Traumatic story turns into mythical lore
Huff
(out of 4) Written and performed by Cliff Cardinal. Directed by Karin Randoja. Until Oct. 25 at Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St. E. nativeearth.ca or 416-531-1402
One of the 20 characters that Cliff Cardinal flies through in his solo show Huff is Trickster, a native folkloric creature who stirs up trouble in the lives he touches.
Trickster is the link that turns Cardinal’s traumatic story of a family living on a contemporary Canadian native reserve into a magical, mythical piece of lore.
But to open the play, Cardinal pulls off an act that looks decidedly not like a trick.
The opening — which we won’t describe in detail here other than to say the crinkling of a Ziploc bag will have a new resonance from now on — appears to be a very real tactic and, if it is real, then it’s also a very scary tactic, used by a young playwright and actor to shock his audience right off the bat.
But on second thought, maybe it is a trick after all because, real or not, it certainly gets the audience invested. Cardinal definitely has a bit of a Trickster in him as a performer and writer, which comes out through writing that mixes very heavy content with a lot of wry, playful humour, primarily through the more surreal elements of his tale, conflating the magical realism of myth with the hallucinations of a solvent high.
Alone onstage, Cardinal tells the story of a boy named Wind and his two brothers, who begin the play huffing gas in an abandoned motel that they accidentally burn down.
From there, more dark details about their lives reveal themselves through their father, their father’s girlfriend, their teacher, their grandmother, a skunk, the skunk’s smell and, of course, Trickster — all embodied by Cardinal in a tight 75 minutes that covers everything from alcoholism and FAS to suicide, racism and sexual abuse.
But whenever Cardinal dives into the darkest territory of the story, he doesn’t dwell there for long. Wind, the middle brother, will simply move on, unfazed it would appear or just used to these kinds of issues on the reserve. The youngest brother, the emotional anchor of the play, will whisper “Awesome” in response to anything his older brother says, does or advises.
Cardinal isn’t the most polished performer, not that that’s a bad thing, but he is able to pull off a charming kind of chemistry between the youngest and middle brother while portraying them both at the same time.
The eldest brother Charles, on the other hand, is a much quieter but much more sinister presence. While the relationship between, say, the brothers and their father, or their father and Donna, his girlfriend, is less palpable, the connections between these brothers feel intimate, for better and for worse.
Director Karin Randoja returns to the current production to kick off the 33rd season of Native Earth Performing Arts, marking Huff’s return to Toronto since it premiered at the 2012 SummerWorks Festival and then went on to tour the country.
On now at the Aki Studio in Daniels Spectrum, it’s great to see the bare bones show with a more fantastical atmosphere thanks to Michelle Ramsay’s lighting.
There was, however, a bit of a snag with the set on opening night: two of three fabric scrolls, representing the three brothers, failed to drop at the right moment and interrupted Cardinal’s speech later. He turned to look at them, then uttered with disdain, “OK,” just like Wind would have done. Trickster.