Reviews
FIRE
Theatre Calgary
Starring Geoffrey Pounsett, Mike Ross, Carly Street and Victor A. Young
Written by Paul Ledoux and David Young
Directed by Richard Rose
Runs until February 28
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
BLOOD ON THE MOON
Sleeping Dog Theatre
Written and performed by Pierre Brault
Directed by John Koensgen
Runs until February 29
Vertigo Playhouse (Tower Centre)
Longtime Theatre Calgary patrons have fond memories of the 1989 production of the musical Fire. There was young Ted Dykstra, burning up the keyboards Jerry Lee Lewis style, as rockabilly madman Cale Blackwell. There was young Henry Czerny, full of smoldering indignation as his televangelist brother Herchel. And there was Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas as their fired-up daddy, the Rev. J.D., turning the big Max Bell Theatre into a li’l ol’ Southern revivalist church.
What we may have forgot was that the exhilarating performances and staging made up for a certain inadequacy in the libretto and the fact that, apart from the rock ’n’ roll oldies, it didn’t have a very memorable score.
Those faults surface again in Richard Rose’s revival at TC, compounded by Rose’s own lumpy mix of heavy dramatics with cheap, goofy humour. A lot of the latter is supplied by a multiple-role-playing Victor A. Young, who is fine in the part of J.D. but turns a series of comic cameos into lame cartoons. The other weak link in the cast is Carly Street, who gives a one-note portrayal of Molly, the woman torn between the two brothers, in a whiny voice that recalls the late Gilda Radner.
Happily, the show is blessed with two charismatic leads in Mike Ross and Geoffrey Pounsett, who play Cale and Herchel, respectively. Ross can’t escape the fact that, after a few great, piano-pounding numbers, the prodigal Cale spends far too much time in sordid decline, but he pours a lot of feeling into his comeback ballad, "Lost Out in Deep Water." A blond, wholesome-looking Pounsett provides the more subtle performance as Herchel, whose evolution from a sincere young preacher to a popular TV minister in league with the fundamentalist forces of darkness is slower and scarier than his sibling’s swift trip to a booze-drenched hell.
Other good things: the music here is in the practiced hands of Bob Foster, Tim Williams, Kit Johnson and Andy Graffiti as the onstage band, and Christopher Hunt is genuinely frightening as a Bible-thumping politician delivering a stump speech that crackles with bigotry and hatred.
Ledoux and Young certainly play on the ironies inherent in the heaven/hell, religion/rock dichotomies, but never go beyond it. We’re left, not with a great musical, but some great set pieces. The best of these is the show’s brilliant first-act finale, which juxtaposes Herchel delivering a fire-and-brimstone sermon with Cale blazing his way through "Good Golly Miss Molly." Their words may be different, but their frenzied body language is identical.
Anyone who says Canadian history is boring hasn’t been going to the theatre. Canadian playwrights have been successfully mining the dramatic potential of the country’s past for decades now. Actor-playwright Pierre Brault makes a first-rate addition to the canon with Blood on the Moon, his rousing account of the murder of Father of Confederation Thomas D’Arcy McGee and the trial and hanging of his convicted assassin, James Patrick Whelan, told from Whelan’s point of view.
The one-man show, which had its origins at the 1999 Ottawa Fringe Festival and is now playing at Vertigo Mystery Theatre, pleads the case of Whelan, who declared his innocence right up to the gallows. Brault plays him as an engaging little Irishman, now a restless ghost eager to tell us his side of the story. As he reenacts Whelan’s dodgy trial, the versatile actor also embodies everyone from the judge and lawyers to a parade of witnesses – Irishmen, cockneys, French-Canadians – simultaneously creating a courtroom drama single-handedly and painting a vivid picture of Ottawa circa 1868.
Brault the writer, meanwhile, stirs a large helping of humour and a pinch of pathos into this real-life murder mystery.
Vertigo patrons accustomed to elaborate sets will find the production, directed by John Koensgen, favours imagination over décor, with nothing but a chair for a prop and Martin Conboy’s clever lighting designs indicating changes in locale. Yet Brault is such a masterful performer that you won’t miss the furnishings. |
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