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Bloody Poetry – an “atheist haunted by the spirit world”

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With Bloody Poetry, The U of A Studio Theatre series continues to be provocative, in the senses of thought-provoking and disturbing.  I felt a little sorry for the person sitting next to me who said to her companion on arrival that she had no idea what it was going to be about and didn’t have time to read the program, and what were they going to see tomorrow, it sounded like something Greek maybe with naked women in it.   Oddly, the not-naked theme continued in a conversation I overheard at intermission between different patrons, one of whom explained while eating red licorice that the program said it was actually about naturism.  “NATurism??”  “No, THATcherism.  Like Margaret Thatcher.”  “Oh.”

The play, written in 1984 by Howard Brenton, is the story of the Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oscar Derkx, who played Jesus in the Studio Theatre production of Last Days of Judas Iscariot) and Lord Byron (Adam Klassen)  and some of the women in their lives, Mary Godwin Shelley the writer of Frankenstein (Merran Carr-Wiggin), her stepsister Claire Claremont (Zoe Glassman), and Harriet Westbrook, Bysshe’s first wife (Kelsey Visscher).   The other character on stage is Dr. William Polidori (Braydon Dowler-Coltman), Byron’s biographer and physician.  The production is directed by Glenda Stirling, the Calgary-based director, teacher, and artistic director of Lunchbox Theatre.

Throughout the play characters pay lip service to the ideals of free love, but they don’t seem to have the same understandings of the concepts of power-balance, autonomy, feminism, and informed consent in relationships that one might expect today.  Byron is overtly exploitive and self-centred.  Shelley, who is a younger less successful poet, starts out trying to make a good impression on the more famous man, smiling sycophantically and awkwardly agreeing with him.  Byron continues to make fun of him about being a teetotaller and a competent sailor, and flirts with him sexually throughout the play.  Shelley tries to ignore both the jokes and the advances.  It’s easy for the audience to share Shelley’s discomfort at some of Byron’s cruder comments, such as the ones about the venereal diseases he’s experienced.

In some ways Shelley is a more honourable person than Byron:  he welcomes Claire and her child into his household, and he pursues Byron to Venice in an attempt to get the child back.  But the interactions with his first wife and her ghost show that he basically abandoned her for Mary, and then while he is with Mary he doesn’t seem to care whether she consents to his affairs with various other women.  Mary certainly believes that the peripatetic lifestyle that he insists on is a cause for at least one child’s death.   Mary’s (Carr-Wiggin’s) facial expression and body language while Shelley made a speech about bourgeois morality showed clearly that she didn’t agree with him and intended to challenge him, and her subsequent challenge had me silently cheering, while he tried to manipulate her by calling her cold and callous.  As portrayed in the play, Mary is a stronger and more interesting character than her older step-sister Claire.  There are fascinating glimpses of Mary’s own creative process and inner life working on Frankenstein.   Claire is just heartbreaking, from her introduction as a naive young woman wanting attention and affection from both Byron and Shelley, her conviction that Byron will marry her, and then her needy clinging to whoever will comfort her.

One of the best bits of staging is the bit where the group acts out the thought-experiment of Plato’s cave, tying up Dr. Polidori in front of a screen and then making shadow plays.    The set and blocking made good use of the deep stage space of the Studio Theatre, with lighting and set pieces breaking up the space to create the illusion of people strolling on beaches far away.   Costuming was period-appropriate, with women in Empire-waist drapery and men in white hose, breeches, wide-sleeve blouses, and neckcloths.  Having worn a dress of that period myself, I was impressed at how the performers experienced the freedom of movement possible in that style of dressing, while never tripping over their full skirts even when dancing recklessly or leaping onto piers.

I tended to focus on the personal side of their convictions and actions, but they also all made speeches about their political and theological disagreements with conventional English society, and about the exigencies of dealing with publishers and funding.  They seemed to use the word “libertarian” in senses where I might have used “libertine”, which made me think that to them it was the same thing – and this may express not just the ways in which Shelley’s life hurt the women around him, but many stories of the personal lives of activists in more recent eras.

I’m fascinated by watching this year’s Studio Theatre series build up.  The offerings are all challenging for the viewer, presenting different sets of complicated characters in settings I’m not personally familiar with.  Bloody Poetry continues until Saturday 7 December with tickets at Tix on the Square and in the New Year there are three more plays in the season.

Bitches and Money 1878

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After Richard III, my next playgoing was to Northern Light Theatre’s production of Martin Henshell’s Bitches and Money 1878, directed by Trevor Schmidt.  It was a pleasant change.  I don’t know how to describe the genre of this show.  Maybe “period dark comedy heist story”? “Steampunk feminist version of Oceans Whatever”? “Betrayals and plot twists”?  The publicity materials call it “about gambling, greed, and time travel”.

It was confusing and fun.  I don’t think I got answers to all my questions about the plot, but I’m not sure whether they weren’t spelled out explicitly enough for me or whether they just weren’t explained.  But it didn’t really matter.

If the title wasn’t enough to set the period and approximate location, the audience entering the PCL Studio Theatre had time to study a shallow dark-wallpapered room with a hand-drawn map of London, the external pipes of gas heating fitted to an older building, ornate fussy furniture, ominous music, and oh!  some characters I didn’t even notice at first.  Black Jack (Ben Goradetsky) is seated facing the audience, looking down at a big pistol in his hand, shifting position occasionally and adjusting the gun.  He’s hard to miss because he’s wearing a vividly-yellow plaid suit, and his black-rimmed eyes add to the sense of menace.  A few minutes later I noticed two female characters, seated on opposite sides of the stage, both sitting completely still, apparently with hands bound behind them, and with bags over their heads.  Seeing the stage populated before the play starts always makes me curious but a bit uncomfortable – should I pretend not to see them? what if they make eye contact or talk to me like in snout? or (as in Ride) are they really naked under there and should I pretend not to be wondering about that?

The lights dropped and came up, and we saw Black Jack interacting with his two accomplices, Cora (Laura Gillespie),  wearing a dramatically sexy black and red outfit that I thought of as “Dawson-City Showgirl” and Patience (Andréa Jaworsky) wearing a severe black walking suit with a small dented hat decorated with a few gears.  Aha, I thought, could this be a steampunk inventor?  One of the best things about this show was the contrasts between the two women and the ways in which each character moved beyond the archetypes seen in the first few minutes.

The story gets told in a series of scenes arranged in non-chronological order.  This is made more clear by numbers projected on the wall between scenes, which seemed to be the order in which they happened.  The setting was fun, the alliances and mistrusts and twists were not completely predictable, and the show was fast-paced with lots of repartée.

Playing until Nov 30th, with a late-night “Booty call” show Nov 29th, tickets through the Fringe Box Office. 

Saturday recommendation: Dykeopolis at 12:15

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Kimberly Dark’s solo show Dykeopolis made me happy and made me laugh, but it also made me think.

She is a relaxed and powerful speaker, connecting effectively with the audience and owning the stage with just a chair and a hardbound journal.   Her richly intimate stories provided provocative and compelling examples of the ways that gender and sexuality interconnect and that homophobia arises out of misogyny.  And her presentation was skilfully designed to reach people with a wide range of experience and comfort level with the subject matter, for example clarifying her definition of the word “queer”.  But as soon as the audience felt comfortable, she jolted them out of that ease and then laughed, “You thought I was going to be a nice lesbian, didn’t you?”  The narrative flows smoothly from story to concept to the next story, from the tangible intensity of a first teenage attraction to finding a balance between protecting a partner’s safety and protecting her pride in an encounter with a macho Mexican cop.

The blog I Dig Your Girlfriend has an interesting interview with Kimberly Dark and a strong recommendation to see the show.  I second the recommendation – but since I’m just getting around to posting this now, there’s only one show left.  Today, Saturday, 12:15 pm, at Acacia Hall on 83rd Avenue (stage 10).  There’s a box office right outside the theatre, which takes cash, plastic, and Fringe bucks, and also lets you pick up tickets you’ve ordered on line.

What it means that there’s a museum

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Imagine how it would feel if you loved books and libraries, but every time you visited a small town or an unfamiliar city and asked about the library, they directed you to a library museum – a building that had once been a library, that had the architecture of the Carnegie library of your youth, with a bit of the musty smell and the tall shelves preserved, a nominal admission charge and a volunteer at the desk selling bookmarks for the books that weren’t there to borrow.

If church community was a big part of your life, what would it have been like to take a big trip  to Soviet Russia, where Intourist guides showed your group through empty spaces that had once been cathedrals, reciting what they’d memorized about the peripheral details of the building but not acknowledging that people there no longer had a worship space.

What if your childhood had been centred around the local ice rink, where you learned to play house league hockey, went to public skating with your friends, hung out in the lobby and in the stands while your parents and siblings played, and had your first kiss while sitting on the rink manager’s desk with your boyfriend?  But the culture and climate had changed so much within your lifetime that all the rinks were abandoned, except the few which were preserved as arena museums?

Or schools?  If later generations were all to be educated at home and on line, would all the schools be left empty, with local advocates arguing about how to preserve samples of each era of school architecture and fought off developers keen to get at parcels of serviced land?  So that no town would have a school, but every town would have an Old Schoolhouse Restaurant or two?

That’s how I feel about train stations.

I love trains.  I love passenger trains with a passion, but I also love freight trains, even when I am in a bus or car waiting at a level crossing.  I love hearing train whistles at night.  I almost rented an apartment where I could look out on a freight-switching yard, because I thought that would be fun.

I love old train stations that are still used to sell tickets and greet passengers on passenger trains.  I love train stations that now incorporate intermodal traffic as well, like Union Station in Toronto (VIA trains, GO commuter trains, GO commuter buses, and a TTC subway station), the station in Gravenhurst that until recently had Ontario Northland trains, intercity buses, and a taxi company, or the train station in Jasper AB which is also the Greyhound bus station.  I love simple new suburban train stations with their ease of access, friendly signage, clean bathrooms, and amenities suited for a commuting public.

But when I am exploring a town, city, or village that’s new to me and one of the attractions they talk about is a railway museum?  Yeah.  Almost always it means “Trains used to stop here.  But they don’t now, and probably never will again.”  I don’t love that.

Summertime at Red Deer College: confusing reality in a magical setting

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In the Ontario city where I used to live, a few of the downtown commercial blocks had internal courtyards that you could access through twisty brick passages, so that you’d end up in a magical place in the middle where you couldn’t see or hear any cars.  In the best of these, there was a restaurant patio or two, with lattice sunshades and white fairy lights wound around the sunshades and trees, so that you could have a drink or a dinner in a place that felt like a couple of twists away from reality.

Last night I walked into Studio A at the Red Deer College Arts Centre to find it transformed into such a magical courtyard, for the Theatre Performance and Creation program’s production of Charles Mee’s Summertime, as directed by Lynda Adams, an instructor in the program.  The risers for the audience were arranged on three sides, with white cloth draperies over each chair pinned with an artificial flower, like at a wedding reception.  Clear twinkling light illuminated white garden furniture and several trees; closer inspection showed the tree branches full of white teacups.  Three identically-dressed actors were already present on the stage, three young women going through stylised synchronised motions of reading, writing, sitting and standing while seeming completely unaware of each other.

Looking at the program revealed that the three, Jessie Muir, Constance Isaac and Taylor Pfeifer, were all cast as Tessa, and several other roles were also filled by two or three actors.   This was a choice made by director Adams in order to include all 21 members of the ensemble in the production, and it turned out to work surprisingly well with Mee’s source text, particularly the first bit which is cryptic, full of awkward pauses and what I think of as gnomic.  The duplicate or triplicate actors sometimes recited the line together, and sometimes alternated.  Their actions were sometimes identical and symmetrical, with each of the three Tessas looking at one James (JP Lord, Dustin Funk, Lucas Hackl) and one François (Tyler Johnston, Chase Condon, and Richard Leurer), and sometimes the three would be responding differently or all rushing to one corner of the stage.  It took surprisingly little time to get accustomed to this narrative convention.

As the story unfolds, the self-possessed young woman Tessa is rattled by two unexpected suitors, then overwhelmed by a crowd of family and friends arriving.  As the characters interact we can see why Tessa soon exclaims

“This is what I grew up with!
What chance did I have with a family like this?
And you want to fall in love with me?
How can anyone expect me to form any kind of relationship
with another human being?”

François, who at first seemed the more appropriate suitor for Tessa than the painfully awkward stranger James, seems to have previously been involved with not just the family friend Mimi (Victoria Day), but also with Tessa’s mother Maria (Julia VanDam, Megan Einarson and Brittany Martyshuk), glamorous, remote, and somehow European, with a flowered scarf in her hair or thrown around her neck.  Two staid slouching middle-aged men outfitted from an LL Bean catalogue for cottage weekends, with baggy khakis and brightly coloured sweaters, turn out to be Tessa’s father Frank (Jake Tkaczyk), and Edmund (Bret Jacobs), Frank’s friend, companion, and lover.  Other friends, connections, and a pizza delivery man (Sasha Sandmeier, Victoria Day, Wayne De Atley) react to each other showing that everything is more complicated than originally assumed, and that nobody is happy with the situations.  Barbara, who seems to be the housekeeper (Jennifer Suter and Collette Radau), interrupts with an over-the-top and very funny tirade about men.  Frank starts out as a sort of genial absentminded host and observer, but we soon find out that even the calm Edmund is full of resentments, in his case against Frank.  The first act ends with all this discontent stirred up into a wonderfully-chaotic choreographed piece by the whole cast stomping and whirling about the crowded space to percussion accompaniment, bouncing off each other and exclaiming their frustrations with love, while Frank periodically shouts “Excuse me!” You can tell this ensemble has some rigorous training in physical theatre and has been working together for many months.

In the second act, things are quieter and the dialogue a bit more conventional, but it seems unlikely that any of these people would be happy together.  Frank makes a speech which starts with the repeated motif of the play that love is complicated these days, and leads to a long thoughtful observation about life changing continuously and the past disappearing as it is lived.  Tessa seems to be considering both James and François as suitors.  Maria reconciles with Frank.  An odd challenge leads to all the male characters doffing their trousers to lie down in plaid boxer shorts and colour-co-ordinated socks.  A few neighbours, Gunther, Bertha, and Hilda (Wayne De Atley, Jessica Bordley, and Rebecca Lozinski), drop in and add to the complications, until a tilt towards resolution is hinted at by Hilda, who makes a delightful and impassioned speech in favour of pursuing love.  Eventually there are happy romantic resolutions for some of the couples, but things don’t work out as tidily as in Anything Goes, particularly for Frank, who slumps alone at the side of the stage as some of the happy couples dance tenderly and the lights dim.

I don’t know any words for the genre of this play.  Some of the marketing materials suggested a light drawing room comedy, but trying to read the script before I’d seen it was as much a struggle as trying to read Waiting for Godot or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  Maybe it was like Noel Coward done in the absurdist tradition?

The set design, colour choices for the costumes (both by Sheena Haug), and lighting (Heather Cornick) contributed effectively to the not-quite-real mood.  As someone who loves both bright colours and socks, I was immediately enchanted to see many of the characters wearing bright co-ordinated socks, Tessa in rainbow-stripes, James matching their turquoise shirts, and François in a bright purple that complemented their outfit.  Original music was written and performed by Jordan Galloway.

I enjoyed this performance very much, but I am still thinking about it.  Like all of Charles Mee’s work, the script is available on line.  It’s easier to read after seeing the play than it was beforehand.  I’m considering seeing it again before its run ends Sunday night, and if this sounds intriguing you should too.  Tickets are available through Black Knight Ticket Centre out of Red Deer, and at the door.  Red Deer College and its Arts Centre are easy to find right off Highway 2 in Red Deer.

Anything Goes!

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Before last night, I would have said that the Westbury Theatre at the Transalta Arts Barns had a large stage.  That was before I saw Strathcona Theatre’s performance of Anything Goes, which left me with the impression that the stage was just barely large enough for the cast of 50+ (I tried to count a couple of times, but they kept dancing!)  A clever stage design evoked the multiple decks, spiral staircases, and porthole-covered swinging doors of an Art Deco cruise liner, while also providing space for the pit musicians to play on an upper deck.  Last night’s preview show played to a full house, and since many of the family, friends, and fans of Strathcona Theatre got there earlier than I did, I was grateful for being able to watch some of the action as well as musicians not so far down from where I was sitting.

Early in the show, I thought that Sydney Williams, playing the nightclub singer and former evangelist Reno Sweeney, was dominating the show as a strong singer with good stage presence.  Adam Houston, as Billy Crocker, seemed a bit outmatched at first, with a difficult first song, but he hit his stride quickly and was more convincing later in the show.  The audience was particularly delighted with David Unsworth as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh when he broke out of his rather predictable exaggerated-aristocracy role late in the show (you can’t miss it).  I will definitely keep an eye out for this young actor in future productions.

The lyrics and music of this classic show (first staged in … with several revivals and revisions since) are by Cole Porter.  A few of the songs were quite familiar, especially “You’re the Top” and “I get a Kick Out of You”.   P.G. Wodehouse (also known for Jeeves and Wooster) had a hand in the book, and you can tell.   There were love triangles, gangsters, mistaken identities, tap-dancing sailors, an exceptionally well-behaved live dog in the cast (credited as Teddy Gorman), evangelists, missionaries, and converts, puns, innuendoes, and assorted happy endings.   When two or three actors were speaking or singing, there were often many other characters on the edges of the stage doing things that were interesting but not distracting, adding to the sense that more was happening than we could watch.

I was a little uncomfortable with the portrayals of the two Chinese converts Luke and John (James Kwak and Spencer Lloyd), complete with Mao jackets and the stereotypical accents common in fictional portrayals of the early 20th century, and the later adoption of “Chinese” disguises by other characters.  I’m not sure why the humorous portrayal of the English aristocrat didn’t disturb me the same way.   Maybe it felt a bit like blackface.   I would not be surprised if it had been toned down from Broadway versions, though.

Linette Smith is Director and Choreographer, and Stephen Delano is Musical Director.  There were a few technical glitches in this first preview performance – some sound balancing or sound cuing that was a bit slow, and one door that came off its hinges distractingly – but nothing that should interfere with the audience’s appreciation during the run of the show.  It continues until Saturday night at the Westbury Theatre, with tickets available at Tix on the Square .

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CaptainAwkward’s thoughts about friendship, affection, hunger, taking care of each other, and Valentines’ Day. I hope you all find ways to acknowledge the love in your life, in whatever shape it comes in.

JenniferP's avatarCaptainAwkward.com

Valentine’s day is tomorrow, right? These are pretty much still my thoughts about that. It’s a terrible night to eat out. Don’t buy anyone an expensive necklace that looks like two butts stuck together. People like to be told that they matter.

Today’s question is also a love story.

Dear Capt. Awkward,

I have depression. It’s diagnosed, I’m on happy pills and everything. It varies, sometimes I’ll be completely fine, other times I’ll have a sobbing emotional breakdown in the middle of a bar. The breakdowns don’t happen very often, and I’ve talked to my drug!shrink about my medication. Unfortunately it appears my options are to be more drugged during the good times in order to compensate for the bad times, which are sporadic and unpredictable. Since I don’t really like being on drugs in the first place, we decided to continue the meds I’m on and cope with the…

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Zodiac Arrest – a circus cabaret

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The Westbury Theatre is the big theatre space at the Transalta Arts Barns.  I’d only ever seen it with the risers pulled out on one side and a flat proscenium stage, but the other night when I walked in, it was transformed with a few rows of seats on each of the four sides, zodiac symbols projected on a curtain on one side, and a big empty sprung floor, set up for a show by Firefly Theatre, the Edmonton troupe specialising in circus arts and physical theatre.

There were twelve performances, each introduced by patter from a costumed host evoking the characteristics of each zodiac archetype.  About half of them were arial acrobatics acts, and they were all amazing – Kadri Hansen, Lisa Feehan, Danny Gorham, Kim Precht, Meghan Watson, Kristi Wade, Annie Dugan, Michalene Giesbrecht, and Kim Precht.  The lighting, music, and costuming contributed to different moods from playful to romantic to creepy.  I don’t have any interest (or aptitude!) to attempt arial work myself, but the Firefly Theatre website has lots of information about workshops and beginner classes in their various disciplines.

Other acts included some clown performances (Candace Berlinguette and Mike Kennard), some stage magic by Billy Kidd, a dance version of the story of Ariadne (including Jamie Cavanagh as an egregiously self-absorbed Theseus), and some contortionists cum rhythmic gymnastics performers (Mackenzie Baert and Caitlin Marchak)

I thought that some of these acts dragged a bit, and that the astrological monologues were likewise too long, but on the whole I had enough awe and delight to make it a worthwhile evening.  Zodiac Arrest’s last show is tonight, Sunday at 8 pm, with tickets still available at Fringe Theatre Adventures. 

De Dutch – Dutch supper for lunch, downtown

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De Dutch is a pannenkoeken house, the only one in Alberta of a BC chain. It’s open for breakfast and lunch until 3 pm, and on Pancake Day (Tuesday February 12th) it’s staying open until 8 pm.  My friend who’s lived in the Netherlands tells me that people there eat pannenkoeken at suppertime, but that the food at De Dutch is otherwise authentic enough to keep going back.

Pannenkoeken are frying-pan-sized thin pancakes with interesting toppings or batter additions – a bit like crêpes but not rolled or folded up.  I had the “Windmill”, with Edam cheese, smoked salmon, and a little dish of Hollandaise sauce to pour over it.  It was delicious, and fresh so that the pannenkoek wasn’t soggy at all, although it was a little thicker than a Breton crêpe.  And after I looked at it, I realised that the name “Windmill” was probably from the shape of the toppings.  Duh.  Some of my friends had versions with meat, with ham and eggs, or with sweet fruit toppings.  Others had tosties, which looked like interesting grilled sandwiches. One of my lunch companions said it was the best sandwich he has ever had, but to be fair I should mention that he isn’t quite four.  We also shared an order of bitterballen (singular, bitterbal) which my friend told us are a common bar snack in the Netherlands, little crunchy-breaded deepfried bites with meat-paste inside them, eaten with mustard.  They were okay as an accompaniment to lunch, but they would be great along with beer.  My bill was a little over $20 including fresh coffee with refills.

Bitterbollen (fried savoury meat-paste balls) at De Dutch

Bitterballen (fried savoury meat-paste balls) at De Dutch

Windmill pannenkoek at De Dutch

Windmill pannenkoek at De Dutch

De Dutch is at 10030 Jasper Avenue.  That’s in the block with construction, but it’s easy to get to on foot from either end of the block, or from the Central LRT station.  It’s open every day, weekdays from 7 am.

I

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I hope you’re all having a great start to the new year!  I’m enjoying some fireworks set off by my neighbours, and socialising with good friends and festive refreshments.  Watch this space soon for reviews of the following.

  • Les Mis – the movie
  • Simply Supper
  • Christmas dinner – no, seriously.