AGATHA’S MAGIC COMES TO LIFE
Vertigo actors nail The Hollow
There are casting choices that seem as though they were destined rather than simply clever.
Try to imagine anyone but Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as the lovers in Casablanca or James Dean as the troubled teenager in Rebel Without a Cause.
Much closer to home, it would be difficult to imagine Theatre Calgary’s A Christmas Carol without Stephen Hair as everyone’s favourite miser Scrooge.
It’s how I feel about director Jan Alexandra Smith’s casting for Vertigo Theatre’s production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow that’s running until Dec. 11.
The 12 actors inhabit their characters so absolutely, it seems as though they were born to play them.
I know that speaks as loudly about each actor’s skills as it does about Smith’s casting choices, but it’s one important reason this production of The Hollow is so much fun and so completely engaging.
OK, so let’s give credit where credit is due. Christie came up with a pretty ingenious plot for The Hollow, with its twists and turns, but it’s her wonderfully eccentric characters who make us want to go along of the ride.
That’s no small feat, seeing as The Hollow runs just under three hours, including the intermission.
With Christie, the identity of the killer may not be clear, but we know from early on who’s going to get bumped off.
Place your bet on the annoying rotter and you won’t be disappointed when he or she is dispatched to meet their maker.
In the case of The Hollow, it’s Haysam Kadri’s Dr. John Cristow, a pompous, womanizing cad who takes any opportunity to belittle his mousey wife Gerta, played with oodles of self-deprecating frailty by Kira Bradley.
Of course, everyone else attending the weekend gettogether at the Hollow, the home of aristocrats Sir Henry Angkatell (Duval Lang) and Lady Ruth Angkatell (Kathryn Kerbes), has a reason for wanting Cristow dead.
With the grating, self-aggrandizing demeanour Kadri gives Cristow, it’s a good thing only the characters on stage are allowed to carry firearms, lest audience members would start using him for target practice as well.
Lady Angkatell is one of Christie’s more delightful creations.
She’s that seemingly clueless matron in the early stages of dementia who wanders into the living room carrying a live lobster she inadvertently picked up in the kitchen, or who darts into the room carrying a trap mumbling about those dratted moles in the garden.
Kerbes and Lang have this gentle, easy relationship where he guides her as much as possible, as if she were a forgetful child.
Kerbes seems charmingly oblivious to everything happening about her, yet she gives the impression there may be more to the old gal than initially meets the eye and ear.
I want to live in Patrick Du Wors’ incredible country home set and I’ll be first in line if Vertigo ever decides to sell Crews’ or Kadri’s costumes.
Anton de Groot’s lighting is so subtle, it seems perfectly natural, but watch how he highlight’s Henrietta’s sculpture as if it’s the 13th character.
Andrew Blizzard’s sound design and original music put the finishing touches on an excellent technical production.
It’s what Smith and her stellar cast deserve.