serve mostly to advance the plotline, not provoke us to think overly hard. SH sums up the thrust of the play when he notes, slightly off-key, that "Political inconsistencies are situational : integrity is the last thing Canadians want in their politicians." Hmnnn. Tell that to Brazeau, Wallin and Duffy, eh? 

Or possibly the best comment on politics occurs during a discussion of nihilism : Jisbella blurts out at SH, "Fuck, all this shit is fucked!" Or, how not to lol at Jisbella's summation of her anti-abortion bill. She confesses it won't solve what has become a non-existent social problem. But, she acknowledges, it will satisfy the PC base : "It's pointless, it's stupid. It works because it's meaningless -- it's perfect politics!" Healey must have been channeling ex-PM Jean Chretien when he wrote that line, Chretien who once observed : "Canada is a country that works in practice, just not in theory." 

Postscript : Healey's ideal government :  At the conclusion of his Artsmania interview with Anita Malhotra, Healey responded to her ultimate question "What, in your view, would be a perfect Canadian government?" Healey gave a succinct (but probably naif) everyman response i.m.o. : "I think government that isn't worried about scoring points would be a perfect government. A government that's willing to admits its mistakes, a government that is willing to listen to evidence and change its view if the evidence convinces them they need to change their view, a government that projects a kind of centredness to the world -- a kind of calm conscience to the world. A government that's fiscally responsible, a government that takes my tax dollars very, very seriously and a government that is less interested in marketing than it is in policy." 

No question. A 1st-world dream like this is better than real life in many of the world's 2nd and 3rd-world zip codes. Think about it. How utterly decadent to be able to go watch good acting and giggle about politics. Conjure life in Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, Central African Republic et al. Healey reminds us we in Canada -- whether proud about it or not -- are life's luckiest folks indeed. 

P.S. Quite coincidentally to-day (140414) I downloaded the April 21st e-version of Maclean's onto my iPad to browse on Canada Line. And in it was the following interview with Tom Flanagan, a long-time Alberta Conservative / Wildrose operative. His cautionary tale about cyber-world media instantaneity is worthwhile. But specifically I dedicate its reading to Richard Rose of Tarragon Theatre. If he and his squeamish board member really thought Michael Healey's SH character was the "true" Stephen Harper whom Healey was libeling, they need only read this for proof Healey's SH is a pastiche, a satirical and artistic and whimsical caricature based on the the guy -- not, not by a long shot, the actual Handshake Dad whom Flanagan used to advise. To make such a profound error in judgment in the arts realm where freedom of expression is foremost is not just gutless but unforgivable.   

http://contentviewer.adobe.com/s/Maclean's%20Magazine/e5d3693b3f95480a8a76987efdc3a82d/MME_20140421/03h_interview.html

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