Review
CRIMES OF THE HEART
Theatre Calgary-Manitoba Theatre Centre
Starring Lisa Waines, Rachael Johnston and Alison Vargo
Written by Beth Henley
Directed by Nikki Loach
Runs until April 4
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Nikki Loach is an actors’ director who knows how to whip up strong ensemble performances, as she has proved numerous times over the years at Theatre Junction. However, that talent has seldom been in evidence in her work at Theatre Calgary, until now. With Crimes of the Heart, she finally has a vehicle and cast to work a little of that Junction magic in the big house.
I’m not sure why the hell Theatre Calgary and Manitoba Theatre Centre decided to revive Beth Henley’s late-’70s play set in Mississippi. If you want to do a heartfelt, humorous play about three sisters reunited by a crisis, why not Daniel MacIvor’s Marion Bridge, which is more recent, more realistic and Canadian, too? Crimes of the Heart isn’t Chekhov, just a southern-fried family soap opera mildly spiced with black comedy. But purely on the level of entertainment, this production succeeds thanks to Loach’s lively direction and six enjoyable young actors.
Junction alumna Rachael Johnston and Winnipegger Alison Vargo are the standouts, playing the wild middle sister and the baby of the family, respectively. Johnston, looking like a tomboy hell-raiser grown up, gives a sparky performance as the self-centred Meg, an aspiring singer in L.A. who has been summoned back to her sleepy southern hometown by the news that Babe (Vargo) has shot her abusive hubby. Vargo, meanwhile, is delightfully kid-like as the seemingly imperturbable kid sister who hides her fears by noodling on a saxophone and consuming large glasses of sugary lemonade.
Lisa Waines as Lenny, the sad-sack eldest sister stuck nursing the girls’ ailing granddaddy, is also stuck with some of Henley’s more baldly explanatory dialogue, but she does manage to bring a splash of colour to her drab character late in the play.
Curt McKinstry is amusingly phlegmatic as the married man who was once mixed up with Meg (he really comes across like an ol’ southern boy). Matt Kippen is charmingly earnest as the baby-faced young lawyer bent on defending Babe. Suzanne McDowell does an admirable job of providing comic relief as the sisters’ meddling cousin. And everyone pulls off convincing southern accents with nary a slip. (Kudos to voice coach Jane MacFarlane.)
Equally credible are Scott Reid’s ’70s-era costumes and his obligatory big set, a homely, old-fashioned kitchen with checkerboard linoleum, lit by Scott Henderson to resemble a yellowing photograph.
2004 - 2005 SEASON
Brush up your Shakespeare if you’re planning on attending Theatre Calgary next season. One Shakespeare play and two Shakespeare-inspired works are in the offing.
Christopher Newton, TC’s founding artistic director and the recently retired head of the Shaw Festival, will return to direct Macbeth early next year. It will be followed by the popular musical West Side Story, which recasts Romeo and Juliet in the New York slums, and a production of the recent hit British comedy Humble Boy, a witty update of Hamlet set in an English country garden.
The six-play season also features a revival of David French’s Canadian classic Of the Fields, Lately, to be directed by actor R.H. Thomson, a staging of the original, 1899 play of Sherlock Holmes and, of course, the annual Christmas Carol. |
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