DETAILS
Big Secret Theatre
Wednesday, March 26 - Saturday, April 19
More in: Theatre
Find It...
Of course it was a musical. It had to be a musical. In 1984, Jim Keegstra of Eckville, Alberta (school teacher, mayor and part-time mechanic) was convicted of hate speech under the Criminal Code of Canada for teaching his social studies class that the holocaust never happened. In 1987, One Yellow Rabbit made Keegstra the central character of a musical called Ilsa, Queen of the Nazi love camp, juxtaposing his fall from grace with the story of two Nazi cartoon villains in search of the lost spawn of Adolf Hitler. In 1992, during Keegstra's re-trial, Northern Lights had brought the show to Edmonton. A court order was issued to ban media coverage, and the show was cut short. Once Keegstra was convicted, OYR was able to put on the show again — and the company has, some 16 years later.
Musicals seem to function on an entirely different set of rules than ordinary theatre. It's as though the implicit absurdity of periodically breaking into song justifies absurdity elsewhere, and with the tacit weight of holocaust denial, it's exactly this convention that Ilsa is exploiting. It isn't tactless, it's a musical. It had to be a musical.
Labelling Ilsa as mere scatology loosely justified by its medium would be selling it awfully short, however. There are certain scenes — like a particularly memorable moment when Keegstra (Andy Curtis), Ilsa (Denise Clarke) and a Nazi colonel (Michael Green) call upon the spirit of Hitler with black magic — where it dares you to write it off as a trite attack on an easy target, but that's only so it can bring that illusion crashing down around you — the appearance of Ghost Hitler is followed immediately by a mournful song sung by two holocaust victims (meaningfully double-cast as Clarke and Green), reminding you of exactly what the horrible implications of Keegstra's crimes were. It had to be a musical.
The tone of the story shifts wildy throughout; from the academic monologue of Keegstra spoken from under a car to a bombastic, wonderful musical segment like “Blame it on Berlin” in which Clarke, Green and Curtis (here playing an extremely gay Nazi chauffeur) dance about and create excuses as to why they've broken vials of Hitler's semen. When the show hits its stride, the contrast it draws between the two types of evil Nazi villains is superlative, though it's worth noting that it does take about 15 minutes of tire-spinning, rote exposition to get there.
What defines Ilsa — as well as the central criticism of it — is that it attempts to function as both a media critique and a theatrical narrative piece. It finds the common ground between these two opposing forms in Keegstra's humanity and is largely successful in illustrating him not as a cartoon villain but a misguided ideologue. Where it falters, it seems to do so from placing too much focus on this difference. The exposition drags on and humourlessly on, and certain hammed-up jokes may leave you thinking “Ah, yes, I see how that could have been funny if it was delivered properly.” The problems with Ilsa (however minor), then, don't stem from any conceptual breakdown, but from a simple lack of polish — likely introduced by an over-emphasis on the script's high-concept during production.
It's always disappointing to see a good show fall just short of being a great show, but with Ilsa, the premise alone is so entertaining that most will happily gloss over its flaws and laugh giddily at Clarke's pantomimed “whacking off Hitler” dance.
