Kids & parents giggle galore at Cinderella antics

Background panto uptake : For the uninitiated, British pantomimes (or panto's in short) have nothing to do with the likes of Marcel Marceau playing dumb and using only hand gestures and facial expressions as his art. Not like the buskers one sees in San Francisco BART stations looking for all the world like statuesque harlequins or military generals or royalty. Until, unexpectedly, they twitch at you and you jump! and then toss them two-bits for the fun of it.

No, by way of redux from the preceding BLR review, here's what's up in this type of play : "The British tradition of pantomime is family entertainment designed for the Christmas / New Year's season. It's a blend of music, dance, slapstick, robust audience participation -- cheering the heroes, booing the villains -- sing-along, local political satire, unfunny puns in extremis, and cross-dressing actors (always key to the revelry). All of this is based ever-so-loosely on a fairy tale or a mix of fairy tales just to give the show a hook and the kids down front some familiar stuff to relate to." 


And "up" it is, whimsically so, at The Cultch's Commercial Drive venue the York Theatre where the troupe Theatre Replacement teams with Cultch to present its second annual "East Van Panto". As a 10-year Trout Lake resident a couple decades back, how could I not relate instantly to an EastVan-based Cinderella story that is set in a typical Fraser Street house : another quaint A-pitch knock-down shack like my old one. A story whose script is laced with endless quips about latte shops, sushi joints and yoga classes along The Drive. One that celebrates the district's countless funk'd up characters and alleyways and buildings besides. What's not to amuse from all this? And the show does, in spades. Just ask the kids. Or their parents.

Show takes off Moment #1 : Vancouver favourite music maven Veda Hille, the show's "Musical Director and Orchestra", kicks everything off hilariously with her synthesized piano and sung-out cell-phone / photo warnings in her opening "Hurrah!" to the audience. Quickly we meet The Slipper Ladies in ballerina tights mincing across the footlights with Studio 58's Sean Sonier in full baritone leading comrades Alexandra Wever and Bailey Soleil Creed in some kick-step. What the littlun's might have thought of such a sight who knows, but us big-kids cheered mightily. A show "letting it all hang out" was sure to follow, and did.

Cinderella was played capably for sure by Donna Soares, but her EastVan posse of chums and protectors could not help themselves stealing her thunder. Particularly Josh Drebit as Feral Cat and James Long as Rat who riffed off each other wonderfully throughout. They were aided and abetted by Dawn Patten as The Crow, all of whose ancestors were regular Trout Lake visitors in my time there. 

But reason alone to go see this silliness is Allan Zinyk in two principal roles -- Ella's evil stepmom and Ronald Grump (a Donald Trump knock-off) -- as well as his hilarious cameo as uber-environmentalist David Suzuki.

As Grump, Zinyk channeled Steve Van Zandt of The Sopranos fame (and long-time Springsteen guitarist) absolutely wonderfully. "The Donald's" hair he swirled around was a classic bit. Perhaps writer Charles Demers tried over-hard to make double entendre jokes about Grump's first of many, uh, balls, but that would be faint criticism indeed. 

The balance of Demers' script clicked off well -- a clever jogger's clip of one-liner's and sight gags. As Prince Grumpy, cross-dressed Dawn Petten had great fun chasing Cinder Ella and dissing step-sisters Drebit and Long. Long's fairy godmother (in an outrageous B.C. Ferries boat get-up) was a goofy gag that nevertheless worked. 

The jokes pile on top of one another. The whole show is set "in the shadow of Bob Rennie", Vancouver's hyper condo-marketer. A late arrival prompts the comment "You took longer to get here than a correction in the real estate market!" References to long-dead east-side nite club venues like The Town Pump and Luv Affair are made, also a campy bit of Kinder Morgan pipeline choreography featuring Ms. Patten in a Christie Clark hardhat. (The whole house Boo'd! mightily at the pipeline people, of course, particularly when CC noted, ditzily : "Pipeline spills happen only in the movies, and the news..."). Always hip-east-of-Main Street lines abound. Some shots cross over to the West Side, as in "It's difficult to find a well-dressed person in this town -- even the mayor wears Crocs!" 

Production values galore : Director Amiel Gladstone succeeds in getting both the pro's and the amateurs to shake their booty together well-in-step with Choreographer Tracey Power's fancy footwork. Set Designer Pam Johnson managed to hook up with EastVan painter Laura Zerebeski as her Scenic Illustrator. Zerebeski describes her jaw-dropping & brilliant visuals thus : 

"I am (an) expressionist painter with a surrealist edge. I paint urban landscapes and personify buildings so they look like the people that live in them. As an avid runner and cyclist, I want to portray what you feel when you move through a scene. The vivid colours and implied instability create a whimsical and cheerful view...when the ordinary becomes absolutely beautiful due to whatever effects of light or season or one's own mood."

N.B. Most notable : her stage-wide screen of a back alley depicting a '75 orange VW Westphalia camper blocked up on a plastic dairy carton box collecting moss on its off-kilter pop-up roof. That graphic could have been taken from our 19th Avenue back yard back in the day. We retired just such a relic in just that colour to ferment just so after years of our beloved "BOB" [bright orange bus] carting us and our bikes up and down Cascadia's shoreline.

Remarkable, too, were Marina Szijarto's costumes : funky, campy, silly, snappy and visually grabby. They complemented Zerebeski's lavish set paintings wonderfully. 

Previously mentioned musical director Veda Hille blended some delightful recall moments into the Demers script with snatches from Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to "Making It Work" and "Too Bad" from local faves the late Doug Bennett and his Slugs to "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol and "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinead O'Connor, also Rihanna's continual reprise of "Umbrella" ["ella, ella, ella, ella"] among others. Hille's work is never to be missed. 

Who gonna like : The York Theatre retro-fit for live stage is a marvel. Better leg-room and soda pop holders you'll find nowhere. It's intimate and cozy and perfect for Grump to throw out gold-covered chocolates (Warning : "May or may not contain nuts!") all the way up into the balcony. Anyone who ever ventures East of Main to go get their Italiano fromage or extra virgin olive oil or grab some spaghetti at local icon Nick's next door to The York or slurp a muggajava at Joe's up the street or relish a prego sandwich with some Euro soccer @ PCOV will surely relate to this decidedly East Van Panto. But even Point Grey privileged types like Mayor Greg or Lululemon's Chip Wilson will find lots to laugh about and cheer and boo and clap at here. Fun fun fun! for all.

Particulars : Until December 28. Check tickets.thecultch.com for showtimes and seating at The York venue, 639 Commercial Drive.

Production Team :  Playwright : Charles Demers. Director & Dramaturge : Amiel Gladstone. Producer, Theatre Replacement : Peter Boychuk. Musical Director & Orchestra : Veda Hille. Sound Designer : Kris Boyd. Choreographer : Tracey Power. Sets & Props Designer : Pam Johnson. Scenic Illustrator : Laura Zerebeski. Costume Designer : Marina Szijarto. Lighting Designer: Adrian Muir.  Stage Manager : Jan Hodgson. 

The actors : Josh Drebit. James Long. Dawn Petten. Donna Soares. Allan Zinyk. Bailey Soleil Creed. Sean Sonier. Alexandra Wever. Feliz Ardal. Uki and Fumiko Enns. Naomi Fota. Olive Knowles. Anders Hille Kellam. Eleanor Mishna-Chauve. Nora and Hazel Pontin. 

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White Rock panto Babes cures screen-itis

Backdrop and tell-all :  Some 35 years back I made my last formal appearances on stage. In a White Rock Players Club production of the music of Loerner & Lowe called On The Street Where You Live. Followed a couple years later with a stand-in stint as Man Friday in that year's pantomime production of Robinson Crusoe. 

Seeing the Club's 70th Anniversary Year panto mount of Babes In The Wood tonight brought back a host of memories starting with the uggghhh! of stage fright. Memorizing lines to deliver them with even a wince of dramatic believability is tough work. And then there's the choreography : I never could execute that bloody step-ball-change dance step they asked for. Add some songs to the mix that you're expected to belt out nearly on-key and without gibbling the lyrics and all the pieces are there : a full-fledged farrago of fall-on-your-face embarrassment in front of family and friends and complete strangers who'll never forget you. That's what stage fright is all about. And quite well-deserved, no question.

Why put yourself through all that potential misery you ask. Because there's a something about community theatre performances that are so genuine and real and homey and familiar and friendly and just plain fun, that's why.

Panto's particular pull : The British tradition of pantomime is family entertainment designed for the Christmas / New Year's season. It's a blend of music, dance, slapstick, robust audience participation -- cheering the heroes, booing the villains -- sing-along, local political satire, unfunny puns in extremis, and cross-dressing actors (always key to the revelry). All of this is based ever-so-loosely on a fairy tale or a mix of fairy tales just to give the show a hook and the kids down front some familiar stuff to relate to. 

On amateur stages, like the WRPC, panto's are also designed to encourage community participation across the board. And though White Rock and the Semiahmoo Peninsula are anything but a sleepy little community any longer, the feel of community is still alive and well and 100% a joy to behold at the 218-seat WRPC stage on Johnston Road in this year's Babes show.

A big part of WRPC panto's over the years has been the age-spread of the actors -- this year probably some 35 years between the youngest hoofers (Bo Peep's sheep are of grammar school age) and the leads, Mother Hubbard and her (his) nemesis the Demon. And all the ages in between from middle-schoolers to teens to young adults to moms-&-dads with families. Some two dozen of them.

Add in the production volunteers -- nineteen (19!) chief designers and coaches, twelve painters, seven props people, seven set builders -- and it's the 12 days of Christmas with a partridge in a pear tree to boot. Literally. Producer Fred Partridge. He not only had to run one of the follow-spots on opening night due to illness but served chocolate-coated cookies at Intermission while a lively local jazz ensemble entertained in the lobby. A scene straight out of a Stuart Maclean Vinyl Cafe piece or John Irving's novel In One Person for sure.

Production values : Babes is the perfect antidote to too much Netflix, too much Breaking Bad, too much screen-time of all sorts. The goal of rescuing the babes in the woods from torture and death at the hands of the Demon is accomplished, as noted, with a whole bunch of cheers and boos and bad jokes and songs. Lead Mother Hubbard was engagingly and robustly grabbed hold of by Brit ex-pat Bryce Mills. White Rock will not be his last whistle stop on stage for sure. His counterpart, Hunter Golden as Demon, has a great basso profundo he exploits with menace. Mackenzie Claus as Jill displays a strong and tuneful mezzo voice worth hearing again no question. None of their noteworthy efforts would have been pulled off with nearly the shine were it not for pianist Shelley Eckstein whose tenacity through months of rehearsals and the show's 22-show run is a marvel. Delightful town hall vaudeville plinks. Only the cigar smoke and ice cube clinks are missing.

Highest kudos of all have to go, however, to Set Design & Decoration chief Andrea Olund for a colourful & snappy arrangement of nursery rhyme buildings, perches and outcroppings, even a mini replica of the Semiahmoo First Nation legendary white rock down on the beach that gives the town its name. Equal huzzahs for Costume designer Pat McClean. Together the visual impact of their cleverness are central to making Babes a feel-good-all-over local show. Add to those highlights the fact that Director Lisa Pavilionis and Choreographer Michelle Reid wring every drop of sweat imaginable out of their troupe of 22 eager actors. True village virtues are on display here, no question.

Who gonna like : So grab the kids -- even the grumpy teens -- rev up Gramps's cane and Granny's shawl and hustle on down to the WRPC.  Babes is full-on family entertainment that falls into your lap and leaves you clapping cheerily. Take in a pre-show walk on the pier amidst the Festivus lights coupled with a bite at one of White Rock's countless waterfront restaurants while you're at it. Just do it! the ad says, because you can't go wrong for this kind of Christmas cheer. What you might have thought were lost and bygone days of innocent fun are still there for you just around the corner. 

Until December 27th. Phone 604.536.7535 for further particulars and tickets.

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Get bent at A Twisted Christmas Carol

Quicky overview : A night of rollicking spontaneous goofiness awaits you with ACT's A Twisted Christmas Carol at its cozy Revue Stage. Based notionally on the Charles Dickens 1843 classic novella, the goofiness comes from the fact that improv is the centrepiece of the action. The thread of pre-scripted dialogue seems largely incidental but can't be because thirteen [13!] writers are credited in the program for producing it.

Improv-vet from Vancouver's Rock Paper Scissors comedy troupe David C. Jones came up with the idea for the improv "twist" back in the 90's. After years being workshop'd, the show opened at the Jericho Arts Centre in '98. The current production is an updated reprise from ACT's 2005 G.I. stage production now performed, appropriately enough, in the room previously home to the Vancouver Theatre Sports League. In the words of Director John Murphy, what happens in Twisted is "...we've taken a sacred novel about a sacred time with a serious message and we've sillified it."

Plot refresher : Scrooge is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad employer. And slightly worse a human being just generally. He harasses and dragoons his clerk Bob Cratchit. Cratchit's disabled son Tiny Tim is just more regrettable London detritus. Soon, however, Christmas ghosts appear to him and warn him he courts eternal damnation unless he does a full-psyche re-boot. He sees the light. Generosity, joy, scotch and Big Eats all 'round in the end.

Fact is Charles Dickens' original text is as much excuse for the show as purpose. "Let's give seasoned improv performers free rein" is the idea. And because it's Winterfest, we'll hook it to Dickens' ever-popular Christmas story of Scrooge and his conversion, as if Saul got side-tracked to Bethlehem instead of Damascus.  

What the actors do : What the actors do most is collapse the "fourth wall" between audience and stage. Interaction with folks in the seats is what spikes the evening's fun. Shout-outs are requested and drive subsequent dialogue.  

What is Scrooge's business, his day job, we were asked. What is  Tiny Tim's benign malady du jour ? What famous personage is the first Christmas ghost? On opening night the challenges put to the troupe by my seatmates were these : Scrooge doesn't run a counting house, he runs a gymnast club for Olympic trainees. Tiny Tim suffers ADD. Julius Caesar is the first ghost.

There's a clever Laugh-In style backdrop of opening windows and sitting places and Scrooge's bed and a kitchen incinerator-oven all arranged to resemble a giant advent calendar (for which the original designers won a Jessie). As for the stage action, there but for the period costumes and thread of Dickensian narration, one would think it a typical Theatre Sports night at, say, a Macmillan Bloedel annual general meeting from yesteryear. 

Front row volunteers are asked to provide character ideas : Jaimie suggests nephew Freddie's wife is a hippo with an eating disorder. Catherine, an admin assistant for a uranium firm, went on a Gastown date to the Cork & Fig : this tidbit provides Scrooge's first-date improv scenario. Wendy tells Mrs. Cratchit she wants no part of  Christmas goose but favours giant yams instead, and the on-stage dinner bits go from there. A young Jacob Marley is snatched from the front-row (ACT's Les Miserables actor Jonathan Wimsby by chance...?) : he gets hauled on stage to do some Irish jigging. 

The fun of it all is how the cast runs and plays with each of these characters and their thematic riffs throughout the play. Another part of the fun is that these antics change each night. [In 2008 during one show Scrooge was a chicken plucker. Tiny Tim's malady was diarrhea. Yams were broccoli. You get the idea.] No two nights are supposed to be the same, though I've got a hunch the gymnast and Julius Caesar schticks will likely repeat. 

Production values : Anyone who loves improv can't help but marvel at the work of this group. Reviving her role as Mrs. Cratchit once more, Diana Frances bares her improv chops marvelously throughout, particularly with front-row-Wendy and in the end doing her "verbal charades" with Scrooge (Gary Jones). Jones' comic timing a la Artie Johnson was terrific. His quick and zesty restating of the improv ideas thrown at him delighted and amazed. As narrator Dickens, Kirk Smith had some great double-take Rick Mercer moments. Jeff Gladstone tittered his way throughout. His Tiny Tim ADD antics and lines were gleeful both to see and to hear. For this viewer, however, it was long-time improv-er Bill Pozzobon as Bob Cratchit and Great Caesar's Ghost whose timing and imagination and spitfire dialogue quite frankly stole the show i.m.o. Simply marvelous!

Director John Murphy (a former ACT Scrooge himself) primed his cast perfectly. Costume designer Tyler Tone did an exceptional job throwing period-piece duds on each of the cast, as well as their comic outfits. Spot-lighting by Ted Roberts added to the circus atmosphere, but one technical glitch people sputtered over : the hazer producing London fog nigh unto smoked us all out in the Revue's tight quarters. 

Who gonna like :  This production is sheer fun from start to finish. As mentioned above, its connection to the Festivus Season is largely incidental. But its connection to the funny bone is visceral. If mall shopping and endless t.v. ads for junque are getting you down, Twisted is the perfect pick-me-up to turn you around with its dizzying wit and ditzy characters.

Particulars :  To December 27th at ACT's Revue Stage, Granville Island. Check http://artsclub.com for various nightly & matinee showtimes.

Script : Based on the novella by Charles Dickens and an idea by David C. Jones. Contributing contemporary writers Tammy Bentz. Toby Berner. Ian Boothby. Chris Casillan. Joe Davies. Diana Frances. Nicholas Harrison. Sharon Heath. Christopher Hughes. David C. Jones. Scott Owen. Michelle Porter. Karen Rose.

Production team :  Director John Murphy. Set Designer Joao Carlos d'Almeida. Set Designer II Michelle Porter. Set Designer III David C. Jones. Costume Designer Tyler Tone. Lighting Designer Ted Roberts. Stage Manager Pamela Jakobs. Apprentice Stage Manager I Ashley Noyes. Apprentice Stage Manager II Jenny Kim. 

Featured actors :  Diana Frances. Jeff Gladstone. Gary Jones. Kirk Smith. Bill Pozzobon.

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Speed The Plow tills its turf terrifically 

Mamet backdrop : In an uncited interview from back in the day, playwright David Mamet offered up some insights into what his plays, generally, are all about : "Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order." Something unbalanced. That is always what David Mamet scripts try to focus on. The people. The times. The culture. The disequilibrium inherent in all three.

Considered one of his lesser scripts, STP is nevertheless quite popular as a re-mount. As you read this, Lindsay Lohan (sic) plays the ingenue fill-in secretary Karen at the Playhouse Theatre in London, UK until month's end. (Her first stage play -- mixed reviews.)  STP is popular perhaps because it has many of the Mamet tropes from his other plays like his signature piece Glengarry Glen Ross : AK-47 clips of cutting dialogue; awakening & betrayal; re-birth -- but often in the same old stew -- by characters hungrier for power than they are for enlightenment or release.

Set-types often populate David Mamet scripts. The naif. The realist. The cynic. Then there's the "temporarily lapsed-cynic". Usually a pretext anyway of a romantic on the loose -- sex just about for sure. Nowhere are these types more prevalent than in Hollywood. F. Scott Fitzgerald knew that truth intimately. He became one. It killed him.

Written in 1980, STP's middle-age greying around the temples and its belly paunch are starting to show. Are debates whether Hollywood should produce art -vs- sell schlock to fatbutts all that relevant any more? E.g. name the last truly intelligent drama since Lolita or The Last Picture Show that you can recall issuing from that place... [lol].

Plot overview :  Recently promoted to head of production at a major Hollywood studio, Bobby Gould is charged with finding suitable scripts for his boss to "green-light". The idea, usually, is for the studio to make money. Enter his associate Charlie Fox, a lesser mortal in the celluloid capitol. He has been approached by a marquee actor named Doug Brown -- think Brad Pitt here -- who loved the rock-'em sock-'em prison buddy-boy script Fox presented to him. Brown wants Gould's studio to produce it, not his own nor a competitor "across the street". Fox sees stars & $$$-signs & a catapult up Hollywood's success ladder for himself once the credits roll and his name is near the top. Being a Producer makes you a somebody.

Meanwhile Gould is in the midst of a "courtesy read" of a novel he disses because it comes from "an eastern sissy writer" -- all about the cumulative effects of nuclear exposure called Radiation. Think of Jailbreak! -vs- The Power of Now. Which should be marketed as the studio's next blockbuster ? These are the choices facing BG on his first day on the job. As Karen notes later, the buddy film is sheer "degradation, despicable, meaningless -- the sex, the titillation, the violence", all of it. Gould responds : "We make the same thing everyone else made last year, that's what they want." 

With frat-boy snickers, Fox and Gould nudge-nudge-wink-wink over Karen. Fox bets Gould he can't seduce her. Gould figures he can. The winner's booty will be $500. Gould asks Karen to do her own courtesy read of the novel and bring it -- and her opinion of it as a box office candidate -- to his mansion that evening. She does her bit. He does his. They do each other. While he's $500 richer out of it all, young Karen thinks on his couch that she has convinced him the "sissy" piece Radiation is the one he should now promote.

The third scene is where Mamet resolves the "unbalanced" aspects of the story so far. Again a telling insight from an interview : "The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants."

Quintessential Mamet : In Scene 3 of STP we get line-after-line of juiced-up punchy dialogue from the out-fox'd Fox, even some fisticuffs before it's all over.  Recall Mamet's words up-top : "...if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order."

In this scene the "temporarily lapsed-cynic" Gould protests that Karen has opened his heart to God and the inevitable End of Days. A.k.a. The Rapture, from the Book of Revelation, thanks to cell phones and microwave ovens and general nuclear-trickery all 'round. Thus, he says, after decades in the movie business "I found something that I can believe in." And that's why he's going to green-light the Radiation script instead of Fox's ballsy-buddy flick.

Fox explodes : "You're a chippy, a whore, you think because you work with your legs you're a ballerina!" Gould shoots back that Fox's jibes at him are just words. "It's only words unless they're true," Fox snarks in reply. "I believe in the words of that book," Gould defends himself, meekly. "I believe in the Yellow Pages, but that doesn't mean I'd make them into a movie!" Fox spits out with venom. True vintage Mamet, all of this.

Character take : Strong, strong performances by all the actors, but especially Mitch and Murray Productions Artistic Director Aaron Craven as the sycophant bully-boy Charlie Fox, the "realist" of the play. From the get-go his character's manic agitation, hyper-ventilation and sheer physicality were 100% compelling. His Hollywood buzzwords, meanwhile, are more spit than spoken. Each zinger was glib, nasty and sardonic.

Craig Erickson as Bobby Gould puts every bit as much gusto! into his role as Craven. Gould's character, however, is Mamet's least persuasive part in STP. His "conversion" to Karen's God-of-Rapture after she beds him was less than fully believable at any point. The flip-flop from braggadocio to wimpster overnight was a stretch, even if intended as satire. Followed by his turnabout back to what the studio expects of him. Utterly predictable, all this, no question. "Balance" has been restored. The protagonist figures out what he wants most of all.

Kayla Deorksen as Karen is an I found it! bumper sticker Christian. Mamet gives her a few doe-in-the-headlights soliloquies in Scene 2. Deorksen performs them blessedly. She prays God stands behind her during her sex-toss with Gould so she can advance her L.A. career in His name. All she wants is a bit part during the production of Radiation. She worships the novel's words, after all, almost as much as she does His Own. But when she confesses her "wickedness" at play's end like a Salem witch, her role as the pathetic but woefully abused naif tossed into a gnarly garden of vipers was all the more poignant.

In 2014 this is not groundbreaking stuff, thematically. Power. Wealth. Stiff egos. Women as sex objects. Sex objects as power seekers. But it's the crispness, the pace (the pace, the pace, ever the pace!) of David Mackay's direction of his cast that makes this a whipcrack performance. STP stings with delight after delight! both in dialogue and stage action.

Production values : I disagree with Mr. Mackay when he says in the Director's program note: "It may not be everyone's dream, but if you had a chance to pitch a Hollywood movie and procure all the earnings, swag and entitlement that could follow -- how far would you be willing to bend your moral integrity to achieve that aim?" Really? Naw. Bobby Gould has a moment's lapse as a scarred and hidebound Hollywood cynic is all. No true personal integrity or life-values beyond the traditional boys' club trophies of power, wealth and stiff egos noted above. That, however, is but a quibble.

David Roberts' set of Gould's film studio office, stage left, contrasts nicely with his 60's Bauhaus living room ensemble, stage right. (Only wee catch was the paint bucket in his office from Benny Moore. The French word peinture in capital letters jumps out. A quick trip to Neilson's Lumber in Point Roberts would have produced a proper Yankee prop.)

Lighting designer Gerald King backlit well indeed the moody Hollywood photo panels provided by Shimon Karmel. They reflect the times perfectly, particularly the full-on shot of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church on Sunset Boulevard out Bobby G's office window. That's how I remember the place from my time living there in the mid-60's. Only the circular disc Atlantic Records building near Hollywood & Vine was a.w.o.l., alas, from this charming snapshot of a lost epoch. 

Who gonna like : If you're a career Mamet-junkie like me, this production will thrill and excite you no end despite its random warts. If you don't know Mamet much but want a real "up close and personal" 80 minutes of verbal swashbuckling, STP may be -- no, will be -- the best bang for your buck so far this season in Vancouver. Who can resist well-executed target-practice at set-types from Hollywood at any time? Great viewing, this, both for its straight stuff and its satirical barbs. And the Studio 16 stage @ 1551 West 7th is the perfect intimate room for such an evening's engagement.

P.S. note : The title.  Speed The Plow.  Mamet once explained it thus :  "I remembered the saying that you see on a lot of old plates and mugs : 'Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow.' This, I knew, was a play about work and about the end of the world, so Speed The Plow was perfect because not only did it mean 'work', it meant having to 'plow under and start over again'."

Particulars : To November 29, 2014 @ Studio 16, 1551 West 7th Avenue between Granville and Fir.

Playwright David Alan Mamet. Produced by Mitch and Murray Productions. Director David Mackay. Lighting Designer Gerald King. Set Designer David Roberts. Stage Manager Breanne Jackson, Publicist Katherine Brodsky. Photography Shimon Karmel. Production Manager Michael Coen Chase. Technical Director Colin Carruthers.

Featured actors : Craig Erickson. Aaron Craven. Kayla Deorksen.

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Big Ears Teddy : meet Broken Sex Doll

Some backdrop : For most North American War Gen's and Boomers, particularly in religious-y households, sex in the 1950's was simply not talked about. The facts of life were pretty well left to us children to discover for ourselves. Awkwardly. Trial and error. Over-&-over. For many, well past middle age it is said. Discussion? Probing analysis? Moral pulse-taking? Well, uh, no. Just this : "No premature preggers -- proceed at your peril ! "

So it helps to know that writer / director / producer Andy Thompson, originally from BC's Bible Belt in Chilliwack, was born in 1970. A Gen Xer. Numbers don't lie : there's a 25-year gap in our birthdates and life experiences. It also helps to know this about Mr. Thompson, from Wiki : "After graduating from high school with honours in physics and math, Thompson chose to study arts in college before committing to a career in engineering. This led to his decision to become an actor." Terrific terse bio, that.

Context after 2 weeks of Big Ears Teddy :  

When : 2136.  

Where: Virtual City, Planet Earth.  

Who : Real, sentient beings who fondulate, incessantly, in every imaginable position with every sex-sensitive digit and orifice of their beings. And do so with robots. To music (15 songs in all).

What : A new techno-trick known as "feelies" has been developed. Not 2-dimensional "selfies" snapped off iPhones, nosireee. Feelies allow folks to voyeur others' real-life experiences in total -- hear them, see them, smell them, taste them, even touch them. Sort of like Hustler magazine downloaded and printed in four dimensions including ersatz-flesh. "Holy sniggers, Batman, high-tech porn rocketed into the twilight zone!" What could be better than taking life-in-hand, pulsing and throbbing, and doing it until death do us come. Over and over and over again.

Why : 18 months back Thompson told Andrea Warner of the Georgia Straight -- "I'm interested in a type of world where all sexuality is fine, there are no rules. It's kind of like anarchy." And in reflecting on such a proposition, Thompson mused further : "What if technology continues to advance at this rapid rate : are we, the people, advancing with technology? What will happen over a century if we advance technologically but stay the same or go backwards morally?" Too abstract? Try this then : "My script and the content is so dirty and filthy -- this real gutteral sexuality that's brought to the surface in this anarchic sci-fi future society -- and it's sung so beautifully, the experience is completely unique."

So. In the context of this year's other musical crotch-y productions -- Urinetown and Avenue Q both recently reviewed here as well -- certainly BSD is aligned with them structurally and thematically. Whether in light of that ex-CBC fellow Big Ears Teddy and his  sexual peccadilloes -- and the two weeks of constant media-mashing that followed about BDSM (for you newbies to such stuff that stands for "bondage-domination-sado-masochism") -- well, it's up to potential BSD viewers to decide whether Big Ears Teddy will queer the show at The Cultch's box office or not.

Plot overview : Notionally, this is a "love" story. Between man and beast. Er, android. All about Daryl, BSD's hero, who makes feelies of himself and the animated mannequin Ginger whose mechanical vag is pure magic. So we're told. And listen to. And watch. No smell detected. No touching, surely. The antagonist is a chap named King, Ginger's ex-service-provider. He plots to disengage Daryl from his love object and those magic plastic loins he's still jealous of. 

Here's a quicky primer on the play's plotline :

Daryl Brown (Benjamin Elliott) is a porn aficionado, consumer, producer, actor. He discovers a way for viewers to feel his sense of touch when they download his vids on interactive YouTube. Android Ginger 5000 (Chelsea Rose Tucker) is his chosen partner for a no-holds-barred no-non-sense skin-to-skin escapade "It's Amazing". The show goes viral on the weekly "Feelie" charts. Ginger's ex- in making horny porny is the King (Neezar Joseph Elferzeli). When "It's Amazing" catapults Daryl and Ginger to be Feelie's top guns, King explodes. He spends the balance of BSD enlisting the aid of his sexually ambiguous Mom (Greg Armstrong-Morris), his sexually ambiguous manservant James (Joel Ballard) and Lars his android-techie (GA-M as well) to neuter Brown by deprogramming Ginger and rendering her lifeless. She will dump Daryl by dint of her unceremonious deposit into the town dump. Ginger solicits help from three other broken sex dolls to thwart King & Co.'s plans. End-of-story.

When BSD debut'd in Spring 2013, most critics raved that that year's version might set a new standard for dramatic production in Vancouver. A sex musical among androids? Well, "not quite ready for prime time" I'd say. Unless one suspends one's disbelief in space age proportion -- say as far off the map as the Rosetta comet landing this week 500 million klix away.

But on the other hand...

So let's do just that. Let's disbelieve big-time and view BSD from the vantage point of Comet 67P. Forget the sci-fi sex-plot shenanigans. They're hilarious to Gen X / Gen Y audiences, no doubt, based on opening night responses. But at its core BSD is all about its staging, its choreography, its lighting and its sound design. 

And nevermind that it's completely conservative in its social out-takes : when Ginger rams Daryl with a broom you-know-where, the next scenes are all about how anal sex renders him impotent. Homophobic? Couldn't tell you. But I gotta hunch.

Then there's the role of women, the fleshy one [Mom] as well as the mannequins. (A) The women are all caucasoids, not a blush of racial colour to be seen on stage. (B) They all act like boy-servants. (C) That they "just want to be loved" to exercise their womanly power is hardly avant garde thinking. 

But. But. As a production, BSD is adazzle with excitement, brilliant light-&-sound, boundless energy, and two-tier staging that is clever-plus. BSD at times threatens to disappear into a theatric black hole given its plotline and characters.  But I conclude it's a case where the sum of the whole nowhere equals its individual parts, to warp the old expression. Because many of the individual parts are terrific -- first-rate entertainment well, well worth seeing -- even if your disbelief, like mine, is about as distant as Comet 67P. 

Top marks to so many : Creator Andy Thompson snared uberkind Anton Lipovetsky to create 15 songs for the show. He took to the challenge with verve and juice. Interesting to this ear, however, was how much his numbers reminded me of the Jesus Christ Superstar stuff I used to play to my high school classes in the early 70's. Not the kind of contemporary and experimental cuts one hears on CBC's iconic radio show The Signal with Laurie Brown. Still, very capably done and for which Lipovetsky last year won a Jessie award for Outstanding Original Composition.

Perhaps not quite enough can be said for lighting designer Jeff Harrison, sound designer Brian Linds, and video designer Corwin Ferguson. Their combined efforts along with Andy Thompson's clever cave-man set and its Laugh-In windows (that were popular the year Thompson was born) created a stage space brimming with bounce and pizzazz. Drew Facey's Jessie-winning costumes with the Danier peter-pouches and butt-straps for King and Brown were a giggle. As were the android get-ups particularly for the "other" broken dolls with their shock neon wigs.

The choreography by principals Vanessa Goodman and Jane Osborne of The Contingency Plan dance collective was a "kick" starting instantly with the troupe clicking artfully with the opener "I do not like my life -- I'd rather see the world through your eyes". More delight later on with the androids demanding "No More!" of being treated like, well, androids. TCP's blocking both on the 2nd tier and mainstage simultaneously was visually snappy. 

Very strong performances by Elliott and Tucker in the lead roles, no question. But to this critic Ian Rozylo as Billy Crumble almost stole the show for his animated antics, while Dustin Freeland as the Doc and Joe was but a half-pace behind. Delightful turns by both Armstrong-Morris as Mom and Lars plus Joel Ballard as King's aide James well.

Who gonna like : As indicated, this is a "not for everyone" schtick. The endless bumpy-grindy stuff lost in repetition what its original cleverness caught. At least to this eye. But still, the parody of krappy porn flix (I've seen one or two...) and the underlying satire / slapstick around stupid sex scenarios we've all been subject to made up for the over-done-ness of the whole idea. Want to see staging that grabs you where it hurts, BSD will work for you. If in-your-face sexuality is not your bag, you might prefer to take in a re-run of Doc Martin or Downton Abbey instead. Just sayin'.

Particulars : November 12-22, 2014 @ The Cultch's newest venue, the refurbished York Theatre, 639 Commercial Drive (next to Nick's).

Writer / Director / Producer Andy Thompson. Original Music Anton Lipovetsky. Choreography The Contingency Plan. Costume Designer Drew Facey. Lighting Designer Jeff Harrison. Set Designer Andy Thompson. Musical Direction Courtney Ennis. Sound Design Brian Linds. Video Design Corwin Ferguson. Prosthetics Designer Tomasz Sosnowski.

Featured actors : Benjamin Elliott. Chelsea Rose Tucker. Neezar Joseph Elferzeli. Greg Armstrong-Morris. Dustin Freeland. Ian Rozylo. Joel Ballard. Alex Gullason. Adriana Simone Ravalli. Ranae Miller. Jacob Waike [Daryl understudy].

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A musical you just might pee your pants over

Script history overview : The in-your-face title of the script Urinetown points to a place originally located somewhere between 1984 and Brave New World. With a story put to music and dance to boot. 

The premise is quick-&-dirty : a water shortage from an extensive drought results in a government fiat that prohibits private toilets. They are replaced by mandatory pay-toilets throughout the unnamed city. Purpose is to conserve water for drinking, irrigation, life-support stuff. 

Protests mount against "Urine Good Company" (ha-ha), the biffy-mega-corp that for years has controlled the city's sewage flow. Lots of song-&-dance later, the wells dry up anyway. Just as the wells are doing today throughout the San Joaquin Valley in California and in Australia. The 2001 original production opened just a week after 9/11. Given America's shaken confidence in itself, that production stood probably more for its social contract messages than for its madcap silliness. The latter for obvious reasons was not much in vogue that September.

The current show is a remount of Firehall's 2006 Jessie Award winner for Donna Spencer in Outstanding Direction, also winning Outstanding Production. In 2014, Urinetown is totally boffo, slapschtick laugh-a-minute irreverance without one iota of serious environmental advocacy, much as its company might like to think otherwise. But more on that to come.

With music / lyrics by Mark Hollman and book / lyrics by Greg Kotis, Urinetown was nominated for 10 Tony Awards in 2002 and took home three statuettes : best musical book; musical score; direction of a musical. Given the satire about democracy's oppressive demagogues, oligarchs and bureaucrats -- plus the pee-&-poo factor -- little wonder the show has become a favourite on college campuses. But U. ain't just for college kids. Not by a long shot. Jaded wizen'd pensioners will delight in it perhaps even more. 

Why, you might well ask, this subject with its pungent title as material for a stage musical ? Seems Hollman and Kotis had done comic improv sketches together at storefront stages back in the day in Chicago, renowned home of Second City : "We were always writing stuff about a world that was a little cockeyed, that something was a little wrong," Hollman revealed in a 2013 interview with K. S. Driscoll. In the next breath Kotis added a bit ruefully : "Theatres continue to fight for the audience, and we're selling a specific kind of goofball, gonzo theatre...how do you make a musical 'relevant'?"

In light of the power and prominence of big ticket musicals from the 60's and 70's, one way to make a show 'relevant' is to indulge in self-referential mockery. E.g. these days who doesn't like to take random shots at Broadway middle-brow musicals such as the stuff of uberproducer Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example? Maybe not quite as madcap as Briton Monty Python's Eric Idle achieved in Spamalot (BLR 140515), Urinetown nevertheless reflects a "lunatic dash through the [angst-ridden] American experience at the turn of the millenium", critic Scott Miller noted in 2007.

By way of response and reprieve, satiric live theatre and the "reality" t.v. supplied by the likes of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report began to emerge. Also plays built on a self-mocking ironic and neurotic worldview, even one with puppets : Avenue Q (BLR 141022).

Plot quicky :  Urinetown's pay-to-pee toilet musical features Caldwell B. Cladwell as its arch-villain, the entrepreneur who owns all the city's pay toilets. Cladwell owns it all and isn't about to relinquish one wee tinkle if he can hold it together long enough. 

Enter the character -- wait for it -- "Hope". She is Cladwell's daughter. And she falls Kersplatt! in love with the leader of the "pee-for-free" group of rebels headed up by one Bobby Strong, an idealistic studmuffin who's a cleaner. He works at "Amenity #9", the end-of-the-line pissoir on skid road, cheapest john among the city's dozens. Here the queues back right up, legs aplenty crossed in agony. Backups not just because of the numbers but because of the slavic guardian of #9, Miss Pennywise, she a compleat bureaucrat : "If you gotta go, you gotta go through me!" she proclaims. 

Shortly, Strong kidnaps Hope (get it...?) and the race is on to see if Cladwell will buckle to his knees trying to preserve, unsphinctered, his tinkle tax riches. He's always thinkin' about tomorrow don't you know. Or whether the rebels, always thinkin' about today and Freedom now!, will prevail. In the end neither does. 

WYSIWYG :  For context, let's go back to lyricist Greg Kotis. Firehall's production is nothing if not an example of what Kotis termed "a specific kind of goofball, gonzo theatre". Try as it might it doesn't have to be "relevant" at all to work. Thanks to Director Spencer's insight and spin on the script, the play spoofs any intended relevance originally injected by Kotis and Hollman. Okay, the water shortage bit. Notionally the script tries to appeal to the audience to suppress their excess consumption tendencies -- a kind of Suzuki-esque mini-message. But the sermonette factor in no way stands in the way of the rollicking good laugh all audiences will have at the antics on stage. Asked at half-time what she liked about the play the most, my 21-year-old stated flat-out with no prompting : "It's really funny and you don't have to do any thinking at all." 

Character follies capture from Moment 1 : The play in sum is its casting and characters. Their choreography. The music that propels them. And its joyous spoof on musical theatre tropes from the last 50 years. 

Particular characters in this production stand out, right from its opening lines. David Adams as Officer Lockstock acts as the play's narrator, sharing the task with Tracey Power reprising her Jessie-nominated role from 2006 as Little Sally. Adams' booming baritone and winking bellicosity are a fine contrast to Power's squeaky insouciance. Power was perfect as she wonders innocently whether bad subject matter and a worse title might be enough to kill a theatre show from the get-go.

Meghan Gardiner pulls off Penelope Pennywise, the biffy guard and money-grabber, with terrific oomph. Her singing is powerful tuneful stuff to enjoy.

Quickly we meet Bobby Strong played by Anton Lipovetsky. Lipovetsky is his customary grinny ironic self throughout who utterly charmed the opening night squad of ticket-buyers and freebie critics like me.

Caldwell B. Cladwell, the entrepreneur of Urine Good Company, is executed with hyper-exaggeration of stereotype, dare I say deliciously so by local favourite Andrew Wheeler. 

And then there's Andrew Cohen the dance captain of the troupe. Omigosh what moves. Most of them designed to mimic the Jets / Sharks blacktop jungle quick-step from West Side Story. Pure delight to watch.

As Hope Cladwell, Michelle Bardach delivers the goods very capably as Dad's university-grad fax-&-copier attendant, first off, then as a co-revolutionary by play's end after loverboy Strong is dumped overboard, literally, right before Papa Cladwell gets his deserved comeuppance too.

Names below, each actor contributed cleverly and crisply to the storyline and Spencer's desired satirical emphasis for them, not the least in the "big show parody" numbers where we see funnin' and light-hearted jabs at not only West Side Story, also Les Miserables and Fiddler On The Roof. Individual shout-outs are deserved, too, for David Marr as Cladwell's manservant Mr. McQueen as well as Matt Palmer as the effete Senator Fipp. 

Production values : Words escape me (almost!) to describe the awe I felt at Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg's choreography of this company, both individually and collectively. Together with Director Spencer this is a song-&-dance fete of choreography and blocking so tightly imagined and executed -- every piece, bar none -- that breath literally escaped me at times. 

Dramatic spoofs of old Broadway shows though they may have been, the rebel crowd's "Freedom now!" routine along with all the others were simply superb. Tight, tight, tight! conception, direction, execution. 

Just one clanger. During the 2nd Act, during the Hope-as-hostage dance sequences by the rebels. Hope sits stock-still throughout, motionless, as if comatose. Even while serial captors poke and prod her and threaten repeatedly to lynch her. A notable if not serious blocking / direction mis-step there. Albeit gagged and snagged, she needed appropriate facial and body responses to these taunts and threats. 

Musical Director Steve Charles put together a top-notch combo cited below. Great chops from everyone in the Kurt Weill take-off music that underscored the show.

Barbara Clayden as Costume Designer had fun outfitting the group, no question. I have to admit I wasn't quite sure at any given moment whether we were in Dickens' 19th century London or in Steinbeck's 1930's Depression. But no matter. You could almost smell her Amenity #9 characters up in the top row. 

As he invariably does, Ted Roberts put together a very practical but also visually-engaging set. The movable stairs and ladders rising above the sewer-height rafters were utilized to great effect. 

Who gonna like : As mentioned above, if you are a Spamalot or Avenue Q kind of theatre fan, chances are the cheeky crudeness of Urinetown will amuse and entertain you. Most certainly the Friedenberg choreography accompanying the actors' rich voices will stop you dead for pure entertainment value. 

And, oh sure. We might do a bit of reflection on how mankind rapes and pillages Sacred Earth unmercifully. But that would be an almost gratuitous, nearly accidental, fallout. 

Meanwhile, a final point not to be lost in all of this : the performance occurs in the heart of Vancouver's DTES -- where the Oppenheimer Park tent city just was -- and that fact puts Vancouver theatre-goers' relative wealth in perspective. The lady who beseeched a loonie or two from patrons exiting the theatre at show's end put the plight of society's most needy in a bit of a sobering context. As it should. 

For all of the above reasons, this is a Can't miss! performance.

Particulars : November 1-29, 2014 @ Firehall Arts Centre, Cordova @ Gore Street, DTES. Box Office, 604.689.0926. Web = http://firehallartscentre.ca. 

Director Donna Spencer. Musical Director Steve Charles. Choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg. Costume Designer Barbara Clayden. Lighting Designer Rebekah Johnson. Set Designer Ted Roberts.

Featured actors : David Adams, Michelle Bardach, Chris Cochrane, Andrew Cohen, Meghan Gardiner, Katey Hoffman, Patrick Keating, Chris Lam, Anton Lipovetsky, David Marr, Matt Palmer, Tracey Power, Rosie Simon, Shane Snow, Donna Spencer and Andrew Wheeler.

Musicians : James Danderfer, Bonnie Northgraves, Liam MacDonald, Rod Murray.

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