Me and You’s sister act soars THEATRE

ME AND YOU

2> ANDREA WARNER SPIRIT HORSE

Adapted by Drew Hayden Taylor from the play by Greg Banks. Written by Melody Anderson. Directed by Greg Banks. A Roseneath Directed by Mindy Parfitt. An Arts Theatre production, presented by Club Theatre Company production. Carousel Theatre. At the Waterfront At the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre on Sunday, April 22. Theatre Centre on Wednesday, April Continues until April 29

18. Continues until May 6

It’s not an easy thing to combine 2

Melody Anderson’s new play, magic with hard-hitting Me and You, is funny, charming, realism, but Spirit Horse succeeds. and deeply affecting. There are Drew Hayden Taylor’s script, an Indigenous just two characters, Liz and Lou, adaptation of an Irish play by sisters whom we watch grow from this production’s director, Greg Banks, young children to old women. It’s a moves fluidly through different times quietly powerful thing to be part of and places. It begins with young sisters the premiere of this women-centred, Angelina and Jesse telling their grandfather women-driven piece of theatre. For 80 how much they miss their late minutes we watch their lives unfold mother, then jumps ahead to a scene and witness the perpetually shifting with a pair of police officers interrogating dynamics of their relationship. the girls’ father, who has no idea

Me and You avoids the bossy older sister/irresponsible where his daughters are. The officers younger sister clichés point to a television, where the girls are in favour of something much more real all over the news, accused of stealing a and nuanced. Yes, Liz is older and bossier, rodeo horse. Pa insists that the horse but she doesn’t know herself the way belongs to the girls—and then we Lou does. She sticks with the checklist of learn the story of how the Spirit Horse life goals: go to college, find a husband, came from a magical lake on Wildwind have a career, have a kid. Lou is younger Mountain to live in the family’s and more impulsive—she travels to apartment in Calgary. Angelina and Europe instead of going to college and Jesse name her after the mountain, but then gets pregnant at art school—but when Wildwind is taken away and sold she ends up being the dependable one, to the rodeo, the young girls decide to a confidant to her niece and caretaker go and take her back to their ancestral for their aging mother. Feminist themes land. The journey sees them eventually arise throughout, and the various male finding a deeper connection to their figures in the sisters’ lives are sources of departed mother. both comfort and deep disappointment, Racism is subtly but insidiously and the sisters must turn to each other to woven into the fabric of the family’s navigate them. life. A pawnshop owner calls Jesse a

Patti Allan and Lois Anderson are “lousy little Indian”, and Pa endures wonderful as Liz and Lou. The ways in both verbal insults and physical abuse which they adjust their bodies, movements, from the police. After watching a postures, and voices as they western movie, Angelina asks if it’s inhabit the characters at their varying possible to be a cowboy and an Indian. ages is already a sizable acting challenge, “I wanna be a cowboy,” she explains, but they’re also wearing Melody “because the cowboys always win.” Anderson’s incredible masks throughout Banks’s direction demands energy the production. Amir Ofek’s set and physical commitment from his design is stunning: two huge walls that three performers, who each take on not only are composed of functional multiple roles. Lisa Nasson keeps Angelina drawers, doors, secret compartments, grounded in innocence and intelligence, and other surprises, but can also be Rain Richardson’s Jesse is full climbed by the actors. of zest, and Brendan Chandler takes

Mindy Parfitt’s direction feels relish in the many parts he plays. Glenn seamless, and in part that’s a testament Davidson’s set—a tepee-shaped assembly to her skill, but it’s also a team effort. of scaffolding pipes and pallets that Allan and Anderson are charming and allows us to imagine locations as diverse natural, even behind their masks, and as trains, trees, and TV screens— Melody Anderson captures something supports the show’s physicality. So truly special in her play. For better or does the exquisite music, composed by worse, sometimes nobody knows you Anne Lederman and performed live by like a sister. Me and You beautifully Emilyn Stam on accordion, fiddle, and conveys the complications of sisterhood—and drum, infusing the production with an if you’re lucky enough to additional layer of vividness. have your own Liz or Lou, go see this Spirit Horse is both a lively adventure tiny marvel of a play together while and a springboard for meaningful you have the chance. conversation. Take your kids.

> KATHLEEN OLIVER THE EXPLANATION

Written and directed by James Fagan Tait. A frank theatre company production, presented by the Cultch. At the Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab on April 18. Continues until April 29

The presentation of The Explanation 2 is as simple as can be: two men telling us the story of how they got together. But James Fagan Tait’s new play is also complicated, because both men profess to be straight.

We start with John, recalling the thrill he got the first time he decided to try dressing as a woman: “It just came to me on a Saturday morning in spring. It was a project. I could just as easily have repotted my plants.” Instead, he goes to Value Village to pick up a couple of cheap miniskirts. A few Saturdays later, he takes the bus downtown to hang out at the Central Library’s literature–dvd section. That’s where Dick sees John for the first time, takes him for a woman, and is smitten. It’s not long before he realizes John is a man, but the two go for coffee anyway, and later go dancing at a nightclub, marvelling at the fact that they’re “two straight guys dancing at a gay bar”. Their friendship is cemented, and soon they’re getting together every week.

Though neither of the men can explain what they’re doing in a way that makes sense—they’re not gay!— they value each other’s company. They also get a thrill from being each other’s secret.

Under Tait’s direction, Kevin Macdonald and Evan Frayne are warmly natural as they navigate the inevitable vulnerabilities of their ever-changing, impossible-to-explain relationship. “We were happy, and I didn’t spend too much time being confused,” Dick says. Tait’s script doesn’t linger in the awkward moments, preferring to puncture them with humour.

Noam Gagnon’s playful choreography makes the nightclub scenes a highlight of the show; Macdonald and Frayne bust some joyful moves to James Coomber’s disco soundtrack. “It was fun” is the characters’ simple explanation—and we believe them.

2> KATHLEEN OLIVER

Tir Na N’OG

from previous page

lines like this: descriptions of absence, of what arises in the place of absence, and the ways in which the planet survives and adapts after human extinction. These are all delivered in a 70-minute monologue by performer-cowriter Karolien De Bleser’s soothing yet clinical voice as she takes us through the immediate aftermath of a world without people and, eventually, millions of years into the future.

The first half of World Without Us is the most immersive and the most effective. There’s no music as De Bleser begins to speak, and in the darkened room, she asks the audience to note the ambient noise that surrounds us all the time, and what happens when that falls away—how you can hear “this concert of breathing in different tempos” from the audience.

De Bleser’s accounts of what we would feel, see, hear, and observe in the minutes and days after humans vanish are fascinating and engaging, even at their most graphic and chilling. Cities filled with “ticking time bombs”, fires and explosions, and nuclear meltdowns; a long and detailed look at a rat liberated by this new world, her eventual death, and the phases of decomposition.

Some of the information comes during an extended blackout, the show’s best and boldest decision. The further the audience disconnects from its own reality, the deeper we slip inside World Without Us. There’s already a nice tension from De Bleser’s delivery—the warm lilt of her voice juxtaposed with the almost scientific detachment of her observations—and the darkness heightens the mounting anxiety as we get farther and farther into the timeline.

The deeper we get inside World Without Us, the better our understanding of our utter insignificance. We are not the world; the world carries on without us just fine. The elk might be radioactive, but Earth carries on, nature adapts, and a world without us isn’t an abomination but rather a foregone conclusion.

Still, even at just 70 minutes, World Without Us drags in certain places. The blackout is great, but it goes on too long, particularly in combination with a hot theatre and De Bleser’s dulcet tones. And, though beautifully written, it’s also repetitive, occasionally devolving into more of a drawn-out dystopian fairy tale than thrilling piece of experimental theatre.

> ANDREA WARNER