DANGER OUTSIDE AND INSIDE
Bar Kapra a strange trip to the woods; Another Home Invasion avoids clichés
If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of … a considerable amount of puzzlement. Joseph Shragge’s Bar Kapra the Squirrel Hunter is an audaciously eccentric three- hander in which, not surprisingly, squirrel hunting figures prominently. There’s also murder, revenge, knockabout slapstick and metaphysical music- hall patter.
It’s set, ostensibly, on Mount Royal, but really in a mythical twilight zone, where the title character guns down his spouse, Bat Kapra — or maybe she’s his sister — in a fit of rage. But he has only winged her, and as she’s secretly healed by the pair’s young apprentice, Trout, she broods on payback.
I didn’t catch the play when it was workshopped during last year’s Fringe festival, but I recall the mixture of perplexity and admiration from those who did. Now Shragge’s company, Scapegoat Carnivale, has given it a fully polished production, ravishingly designed by Patrice Charbonneau- Brunelle ( whose marvellous design for Bus Stops can be seen at Centaur until March 27). The audience is gathered around a runway- like thrust stage while video images of fall and winter in the woods are projected onto rows of hanging screens.
Director Andreas Apergis also gets strong performances, deliberately drawn in the bold strokes of a Brechtian parable, from the cast. Chip Chuipka’s Bar Kapra is a dangerous, mad- eyed mountain man who nevertheless keens in agonized guilt. France Rolland is a tough match as Bat, wounded in body and soul by his treachery. And Jennifer Roberts is a winning combination of harlequin and holy fool as Trout.
Why, then, with so much going for it, does it not hit the mark? Mostly because Shragge’s script is largely a confused muddle rather than the enigmatic stage poem it seems to think it is. There are some fine moments along the way — the last stretch has the icy grandeur of an Ibsen epic — but it still feels like a work- in- progress waiting on Shragge to figure out what it’s actually about.
Mike Payette’s final production as artistic director of Tableau D’Hôte, before he takes over Geordie Productions in the summer, is something of a hard sell. And that’s partly the point. In fact, one prominent theme in Another Home Invasion, an 80- minute monologue by acclaimed Vancouver playwright Joan MacLeod, is the way our indifference toward the elderly leaves them prey to life’s ravages — and to actual predators.
Jean is an octogenarian hoping to live out her last days with her beloved Alzheimer’s-afflicted husband in a decent sheltered accommodation. As the system inevitably fails her, an increasingly intimidating intruder insinuates himself into her life.
The first thing you notice about Deena Aziz, who plays Jean, is that she’s far from her character’s age, and her performance doesn’t attempt to narrow the gap by falling into doddery clichés. She suggests Jean’s advanced years with the subtlest of touches — a watery gaze here, a strained turn of the neck there.
Lara Kaluza’s design is a weird wonder — a comfy, threadbare armchair surrounded by clusters of taut cords that thrum and glow with menace.
There are some genuinely chilling sequences — the resurgence of a particularly creepy childhood fear, for instance. But as with Bar Kapra, I found myself admiring rather than succumbing to the playwright’s intentions, and I have to admit to sometimes falling into uncouth boredom as Jean meandered around the details of her days. It’s an oddly chastening experience to find your eyes glazing over during a play that so compassionately insists that attention must be paid.