Tag: Rachel Ditor

Conflict, romance on stage

In a Blue Moon tours the Lower Mainland, and beyond. (photo by Barbara Zimonick)

From the première of Strange Bedfellows on Broadway in 1948 to today’s Skylight, audiences have enjoyed the plots of mismatched individuals thrown together who somehow weave a life for themselves.

Similarly, In a Blue Moon, the latest work of playwright Lucia Frangione and dramaturg Rachel Ditor, brings together the unlikely duo of Ava, a widow, and Will, the brother of Ava’s late husband, Peter. The play takes place in British Columbia, where Ava and 6-year-old daughter Frankie move to a cottage near Kamloops that Ava inherited. On arrival, they find Will living there between jaunts around the world to practise his photography.

Though Frankie takes a shine to her uncle, Ava’s and Will’s differences keep the two adults apart. Will is the charming, adventurous, carefree spirit enjoying life’s carnal pleasures, while Ava is a yoga-practising vegetarian with a “tsk-tsk” attitude, whose goal is to live healthily and set up an Ayurveda clinic. Her move to Kamloops is based loosely on the life of Frangione’s own uncle, who was a farmer who decided to become a massage therapist late in life.

Life in the rural cottage focuses on discussions between Ava and Will – their different views of life, their memories of Ava’s husband – and the presence of Frankie, whose emotions alternate between happy-go-lucky precociousness, enjoying time with her uncle, and confused anger around the death of her father.

Over time, the three become close, like their own small family, and it seems that Ava and Will might have a future together, but when Will’s former girlfriend enters the picture, that future looks like it will change irreversibly.

This play delves into some interesting dynamics between the lead characters, who seem to have an unbridgeable gulf between them, made worse by the different ways in which they reacted to the death of Peter, who had suffered from diabetes. Will didn’t know the extent to which Peter had ignored doctors’ warnings, even going so far as to stop taking medications and drinking and eating what he wasn’t supposed to. Ava admits she had lost respect for her husband because he had given up on staying healthy. As the severity of the disease worsened, Ava had to watch painfully as her husband slipped away.

Despite the gravity of the subject matter, there are many light-hearted moments in the writing, such as when Frangione pokes fun at some stereotypical holistic healing references (Ava tells her daughter that she has “undigested emotion”) or when Will tries a few yoga poses – and fails miserably.

Unfortunately, what could have been a solid, thought-provoking play is weakened by some less-than-stellar directing. Will delivers a performance of gruff indifference, where practically every line sounds like it should be punctuated with a grunt. Even when he’s reflecting on an old rolling pin that he’s kept over the years, his voice is more angry than nostalgic and he almost barks how the red handles please his sense of esthetic.

Ava’s delivery is quite flat, as well, with practically no raw emotion showing up until the second act, when her jealousy of Will’s ex causes her to drown her sorrows in alcohol.

The biggest redeeming aspect of the play is the set design, in which photographs are projected on a large circular backdrop that starts as a giant moon, but later looks like a massive window overlooking the cottage surroundings. Images of the actors enjoying the countryside together are also projected on this backdrop in short sequential bursts, making it seem as though these actors are real people outside of the play. It’s quite a unique and clever way to add another dimension to the activities on stage and was enjoyable to watch throughout the performance.

In a Blue Moon is an Arts Club on-tour show. It runs at Surrey Arts Centre until Jan. 23 (604-501-5566), Clarke Theatre in Mission Jan. 25 (1-877-299-1644) and at Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam Jan. 26-30 (604-927-6555). Contact artsclub.com or 604-687-5315 for more information.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer and media trainer in Vancouver. Her consulting work can be seen at phase2coaching.com.

Modern Uncle Vanya

Robert Salvador, left, Anna Galvin and Jay Brazeau in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. (photo by David Cooper)

Ah, the trials and tribulations of brothers and sisters. It’s the few and far between who go through life without the experiencing them. But, as with all humans, the beauty of the sibling dynamic is that just when you think you know someone, they turn around and surprise you. They show a vulnerable side you never thought existed; come through in the crunch to do the right thing; or push you out of your comfort zone, enabling you to discover a life you didn’t think you could have.

Such is the story of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a wonderful play by Christopher Durang that retells the story of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a contemporary setting.

In the modern-day version, rather than uncle and niece, Vanya (Jay Brazeau) and Sonia (Susinn McFarlen) are a brother and adopted sister left behind to look after ailing parents, while sister Masha (Anna Galvin) – representing Chekhov’s Prof. Serebryakov – has taken off to become a world-famous movie star. She gave up being a respected stage actress and is now known for playing a nymphomaniac serial killer in Sexy Killer, which has spawned five sequels.

Their parents, fans of Chekhov, gave them all names from the Russian’s works. In a nod to Uncle Vanya, the parents left the house to Masha, who hardly ever visits and has only come back this time to sell the home in which her brother and sister live, which would leave them homeless.

In Uncle Vanya, the professor arrives with a much younger second wife; in Vanya, Masha arrives with Spike (Robert Salvador), a much younger and even more self-absorbed male co-star. Masha flounces about the stage, callously rubbing her siblings’ noses in her successes and boasting about her studly lover, while Vanya and Sonia berate her for being absent when her parents were ailing and wallow in their own misery of unfulfilled lives.

Added to the mix is Cassandra (Carmen Aguirre), a clairvoyant who channels spirits, warning Sonia and Vanya of future evils. “Beware Hootie Pie,” she moans. “Beware of mushrooms in the meadow.” Her seemingly nonsensical visions turn out to have merit, although no one can actually interpret what she says in the moment for any practical purposes.

photo - From the moment Jay Brazeau entered the stage looking like Rip Van Winkle in a three-quarter-length nightgown and let out a big yawn (as Chekhov directed Uncle Vanya to do), I knew this was going to be a good play
From the moment Jay Brazeau entered the stage looking like Rip Van Winkle in a three-quarter-length nightgown and let out a big yawn (as Chekhov directed Uncle Vanya to do), reviewer Baila Lazarus knew this was going to be a good play. (photo by David Cooper)

While the play has consistent overtones of regret, jealousy and disdain, it’s not without its humor, due largely to the quips between the homebound brother and sister.

“I had a dream that I was 52 and not married,” laments Sonia at the play’s onset.

“Were you dreaming in documentary?” Vanya retorts.

As well, Vanya, who is gay, draws many laughs from the audience as he ogles Spike, particularly during a hilarious “non” strip-tease sequence.

And while Masha starts off as the uncaring evil stepsister, who won’t even let Sonia talk, it’s pretty clear how unhappy she is after five failed marriages and having never gotten to play her namesake on stage.

In the evening, the three siblings (Vanya and Sonia, reluctantly) and Spike head to a costume party, where Masha hopes to meet a realtor who will sell the house.

Sonia takes the one opportunity she has to upstage her sister by dressing in a beautifully sequined gown.

After they return, Masha finds out she has lost Spike to a younger woman, but, in Cinderella fashion, Sonia has met a man at the party, opening up possibilities for romance. Using “voodoo,” Cassandra causes Masha to have a change of heart.

In the epilogue of the performance, Vanya is presenting a play that he wrote, only to have Spike disrupt the flow by checking his cellphone. This sends Vanya into a rant of how things used to be, much like Chekhov’s doctor in Uncle Vanya. He grieves over the loss of simpler times and fumes, “There are 785 TV channels. You could watch the news that matches what you already think!”

Director Rachel Ditor’s experience with the playwright goes back to when she performed in Durang’s Beyond Therapy, in 1980. She calls his writing “fabulously subversive and hilarious” and rightly points out that rather than being quelled by mainstream culture, it is the mainstream that has picked up on his theatrical cues.

From the moment Brazeau entered the stage looking like Rip Van Winkle in a three-quarter-length nightgown and let out a big yawn (as Chekhov directed Uncle Vanya to do), I knew this was going to be a good play. While the secondary roles were somewhat overacted, they were entertaining, nonetheless, and the poignant portrayals of Vanya and Sonia combine with a great script to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable play from start to end.

Vanya runs at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage until April 19.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer media trainer in Vancouver. Her consulting work be seen at phase2coaching.com.