Imagination makes this
THEATRE PETER PAN
By Fiona Sauder and Reanne Spitzer. Directed by Deb Williams. A Bad Hats Theatre production, presented by Carousel Theatre for Young People. At the Waterfront Theatre on Saturday, November 23. Continues until January 5
➧ THE STORY OF Peter Pan has captivated the imaginations of children for generations. And despite the many different interpretations of J.M. Barrie’s story over the years, Carousel Theatre for Young People has found a unique and refreshing way to tell this beloved tale. This version impresses with its creative staging by director Deb Williams, and with its contemporary flair, thanks to a modern pop/folk–style musical score by Landon Doak.
In CTYP’s version of Bad Hats Theatre’s Peter Pan, written by Fiona Sauder and Reanne Spitzer, we’re taken to a playful space where theatrical magic happens right before our eyes without the use of extravagant sets or effects. Actors transform into different characters in front of us, props are resourcefully pulled out from treasure chests, and instruments such as a piano, ukulele, and guitars are used as needed by the cast to provide accompaniment and sound effects. And whenever you think “How can they pull that off?” (such as flying), Williams and choreographers Wendy Gorling and Amanda Testini cleverly make things work through the creative movement of the actors, and using the resources available on-stage.
With a few quick adjustments of Kiara Lawson’s functional costume, we see Marlene Ginader effortlessly transform from Mrs. Darling into
Tinkerbell. Later in the show, she puts on a striped sweater, hunches her posture, and becomes the pirate Starkey. It’s all great fun to watch.
Doak’s contemporary score, which evokes shades of Mumford & Sons, adds to the show’s unique flavour. From the sultry tango “Hook’s Lament”, to the audience-participatory “Do You Believe in Fairies”, to the soaring “Flying Home”, Doak’s songs are wonderfully catchy.
Leading the way as Peter Pan is the fierce Kaitlyn Yott. Fearlessly flying across the stage, sword-fighting with pirates, and dealing with the emotional complexities of newfound love, Yott is a strong balance of moxie and vulnerability. As Yott’s villainous counterpart Captain Hook, Josue Laboucane is a ton of fun. He brings cheeky, confident swagger in “Hook’s Lament”; I’ve never seen Captain Hook dance so well before.
Ginader is fabulous in her triplecharacter performance of Tinkerbell, Mrs. Darling, and Starkey. In fact, make that a quadruple-role performance, as Ginader pulls out a violin during the show and becomes a musician. In each of her roles, Ginader skillfully shifts her physicality and vocal delivery—from prim and proper as Mrs. Darling, to bratty and mischievous as Tinkerbell.
The heart of the Peter Pan story is its celebration of imagination— something that this production nicely embodies, as it guides audience members in using their own imagination to complete the experience. The show makes no attempt to disguise the fact that John and Michael are played by females (Tessa Trach and Paige Fraser). And at one point, with the clever use of a cloth sheet, we see an underwater battle between Peter Pan and Captain Hook take place.
In the question-and-answer period that followed the opening performance, a little girl in the audience asked about the ball that Ginader uses to symbolize tiny Tinkerbell flying about the stage. When asked by an actor if she thought Tinkerbell was real, the little girl responded “Yes”—proving this production’s imaginative qualities will take many children to Neverland this holiday season.
THE FATHER
By Florian Zeller. Translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Mindy Parfitt. A Search Party production. At the Vancity Culture Lab on Thursday, November 21. Continues until November 30
➧ THERE WAS AUDIBLE weeping at the end of The Father, and not just from actor Kevin McNulty, in character as André, an elderly man with dementia. The tears flowed and our noses ran, and as an audience we learned new ways to be devastated in public together. Such is the power of McNulty’s jaw-dropping performance; it’s a singular achievement in a long and still-vibrant career of memorable and award-winning turns.
The audience’s heartbreak is a real testament to McNulty, because André has become, in part, a jerk with a persecution complex. He’s also a slippery character and a deeply unreliable one. His memory is faltering, failing, and fracturing, and playwright Florian Zeller does an incredible job of conveying André’s illness through repetition, time jumping, and double casting. (Almost every character is played by at least two actors at varying moments.) This helps the audience experience firsthand André’s confusion and frustration, his paranoia and vulnerability. But it also makes his prickly humour and his penchant for cruelty all the more dangerous. He lashes out at the daughter looking after him, and his caretakers have all quit because he’s so verbally abusive and physically threatening. But what is real and what is just in André’s mind? Zeller’s script keeps the audience guessing until the very end.
Director Mindy Parfitt has an incredible command of the material.
By Marcus Youssef. Directed by Stephen Drover. A Theatre Replacement production. At the York Theatre on Sunday, November 24. Continues until January 5
➧ EAST VAN PANTO has always been hypercaffeinated, but perhaps never more literally so than in a number this year, where the Drive’s numerous coffee outposts battle it out for superiority. Just when you think Joe’s, Continental, the Calabria, and the rest of the old-schoolers have finished with their feud, newcomers
Prado and Moja join the action.
Yes, this year’s version, the second in a row written by Marcus Youssef, is peak Drive. Even the title puppet, Pinocchio, hails from a box of refuse in the back of Beckwoman’s—a “hippie emporium” run by a woman who, we’re led to believe, has a pathological aversion to customers. Instead of Geppetto, we get Gelato (Shawn Macdonald), a lonely ice-cream vendor who can’t figure out why his eco-friendly recycled flavours (used chewing gum and frozen baby diapers, anyone?) don’t sell.
But as much as the playwright loves the Drive, the subversive scribe is not afraid to send it up; one zinger refers to “property-rich, old, white hippies who really hate residential towers”.
Youssef’s latest is also even more full of political barbs than his The Wizard of Oz was last year. (Everyone from Andrew Scheer to Justin Trudeau gets their digs, and wait till you see the surprise villain in Act 2.)
This Panto knows instinctively what the strong contingent of kids in the audience will like: namely, the odd fart joke and characters who detest kids. “They just play Fortnite, dab, and eat Tide Pods all day,” Naomi Wright’s scarf-bedecked Beckwoman bemoans. And some of the show’s biggest laughs come when a villain cooks up the “Kids Only” Hastings Racecourse, complete with slot machines and Monster energy drinks on tap.
With all that in mind, the biggest surprise may be that Pinocchio carries deeper messages than usual, slyly reaching for meaning amid the chaos.
It can do this, in large part, because Pippa Mackie brings such huge heart to the show as the innocent puppetboy, coming to life with wobbly hinges and bouncy knees. Watch her “I flip it, I flop it, I pop it, I lock it” in a hip-hop ode to “7 Rings”. (Shout out to choreographer Amanda Testini.)
In this retelling, the Fairy Instagram Mother (Chirag Naik, perched on a hoverboard, in a pink wig and size11 purple patent boots) tells Pinocchio he won’t be “real” unless he gets 100,000 followers on social media— and the whole show playfully pushes us to look at what makes us real these days. At one point the Fairy deadpans, “You haven’t posted in more than 15 minutes—I thought you were dead!” Pinocchio’s “conscience consultant” Jiminy Pattison (Amanda Sum) tries to counteract the bad messaging, but “Canada’s wealthiest man-cricket” is so busy buying up grocery stores and car dealerships he’s rarely around.
More insanity ensues, with villains Mademoiselle Fox Cabaret (Shawn Macdonald’s demented creation, a drag spin on Cruella de Vil, if she were more into red and white) and jazz crooner–impresario Michael Bublé (Naik again), running some kind of cheesy puppet ring.
Amid it all, though, Pinocchio prods us to reconsider what’s important—namely, real connections with real people; families, no matter how dysfunctional or nontraditional; and the kind of whacked-out community Theatre Replacement’s annual gift celebrates each year.
Music maestra Veda Hille (on keyboards, with Barry Mirochnick on drums) mixes it up with the usual eclectic abandon, her score reimagining everything from Hamilton songs to smashes by Lil Nas X and Billie Eilish. The highlight is a take on Andrea Bocelli’s pop-opera ballad “Con Te Partirò”, which Macdonald’s Italian gelato man pulls off with tenor-iffic splendour, stopping to weep quietly, and wring
“Awwwwws” out of the audience.
Overall, the show doesn’t quite reach the demented pitch of Youssef’s Wizard of Oz—which, to be fair, ranks as one of the best in a strong Panto history. And the stage never seems quite as full and crazily Technicolor as past productions, with Cindy Mochizuki’s painted backdrops not popping as much as the wonderfully warped East Van streetscapes by artist Laura Zerebeski.
Still, you’ll feel surprisingly good emerging onto the Drive from this two-hour escape from Insta likes. Just be careful which flavour of gelato you get on the way home.
FADO: THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
By Elaine Ávila. Directed by Mercedes Bátiz-Benét. A Puente Theatre and Firehall Arts Centre presentation. At the Firehall Arts Centre on Friday, November 22. Continues until December 14
➧ IT’S A PLEASURE to see new works that centre immigration stories and homecoming stories on Vancouver stages, and playwright Elaine Ávila, who’s of Azorean Portuguese descent, shares her cultural background with Fado: The Saddest Music in the World. Fado is the music of Portugal; its songs are heavy with melancholy, as beautiful as they are mournful.
Ávila’s Fado focuses on Luisa (Natasha Napoleao), an aspiring fado singer whose parents fled fascist Portugal for Canada, settling first in Vancouver and then in Surrey after her father’s death. Years later, Luisa and her mother, Rosida (Lucia Frangione), are mourning the death of famed fado singer Amália Rodrigues, whose guitarist, Antonio (Judd Palmer), was Rosida’s childhood friend. Luisa convinces Rosida to travel to Portugal in the hope that Antonio will help her become a great fadista. Once they arrive, Antonio and Rosida consider picking up where they left off, Luisa falls for a poet, and both women struggle to figure out where they belong and who they are. There’s also a subplot about homophobia, a recurring question of whether Rosida has fascist sympathies, and the ghost of Amália Rodrigues (Sara Marreiros).
There’s too much packed into Fado’s 85 minutes, and yet also not enough. There are no consequences for the homophobic character, Rosida’s possibly fascist inclinations are laughed off as a joke, and the ghost of Amália is never fully integrated into the narrative. In fact, the play barely mentions Amália by name once it’s invoked her death and its impact on Luisa and Rosida. There are moments that drag and others that speed by too quickly, and all of it is strung together between songs, most performed by Marreiros, with a few by Napoleao. Fado’s music is gorgeous, but by cramming in so many plot points between tunes, the play begins to feel like a jukebox musical rather than an engrossing story about a daughter and a mother and their connection to the saddest music in the world. There’s no space to breathe. I’d love to see another iteration of this production that edits down some of the subplots and keeps the fado music central to the mother-daughter relationship, and the attendant familial and cultural complexities that accompany a search for “home”.
Marreiros and Napoleao sing with gusto and passion, and it’s particularly rewarding to hear Napoleao convey Luisa’s deepening connection to the music as her character finally stops trying to intellectualize the songs and just experience them. Patricia Reilly’s impressive set—a large wooden stage with white and blue tiles covering its front as well as the entire backdrop— provides the perfect foundation for Marreiros’s and Napoleao’s numerous performances. Spending time with these songs and reading Ávila’s generous lyric translations in the program are two experiences I don’t take for granted. But the play feels like it’s struggling with its identity, just like Luisa and Rosida. The answer, though, can be found in the title. Fado: The Saddest Music in the World works best when it stays true to its name.