Jesus Freak by Peter Boychuk

Jesus Freak by Peter Boychuk plays at Pacific Theatre,  March 1 to March 23.  It’s genius. A brilliantly written play performed by the best of casts to enlightened direction.  I loved the physical fight scene.  But most I loved the mother played by Katharine Venour.

The story is of an adult family, “cool” parents living on Saltspring Island, mother a novelist, father a bureaucrat who fought the establishment when younger, with the gay actor son over from Vancouver and the political science student daughter visitting from Montreal. It’s the Easter weekend. Everything is symbolic in this play. There’s layers within layers.  It’s Biblical in that sense, shallow and mythical for the superficial reader, profound and revolutionary for the deeper explorer.  Pathos too. I was crying as Kaitlin Williams,who played the daughter ,Clara Campbell told her mother how anxious she felt, how alienated, how alone.  I was so angry at the father, Alan Campbell, played by Ron Reed, who was such an intellectual bully but completely unaware of his intransigence yet equally so loving of his family. His hypocrisy ,so apparent as he claims to be open minded but says “I think I’d have found it easier if she said she was a drug dealer rather than saying she’d joined a church.” Such a fine little man with such a big heart.  Such beautiful a family.   Ron Reed surprised me with yet another unique performance showing facets I’d never known.  Yet I’ve admired him in dozens and dozens of roles.  Morris Ertman the director has a delicate touch.  I loved mother giving her daughter a picture of her mother and her in Sunday school.

God, it’s good to be Canadian at times when you see such a play! It’s utterly unique to Canada and especially the Pacific North West. The eagle joke was over the top.

 The struggles of the gay son, Nate Campbell, played so sensitively by Brandon Bate.  I loved the protectiveness of the father who said his son’s late lover was insincere. 

 Such beautiful parents.  Smoking a joint, having a glass of wine, so much accomplished. Later in life.  Such a story. Such incredible dialogue.  And humor.  Good humor.  Sadness, angst. I was moved to the core.  A play you could watch over and over and over again.  Such themes.  Faith, grace, intellect, reason.  But mostly love.  

Without the good mother there is war was my take home message.  The mother who is a cancer survivor.  Such profundity.  The family that loves. The great actors and great theatre.  Truly wonderful, a magical,  mystical, Druidic miraculous angelic night of live theatre..  Alright, I liked everything about this play. 

I  know each of these people portrayed in real life.  They  have all irritated me. But I loved  transformation.   In the end even I  found  tolerance and love. Their pettiness transformed into rank humanity.  They’re relationship. Fellow humans on a tragic comedic planet. The playwright captured a glimpse. I loved the references to Star Trek.  Now that was hilarious.  Gene Roddenbury would have approved.

A great night. Laura loved it too.  It was a dark and rainy  night when we left the theatre.  We were a little closer, a little more connected.  Three in one. There were a lot of clues and still more to be found. 

The Wolves - Pacific Theatre Play -Oct. 19-Nov. 10

The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe was a fantastic play about a college girls soccer team.  Incredibly intimate writing, I was reminded of the Quilters.  Sometimes I was taken back to teen years eves dropping outside the girls’ locker room. Not really getting half the nuances.

 My friend Laura said, “the estrogen of all those young women was overpowering. I was timid and shy as a girl and the atheistic women with all their energy kind of frightened me at times.”

 It was the energy, a  brilliantly crafted play.  The choreography of running and warm up and passing ball and  dialogue between stretches a masterpiece of art.   A powerful drama driven by exercise and relationship.  

I loved the transformation of the girls as they moved from reserve  to friendships to a team.  There was  a whole array and depth  of emotions  sparked with silences.  

Director Jamie King got the timing and pathos perfectly.  So much going on.  I was riveted. 100 minutes and no intermission. An emotional roller coaster of ideas and theatre.   The spell wasn’t broken once.  Magical.   The final darkness and  audience bursting with applause.  Now that’s theater. 

Nicole Weissmiller, the lighting designer, got it just right.   I felt I was in a foot ball stadium the whole time. The green Astro turf glistened.  

Danielle Klaudt and Paige Louter were the producers.   Victoria Snashall did an awesome job as stage manager.  

The costumes were simple but more than met the eye.. The beautiful girls despite the sexual content of some conversations never were ‘sexy’ thanks to the clunky school sports uniforms.  Throughout they were team mates,  sisters,  daughters.  So much depended on the costumes.   Matthew Macdonald-Bain did sound.  Again it was just right, perfectly in sync with the emotion.  Everything came together to maintain this amazing surging flow.

Kim Larson, Amanda Sum, Danielle Kaludt, Georgia Beaty, Jalen Saip, Ali Watson, Montserrat Videla. Shona Struthers and Paige Louter were the actresses. The Wolves.  The young women.  The Team. Each was distinct , endearing and an incredible character.  I loved them all. Tania Dixon Warren the soccer mom was amazing.

Wow.  

Thank you Pacific Theater and Rumble Theatre for an unforgettable play.  

Kim’s Convenience Play at Pacific Theatre

The beginning of fall is heralded by the season of theatre, song and dance.  The first production is Kim’s Convenience





 at Pacific Theatre. Why live in Vancouver with the traffic and construction if not to experience the wondrous ness of high culture.  Pacific Theatre is my favourite consistently good theatre company.  Season’s tickets for a quarter century have never failed to be the best bang for the buck in live entertainment.

Kim’s Convenience was a delightful play. No wonder CBC made it a series.  I loved the actors, the plot, the humor and pathos.  I saw my father and me in the interaction between Korean father and son.  My friend, Laura was uplifted. 

Our friend Laverne, former literature professor thought it wonderful. We’d both enjoyed different plays this year at Bard on the Beach. She’d loved As You Like It while Laura and I loved their MacBeth. Now we had had another amazing fix of talent, creativity and genius.  Lorne had driven all the way in from Chilliwack, through the demon infested Langley freeway back up just to enjoy another night at Pacific Theatre.

Bringing undue attention to ourselves wolfing down the delicious hoer d’oeves of opening night, we realized we’d all missed dinner.  The youg people were beautiful and mingling discussing the finer points while us old folk were focussed on foo.   After enjoying seeing Ron Reed  happy with the sold out successful standing ovation production, our little group headed up Granville to the excellent restaurant West.  We dined in elegance, sharing thoughts on our childhoods and neighbourhoods topics raised by the thought provoking play.

Thank you Pacific Theatre for another wonderful evening. 

Tolkien Play, Pacific Theatre

Incredible writing. Superb acting. Loved the sets and costume.  Kind of Darkest Hour with Hobbits. Opening night. Always a treat. Seeing friends. Over the years so many people returning for the highest minded theatre on the coast. Real challenges of ethics and morality.  The theatre as it’s own ‘my utmost for his highest’. Enlightenment meritocracy.  Ron Reed, director and playwright extraordinare. This script would please C.S. Lewis for sure and certainly have Tolkien’s interest.
I loved learning more about the Inklings. Never knew Owen Barfield was a part of this.  John Innes unfortunately absent opening night plays J.R.R. Tolkien but Ron Reed did a really good understudy job replacement though needed written prompts even though he’d written the play. That itself was ironic and amusing given all the irony already in the high minded play. Much British humor that would tickle John Cleese.  Certainly a respite from the low brow fake news of present day.  This really did challenge one to think and consider.  At the core was truth and friendship.
I truly loved Ian Fathing’s C.S. Lewis.  He really was Lewis as I imagined him.  Tim Dixon played a great role as Warnie Lewis, the Lewis military brother.  I didn’t really know Tolkien had been in the WWI trench warfare  Battle of Somme or even that C.L.Lewis was in the WWI front and took shrapnel in the fierce trench fighting. They both lost several close friends together there and this certainly affected their subsequent outlook and inner life.
The delightful contrast of Tolkien’s catholicism and Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity is so well played.  We don’t talk of religions or life and death and meaning these unidimensional hedonist consumer days.  Everyone thrives on lust and  perversity while being offended by lust and perversity.  The real fighting in mud and blood seemed to have lifted these men together out of the genitals of self. Even Campbell, played by Simon Webb who also played writer Dyson, had been in the Spanish War.  The communists and fascist so clearly described as different sides of violent totalitarianism. The verbal descriptions Shakespearian in their vividness with no one needing severed heads on stage to make the point.
I loved Edith. Eria Faye Forsythe who  played Tolkien’s wife with all the wisdom and genius of the women who were partnered  the great men of that era. I’ve loved all of Forsythes acting, so sensitive and dynamic. Her timing is elegance itself.  Anthony F. Ingram played Charles Williams who I quite didn’t know.  That’s history. A great man of the day and in later years forgotten while Tolkien and Lewis remain as classics.  Ingram played him amost American and a harbinger of the Anglican church today with all the ‘magic’ left and the perhaps the ‘mystery’gone.
I loved Tolkien’s term ‘northerness’ a mystical reference which is all but lost in loudness of the racist obsessed southerners.  Beowolf, a study of myth and reality.
I’d read all these books in my teens 20’s and 30’s so knew Beowolf, read all of Tolkien and most of Lewis. I loved Catholic Tolkien’s line that said Lewis’s Mere Christianity was too mere.  It was clear that this was a time before political correctness when people were frank with each other.  No wonder these writers became like polished pearls with the obvious support and cutting criticism of each other. Today every meeting of Inkllings would have been followed by a dozen law suits.  I see students scurrying away from Tolkien and Lewis to their safe places and trauma counselling. I’ve loved Lewis, Tolkien and  Owen Barfield and and realize others of the Inklings served up the very ideas that served to set the sails of my own personal trajectory.  It was moving to be reminded of the idealism and reverence of my younger years.  I don’t think of these things much now  in the cacophony of postmodern  ‘fake news’ , "false witnesses" ,  "new totalitarianism" and ‘victimology’. There’s a gentleness in the world of men who have served their country and fellow man and see friends die and know the foolishness of leadership who want to be leaders.
The play speaks to a past both individual and societal. It also speaks  to the friendship of men and God but mostly of men.  It really was a play like all the great plays.  It had us all talking and checking encyclopedias long after we’d left Pacific Theatre. Laverne our Professor of Literature companion said she couldn’t wait to search out a reference to ‘cake and ale’.  There were so many layers, from a really good biographical history romp to subtle meanings within meanings.
I loved the Tree.   Set designer Drew Facey said much with just that tree. And today I learned from science that trees have heartbeats.   I loved  all the moving parts, and black clothed young people pushing things about in scene changes.  I loved Gauthier's and Hood's excellent costume design.   I loved Cabilete’s Stage Management and Akesen and Colhoun’s Sound Design. They were all so perfect that it was easy to just be in the play without consideration of the light and sound and background.
It really was all simply perfect.  Everything about the play rung true, universal and ancient.  A masterpiece.  It was  sheer gift to have been there tonight.

Almost, Maine by John Cariani at Pacific Theatre

It was hard to get off the couch but worth it.  Season’s tickets to Pacific Theatre is an annual joy. Gets me out time and again for the best theatre and best culture Vancouver has to offer. This night was no different. I don’t know John Cariani. I should. He’s a truly brilliant playwright.  Almost, Maine was a series of love vignettes, theatre’s equivalent to the ballet pas de dieux.  Small town.  Whimsical, hilarious, touching, moving.  Young love. Loss and some sadness but mostly joy.   I loved the actors Peter Carlone, Kim Larson, Giovanni Mocibob, Baraja Rahmani, Jalen Saip. Director Kaitlin Williams is to be celebrated.  A wonderful experience. Thank you Pacific Theatre.  It was great after too to mix with friends Anna Marie, Kevin, Hannah and Caleb. We all so enjoyed the play.

"The Christians" by Lucas Hnath, Pacific Theatre

We all loved “The Christians” by Lucas Hnath at Pacific Theatre.  Sarah Rodgers directions were so very good I didn’t once think the show was even choreographed. It was that smooth.  I loved the choir and the songs and Lonnie Delisle the choir director.  The costumes by Sydney Savannah were priceless, some of the choir members truly reminding me of classic ‘church ladies’ of my childhood. The hats could well have been from my mother and aunt’s closet. It was that real.  The play was such a romp, like a televangical mega church experience in the small Pacific Theatre.  Sound designer Rick Colhoun can take a bow for that. His surround experience had me thinking of the recent U2 concert we’d attended.
Tre Cotton played Associate Pastor Joshua while Ron Reed played mature Pastor Paul.  They were perfect. The younger and older man and all the dynamics of leadership.  Always there was a mirroring of what was being said of God and Jesus and Biblical teaching and the behaviour of those in dialogue.  Macrocosm and microcosm.  The intellectual and emotional, flawlessly juxtaposed. Brilliant writing and acting.  Erin Ormond played Pastor Paul’s wife Elizabeth.  She and Paul were truly deep with the bedroom discussion of relations and agreement and disagreement, truly over the top.  Unbelievable intimacy and  theatre.  Yes I felt like the very fault in society today was being plumbed, the challenge of conservatives and liberals, whigs and tories, republican and democrat, change or no change, truth or untruth.  The whole dance of the present was happening there before us in the words and acting on stage.  I loved Lucas Hnath’s writing as it touched the soul of church and society today.
The idea revolved around ‘hell’.  Did it exist? What was it? Really a question of carrot and whip.  Funny too. The images that played out in words.  Punishment and guilt. Redemption. All the while the big words were reduced to little behaviours, questions and expressions.  Congregant Jenny played by Mariam Barry reduced it all to how to pay for food for her son and clothing and costs and what was true.  She was so real.  Lofty theology met honest social work.  All happening in an amazing play that was broken up in bits with music and song then deeply spiritual questions. I loved it.  Allan Morgan playing Elder Jay really questioned the cost to the church and the attendance issues, marketing, building, debts and sales, politics.  Funny considerations in the midst of deciphering what God is saying.  Central to all was the  "urge to communicate but the distance was insurmountable."
Our friend Lorne had driven in from Chilliwack for it. We’d gone for a great meal and super service at Cafe Barney before the play discussing taxation of the poor by the elite and the ungodly corruption of our present. government. Then we were at this play with it’s whole other higher set of challenging ideas.   Anna and Kevin met up with us after having just returned from  their monumental cross country expedition with the god kids.  Laura and I love going to church with them all and having a White Spot or Earl’s after church lunch.  This was  opening night and a really fine full house night indeed.  After we all talked  of art and ideas and culure and travel.  Lucia Frangrione, my favourite playwright, was there and we even got to say hi.  Other friends of Pacific Theatre we’ve come to know because they, like us, love this theatre so very much were there too, all of us happy with a truly great production and performance.
Thank you all for a  great night of theatre and some very loving challenges to heartfelt thought.

Outside Mullingar at Pacific Theatre

Laura and I enjoyed another rare and precious Pacific Theatre play, Outside Mullingar.  An Irish play set in the farms of the parents of a man and woman who grew up next door to each other, went to school and church together and casually talk of events of their neighbours decades before.  The parents are delightful as they talk of their children. It’s that kind of old world family thing.  Generations and tradition.  So absent in television reality.  A marvellous written by John Patrick Shanly with exquisite directing extraordinary acting.  I felt like I was back at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Leaving the theatre I was truly uplifted by great art done so very well.  Thank you Pacific Theatre.
Now it’s time to order season’s tickets for next year.

Valley Song at Pacific Theatre

 Magnolia and Cherry Blossoms were in bloom today  After many weeks of rain the sun was shining again in Vancouver.  I’d been driving with the top down on my Miata.   Ladies on the street,   lighter without umbrellas and overcoats. sported jackets of spring fashion.  

Laura and I had heard from friends how much they’d enjoyed Valley Song by Athol Fugard. Tonight was our theatre night.  We have season tickets at Pacific Theatre.  

Set in the year following South Africa’s first free election 1994,  the play focused on the relationship of Abraam “Buks” Jonkers and his granddaughter Veronica Jonkers.  Buks is 76 and in love with the land, his valley, the village and the crops.  Veronica loves her grandfather, singing and is drawn to the city.  The story includes her dead mother, Caroline and the dead grandmother Betty. Buks spoke to the ghosts them when he was alone. Change was coming to the valley.  Buks was for the old.  Veronnica’s dreams and Johannasberg were the change.

David Adams played Buks passionately. Sereana Malani played Veronica touchingly.  David Adams also played the author, the white man who had come to the valley to escape the city.  Veronica broke into her own songs, remarkable feeling pieces of home, her life  and the valley, original music by Cathy Nosaty.

I cried. I laughed.  The acting and song couldn’t be better. Even the set by Drew Facey couldn’t be improved on. Director Jovanni Sy is incredible.  I was drawn right into the story with the fingers of the writing getting a hold on my heart, tight, the acting stirring my soul.  

I liked the talk of land,  planting pumpkin seeds and prayers for rain.  The play was full of metaphor. As spring was coming here to Vancouver  the play of change and renewal in another land and time..  A play of immense depth. It reminded me of the old plays that first fired my love for theatre, Death of a Salesman,  I Remember Mother.  Yes, I loved Shakespeare but it was the Chekov and Noel Coward that really captured my imagination.  I wanted to be a play wright when I was younger but settled for a love of theatre.  This play, these actors, this theatre, the director, the whole creative team made me thankful tonight again for live theatre.

The applause went on for a long time.  Laura loved the play as much as I did.  She'd been crying and laughing too. The last theatre we’d been to had been a few months back on Broadway in  New York.   In it’s own way this little theatre production was just as good.  We are truly blessed to have Pacific Theatre for it’s character and excellence.  

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Mo, a Christmas Show, by Lucia Frangione

Holy Mo, A Christmas Show by Lucia Frangione, playing from Dec. 2- Dec 31 at the Pacific Theatre 12th and Hemlock is promoted as a ‘reverently irreverent re-imagining of the Nativity’.  In notes from the playwright, Lucia writes that she first wrote the play Holy Mo with Rene Joshi and Marie Anderson 24 years ago.  She describes it as ‘zero budget and three fools’.
In the play the Hebrew people are the Heebees and Herod is the King of the Juices, the Babylonians are the Babblers and the Romans are the Row Mans.  It’s very avant garde and performance art with hilarious twists and great costume changes. I really believe the wagon should get set design of the year award for originality and multiple use.
This is just the latest version of Holy Mo. I really believe that I’ve seen it three times and Lucia mentioned the 1997 version which really blew my socks off. I was talking about it to friends for weeks.  This is a totally re written one in which I personally think the Magnifi - Cat takes the show.
Kerry Van Der Griend is the director of the three stars,  Folly played by Lucia Frangione, Buffoona played by Jess Amy Shead, and Guff played by Anita Wittenberg.  It’s an amazing work of chaos and order that comes off as theatre just when one thinks the whole thing is about to dissolve into madness.
I loved the advent candles.  The songs throughout were grand to beautiful. It really could be termed a musical if the songs were not so brief. Row Man was my favourite with all the audience participation and the sense of being at a hockey rink
Yet there was the Story.  In the midst of all the fun and laughter the story is retold.  I liked that.  I really could see Holy Mo over and over again. It’s like  Handel’s Messiah to me in that way.  A special addition to my Advent season that reminds me of what really does matter at Christmas.  I think every Christian adult and child should see Holy Mo. Obviously non Christians would enjoy it but the subtleties or not so subtle subtleties such as  Maggie, the Magi, would be lost on anyone who doesn’t already know the story.  That doesn't hurt Alice in wonderland. Still I’d suggest at least a reading of the original before attending for anyone not cognizant of who Manny might be.
Thank you for another wonderful play experience, Lucia.
(It was also great for Laura and I to see our young friends Kevin and Anna and Hannah and Caleb, both couples whose beautiful church weddings were so unforgettable. )
(John Fluevog’s Shoes (fluevog.com) is one of the many supporting advertisers.  Laura thinks Fluevog’s Shoes situated on Granville Street are the finest in Vancouver.  She calls them “works of art”,  so I’ve offered to buy her a pair,  given they support the finest theatre in Vancouver.)

A Good Way Out - Pacific Theatre

Last night Laura and I really enjoyed Pacific Theatre’s “A Good Way Out’ by Cara Norrish.  It was about a Christian woman who had left her wayward life but still had a brother caught up in the world of drugs and bikers.  It’s a world I know well.  The characterizations were so good with social services,  babies and despair, that I felt it was like a day out of my life working as an addiction specialist in Vancouver’s downtown eastside.  The drama was so real. I appreciated the struggle and felt the frustration of the one who has left behind what she can’t not help others get out of.  It was sordid and sad.  I don’t know about the title “Good Way Out’.  I hoped that referred to the girls but it wasn’t really clear.  I ask myself where Jesus is and couldn’t help but later  think of Job.  Great theatre, brilliant acting and really gifted dialogue. Fabulous set. I’ve actually worked on bikes in just that setting.  Another good night of theatre at the Pacific.  Great to see Hannah and Caleb who had just celebrated their first anniversary too.
www.pacifictheatre.org

W;T, Pacific Theatre, May27, 2016

What a remarkable play!  Margaret Edson has really explored in depth the relationship between today’s experience of cancer and the Holy Sonnets of Donne.  Humour and Pathos.  I was moved by the realism of Katharine Venour’s portrayal of English professor, Vivian Bearing. The good, the bad and ugly of hospital and academia were captured in the script with superb direction by Angela Konrad.  I really did like Dan Amos’ portrayal of the medical resident, Jason Posner.  I fear there was a time I might well have followed him into research had I not become a clinician instead
Julie Casselman’s portrayal of Susie the nurse was true. Ron Reed played a most convincing Dr. Kelekian. Ella Faye Forsyth’s portrayal of Vivian’s old professor was touching to the core.  The whole ensemble, quite a cast indeed, worked well on the little stage which was a master piece of Set Designer John Webber.
In the middle of the play I noticed an older lady in the audience looking unwell as her own family were troubled by her sudden leaning left. I walked over to her as I’ve done for decades now and  said,  I am a doctor.  It’s always been more  comforting to those I’ve said it to than it has been for me to say it.    This wonderful man picked this lovely lady up and carried her to the wheel chair on the set.  We didn’t know how to exit the stage with stairs in every direction so it was critical that someone in the show took charge and said that we should carry the wheelchair up the stairs to the lobby.   So we lifted the wheelchair without hesitation and directed by this very smart woman carried the lady up the stairs.  It’s been decades since I’ve carried wheel chairs but this lovely lady was light as a feather..  Then family and friends lay her on the floor with just  the right pillows to satisfy me.  I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to correct the well intentioned from laying people out flat.  If a person’s vomitting or at risk to, lie them on their side. If there’s concern of stroke or heart attack or respiratory failure ensure they’re partially upright to allow the diaphragm to do it’s job.  
Her breathing was fine, no lateralization, pupils equal and reacting to light,  oriented, bilateral sensation in tact, all limbs moving,   pulse a bit willowy but steady and regular, good colour, good blood return from nail beds. She said she was tired and she seemed fatigued. She was a young 80 year old and sorry she’d upset the play. Someone handed me a phone to the 9-11 operator and I conveyed my findings while watching her.  I concluded she’d simply had a touch of vagal vasal ( a feint) with the closeness of the theatre and the passionate depth and tenseness of the play at the moment I saw her keel to the side.  One worries it’s a heart attack or a mini stroke but really those are just things we ‘rule out’ in emergencies to avoid surprises. In my northern medicine days I’d have given her a drink, asked family to watch her over night, waking her to confirm lucidity every few hours.
The fire department arrived with quite the fan fare.  One of the firemen was so truly caring he could have been her son.  Her daughter was there  so truly concerned and loving and I really do believe helping her mother along with silent prayer.   Everyone was so warm.
The paramedic arrived and really took charge. I thought he might have played football in another life. He reminded me of Jason Posner. Very efficient and professional moving things right along.  It was a reenactment of a real team so very similar to the one i’d just witnessed portrayed on stage. I couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t part of the theatre. Did this happen night after night. Would candid camera suddenly appear?
Observation for me , is the real thing in emergencies, except the gun shot and knifing one’s I’ve had to deal with.   That was years ago and I was all caught up in inserting lines and putting in medications in ER’s and ICU”s. It’s been a decade since I resuscitated someone. I attended a syncope on Davis Street. I’m blessed to be able to recognize the full range of street drugs.  I really don’t like seizures but mostly one simply has to wait.   In all the emergencies I’ve attended in the community,  it’s just been important to stop people when they were scared and wanting to do things even if they’re wrong.
Everyone here tonight was present and caring. The ambulance and fire staff were downright professional. I felt sorry for the lady though. She said ‘she just like all the people to go away.”    I knew how she felt.  Feeling ill is a private affair but we live in community.
I’ve responded to countless emergencies in hospitals, clinics, trains and wilderness, though most recently it seemed I’ve been specializing in on plane emergencies, a half dozen as many years.  I’ve never attended one in a theatre. It was especially surreal to return to the theatre, a hospital room set,  where the ‘play must go on’.
It was a superb finale.
A standing ovation for sure.
What a cast and what a brilliant script and direction.
I was thankful too that a theatre manager informed everyone that the lady was at the hospital and appeared to be doing well.  
“Death be not proud though some have called thee, Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”  John Donne

Pacific Theatre

Laura and I loved the improvs at Pacific Theatre.  Great cast of actors.  Definitely all the usual suspects. Hilarious.  Amazingly talented with music and acting. I've never seen such accomplished and funny musical improv.
Hannah and Caleb, the beautiful young couple whose wedding we'd attended such a short while ago were there.  Caleb volunteered to provide the sound effects for one improv.  It was especially funny. Of course, Caleb made all the difference in our eyes.
The Pacific Theatre announced it's new season.  Some really great shows.  Lucia Frangione is back with one of her award winning plays.  Every year is different at Pacific Theatre.  The defining and unifying feature of the plays is excellence and integrity.  Every year I have a favourite play though I've never not liked a performance. This year it was Common Grace.
The Christmas season performances are always special.  Stooge or Caribou Christmas or something else special.
They're all theatre at it's finest. Years later I'm still telling people about the Quilters, that Prairie play made from the letters the mail order brides sent back to Britain.  Another play, Chairs, documented the deaths in Vancouver from HIV, the tainted  blood transfusions, needles and bathhouses.  Such a rivetting performance.  They're from years ago.
But Pacific Theatre tackles those big plays, the Death of a Salesman type theatre, where the big questions are being asked in the way only theatre can.  There's something so alive in theatre that computers and televisions simply can't get near to. Human experience.  Acting out stories goes back to cave men 80,000 years ago.  Tragedy and Comedy.
And then there's the Christian perspective.  The ethical and moral considerations.
I love Pacific Theatre. I'm glad I've got my season's tickets already.

Common Grace By Shauna Johannesen

What a truly brilliant play!
"I loved everything about it.” She said, “I loved the sets. I loved the women. I could take any of my girlfriends to that play and they’d love it too."
“I liked the upstairs  exit.” I said, “The timing and dialogue were incredible. I loved how Mark transformed as a character. He totally changed"
“Colleen did too.” my friend said. “But I loved the youngest daughter. I loved how they were always cleaning around the sink. It was like we right there in their home."
“I thought Dan was terrific.  Hard to think of it as a Christian play.  More a play about real life and love happening to people who just happen to be Christian.” I said.
“That’s what the playwright said in the interview.   She wanted it to be about faith but not about faith.”
We talked together about the play all the way home.  Three daughters and mother at the wake of their father. Two neighbours, a pastor friend and the untold secret shared.
Director Ron Reed, Actors Shauna Johansen playing Colleen, Sherri Norris as Carol, Rebecca be Boer as Abby, Cara Cunningham as Alana, Julie Lyn Mortensen as Miriam. Robert Gary Haacke as Mark.  Carl Kennedy as Pastor Dan.  What a cast!
Having briefly been the head of a university psychiatric family therapy department, I can honestly say that this play got it right.  I think everyone would relate but it really should be mandatory for all pastors, psychiatrists, family therapists, social workers and psychologists.
I also generally think a car chase or a terrorist attack would improve most shows that might get labelled chick lit but this is truly the exception.

Whipping Man

The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez opened tonight at the Pacific Theatre. (www.pacifictheatre.org)  It plays till March 21. Tonight’s performance, directed by Anthony Ingram, starring Carl Kennedy as John, Giovanni Mocibob as Caleb and Tom Picket as Simon received a standing ovation from a packed audience.   A Jewish family at the end of the Civil War comes to terms with their own persisting imprisonment despite their apparent freedom.  Indeed family and freedom and man’s relationship to one another is metaphorically and literally explored in this profound play which revolves around slavery and the whipping man.  The parallel of the south and Egypt is as strongly drawn as the secrets and lies that persist between brothers and father’s, sons and daughters.  The drama was palpable. A truly remarkable night of threatre.
As Hannah said later, “we love this theatre as our date night because we’ve always so much to talk about after the play.”  Hannah was talking to me but looking at her beloved .  Their wedding is planned for next month.  Tom and Laura, my other friends there that night loved the play equally.
Ron Reed, the Pacific Theatre’s artistic director, mingled with the audience,  cast and crew in the lounge afterward.

The Seafarer - play

The Seafarer, a brilliant play by Conor McPherson is performed at the Pacific Theatre (www.pacifictheatre.org) Broadway at Hemlock. What a fabulous way to kick off the Celtic Festival celebration.  Director Anthony Ingram is to be celebrated for the remarkable timing and directing he has given to these actors  whose individuality and relationships make for the  best acting this city has seen.
Jim Dixon plays Ivan; John Innes, Mr. Lockhart; Andrew McNee as Nicky; John Tracy as Sharky; and Ron Reed, Richard.  Ostensibly it’s about the Irish home of blind Richard and his brother Sharky. There are definitely spirits on Christmas eve.   A card game ensues when the guests arrive.  There’s drinking and drama the likes that only the Irish can conceive.  It's divine comedy and devilish tragedy. The acting was that intense.   Conor McPherson’s writing is gifted indeed.
I would recommend it to all, especially any with a drop of celtic blood and certainly any who have tasted Irish Whiskey.    

The Foreigner

I laughed and laughed and laughed some more. I couldn't hear myself laughing because everyone in the packed audience was laughing right along with me. The only surprise was that the actors weren't laughing.  Deadpan comedy, slapstick and very witty repartee.  Every form of humour known seemed to play across the stage.  And I loved it!
Evan Frayne directs the Larry Shue play, The Foreigner,

 at the Pacific Theatre, 1440 West 12th Avenue at Hemlock, Vancouver. John Voth plays Charlie, the shy and boring friend of his hale merry soldier friend, Froggy, played by Ryan Scamstad.  Charlie accompanies Froggy to America where he stays the weekend with Betty played by Erla Fay Forsyth.  At this home, David, played by Mark Gordon, a minister, and his fiancee, the heiress, Catherine, played by Kaitlin Williams, are staying as well.  Ellard, played by Peter Callone, is the 'slow' brother of Kaitlin.  Owen, played by Byron Noble, is the dubious 'friend' of the minister.   These are the characters who the actors make come alive.
To tell the plot would be a spoiler but it begins with Froggy telling Betty that Charlie is a 'foreigner' who can't speak English.  From this Charlie learns secrets and schemes and enchantments.  The twists and turns are a marvel to behold. The writer's mind must be a thing of rare beauty to have come up with this genius which the director and actors have mined as gold.
Great set, great props, great special effects. All round a fabulous evening. Thank you Pacific Theatre!

Mother Teresa Is Dead, Pacific Theatre, Vancouver

Mother Teresa Is Dead, by Helen Edmundson, is playing March 1 -23 at the Pacific Theatre, (604-731-5518) West 12th at Hemlock, Vancouver, BC Canada.  Delicately directed by Evan Frayne this Bollywood Theatre set in Madras India stars Julie McIsaac as an English plain Jane caught in a spiritual crisis as a Mom, and Wife lost in western consumerism fleeing from family to the familiar strange of simple giving.  Katharine Venuour plays Frances the older English beauty who grew up in India and now lives there a lost artist seeking a lost home in a foreign land.  Kayvon Kelly plays Srinvas, Oxford educated rational sexist Indian guru saviour offering salvation to western women while competing with western men, sensitively at home with himself.   Sebastian Kroon plays Mark, English lower middle class football loving husband and father leaving his son to chase his wife half a world away for sake of family in an alienated England.  There is so much rich acting and such angry sad and frightened emotion with east and west politics, faint compassion and certainty of hope.  Somewhere in all this genius there's love and prayer and finally human touch among men and women.  It's an amazing play typical of the thought provoking inspirational heart wrenching finely crafted work Pacific Theatre is renowned for.  I'm so thankful to have been there and can only recommend this to all.  Helen Edmundson is a truly remarkable writer reminiscent of Noel Coward.

Leave of Absence, Lucia Frangione, Jan 25-Feb 16, 2013, Pacific Theatre

Playwright Lucia Frangione is a busty C.S. Lewis. She converts the profane into the sacred with a potter's touch. Her latest masterpiece, Leave of Absence, playing at Pacific Theatre, Vancouver, Jan. 25 to Feb. 16 is a tour de force as it grapples with school yard bullying masquerading as sexual purity. Four adults, priest, single mother, school mistress and Russian Canadian strong man interact intimately but cannot touch the spirit of an adolescent victim turned martyr. The sensuality and spirituality of language and symbolism is revealed in all aspects of a play uniquely choreographed with space upon space. St. Theresa of Avila , Robertson Davies and Stuart McLean would both embrace Lucia as their own.   The acting and directing was superb. well deserving of the standing ovation that followed the bitter sad yet hopeful ending.