MONDOmagazine

Lullaby
Presented by Dark Horse Theatre
Directed by Jennifer H. Capraru
Written by Thelon Oeming
Runs November 3-18, 2007 at Simone Interiors in Parkdale

By Kerry Freek

Hey, remember when somebody spray-painted DRAKE YOU HO THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT (and then DRAKE YOU PIMP THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT) on the side of the (then) new Starbucks on the corner of Queen and Dovercourt? It doesn’t matter who did it — a whiny art kid, a human rights activist, a longtime resident of Parkdale, whoever, whatever. But it definitely gave folks a visual, verbal expression of what was (and is) happening to Parkdale, with its condos and Starbucks and skyrocketing property value.

The debut production of Dark Horse Theatre, Lullaby is the result of five years of observation and residency in Parkdale. Writer Thelon Oeming uses gentrification as a backdrop for interaction between his characters, and, more importantly, statements on morality and humanity.

Looch (Dusan Dukic) and Leandra (Amy Rutherford) are a young couple with a new investment in an old house in Parkdale. Backed financially by Looch’s father, they’ve started renovating the house with no idea of its history as a cramped boarding house — until they meet Kenny (played impeccably by David Ferry).

Fresh out of Kingston Pen and in his mid-fifties, Kenny has returned to Parkdale. He rents out Looch and Leandra’s unfinished basement in an attempt to find the sense of home he once knew. But the area is changing — wealthier people, fancy shops, condo construction. Save for a couple of bars, none of what Kenny remembers is the same.

Looch and Leandra develop a surface relationship with Kenny, caught between befriending and despising the guy — accepting his gifts and, at the same time, blaming him for their problems. But as Leandra learns to see past Kenny’s unrefined exterior, the two become each other’s confidantes, and Looch’s jealousy escalates into a personal conflict that becomes violent.

Performed in the back of Simone Interiors (ironically, an interior design shop on Queen West), Lullaby’s set is stark, mostly white, and evokes a house under renovation. In Looch and Leandra’s part of the house, details like Ikea lamps, a futon, and some raw silk pillows convey their yuppie lifestyle, while Kenny’s basement apartment is outfitted with a card table, an old couch, and the smell of stale smoke.

While Dukic and Rutherford make a believable couple, their interaction filled with nuances like upside-down kisses and strokes on the cheek, it’s Ferry who carries the show, reminding us that we’ve definitely met Kenny before. Ferry’s mastered the right balance between likeable and not-so-savoury characteristics: he’s a sentimental, generous guy with some internal damage: an anger problem, uncouth language, and a slight know-it-all complex (especially when it comes to construction). Right — and the fact that he’s an ex-con. But his heart is in the right place, and we see it in his efforts to please Looch and Leandra.

A hot topic in the Toronto media over the last few years, Parkdale’s gentrification provides a reason to defend the symptomatic displacement of what Lullaby’s director calls “marginalized” people. But Lullaby takes it one step further, exploring the reasons that we avoid involvement with strangers, and at what cost we do so. As Parkdale becomes a hot spot for affluent art collectors, out move the people that we pass every day on Queen West — people who require affordable housing, a sense of community, and some respect and compassion — just like everyone else.

Evil Dead the Musical
Directed by Christopher Bond and Hinton Battle
The Diesel Playhouse
Recently extended, closing August 4th, 2007.

By Miles Baker

This play is exactly what it should be. It’s tongue-in-cheek camp with gratuitous blood splatter, a healthy helping of slapstick, and full of lines from the movies. You can also drink heavily while watching, something I could really use more of at theatres. Read the rest of this entry »

The Loner Show (Fringe)
Robert Gill Theatre, check local theatre listings for show times.

By Kerry Wright Zentner

How do you feel about things that have no real meaning? If they satisfy you, then you should go to The Loner Show. You should also go to it if you are one of those lucky people who enjoys absurd humour and meandering, dreamlike (or nightmarish) situations which do not consent to really resolve themselves, and which are satisfied to merely exist. This sounds harsh, but I am actually recommending the show.

The Loner Show is not really theatre in the classical sense. That is to say, it is not a play, and is not to be confused as a heartfelt and touching story of five lonely urbanites, trying to find love in the big city. Loner-holics anonymous this is not. There is no overarching plot and, although the performances are all character-based, no real development of character is employed. Although the show deals with the highly relatable themes of love and loneliness, the characters and situations stray so far into absurdity that they do not attempt to be related to reality at all, and are presented as a freak show more than anything. No revelations to the soul here, just good old-fashioned improv. In that sense, The Loner Show is really like a night at a comedy club, but sans the annoying hecklers and cheap booze.

This is how it played out on night one:

I enter the Robert Gill theatre, which is small and low. It is tucked away on the third floor of the Koffler Student Centre located at College and St. George, and it feels kind of confining. Soon the lights dim and a projector screen alights. The projects host and mastermind, Brian Barlow, takes the form of a handy man for the following video, and then appears onstage, in costume, for a short skit and to make the introductions. After the first introduction (wherein the notion of randomness will begin to take root in your mind), Michael Balazo takes the stage, bouncing around as a “Rex-kwon-do” style combat instructor who proceeds to advise us on the dangers and virtues of hand-to-hand combat (or foot-to-crotch combat) and the ways in which it has led him to love. After another introduction by the resourceful handy-man, we are treated to a video made by a disheveled, down-on-his-luck realtor (Levi McDougall) who apparently doesn’t have the interpersonal skills to give a tour of the house he is selling in person, and who, by the end, is seen lying dismally in the bathtub. Next up is Katie Crown, taking the mic as a shy first-time-reader who wants to share her story with us. Don’t let her act fool you though, she has a dangerous comedic mind that, as it turns out, is far from withholding. Following this is Kathleen Phillips’ story of finding love with a tiny, hideous man after being attacked by the voracious claws of cupid. And capping it off, Chris Locke makes an urgent appeal for the audience to help his village, regaling us with his travels thus far, which have included him receiving some abuse to his self esteem from a pair of mystical forest parrots.

The show (it clocks in at only 35-45 min.) dips midway, during the Q and A session (administered by our host), where we become aware that we are simply watching a guy filling time and trying to have a few humourous thoughts while on stage. More often than not, the answers to the audience’s questions are quick and funny, if brief and without direction. The idea of being complicit in the improvisation is appealing, but it could have gone further.

The important thing to note about The Loner Show is that it is largely improvised. The characters may be preconceived, but the whole show has an atmosphere of having been concocted on the spot, and apparently it was. This means that each and every night, an entirely different set of situations will be enacted, making no two viewings alike.

The only major let down was the fact that the six of them do not (nor any combination thereof) come together to do a final ensemble performance. It seems a major oversight to get six of Toronto’s finest comedians together and to not even have them collaborate. I felt the show could have used some cross-comedian repartee, rather than just serving to showcase each of their individual skills under the one loosely conceived theme of the loneliness and awkwardness that afflicts their six dismal characters. I would have also liked to see Levi McDougall improvising in person as opposed to on screen, although I did find his video entertaining.

Even so, I still saw some of the brightest local comedians dishing out their finest goods, and that’s why it worked. For me, the highlights of the show were firstly Katie Crown’s outrageously concocted and perfectly performed tale of redemption through explicit fetish sex in a populated shoe store, and Chris Locke’s run on sentence entreating us to help him save his wife who was kidnapped from town by villains on rollerblading evil horses, then given a sex change operation and apparently sent back to rape him (in case you can’t tell, this show is not kid-friendly). His tale played out as would a chapter from Candide had Voltaire been exposed to numerously more psychedelic drugs and eighties cartoons.

Ultimately, it was in these stream of consciousness moments when the brilliant dream logic of improvisation shone through the most. And those moments made the experience worthwhile for me, and are why it’s still reverberating around my skull.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

By Kerry Freek

Last Sunday, I sat on some cold cement in a dark, dirty stairwell and chomped on alphabet pretzels while listening to screamers and drinkers. Am I a bookish vagrant? A literary hobo? Mais non. I am me, and the event was this month’s NO FACE NO PROBLEM. The location? 107 Spadina South — in a cavity in Chinatown, by a tax sign.

NO FACE NO PROBLEM is a “monthly series that asks its participants [to] strut and stammer with words and body to an audience at various locations in and around Toronto,” writes ThankYouJeanPierce on the Stillepost message board. While I don’t have confirmation (I’m a terrible journalist), it appears that Jonathan McCurley (of the Life of a Craphead project thingy) and Laura McCoy curated and/or developed this month’s edition.

We met on the busy, coconutty south-west corner of Spadina and Dundas outside of the Dragon City Mall at 3 p.m., only to be led to an underground stairwell “secret location,” which was actually quite novel. A cement floor provided the stage, and the stairs made for amphitheatre-style seating.

McCurley opened the event by welcoming us and reading some wordplay poetry (written, he said, that morning). It and all following performances (mostly spoken word) were a treat to behold, and included medieval fantasy-inspired rhymes, a charming jibberish piece, and Grandmother Willow, an alter-ego of Ben Ong (of the Waterloo band Bocce). Ong presented simple yet pensive songs about elephants and the environment, accompanied by the dulcet tones of a secondhand omnichord.

Seemingly impromptu public poetry readings are not without risk. During Louis Calabro’s drinking-and-reading set, a wary security guard peered out from the glass doors of the mall (backstage) and made a mental note that a bunch of hooligan beatniks were taking up the stairwell. I, on the other hand, made mental note of some kids climbing on a stalled escalator in the mall beyond us.

Later, as Eugene Slonimerov (I’ve also seen it spelled “Slominerov,” but I can’t be sure which one is correct) lead us through a divine visioning and chant session (“Where is Millie?”), yet another security dude approached and we were asked to leave the premises. Eugene put on a superb sad face and said, “But it’s for a school project.” The crowd, united in the fight for secrets, nodded in agreement. Somebody negotiated five more minutes and, when our time was up, we moved above ground for Laura McCoy, the last performer.

As stunned passersby gaped at the rag-tag gathering and absently licked their ice cream cones, McCoy shouted bits of conversation over her drumming, passing traffic, and an air horn that was circulating the audience. We were encouraged to sound the horn as much as we pleased, and we did. All told, I had a cold bum, but a marvelous afternoon.

For future locations and info, keep your eye on stillepost.

The Threepenny Opera
Written by: Bertolt Brecht
Music By: Kurt Weill
Performed by the SoulPepper Theatre Company
Director: Tim Albery
Musical Director: Paul Sportelli

By Leo K. Moncel

Whores whore, burglars loot, and stick-up men rob not because they are any more wicked than anyone else, but precisely because they are as wicked as everyone else and their circumstances afford them only crime for improving their stake in life. The lower class crook is jailed for his hunger while the bourgeois capitalist is celebrated for his.

It’s a vicious worldview, and Soulpepper’s latest production of The Threepenny Opera positively revels in it. The classical notion that tragedy is the result of an audience feeling pity and horror simultaneously is flipped on its head. Laughter simultaneous with horror is the recipe for a black comedy and Soulpepper gets the dreadful joke here.

The story begins with Mr. Peachum, a merchant who makes a handsome living pimping a racket of beggars whom he afflicts with artificial disabilities to make more pitiable. Peachum is naturally offended when he learns his daughter, Polly, sneaks off to cavort with Mr. Macheath, a.k.a. Mac the Knife, London’s most notorious criminal.

Polly, meanwhile, is head over heels for Mackie, and the two are married in a warehouse. Upon learning of the wedding, Peachum plays all his cards to have Mac jailed by police chief Jackie “Tiger” Brown. In jail, Mac is visited at once by Polly and Lucy Brown, the chief’s daughter. Each woman claims Mac her own. Lucy frees Mac only for him to fall back into the clutches of the law when sold out by his old flame, Jenny Diver, a prostitute whom he visits instead of making an escape. Mac is sentenced to the gallows.

Brecht lifted the plot from The Beggar’s Opera, then reworked the play into his model of epic theatre, which alienates the audience from the action and emphasizes thought over feeling. To this end, the script calls for direct addresses to the audience, breaking the play’s action momentarily. These narratives are performed by a newly invented butcher/narrator character played by a mohawked and nose-ringed d’bi.young.anitafrika, who walks freely in and out of the story, attacking and breaking the dramatic world.

Set is crucial for creating an immersive dramatic world,. Soulpepper’s new Young Theatre in the Distillery District serves as a backdrop. The original red brickwork has been kept and is ideal to the harsh but elaborate industrial set.

The actors, far from saintly, have a tremendous amount to play with. It’s a delight to watch. Albert Schultz, who happens to be the artistic director of Soulpepper, brings Mac the Knife alive with gleeful viciousness. Patricia O’Callaghan is an excellent Polly, seemingly so naïve and head over heels in love, but with a centre of ice, betrayed best in her musical numbers. Another stand-out is Sarah Wilson as Jenny Diver. It’s not a large part, but Wilson absolutely simmers with dark allure. More impressive though, is how, with a natural gravitas and some careful decisions, she hints at a heavy sadness just below the damaged but swaggering exterior.

The one point where the production just misses the mark is in its attempt to physicalize the steamy, sexy parts. The actors are convincingly seductive in their spoken and sung performances, but they’re not salsa dancers. Two attempts at burlesque eroticism — an exchange where Mac and Polly consummate their marriage and a song between Mac and Jenny about the good old days together, both fall shy of the mark. Never have I seen a beautiful woman’s crotch groped so mechanically. The sex, like the violence, is left more potent as something alluded to.

The Threepenny Opera is an exquisitely crafted piece of entertainment. It’s a joy to get lost in the aesthetics of it. Consuming this piece is like enjoying an ornately decorated cake with a razorblade in it. A treat. But horrifying.

Diplomatic Immunities: The End
Conceived and directed by Darren O’Donnell
Buddies and Bad Times Theatre
Closing February 25th, 2007

By Miles Baker

Diplomatic Immunities: The End is a play about people, starring strangers. At its most interesting, The End is like a house party where you get to meet ordinary, yet very interesting people. You’ll think some of them are full of crap, some will say some things you’ve never thought about or experienced — either way you’ve been engaged.

Describing The End is hard to do. While there are staged parts, a good portion of the show is non-fiction, as the actors talk about themselves, their fears, and their insights. There is also a great deal of video projection, including recordings of interviews from all over the western world. After an interview segment, the cast tells you about the person — where they are from, what they are afraid of, what religion they subscribe to, how they think the end of the world will happen, and what sound they would like to hear at the end of it (among other things). It’s neither theatre, nor performance art, nor video art, nor installation.

But classifying The End isn’t important or as interesting as the show itself.

Most of The End refuses to draw conclusions, but by the very end the overall message is that cooperation, not competition, is the true nature of life. The audience stands up and recites a pledge saying as much. Personally, I don’t agree with that idea. I think our nature is a healthy mix of cooperation and competition. But my reaction to this is equally important to what O’Donnell is trying to do. The End wants to get the audience thinking about other people and looking at new points of view; it seems intentional that the creators want some of the audience to disagree with them.

The biggest problem with the show is that there are times when The End doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The ideas start big and complicated, but they have no place to go. While there is structure to the show, it isn’t a typical structure where the action and excitement build up to anything.

The show staggers during the audience interviews. At two different points, audience members are brought onto the stage and asked questions by the cast and audience. These are interesting and make each night a unique experience, but they also slow down the action. Essentially, you’re watching an unedited interview that goes on a little too long. That being said, both of the people brought up were interesting and did have something to contribute the themes of the show at large, but they were both tangents in a show that already had many tangents.

By far my favourite part of The End was the ending itself. There is a video projection of the cast interviewing an elementary school class about the end of the world. The kids are wise beyond their years and very cute. The cast asks them what song they would like to hear at the end of the world. One boy suggests “SexyBack” because he likes it. The class ends up selecting Queen’s “We are the Champions.” The final image is of one of the cast members (Ulysses Castellanos) silhouetted and singing the song while the children play dead behind him. The mix of play with incredible seriousness is what makes The End successful.

The Death of Catch23

By Sam Linton

2006 has drawn to a close, yet it’s still always important to look back and reflect on the events of the past year as we stare into the vast unknown of the future. 2006 marked a lot of changes to the cityscape of Toronto, but for me, one of the most meaningful and overlooked changes happened as far back as July 31st, with the finish of Catch23 Improv, which had taken place in the back room at Clinton’s Tavern every Monday since I could legally drink. For four years, Catch23 had served as an excellent venue for comedy, drinks and, dare I say it, camaraderie. At 9 PM of July 31st, 2006, Catch23 kicked off its last show, featuring the talents of 10,000 to Flight (Julie Dumais and Mark Andrada), A Gun (Kurt Smeaton, Graham Wagner and Andrew Love) and Neat² (Peter Oldring and Pat Kelly). MONDO, the only Toronto paper present, was there for this momentous, sad, and very funny night of mournful comedy. As the show came to a close, I asked many of the comedians and assorted crew to memorialize their thoughts and feelings on the venue’s closing, starting with Catch23 founder Julie Dumais on the “why” of the venue’s demise.

“When we started, there were very few venues [for improv] in the city. I would say over the past five years definitely the improv scene in Toronto has exploded. It’s just a lot of serendipitous things that have happened simultaneously; I certainly take no responsibility for it, I think that it’s something that, in a lot of different corners, emerged at the same time. I think everything sort of has its ebb and flow, and we got to a place where we were like, “all right, it’s been a really wonderful run, we’ve really enjoyed it. Let’s stop while we’re still loving it as opposed to letting it die a painful death.

“Catch23 as a format is not dying, though. There’s an incarnation of it happening in Australia now, one about to begin in Vancouver. The format itself has started to spread like rapid-fire, but this will always be the anchor point.”
Julie Dumais, Improviser/administrator/founder

Performers’ Eulogies:

“It was a comedy icon in Toronto that very few people knew about or wrote about or cared about, but I cared about it and now it’s dead.”
Kurt Smeaton, Improviser/Co-Founder

“I’ve done about 15 to 20 comedy shows consistently here in town for about 8 to 10 years and this is by far the best and it’s a real shame to see it go. There’s some really sad people in here tonight, because if you weren’t here, you missed it.”
Brendan Bane, Sound/Tech/Lights

“I think it was a show that needed to die, and one that would have killed itself. Any good bunch of satirists are out to destroy things that are lame, so the show was perhaps just getting the slightest bit lame, and responsible people went out and killed it. Any sign of weakness in comedy deserves to be destroyed, I guess is the idea.”
Graham Wagner, Improviser

“I think it’s sad that it’s over, but it died before it died.”
Rebecca Kohler, Improviser.

“When I first started doing this, it was terrifying. I was terrified for a month before every single show, butterflies in my stomach, I was very consciously thinking, ‘what are they going to do next?’, but with every single scene, it just got easier and easier and better and better and these guys have really had a lot of fun. It’ll continue; the cool thing about it ending is that all of the performers involved are all doing other stuff, you can go see them in Toronto and other cities. The show’s really been a breeding ground for a lot of really cool talent, and I really look forward to being involved in all of the new projects and seeing the new shows as they come up.”
Chris Tindal, Musical Accompaniment

“My only thoughts would be that it was one of the best shows in town, because there’s rarely a show that combines the structure of good improv but also that game-y kind of aspect, and also a good crowd. It’s a shame that they’re shuttin’ it down, but I always had fun because it reminded me of Calgary, doin’ improv down at Loose Moose [theatre].”
Pat Kelly, Improviser/Final Champion/Former YTV Personality

“One of the things with Catch23 is that my cousin is one of the people who organizes it, Kurt Smeaton. So for me, one of the things that stands out obviously about working at Catch23 is the idea of working with a family member. We didn’t necessarily grow up together, because I grew up on the West, he grew up on the East, and so it’s one of things where having Catch23 has been something where I’ve gone to perform with my cousin, see him perform while I’m workin’ with other people, so in a very odd way it’s a family-based experience for me, personally. I’ve had nothing but a great time working in that capacity to have anywhere where you can go improvise, and you can play improvisational games if you want or you can leave it very open and the structure is left up to the individual teams to decide for the night, and that’s kind of a gift. Some nights it works and some nights it’s a disaster, but in any case, it’s one of the few formats of a show that allow improvisers to do that. I guess I’m sad that I don’t know when I’ll see my cousin again, though. That’s the big thing.”
Peter Oldring, Improviser/Final Champion.

So, as we march ever onward into a bold new year, it is important to take stock both of what we have lost, and what we have gained. Goodbye, Catch23. You will be missed.

R.I.P. Catch23 Improv (2002-2006)

Many of the improvisers featured in this article can be found performing at various other venues throughout the city (The Bad Dog Theatre Co., Sunday Night Live, etc.) Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring can be found on the web.

Julie Dumais plans to hold a Catch23 reunion at an unspecified point in the New Year.

Wicked
Canon Theatre
Closed December 31st, 2006By Gabrielle Charron-Merritt

After the flop formerly know as Lord of the Rings, I started to wonder if Toronto was fit to host any musical. Performances of such extravagance just don’t rile up Torontonians — or even our tourists — anymore. LOTR’s epic proportions failed miserably to excite anyone who had seen the films, and the Blue Man Group, pipes and all, just got canned from the Panasonic Theatre on Yonge Street.

As a comeback and a quick cash-in for Mirvish, Toronto saw the return of Wicked at the Canon Theatre. For those out of the loop, Wicked is based on Gregory Maguire’s best-selling novel of the same name. Shoshana Bean plays Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, and Megan Hilty plays Glinda, the Good Witch. The play focuses on both girls as they go through college stuck together as roommates. One is a misunderstood, talented, yet slightly green girl; and the other is the prettiest, ditziest, and most popular girl in college. It’s a fairly typical “odd couple” dynamic, yet proves to be hilarious, if only in a wholesome, PG kind of way. For example, “What is this Feeling?” while titled like a cheesy 70’s love song, is actually about loathing — it may not be that edgy, but it’s funny, damn it. As they warm to each other, Glinda sings “Popular,” which is about how she intends to make Elphaba popular (but “not quite as popular as [her]“). In the end, I laughed at all those things that made The Wizard of Oz so magical as a child, but my inner adult got a few chuckles as well; everyone just wants Toto to shut up.

Like the rest of the city, I had forgotten the magic of musicals — Wicked was a refreshingly fun performance. Too bad the tickets were so horrendously expensive. Unfortunately, your last chance to see the Toronto show was on December 31st, and your only option now is to follow the cast and crew over their US winter tour.

If you’ve missed it but want to see something Oz-related, I suggest seeing the “Dark Side of Oz,” (the original movie dubbed with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) at Reg Hart’s Cineforum on 463 Bathurst. Of course, the downside to that is Reg Hart. Who is much like Toto.