Review roundup: Dog Man: The Musical, cicadas, Take Rimbaud, 12 Litres 8800 Steps
A musical based on Dav Pilkey’s beloved children’s books was the best thing I saw last week
Strange as it may seem, the best thing I saw last week was Dog Man: The Musical (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), Kevin Del Aguila and Brad Alexander’s fun, campy and extremely imaginative family musical based on a series of children’s graphic novels by Dav Pilkey. I missed the show when it wagged its scruffy tail here two years ago, and I’m glad I caught it this time.
Energetic fifth graders George (Troi Lennoxx Gaines) and Harold (Mundo Ballejos), hot on the success of their Captain Underpants books (which Pilkey also created), discover that the musical Annie began as a comic. And so they attempt to write a musical based on their Dog Man books. How hard can it be? they ask, giving us a Hamilton reference. (One of many musical theatre Easter eggs.)
Before you know it, they’re telling the story of Dog Man’s origins — played by Nick Manna, he has the body of a policeman and the head of a dog — as well as his nemesis Petey (Anthony Rodriguez), Petey’s adorable cloned offspring Li’l Petey (Sadie Jayne Kennedy), and an evil genius fish called Flippy (Glory Yepassis-Zembrou).
Director and choreographer Jen Wineman keeps the action moving along quickly, with characters undergoing operations, breaking out of jails and coming to life thanks to something called the “Living Spray Factory.”
The songs are lots of fun, especially two duets between Li’l Petey and Petey that contrast the former’s happy disposition with the latter’s penchant for mischief. (Confession: I’ve played “The Evil ABCs” an embarrassing number of times since seeing the show.) There’s even an ingenious little number about how to make the titular character — who only barks — sing.
What makes the show so delightful is how the creators blend a DIY aesthetic — many props are fashioned from regular items you’d find in a kid’s play room or a family basement/garage — with a cartoon-like speed and agility. The production relies on imagination, not high-tech gimmickry.
The actors, cleverly outfitted by costume designer Heidi Leigh Hanson to evoke their literary predecessors, look like they’re having a blast, and a few of them boast first-rate voices.
If you know any pre-teens who enjoy the books, or if you’re just a young-at-heart theatregoer who loves a good time, park yourself at the CAA Theatre (651 Yonge), where the show continues until June 14. Ticket details here.
House of horrors
I’ve often wondered why more local playwrights don’t write genre works. We rarely get decent homegrown comedies or mysteries, for instance. And only Eldritch Theatre and the emerging Spindle Collective seem that interested in horror. Perhaps it all has to do with how grants are dispensed.
Now writer David Yee and composer Chris Thornborrow have collaborated on cicadas (Rating: ✭✭✭), an ambitious co-production between Tarragon and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre. While the piece doesn’t all come together, it works on a visceral level and is at times quite chilling. It’s being called an “eco thriller,” and I can vouch for the second word of that description.
Married couple Janie and Trim (played by actual couple Monica Dottor and Ryan Hollyman) buy a home in Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood, although they’re told not to open their basement door. Like the protagonist of the Bluebeard tale, however, they ignore that warning, only to find unsettling things beneath their home, including water (which disappears as quickly as it appears) and the titular cicadas.
There are other unusual occurrences. A painting by Janie’s math professor mother hangs on the upstairs wall, and as time goes by the two notice different things in it — a river, for instance, or lights.
It’s hard to talk more about the plot without spoiling anything. But the couple experiences a tragedy that precipitates their descent into some sort of nightmarish existence: part home-owner’s nightmare, part parental fear. Janie takes things particularly badly, her mood suggested by increasing hollowed out makeup effects (Jawon Kang is the costume designer).
cicadas began life as a 38-minute radio drama, and it’s easy to see that in this expanded, bulked up version, directed by Nina Lee Aquino. But what might have seemed mysterious and intriguing in little bites can feel monotonous at triple the length. And I’m not sure Yee and Thornborrow’s themes about mathematics, nature and the environment hold up to fine scrutiny.
Still, Dottor and Hollyman deliver committed performances of characters we know little about, even gaining our sympathies, while Ellora Patnaik does her best in a series of roles, playing everyone from a realtor to a flaky medium to the titular insect. All three navigate Kang’s intentionally disorienting set as if they’re in an A24 thriller.
The most effective element of the production, however, is the sound. Designer John Gzowski captures the unearthly creaks and echoey, far-off shouts with real skill — at a couple of points I was looking over my shoulder.
And what a luxury to have a four-person band playing music live — at a play! Musicians Amahl Arulanandam, Marc Blouin, Nathan Petitpas and Wesley Shen, some of them occasionally seen through a crack in a very temperamental door, help add mood, mystery and momentum to the play.
They might not explain the work’s gnarly intellectual themes, but they will make you feel something.
cicadas continues at the Tarragon Mainspace (30 Bridgman) until May 24. Ticket details here
Surviving addiction
Anita La Selva’s 12 Litres, 8800 Steps (Rating: ✭✭) should work better than it does. It’s a sincere, serious and earnest look at one woman’s experience with caring for an alcoholic and finding some sort of unexpected comfort in a horse.
La Selva, who co-directs (with Beatriz Pizano), plunges us into the woman’s life immediately, taking us through several consecutive days of her life as an actor, teacher and caretaker for her partner, an alcoholic whose body is shutting down.
As established in the opening scenes, it is an exhausting, monotonous routine — which she recounts with precision — culminating in a restless insomnia in which rest comes via sleeping pills, presumably her own kind of addiction.
Occasionally, we get glimpses of a magnificent horse, evoked by the wonderfully physical actor Brad Cook in a handsome costume (by Teresa Pryzbylski) that gives the animal dignity and grace. But how does the narrator meet the horse? Is it part of some formal therapy suggestion? This crucial question is never answered.
We see bits of the woman’s past with her partner, particularly in years trying unsuccessfully to conceive. Did this contribute to the man’s addiction? The man was also a theatre artist. How did that contribute to their relationships? There are no easy answers. Instead, we see the woman find her partner’s stashes of bottles throughout their home, and going through credit card bills seeing all the charges to the LCBO.
In the most effective scene, we see her at the hospital draining 12 litres of fluid that have built up in her partner’s body; she fills 12 one-litre bottles at the foot of the stage, and the extended scene is disturbing and quietly moving.
She gives less detail to her encounters with her equine friend, however, and the second part of the show’s title — about walking, presumably for healing and comfort — comes as a surprise.
Trevor Schwellnus’ production design, particularly his images for a screen backdrop, and Thomas Ryder Payne and Daniel Tessy’s sound design add to the mood and setting. And La Selva is a focused performer with a deep, resonant voice.
But there are far too many unanswered questions in this co-production between Aluna Theatre and Unbridled Theatre Collective that prevent the work from coming together.
12 Litres 8800 Steps continues at the Factory Mainspace (125 Bathurst) until May 17. Ticket details here
Poetic injustice
The Howland Company is one of my favourite indie theatre companies. I count some of their productions and co-productions (The Wolves, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, The Welkin) among the most memorable shows I’ve seen. Their current production of Susanna Fournier’s Take Rimbaud (Rating: ✭✭) — in partnership with Buddies in Bad Times — is a rare misstep.
Purportedly an examination of artistic struggles through the ages, the performance piece draws on poets from ancient Greece (Sappho), the 1870s (Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine) and the 1950s (Sylvia Plath) to look at the challenges of making art in the modern era.
While there’s some light satire about artists’ lives — the need to brand things, for instance, or the effects of criticism — larger issues like the commercial justification of art, and political/economic theory aren’t clearly integrated into the play.
And the meta-theatrical structure — the show begins with actors playing stagehands — doesn’t pay off. Many of the same themes and issues were theatricalized in a much clearer and more entertaining way a couple of months ago in the same space in The Herald.
As I overheard on my way out of the theatre, “Who is this for?” Indeed. You can find my full review here.
Take Rimbaud continues at Buddies until May 23. Ticket details here
In the Baggins
Congratulations to Jonathan G., who won a pair of tickets to the Stratford Festival’s upcoming production of The Hobbit. Jonathan correctly answered that the main character of the play is named Bilbo Baggins.