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Mermaid Legs

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Noori Gill, Mel Bahniuk, Dayna Lea Hoffman, and Tia Ashley Kushniruk in Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs. Photo by Brianne Jang of BB Collective Photography

When I attended the Workshop West production of Beth Graham’s play Pretty Goblins in 2018, I was struck by how well the playwright (and the actors Nadien Chu and Miranda Allen, directed by Brian Dooley) captured the relationship between two sisters, through years of growing up together, experiencing challenges (some horrific) separately, supporting and resenting and understanding and accepting. After a performance I mentioned to the playwright that some of it had reminded me of my relationship with my own sister, and she said that she didn’t have sisters herself. An earlier play by Graham, The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, also focuses on three adult siblings, and their differing roles in coping with their aging mother. Again, the relationships as shown were nuanced and easy to relate to.

Skirts Afire, the annual Edmonton women’s arts festival at several local venues this week, is hosting the world premiere of Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs at the Gateway Theatre. It too focuses on relationships among three sisters, the older ones Scarlett (Noori Gill) and Ava (Mel Bahniuk) and much-younger Billie (Dayna Lea Hoffman). We hear enough about their parents to accept that the sisters are each other’s primary supports. But fascinatingly, in the first scene one character says that this family does not talk about feelings. They show support by problem-solving for each other, by inviting each other for supper, by keeping track of one sister’s schedule and challenging another to ask a divorced co-parent to do his share. And sometimes – that is not enough.

Direction is by Annette Loiselle, and design elements by other contributors enhance the storytelling as well: Narda McCarroll’s set design turns the black-box into a white world of fluttering sheets/wind/waves, uneven rocks, and shifting furniture. Ainsley Hillyard’s choreography for the three sisters and an ensemble of dancers (Mpoe Mogale, Alida Kendell, Tia Ashley Kushniruk) conveys everything from the weighting-down of depression and the struggling to reach through barriers of a broken connection, to the joy of dancing on a beach, alone or at a party. In one scene, tap dance conveys jarring, out-of-context, manic enthusiasm. Rebecca Cypher’s costume design has all the performers in shades of white, conveying their very different personalities in small details. Aaron Macri’s sound design with Binaifer Kapadia’s original music and Whittyn Jason’s lighting design all build the world and contribute to the message.

This play made me realize that many fictional stories about families dealing with the effects of a mood disorder are oversimplified. Sometimes movies or novels make it seem as if getting the right diagnosis, then getting the right medication, are straightforward steps leading to a happy ending — or as if flaws in those steps lead inexorably to a tragic ending.

Mermaid Legs shows that it isn’t that simple. And it shows that the identified patient isn’t the only one who needs to work at becoming healthier.

That it can show these things while being entertaining, beautiful to watch, relatable, and sometimes hilarious, is a tribute to not only the playwright but the whole team. (Oh, and when you think it’s almost over – watch for a very funny physical bit in the game of hairband-keepaway!)

Mermaid Legs is playing at Gateway Theatre (home of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre) until March 10th. Tickets, content warnings, and accessibility information are all available here.

Evelyn Strange at Teatro

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Oscar Derkx and Gianna Vacirca, in Evelyn Strange. Photo credit Marc J Chalifoux Photography and Video

It doesn’t take me long to say yes when a friend offers me a ticket to opening of a Stewart Lemoine play at Teatro la Quindicina. I didn’t read anything about it ahead of time, though a glance at the program told me that Evelyn Strange was first performed in 1995, and that Shannon Blanchet, this production’s director, had played the title role in a 2006 production at Teatro.

The curtains open on a box at the opera. The Metropolitan Opera in NYC, in 1955. So it’s ornate and private and expensive — and somehow set designer Chantel Fortin and lighting designer Narda McCarroll make it feel like that, with just a few pieces that get slid away to become something else in the next scene.

The occupants of the luxury box are Nina Farrar, whose sophistication and snark are a perfect fit for Belinda Cornish, and her husband’s earnest young employee Perry Spangler (Oscar Derkx), tidy and respectful in Clark-Kent-esque glasses. Perry explains that Nina’s husband Henry gave him the ticket because he was tied up, charging him to keep Nina company and see her safely to her commuter train. And which opera is it that neither of them really wanted to see? Siegfried, a five-hour segment of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. (By the way, Sing Faster: the Stagehands’ Ring Cycle is a fascinating 1-hour documentary video, if you can find it.)

Evelyn Strange is a great example of Stuart Lemoine’s work and why Teatro does it well. The opening situation has unexplained threads, but the details and characters that appear next don’t resolve those questions but create others. The dialogue and action is amusing but never predictable. Jesse Gervais is Perry’s pushy colleague, poking into Perry’s secrets and holding his own. The eponymous confused woman who slips into the opera box after the lights go down, and slips away again before intermission, is Gianna Vacirca.

Things get odder. Some things seem to fall into place but other things are hinted. Settings like a publishing sub-editor’s office, an automat vending-machine restaurant, a hotel suite, Grand Central Station, and a bachelor’s apartment provide glimpses of mid-century modern chic, with a few well-selected details. Vacirca’s character, Miss Strange, claims to have no memory of her past – which would explain her, um, strange behaviour, assuming she’s now telling the truth.

There is a missing husband, a double-booked hotel room, evidence of trenchcoats and opera tickets and a $20 bill – in some plays, the details might never all fall into place and from other playwrights the hints would all be so obvious that we could figure out the outcomes at intermission. But not with Stewart Lemoine. At intermission my friend and I chatted about some of the possible explanations – we were right about some and wrong about others. And when the play ended, a patron behind us read out the list of predictions he’d jotted down at intermission to note how many of them he’d gotten right. It was that kind of play, like an elegant jigsaw puzzle.

And speaking of elegant, the 1950s-era costumes were designed by Leona Brausen. And speaking of jigsaw puzzle, one of the questions I had afterwards was “what did she have under that? and why didn’t it fall off?”

There are so many Stewart Lemoine plays that I haven’t yet seen, that I don’t want to use superlatives like “best”. But this production is most entertaining, with the directing and acting adding to a very clever script.

Evelyn Strange is running at the Varscona Theatre until June 12th. Tickets are available here and at the door. Masks are required when not eating or drinking – the usual list of refreshments including red licorice and Bloom cookies is available from the cheerful artistic associates staffing the lobby booth.

Tracey Power’s Glory!

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Kate Dion-Richard, Gili Roskies, Katie Ryerson, Morgan Yamada, and Kevin Corey in GLORY. Photo: Barbara Zimonick. (Set & Lights: Narda McCaroll. Costumes: Cindy Wiebe.)

When I read that Calgary’s ATP would be putting on a new play about women hockey players, and specifically the Preston Rivulettes of the 1930s, I knew I needed to go to Calgary to see it.  And I was right!

I cried a lot during the performance, because the portrayals of the young women and of their community’s responses were so familiar from my own experience of female hockey starting in the 1970s.  I felt represented, understood, and honoured.  “I’ve always wanted to play on a team!” enthuses future captain Hilda Ranscombe (Katie Ryerson).  “Girls don’t play hockey!” retorts reluctant coach Herbert Fach (Kevin Corey).

The playwright Tracey Power (Chelsea Hotel) chose two pairs of sisters, Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe (Ryerson and Edmonton’s Morgan Yamada) and Marm and Helen Schmuck (Gili Roskies and Kate Dion-Richard) to represent the players, and created interesting distinct characters with enough backstory, conflict, and connections to be compelling.  The historical background of the 1930s was essential to the story, filled in by the characters talking about their families and community and by listening to CRBC (later CBC) radio.  One player couldn’t go to university because her father’s business was struggling and her brothers had lost their jobs; another wasn’t admitted to law school because she was Jewish.

Hockey games were represented on stage in stylized choreography (Power), with different movements and music for each game.  Yamada was an agile and stubborn goaltender.  Hard shots (of imaginary pucks) had me ducking in my seat.  Set and lighting (Narda McCarroll) and costumes (Cindy Wiebe) support the storytelling.  I was particularly impressed with the rapid movement of the rink-boards pieces to become changerooms, factory workrooms, and even a baseball park.  Director James McDonald (formerly of the Citadel) and playwright Power paced the action well and kept the human stories to the forefront.

I have known of the Preston Rivulettes since I was a young hockey player and fan, looking at team photos and trophies in the old Preston Arena.  I vaguely remember meeting Hilda and Nellie much later in their lives, at a Preston Trianglettes game, and finding it hard to comprehend that forty years earlier, they had played for provincial and national championships.  In the 1970s there was no provincial or national governing body or championship for female hockey – but in the 1930s there was.   The play Glory included enough of the documented facts to make me happy as a scholar, but more importantly captured perfectly what it is like for women to play the game they love despite many obstacles.   I hope to tell some of the second-wave women’s-hockey stories on stage myself someday, and this play affirms my sense that they are worth telling.

“When we fight to win, we have a whole lot more at stake”, one of the characters in Glory says, explaining why fans find their matches exciting.  And Hilda Ranscombe finishes with a monologue daydreaming about what will happen someday, despite the loss of competitions and opponents on the eve of war.  Someday, she says to her teammates, there will be so many teams we won’t be able to play them all.  And there will be women coaches.  And women referees.  And women announcers.  And Olympic medals.

There are, Hilda, there are.  Thank you.

Glory is playing at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary until April 21st.