Examining life at various stages

BAILA LAZARUS

Theatre-goers have plenty to choose from this month, whether their tastes range from the serious to the absurd. New plays have opened at the Playhouse, Arts Club, Firehall and New Playwrights theatres, each with Jewish connections.

For side-splitting comedy, head to the Playhouse for the bedroom farce Noises Off by Michael Frayn. It's a play about "doors and sardines, bags and boxes, phones and police" and if that doesn't make you curious enough ... it's also all about sex. Noises Off follows the making of another play, Nothing On, which takes place in a large house in England in the 1970s. With the owners away, a real estate agent brings a lover to the house and runs into the housekeeper, the owners, a burglar and an Arab shiek. The actors in Nothing On are horrible. There's Garry Lejeune (David Mackay), the know-it-all who's constantly questioning the decisions of the director and who never finishes his sentences, Brooke Ashton (Melissa Poll), the blond bimbo who poses after every line and who keeps losing her contact lens, Frederick Fellowes (David Marr), who needs constant motivational reassurance and who gets nosebleeds when he's stressed, Dotty Otley (Nora McLellan), who couldn't remember a stage direction if her life depended on it and, of course, Selsdon Mowbray (Bernard Cuffling), the drunk who forgets his lines and can't hear the cues because he's half deaf. And then there's the director, Lloyd Dallas (Ari Cohen), who who has to keep the whole mess together long enough to put on a play.

Granted, the writing in Noises Off is not deep and the humor is derived mostly from slapstick, but the antics of the characters and the brilliance of the split-second timing is what makes this play a must-see. It may not be Shakespeare, but it's been enjoying successful runs for more than 20 years and it's worth its weight in tears of laughter.

Noises Off, directed by Dean Paul Gibson, shows at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre until Dec. 18. Call the box office, 604-873-3311, or visit www.vancouverplayhouse.com for ticket information.

Something else that isn't exactly Shakespeare (although it tries to be) is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), starring Toby Berner, David C. Jones and Brad MacNeil.

This is a farce of a different kind where the Shakespearean "expert" (Berner) has read two (count 'em – two) books on the Bard, has a degree from the University of the Fraser Valley, Chilliwack Campus, rides around on a skateboard and is in the midst of writing a book entitled I Love My Willy. In the theatre's playbill, the biography of Shakespeare identifies his father as "Mr. Shakespeare" and his
mother as "Mrs. Shakespeare" and adds that Hamlet had an "edible complex."

OK, so the humor isn't exactly high-brow and the laughs are often generated by silly costumes, making fun of the audience and butchering the Bard's lines ("That which we call a nose by any other name still smells"), but the play has enough variety, energy and truly entertaining moments that its more juvenile humor can be overlooked. Jones is often hilarious as the cross-dresser who wants to play all the female roles; Berner does an admirable, though overacted, job as the studious professor; and MacNeil is a solid performer who neither adds much nor detracts from the show. And there's no denying the humor in such triumphs as Othello, done in rap because that's the closest they could come to including a black element to the play, the kings plays done as a football game, with King John being poisoned at the 10-yard line, all 154 sonnets on one three-by-five card and, the piece of resistance – Hamlet done in subsequently shorter and shorter versions, down to a five-second rendition and then, finally, done backwards.

Adding to the on-stage amusement is some audience participation. Make sure you join in the fun when told, otherwise you could be singled out for some personal embarrassment.

Directed by James Fagan Tait, Complete Works shows at the Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island until Jan. 8. For ticket information, call 604-687-1644 or visit www.artsclub.com.

If you're looking for something on stage that's more thought- than laugh-provoking, now's the opportunity to take in Vancouver's first annual Tennessee Williams Festival. Presented by the newly formed In the Company of Productions, the festival is showing two lesser performed Williams plays – The Night of the Iguana and Summer and Smoke.

Both these plays carry the familiar Williams settings of hot, stifling locales, unrequited love or passion, smothering Victorian lifestyles and mildly hopeful futures.

In Iguana, three travellers meet at a dilapidated Mexican hotel: a defrocked minister-turned-tour guide who struggles to stay on the wagon, a New England spinster who has never been with a man, and her grandfather, the oldest living poet, who longs to complete his final poem. Together, they share the hospitality of the hotel's loud-mouthed, loose and sensual widow. Over the course of an afternoon and night, they expose their secrets, their vulnerabilities and their goals, until each one, in their way, achieves a sense of belonging and optimism.

In Summer and Smoke, a minister's daughter tries to tame a young doctor with whom she's been in love all her life. But her strait-laced attitude keeps her physically and emotionally distant from the carousing playboy.

In an unusual circumstance, lighting director Itai Erdal did the lighting for both shows. He said he took this work instead of other jobs because he loves Williams' plays, Iguana in particular. He has cast the plays in warm hues of orange and blue, reflecting the tropical feel so pervasive in Williams' work.

Summer and Smoke is directed by Sara Botsford and features Stephen Spender, Shannon Powell, Linda Darlow and Terry David Mulligan. It plays at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova.

The Night of the Iguana is directed by Michele Lonsdale Smith and stars Christopher Shyer, Lynda Boyd and Sarah-Jane Redmond. It's at the Playwrights Theatre Centre, 1398 Cartwright St., Granville Island.

Both plays run until Dec. 11. Tickets are available through the Firehall's box office at 604-689-0926.

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