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Quick takes on short runs – Keith Alessi and MacEwan

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Keith Alessi, in Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life

First, the one that you still have chances to see! Keith Alessi’s solo Tomatoes Tried To Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life is playing this weekend at Gateway Theatre, as an extra to Workshop West’s subscription season. There are performances tonight (Friday night), Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon at 1:30. It looks like the Saturday show is sold out, so act quickly if you want to grab tickets to one of the others.

I’ve heard lots of solo memoir pieces, and this was one of the best. The performer/creator, Keith Alessi, is humble and authentic, with a ready store of banjo jokes to cover any time he spends re-tuning his instruments. Yes, instruments, plural. There are several on stage at top of show, but more are brought in later. His story and delivery are compelling, with more laughter than tears. Erika Conway is credited as director and producer, and is responsible for the dramaturgy that shaped the story and focused the message. Gateway Theatre, the blackbox venue home to Workshop West, is a great choice for acoustic music and storytelling with an intimate supportive audience.

A shorter version of this show appeared at Edmonton Fringe in 2018 and 2019 – I didn’t see it then so I can’t tell you how it’s been improved. But this version has an intermission, and afterwards Keith is joined on stage by Bruce Ziff (retired U of A law professor and not-retired banjo player), since as Keith explains banjo history, it lends itself to playing in jams and circles, to community and to people playing together, whatever their experience/skill levels. A timely reminder!

Tickets are $25 – and all the proceeds of the tour are divided between arts organizations and cancer charities. At this stop, the beneficiaries are Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre (with its mandate of nurturing new Canadan plays/playwrights), and Wellspring, the set of supports for patients, survivors, and families affected by cancer. Remaining tickets are here.

Last weekend I caught another short-run show, and ever since I’ve been running into people talking about it. “Did you see Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 at MacEwan?” “Wasn’t that GOOD?”

This large-scale musical by Dave Molloy hit Broadway in 2016 and won some Tony awards then. It hadn’t been done in western Canada before this production with Jim Guedo directing students in the Musical Theatre program at MacEwan University. The story comes from a segment of the Tolstoy novel War and Peace. I loved how the script acknowledges the challenges of following a large sweeping novel, with the prologue song addressing the audience, telling us to follow in the program and then introducing each character with a repeated catchphrase “Natasha is young, Sonya is good, Andrey isn’t here” and so on. I was reminded of other large-cast novels / operas / musicals where I could have used this kind of acknowledgement and clues – Les Miserables, two versions of Eugene Onegin, a lot of Shakespeare …

Set design (Daniela Masellis) and direction (Guedo) have the audience seated on two sides of a raised alley stage in the Tim Ryan Lab black-box – but the actors are not contained on that stage, or on its extensions to accommodate musicians – they use all the lobby entrances, they swish or strut or slink between cabaret tables and engage with audience members, they carry stools around the audience area and stand on them … I felt immersed in this world of 19th-century Moscow.

Lead roles are played by Lisa Kotelniski (Natasha), Matthew Gregg (Pierre), and Liam Lorrain (Anatole), with Layne Labbé a standout as Hélène in an ensemble of 14 student-performers.

I was particularly impressed by the handling of sound mixing and amplification. With fourteen singers moving around the room, including some playing instruments, and eight additional musicians located at two ends of the stage, I was always able to hear and comprehend the lyrics of the songs. Sound designer Dave Bowden and audio lead / live mix operator Alex Delaney are to be commended.

The last production in MacEwan’s mainstage series is The Prom. It plays the last weekend of March, with tickets available here.

Unexpectedly touching and hilarious: Small Mouth Sounds

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I have just seen some of the funniest stage business that I’ve seen in about a year.  And some touching character reveals that I didn’t see coming, despite thinking at the start that I recognized all these characters because I had been in yoga classes or support groups or retreats with all of them.

Wildside Productions’ Small Mouth Sounds, written by Beth Wohl and directed and designed by Jim Guedo, is playing at the Roxy on Gateway until March 24th.  I loved not knowing much at all about what to expect, and figuring out as it went along who all these characters were and why they were at the retreat.  I don’t want to give away any of the good bits, so you can have a similar experience.

It’s about six people who show up for a five-day silent retreat, and the retreat leader (Nathan Cuckow).  There is something marvelously uncomfortable and exposed about the set, especially in the harsh cold pre-show lighting – not at all like the cozy safe nest of Star of the North Retreat Centre where I attended a silent yoga day last year.   Audience seating is a bit farther back and higher up than it usually is at Roxy on Gateway, adding to the sense of distance.  There is an early scene which ends with each character rolling up their yoga mat – I realized that each of them was doing it in a way that showed who the character was and what their frame of mind was.  The other characters were played by Amber Borotsik, Belinda Cornish, Kristi Hansen, Richard Lee Hsi, David Horak, and Garrett Ross.

There is very little spoken dialogue in the narrative.  What there is, matters.  Most of the characters try to keep the discipline of silence, but fail or abandon it when it is important – just enough to give emphasis or provide a little bit more explanation to the audience.  I wondered ahead of time if the silence would feel gimmicky, but it really didn’t – it fit naturally with the context, and gave lots of opportunity for wordless communication of everything from pain to disdain.

I liked it a lot.