Brothel #9 hints at hope in the shadows

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 :  Brothel #9 is not for the faint-of-heart. Sex slavery. Rape. Tortuous screaming in the show's opening moments. Violent undercurrents constant. Just life as it is and what it is for these characters trapped in Calcutta's sex trade ghetto (the city now known as Kolkata). 

Dreamt up by South Asian-Canadian playwright Anusree Roy, the show resulted from numerous trips Roy took to this northeast Indian city specifically to interview sex workers, their pimps, and the cops who are bribed to not only look the other way but have their way with these women they "protect".  Ms. Roy was also influenced in her imagining by the troubled abandoned roaming teens she worked with in India's inner city core years earlier and their utter vulnerability (the blinding scene from Slumdog Millionaire popped instantly into mind watching her script play out).

The show focuses on four characters. The youngster Rekha who naively thinks she's being sent to Calcutta to take up her first real job : making light bulbs. Fact is she's been sold to the pimp Birbal by her sister's husband who drops her off outside the "factory". The madam of the brothel Jamuna who is resigned begrudgingly and fatalistically to this life. When he isn't hunting out women to be sex-for-hire "playthings", Birbal spends his time going back to his village to care for his wife who is dying of "the monkey disease" -- AIDS. Last but not least Salaudin, the rapist married cop who has been Jamuna's Tuesday / Thursday john for years but finds his tumescence aiming elsewhere now.

WYSIWYG :  The expression "It is what it is..." is neither nihilistic nor impotent in circumstances as desperate as these. To borrow a familiar Vancouver DTES refrain from their annual photo calendar, it's a belief there's hope in the shadows.

And so it is with 34-year-old Roy's script (first produced in 2011). How enslaved now in this ghetto, Rekha (Adele Noronha) learns to adjust to her imprisonment in order, she hopes, to buy her freedom from Balbir (David Adams) and return to the rural village life where she grew up. As the saying has it, the only way out is through. To escape -- whether physically or emotionally or morally -- one must forgive. But remember, too. Have compassion, yes, but keep the faith and not succumb to what lesser souls surely is flat-out futility.

Through just four characters playwright Roy manages to make the universe personal. In Jamuna (Laara Sadiq) we see a complex survivor who is resigned to her life. She makes fish soup and sings Indian lullabies to herself even while Salaudin rapes the virgin god-fearing innocent Rekha one room away. Birbal is a violent but also compassionate man. Thus the paradox of him being a pimp but caring deeply for his wife, too. Salaudin (Shekhar Paleja) claims to fall in love with this young woman he earlier raped. For her part, Rekha's determination to liberate herself from her prison is undiminished even as she faces profound life setbacks.

Production values that enhance the show :  Upon entering the Cultch's Lab auditorium I was instantly struck dumb by Drew Facey's set and attendant props. A more detailed and realistic rendering of big-city back alley brick, exposed wires, and failed plaster I have never seen equaled on any Vancouver stage. Worth the price of a ticket just to see this !

Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh's brilliant saris worked marvellously both as costumes and as opportunities under director Katrina Dunn for continuous stage business by the two women principals. Lighting design by Adrian Muir captured alleyway starkness with subtly, while Rup Sidhu's moody melancholic sitar-&-vocals supported the Facey / Muir milieux viscerally. Completely "unrepresentative". Totally honest & genuine, all of it.

Acting pin-spots : Slogging my way out of EastVan amidst the Culture Crawl crawlers -- and hitting every red light between Vennables and the Knight Street bridge -- it occurred to me I witnessed this afternoon three absolutely paramount, gripping, breathtaking performances.

A more forceful and compelling Birbal could not be imagined than what opera veteran David Adams brought. As noted, a paradox. A pimp. A loving husband. A bully. A buddy. Utterly compelling, rich, nuanced, profundo.

For her part I could watch Laara Sadiq forever. As the fatally compromised and complex Jamuna she was superb. To imagine her as Lady Macbeth or Lear's chippy daughter Cordelia is just heaven to think of. In jazz they talk of "chops". Sadiq has irresistible unconquerable chops.

And then there's Adele Noronha as Rekha, named by her late mother after Bollywood superstar (nearly 200 films) Banurekha Ganesan. The range of Noronha's emotions from terror to s.t.w. "businesswoman" to the moral but forgiving judge of Jamuna and Salaudin as she engineers her escape to nurture a new life, lit. & fig. -- Noronha grabbed me by the throat. I cannot remember a Vancouver stage character and performer who has brought on such welcome tears in me. 

Who gonna like : Exceptional. Stupendous. Astounding.  From what I have written above, you will know whether this is for you or not. 

Particulars :  Produced by Touchstone Theatre as part of the Diwali Fest in association with The Cultch. On at the VanCity Cultural Lab stage through November 27. Run-time two hours including intermission. Happy hour at the bar until 30 minutes before show time. Festival seating : 1/2 hour ahead to grab the best is recommended. Parking in the area often "Residents Only" so plan ahead. Schedules and tickets @ the cultch.com or by phone 604.251.1363.

Production crew: Director Katrina Dunn (her final production as Touchstone Theatre Artistic Director [19 years]). Set & Props Designer Drew Facey.  Costume Designer Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh.  Lighting Designer & Production Manager Adrian Muir.  Music Supervisor Rup Sidhu.  Stage Manager Joanne P.B. Smith.  Assistant Stage Manager & Props Support Shila Amin.  Sound Editor & Technical Director Scott Zechner.  Fight Choreographer David Bloom.  Accent Coach Supriya Bhattacharyya.  Head Carpenter Adam Curry.  Carpenters Robert Allen, Jesse Hendrickson & Jesse Trayler.  Scenic Painter Justus Hayes [Ed. Note : Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!]  Transportation Randy Biro.  Scenery built at Great Northern Way Scene Shop.  Publicist Jodi Smith.  

Performers :  David Adams (Birbal).  Adele Noronha (Rekha).  Shekhar Paleja (Salaudin).  Laura Sadiq (Jamuna).  Munish Sharma (various johns).

-30-

Long Division is the curve of math made human

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)

Editor's note : As we are unable to attend this remount by Pi Theatre, the following is a redux version of BLR's November 18, 2016 review of the play from its original Gateway Theatre co-production. 
The principal actors and production team are the same.

The Pi cast whose interactions form a clever, compelling & chilling Moebius strip of life.

From the footlights : You know the theory of "six degrees of separation". Roughly put, that total strangers who meet anywhere in the world will in short order discover some manner of common connection between them. SFU Professor Peter Dickinson's Long Division is analogous. A kind of Moebius strip of human experience -- that half-twisted connected loop you learned in Grade 5 science class -- such is what links the show's seven characters to a single tragic event that pulls them all together and tears them apart at the same time.

As the Pi Theatre Productions promo describes the show, "the three male and four female characters use number theory, geometry and logic to trace their connection to each other and to the moment that changed their lives." 

According to Mr. Dickinson's blog, the show involves over 80 converging cues that link the show's sound, lighting, stage activity and video/projections. In addition "there is the fact that movement in Long Division is operating both on the level of traditional theatre blocking and in relation to an additional choreographic score." Pi calls the show "a multimedia, physical theatre play about the mathematics of human connection". 

How it's all put together :  Physical theatre relies on the motions of the actors to demonstrate what they're talking about, and what they're also not saying. In the choreography of Lesley Telford, the actors intercross and dissect and bridge one another in rhythmic spiccato marches and jaunts to unmarked spots on a diminutive 15 x 5 meter stage surface. Their gesticulations are often like pinocchio marionettes done in syncopated jerkiness. Their actions are semaphores to reflect, I think, the angularity of the serial mathematical propositions being bandied about in the dialogue. Clearly the choreographic debt to Marcel Marceau's famed "art of silence" mime technique is also immense. For the actors, a lifetime of doing party charades would certainly warrant a 1, not a 0, in this binary universe of ours.

Sequentially the actors present their characters' stories through extended monologues while miming and intersecting with the others. Scads of mathematical theories are reviewed or mentioned. Dizzyingly so. Just like Grade 11 discovery math was, is and always will be to many. But in linear terms, much of the focus really boils down to the notion of probability. The "point" of play is perhaps best expressed by the character Lucy who speaks for millions of Canadians when she talks of our national lottery ticket mania : "It's a mix of risk and certainty," she says, "the fulfilling of expectations : even when you know what's going to happen, you're still surprised. It's never about beating the odds, it's about not succumbing to them" she says to end Act 1. (Which, just 10 days after Election USA, is an utterly apropos life observation here in North America.)

What the show bring to the stage :  This script is ingenious, no question. A brainiac romp more different by far than any of the other 170-odd plays I've seen the past four years. The descriptors noted above in the Pi promotional notes are accurate. A humanities student mostly, I nevertheless had two favourite alt-subjects in high school : geometry and physics. Geometry for its postulates and theorems so like philosophy. Physics for its mix of space, time and energy -- also akin to philosophy. 

Fair enough. But over the course of the night the audience is introduced to three or more dozen mathematicians and their various propositions dealing with cardinal, ordinate, nominal numbers etc. etc. School principal Grace Ingram (Linda Quibell), herself an unsuccessful English teacher, says this about these nameless, faceless digits she's become accustomed to pushing to and fro as an education bureaucrat : "You can count with them and you can count on them." Hmnnn. An ex-education bureaucrat myself, back in '75 I remember the school district comptroller -- when directed to project the cost of teacher salary increases -- asked : "And just what would you like the number to look like, pray tell?"

Along the way primarily two contemporary social subjects are investigated : bullying and bigotry. Both of which lead to a calamitous and dreadful outcome at the local high school. Linkages are made to numbers and what they mean in certain religious and number theory and astrologic-type contexts, but in the end the appropriate algorithms and calculus play themselves out with a kind of inevitability. The seven interactive agents all become "an empty set that contains all there is, gathering all our hurts together".

Acting pin-spots : Crisp and keen performances by each and every actor on the snuggish Gateway Studio B stage, a house that seats just under 100 people. Best lines by playwright Dickinson are reserved for Lucy Ganardi (Melissa Oei) whose character is an aspiring actress who to make ends meet has to sling beer for Jo Garofsky (Jennifer Lines) at her downtown bar. Lucy quite gets the math jones around probability and Moebius-style outcomes that are the central conceit of this script -- in the end we all wind up where we started -- but she believes striving for happiness is a better goal than mesmerizing over numbers in this curve of time we live in.

When the inevitable "Do you believe in god?" question arises amongst this casual assembly of agnostics, Islamics, gays and straights, I was put to mind of Stephen Hawking's response to the question : "I believe in the power that creates and expands the universe," he said. Amen. A physics / philosophy hook that resonates more with me, personally, than an extended and at times microscopic examination of integers and the true mathematical meaning of "zero". (Re-scripting this play through the lens of quantum physics would be a hoot!)

Who gonna like : As noted above, a "more different play" in Vancouver I've not seen (though I know the PuSH and Fringe festivals also offer much avant garde postmodern stuff that punches through the 4th wall and plops itself boldly into the audience's collective and often unsuspecting lap). There's a whiz-kid element to this canny and utterly idiosyncratic script that folks who, quote, "hate all things math" would likely find somewhat off-putting. Without question the two women in my family would be front-&-centre in that category. But for lovers of unique, inventive, and novel small-stage scripts and drama, as obviously do I, once again Pi Theatre Productions brings to the fore a show filled with zest and imagination galore -- not only in the acting but in the production originality of lights, set and math equation projections as well. A night I will remember many moons from now no question.

Particulars : Produced by Pi Theatre Productions originally in collaboration with Gateway Theatre (November 2016). Performed at Annex Theatre, 823 Seymour Street, Vancouver.  From April 26-30 [six performances].  Run-time 100 minutes including intermission.  Schedule and tickets for both evening and matinee shows by phone at Pi office, 604.8720.1861 or via Pi Theatre

Creative Team : Playwright Peter Dickinson.  Director Richard Wolfe (Artistic Director Pi Theatre).  Assistant Director Keltie Forsyth.  Choreographer Lesley Telford.  Composer Owen Belton.  Set Designer Lauchlin Johnston.  Costume Designer Connie Hosie.  Lighting Designer Jergus Oprsal.  Projection Designer Jamie Nesbitt.  Production Manager Jayson Mclean.  Stage Manager Jethelo E. Cabilete.  Dramaturg DD Kugler.

Performers :  Anousha Alamian (Naathim Zaidi).  Jay Clift (Reid Hamilton).  Nicco Lorenzo Garcia (Paul Vinoray).  Jennifer Lines (Jo Garofsky).  Melissa Oei (Lucy Gunardi). Linda Quibell (Grace Ingram).  Kerry Sandomirsky (Alice Evans).

Addendum :  In his November blog, playwright Dickinson noted : "Three and a half weeks of rehearsal plus one workshop week on the script plus four odd years of writing and revising and dramaturging the original idea : all to get to this point. When you balance the run of the show (even including the remount at the Annex in April) against the length of time for its development, it seems an unfair equation. But I can live with the math."

And from the original program notes, further observations by Mr. Dickinson : "I didn't set out to write a play about math. But the story I wanted to tell -- about seven random strangers connected by tragedy -- seemed to demand it. Math became a way for my characters to abstract an event that was too painful to confront by other means. In the course of my research I discovered that, as the 'science of patterns,' there is a reason why we often turn to math to account for the mysteries of our universe. I also discovered that our own relationship to the universe, and to each other, can only every be additive : 0 + 1. Likewise in the theatre one can never go it alone...[folks were] willing to take a risk on a quirky play about how people divide into each other. If, for better or worse, theatre is partly a numbers game, I can only say that in my case those numbers have aligned in a very special way."

-30-

Miss Shakespeare wows 'em all over again

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 :  In Elizabethan / Jacobean England, women were forbidden to perform on stage. Men played women, boys played girls. But if as a woman your creative juices flow and you've got Wm. Shakespeare's DNA coursing through your veins as his younger daughter, being told you can't do theatre just fires you up. You gotta do what you gotta do. Such is the conceit behind the Tracey Power / Steve Charles musical Miss Shakespeare.

Power imagines for her play Shakespeare's daughter Judith who is not just a beer slinger at a local pub. She's a frustrated unpublished & unproduced playwright with skills not equal to Dad's maybe, but notable and consequential. Judith rounds up her pals nicknamed The Daily Gossips. She convinces them to rebrand as a troupe of rebels who're gonna put on a play even if they've got to stuff their trousers with gherkins to properly present their parts.

After rehearsing in the basement of The Cage pub a day a week for months on end, they decide to go public in drag as men in nearby Coventry just to see if they can get away with it.

How it's all put together :  Women in cotton skivvies debating whether it should be a squash or a cucumber or a turnip to tuck into their knickers. Properly stuffed, they troupe forth : "Here in The Cage we believe / That making theatre is like making a child. / If you want to be truly successful / You need more than just a penis."

Almost as if addressing an imagined all-woman audience, they chime in chorus : "Come see what you're missing, the passion of life, see what you're pissing away...!" And further goad and prod us spectators : "If it's passion you seek, it doesn't come to those who are weak!"

The storyline rhymes off the women's grievances against their cloistered lives, their plight. Margaret (Erin Moon) has a husband who is a righteous starch in the church but perpetually unstarched in bed. Their marriage unconsummated after years and years. Bastard orphan Hanna (Pippa Mackie) whose whole life is a quest for her real self -- and if playacting somehow brings out the true her, great. Poor Katherine (Medina Hahn) who miscarries some 15 times and whose anxieties seem to prevent her womb from carrying to term a child for her loving husband.

What the show brings to the stage :  Borrowing from the lingo of Wave 2 Feminism, Judith (Meaghan Chenosky) accuses dad WS of theft of voice : "You write about us as if you know who we are!" She argues with him to ditch a certain Thomas Fletcher who apparently helped WS out on his later plays after WS had taken sick. Let me be your ghostwriter, she pleads. But Dad demurs. He fears the family will be humiliated if he's outed about using a woman -- particularly his own daughter -- to help him compose his so-revered theatrical stuff.

So Judith carries on with The Gossips. After they stuff their britches Hanna chortles : "If the shape looks right the illusion is real!" and then sing "Keep your pizzle in your pants! We'll be ruined if it drops!"  Shortly this chummy little sorority is riven, however. Judith's older sister Susannah (Caroline Cave) announces she must quit for fear she will be uncloaked and embarrass her 6-year-old daughter Bess. And her doctor husband's career & reputation face ruin -- all over a tumescent turnip. 

Crestfallen Judith responds understandingly but stakes her own claim shortly : "The life I saved was my own / Here's my voice, here I am / Forgive my form, forget my face / Here I am!" The women go to Coventry. They perform a show called "Atlanta" -- women acting as men playing women. The climax of their show brings out "huge anger and shocked confusion at all their wrongs" that are made plain for Coventry to see.

But like Uncle Bill's All's Well That Ends Well, at the end of Miss Shakespeare now grown-up niece Bess greets her aunt Judith as her personal hero & saint & muse a half century later -- Aunt Judith her inspiration, not the Bard. Bess proudly announces how she's become a playwright herself and is not only accepted in polite society but is about to perform in London. She chuckles "Grandfather would be very confused by it all!" right before the chorus's final triumphant anthem : "Come see what you're missing / The passion of life / See what you're pissing away / Don't piss it away!"

Production values that enhance the piece : As noted 18 months back when it premiered in Vancouver, Power and her co-founder of The Escape Artists theatre company Steve Charles have produced a remarkable and tuneful script. The numerous songs mostly poke fun at men's peccadilloes then and now. Undue finger-pointing and sardonic put-downs are foregone -- despite having ample reason to go there -- instead a lighter tone punctuates and populates the tunes and lyrics. Accompanied by piano and string bass, the musical mood is a mix of honky-tonk that meets up with Kurt Weill who chases down Jacques Brel. Not derivative at all -- this is very original stuff -- but reminiscent nevertheless of such storied musical pedigree that precedes them. 

Director James MacDonald with Ms. Power has put together some excellent footwork in the characters' blocking and choreography. Similarities with certain Les Miserables show-stopping numbers was particularly effective in Act I's closer, "The Littlest Soldier", where the women decide to go public "wearing the balls of men".

As before, the cast were all well-coached to project their expressions full throttle and be wholly demonstrative in their cavorts about the stage by choreographer Power. The moody pub basement set (Cory Sincennes, designer) with its distressed furniture and matching Jacobean outfits (Barbara Clayden, costume designer) joined company with a swack of toga-like sequences with cloths flung about like angelic shrouds -- "Hell in disguise" Isabel (Tracey Power) proclaims. All of it visually rich and lit with subtlety and nuance (Itai Erdal, lighting designer).

Acting pin-spots : As Judith, Meaghan Chenosky was the only newbie in this year's remount. While a bit timid in the opening scenes, she grew considerably more forceful on the night. Her arguments with Dad (Susinn McFarlen en masque) were vivid and compelling. Caroline Cave as Susannah once again turned in a brava! performance that grasped fully the nuances demanded by the times. How to remain faithful to sister Judith while respectful of her doctor husband's career and her young family's public reputation. 

Susinn McFarlen reprised her narrator's role along with the Dad Bill bits. Her resonant rounded pitch of voice brought to the Firehall the same energy and connectivity she wowed the crowd with at Performance Works in 2015. 

Medina Hahn's soliloquy lament for each of her dead 15 children -- who she named and imagined real-life roles for -- was utterly touching. Pippa Mackie perfectly named for her peppery part, while Erin Moon as Margaret was touching. Ms. Power also perfectly named for her feisty Isabel : she would be one "littlest soldier" I'd not want to joust with.

Who gonna like : My wife summed it up succinctly and precisely. "Anyone who loves theatre will love this show," she announced during our ride back to Tsawwassen. Yes. And, timing being important, Miss Shakespeare is the perfect aperitif and reassuring nightcap to the USA polling booth events of yesterday. The chance for the country to at long last elect its first woman President fell prey to a quirky time-worn institution called the Electoral College. Despite the fact that Ms. Clinton had 200,000 more ballots cast in her favour than her opponent managed. This is clever playwriting. Clever songwriting. Clever play-within-a-play-within-a-play house of mirrors stuff. Tuneful, joyful, inspiring. Can't ask for much more than that anywhere anytime.

Particulars : Produced by Musical TheatreWorks in association with the Firehall Arts Centre. Book & Lyrics by Tracey Power.  Music by Power and Steve Charles.  Performances November 5-26. Tickets and schedule through Firehall Arts Centre firehallartscentre.ca.  Run-time 120 minutes including intermission.

Production crew : James MacDonald (Director).  Steve Charles (Musical Director / Sound Designer). Tracey Power (Choreographer).  Anna Kuman (Assistant Choreographer).  Barbara Clayden (Costume Designer).  Cory Sincennes (Set Designer). Itai Erdal (Lighting Designer).  Peter Jotkus (Stage Management).  Tanya Schwaerzle (Apprentice Stage Manager). 

Musicians : Anne Duranceau (String bass).  Bonnie Northgraves (Piano).

Peformers : Caroline Cave.  Meaghan Chenosky.  Medina Hahn.  Pippa Mackie.  Susinn McFarlen.  Erin Moon.  Tracey Power. 

Addendum #1 : In 2016 Miss Shakespeare garnered the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Production. In the Playwright's Notes for that show Power noted : "...What inspired me to write a play with all women? Was it political? Truthfully, I just fell in love with a story, and I wanted to tell it. The questions have been on my mind, though as recent job studies show that there is a 70/30 civision of men and women in the arts...In the 400 years (since WS's death) is 30% enough?" she asked.

With thanks anew to Marsha Lederman for her May 2, 2015 Globe & Mail piece "Women, long underrepresented in the [live theatre] industry, are pushing back", the following metrics are telling. 

Statistics from North America and Britain reveal the gender-representation imbalance in professional theatre. Women currently comprise the majority of university theatre graduates in all disciplines. They also consume some 60% of seats at professional theatre festivals like Vancouver's Bard on the Beach. Yet only some 20% of produced plays in Canada are written by women, though 50% of the Playwright Guild's membership are women. 

Addendum #2 :  In The Firehall program for the current run, Ms. Power elaborates : "It's a strange realization when you find yourself talking about your characters like they're your close friends. This past summer I travelled to Stratford Upon Avon, but unlike the thousands of other tourists, I was there to see where Judith Shakespeare lived, not her father.  To stand in front of what was once The Cage Tavern, and imagine all I had written, taking place in there. It was incredible. Over the past eight years Miss Shakespeare has grown from a notebook of strange ideas into a story about seven women whose strengths I admire, and whose passion inspires me every day. I could not imagine living in a world where I was not allowed to create, it's a part of who I am, and my wild imagination, although ridiculous at times, has always been encouraged by my family and friends. To think only 400 years ago, this wouldn't have been the case."

Addendum #3 :  The Judith Shakespeare imagined by Tracey Power in what she termed her "saucy new musical" last year bears no known actual, factual resemblance to William Shakespeare's younger daughter Judith who was the surviving twin of brother Hamnet who died at age 11 from flu or scarlet fever or plague. 

The Judith of official record was another 17th century working class mom who for a time slung pints at the local pub in fact called -- but also symbolically -- The Cage.

A couple of months before WS's demise in 1616, Judith married a local philandering vintner named Thomas Quiney. At about the same time it became known that a previous mistress along with the baby had died in childbrith. Outraged and humiliated, on his deathbed WS cut Quiney out of his will. The coincidental juxtaposition in Miss Shakespeare between the characters Judith and Margaret was not borne of historical fact, just some clever dramatic creativity by Ms. Power to inject additional spice and irony into her script.

Subsequently the real-life Thomas Quiney and Judith had three boys, the first of whom they named Shakespeare. He died in infancy at age one. The other two boys were also taken by flu or scarlet fever or plague years later, dying some months apart when each was in their teens. 

-30-

Detroit is definitely USA's central nervous system

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 : Lisa D'Amour's Detroit was written in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 sub-prime mortgage cataclysm that brought about the worst recession since 1959. Widespread job losses, foreclosures on mortgages, 1.41 million personal bankruptcy declarations in 2009. One needs to look at these miseries through a prism of what life was romanticized to have been like in suburban America in the post-war 50's boom. 

A middle class 30-something couple live in an unnamed suburban enclave -- it could be outside of Motor City but it might equally be some other suburb by some other rusting-out big city in Anywhere, USA. Detroit as metaphor for decay & entropy. Residents struggle to keep up appearances but there are gloomy clouds overhead. Ben (Joel Wirkkunen) has lost his job as a bank loan officer, though wife Mary (Jennifer Copping) clings to her paralegal job in the city despite a daily vodka haze and her Internet surfing habits. 

Hubby insists he is hell-bent to self-educate. He wants to mount an internet site offering subscriptions to his financial planning services. Particularly designed, he says, to appeal to debt-burdened fellow suburbanites. The very premise sounds sketchy. Mary nags him mercilessly about his slow progress.

Next door in a house largely gone south, new renters have just moved in, Sharon (Luisa Jojic) and Kenny (Aaron Craven). They are recovering addicts who met some months back in rehab. They are trying to go straight : she works in a call centre and he is a warehouse labourer. It's as if they're squatters. They have no furniture other than their mattress and a dog-shredded stuffed chair. Until Mary gifts them a Sally Ann coffee table as ugly as it is cheap.

How it's all put together : What is more an American tradition than the backyard BBQ? When Ben and Mary realize there actually is a couple living next door -- furniture or no -- they invite them over for steaks on the barby. Soon it will become a series of such backyard parties as the couples get to know one another better. And the plot and characterizations will morph from a mild-&-brief Flintstones start-up to full-on The Simpsons in a nanosecond. 

D'Amour employs incisive mordant wit, particularly in Sharon's character. Her manner is both bleak and humorously discerning. The brave new world of the American 21st century ushered in by George Bush looks to D'Amour to be more an unraveling than an unfolding. Still, there are yuks galore that underscore all the economic jittery and fears. No question the vaunted American dream appears mostly smoke-&-mirrors. Upward mobility followed by a comfy retirement is pure Norman Rockwell -- the late illustrator's sentimentality is ripe for D'Amour's sniggery.

What the show brings to the stage : The truth of D'Amour's script lies here. These are not us over-fortunate Boomers who went hippie and if we managed to dodge the VietNam bullet then quickly sold out to suits, short hair, jobs and mortgages. These are Millennials. A lot of fatalistic nods at living for the moment. Less "mindfulness" in all this, however, than endless escapist vapours both legal and not.

It is said that luck is what happens when opportunity and preparation meet up. And trite as such fatherly advice might be, there is truth there, too. What roles do fate and chance play in the great 1st World scheme of things? In the play's only truly serious soliloquy, Sharon confesses to Mary about her core demon, her addictive soul, and how drugs have killed off her entitlement mentality. The next high is what counts. That is her patron saint.

"Every day really is a new day," Sharon wants to believe, "but Mary, I open my eyes every morning and all I want is a pipe to smoke. It's like there's a fire burning in the centre of my head and the pipe is the water that will put it out. I'm supposed to set goals and take night classes that will expand my horizons. And I guess that works. But to be honest I feel like the real opportunities are the ones that fall into your lap. Like winning the lottery or someone's rich uncle needing a personal assistant. That almost happened to me once. And everything would have been different."  

Lisa D'Amour has a visceral grasp of absurdity, of magnified social disaffection, of hapless characters who in becoming cartoon caricatures of themselves are, ironically, somehow more "real" in the process. 

Acting pin-spots :  Lisa Jojic as Sharon is a scene-stealer from moment one thanks to D'Amour's depiction of her as a breathless, antic and desperate junkie trying to play clean. And she has the manic buzzy dialogue to go with it filled with non-sequiturs and malapropisms and trippy leaps of logic and diction. 

Research reveals the Ben character is often given nebbish treatment. Not so by Joel Wirkkunen. His gut-level fear about life after his bank severance runs out is palpable. The acidic spats he has with Mary that she reports to Sharon reveal an unkempt untidy and unsettled soul writ large here.

Mary is the classic reasonably-high-functioning alcoholic by day, an unholy wretch of a drunk by night. Well executed by Jennifer Copping.

As Kenny, Aaron Craven's best moments are near the end when he tries to convince Ben they should go to a strip club and have a lap-dance or two. The girls are away, ostensibly camping a mere 12 miles out of town. When the women return all a-giggle after serial misadventures, the drooly strip-club venture is obviously off. To follow this detumescent moment for the lads, D'Amour creates a final scene with the two couples that is 100% surreal and bizarre. 

A wee beef with the playwright : At the end D'Amour felt compelled, for some reason, to interject a narrator character -- even named him Frank so we'd "get" his purpose. Tells the tale of this suburb, its genesis, its neighbourly purpose, its central clubhouse (almost assuredly modelled after the North Rosedale neighbourhood of Detroit), its community focus, the feel-good vibes and self-satisfied good fortune folks living there then felt they had. And probably did. But. Any semi-intelligent audience would have been quite capable to infer all that Frank was being so frank about. Quite possibly this was a dramatic faux pas by D'Amour that helped her lose the Pulitzer Prize to Bruce Norris's superior Clybourne Park in 2010. Still, wee quibble this.

Who gonna like : Edgy, timely, gritty stuff is always the grist for the mitchandmurray theatre grill. And the Studio 16 stage on 7th Avenue is plenty small enough to bring all the energy of the playwright's insights and the characters' dialogue right into the audience's face. The production was postponed from its summer date due to a complete absence of arts funding "from the usual suspects", though no reasons were stated. So crowdfunding coughed up the money to allow the show to go on. 

Mamet fans. Albee fans. Ionesco fans. You are the target audience of this script and this tight-&-timely production. 

The words of the playwright Lisa D'Amour herself should tell you whether this is your kind of show or not :

"There's a sense of an ecstatic self that wants to burst out of you that doesn't make a lot of sense. That's hard to put into words. But that you have to sort of suppress in order to get through the day by the rules of polite, civilized society. How do you grapple with these two sides of yourself -- the civilized self and the self that has all sorts of inner cravings and yearnings, whether those be sexual or a desire to be wild? That idea is [always] coming out in my plays."

Whether HRC becomes USA President or not, it is the epoch of Drumpf and Daesh. They have lots in common. Take no prisoners. The "rules of polite society" are, alas, a quickly forgotten romantic notion from days gone by. Dog eat dog. Kill or be killed. Survival of the fittest. The characters of Detroit play out this pathos compellingly.

Particulars :  Playwright Lisa D'Amour. Produced by Mitch and Murray Productions in association with Anne Marie Deluise. On thru November 19th at the Studio 16 on West 7th at Fir. Run-time 100 minutes with no intermission. Phone 604.872.0075. 

Production team :  Director Lois Anderson.  Co-Producer Anne Marie Deluise.  Publicist\PR Kate Isaac. Stage Manager Jennifer Wilson.  Set Designer David Roberts.  Lighting Designer Conor Moore.  Sound Design Dylan McNulty.  Communications / Production Assistant Kate Isaac. Front of House  Michael Coen Chase.  Photography Shimon Karmel.  Graphic Design Mari Chijiwa.

Performers :  Jennifer Copping (Mary).  Aaron Craven (Kenny).  Luisa Jojic (Sharon).  John R. Taylor (Frank).  Joel Wirkkunen (Ben). 

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Empire of the Son grabs at the heart : this is family

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 :  Autobiographical shows that involve dying or dead parents are extremely difficult to pull off. Simply because the playwright is so close to their material. Thus being able to make their story come alive in some sort of universal sense without being mawkish or slightly irrelevant is truly a challenge.

And -- trite to observe -- families are unique unto themselves. So in my case when I challenged Dad why he and Mom brought five children into the world -- starting right after WWII began in Europe -- my father reached for his handkerchief.  Fighting back a well-up of tears, he snuffled in protest : "Why is it a man can't seem to talk about his children without having to blow his nose first...?"

Quite the opposite case with Tetsuro Shigematsu's diary Empire of the Son, which is his ironic title about Shigematsu's Japan-born father, Akira. Not only did Akira not cry sentimentally over his son, he never found a way to tell Tetsuro outright that he loved him. Or his son him. This even though Akira had been a radio personality on both the BBC and the CBC in his time. And the fact Tetsuro was a CBC voice for a bit, too. Son's subtitle is : "Two generations of broadcasters and the radio silence between them." In a word, Son is Tetsuro's solo attempt to make sense of his childhood in the final year of his dad's life (Akira died September 18, 2015.) In the writing and performing of his material, Tetsuro hopes to overcome his own learned inability to cry.

How it's all put together : While outfront emotional honesty was one of my father's signature qualities, other cultures seem to prefer reserved stoicism instead : thinking strictly in stereotypes here, the classic English "stiff upper lip" jumps to mind, while some societies are thought inscrutable and others are seen as innately reticent. 

Dad Akira was a youth who witnessed his neighbourhood in Kagoshima incinerated by Allied incendiary bombs in June, 1945. Later he would witness the aftermath of the horror of Hiroshima while passing through on a train. (Modestly, he occasioned his ensuing nausea to be from food poisoning, not atomic radiation sickness.) Emigrating to England, Tetsuro was born there before further migration to Canada for the family. 

As noted, Akira did live radio for both the BBC and CBC : how is he not able to open his heart to his son the way Tetsuro'a son opens his heart to his Dad in a way Grandpa never could?  The most compelling radio personalities (think CBC's Peter Gzowski or Jurgen Gothe or Shelagh Rogers) have always emoted, lived their empathy, embraced us unseen listeners heart-to-heart. For Akira such was apparently not possible mano a mano with his son. The public persona and the Dad were distinct personalities. Maybe akin to how we writers hide underneath our keyboards.

So it is stories that tell the story in Son. A granddaughter's apocalytpic phantasy nightmare woven into a grammar school story. A grandson's easy flippancy with Tetsuro that would have been utterly unimaginable with Akira. A camera focuses on miniature toys and other memory pieces and blows them up to assist in the telling of this tale -- a compelling visual effect.

What the show brings to the stage : Pauses, silences, word-gaps -- "Shiggy" as his website nicknames him -- employs these techniques both as dramatic Pinteresque style but also to give the audience pause. Pause to grasp that each of us has a personal and family apocalypse in our hearts that we need deal with, for better or worse. In fact, this piece is actually a universal story of the manchild and our inevitable struggles to escape the shadow of our fathers. The universal made personal, in other words.

Humour and irony and self-deprecation figure largely into this script by son whose middle name is what his dad calls him : Hugh. Dad prizes understatement. Having met the Queen, having been present when Marilyn Munroe slurred her way through "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to Jack Kennedy, he demurred : "But I was not the only one there...". 

Not all men probably suffer the extent of estrangement and distance young Hugh the lippy skateboarder did with his dad. His estrangement was only overcome when Dad's Parkinson's and diabetes and strokes rendered him a 100 pound invalid whom Hugh would carry like a puppy to the loo for b.m.'s. While thankful, Dad all the while would protest "Gomen-nasai!" -- I am sorry, I am sorry!  This is regret suffered in Japanese culture when an obligation is placed on others. Particularly an obligation occasioned by "mendo--naa" -- one's needy situation. Japanese suffer pain if they feel they are being troublesome or a bother to one's family or neighbours.

Best symbol of the show was the headset of hazard-yellow noise-canceling earphones Akira wore when he was demoted by the CBC due to program funding cuts by Brian Mulroney. From his prestigious announcer's job at CBC Montreal, his union seniority meant he would drift down to a lowly mail room clerk position. "Do not call me 'Akira!'" he shouted randomly at folks greeting him during his daily rounds lugging the mail cart. The miniature toy captured by camera depicting this fall from grace was the show's most poignant moment.

Who gonna like : A reprise of its successful sold-out 2015 run at the Cultch's 85-seat black box room known as the C-lab, the approximately 1,000 folks fortunate enough to have got their tickets for this year's also-pre-sold-out run will find much to laugh and wonder and remark upon in this unique one man slice-of-life show. 

Regularly punching through the 4th wall to interact with patrons and his own family alike on opening night, Tetsuro makes this material engaging no question. Him sitting on the St. Paul's bed patting Dad's knee -- after his sisters had all-three actually climbed into bed together and caressed their ailing father -- this anecdote just about said it all about us men and our intimacy issues whether contemporary Japanese, Brit, Cascadian or throwback Cro Magnon.

Meanwhile the central conceit the playwright focuses on is the question of whether he will actually cry when Dad's ashes finally come home. (Currently his cadaver is being used for scientific research at UBC med school.)  Whether big boys do cry (me, like my dad) or don't cry (Hugh, like his dad) is, at end, irrelevant. Carrying Dad to the loo hour by hour for weeks on end says more than a mere tear -- or even a total sobbing catharsis -- ever could, should, might or would. Love is doing. Love is now. Love as memory is a sad second best.

Particulars :  Produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (Vancouver) in collaboration with The Cultch. Upcoming national tour in association with Pi Theatre. At the VanCity Cultural Lab, VECC site on Vennables @ Victoria.  Until November 13.  Run-time 75 minutes without intermission. Tickets on-line @ the cultch.com or by phone 604.251.1363

Production crew : Writer / Performer Tetsuro Shigematsu.  Artistic Producer Donna Yamamoto.  Director / Original Concept Dramaturgy Richard Wolfe.  Dramaturge Heidi Taylor.  Set Design Pam Johnson.  Lighting Design Gerald King.  Costume Design Barbara Clayden.  Sound Design Steve Charles.  Audio Dramaturge Yvonne Gall.  Stage Manager Susan Miyagishima.  Technical Director / Production Manager Jayson McLean.  Props Master Carole Macdonald.  Video Design Consultant Remy Siu.  Apprentice Stage Manager Maria Zarrillo.  Documentary Audio Yoshiko & Akira Shigematsu.

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