Review
IN KLEZSKAVANIA
One Yellow Rabbit and the Plaid Tongued Devils
Written by Ty Semaka and One Yellow Rabbit
Directed by Blake Brooker
Runs until April 23
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
In the annals of One Yellow Rabbit, In Klezskavania is the troupe’s great "cheap laughs" show. Based on the concept album by the Plaid Tongued Devils, this cabaret musical billed as "a gothic gypsy rock opera" is really one big, crazy, perverted cartoon. Creepy and gleefully tasteless, it’s like something R. Crumb would draw after watching Nosferatu.
And no one appreciates that cartoon element more than OYR’s Michael Green, who once again dominates the show in its current revision-revival as its gloriously grotesque villain, Baron Leo Von Tantamount. Playing the demonic dictator and revolting restaurateur of Klezskavania, a fictional carbuncle on the face of Eastern Europe, Green doesn’t merely masticate the scenery, he verily threatens to devour the whole production, musicians and all. And he’s got the gargantuan appetite to do it.
Looking like Napoleon en route to becoming Mr. Creosote, sounding like he’s spent a fortnight trapped in a wine cellar, Green’s egregiously epicurean baron smacks his lips over both his eatery’s Mephistophelean menu (freshly clubbed baby seal, anyone?) and his dungeon’s worth of half-starved sex slaves. "I like crunchy bitches!" he exclaims, seemingly confusing concubines with candy bars, as he once again slips off his barstool like a booze-sodden spider, all spindly legs and bloated belly.
Ah, yes. Leo’s a charmer with the ladies, all right. "What fresh putrescence is this?" he inquires, inhaling a female patron’s perfume. And when he takes the floor, not even the Devils can top him – "Get out of here with your sad fuckin’ music," he slurs at the band’s angelic ace violinist, Jonathan Lewis – or the Devil himself, for that matter.
The latter is incarnate here in the amiable person of fellow Rabbit Andy Curtis, who runs a close second to Green with the scene-stealing antics. His namby-pamby, nimble-footed Beelzebub is less Lord of the Flies than Lord of the Dance, a sensitive dude who sips girlie drinks and sports long hair and crimson Spandex like he’s just wandered in from a Spinal Tap audition. Green and Curtis are one of the great comedy teams in the history of Canadian theatre – there, I’ve said it – and I can think of few performers who convey so much pure, unbridled fun onstage. Just watching the two of them in action is worth the price of admission.
The story? Who needs a story with these comic geniuses? But there is one, of sorts. It involves a scheme by Vladimir (Denise Clarke), a disfigured peasant, to exact revenge on the bad baron for slaying the poor fellow’s family and, in a Gogolian touch, ordering his nose lopped off. Vlad, in return, takes his cue from Herodias’s manipulation of Herod and sets out to have lecherous Leo seduced by a Salome-like dancer named Lucy Du Lamour (Anita Miotti) – much to the chagrin of the despot’s termagant wife, the singer Penultima "Penny" Arcane (Onalea Gilbertson), and his neglected son Lorne (Brad Payne), a born-again Christian who’s got an Oedipal thing for mummy.
Clarke, who wasn’t part of the musical’s original 1999 production, takes a backseat to Curtis and Green, although her Vladimir is an engaging scapegrace of a narrator, with a big black triangle like a harlequin’s patch where her proboscis used to be, and a fondness for Russian folk dancing. Of the younger ensemble members, Gilbertson enters most fully into the show’s raucous, ribald spirit, and she’s been given some new songs to show off her considerable vocal prowess – most notably a ditty about Penultima’s penchant for micturating during coitus. Or, as she quaintly puts it, "I’ll spend a penny on you." A chanteuse who loves to share her liquids, at one point she also sprays the audience with milk from her fabulously floppy but still lactating breasts.
Payne, as her simpering offspring, is convincingly pathetic but gets stuck doing a variant on Seth Green’s shtick from the Austin Powers movies, while Miotti’s Lucy is lacklustre and Clarke’s choreography for her is oddly uninspired; when Miotti does her spoof veil dance, you keep comparing it unfavourably to Clarke’s own stunning Salome number in OYR’s Mata Hari.
And since we’re making comparisons, you can’t help thinking of another musical about the Devil seen earlier this season – November Theatre’s The Black Rider, with its seductive score by Tom Waits that made you want to run out and get the CD. I can’t imagine doing the same with In Klezskavania, but the Devils’ crude klezmer-rock tunes work as part of the whole jokey theatrical package and, of course, their live playing sizzles.
Blake Brooker’s direction is lax at times and Gregg Casselman’s glyphic backdrop design isn’t particularly striking – one wonders why Ty Semaka, In Klezskavania’s co-creator, lyricist and lead singer, didn’t also add his talent as a graphic artist to this show. But Tara Charran’s eclectic, comic-book costumes are terrific and Brooker and Tim Strong’s lighting conjures up a garishly infernal atmosphere. (Incidentally, Von Tantamount’s restaurant-cum-cabaret is never specifically referred to as hell, but given that both Hitler and Ronald Reagan are among the clientele, I think it’s safe to assume.)
No, In Klezskavania won’t be remembered as One Yellow Rabbit’s finest two hours, but it’s certainly one of its funniest. |
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