Vancouver theatre review

The Vic by Leanna Brodie
Directed by Sarah Szloboda
A Terminal Theatre production
Jericho Arts Centre
Feb 16 th to 21 st, 2010

Vancouver, BC: This production of The Vic is an ambitious undertaking by the young Terminal Theatre company which staged its first production in the summer of 2009. For this, their third production, they might have been better served had they chosen a less convoluted play.

The Vic features 8 female characters - described as part victim, part victimisers - in four disparate story lines which finally come together - sort of. I found the continuity of this play hard to follow so without having read the script, here is what I gathered from the show. 

The set is dominated by a giant screen on which brief film clips show at different points between the other scenes. This as we discover is the thread that draws the four stories together.

The play opens with women entering the darkened space, each carrying a light, the Spanish singing evoking the "desaparecidos" or "the disappeared" of Latin America. Then we see four local women searching for a missing woman, Cara (April Cameron) whose inner thoughts are revealed through her "diary" shown in the film clips. Cameron's naively wistful, young girl provides the only really sympathetic character in the story.

Dance Marathon at The Roundhouse Community Centre
bluemouth Inc. and Boca del Lupo
February 12 th, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I was having a blast at the Dance Marathon until I got eliminated in The Derby - how lame, so to speak! That was when I  realized that my competitive streak is as strong as it ever was - because I was not ready to  go and I was MAD.

The Dance Marathon is a greatly truncated version of the 1920s and 1930s endurance contests as depicted in the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They. Originally commissioned for Toronto's Harbourfront Centre,  Vancouver's Dance Marathon is part of the exciting Cultural Olympiad that has been entertaining us with an incredible variety of art, theatre, music and dance. 

As an Olympic volunteer I was able to to see the Opening Ceremonies dress rehearsal on Wednesday night and was really impressed but last night, watching the show on television, I realized what an amazing show Vanoc had put together. As the final speeches were taking place I made my way along Pacific Boulevard to the Roundhouse in time to see on the television there, the two cauldrons being lit.

The  ceremony being over, it was time to get the Dance Marathon under way. I signed my waiver form , picked up my number plus a bottle of water  and was ready to go. Several of the dancers from the opening ceremony wandered in and joined up. I recognised some of the folks who did the Celtic dancing with that amazingly fast footwork. Some competition!

The Passion Project
Director/Creator   Reid Farrington
Pacific Theatre and the PuSh Festival
Pacific Theatre
an 27 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  When I initially read the description of The Passion Project as "video art installation- meets theatre" I wasn't sure what to think about it other than that it would be novel and different. After seeing it, I concluded that think is the wrong word. It is more a sensory experience than a cognitive experience.  And what on earth do I mean by that?  Let me try and articulate my experience.

Arriving somewhat early, as usual, I await the start of the show in the lobby of the theatre. A suggestion of what is to come is shown by three sets of grainy black and white images projected onto a sackcloth screen. As more people arrive we are taken round to the back entrance of the theatre and told that we should wander around during the performance for an interactive experience.

The theatre space has been reconfigured and some rows of seats removed. There is a 10 x 10 square delineated by rows of panel with loops of ropes hanging overhead. Around the square there is room for the audience to walk. The lit set is quite striking. The ropes and sack-cloth screens evoke a sense of medieval times; the demarcated space, a sense of confinement.

Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
A new version by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Victor Vasuta
United Players of Vancouver
Jericho Arts Centre
Jan 22 to Feb 14, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I really enjoyed United Player's production of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, although I did find myself wanting to hand Nickolay Ivanov a strong dose of some psychotropic  medication and a referral to a psychotherapist. But that's the infuriatingly hapless self-absorbed character that Chekhov created.

In the title role, Noel Johansen showed us a  man who has lost his way in every aspect of his world - his marriage, his work and his finances. Married to the ailing Anna (Tamara McCarthy), whose wealthy parents disowned her when she converted from Judaism to marry him, Ivanov has "fallen out of  love"  with Anna. He leaves her at home each evening while he goes to  visit the  Lebedevs,  the affable Pavel (Dave Campbell) and his  wife Zinaida (Christine Ianetta). Zinaida is a wealthy moneylender to whom Ivanov is severely in debt. And then there is Sasha.

Sõ  Percussion plays Steve Reich and David Lang
Push Festival and Music on Main
Heritage Hall
Jan 24 and 25, 2010

Vancouver BC: My insanely busy life living and writing on theatre, food, travel, and of course dance - the doing of it , not the writing about it, leaves me little time to go to music events but when I read about Sõ Percussion in the PuSh brochure, I could not resist going to this performance.  Rhythm is what my life's about at the moment - I feel the beat - all the time. Maybe a different kind of beat. I'm talking samba, chachacha, waltz, tango but rhythm trumps melody when dance and dance music plays all the time when I am at thome.  Since I had no idea what the range of percussion music would encompass, this would be an opportunity for me to learn something new. So, for any of you who, like me, know painfully little about this subject, I did some pre-event research and spent some fascinating time reading and listening at the websites of So Percussion , Steve Reich and David Lang.

The Show Must Go On
by Jérôme Bel

SFU Woodwards and The Dance Centre
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU
Jan 20 to 23rd, 2010

I was especially looking forward to going to see this show  because I anticipated that for several reasons it would be a bit of an adventure . Firstly this would be the first production I would see in the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre in the Simon Fraser University complex, newly built on the old Woodwards site. As it turned out it is still so new that I was directed by a security man to an entrance to the theatre complex through a gap in the construction fencing that still surrounds much of the area.

The second reason was that instead of driving my car I planned to take the Canada Line up to Waterfront and walk along West Hastings to the theatre, checking out a Salsa Studio on the way. I can just hear the groans of "what's the big deal, taking transit" but I was going by myself to this show, and for me, walking alone late at night in what is not as yet a very desirable part of the city, constitutes an adventure.

The Edward Curtis Project by Marie Clements
Directed by Marie Clements and Brenda Leadlay
Presentation House Theatre
Jan 21 to 31, 2010

Photograph Credits: Tim Matheson

Vancouver, BC:  "Obsession and appropriation." 

In a unique and rare conjunction, within a four day period, I saw two newly created theatrical works, dealing with similar themes but approached very differently - Beyond Eden and The Edward Curtis Project. After seeing The Edward Curtis Project, I stayed to hear the talk back session in which members of the cast succinctly summed up the common themes of these plays as "obsession and  appropriation".

Both plays are loosely based on real events surrounding two men, each driven by an obsession. Beyond Eden's Lewis Wilson is an anthropologist/ archeologist bound on preserving cultural history of the Haida by  retrieving and restoring decaying totem poles form a deserted Haida village.  Edward Curtis is a photographer who devotes his life to "documenting" what he calls "The Vanishing Indian." In both cases an argument can be made that as  "the other", i.e. non-Aboriginal, they are engaging in cultural appropriation by "stealing"  Aboriginal  art or icons. And in the case of Curtis, possibly even portraying a self-manufactured cultural image as the real thing.

THE VERTICAL HOUR  by  David Hare
Directed by  Tamara McCarthy
The Jericho Arts Centre
A United Players Production    
November 13th to December 6th

Vancouver, BC:  VERTICAL HOUR LACKS LOINS
I applaud United Players for bringing this intellectually engaging play to the Jericho Arts Centre.  The work of David Hare is always good for  lively discussion on the way home from the theatre.  But this production is like having three really nice, interesting people over for dinner; and you discuss politics, doctors, psychiatry, war, relationships, sex, marriage; and they stay way too late.  There is a lot of talk about  what is really going on during the evening with very little evidence of anything but talk. 

David Hare has written three very interesting lead roles and Director, Tamara McCarthy has failed to bring them to life.  There is no ferocity, no sexual tension, no passion, irony or sub-text...just people talking and talking and talking.

The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen
Adapted and translated by Errol Durbach
Directed by Gerald Vanderwoude
Theatre at UBC/Yorick Theatre co-production
Telus Studio Theatre,  UBC
Oct 29 to Nov 7, 2009

 Vancouver, BC:  Don't miss this production of  Ibsen's The Master Builder. Re-shaped with a surgical precision by Errol Durbach's concise adaptation and Gerald Vanderwoude's taut direction, it is a sharply focused portrait of a man at the pinnacle of his profession, brought down by his desire for a nubile young thing. The play may have been written in 1892, but the story is played out frequently in the media today as politicians,  business executives, perfomers and preachers publically beat their chests crying "mea culpa" as their wives file for divorce and half their assets. I tried to count on one hand such situations in the recent past but soon ran out of fingers!

Halvard Solness (Chris Humphreys) is the Master Builder. A self-taught man with no formal training in architecture, he epitomises success in his town, allowing little opportunity for the young would-be artisans like his draughtsman, Ragnar Brovik (Nicholas Fontaine), to earn commissions to build projects of their own. Ragnar's father, Knut Brovik (Matt Young), the aged architect who once employed Solness, and Kaja Fosli, Brovik's niece (Odessa Cadieux-Rey),  both work in his office; they wait for him to put his stamp of approval on Ragnar's designs so that he can branch out on his own.He is utterly self-centered, manipulating everyone from his wife Aline (Trish Pattenden) to Kaja and the Broviks, to achieve his own ends. But his success is built on the destruction of other people's happiness. His wife has never recovered from the loss of the family home in a fire , even with the support of  Dr. Herdal (Maurice Verkaar).

And then out of the past appears Hilde Wangel (Fiona Mongillo), who has come to claim her "castle in the air."  

 Solness, who outwardly appears so prosperous and confident, has doubts.  He believes that he is one of a few chosen people, who can want something so insistently  that they will it into happening - through the agency of  devilish trolls. He harbours a secret  fear - that retribution for his good fortune must come, and it does - but  he just does not recognize its agent  when he sees her.

This is perhaps the most mystical and symbolic of Ibsen's later plays and I find it fascinating that Ibsen, the father of realism in the theatre, needs to invoke a belief in supernatural forces,  to account for Solness's self-doubts. But for a man in his mid-sixties, nearing the end of a prolific but often critically challenged career, it would not be odd for Ibsen to transpose his own inner concerns with memory and the reality of past and present, into his protagonist.

EVIL DEAD - THE MUSICAL (The Vancouver Production)
Book & Lyrics by George Reinblatt
Music by Frank Cipolla, Christopher Bond, Melissa Morris, George Reinblatt
Music Supervision by Frank Cipolla
Additional Lyrics by Christopher Bond
Additional Music by Rob Daleman
Director: Mark Carter
Choreographer:  Ken Overbey
Musical Director: Sylvia Zaradic
Norman Rothstein Theatre
A Down Stage Right (DSR) Production    
October 29th to November 7th

Vancouver, BC:  THIS CHEESE IS FUN!
The set is crappy (and very cleverly designed), the costumes are deliberately tacky, there have not been worse wigs since Dynel was invented, the props fall apart, the acting is over the top, and my cheeks ached from grinning through the whole show.  This is cheesy as an art form.  The evening is a riot of bad puns, brilliantly bad acting, great singing and fun choreography. 

Director Mark Carter keeps this paper-thin musical airborne for the by keeping his attractive cast racing at breakneck speed so you are hardly aware of the dead spots in the script. 

Based on the cult classic Sam Rami movie, which is a send up of horror films, the musical is a spoof of a spoof...tricky territory for a director with less skill than Carter.  But he pulls it off with the help of a smart set designer, John Bessette and the wacky choreography of Ken Overbey ... and that cast. 

Scott Walters plays the manic Ash with bulging biceps, bulging veins and bulging eyeballs.  He has the nice guy, potential psycho thing nailed.  He is ably abetted by Meghan Gardiner as both dumb blonde Annie and not so bright Shelly, who is so good in both parts that she should be given away as Christmas presents.