The Invisible Hand strikes head-&-heart
All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \  Les Miserables, 1985)

Quicky version

Another creation of American playwright Ayad Akhtar (whose script Disgraced won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2013), The Invisible Hand considers the religious fundamentalism of not only radical Islam but of capitalism, too, and how the fervors that infect each of these belief systems are not just parallel but in fact intersect.

With the arrival of what I have coined "jihadislam", North American audiences owe Akhtar Thanks! for his efforts to decryptify the Muslim religious / social / military / outlaw phenomena that daily blast their way into our psyches over the airwaves.

With comic riffs and layers of irony like layers of an onion -- the more you peel the worse it smells and the more it brings tears to your eyes -- this show doesn't mince words or sentiments. Our belief systems are built on words and driven by emotions. Emotions that have meaning to us but not necessarily any obvious or inherent moral superiority on the face of the earth. Akhtar lightens up his tale with humour and empathy and softness, but the underlying thriller aspect, the chance of the hero's brutal sacrifice at the hands of The Other, keeps you riveted to your seat.

Wordy version

From the footlights : Nothing like the potential for a bayonet beheading by hooded assassins to grab our attention. Or at least to operate metaphorically as "the invisible hand of fate" the audience imagines lurking behind Nick Bright. As a WASP investment capitalist working for NYC's mega-Citibank in Pakistan, Bright and his colleagues are all marked. In this case not yet marked to be a trophy for the local cult Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the violent Islamists who videoed the cruel and methodical and slow execution of journalist Daniel Pearl. For the moment, anyway, Bright is simply marked for a $10 million ransom by an imam who claims his intent is to use the money to improve his flock's living conditions in hopelessly corrupt Pakistan.

Another creation of American playwright Ayad Akhtar (whose script Disgraced won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2013), The Invisible Hand considers the religious fundamentalism of not only radical Islam but of capitalism, too, and how the fervors that infect each of these belief systems are not just parallel but in fact intersect.

Bristling with tension, the play takes place in a couple of residential holding cells as Bright tries to win his release by making his captors millions through stock market speculation. Along the way it's a seminar on how gazillionaires play the market, literally, with all its options, puts, calls, futures, short sells, long sells and the like that are 100% wizardry to arts majors like me. The Pi Theatre troupe producing the show at The Cultch is absolutely true to its slogan of Fearless Theatre.

How it's all put together :  The title is taken from 18th century laissez faire capitalist theorist Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) who posited that the bread on the family table gets there not by any beneficence on the part of its producers but by the economic self-interest of the farmers and the bakers who sell their product to said family. Thus, he said, "the invisible hand" of free markets will self-adjust through supply-&-demand dynamics : government need not get hamfisted with intervention, thanks.

Akhtar is less a propagandist than a provocateur, he would insist. A novelist and screenwriter as well as playwright, he disclaims advocating any single social, political or religious perspective. Summoning the classic dictum of the ancient, Horace, in Ars Poetica, he says his art aims to teach and to please, both. He told Alexis Soloski of The Guardian for a NYT feature piece in 2012 his goal in all his outputs artistically is that his work "be deeply engaging and alive and vibrant".

And just so TIH is. Nick Bright (Craig Erickson) has been held captive some three weeks when the show starts. Handcuffed, he's established amiable relations with his gaoler Dar (Conor Wylie) who clips Nick's fingernails. He's taught Dar to corner the south Pakistan farm market on cheap potatoes, stockpile them, wait until there's punishing demand up north, then sell his supply dearly. Oh, and do not confuse patriotism and money. Ditch your rupee profits, immediately buy $USD instead as it is the world's dominant currency.

Enter Imam Saleem (Shaker Paleja). He can't understand why Citibank (slogan : "Citi never sleeps") hasn't coughed up the ransom right smartly. One reason is Saleem's sect has been named a terrorist cell by the U.S. so ransom negotiations are forbidden by the State Department. Saleem's enforcer comes on as menace personified. 

Bashir (Munish Sharma) is a radicalized Brit national who's returned to his family's cultural roots to advance "the cause" once he latched on to Imam Saleem as his avatar. He threatens Nick with death at the hands of Lashkar. 

With Saleem and Bashir's patience at an end! over how Citibank has "gone cold", now there's but deafening silence from New York about Nick -- i.e. no talk of cash & no chat about Nick's safety -- just in time Nick convinces his captors if he can get his hands on a Mac he will do a workaround the ransom demand to Citibank. Instead he will access his personal Grand Cayman tax haven purse worth some $3 million. And parlay that offshore stash into millions more. For them. To buy his freedom. 

Let the fun begin.

What the show brings to the stage :  With the arrival of what I have coined "jihadislam", North American audiences owe Akhtar a big Thanks! for his efforts to decryptify the Muslim religious / social / military / outlaw phenomena that daily blast their way into our psyches over the airwaves.

Of Pakistani-American parents, both doctors -- and raised in Wisconsin just outside Milwaukee, as was I -- Akhtar is a bit of an obsessed artist these days. He's pumping out a play a year or more. TIH is to this viewer, anyway, considerably more compelling than was the plot and characterization of Disgraced that I accused of being just too-too in its myriad levels of coincidence. (Noting in my review, of course, that obviously the Pulitzer Prize judges disagreed with me in spades.)

Akhtar's obsession in this particular script about "the Muslim experience" is the nexus in moral compulsion between disparate groups of true believers. Wall Street hustlers on the one hand. On the other the Imam Saleem sect that professes to be all about doing good works for needy people. "We are prisoners of a corrupt country that is of our own making," Saleem admits to Nick. "You kidnapped me so you can fix your roads!" Nick responds incredulously. Quite so, apparently.

A racist himself, Bashir tells Nick he came "home" to Pakistan from the family flat outside London, like many of his generation, because "we are giving up our soft lives in the West to do something useful" for needy Muslim brethren back on old sod.

Nick is not allowed to handle the Mac laptop himself, so he mentors Bashir on how to play the market game : figure out an angle of political consequence; capitalize on it lit.-&-fig; create new and other conditions to maximize opportunity and results; repeat; repeat; repeat.

Along the way a kind of "reverse Stockholm Syndrome" occurs, Bashir admits, as he comes to befriend Nick as a person, not just as a mentor who is making him and Imam Saleem millions despite the fact that Saleem pays lip service to the notion that money, not religion, is the opiate of the masses as Marx had averred.

Which, TIH asks implicitly, is the greater cancer on society? Islam or capitalism? While it's clear the secular Muslim Akhtar doesn't favour jihad -- of Lashkar, Saleem remonstrates with Bashir : "They are not Muslims, they are animals!" -- he certainly does not kiss the capitalist blarney stone, either. 

Production values that hi-lite the show : Akhtar gives the play a kind of potboiler ending -- a bit of role reversal irony that had patrons around me chortling. Personally I find nothing risible whatever about that other Marxist tenet "the end justifies the means". But overall the show examines cleverly indeed how blind people can be when they conflate ideas such as market economy with democracy with freedom with religion (as the wild misnomer The Arab Spring attests to so profoundly). Or when folks cleave to social darwinism : survival of the fittest as a "fact of life" to accept, unquestioningly, whether on Wall Street or the sands of the wannabe caliphate in the Middle East.

Director Richard Wolfe [Artistic Director of Pi Theatre]  mined Mr. Akhtar's script well indeed. He and his actors utterly "got" the various levels of cognitive confusion and dissonance that arise world-wide. Americans don't see how they mix up democracy and money as one piece of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" that their famed Declaration of Independence promises. Many Muslims disparage the capital system but do all they can to get a piece of it for themselves. Distrust and fear are rampant. Exclusions abound. Violence is inevitable when frustrations mount past the tipping point. On a lighter note, Bright reminds Bashir : "Very few wars have been fought between countries that have McDonald's...".

Musical Director & Composer Gordon Grdina's work along with Sound Designer Christopher Kelly's finessing are worth going to hear even if one were masqued. With Fathieh Honiara's haunting cultural vocals and their appropriate wind accompaniment -- as well as the street soundscape of cars and dogs and overhead drones buzzing angrily above, bombing regularly -- this was all impressive. The set by David Roberts is imaginative and convincing Pakistan urban parched rockery-&-plaster with a rendition of the city's labyrinthine streets rising up cleverly behind the mainstage cloisters for prisoner Bright.

Acting pin-spots : The script focuses on two characters, Nick Bright and Bashir. And they each are terrific. Craig Erickson simply adds to his other recent Vancouver outings that were excellent as well : in the Mitch and Murray Mamet script Speed The Plow -plus- ACT's Scar Tissue. His execution, ugly pun acknowledged, of the staged pistol assassination scene to end Act I was utterly embracing frightening theatre. 

Munish Sharma as Bashir was a wholly engaging and genuine gestalt of emotions : bully-boy London tough with a great low-brow accent coupled with boyish nuance learning the stock market game. "What the fuck is a future?" he asks -- which in its normal meaning, not stock-market-ese -- is at the end what this show is fundamentally about. Solid performances by Messrs. Paleja and Wylie, too, both with delightful subtlety at key moments.

Who gonna like : With comic riffs and layers of irony like layers of an onion -- the more you peel the worse it smells and the more it brings tears to your eyes -- this show doesn't mince words or sentiments. Our belief systems are built on words driven by emotions. Emotions that have meaning to us but not necessarily any obvious or inherent moral superiority on the face of the earth. Akhtar lightens up his tale with humour and empathy and softness, but the underlying thriller aspect, the chance of the hero's brutal sacrifice at the hands of The Other, keeps viewers riveted to their seats.

Mr. Akhtar achieves his objective noted above thanks to Director Wolfe and the actors themselves, not to mention the insightful and incisive Akhtar script :  to "be deeply engaging and alive and vibrant". This is small stage theatre at its most relevant. Miss this and you miss insights that no number of news reports could ever provide.

Particulars : Presented by The Cultch as Produced by Pi Theatre (Vancouver). At The Cultch Historic Theatre, through April 23rd. Run-time 120 minutes, including intermission. Schedule information & tickets via thecultch.com or by phoning the box office after 12:00 noon @ 604.251.1363.  

Production Crew : Written by Ayad Akhtar.  Directed by Richard Wolfe [Artistic Director, Pi Theatre].  Set Designer David Roberts.  Costume Designer Christine Reimer. Lighting Designer Alan Brodie.  Musical Director & Composer Gordon Grdina.  Sound Designer Christopher Kelly.  Vocalist Fathieh Honari.  Stage Manager Jethelo E. Cabilete.  Dramaturge Adele Noronha.

Performers :  Craig Erickson (Nick Bright).  Shaker Paleja (Imam Saleem).  Munish Sharma (Bashir). Conor Wylie (Dar).

Addendum #1 : As noted above, Ayad Akhtar grew up in the USA town contiguous to where I grew up near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He in Brookfield, me to the west in Waukesha. Like me, too, he also has a tremendous affection and connect with where he grew up. 

He has done four collaborations with the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre (the Rep) in the years since he graduated from Brookfield Central High. He took his play The Invisible Hand to the Rep two months back for a run.

Prior to its opening he sat down with Matt Mueller, the Pop Culture Editor of an e-zine OnMilwaukee for a chat. Excerpts that I think are relevant are included below.

OM : Do you believe capitalism is in a good place?

AA :  Capitalism is a religious ideology we believe because it's our ideological...it's our ideological blind spot. We think that it's true. We think free market liberalism is true. We think that it makes the world a better place. It's just what we believe. There's no evidence for that. It's what we believe. In that way, it's religious ideology.

I think I've been suspect of capitalism for a long time. I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that getting rid of capitalism is the solution. One thing that's often not known is that a lot of militant political movements around the world have taken their lead from Marxism and have done so for many years. At the core of a strain of Islamist militant thought is the desire for a more just economic world inspired by Marx. So the discourse you see historically with a lot of militant Islamic movements is very similar to the discourse of Occupy Wall Street and very similar to the discourse that Bernie Sanders has right now.

That's something people don't necessarily know, but that's because there's a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in this country. Issac Asimov put it very well when he said, "In America, it seems sometimes as if my ignorance is as good as your knowledge." There's this sentiment out there that I don't know shit, but it doesn't matter because I'm right. I don't care what you say or what the facts are, and we are suffering the consequences of that environment in our political life.

OM : And the Internet has only exacerbated that...

AA : Social media is probably the worst thing that's happened to American democracy.

OM : Really?

AA : If my ignorance is as good as your knowledge, then me posting my ignorance is an act of self-expression that deserves to sit side by side with a cogent, factual articulation of reality. That way lies madness.

OM : Yeah, on Twitter, there's no value of argument. It's a level playing field.

AA : There's no truth value.

OM : A New York Times article can be next to a racist rant from somebody on the same feed.

AA : Or outright ignorance. I think the truth value of language has ceased to exist in the public sphere. That's a crisis. That's no joking matter, because we're walking ourselves right off a cliff. These are real things. When your language has no meaning, you cannot communicate any longer.

We've got pipes in Flint (Michigan) that have been corroded by the process of privatization. We've got problems in this country that are so severe and significant, but the conversation is about a bunch of identity politics, and the people who are trying to deal with things in a concrete way are shouted out by people who think that our biggest problem is that we've got abortion rights or gun control issues. Forty per cent of American thinks Obama is a Muslim Kenyan king. This is a crisis in the national consciousness...

I'm not saying that social media is not something that could be used in a productive way or that it hasn't been used in a productive way. But for the most part, it has become the scourge of our national consciousness. It's a cesspool, and it's dragging the national conversation down with it.

OM : In a show like this, where you're dealing with these weighty ideas about global economies and ideological extremism, how do you balance explaining that to an audience while also keeping them invested emotionally?

AA : That's the challenge. Tell a good story. If you tell a good story -- that's first and foremost -- and keep the audience's interest, there's room for you to say some things and explore some ideas. But you have to keep your finger on the narrative pulse. You gotta tell a good story.

OM : Look at Shakespeare. People remember his plays because of the stories and the characters...

AA : And the language!

...not because they're commentaries or statements about something at that time.

AA : They remember Shylock because of those speeches, because of the language, because of the depth of the intelligence, because of the poetic flourish and the human window that that language opens up. I think that's exactly right.

I'm not writing to correct some idea that non-Muslim whites have. I'm not trying to make Muslims more palatable. I'm not trying to defend Islam. Islam is a great tradition that has lasted 1,500 years; it does not need the meager defences of a sometime-playwright. You know what I mean? I'm trying to fry a different kind of fish.

But because of my Muslim origins, because of the fact that my specific -- my Yoknapatawpha County, the county that Faulker used to write about -- is Muslim experience in America, that's my particular to which I'm writing toward the universal, toward the human experience, toward the contemporary global experience. It's just that I'm writing from this particular. But the particular gets mistaken for the content. Why? Because of this rampant environment of identity politics, which I am writing about but which I am not writing to.

Addendum #2 -- Pi Theatre mission statement that clearly is reflected in this production of TIH :

Pi Theatre produces bold and uncompromising plays that explore modern life. We connect audiences with theatre that’s intellectually alive and emotionally charged.

Pi promises work that pushes hearts and minds to their fullest extent. We are concerned with creating social moments, community connections and artistic impact.

We believe in work that extends beyond the stage to challenge perceptions and get people talking.

Our values:

Inspiration

Exploration

Excellence

Thoughtfulness

-30-

Dead Metaphor has hilarious painful timely jabs

All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \ Les Miserables, 1985)

From the footlights :  At the hands of TO veteran playwright George F. Walker, the Canadian anti-Taliban adventure in Afghanistan becomes but springboard for how a single bit of wit will play out : what is a proficient military assassin -- a long-distance sniper with a high kill-ratio -- to do for civilian work when he is mustered out of Af and returns home? (The show cries out to be retitled "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Gunner").

This one-trick pony is put among a pack of unlikely also-rans for the next loop around his life's track. His pregnant and pushy once-&-future wife. Shouty leftist Dad who's dying of a brain tumour and has lost all filters and governors to check his spontaneous acerbic outbursts. Mr. Nice Guy civvy job placement counselor who's in a blistered and scabrous marriage. Mr. NG's wife, a right wing reactionary political candidate who is on Sarah Palin's "Pit Bull with Lipstick" hockey team, no question.

Theatre virtuoso Richard Ouzounian calls Walker "the man who juggles the double crown of Canada's angriest and funniest playwright". For its part Canadian Encyclopedia claims Walker "is best known for his fast-paced black comedies, filled with corrosive satire of the selfishness, greed and aggression characteristics of contemporary urban culture...".

Happy to report Firehall Theatre's production of Dead Metaphor proves each of these claims. It also ensures all the tomfoolery inevitable out of the bunch noted in paragraph two will somehow work out. They spar feverishly and hilariously at cross-purposes the night long with delightful effect. DM is a potty-mouth roar and rant that will bring tears to a glass eye -- metaphorically speaking of course.

How it's all put together : The pre-curtain lyrics by the punk group Rise Against in their anthem "Hero of War" set the stage. To come will be pure-&-simple satire and sardonic black humour. Its fictions play out only slightly more -- maybe less -- exaggerated than the latest Repugnicrat antics that prance across our t.v. screens every day.

Dean Trusk (Mike Gill) returns from sniper duty in Af with barely muffled PTSD from his tour after his 17 kills. Bureaucrat job placement guy Oliver Denny (Jovanni Sy) leans on wife Helen (Meghan Gardiner) to take war vet Dean on as an assistant in her election campaign. "He'd be easier to sell if he'd lost a limb or something," Helen whines. But she hires him. When Dad Hank (Alec Willows) hears of son Dean's new job he bristles instantly : "She doesn't have ideas. They're just sales pitches. She's dangerous because she's a fraud."

Dean soon discovers Helen is getting illegal campaign contributions from highly-placed church officials. Helen and Mitchell, her "handler" lit.-&-fig., fear Dean may do a Deep Throat to the media on them, so he gets the boot. But like Watergate, leaks can't always be plumbed dry. Oliver tries to talk Helen into dropping out of the race lest all this campaign finance scandal go public. Ego won't let her. She shrieks in frustration : "People are causing impediments to my personal tranquility," she snivels. "When they disagree with me they should just shut the fuck up!"

Though Walker doesn't expressly declare his setting and plot and characters to be American, they are so extreme they could hardly be mistaken for Canadians who are generally a more reserved and apologetic and off-hand lot. Not this bunch, by no means.

How the plot evolves : A dead metaphor is a physical comparison that needn't be visualized to be understood : "Why can't he grasp the obvious?" is an example. And the obvious in this play is the churlish and fractious state of political relations -- a grossly distempered grassroots -- that makes far-away foreign war service seem more tame than homegrown politics. Any A who fails to grasp B's "obvious" truths about life on open mouth radio or in social media is free to be assailed. Bullying, shaming, ostracism or simply taken out "with extreme prejudice" as Brando put it so blithely in Apocalypse Now are all fair game tactics. 

Act 1 ends when Dad Hank with his inoperable brain tumour tells Dean over the BBQ he wants to go. He proposes a park walk that he won't return from. Always gnashing his teeth against government's deceits and lies, he rants at his obviously reluctant son : "But I'm giving you a purpose to kill someone for a reason you might actually be able to understand!" he pleads.

Act 2 begins with a choice church scene. (The audience is cleverly conscripted by the cast talking over their shoulders to be co-congregants in the conversation.) Hank calls out Helen as a complete and utter phony to the church flock. She can't help herself but recount to the gathering an earlier threat he made -- The Realist's Paul Krassner meets Hunter S. Thompson here -- how Hank would happily defile her beheaded cadaver sexually. But quickly she dismisses it all with a cheery wave to God. Wife Frannie (Donna Spencer), meanwhile, is mortified at all this spectacle and addresses us worshipers : "Hank's not well. If he meets you on the street and tells you to eat shit or go fuck yourself, don't take it personally!" she reassures us. (Hilarious! bit).

Helen now frets openly that Dean might rat her out over the illegal church payola. Oliver grows increasingly anxious that his increasingly unhinged wife will do the world permanent damage. "I'm the sad ineffective guy she met before she found her inner beast!" he broods. And decides right smartly she's a danger to the future that cannot be countenanced. Ever-closer-to-delivery, the pregnant ex/future wife Jenny (Carmela Sison) ultimately becomes power broker for Dean. She badgers him to use his military training on domestic soil for cash. Whom to silence, for how much? 

Production values the show brings to the stage : DM is a pastiche, more character sketch and penny dreadful political send-up than a fully rounded play. Also, to see the show pre-US Primaries in 2016 would, no question, have given it a fresher spin.  Day-to-day visual proofs S. of 49 show a "grossly distempered grassroots". Their antics reveal a reality clearly stranger than fiction. [Compare local equivalent : How likely Michael Healey's Proud -- an inspired spoof about Handshake Dad Stevie Harper -- how likely it would have much dramatic traction now that Harper's a nobody and Sunny Sonny runs the country? Not likely. Despite a couple of very successful earlier runs that BLR thoroughly enjoyed at this very same Firehall.]

But. There are choice doings at play here, no question. First grabber is set designer Lauchlin Johnston's utterly imaginative rendering of Afghan desert and bombed-out rubble as backdrop. The war's detritus even reaches to the base of the job placement office desk and the restaurant table, too. This cleverness is back-grounded by a painstakingly-produced sky blue + sun scrim. The open set and the L-shaped house seating lend immediacy and more intimacy than the usual proscenium arch arrangements. Very clever all this!

Director Chelsea Haberlin -- who's simultaneously doing Gruesome Playground Injuries at the Pacific Theatre up the road in South Granville -- has cast her troupe well. For comic amusement no question Alec Willows as Papa Hank with the unleashed tongue is a show-stealer. But opposite him Meghan Gardiner as the shrill Ann Coulter knock-off is also a piece of work. Words ("lists of things she doesn't like, not beliefs") prattle and zing and fling out of her mouth in inverse proportion measuring depth-vs-speed. Jovanni Sy's evocative, peppery performance both as counsellor and befuddled wannabe wife-killer was choice in all his run-arounds.

Who gonna like : Folks will need high tolerance indeed for political charades & goofy conspiracies & self-righteous angry diatribes. Higher even than what they see on CNN. Fact is Walker's script as imagined and delivered by the cast under Ms. Haberlin's direction is nothing shy of a hoot! and a tickle and a laugh despite its seething anger underneath. Obviously Mr. Walker has serious meta-messages to deliver on the political spectrum of likes-&-dislikes, no question. But his explosive satire even as it plays out ambiguously at the show's end has a magnetic quality to it. It makes sense of the scrambled and chaotic world we live in today in a way only live theatre can do that raw t.v. footage simply cannot.  

Particulars : Written by George F. Walker.  Produced by Firehall Arts Centre, Donna Spencer, Artistic Director. At 280 East Cordova Street (corner of Gore).  Until April 23, 2016.  Box Office 604.689.0926 for nightly & matinee performances.

Production Team :  Director Chelsea Haberlin.  Set & Lighting Designer Lauchlin Johnston.  Costume Designer Amy McDougall.  Sound Designer Troy Slocum.  Props Master Jennifer Stewart.  Stage Manager Jillian Perry.  Assistant Stage Manager Aidan Hammond.  

Performers :  Meghan Gardiner (Helen).  Mike Gill (Dean).  Carmela Sison (Jenny).  Donna Spencer (Frannie).  Jovanni Sy [Artistic Director, Gateway Theatre] (Oliver).  Alec Willows (Hank).

Addendum #1 : from the program.

A note from the Director :

Do you know what a dead metaphor is? I didn't until working on this show. Here's the definition : A figure of speech which has lost the original imagery of its meaning due to extensive, repetitive, and popular usage. Because dead metaphors have a conventional meaning that differs from the original, they can be understood without known their earlier connotation.

It's not the most obvious title for this show which makes it a really interesting one. George F. Walker revealed in an interview why he picked this title. It's a fascinating explanation but I think that there are other possible explanations. I've written George's explanation below but I challenge you to watch the show and come up with your own reason before you read his explanation.

When asked why he called this play Dead Metaphor George F. Walker said : "One of the reasons for it was the thought that there used to be a time when we didn't send soldiers off to fight wars and then forget entirely about them, like they weren't even part of our society. Less than one percent of both our [USA & Canada] populations have anything to do with them. So something that used to mean something -- soldiers fighting for their country -- is now irrelevant. It is a dead thing. We don't even know where they are. Off they go and then they come back into our world, many of them in trouble, messed up and with nowhere to go. They come back and they only get noticed when they're in trouble. And we're in trouble too."

Chelsea Haberlin, Director

From the Firehall's Artistic Producer :

"One of the ways of making the world less chaotic, I guess, is to show that it is chaotic." George F. Walker, 1982.

Welcome to the Firehall and to our production of George F. Walker's Dead Metaphor. With his provocative wit and his sly satire, Walker paints a picture of a family caught in the challenges of unemployment, pregnancy and aging parents. With off of this season's works we have worked to bring you stories that entertain, challenge and create a greater understanding of who we are in society today. Only in the theatre can you sit and share an experience with others whom you don't know that will be a once in a life time event...

Donna Spencer, Artistic Producer

Addendum #2 : selected stanza lyrics from Rise Against's song "Hero of War" :

He said "Son, have you seen the world?
Well, what would you say if I said that you could?
Just carry this gun and you'll even get paid."
I said "That sounds pretty good."

Black leather boots
Spit-shined so bright
They cut off my hair but it looked alright
We marched and we sang
We all became friends
As we learned how to fight

A hero of war
Yeah that's what I'll be
And when I come home
They'll be damn proud of me
I'll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
Because it's a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

A hero of war
Is that what they see
Just medals and scars
So damn proud of me
And I brought home that flag
Now it gathers dust
But it's a flag that I love
It's the only flag I trust

He said, "Son, have you seen the world?
Well what would you say, if I said that you could?"

-30-

Good People is a gritty, witty tale of fate & choice

All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \ Les Miserables, 1985)

From the footlights : Class divides. Tribes. Ghettoes. Stereotypes. The stuff of Good People by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire who grew up in South Boston. Which is a large rectangle that during the Irish potato famine's mass influx of emigres to the New World became just that for them, their world, their cloister. Partly by chance, partly by choice once they were shunned as peasant mucksters by Boston's hoi polloi. And largely stayed their peoples' world for a century or more.

Good People, the title, is no throwaway. Nor is it necessarily ironic in asking the question what roles do luck, chance, opportunity and personal effort have to play in whether one succeeds or fails in life.  Set at the time of the Great Recession eight years back, jobs have literally gone south. The economy is in tatters. Losing one's dead-end job as a dollar store clerk might be less paycheque interruptus than an outright job death sentence. 

These realities and questions are the tale Margie Walsh [Colleen Wheeler] works her way through. Hoping to score job contacts through him, she re-links with her high school flame Mikey Dillon [Scott Bellis] from three decades back. He's a SoB escapee all right, a reproduction endocrinology specialist with a trophy wife 15 years his junior. They live in leafy Chestnut Hill up across the South Boston Bypass and I-93 freeway that divide the haves from the have-nots.

With the sizzle and snap of irony and sarcasm, Margie spars with Mike. She challenges him how he came to his considerably more privileged circumstances -- being "comfortable" to use the diminutive descriptor the wealthy often do -- while she stayed on, a Southie stuck in time now one rent payment away from living on the streets with her mentally disabled 30-year-old daughter. Who are "good people" and what makes them so? And is that a single reference point or possibly a continuum? In the original NYC production in 2011, Frances McDormand (of Fargo fame) won a Tony statuette for best actress. Ms. Wheeler gives the role a delightful and inspired and genuinely engaging turn in ACT's Stanley show, too. 

How the plot's all put together : The stage action occurs on four different mini-sets, three of them plopped on stage wagons to intersect both physically and thematically. The story focuses on how Margie deals with life after getting fired from the Family Dollar store. She's worked there for three years but because of chronic lateness -- mostly due to her daughter Joyce's often-tardy caregiver -- the whippersnapper store manager Stevie Grimes (Ben Elliott) is ordered by regional admin to fire her even though she was a childhood chum of his late Mom.

The caregiver happens to be the Walsh's landlady Dottie Gillis (Patti Allan), a Bingo-playing buddy. Buddy though she may be, Dottie threatens to evict Margie and Joyc-ee if Margie's late at all with the month's rent. Third Bingo-maniac is Margie's bosom buddy Jeanne (Jenn Griffin). At one such game night at the parish church hall Jeanne convinces Margie to hunt up ex-squeeze Mikey and try to hit him up for a job. "He was always good people, Mikey," Margie tells herself. 

Back rolls the bingo hall, in rolls the Dr's office. Instantly we learn there's a lot of attitude in the air. Margie says his receptionist was "pretty cunty to me", while he laughs it off and says Margie's just another "mouthy from Southie". Margie learns that Mikey's wife Kate (Sereana Malani) is planning a catered birthday party for what is apparently his 50th birthday. She insinuates an invite to try to hit up his wealthy guests for a job. But only through a sarcastic challenge to "let the Southie rats in", accusing Mikey of having become "lace curtain Irish", Southie lingo for nouveau riche snob. He bristles and accuses Margie of being a time-honoured Southie "meanie" by baiting him with passive-aggressive repartee. "I'm just bustin' balls, Mikey, you're good people," she responds in vintage passive-aggressive Whitey Bulger mob-speak.

Jeanne puts Margie up to telling Mikey that daughter Joyce was not a preemie by husband Gobie who deserted them many years back and may be in prison or dead. She's to tell Mikey she was pregnant before he went off the UPenn and try to get some guilt-money out of him because "nobody goes to a party and hires an unemployed cashier".

Act II finds Margie meeting Kate in the sumptuous Chestnut Hill living room, she who is a black doctor's daughter and professor at University of Boston : "You there because Harvard wasn't interested...?" Margie teases.  The show turns its attention, as noted above, to "what roles do luck, chance, opportunity and personal effort have to play in whether one succeeds or fails in life". Ugly racist history from Southie is brought up as well as the fact of Margie and Mikey being an item at the time she became pregnant with Joyce. Lots of tension and anger and gnashing of egos. Ultimately Margie sullenly withdraws the paternity claim for Mikey and retreats to another game of Bingo. How her mystery rent showed up just in time so she's not evicted by her "friend" Dottie is revealed and life in Southie goes on. "You'll find something," Jeanne assures her, even if it's just a line-job at the Gillette shaving gear plant.

What the show brings to the stage: Apposite viewing, Good People, in a world rife with mass refugee migrations and people forced to examine their beliefs around race and bigotry and fears of "the other". What are the components of "success" in life? What does the concept of "good" really mean? What role are one's roots and their formative years of neighbourhood & culture to play out across a person's life? Should loyalty-to-place carry much, if any, weight as one passes along the myriad pathways we traverse? These are valid and apropos questions, always, to raise with oneself.

The above said, fact remains Lindsay-Abaire's script strikes this dual citizen of U.S. and Canada as a wee-bit "quaint" and timed-out after watching t.v. footage of Syrian refugee kids gleefully discovering snow for the first time last week-end on Mt. Seymour. While The Trumpster bleats his huckster's horn S. of 49 and inspires lots of base-anger but even more fear-&-loathing among the majority, discussions of how someone from Lindsay-Abaire's South Boston or Spike Lee's Harlem or L.A.'s Watts or the DTES of Vancouver might find the way to "liberate" themselves from their childhood social station perhaps is not quite as magnetizing as it would have been on American theatre stages 2-3 years after the collapse of Wall Street in 2008. But that hardly ends the discussion.

Production values that hi-lite : Does theatre engage? Does it excite? Does it compel? Does it entertain? And to each of these questions, a la the Trevor Nunn dictum above, the answer in ACT's version of Good People is a palpable and robust Yes! 

Director Rachel Ditor deserves not only a round of Snaps! and backslaps for her casting this show, but also a h-u-g-e hug. Putting Colleen Wheeler and Jenn Griffen and Patti Allan together as the unholy Bingo trinity sisters was absolutely inspired. And rise to the occasion the three of them did wistfully and wonderfully. The energy among them riffing off each other had me in contortions the night through.

Couple that trifecta of talent with Lauchlin Johnston's superb scene wagon sets that ran smoother than a Tesla and Adrian Muir's command of the stage's spots and rheostats, and there's an evening's entertainment here of pure whimsical theatry.

Does the script drag in its exposition in Act I? Yes. Does wife Kate's character switch unbelievably-too-abruptly from her kvetching and nattering at husband Mikey and doubting his core honesty to then turning on ex-girlfriend Margie with lots of spontaneous sermonettes about how she's been an unfit mother for 30 years in Act II? Yes.

But. As this reviewer often remarks, "these are mere quibble". 

Acting pin-spots : Colleen Wheeler unquestionably commands the kliegs with her performance. It's as if she's channeling both Frances McDormand and Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano \ Nurse Jackie) in her stunning take on Margie Walsh. 

Jenn Griffin was stellar as the punchy mediator between Margie and Dottie, that ditzy-demonic-delight utterly aced by Patti Allan. 

Strong showing by each of Scott Bellis and Sereana Malani and Ben Elliott to round out the evening.

Did the voice-coaching to replicate Southie Boston accents (think Kennedy-low-brow here) work? Good efforts by all, but quite frankly I don't think all the effort was necessary. Whereas one can't quite imagine Mary Poppins spoken as flat Chicago mid-west un-twang, such might work here without detriment to the spirit of the Lindsay-Abaire purpose and intent. 

Who gonna like : Whatever theme-based or timeliness reservations I may have, to see this show for the Margie-kitchen and Bingo hall scenes is absolutely! worth the price of admission. Tight character acting coupled with superb set design and execution bring this piece alive! with their joint and several cleverness for an evening's delight particularly when the klippety-klop pace of the second act plays itself out.

Particulars :  By David Lindsay-Abaire.  At ACT's Stanley Theatre Granville @ 12th.  Run-time 135 minutes including intermission.  On until April 24th.  Schedule information & tickets via http://artsclub.com or by phoning 604.687.1644.

Production team :  Director Rachel Ditor.  Set Designer Lauchlin Johnston.  Costume Designer Carmen Alatorre.  Lighting Designer Adrian Muir.  Sound Designer Murray Price.  Stage Manager Peter Jotkus.  Assistant Stage Manager Rebecca Mulvihill.

Performers  : Pattie Allan (Dottie).  Scott Bellis (Mikey).  Ben Elliott (Stevie).  Jenn Griffin (Jeanne).  Sereana Malanai (Kate).  Colleen Wheeler (Margie).

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Gruesome Playground Injuries a touching tale

From the footlights :  Playwright Rajiv Joseph wrote the title to this play before he concocted even one character, the plot line or a single digit of dialogue whatever. Drinks with an accident-prone friend describing serial injuries over decades led to the title being jotted on a cocktail nappy when friend went to the biffy.

What grabs the eye and ear from the title is the paradox of "play" set against "gruesome". And so it is, betimes, in life. When we laugh so hard we soon start to weep as in the head-to-tummy game of Ha! high schoolers used to play. How other peoples' accidents and pain tend to produce instant gawkers of many passersby. Had "Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thang" not been scooped for a 1973 movie it would work here for sure.

Two young people, Kayleen and Doug, first meet in the Catholic school nurse's office as third graders. They bond, awkwardly. And spend the next 30 years as misfits in co-dependency. He is the often-banged-up broken-boned tooth-missing reckless risk-taker. She is witty and sardonic, but equally broken, a self-injuring soul. That Joseph and the Pacific Theatre team are able to create not just a series of entertaining vignettes but deliver to viewers a believable and abiding friendship-through-wounds is no small achievement.

How it's all put together :  A two-hander, GPI relies on an artificial but purposeful construct by Joseph : from scene-to-scene, forward 15 years, back 10. Eight scenes in all -- two at the characters' mid-point age 23 -- that show them tending to one another's injuries as life's separate journeys take each of them from the nurse's office to hospitals to psych wards to the confines of their bedrooms as their wounds tot up over time. (Ben Brantley of the NYT oh-so-wittily noted "The play is just asking to be retitled 'Same Time, Next Scar'.")

At eight, Doug (Kenton Klassen) has tried an Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon bike-launch attempt off the school roof. His face is smashed. Kayleen (Pippa Johnstone) is seeing the nurse due to non-stop wretching, lit.& fig. : "My mom says it's because I have bad thoughts," she tells Doug. Intrigued by his messed up head, she asks him to lift the gauze so she can touch his wound. This is the first such exercise throughout the play -- the touching of hurt parts -- and it works both physically and metaphorically. Usually in rom-coms "Can I touch it?" refers to an erogenous zone. But these two characters are just friends, or are they? Or perhaps unrequited lovers of pain, his physical, hers psychic. Yes.

In a 2013 interview with Austin, TX's Capital T Theater, this very proposition was put directly to Mr. Joseph : Kayleen and Doug seem to float around that very narrow line of friendship and love. This seems like a very clear choice by you as a playwright. What intrigues you about that line between friendship and being in love? His answer : It's fucked up, frustrating and heartbreaking, and that can usually make for good drama.

For its part, meanwhile, the psychologist's handbook of disease diagnosis known colloquially as the DSM describes "behavioural spin" being "manifested as a continuously reinforced process leading (a person) to engage in masochistic activity, perpetuating itself, and binding the addict to his/her behaviour." Sounds about right here. Also the co-dependency piece. Kayleen is Doug's hands-on angel, he is her priest, perhaps. (In Grade 8 at a Cleveland Catholic middle school in 1987 Rajiv was voted the most likely in his class to take the vow and don the cloth. But he liked girls better than being an altar boy, so no go there.)

What the show brings to the stage : For folks (like me) unaware of Rajiv Joseph, this is a first-rate introduction. The man has a terrific ear for the rhythms, cadences and dynamics of language. His capture of realistic dialogue in turn reveals true sensitivity and empathy for broken hearts and wounded souls without getting country-rock soppy and cloying. Kayleen is forever calling Doug out for all the stupid human tricks he's constantly pulling (on a roof during a lightning storm; up a telephone pole in the rain; gleefully setting off firecrackers, at age 23 -- that results in him symbolically as well as actually blind in one eye) : "You're retarded!" she flings at him. "Hey," he protests, "that's real rude to retarded people." "I'm sorry I offended you," she snaps back.

Their relationship is complex and confusing, like teen-age "practice lovers" who become buddies, best friends, confidantes : part brother-&-sister, part fellow patients, part just two people desperately seeking one another but who can't break through their karmic shields to actually do so.

Which, presumably, is why there are regular multi-year gaps in their various re-connects for two who are supposedly best friends [Note-to-file for Rajiv Joseph : is this genuine-&-realistic in a social media universe?]

Kayleen is mentally ill, suffering repeating and worsening bouts of depression. She's a cutter, uses a box knife. Doug wants to be her break-through, her go-to problem fixer : "I wish I could do to you what you do to me," he tells her. "Do you think we could just pry ourselves out of here and go someplace else?" he asks, as close to a proposal as he'll ever make and she'll ever get. But Kayleen is too scared and wounded to go along. And so Doug, once more, just goes. Along his silly risky sort-of-macho antic way.

Production hi-lights that shine :  For newbies to it like me, Pacific Theatre at the old Chalmers Presbyterian Church on 12th-&-Hemlock is an open stage, some 400 square feet below a north bank of some 75 seats sloping down to it with another 70 or so mirroring back on the south bank.

Thus the actors on the stage are centred between the two flights of seats and are wholly visible at all times. No wings, no escape!

To start each of the eight sequences, they madly grab their costumes from clothes hooks right-&-left and dress as they wipe off the last scene's make-up and daub on this one's.  Bits of tuneful music -- everything from "Time After Time" to "Wrecking Ball" -- play along as backdrop.

Set designer Carolyn Rapanos centres the action on two webbed wooden settees that can be flipped on edge to form a funeral home garden wall or the boards of a hockey rink. Above are 3"-wide strips of torn and tattered hospital gauze criss-crossed and hanging down over them. They reflect the many years of shared wounds -- a tangled web indeed -- a theme that is mimicked in blood-red floor paint below.

Director Chelsea Haberlin continues to pad her increasingly impressive resume of successes with her blocking and stage directions. E.g. the costume changes between scenes required the actors to stay in character, which they did best as the giggly 8-year-olds to kick off the show, then as 38-year-olds for the final scene as a haunting acoustic cover by Charles Kelley of the normally shrill Miley Cyrus pop tune "Wrecking Ball" rains down on them mournfully. They exchange these pained vows that betray love regardless : "I can't be the reason you're alive" -&- "I'm sorry for our whole life right now." Sensing their mutual losses over time, they end the show recalling how as 13-year-olds they greeted dawn's early light and morning's blue skies after an all-nighter on the St. Mary Margaret School's playground swings. Touching for sure.

Acting pin-spots :  Both Pippa Johnstone and Kenton Klassen carry their characters' weight with equal finesse and nuance, albeit nearly 100% opposite in temperament. Their turns as 8- and 13-year-olds were especially a delight in the hoppy-jumpy nervous twitchery of those years. The joint vomit scene was a comic highlight no question.

In Scene 4, (age 28) Kayleen's monologue to Doug as he lies there in a coma after the lightning strike was as poignant as it was profane, Kayleen a loving effing angel anxiously and compulsively moisturizing her hands as she learns of his new fiancee Elaine. She recalls his outright protestation of love to her at her father's funeral 10 years back : "You can't marry that girl, Doug," she addresses him, unconscious. "What about me? All that stuff you told me at the funeral about 'The 10 top things anyone's done for me were by you...!' Well, I'm going away and you're going to have to come looking for me again," she says. I utterly teared up.

For his part, Klassen masters a goofy jock laugh that underscored each and every tale of derring-do gone grossly awry. From Scene 1 through Scene 7. Scene 8 found Doug pensive, resistant, resigned. A bittersweet wrap-up scene indeed.  

(BLR ed. note : Personally I thought Mr. Joseph's character graduation -- from mild-mannered risk-taker Doug with an achilles tendon issue to a cane-assisted flubby insurance guy to wheelchair paraplegic atop a Zamboni especially accommodated for him at play's end -- all this a bit over-the-top in character detail design I think. But that is mere quibble. See Addendum. Albeit not a Christian any longer, I concur with Artistic Director Reed's take on this script.)

Who gonna like :  As stated above, Rajiv Joseph is a playwright to pay attention to. Small-stage fans who like character studies done with wit and humour while exploring contemporary angst and neurosis sub-themes will enjoy this show as much as the 100+ Saturday matinee patrons did today. The complexity of people reaching out to one another, however haltingly and tentatively, is always a touching bit of live theatre to witness. Particularly when the stage characters the playwright crafted are backed up by actors who fully understand and embrace their roles. This is just such a performance.  

Particulars : Presented by Pacific Theatre.  At the Pacific Theatre stage, 12th & Hemlock.  Through April 16th. Run-time 95 minutes, no intermission.  Schedule information & tickets via Pacific Theatre or by phoning the box office @ 604.731.5518.

Production Crew : Written by Rajiv Joseph.  Director Chelsea Haberlin.  Set Designer Carolyn Rapanos.  Lighting Designer Phil Miguel.  Sound Designer Chris Adams.  Costume Designer Christopher David Gauthier. Stage Manager Shelby Bushell.  Production Manager Phil Miguel.  Technical Director Cougar Basi. 

Performers :  Pippa Johnstone.  Kenton Klassen. 

Addendum : From the program "A Note from the Artistic Director" :

This play? Why on earth?

Because Kenton and Pippa are in it. They staged it as their final [Pacific Theatre] apprentice project, they were terrific, and I figured more people needed to see them in it...

Because [it's] the best play title ever. Definitely the truest title : if you don't like the title, you won't like the play.

Because I really do love this play. Usually I go for story-driven scripts, rising action, this leads to that, reversals, all that dramaturgical stuff. This isn't that. Still it works for me : I'm drawn in, compelled, moved, fascinated.

And because...whether every viewer will see it this way or not, I find something spiritual in this play, something very close to the heart of my faith as a Christian. Two people who've been dealt really bad hands, two outsiders...the last, the least, the lost -- who suffer and fail a lot, who fall pretty low and don't even have bootstraps to pull themselves up by. Who somehow still manage to pull each other up. They've got pretty nearly nothing except a remarkable love for each other. And somehow that seems to be enough.

Maybe this play isn't religious, or even spiritual -- or maybe it's gospel. I don't know. Your mileage [sic] may vary, but I do know this : I find myself stirred in the same way I'm stirred by Easter, or friendship, or a small act of kindness or sacrifice.

I also think it's really funny. But maybe that's just me.

Ron Reed, Artistic Director, Pacific Theatre

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Killers Bonnie & Clyde set to music, dance

From the footlights :  Almost no one born before 1960 cannot remember the '67 sold-out s.r.o. smash movie by Arthur Penn, Bonnie & Clyde. It featured A-list actors Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons. And nosiree Bob, it warn't no consarn goofy musical neither. So that is the kind of challenge facing the theatre company Play on Words' production in the chummy Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive.

What you get is 15 actors participating in countless shoot-em-ups in banks, grocery stores, cops & robbers drawing a bead on one another while onlookers scramble & freeze. Doing so with song-&-dance routines to boot. Marry that action to a coupla sets of outlaw lovers in their 20's who share countless squeezes and a bunch of squabble, too. The question from all this that arises is simple : can such a show possibly inspire 2016 audiences 50 years after Penn's iconic motion picture. Answer : Yes! it can. And does, produced with zing and style by the POW troupe under challenging stage conditions.

How it's all put together : Clyde Barrow (Charlie Deagnon) has just bust out of prison with brother Buck (William Ford Hopkins). They meet Bonnie Parker (Sherry Freeman) along the road sniping over her broken down oil-burner of a car. They fix her ride, she agrees to hustle them into Dallas. And so the tale of USA's most notorious gangster lovers begins.

Script author Ivan Menchell described the pair for Playbill in 2011 : "Clyde had a penchant for mischief even as a young boy. Poverty made him into a criminal, but it was prison that turned him into a killer. As one inmate put it, 'Clyde entered prison a school boy but left a rattlesnake.' Bonnie, on the other hand, was motivated by an almost desperate need for attention and the determination to escape the profound poverty of her life." A waitress from Rowena, TX, Bonnie dreams big, says she wants to be in pictures, be a singer, be a poet. Not all that askew from what her grammar school teacher described as "a beautiful...little girl, she possessed seemingly a desire to do good and build for herself an ideal station in life." But soon she got the hots for life on the run instead, and the headlines, and editors who published her poems and some pix.

Enter composer Frank Wildhorn. He takes Menchell's description and cranks out some show tunes, a couple of rhythm-&-blues charts plus some solid gospel call-&-response sing-alongs whose titles and lyrics (by Don Black) sum up both the script and the sentiment of the story : "How 'Bout A Dance?" "This World Will Remember Us". "You Love Who You Love". "God's Arms Are Always Open". "Too Late To Turn Back Now". "Raise A Little Hell". "Dying' Ain't So Bad".

What the show brings to the stage :  With mild rebuke NYT's critic Ben Brantley four years back termed the play "a modest, mildly tuneful musical biography". In the Hollywood Reporter David Rooney echoed BB : "trite storytelling" whose "characters and their relationship never acquire much depth". "Many individual scenes engage, but overall the show is stubbornly unexciting," Rooney concluded, calling it "a crime spree [that] doesn't describe the drama's absence of vigor."

In part that might have been because they saw the show at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater in mid-Manhattan where there's seating for 1,079 butts, just slightly less than ACT's 1,216 seat Stanley Theatre on Granville Street. The Havana house, by contrast, holds 60-some. With entrance aisle, only 40 feet across by just 13-feet deep, roughly 500 square feet in all.

Maybe it's the frisky Play on Words troupe. Or perhaps it's Director Ryan Nunez's co-conspiracy with Choreographer Lyndsey Britten that energizes the cast under Musical Director Marquis Byrd. But POW has put together a production that is anything but! "stubbornly unexciting" or suffering an "absence of vigor". The show has verve and pizazz that small-theatre fans will find engaging, even though the meta-message delivers a cautionary tale for our times.

Redux Arthur Penn. His publicists crafted this catchy ad tagline : "They're young, they're in love, they kill people." Trouble is these days those descriptors apply, in real time, to violent jihadislam-cult killers like the San Bernardino couple or the Canada Day family picnic plotters, those desperate and pathetic wannabe bombers from nearby Surrey still on trial.  In such a world, no question one needs a super-charged suspension of disbelief to watch any kind of theatrical violence whatever, even when it's sugar-coated with "some show tunes, a couple of rhythm-&-blues charts plus some solid gospel call-&-response sing-alongs" on the side.

Production hi-lites of POW's show : No small feat to squeeze 15 actors and a 5-piece live band into 500 square feet in a narrow rectangle for virtually the entire 130 minutes of show. But between them, as noted above, Director Ryan Nunez and Choreographer Lyndsey Britten sussed out their stage, their characters, and the musical script well indeed. They filled the stage spaces with vignette settings where the supporting actors stayed universally in-character doing bits of stage business while the main action occurred centre stage. Nunez had Bonnie and Clyde plop onto the stage deck repeatedly, leaning against one another and nuzzling, to fine effect. 

The costume design by Marci Herron was a cross between Grandma's attic and Sally Ann, pretty well spot-on to depict the times. Jessica Snook's set design was a serviceable mix of scattered opera chairs and brocade furniture and fixings. The Model-A Ford, for its part, was endearingly risible, purposely designed no doubt to be as if on loan from the grandkids' summer backyard show.

Two numbers particularly by choreographer Britten were eye-grabbing pleasures : the "God's Arms Are Always Open" gospel with a weaving arms-to-the-heavens Sunday service ensemble in Act I, and the sarcastic, bitter "Made In America" protest anthem by the troupe to kick off Act II. Very capable and resourceful design well executed by the cast.

Musical Director Marquis Byrd no doubt had a direct hand in selecting the singers of the Wildhorn / Black songs. His choices, to a person, did not disappoint in the least. Smart singing by all.

Acting pin-spots : Leads Freeman and Deagnon as B-&-C of course carried much of the script, and delightfully so. Both held character with loving facial repartee throughout; their visceral spats, hissing atop one another, were crisp & poignant acting. 

In support, brother Buck, William Ford Hopkins opposite Cassady Ranford as wife Blanche were both as compelling as their siblings. Ranford particularly evinced great poise as the conflicted, God-fearing hairdresser wife who found herself dragged into the Barrow Gang only because her love for Buck trumped -- if in today's world that's not now a poisonous verb -- her fear of God's wrath. 

Who gonna like : A young company founded by Capilano U. drama grads, POW is theatre that should be seen by young actors and musicians and stage performers of all variety who want a first-hand look at what imagination and creativity and focus and concentration on detail can accomplish in minimal space with minimal resources and even fewer dollars. The Havana stage is literally, not just figuratively, coffee house theatre. 60 seats! My long legs and big feet in Row 1 almost tripped the actors more than once they were so close as they rambled and danced across the stage. Older folk who know the story of The Poet and The Bandit -- B.C.'s Susan Musgrave and her ex-con bank robber husband Stephen Reid -- will find some lyrical parallels afoot here as well. The future of B.C. professional live theatre is alive and well and growing and prospering. This show is proof!

Particulars : Bonnie & Clyde the Musical.  Composer Frank Wildhorn. Lyrics Don Black. Book by Ivan Menchell. Produced by Play On Words Productions. Presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International. At Havana Theatre in the Havana Restaurant on Commercial Drive across from Brittania Park [my favourite Vancouver street]. Until April 9th. Tickets via Eventbrite as well as at the door on the night of the show ($25 g.a. \ $22 provably students -or- seniors).

Production Team : Producers Sabrielle McCurdy Foreman, Theo Budd, Ryan Nunez. Director Ryan Nunez.  Musical Director Marquis Byrd. Choreographer Lyndsey Britten.  Fight Choreographer Sylvie LaRiviere. Costume Designer Marci Herron. Set Designer Jessica Snook. Props Master/Design CJ McGillvray.  Sound Designer Clare Wyatt. Lighting Designer Andrew Chu. Stage Managers Kaja Jean, Ziggy Shultz. Front of House Coordinator Chloe Rowat. 

Orchestra : Marquis Byrd (Keyboard). Jamison Ko (Percussion). Clarice Scop (Fiddle). Adrian Sowa (Guitar). Joanna Yoo (String & electric bass).

Performers :  Jessie Alvarez (Deputy Hamer / Guard).  Henry Beasley (Ted Hinton / Fight Captain).  Nathan Cottell (Sheriff Schmid).  Charlie Deagnon (Clyde Barrow).  Sabrielle McCurdy Foreman (Preacher / Judge). Sherry Freeman (Bonnie Parker). William Ford Hopkins (Buck Barrow). YooRa Kang (Stella / Shopkeeper). Steven Masson (Henry Barrow / Joe / Bud Russel / Bob Alcorn). Taylor McKee (Young Bonnie Parker / Customer). Cassady Ranford (Blanche Barrow). Chloe Rowat (Cumie Barrow / Governor Ferguson / Front of House). Jason Sakai (Young Clyde Barrow / Archie). Stefanie Stanley (Emma Parker). Annastasia Unger (Trisch / Teller).

Addendum -- Director's Notes [from show program]

It's for the love of a man that I'm gonna have to die.
I don't know when, but I know it can't be long.  - Bonnie Parker

The idea to mount this production of Bonnie and Clyde : The Musical in Vancouver came from a side comment I made while listening to How 'bout a Dance. "We should do this show!" I said. Now, a year or so later we're opening here at the wonderful Havana Theatre. Frank Wildhorn creates such an incredible score and script, telling stories of the real events from the lives of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. What I love about this show is the fight between what is right, and what is wrong. The hope is that the audience should feel confused on why they are rooting for these cold blooded killers. The cast that we have assembled have brought these historical characters back from the dead and shine a light on a time where America would do anything to be on the front page.

I am completely floored by the talent we have accumulated for this production. From the amazing young cast, to the hardworking crew. Many people in this production are making their debuts; from fighting and sound design, to music direction and direction, I am proud to be a part of a company who offers chances to young people who deserve them. Working with young professionals who are in the same boat as myself has been a rewarding and creative experience that I will remember for the rest of my life.

You've read the story of Jesse James, of how he lived and died.
If you're still in need of something to read,
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde. - Bonnie Parker

Ryan Nunez, Director

Auditory caution : In the diminutive Havana room it is strictly festival seating.  Thus best to arrive 20 minutes early to secure a perch to the east of centre aisle. The band is downstage right, and sitting too close to these talented and eager players will cause, on occasion, some difficulty hearing the singers' lyrics when they are positioned close to stage left.

Foody recommendation : If you have not had the pleasure of dining at the Havana on their sidewalk deck, do so. A Cuban rice-&-red bean bowl and side salad with avocado vinegarette was scrumptious and only about $12. 

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