Plenty of swashbuckling family fun
Theatre company’s Zorro swashbuckler fun for the entire family
There’s plenty of swashbuckling family fun in Alberta Theatre Projects’ holiday show Zorro: Family Code.
Rebecca Northan, Bruce Horak and Christian Goutsis have crafted a rambunctious tale of a late-life mission for the masked avenger who, like so many other superheroes, vows to right as many wrongs as possible.
Zorro’s longtime nemesis, Juan Ramon (Tyrell Crews), has escaped from the California prison where Zorro sent him only to resurface in the small Spanish town where he and Zorro (Derek Flores) grew up. No sooner did Ramon and his sidekick, Pedro Gonzales (Kevin Corey), arrive in Spain that they started robbing the townspeople.
Hot on their trail is Zorro, who is actually Don Diego de la Vega in disguise. He means to recover the money, return it to the villagers and try to reform his onetime friend turned villain.
It would be a simple tale, but it seems there is more than one masked avenger in town, which confuses both Juan and Don Diego and intensifies the hijinks.
We get to meet Don Diego’s family, which includes his teenage daughter Isadora de la Vega (Natasha Strickey), his son Miguel de la Vega (Lucian-River Mirage Chauhan) and even the ghost of Zorro’s wife. There’s also the beautiful innkeeper, Maria Maurrieta (Mabelle Carvajal), who was a childhood friend of both Juan and Don Diego.
I’m presuming preschoolers are not going to read this review so I can reveal that it’s Isadora wearing a Zorro outfit at the beginning of the play, but before the final curtain, little Miguel and even Maria also don the famous wardrobe.
A hero is only as good as his villain is evil and Crews makes Ramon super-bad in the best comic fashion.
His is the kind of villain audiences love to boo in melodramas and love to cheer whenever he endures some physical pain, which Northan, Horak and Goutsis make certain happens at regular intervals.
Corey makes poor Gonzales a whipping boy for Ramon and the two engage in ample horseplay in the wonderfully silly slapstick opening scene. Corey is the play’s true chameleon, changing costumes, accents and characters to play a friar, a ghost and the village’s cheese maker.
It was an inspired choice to write Don Diego’s son Miguel as a youngster and then have 10-yearold Chauhan play him because Miguel is the hook for the children in the audience. At the top of Act 2, Chauhan takes on both Crews and Corey and, even when they have him tied up with his head in a sack, he still gets the best of them verbally, much to the delight of the children in the audience.
Karl Sine has staged close to a dozen impressive sword fights and punch-ups, which the cast execute with finesse. Strickey and Carvajal make Isadora and Maria strong female characters and you can tell how much they relish the opportunity to engage in the swordplay with Crews, Flores and Chauhan.
Flores has great fun bemoaning all the aches and pains that have accompanied Don Diego in his aging, especially when he has to swing in on ropes, duel for any length of time or fall off a balcony.
There is no shortage of groaning, huffing, puffing, limping and sweating, making it a memorable physical performance.
Narda McCarroll has given the cast a great set to work on and Hanne Loosen great costumes for them to play in. This is a good-looking, high energy show.
If there is a fault, it’s that the script and Northan’s direction tries hard to appeal to adults as much as children, and that means there are stretches where younger children’s attention will be waning and wandering.