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The Seafarer, at Alberta Theatre Projects

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Show poster for The Seafarer at ATP, featuring Paul Gross

Full disclosure: I went to Calgary to watch ATP’s production of Conor McPherson’s play The Seafarer, just because Paul Gross is in it. I had never seen Paul Gross on stage, despite his Albertan roots and his strong reputation in Shakespearean material at Stratford. I have watched the TV comedy Slings and Arrows several times through – and if you haven’t and you like theatre, you should! as well as other video performances. He was an integral part of the film production Passchendaele, along with his U of A classmate Francis Damberger.

Anyway, the weather was good and the mezzanine seats were reasonably priced, so a friend and I headed to Calgary. I knew that Conor McPherson was an Irish playwright who wrote The Weir (which I’d never seen or read), and I figured out later that he’d also written Port Authority, which I’d seen in a local production with Cody Porter in it. I didn’t read anything else about the story or the other actors.

Given all that, I was blown away. Directed by Peter Pasyk, it was the best production of a straight play I’ve seen in ages. The ensemble of five was all very strong, especially Shaun Smyth (whom I remembered from the solo Playing with Fire: the Theo Fleury story). Four residents of a near-contemporary Irish suburban town are heading towards Christmas. The set is the cozy, cluttered, and dingy basement living-room of two sloppy and foul-mouthed brothers, Richard (Christopher Hunt), recently blinded in a dumpster-diving accident, and Sharkey (Smyth), who’s arrived back home after finishing a chauffeuring job up the coast. Their Christmas preparations are mostly about laying in enough drink for everyone who might drop in for a mince pie or a game of cards – even though Sharkey is counting his first few days of sobriety. Two neighbours are frequent guests: Ivan (David Trimble) who has the audience gasping every time he tumbles down or scurries up the stairs, and Nicky (Chirag Naik), who now lives with Sharkey’s ex-wife, Sharkey’s kids, and even Sharkey’s car, which he left with Eileen for the school run.

I felt completely caught up in the group’s misadventures and disagreements, even before Nicky brings in a mysterious stranger, Mister Lockhart (Paul Gross), well-dressed and quiet, with a large hat brim hiding his face. Nicky (who’s not entirely welcome to Sharkey himself) says that he met Mr. Lockhart in a pub, and brought him along for the Christmas Eve card games. It’s awkward.

In the intermission break, my companion and I discussed what had been revealed so far and whether we’d seen it coming. My friend had more insight than I had, but we both enjoyed trying to figure out whether and how these hapless characters would get out of their predicaments. Neither of us guessed the ending, and both of us felt satisfied with it. We had lots to talk about on the way home!

The Martha Cohen Theatre with its mezzanines and balconies and tiny multi-level lobby spaces was a great opportunity for this intimate character study. Set designer Hanne Loosen has created a cozy two-story set that feels like it continues off the stage into the cold back alley, the tiny kitchen, and the barely-functional downstairs toilet.

I still love Edmonton theatre, where I watch so many good plays I have trouble keeping up with posting – but this visit reminded me to keep Calgary and ATP on my radar too. The Seafarer has three more performances, the last tomorrow Nov 10th at 2 pm. If you’re in Calgary, or you’re up for a drive, some tickets are available here.

My Pride weekend entertainment, ephemeral and re-playable

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This month marks the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising, one of the milestones in LGBTQ+ activism against injustice.  And in honour of that, there are lots of LGBTQ+ cultural events and celebrations.  This weekend I watched and enjoyed four pieces that are making me think about LGBTQ+ experiences and how they’ve changed in my lifetime.

First, I watched ten Netflix-hours of Tales of The City, the update or reboot or whatever of Armistead Maupin’s serialized stories portraying life in San Francisco starting in the late 1970s.  Apparently the first three books were televised as miniseries a while ago and I completely missed them, but it was really cool to see new storylines about some of the characters I remembered from the books, and about a new generation of young queer artists and activists and community members who find a haven in the magical apartment building on Barbary Lane.  The original short-chapter stories varied in tone like poetry, some of them so ridiculous they’d be offensive if they weren’t written affectionately by an insider, some of them just poignant punches in the gut about being rejected for being different, and some gentle lessons about building chosen family and choosing hope rather than despair.  Anyway, the Netflix series captures this very well.  The only characters who seemed one-dimensional or comic-relief were the twins who  reinvent themselves as an Instagram sensation.  Everyone else had interesting character-arcs and also provided some opportunities for the writer to explore ideas about queerness, community, family, and aging.  Of the new main characters introduced in this series, I think all of them except Shawna (Ellen Page), who was present as a small child in the original books, were people of colour.   I especially liked Jake (Garcia), the young Hispanic trans man.   I also appreciated that aging trans landlady Anna Madrigal, played by Olympia Dukakis since the first miniseries in 1993, was played in 1966 flashback by a trans actor, Jen Richards.

After that binge-watch at home, I caught Rocketman on the big screen.  It was a lot of fun, with lots of great Elton John music dressing up scenes from his life as told in flashback from an addiction recovery group session.   One thing that stood out for me was the strength of his continuing friendship with lyricist Bernie Taupin.

Today I attended Drag Queens in the House storytime at the Strathcona Library.  Three local performers read picture-books to the young audience members and led them in some singing and dancing.  It was wholesome and delightful, and I love living in a neighbourhood where people bring their little kids to an event like this.

I also wrapped up my Nextfest viewing for this year with Boy Trouble, a solo theatre piece written by Mac Brock and performed by Maxwell Hanic.   The wry likeable teenage protagonist tells the audience about his life – his neighbourhood park, his single mum, his best friend, how he realized he was gay – and then with help of projected video shows us some of his precocious explorations on Grindr.  The story is lyrical and relatable, capturing how Kay feels as he goes through ordinary schooldays with a secret adult life late at night.   And it becomes unexpectedly nuanced – the hookups have no harmful outcomes or cautionary tales, but his momentary longing to have an ordinary teenage experience, “what the rest of them have at every party, every dance”, an encounter where “I think he was as nervous as I was”, is the one where he’s betrayed and outed.  And even that doesn’t happen in a moralistic way – we see Kay’s support strategies, his visualization, his mum, his best friend, all rallying around enough that we don’t need to see what happens next to know it’s going to be okay.

It was a great wrapup to a good Nextfest, and an appropriate ending to a weekend of stories of LGBTQ+ lives over the years.