| THEATRE REVIEWS
It’s weird. There’s no getting around it, and you might as well admit it up front. There’s nothing even slightly traditional about a man and a woman in love with the same bird. The woman, Adele, "mates" with a golden eagle, Susan – figuratively, as far as we know – and the man, Cecil, works through his unrequited passion for Susan with an eerily similar bird – not entirely figuratively. It’s likely unnecessary to point out that this play finds its home on One Yellow Rabbit’s stage.
But if you can get past the slightly off-putting premise, you find an oddly romantic story and some strikingly sensitive portrayals. Featherland was written by OYR’s Denise Clarke, based on a book by B.C. author Bill Burns, and the strangest thing of all is that it’s a true story. Cecil and Adele Hyndman actually lived this curious life on Vancouver Island, destined to become fodder for Clarke’s vivid imagination.
The device that she’s dreamed up to give us entry to the story is an ingenious one. Burns, the Hyndmans’ biographer, is stricken with a pneumonia that conjures hallucinations of the characters he has come to know so well. In his fevered state, both eagles appear in the guise of very avian women (Clarke and dancer Christine Bandelow), both of whom can tell their own tales as Cecil and Adele (Michael Green and Vancouver performer Rita Bozi) live out their bizarre history. Through the character of Burns, the audience can acknowledge its own scepticism regarding the couple’s relationship with the birds, and eventually come to accept the affairs as romantic.
In a bold move that is initially surprising and whimsical, the script is created in rhyming verse. But the scheme gets old quickly. You find yourself concentrating more on where the next rhyme is coming from than the actual meaning in the text. You wonder what Clarke has dredged up to rhyme with "prude," and since one of the characters was recently cavorting naked with one of the eagles, you know what it’s going to be. Blake Brooker’s direction is flawless, however, and there are some remarkable performances here – particularly from Clarke and Curtis. Although the Rabbits would likely never admit to caring about such things, it wouldn’t be strange to see a Betty nomination in this show’s future.
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The role of Adele in Featherland was originally written for Elizabeth Stepkowski, so it’s a little strange to see the former OYR ensemble member Elizabeth Stepkowski in a very different role a mere 16 hours later. In the two-hander Kreskinned, she shares the stage with familiar local actor Christopher Hunt, and the two are an incongruous but comical pair. Joyce and Dennis have been set up on a blind date by a mutual friend, who sends them to see Kreskin. They both hate it but somehow find themselves on stage being hypnotized.
The romance looks unlikely to develop in the beginning – Joyce is a control freak who never goes on a second date, and Dennis is a commitment-phobe who’s been engaged nine times. But then they discover the play’s premise: each still reacts to their "trigger words," and unbeknownst to one another, they exercise the power frequently.
It starts out as a handy escape route when those awkward second date gaffes manifest themselves, but as the relationship evolves, it becomes almost routine. It’s a schtick that could get old in less accomplished hands, but the script by Michael Healey (The Drawer Boy) and Kate Lynch is clever and concise, the performances by Hunt and Stepkowski are dynamic and engaging, and Kate Newby’s well-paced staging leaves no time to think about the petty details. |
