FOREIGN INVESTMENT
Crafty, comical Crawlspace will draw you in
It is possible to lose money in the Toronto housing market, and Karen Hines, in her onewoman show Crawlspace, is here to tell us how she did it.
In 2006 this actress- writer- director- clown decided to leave the renters and join the owners. She withdrew her life-savings and invested them as a down payment on a “lemon yellow coach house” in Riverdale. Or maybe it was Parkdale. Where names are concerned she prefers, for legal reasons, to cover her tracks.
She has an assistant to remind her of this every time she seems in danger of forgetting it, so that frank disclosure becomes a running gag. The presence of this second player, Sascha Cole, means that this isn’t strictly a solo show, but her role is very subordinate.
Hines ended up selling her place at a considerable loss, due to some dodgy features that she hadn’t properly checked out in advance: hence the avoidance of specific, possibly incriminating detail. The avoidance seems to have affected other areas of her life as well.
After the initial euphoria of having her own little place, Hines’s dreams began to fall apart. I assume the show really is autobiographical. The one name Hines doesn’t change is her own.
Then there’s trouble with wildlife; she was faced not just with raccoons that get into garbage but with raccoons that were themselves garbage. She was happy that instead of the conventional basement her house had the eponymous crawlspace, until she discovered that it wasn’t really a space and couldn’t be crawled into. It began to emit noxious fumes that made her seriously ill. And it was ages before she could get someone to force an entrance and investigate.
Real estate agents are no help. Indeed the show’s primary lesson may be that you shouldn’t put your trust in good- looking male realtors with names like Joffrey even if over time you grow quite close to them. No, not like that; not that she wasn’t tempted. But lessons seem to be what the show is about. The Tank House, one of the Young Centre’s smallest spaces, is done up as a classroom, with blackboard and t eacher’s desk. The audience is the class, liable to be appealed to or interrogated. It’s fair to say, though, that this is done without the tinge of bullying or coercion that’s often present in such participatory circumstances. It’s all the more notable in that Hines as a performer almost defines passive-aggressive.
Her demeanour, here at any rate, is that of an aggrieved pixie. But whenever you think that her 90-minute hard-luck story has outstayed its welcome, she draws you back in with some mocking, often self-mocking, observation, craftily timed for comic impact.
The show is part of Soulpepper’s Solo Series, currently sharing the bill with the revivals of past favourites with which the company will soon be braving New York.
Runs until April 15.