The Penlopiad

My review of the Arts Club's newest production, Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad.

Colleen Wheeler (left) and Meg Roe star in the Penelopiad.

Credit: Supplied

The Penelopiad a powerful new take on an old story

Posted By: Andrea Warner

Love her or hate her, few can argue that Margaret Atwood knows her way around a woman’s words. The female characters in her books pulse with a tangible complexity: They have wit, intelligence and passion. As a writer, she fills the huge gulf between the stereotypical feminine archetypes of Saint and Slut with a nuance that’s often sorely lacking in literature. And now, with the Arts Club's help, Atwood leaps from the page to the stage with The Penelopiad.

A flipside to the Greek myth of Odysseus, it focuses instead on the hero's wife, Penelope (Meg Roe), and her struggles to keep their kingdom afloat during his decades-long Trojan War absence. She chooses the prettiest, youngest women slaves to become her confidants, and it becomes their job to stave off the thug-like men looking to claim the kingdom — and Penelope — as their own. The women succeed, but at a horrific price.

Structured so that it zigs in and out of time, Penelope alternates between recreating scenes from her life and narrating events in the present day from the spirit world (where she’s haunted by her cousin/rival, Helen of Troy and the slaves she failed). The slaves are portrayed by one of the strongest ensemble casts to ever grace a Vancouver stage: Colleen Wheeler and Laara Sadiq are particular standouts, thanks to showy dual performances as Odysseus and Helen of Troy, respectively. Wheeler, who has played a man with great authority before, fluidly transitions between her two roles perfectly with just the slightest adjustments to her mannerisms and movement.

Wheeler also sparks opposite Roe as Odysseus and Penelope’s sexual connection deepens their marriage. Here Roe goes beyond her usual reliably fantastic state and has, arguably, never been better. She’s regal, womanly and her subtle delivery of Atwood’s deadpan observations and poetic phrasing is spot on. She absorbs the pompous surface of Atwood's words in favour of the author's clever and keen observations.

Director Vanessa Porteous, artistic director of Calgary’s Alberta Theatre Projects, makes a stunning Vancouver debut. Confident, creative and insightful. With the exception of a faltering quasi-musical segment in act two, I’ve never felt — or welcomed — the presence of a director more.
The Penelopiad offers what might be one of the most daring, innovative and extraordinary productions in the Art Club’s canon. That, friends, is the ultimate in female empowerment.

The Penelopiad runs to Nov. 20 at Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage, 8pm (Wed-Sat), 7:30pm (Tues). Matinees: Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm. $29-$65 from 604-687-1644.

The Graduate

My review of The Graduate is in this week's WE.

Kayvon Khoshkam and Camille Mitchell

The Graduate fails to seduce

Posted By: Andrea Warner

 

When it debuted in 1967, the Graduate was hailed as the best comedy film of the year. But that was merely to be one aspect of its influence. Benjamin Braddock (portrayed by Dustin Hoffman) became the poster boy for a specific archetype: restless young men rebelling against the lingering consumer perfection of the ‘50s, but too upper class to embrace the ‘60s counter-culture. Ben’s character traits — a smart person who does some dumb, self-destructive things — spoke to a universal truth that continues to resonate and has helped make the Graduate an enduring part of pop culture.

It’s that significance that makes its alternate life as a play, adapted by Terry Johnson in 2000, a double-edged sword for the Arts Club. The name recognition all but guarantees good attendance, but with that comes high expectations. For those curious about whether the Graduate holds up in its transition from screen to stage, well, in short, it doesn’t.

Johnson’s plot points remain faithful to Calder Willingham and Buck Henry’s screenplay, which was based on Charles Webb’s novel, but he introduces a host of small changes that dilute the story.
Benjamin (Kayvon Khoshkam), home for the summer following college graduation, doesn’t know what to do with his life, but his parents are rolling full steam ahead for him to attend grad school. When Mrs. Robinson (Camille Mitchell), a friend of his parents, stumbles drunkenly into his room during a party and makes a pass at him, he succumbs to the affair, not so much from desire or excitement, but a depressive self-loathing. Ben’s shaken from his stupor when his parents insist on setting him up on a date with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Celine Stubel). Against Mrs. Robinson’s wishes, they fall for each other. He breaks Elaine’s heart when he confesses the affair and must try to win her back before she marries someone else.

Director Lois Anderson offers some nice creative touches, the best of which is original music from indie-rock band Ivory Sky. But, her scene transitions are often jarring, and her use of blackouts to convey the passage of time is poorly executed. Similarly, some of the actors’ choices are inspired, while others prove confusing. Mitchell makes an attractive Mrs. Robinson, but is never quite as manipulative, sad or calculating as necessary — playing up Mrs. Robinson’s boozy nature until she’s more caricature than character. Similarly, Khoshkam can’t quite nail down Benjamin’s rhythm for the first 30 minutes, and the opening scene between the leads are mostly devoid of spark. There are lots of laughs, but no underlying tension. Everything changes with Stubel’s arrival, as she brings out the best in both Khoshkam and Mitchell. Stubel and Khoshkam have an easy chemistry, and the scene between Stubel and Mitchell as mother and daughter contemplate the shared object of their affection and face some unpleasant truths about their relationship is genuinely fantastic.

Sadly, this scene is the only positive departure Johnson’s script makes from its source, and Anderson’s direction creates distractions rather than smoothing over the play’s fundamental flaws. It’s mostly thanks to Stubel and a few key moments that this Graduate sneaks by with a passing grade.

The Graduate runs to May 14 at Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnson), 8pm (Mon, Wed-Sat); 7:30pm (Tues). Matinees: 2pm, Wed, Sat. Tickets $25-$49 from 604-687-1644.

Theatre year-end 2010

Our favourite theatre of 2010 is featured in WE's new issue.

Simply the best: Alex McMorran and Cathy Wilmot in Fighting Chance Productions’ Sweeney Todd

Credit: Supplied

Bringing the curtain down on another year

Posted By: WestEnder Staff

12/29/2010 12:00 AM

BEST SHOW (Large Venue)

Even the most zealous anti-Olympic protestor would be hard-pressed to minimize the arts bonanza of the Cultural Olympiad. Sure, there were questions about whether too much was spent on international touring companies that could have gone to Canadian artists, but any program that brings Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina company to town is a winner. Blue Dragon, the sequel to Lepage’s The Dragon’s Trilogy, finds its central figure living in modern-day China and dealing with his Canadian past. A multimedia feast of dance, music, film, and Lepage’s signature puzzle-like sets, Blue Dragon gave Vancouverites a chance to see a true national hero who has dominated the international theatre world for a quarter century — as opposed to briefly worshipping a 17-year-old who skied a fraction of a second faster than another 17-year-old. —Steven Schelling

BEST DIRECTOR (Large Venue)

Founding member of Electric Company Theatre, winner of the prestigious Siminovitch Prize, and director of this year’s experimental film-meets-theatre extravaganza Tear the Curtain!, Kim Collier is a rare talent. Inventive, surprising, and even-handed, her work is often breathtaking, sometimes cerebral, and never, ever boring. —SS

BEST ACTOR (Large Venue)

Before the curtain went up on Arts Club’s Glengarry Glen Ross, a loosely assembled scrum of media took bets on the fortunes of its star, Eric McCormack. Would an actor known to millions as nebbish, nice-guy gay Will, from the long-running U.S. sitcom Will & Grace, be able to pull off the part of ruthless real-estate huckster Ricky Roma? Within moments, McCormack had sold his sinister performance not just to the cheap seats, but to those on the aisles who’d stopped scribbling on their notepads. It’s one thing to capture an audience in the palm of your hand, quite another to shatter a roomful of preconceived notions. —SS

BEST SHOW (Small Venue)

For two weeks in October, the Jericho Arts Centre became a seedy Victorian-era London alleyway — the setting for the blood bath that is Stephen Sondheim’s macabre masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This vibrant revival of the musical about a vengeful barber murdering his clients and turning them into meat pies with his landlady/co-conspirator came courtesy of the brilliant, mostly 20-somethings behind Fighting Chance Productions. The remarkably assured take on this rich, technically complex material (it’s Sondheim, remember?) proved you don’t need huge budgets and big names to craft quality live entertainment. With the right ingredients, producing the perfect piece of theatre can be as easy as, well, pie. —Andrea Warner

BEST DIRECTOR (Small Venue)

Would Sweeney Todd’s audiences ever guess that its director, Ryan Mooney, is still in college? Probably not. Since Fighting Chance Productions’ debut in 2007, Mooney, the company’s founder and artistic director, has proved himself to be a young man with a singular vision. With Sweeney Todd, Mooney hinted at the kind of director he’s growing into: resourceful, innovative, and clever. Commanding a sprawling cast in a small space is no easy feat, but Mooney’s execution made perfect use of the physical contrast, illustrating the all-consuming tension and frenzy of the source material’s tale of revenge and madness. —AW

BEST ACTOR (Small Venue)

As Sweeney Todd, Alex McMorran was glowering, darkly funny, and mad in every sense of the word. A man unhinged by grief and a thirst for revenge, McMorran made Todd’s extraordinary bloodlust utterly believable. While plotting to extract his pound (or more) of flesh from those who’ve cost him his daughter and his wife, McMorran nailed every emotional high and low, subversively toeing the line between empathetic victim and ruthless hypocrite. Additionally, his chemistry with Cathy Wilmot as Mrs. Lovett proved delightfully unsettling and surprisingly sexy. —AW

BEST ACTRESS (Small Venue)

While Sweeney Todd’s Mrs. Lovett is a role many salivate over, her solos have been known to cause more than a few actresses sleepless nights. Doubtless Cathy Wilmot slept soundly, because her voice ran headlong through Sondheim’s trademark counterpoint and syncopation without a hint of strain, all the while infusing every line and lyric with subtext. Her Mrs. Lovett is a manipulative liar, sure, but she’s also incredibly lonely and blinded by her romantic obsession with a psychopath. Wilmot got at the murky heart of Mrs. Lovett’s darkest motivations without sacrificing the wonderful gallows humour that permeates even her bleakest moments. —AW

BEST SITE_SPECIFIC THEATRE

Last May, ITSAZOO Productions’ Bridge Mix transformed a city eyesore (a concrete parking garage in the business district) into a place where anything was possible, including a spontaneous street-hockey game, a confrontation between Robert Pickton and the ghosts of his many victims, a choreographed dance-off, and a hilariously sweet demonstration by a little girl who believes she can collect people’s dreams for interpretation. Bridge Mix’s variety and lack of pretension helped showcase the raw talent of Vancouver and Victoria’s emerging theatre companies. That the audience moved between various spots throughout the parkade, with a roving bar never more than 10 feet away, only sweetened the deal. —AW

BEST COMEBACK

A hopeful sign after a bleak period of restructuring, Ballet BC wowed audiences with Songs of a Wayfarer and Other Works, a season opener composed of three new works. Artistic director Emily Molnar continued in her efforts to transform the once-tired group into a truly contemporary ballet company. Her titular contribution to the programme proved playful and intelligent, while choreographer Kevin O’Day brought a fresh, international sophistication to the Queen E stage. The undeniable highlight, however, was Jose Navas’s dizzying The Bliss That from Their Limbs All Movement Takes. Dance fans will also take delight in Navas’s appointment as Ballet BC’s choreographer-in-residence for the next three years. —Jessica Barrett

Sweeney Todd

I highly recommend Fighting Chance Production's Sweeney Todd. My review's in this week's WE.

Alex McMorran and Cathy Wilmot strike a devil’s deal in Fighting Chance Productions’ Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Credit: Supplied

Up-and-comer gets deliciously down and dirty

Posted By: Andrea Warner

10/20/2010 12:00 AM

 

Since making its debut in January 2007, Fighting Chance Productions has evolved from fledgling musical-theatre company to youthful powerhouse, with memorable offerings like 2009’s Rent and a campy production of Forbidden Broadway. Now, just a few short months after mounting an acclaimed production of Hair, the little company that could makes a bold play for a spot among the theatre scene’s heavy hitters (Arts Club, Electric Company, Playhouse) — but on a fraction of the budget. With its production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, it has scored its greatest triumph yet.

A gruesome tale of injustice, revenge, and blood-soaked madness, the Stephen Sondheim musical revolves around Sweeney Todd (Alex McMorran), an escaped convict who returns to London 15 years after being wrongfully imprisoned by the lecherous Judge Turpin (Arne Larsen). Todd returns to his former home above Mrs. Lovett’s (Cathy Wilmot) pie shop, where the pie-maker reveals that Todd’s wife went mad, took poison, and left their child, Johanna (Krista Gibbard), to be raised as the judge’s ward. Mrs. Lovett soon agrees to help Todd exact revenge on the judge, encouraging him to reopen his barber shop, thus kick-starting a ravenous murder spree and an ingenious, if revolting, method of disposing of the bodies.

Meanwhile, Johanna, now 16 years old, is a caged bird, locked away from society in Turpin’s house. From her window she catches the eye of Anthony (Chris Harvey), a boy incidentally indebted to Todd for saving his life, and they fall in love, much to Turpin’s chagrin. The old judge decides to marry Johanna, sparking a plot by the teens to escape his clutches. When it fails, Joanna is sent to an asylum.
Todd helps Anthony break her out, and subsequently lures Turpin back to his shop for a bloody climax, wherein all of the characters collide — some dead, some alive — in Mrs. Lovett’s basement.

Fittingly, McMorran and Wilmot command the audience’s attention at every turn. McMorran’s Todd has a crazed glee in his eyes; a hulking, haunted step; and a voice that sends shivers up the spine, especially when he’s reunited with his razors (“My Friends”) or recounting the horror that befell him at the hands of the judge (“The Barber and His Wife”). Wilmot neatly shifts from hilarious to hopeful, sharing her delusions about a future with Todd (“By the Sea”), followed by a heartbreakingly empty promise to protect her young ward, Toby (“Not While I’m Around”).

In addition to their individual performances, the duo are mesmerizing when they share the stage together, particularly during the hilariously grotesque “God, That’s Good!” They also amp up the sexual tension between their characters, adding depth to the depravity of their shared bloodlust.
Even the insta-romance between Anthony and Johanna, usually Sweeney Todd’s weakest element, gets a new lease on life. Harvey and Gibbard infuse their characters’ longing with a profound sense of urgency, elevating songs like “Kiss Me” from saccharine to substantive. Gibbard, particularly, is a revelation, hitting Sondheim’s difficult-to-sing syncopated notes with assured confidence.

Director (and Fighting Chance founding artistic director) Ryan Mooney challenges himself yet again with a small stage and an overflowing cast. And yet he has full control over the proceedings: the music, the set pieces (sparse and effective), and the actors move together in perfect synchronization under his watchful eye. His Sweeney Todd is a masterful marriage of music, melodrama, and the macabre. This young gun is blazing. Able to achieve so much with so little, Fighting Chance should have the bigger, more established theatre companies looking over their shoulders in admiration, for now, and with a little trepidation in the years to come.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street runs to Oct. 30 at Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery), 8pm (Wed-Sat). 7:30pm (Tues). Tickets $20-$30 from FightingChanceProductions.ca.

The Park

I really loved Studio 58's The Park, and I think you will, too.

Over-earnest environmentalists fight off unscrupulous politicos and developers in Studio 58’s original musical, The Park.

Credit: submitted

Studio 58 pokes fun at Vancouver’s foibles

Posted By: Andrea Warner

10/06/2010 12:00 AM

 

Writing a fully realized two-act musical in college takes hubris. Writing one that’s as winning and entertaining as The Park takes talent. The versatile young minds at Langara College’s Studio 58 have both.

Written by Benjamin Elliot, Anton Lipovetsky, and Hannah Johnson — all either students or recent graduates — The Park’s first incarnation was as part of last year’s STEW, Studio 58’s performance series of one-acts. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, so the trio went back to work, fleshing out what is ultimately the quintessential love letter to Vancouver, albeit one that wholly recognizes and pokes fun at the city’s quirky characters and archetypes.

John (Joel Ballard) is a disgruntled parks worker who gets a pink slip after six thankless years on the job. In a moment of self-indulgent fury, he lets slimy millionaire Gabe (Dustin Freeland) talk him into signing a petition to turn Stanley Park into Stan Park, a concrete parking lot. But John’s also secretly in love with Geena (Amy Hall-Cummings), a fiercely aggressive environmental activist, and vows to help her with her own petition to stop the destruction of the park.

The three leads display versatility, good comic timing, and varying degrees of vocal prowess. Freeland’s a gifted scene stealer, but Ballard’s performance is quietly appealing. And the supporting cast has plenty of opportunity to step briefly and repeatedly into the spotlight. Although each has moments worth mentioning, Kendall Wright, who plays park supervisor Patricia, deserves singling out. On paper, Patricia is annoying, hyper-sexualized, and supremely melodramatic. Wright takes those qualities and skillfully ratchets them so far over the top that she somehow moves the character from grating to ingratiating.

The songs are clever, paying tribute to everything from Sondheim to AM ’70s gold. Opening number “Springtime Happening” is well-executed, kicking things off neatly, efficiently, and most importantly, entertainingly. The characters are briefly introduced, we get a sense of what’s to come, and the song lets us in on the tone of the ensuing two hours: humour mixed with hope. “Chicken Waltz” is hilariously violent but sweet, a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of the crazy things we do for love, while “A to the Q to the Warium,” which features the juice-worshipping Vancouver “President,” is a great send-up of the city’s culture. Throughout, The Park’s style of gentle self-mockery proves endearing. The writers may make fun of their characters (and Vancouverites in general), but they never diminish them.

David Hudgens’s direction is lively and inventive, perfectly in keeping with Kayla Dunbar’s frisky but- fun choreography. The backing band, which includes Elliot, Lipovetsky, and drummer Spencer Shoening from local indie-rock band Said the Whale, keeps the momentum going. Taken together, the winning elements of The Park signal that a revolution is going on behind the classroom doors. Not content to merely produce the future faces of Vancouver theatre, by creating this homegrown musical and achieving a tricky balance of humour, heart, and social commentary, Studio 58 proves they are Vancouver theatre.

The Park runs to Oct. 17 at Studio 58 (100 W. 49th Ave.), 8pm. Tickets $10-$22 from 604-684-2787 and TicketsTonight.ca.

Robin Hood at Queen Elizabeth Park

My review of ITSAZOO's wonderful Robin Hood. Go see it now, please.

Kaitlin Williams and Chris Cook star as Marion and Robin in ITSAZOO Productions’ unique take on Robin Hood, which is set in a dystopian Vancouver.

Credit: Supplied

Newfangled ‘Robin Hood’ a biting satire

Posted By: Andrea Warner

08/11/2010 12:00 AM

In the three years since ITSAZOO Productions first staged co-founder Sebastien Archibald’s Grimm Tales at Queen Elizabeth Park, the Olympics have come and gone, homelessness in the city has continued to spread like a cancer, and provincial arts funding has been slashed. And while this never-ending quagmire of hopelessness feels rather suffocating, it’s proved to be just the material Archibald needed to write Robin Hood, his most incisive and cathartic work to date.

Loosely arranged around the familiar premise of the original Robin Hood, which detailed the uprising of the working class against the rich, this production is set in a not-so-fictionalized Vancouver where Mayor Nottingham (Archibald), evil MLA Rich White (David Benedict Brown), and power-hungry, Taser-happy Chief Gisborne (Julie Church) plot to strip citizens of their civil liberties and pump wads of cash into landing the “International Big Deal.”

Robin Hood (Chris Cook) and his band of merry thieves steal from the rich to give to the poor, ultimately kidnapping MLA White’s daughter, the spoiled Marion (Kaitlin Williams), in the hope that her ransom will fund Robin and Little John’s (Colby Wilson) dream: a huge mansion with beds and resources for homeless people. After she’s roughed up by Chief Gisborne’s cops simply because they think she’s homeless, Marion joins Robin and the group to help defeat her father and the Mayor.

As this is a roving-theatre experience, the audience is led throughout Queen Elizabeth Park by Alan (Joel Stephanson), a minstrel-busker whose own story is heartbreakingly familiar: he has kids, loses his job and can’t find another one, which leaves him grappling with a depression that, in turn, manifests as substance dependency. It’s a dark, vicious cycle, and one that’s likely all too real.

The cast is energetic and youthful. Cook excels in his role as leading man, with a cocky charm that doesn’t detract from Robin’s believability. It’s also almost impossible to keep one’s eyes off Wilson in any of his scenes, so compelling is his line delivery and presence.

There’s plenty of bleak humour to be mined from this oft-unfortunate reality, and Archibald is fearless in turning scathing indictment into incisive satire. At times he branches into preaching territory, particularly with Marion, who’s often saddled with spelling out the obvious (i.e., poor people are no less deserving than the wealthy). What Archibald and ITSAZOO accomplish recalls their efforts with last summer’s Canterbury Tales, which also used theatre as a venue in which to call for social change. For those stymied by Vancouver’s seemingly insurmountable social ills, Robin Hood is both a breath of fresh air and a fire under your ass.

Robin Hood runs to Aug. 19 at Queen Elizabeth Park (Main at 33rd; audience meets at Bloedel Conservatory), 7pm. $13-$17 from ITSAZOO.org or 778-888-2435.

My review of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, at the Arts Club as part of the PuSh Festival.

The life of the famous horror author gets a Goth treatment in Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe.

Credit: Supplied

Nevermore

If I were 20 years old and still had my lip piercing, Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe, would be everything I could hope for in a musical: macabre lyrics, Victorian-era-inspired Goth fashions, and spooky, sing-song chanting. Sadly, I’m a decade older, so, while entertaining, Nevermore’s a one-trick pony that can’t sustain its momentum beyond the first act.

The creation of Edmonton-based Catalyst Theatre, which mined similar territory at its 2008 PuSh Festival appearance with an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Nevermore delves into the sad life of Poe, the legendary author of brilliantly horrific short stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and the epic horror poem, “The Raven.” Based mostly on actual events, narrators take Poe (Scott Schpeley) and the audience through the signposts of his tragic existence — and there is a ridiculous abundance of tragedy, because almost everyone Poe ever loved died or abandoned him. This means the story stops and starts as Poe copes, rallies, and crashes, again and again. By the time loved one number three begins coughing up blood, it’s almost impossible not to laugh.

Most of the story unfolds with the narrators as puppet masters, the characters acting out their stories as marionettes on strings. This works some of the time, but not every actor has the same level of physical precision. Nevermore is more interesting when the narrators are silenced and the characters are permitted to act out scenes in the present, bringing the audience in on the action.

The music, while full of stark contrasts, could be more complex. As it is, it’s enjoyable, but utterly forgettable. There’s adequate whimsy, woe, and wit in the lyrics, but the problem with paying tribute to a writer like Poe is that few can match his skill with words.

To its credit, Catalyst successfully creates an immersive experience, from the wonderfully simplistic set (a silver scaffold with various sliding doors paneled in what looks like black lace) to the lighting, costumes, and cadence of the songs. But when the initial wow factor ebbs, Nevermore continues on to increasingly diminishing returns.

Debt: The Musical

My review of Debt: The Musical is online now at WestEnder.com

All due credit: The cast of "Debt: The Musical" busts a move for insolvency.

“Debt” goes for broke

With arts budgets slashed and burned, credit-card interest rates at an all-time high, and money increasingly elusive, has there ever been a more timely stage debut than Debt: The Musical?

Written by Leslie Mildiner, with songs by Todd Butler, Debt is a jubilant skewering of art and commerce, loosely structured around the stories of four people crippled by their finances. There’s the single mom/actress (Ellen Kennedy), the shopaholic (Tracey Power), the can’t-make-ends-meet dad (Tom Pickett), and the writer (Andy Toth), all of whom are tied together by a narrator, Spike (Simon Webb). Each attempts to cope in his or her own way with fiduciary tumult, with varying degrees of success — and plenty of singing and dancing.

The most interesting and fully realized stories belong to the single mom who dabbles in the phone-sex industry and also grapples with a bureaucratic welfare officer, and the writer, a daydreaming narcissist who thinks he’s too educated for menial labour.

The musical numbers negotiate the many aspects of falling into debt and climbing back out, from corporate to personal greed, kids, recessions, weak job markets, and the questionable economic value of being a college graduate. Butler’s songs cover a wide range of musical genres, but among the catchiest are the doo-wop-inspired “He’s Got a Degree,” lamenting the job situation for the higher-educated, and the reggae-influenced “Go Postal,” a tongue-in-cheek take on workplace violence. The sobering “Labour of Love” aims for the heart as an ode to struggling parents, but something about the harmony and the melancholy lyrics make it feel cheaply manipulative and out of place with the rest of the show’s well-crafted songs.

Mildiner’s script could still use a bit of tweaking, with perhaps more of a focus on the stronger characters to create a more tangible connective thread and narrative structure. Overall, this strong debut, with fine performances and a winning collection of musical numbers, makes Debt a worthy investment.

To Jan. 30 at Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova), 8 pm. Matinees Sat.-Sun., 2 pm. Tickets $16-$28 from FirehallArtsCentre.ca

—Andrea Warner

The Invention of Love

My review of The Invention of Love appears online at WestEnder.com

THE INVENTION OF LOVE

By Andrea Warner

Tom Stoppard knows a thing or two about love. The celebrated playwright turned the Bard’s soft-side intothe Oscar winner, Shakespeare in Love. More recently his relationship dramedy, The Real Thing, had a three-week stint at the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage.

Unfortunately, United Players’ Canadian premiere of The Invention of Love is one of Stoppard’s driest, most academic offerings, boasting more $5 words than the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. Putting the playwright’s mind over what really matters, Love means to show us just how big Stoppard’s reading glasses are.

The play tackles — in varying flashes forwards and back through time — the life and death of poet and scholar A.E. Houseman. Stellar Tariq Leslie, as the young Houseman, silently lusts after his best friend, dreamy jock Moses Jackson (Andrew Halliwell). It’s all talk, no action, the actors left drowning in a sea of lengthy monologues. As a result, the first act stalls repeatedly, and often feels like a tired university liberal arts lecture.

While young Houseman’s life is precariously hooked to his unrealistic dreams, the older Houseman (Graham Bullen) is caught in a strange afterlife with a variety of scholarly types, each of whom alternately waxes on about their chosen academic fields, its merits, its lows, and the politics of the time, including the controversy-baiting shenanigans of flamboyant writer Oscar Wilde (James Gill, who has a gay old time, literally).

The second act picks up steam, when Houseman’s finally ‘outed,’ and it’s here that Stoppard’s genius with wordplay finally allows the actors to shine. Stoppard invents love: the all-consuming, paralyzing aspects love that moves men into epic soliloquies about the meaning of words, the beauty of poetry, and the fallibility of scholarship.

Unfortunately, Stoppard’s genius is ultimately tempered by overwhelming intellectual indulgences marring what otherwise might have been a consistently compelling narrative.

Blackbird

My review of Blackbird appears in this week's WE.

BLACKBIRD
Scottish playwright David Harrower has often been labelled an exponent of “in-yer-face theatre,” a style of drama that emerged in 1990s Great Britain feature narratives unabashedly crafted to shock. Harrower’s Blackbird, on now at the Vancity Culture Lab at the Cultch (a well-designed and much-needed intimate new venue) easily falls in with this style. The one-act play pits the young, volatile Una (Jennifer Mawhinney) against the middle-aged Peter (Russell Roberts). Over the course of 100 minutes, they pick over the remnants of their ruinous sexual relationship, back when Una was just 12 years old.

Appearing out of the blue at his workplace one day, Una confronts Peter (who, having served his jail time, has changed his name from Ray) about the past. Facing each other for the first time in 15 years, there are land mines aplenty to navigate. Accusations and sad recriminations skim the surface of lingering lust, long-buried secrets, and the inevitable ‘ick’ factor of the incredulous question: Was it misunderstood love, or abuse?

Mawhinney’s characterization of Una seems drawn from a display case of standard damaged-goods affectations: lots of hair-twisting, face-scrunching, and bouts of overt sensuality offset by episodes of childlike naïvete. Mawhinney only shows what she’s capable of when she drops the victim’s-whisper delivery and gives Una the necessary depth to move from Lolita-esque caricature to traumatized, complex young woman.

Roberts’s role is the less showy of the two, and though he makes his contrite Peter somewhat sympathetic, the character’s inherently treacherous nature ensures nothing more than a lukewarm reception from the audience. Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of the entire production: Blackbird should, by its very nature, resonate, but this production ultimately proves relatively forgettable, and a far cry from in-yer-face.

Toronto, Mississippi

My review of Toronto, Mississippi appeared online at westender.com last week.

Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe in Playhouse's production of Toronto, Mississippi

TORONTO, MISSISSIPPI

By Andrea Warner

Vancouver-born playwright Joan MacLeod, who has nine plays and a Governor General’s Award to her credit, has lived, taught, and toiled from Toronto to Victoria. It’s no surprise, then, that Toronto, Mississippi, proves to be a tender and tasty slice of Canadiana.

Thankfully, there’s no maple syrup or hockey sticks to be found here — just a story about Jhana (Meg Roe), a mentally challenged 18-year-old attempting to navigate adolescence and impending adulthood. Jhana lives at home with her tightly-wound mother, Maddie (Colleen Wheeler), and their poet boarder, Bill (Alessandro Juliani). When King (William MacDonald) — Jhana’s father, a professional Elvis impersonator rolls back into town, everyone’s world turns upside down.

Thanks to MacLeod’s clever, humane writing, and Roe’s deft comic touch, the audience is fully immersed in Jhana’s day-to-day challenges and triumphs, from basic lessons in her life-skills classes to her first crush on a boy. Jhana’s interactions with Maddie are as real as any teenager attempting to exert her independence, and her reliance on Bill is evident: The warm exchanges between the two could melt even the iciest heart. It’s a perfect set-up whose future is threatened when King returns.

Juliani and MacDonald do cocky grandstanding incredibly well, their characters circling each other warily, equal parts awkward and amusing. Bill may be written as non-threatening (after all, he’s a grad student with one book of poetry to his credit, who considers himself a voice for women and minorities), but Juliani brings a subtle masculinity to the role that more than challenges King’s swaggering, virile persona. His chemistry with Wheeler is palpable, and the de facto family they’ve created for Jhana is nicely reflective of an era that ushered in new, non-traditional familial structures (Who’s the Boss immediately springs to mind).

Wheeler gives Maddie a tough protective exterior, which is a realistic defense mechanism for a woman who’s single-mommed it for 10 years, and defended Jhana from bullies and judgmental strangers for nearly two decades. When she says “I always hate the sound of my voice when I talk to you” during one of her fights with King, Wheeler nails the tone of a woman slipping back into bad patterns. But the talented actress brings so much intelligence to the character, it’s hard to believe Maddie would ever have fallen for a guy like King, let alone considered letting him back into her bed.

The only real misstep in the otherwise sparkling gem of a script comes about five minutes shy of the final bow, when the audience endures not just one ending, but three — which smacks of a writer who was just finding her voice (this is MacLeod’s second play). It’s a small complaint, but one that stands out, since everything else is so strong. That said, it’s such a rare treat to witness great writing fueling fantastic performances that Toronto, Mississippi ends up feeling like a warm hug on a cold night.

Skydive

My review of Skydive appears in this week's WE.

James Sanders and Bob Frazer take to the air in Skydive.

By Andrea Warner

Taking its second bow in three years as part of the PuSh Festival, Skydive, Vancouver playwright Kevin Kerr's aerial comedy, was written specifically for its two leads, real-life good friends Bob Frazer and James Sanders. As much spectacle as comedy, Skydive transcends traditional stage plays in that it's also a feat of engineering, literally making a quadriplegic man fly.

Kerr's script focuses on polar-opposite brothers Morgan (Sanders), a middle-aged loafer who couch-surfs and spends his time offering advice as an unlicensed therapist, and Daniel (Frazer), a brainy agoraphobe who can't get past his psychological traumas. Reunited in their mother's house after she's moved into a nursing home, Morgan tries to encourage Daniel to live up to his end of a childhood pact and confront his biggest fears by going skydiving.

Skydive tackles weighty issues like family dysfunction with generous doses of comedy, attempting to prove that laughter really is the best medicine. Sometimes it is; when the jokes work, they're often laugh-out-loud funny. But others, particularly in the first 30 minutes, feel as stale as the punch lines from an episode of Two and a Half Men. In addition, the last 10 minutes feel heavy-handed, with the play's themes of fear and lives half-lived getting shoved down the audience's throat.

Skydive's real triumph is that throughout almost the entire production, Frazer and Sanders seem to float through space, each attached to a long pole operated by mostly unseen hands. The duo really do appear to fly, and many audience members will likely be unaware that Sanders is confined to a wheelchair in real life. While the actors may not actually fly through the air with the greatest of ease, Skydive's brilliant machinations ultimately help this hit-and-miss comedy take off.

The Constant Wife and Last Five Years

My review of The Constant Wife and Last Five Years appears in this week's WE.

Nicole Underhay and Ted Cole in Arts Club’s The Constant Wife, and (inset) Naomi Dayneswood and Jesse Donaldson in the failed-marriage musical, The Last Five Years.

Two very different plays sift through the rubble of crumbling marriages

Love (or something like it) is in the air on Vancouver stages right now, as relationship-themed plays compete for a little piece of your heart. It’s almost unfair that The Last Five Years, a small-scale Broadway musical (fighting against an uneven script), finds itself pitted against the witty and wonderful words of Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife. That, and Years’ tired depiction of a woman in love, feels so painfully passé when compared to the balls-out equality of Wife’s fierce females.

Wife, set in the 1930s (as depicted in a beautiful set from Ken MacDonald), unleashes its characters from conventional behaviour — these are rich people who play by a different set of rules — and tackles the three big Fs: fidelity, feminism, and fortune. Constance (a perfectly cast and sparkling Nicole Underhay) and John (Ted Cole) have been married for 15 years when rumours surface of John’s affair with Constance’s best friend, Marie-Louise Durham (Celine Stubel does the chirpy strumpet with aplomb). When Constance’s former suitor comes back into the picture, all hell breaks loose, and Constance proves that she’s no silent, suffering spouse.

Wife has been hailed by Variety as the precursor to Sex and the City, and it’s true, in that the women in Wife rule the stage. Martha (Moya O’Connell) is Constance’s self-righteous younger sister and a spinster, and both women are stifled by their brutally witty mother, Mrs. Culver (a divine Bridget O’Sullivan), a rich old woman whose words carry the same blunt force as a blow from a sledgehammer.

The bon mots and one-liners are delivered with sophistication, and director Morris Panych brings out the best in Maugham’s catty and astute asides. Panych also digs into the source material to hit the nail on the head of some of today’s taboos: seeking satisfaction outside of the marital bed, embarking on an open relationship, and seeing women as equals.

Women fair less well in The Last Five Years, a musical written by Jason Robert Brown and based on his own failed marriage. Jamie (Jesse Donaldson, vacillating between winning and annoying) and Cathy (bright spot Naomi Dayneswood) meet in their early twenties, fall in love, get married, and eventually break up over the course of five years, with each song representing a different stage in their relationship. Jamie’s gaining some major success as a new best-selling author, while Cathy’s doing summer theatre in Ohio and failing to get her big break as an actress.

Jamie’s story arc moves from first meeting to breakup, while Cathy’s tale starts at the breakup and moves backward to the couple’s first meeting. It’s an interesting conceit, but one that allows each characters’ flaws too much room to breathe, making it difficult to muster prolonged sympathy for either side. Simplistic characters — Jamie is the jerk who disappears, leaving only a Dear John letter; Cathy is the needy wife who’s hung her star in someone else’s sky — don’t help matters either. The Last Five Years is like watching friends who have no business being together break up for an hour and a half. You want to give them both a shake and then go get a drink.

As the audience traverses both sides of the story, certain songs allow for moments of genuine heart to shine through. “The Schmuel Song” shows a softer side of Jamie as he makes up a Christmas story for Cathy to encourage her self-esteem. “I Can Do Better Than That” shows some of the fire Cathy used to have, declaring she’s not looking for the proverbial white picket fence and desires a more complete life.

Many of Cathy’s songs paint her as a woman who is insecure, defined solely by her relationship with Jamie. (Brown’s former wife, on whom Cathy is based, threatened legal action if certain songs weren’t changed.) Conversely, Jamie’s songs are mostly self-involved, alternating between falling for Cathy and his burgeoning success as an author. Donaldson’s got a charismatic presence, but he does little work to keep Jamie’s cartoonish ego in check; his Jamie is prone to plenty of pelvic thrusts and rock-star antics. Dayneswood’s Cathy is appropriately sad and pathetic, but she infuses the character with lovely doses of defiance and vigour.

We should connect with the broken people singing sad songs in The Last Five Years, but the heart loves who it wants — and the women of The Constant Wife are irresistible: mind games, manipulation and all. After all, who among us would choose a bittersweet break-up tale when there’s the tartly delicious story of sweet revenge waiting in the wings?

Best of theatre, 2008

Steven Schelling and I picked our favourite theatre from 2008 for this week's WE.

STAGE: Last (curtain) call — Looking back on the year’s best in theatre

The problem with year-end theatre roundups is that the theatre, like most performing arts, doesn’t follow the guidelines of the Gregorian calendar. With most companies launching their seasons in September and closing them in May, and summer options filling the breach, the January 1 cut-off can seem maddeningly arbitrary.

Difficult or not, WE’s two chief theatre reviewers were strong-armed into conforming. Herewith, a few of their favourite theatrical things from 2008.

FAVOURITE SHOW (LARGE VENUE)
The Tempest and Titus Andronicus shared the smaller of the two stages at Bard on the Beach, but watching the talented cast traverse the diametrically opposed material was like auditing a master class in Shakespeare. — Andrea Warner

Doubt — without a shadow of one. John Patrick Shanley created a crisp 90 minutes of moral ambiguity, refreshingly (and maddeningly) devoid of an obvious conclusion. And the sublime cat-and-mouse game between Jonathon Young and Gabrielle Rose? It just doesn’t get any better. — Steven Schelling

FAVOURITE SHOW (SMALL VENUE)
Being that it was mounted in an East Van warehouse, the venue wasn’t what you might call “small.” Nonetheless, the Virtual Stage/Electric Company live cinematic co-production of Jean Paul Satre’s No Exit — which had its cast locked in a small room and their performances projected in real time on a back wall — was the height of welcome claustrophobia. —S.S.

Rosa Laborde’s timely meditation on youth, politics, and art wasn’t without its flaws, but Léo made for a powerfully taut 90 minutes. A comely cast playing the sexually confused trio of frenemies (coming of age in ’70s-era socialist Chilé) didn’t hurt. —A.W.

FAVOURITE MUSICAL (LARGE VENUE)
The Drowsy Chaperone, the lovingly tongue-in-cheek sendup of the glory days of Broadway musicals, has it all: glamourous costumes, beautifully choreographed dance numbers, and silly songs galore. —A.W.

Despite a few small sound issues, The Drowsy Chaperone, with its great cast (especially Jay Brazeau), great costumes, great music, and great silliness was, ultimately, a great piece of frosted escapism — just as it should be. — S.S.

FAVOURITE MUSICAL (SMALL VENUE)
Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim’s challenging musical that messes with fairy-tale endings, marked the debut of the promising Patrick Street Productions, and introduced Vancouverites to the incredible Ingrid Nilson as a knife-wielding, wickedly funny Little Red Riding Hood. —A.W.

Into the Woods. Ambitious, well-executed, and a commendable first step for Patrick Street Productions. (Imagine, choosing Sondheim the first time out? That’s ballsy!) I look forward to seeing what they do with their upcoming spring production, The Full Monty. — S.S.

MOST DARING PRODUCTION
It’s a tie between the remount of November Theatre’s dizzyingly incomprehensible yet thrilling The Black Rider and Leaky Heaven Circus’ rollicking cabaret act about cannibalism, A Bone in Her Teeth. (Confidential to Sasa Brown: never has baby-eating been funnier.) — S.S.

FAVOURITE TOURING PRODUCTION
Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre and its dark, brooding, and comedic original musical, Frankenstein, brought to the VECC as part of the PuSh Festival. Part goth nightmare, part Tim Burton copyright infringement, the overall effect was mesmerizing and hugely entertaining. — S.S.

FAVOURITE DIRECTOR
Kim Collier, not only for the breathtaking genius of her multimedia No Exit, but for her masterful goth/bondage turn at Shakespeare’s often neglected sex-and-gore fest, Titus Andronicus. — S.S.

Although Kim Collier also rocked Titus Andronicus, fellow Bard on the Beach director Meg Roe’s debut in The Tempest cast a magical spell that was impossible to shake off. — A.W.

FAVOURITE NEW ACTOR
Charlie Gallant’s work this year (as a homophobic and violent teen in Steel Kiss and a Montréal Massacre survivor in The December Man, both with Green Thumb Theatre; and Demetrius in Titus Andronicus at Bard on the Beach), would be impressive for a well-established Vancouver actor. It’s even more so when you consider Gallant graduated from Studio 58 only last year. The winner of this year’s Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for most promising newcomer, his shirtless, hyper-sexual turn in Titus made him a talked-about matinee idol, and not just for the high-school field trip set. — S.S.

FAVOURITE NEW COMPANY
Itsazoo transformed Queen Elizabeth park into a fairy-tale playground with Grimm Tales, a twisted re-imagining of classic fables, led by first-time forest tour guides Hansel and Gretel. Funny and occasionally creepy, it was also the only theatre company to incorporate exercise with entertainment (with Boca del Lupo on hiatus), utilizing the entire park for each vignette. —A.W.

FAVOURITE TREND
The rise of the “old man”: Jay Brazeau and Simon Webb, two of Vancouver’s most established theatre vets, brought wit and grace to stages big and small. Brazeau was a manic, money-hungry lech one minute (The Producers) and a cranky, hilarious, musical-loving agoraphobe (The Drowsy Chaperone) the next. Webb’s lean frame managed to fill out the sharp edges of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays (Pinter’s Briefs) and corralled the loose-cannon characters as the narrator in Into the Woods. —A.W.

Being able to see original plays before the movie versions hit the screens (at least in the cases of Doubt and Frost/Nixon). Even though it took far too long for The Drowsy Chaperone to come to town, apparently Vancouver has graduated from third- to second-tier when it comes to getting the rights to acclaimed Broadway and West End shows. —S.S.

The Drowsy Chaperone

My review of The Drowsy Chaperone appears in this week's WE.

A “perfect” cast lampoons the innocent entertainments of a simpler time in the Vancouver premiere of the Tony Award-winning musical, The Drowsy Chaperone.

Raucous, high-energy ‘Chaperone’ anything but drowsy

Posted By: Andrea Warner

The Drowsy Chaperone, the happiest accidental success in Canadian theatre history, tore a whirlwind path from stag-party goof to Tony Award-winning Broadway smash. Now, seven dizzying years after making its debut at the Toronto Fringe Festival, Chaperone finally tap-dances its way onto a Vancouver stage in the show’s first-ever independent production.

Easily one of the highlights of the city’s theatre year, Chaperone is a loving send-up and celebration of musicals from days gone by. Fashioned as a play-within-a-play, it’s narrated by Man in Chair (a show-stealing Jay Brazeau, equally hilarious and touching), a Broadway aficionado suffering from unspecified sadness. Putting on a cast recording, he’s transported from his drab New York apartment into the world of his all-time favourite trifle, The Drowsy Chaperone, a typical 1920s -style romantic comedy chock full of mistaken identities and silly twists. The plot, such as it is, revolves around getting a glamourous stage star (Debbie Timuss) to the altar, all under the neglectful, gin-soaked eye of her chaperone (Gabrielle Jones).

Cast perfectly, there are a few performers — and numbers — worth highlighting. Timuss is charmingly funny as the woman caught between her addiction to fame and her desire to be with the man of her dreams (particularly during the sidesplitting “The Bride’s Lament”). Jones is great as the boozy chaperone who lives entirely in her own world, as demonstrated in her passionate number “As We Stumble Along.” In fact, almost every song offers a pleasant surprise, from the tap-dance between the groom-to-be and the best man during “Cold Feet,” to the irreverent “Message from a Nightingale,” a mocking admission of Broadway’s racist past.

Chaperone’s only notable fault is that, occasionally, words sung in the lower registers get lost, whether overpowered by the onstage band or through strange blocking, where an actor is momentarily singing with his/her back to the audience. This snag only stands out because the rest of the production, from choreography to costuming, is so damn good.

It may have taken seven years, but The Drowsy Chaperone was well worth the wait.

Laramie Project

My review of The Laramie Project appears in this week's WE.

Decade-old tragedy retains its relevance

By Andrea Warner

This year marked the 10th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder, a violent homophobic hate crime that brought international attention to the small Wyoming town immortalized in the affecting but flawed play, The Laramie Project.

Written by Moisés Kaufman and members of New York’s Tectonic Theatre Project, The Laramie Project is a patchwork quilt of quotes from the company members’ own journal entries, their interviews with town residents, and published news reports. Its three acts recount the discovery of Shepard’s nearly lifeless body, the aftermath of his death, the arrests of two young men for the murder, and their subsequent trial a year later.

The cast stumbles in places (a few forgotten lines and some “Well, golly!” accents), but several shine brightly, adeptly conveying real people affected by a horrific crime. Matt Clarke moves fluidly between each of his characters, and is particularly charming as Jedediah Shultz, a college student, and Matt Galloway, the wordy bartender who was one of the last people to see Shepard alive. Jean Nicolai gives a strong performance as the plucky yet stoic police officer who was first on the scene when Shepard was found.

Ultimately, the play suffers from weak script editing; Kaufman’s decision to highlight certain characters seems like an indulgent desire for “local flavour” at the expense of characters who help move the story forward. Director Ryan Mooney could have also used a firmer hand in deciding how to adapt Laramie for Havana’s small stage (the actors were routinely under-lit or about a foot away from their spotlight). Mooney’s biggest mistake is his gratuitous use of music, an unnecessary manipulation given that the power of this play is in its words.

Four Course Meal

My review of Four Course Meal appears in this week's WE.

Ryan Hauser (left)and Sebastien Archibald in Four Course Meal.

Credit: Supplied

Four Course Meal
By Andrea Warner

ITSAZOO Productions, a Victoria-based non-profit theatre company, has a reputation for presenting innovative theatre in wildly inventive settings. The group made its Vancouver debut this past summer with Grimm Tales, which turned Queen Elizabeth Park into the secret enclave of fairytale characters with more problems than an entire season of Jerry Springer rejects. The company’s youthfulness (the founders are a few fresh-from-UVic-theatre grads) makes its accomplishments all the more rewarding.

Four Course Meal, the company’s second offering of its first full season in Vancouver, incorporates four one-act plays, all of them written by a variety of new voices. The evening starts off on a tasty note with the quaint fairytale, Milmish. The titular character is part frog, part human, whose parents disagree about how best to socialize her in the “new world,” where most children are perfect, conceived through the “miracle” of mail-ordered gene-selection. The cast is funny and sweet, and Colby Wilson’s particularly hilarious turn as the professor is not to be missed.

Baggage, the second piece, is at turns brilliant and vulgar, but it’s the most nuanced and accomplished of the four. Written and directed by Sebastien Archibald (writer of Grimm Tales), it depicts the entirety of an imagined relationship between two people who have just met, plus all of the hang-ups, insecurities, and, well, baggage that have brought them to this point. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking.

The second half, unfortunately, falls flatter than a soufflé cooked in the midst of a demolition derby. Indiana Jones and the Wannabe Nemeses is a one-man show that strives to be meaningful, deep, and funny, but comes off as bitter, manipulative, and boring. Five Red Balloons fares better, but its high-concept meditation on the inherent evil of man feels more emo than avant-garde. The cast is great, but overall, the piece never resonates as loudly as its writer clearly wishes it would.

Ultimately, Four Course Meal isn’t quite ready to serve as is. But, given the lively sparkle of the first half of the evening, this might be an exercise in restraint: the company offers a lower admission fee if you want to see just the first two acts. Practice quality over quantity and get your dessert somewhere else.

Influence

My review of Influence also appears in this week's WE.

STAGE REVIEW: History and fantasy meld beautifully in ‘Influence’

Daniel Arnold and Colleen Wheeler combine literary history and Greek mythology in Influence.

Credit: Supplied

Posted By: Andrea Warner

11/13/2008 12:00 AM

Victoria-based playwright Janet Munsil might be a genius. At first glance, the ideas behind her new play, Influence, seem too numerous and, well, dull — like some strange introductory English Lit class — to result in anything resembling an entertaining two hours of theatre. And yet, in her capably crafty hands, she makes her audience care about the magic of inspiration and art by interweaving Greek mythology, Romantic poet John Keats, and failed painter Benjamin Robert Haydon.

Influence delights in its academics, but takes equal pleasure in blending fact and fiction for a full-bodied re-imagining of a visit by Keats and Haydon to view the Elgin Marbles (ancient Greek statues originally housed in the Parthenon, and the inspiration for Keats’s famous sonnet). There, the pair meet three tempestuous Greek gods — Athena, Apollo, and Hephaestus — who end up battling over Keats’s fate, as well as settling old scores with each other.

This is an impeccably cast production, but a few standouts include Daniel Arnold, who is a joy as Keats. His desperation is palpable (Keats has just quit his job to become a poet), and his delighted awe at Haydon’s artistic passion makes their mentor-protégé relationship entirely believable. Colleen Wheeler is always wonderful, and her Athena is powerful and appropriately intimidating, given that the character is the God of wisdom and war.

But Influence’s greatest asset is Mike Stack as Haydon, imagined here as obnoxious, self-involved, a borderline mad Willy Wonka wielding a paintbrush. Yet Stack keeps the character relatable, allowing the audience to see that for all Haydon’s bravado, his denial is a fragile bubble in which to hide.

This is Influence’s world premiere, and while there likely are still tweaks to be made (it’s about 20 minutes too long), it has all the makings of a new classic.

Grimm Tales

My review of Grimm Tales appears in this week's WE.

‘Grimm Tales’ mines the macabre in children’s lit

By Andrea Warner

They say youth is wasted on the young. Try telling that to the innovative crew behind Grimm Tales, a loved and lauded play from Victoria, who are now chasing each other from scene to scene through one of Vancouver’s most challenging new “venues.” Perhaps only a fledgling theatre company like ITSAZOO would be so ballsy as to stage a two-hour walking play through the manicured but steep terrain at Queen Elizabeth Park. (Word to the wise: wear comfortable shoes to fully embrace this wacky forest of fun.)

Grimm Tales, written by Sebastien Archibald, who is also part of the ensemble, revisits the most traumatic, familiar, and eyebrow-raising of fairytales. The tales on their own are often macabre and scary — complex lessons in morality, ethics, and evil. It’s like CNN, but with better writing.

In Grimm Tales’ twisted take, Hansel and Gretel are tour guides through the Enchanted Woods, a dark place that’s home to a multitude of strange people, all of them looking for a happy ending. Funny, cute, and nicely paced, it works like a well-oiled machine, entertaining adults and kids alike. Under Chelsea Haberlin’s direction, the talented cast keeps everything moving at breakneck speed.

Ryan Hesp’s Prince craves adventure and has an insatiable eye for the ladies, constantly finding himself engaged to needy princesses. Hesp brings great moments of humour to his arrogant and entitled alter-ego. Peter Carlone is suitably creepy as Fred, the sinister fellow based on the story of Bluebeard, who warns his ladylove not to look inside his secret room. Carlone also plays band member Donkey with a gleeful dazedness. Ingrid Hansen’s physical transformation into the Cat is a neat combination of hands curling into paws and long legs moving with feline agility.

If watching Colby Wilson and Katie Hood interact as German siblings Hansel and Gretel doesn’t bring a smile to your face, check for a heartbeat — their enthusiasm is contagious. Wilson’s comedic timing and off-handed improv style elicit bursts of unrestrained laughter, particularly when catching the small bits he mutters offhandedly. His wide, innocent eyes and loose attachment to his accent are incredibly charming. Hood is a tiny terror, and she perfectly captures the older-sister vibe, half-heartedly attempting to reel in Hansel’s impulsive whimsy, playing the perfect straight woman. She gets to show off her kick-ass girl power as well, as she questions why only pretty girls get happy endings before facing off against her evil stepmother in the candy-coated gingerbread house.

Some of the fairytale adaptations are particularly ingenious: The Princess and the Frog is given a modern twist to mock society’s predilection for reality television — it’s knowing and clever without being too moralistic. The Bluebeard adaptation is a curious inclusion, since it’s unlikely to ring familiar to most people, but it’s so supremely creepy and dark that it stands out as one of the play’s most memorable moments. Plus, some of the female characters that get short shrift in the original versions of these stories are now empowered 21st-century types. (But only some. Others are firmly rooted in a permanently shallow state.)

The ragtag group of musicians that follows the action of each vignette make for a great addition to Grimm Tales. The band is composed of animals casually referred to as Puss, Buns, Cock, and Ass (though not credited as such in the program), and it’s this sly combination of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll that glides over little ones’ heads and right into the heart of the dirty 12-year-old inside us all.

That lack of finesse sometimes extends to Grimm Tales’ unsubtle social commentary, which needs more refinement so that the play feels less like a PSA. Set in a war-torn Enchanted Woods, the peasants are starving while the King feasts. The King has also paved over nature, reared a shallow and shrill daughter, and boasts a Southern accent. And the band’s politics, while funny, segues into a ‘Don’t Do Worms’ (which is to say, drugs) campaign that feels a bit tired.

Grimm Tales is an eventful walk in the woods, made far more interesting by its myriad moments of magic and malice — a welcome end to the summer theatre season.