Yaga: Tell me a (better) story

Colleen Wheeler, Aidan Correia, and Genevieve Fleming
(Photo by Pedro Augusto Meza)

Despite the sometimes superlative strengths of this production, the evening doesn’t satisfy — at least it didn’t satisfy me. That’s because, although there’s a lot of plot in Kat Sandler’s twisty script, there isn’t  an engaging story.

Right off the top, we meet Yaga (or Baba Yaga), a witch from Slavic folklore — and she’s pissed. “You say I’m old, old as the earth,” she begins. “You say I’m ugly … You say I live alone in the woods … You say that I am lonely.” But Yaga insists that there’s more to her than the stereotype of the crone — and she tells us to listen for a change. It’s a gorgeous incantation.

Then the story begins. We meet Katherine (Colleen Wheeler), a sixty-ish professor of osteology. That means she studies bones, which is partly why a young guy named Henry (Aidan Correia) is interviewing her for his podcast series about serial killers: Baba Yaga was said to grind up her victims’ bones, he thinks folk tales might be connected to serial killers, and Henry wants Katherine’s take on all of that. He’s also desperate to have sex with her and, in Wheeler’s performance, it’s a pleasure to watch Katherine’s confidence and amusement as she toys with the young nerd.

Then Henry disappears from their small town. An uncertain local cop named Carson (Genevieve Fleming) and a pushy young private detective called Charlie Rapp (Correia again — the three actors play a total of 15 characters) team up to solve the case. It’s not a big surprise when Katherine becomes a suspect and an immediate question — for Charlie at least — is whether or not she’s Yaga.

As I said, the plot gets ornate, but playwright Kat Sandler doesn’t give us a lot of reasons to invest in it. We barely know Henry, so who cares what happened to him? I found Katherine’s intelligence and frank sexuality appealing, but Sandler gives us almost no idea of who she is emotionally or personally, so who cares what happens to her? There are no stakes to speak of until about halfway through Act 2 — when we finally encounter a concrete crime and its consequences. But even that energetic impulse gets lost in subsequent narrative machinations.

Still. Riches. Wheeler’s embodiment of six distinct characters, including Katherine’s dementing mother, a terminally world-weary waitress, and a shy trucker, is perfection: there’s wit and heft to every portrait. Wheeler’s comic timing is superb, including in Katherine’s early, amused, putdown of Henry: “I’m so sorry. I thought you had a sense of humour.” And it’s a pleasure to listen to the musicality of Wheeler’s voice.

Ryan Cormack’s set — a tall stand of birch trees with a wooden playing area suspended in its midst — is excellent. Very few designers take such good advantage of the Historic Theatre’s height and the execution of the birch bark is remarkable.

I also particularly appreciated Mary Jane Coomber’s insinuating sound design.

Actor Fleming overstates a couple of her characters — notably a boxer named Pamela Riley, but also a town gossip called Truly. She fares well elsewhere, though, especially as her central character, Carson, the detective. Fleming has a solid handle on the rapid-fire dialogue of the script’s homage to the police procedural and, here and elsewhere, her characters have depth.

Correia differentiates Henry and Charlie so well that, at first, I thought the characters might be being played by two different guys. But my sense is that the men in this script are more simply written than the women: Correia ends up playing a lot of eagerness.

Still, the fact that everybody’s flipping characters all the time — and at high speed — is theatrical and costume designer Sheila White deserves credit for her part in making these transitions work.

The script undermines itself in its concentration with puzzle making, though. There’s at least one logistical problem. (For people who have seen the show: Could private eye Charlie really be that unobservant?) The play’s admirable foray into feminist reclamation of a cultural figure gets so confused that it has three endings. And, most importantly, underneath the skillful interpretations of this production and the flash and humour of the writing, Kat Sandler’s Yaga doesn’t give us enough reasons to invest in what happens next.

YAGA by Kat Sandler. Directed by Roy Surette. At Touchstone Theatre production on October 28. Running in The Cultch’s Historic Theatre until November 5. Tickets

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