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. 

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.

"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.

Christmas Presence - Pacific Theatre

Christmas Presence! Another year.  Ron Reed reading selected Christmas tales  and humour.  I love Shepherds. I love the Barbarians invited for Christmas dinner. I’ve been coming for years.  Was thinking of earlier years with Michael Hart singing and playing guitar. First time I heard him and listened to his cd’s for years after.  Loved seeing the pianist I’d missed, this year.  Every year the musicians are the finest. Loved the year Sherri Plett sang. That was only a few years ago. I got the cd that year and loved it playing in the car going to work. Made the drive less stressful.
My friend was at Christmas Presence on the weekend and couldn’t believe the band wasn’t a fixed group. Ron Reed said they’d played most songs through once before the show.  You’d never know. They are such consumate musicians. The sign of talent.  And inspired. Singing and playing music about the birth of Christ at Christmas. Well not just about the Birth of Christ but everything about Christmas, like the story about the turkey dinner.  There was an actual Christmas carole but it was real funky folk and there was a story about a minister who got angry one Christmas until he saw his little boy cry.  It was that sort of story, tender.  And moving and touching and Christmas. And I missed my now dead Mother and Father and brother but I didn’t feel alone. I thank Ron and the Christmas Presence performers for that.  I really liked the guitars, the mandolin and violins and stan up base and drums and piano and weird blue grass instrument that sounded so sweet.  I’m so glad they have cd’s to share so I can enjoy the rest of the year.
It really was Christmas Presence.    A whole lot good fun.  Sounded like I think an egg nog would sound like.

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

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.

Freud's Last Session, a play by Mark St. Germain

Freud’s Last Session, a play by Mark St. Germain is showing at Pacific Theatre, April 24 to May 30, 12th and Hemlock, Vancouver.  We loved it.  I am a psychiatrist so that made the play a must see. Anything with Freud is required viewing by our ilk.  What made it especially a treat was that it was really a discussion and debate between CS Lewis, the Christian theologian and S. Freud, atheist psychoanalyst.  Just hearing the writing of Mark St. Germain as it touched on the key issues of the 20th century, sex,  suffering, war, life after death, biology, destiny, was so refreshing.  I read the discussions of even 50 years ago and realize that as reality television talk show video game society we have collectively lost the level of communication that was normative one time when people actually relied on discussion as communication.
The play is situated within an amazing set thanks to Carolyn Rapanos.  Ewayne Frayne played CS Lewis and Ron Reed played Freud.  If ever you've imagined  historical characters, you can appreciate how enjoyable it is when they come alive for you so you forget it’s a play and forget they are actors.  That’s what this was like. Frayne and Reed made both great men come alive and as well made them acutely human and terribly real.  Mark St. Germain’s writing has a wisdom and compassion that leaves one appreciating both antagonists as equal and together.  There is none of the simplistic reductionism so common today. None of the comic book writing.  It’s that real and human. Director Morris Ertman brought out the very best in the play and these amazing actors.
I left feeling better about life,  enriched and uplifted.  I was even thankful to be a psychiatrist and even more thankful to be a Christian.  Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis have contributed so much to my understanding of life.  I had gone to the play with friends and we talked about the play long after it was over.
The intermittent playing of the old radio on the set,  with news of Hitler and invasion of Poland,  was a poignant touch that grounded the actors discussion in the stark reality of that time.   Gas masks  and air raid sirens punctuated the play.   I personally can be so complacent in Canada forgetting that much of the ideologies I’ve learned from were crafted in a fiery cauldron.  These men weren’t like intellectual activists today. They were struggling with life and facing death coming to conclusions which not surprisingly have outlived them.
A truly remarkable play.  I’m so thankful that Pacific Theatre chose this pearl for the last of their season.

Refuge of Lies

http://www.pacifictheatre.org/

Refuge of Lies opened tonight to a packed Pacific Theatre audience. Ron Reed, the playwright, is to the Holocaust what Paul was to the Cross. The theological implications of this masterpiece were as profound as the acting was moving.

Terrence Kelly's performance as a Dutch war criminal Christian convert, Rudi Vanderwaal ,was sheer genius. Howard Siegel portraying Simon Katzman, his Jewish accuser, was equally outstanding. Anna Hagin's performance as Rudi's wife, Netti, was heart touchingly real. The whole cast, including Anthony Ingram as Rudi's pastor, Erin Mahoney as Simon's neice, and David Nykl and Kerri Norris as Rudi's loyal friends made this play a piece de resistance. Even the Jessica Howell bathtub prop was obviously a product of in depth consideration.

Refuge of Lies should be mandatory for every pastor, rabbi, iman or priest today. The Pope is struggling with sex scandals of the church, as state and religious authority collide. The Canadian military turning prisoners over to the Afghanistan military for torture and death beg the question of who is responsible. Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem that Obama calls 'illegal' while Iran would have nuclear weapons to settle the "jewish question" once and for all. Refuge of Lies is a play for anyone who would understand the depth of news and how the Holocaust must be remembered lest we forget and repeat it's horrors

Refuge of Lies asks when is justice revenge and most importantly can Grace change a man. Can the murderer Abraham be redeemed by God? As the BC courts consider television coverage at trials the very question of what is private between man and wife and man and God is tested here in dialogue and acting.

Ron Reed's daring and challenging play is simply a must see and must feel play. It is truly a baptism of theatre and spirituality.