Archives for September 2019

The casting of a woman, Sandra Ferens as Jan, the hunting guide, might help to make the character more sympathetic in this production.

Canadian playwright Trina Davies’s The Trophy Hunt feels like an overly deliberate writing exercise in which she plays three variations on the theme of African big-game hunting. (Why Africa? Why not the Canadian North, which would bring things closer to home?)

In the first variation, a hunter, who slaughtered a protected lion then paid a social-media and legal price for it, moans about how persecuted he feels. Poor baby. Who cares?

In the second, a hunting guide tries to distance herself morally from her clients, whom she regards as assholes. But she’s enabling them so that she can make 75K per hunt, so … Poor baby.

The identity of the third speaker is a mystery at first, which makes the final section the most satisfying in terms of the writing.

The acting in this production is mixed. Playing Parker, the media-shamed lion killer, Michael Karl Richards brings a load of sincerity but no edge. In a grounded performance, Sandra Ferens makes Jan, the guide, about as sympathetic as she can get. And Lissa Neptuno is sly as the third character, a self-consciously exotic local named Soraya, although, for some self-defeating reason, director Shelby Bushell has Soraya strike yoga poses throughout the violent climax of her speech.

Overall, the pace that Bushell sets is slack, and that’s not just because this is an ambulatory performance (the audience walks from site to site along the shoreline of False Creek); the pace within monologues also drags.

A fourth character, a tour guide (played gamely by Ariel Slack) doesn’t fit: whereas all of the other characters are serious in one way or another, the guide is broadly comic.

This production is okay, but the script is wonky and gives little indication that the playwright is passionately engaged with her material.

In Ron Basford Park. Remaining performances on September 10 (6:30 p.m.), 11 (6:30 p.m.), 12 (6:30 p.m.), 13 (6:30 p.m.), 14 (6:30 p.m.), and 15 (6:30 p.m.)

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Natalie Frijia makes an amiable tour guide.

BikeFace is clean, simple, and it does its job, kind of like a glass of water — or a good bike.

In her solo show, writer/performer Natalie Frijia tells us about her cross-Canada cycling trip. The travelogue includes elements you’d probably anticipate: mishaps (like choosing a really bad camping site), encounters with colourful locals (like the guy who runs a tacky Wild West town), and mosquitoes.

There’s also an undertow of sexual threat: “If you’re a woman and you want to do something,” Frijia says, “this is what you’re told is out there.” But Frijia is resilient: she’s going to have her adventure, goddamn it. And she underlines her feminist point with humour, quoting repeatedly from Dr. A. Shadwell’s 1897 work The Hidden Dangers of Cycling, which includes the gem: “For women, cycling destroys the organs of matrimonial necessity.”

Frijia’s analysis isn’t complicated, but its simple defiance is appealing and she is a personable and — as you might expect — robust narrator.

In The Nest. Remaining performances on September 11 (5:15 p.m.), 12 (10:30 p.m.), 13 (6:45 p.m.), and 15 (1:30 p.m.)

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Tessa Trach and Georgia Acken in Amélie. The gnome doesn’t get a credit.
What kind of world is this? (Photo by DL Acken)

About an hour into this 90-minute show, I checked my watch and my companion leaned over to whisper, “Time has slowed.”

As in Amélie the movie, sweet nothing happens in Amélie the musical — well, nothing interesting. Amélie is a shy young Parisienne and, for a lot of the story, that’s her action: being shy — and whimsically kind. Then she finds herself attracted to an almost equally eccentric and shy young man named Nino, but Amélie avoids and teases Nino for so long that you want to slap her. There’s no narrative tension in this; the resolution is inevitable. SPOILER ALERT: they get together. Of course they get together!

To make things worse, this material seems very pleased with its own inertia, presenting itself as quirky and delicate when, to me, it’s just coy.

That said, Western Moon Theatre does a reasonably good job with it. Georgia Acken is simply and effectively present as the young Amélie. Tessa Trach is credibly innocent as the adult version, which is no mean feat. And Nevada Yates Roberts, delivers clearly delineated characterizations as a hypochondriac named Georgette and Sylvie, a sex-shop owner.

Vocally, I particularly enjoyed Enoch Choi’s Nino, Paul Just’s Elton John (yes, Elton John), and Sean Anthony’s turn as Amélie’s father, Raphaël.

Director Chris Lam and choreographer Linzi Voth make simple but effective use of the large playing area. And, under Peter Abando’s direction, the four-piece onstage orchestra is solid.

But Craig Lucas’s book? Ai yi yi. Never date an Amélie.

At the Firehall Arts Centre. Remaining performances on September 10 (8:15 p.m.), 11 (7:15 p.m.), 13 (8:45 p.m.), 14 (4:00 p.m.), and 15 (3:15 p.m.)

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Playing a ghost, Katie Hartman pours it out in The Legend of White Woman Creek.

Oddly, I found The Legend of White Woman Creek both hypnotic and boring.

Katie Hartman, who wrote the piece with partner Nick Ryan, who’s running the lights, performs solo. Starting out as an academic who specializes in the paranormal, she summons the ghost of nineteenth-century American settler Anna Morgan Faber. Then Anna proceeds to deliver a folk music concert. Fortunately, the academic has thought to bring a guitar and a microphone.

Through a 13-song cycle, Anna tells us how she married a taciturn German immigrant named Heinrich Faber and lived with him for two miserable years in a sod hut in Kansas. When Heinrich and his pals raid a Cheyenne camp for no reason, the Cheyenne retaliate by kidnapping Anna — much to her eventual delight.

She falls in love with a noble Cheyenne chief. (Does he have to be so singularly noble and a chief? Is this a form of settler porn?)

I’ve been flippant about the framing, but there’s an undeniable integrity in Hartman’s performance. She sings as if she herself is a medium — in a voice that feels like wood to me because of its naturalness and strength — and she often channels wrenching emotions.

The melodies evoke prairie spaciousness and there’s harsh beauty in some of the lyrics. I’m thinking about a song, for instance, in which a pair of crows fly over a battlefield and see the human remains as an unexpected boon.

Anna’s narrative and its characters don’t acquire much nuance, however. And the songs all feel similarly melancholy and, for the most part, slow.

There’s a lot of talent here but, in this song cycle, it has not found its perfect vessel.

At the Revue Stage. Remaining performances on September 12 (6:45 p.m.), 14 (5:45 p.m.), and 15 (1:45 p.m.)

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Look at this photo. Do you think this show might be a bit illustrative?

Playwright Lili Robinson has some great instincts.

Mx, Robinson’s exploration of her combined African and white heritage, starts with a monologue from Mz. Nancy (Alisha Davidson looking gorgeously imposing in a red sequined dress, scarlet-and-gold headscarf, and sparkling red shoes.) “Some faces I recognize from other evenings,” she says, “Stops on the tour. Dreams.” Mz. Nancy seems to be some kind of traveling talk-show host with a twist: the trickster version of Oprah.

Mz. Nancy invites a character named Max — or Mx — up from the audience: it’s Robinson; she’s a plant. Then Mz. Nancy and Samantha, a perky, 50s-style white woman proceed to vie for possession of Mx’s soul.

Robinson peppers Mx with puppetry (a talking map), dancing, lip sync, and ritual, which is all refreshing. And there’s some sly humour: when Samantha tries to lure Mx to her side, she offers a croissant.

But the folks who were supposed to help Robinson structure her script have let her down. Robinson won the Fringe New Play Prize last year, which means that Mx was developed with the assistance of the Playwrights Theatre Centre — specifically dramaturge Joanna Garfinkel.

But Garfinkel has left Mx with a passive protagonist: Mx just gets booted around by the other two, so there’s a blank where the script’s centre should be. And Samantha is a two-dimensional villain, a condescending faux liberal who calls Mx the N word when her mask slips.

So the only interesting character onstage is Mz. Nancy, who’s beneficent but unreliable. Mz. Nancy promises to introduce Mx to her Black father’s side of the family but, as Samantha says, “Nancy isn’t so much about information as she is about possibilities.”

Both Davidson as Mz. Nancy and Emily Jane King as Samantha deliver stylish, committed performances; King comes across as a vampire version of Grace Kelly. Robinson is a little less sure as Mx, but she hasn’t given herself much to work with.

In its current version, Mx is an illustrated essay. I’d love to see a version in which we get to see Mx’s story as a story.

And, yes, I am a white guy reviewing the work of a woman of colour. I was invited to do so. I also want to diversify the voices on my site so, if you’re interested in working together, please get in touch.

At the Revue Stage. Remaining performances on September 9 (5:00 p.m.), 13 (10:15 p.m.), and 15 (5:15 p.m.)

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