Review: (Calgary) Jack Goes Boating

Swimming in Life
by Joe Vermeulen
@YYZatcboy

[Please note that this review is based on a preview performance.]

It is a cold New York winter, and Jack has just met the love of his life. Connie is everything he has been looking for in a woman. There is just one problem though, Connie wants to go out boating and Jack cannot swim. Jack turns to his best friend Clyde (who set the couple up in the first place) to teach him to swim. Clyde and his wife Lucy are then subjected to Jack learning how to cook a gourmet meal for Connie. Just as the young love is taking flight, Clyde and Lucy’s marriage is imploding.

Garret Ross brings awkward and fumbling Jack to life wonderfully. You feel his awkward nervousness and excitement at his new love. You experience him confronting his fears and growing his own expectations of what he can do. Ross’s chemistry with the rest of the cast is palpable and the stage relationships became completely believable. 

Review: (Calgary) The Audition

Script Troubles
by Joe Vermeulen

The Audition is a solo about a woman who arrives for a New York audition only to find that there is no one there. She is subsequently locked into the theatre, and to keep herself company she talks. 

I’m going to be completely honest here... I really did not understand the point of this show. I went into it expecting something like “A Chorus Line” which gave a voice to the hundreds of performers who are auditioning for musicals. While The Audition did begin to broach some interesting areas such as the degradation of women in auditions - including sexual exploitation - and the lack of many powerful roles for women compared to men, but almost as soon as they are mentioned the play moves on to some other odd tangential area. The main character Amy (Brit Kennedy) mentions several times that she is dead, which would be another fascinating aspect of the play to explore, but again it is mentioned a few times and nothing is done with it. To make matters worse the play contradicts itself; Amy claims to be dead, and then proceeds to kill herself offstage. When writing a difficult play it is very important for the writer to be clear what the actual point of the play is. Here, it felt like the work had artificial constraints placed upon it that limited the writer’s ability to flesh out the interesting sections with additional characters or other scenes. The piece is much too long for the very little substance that it actually contains. 

That being said, Brit Kennedy does well bringing Amy to life without making a mockery of the vacuous and almost mindless text that she has been given. She is able to emotionally connect with the audience, showing us, rather than telling us about the internal turmoil and rejection that is faced by actors at auditions. Her fear of the gun that she finds loaded in the wings and accidentally fires is palpable and one of the most compelling (and frankly lucid) moments in the entire show. 

While The Audition does raise some interesting points, the overall show is extremely vague and not very compelling or believable. 

The Audition continues to October 13

Review: (Calgary) Singin' in the Rain

What a Glorious Feelin' I'm Happy Again

by Joe Vermeulen

Based on the 1952 movie musical with the same name, Singin’ In The Rain gives a fictional inside look into a 1920’s Hollywood studio just as talking pictures came to be. Featuring politics, intrigue, comedy and of course romance, this charming show is certainly a classic, with such well known songs as “Good Morning”, “Make ‘em Laugh”, “Lucky Star” and of course, “Singin’ in the Rain”

Opening at the première screening of their new movie, Don Lockwood (Jarryd Baine) and his co-star Lina Lamont (Bethany McNab) and Lockwood’s friend and pianist Cosmo Brown (Graeme Humphrey) are treated to a successful opening. However at the opening gala producer RF Simpson (Chris Gibson) shows the first screen test of the new technology behind talking pictures. In order to save the studio they have to re-do their planned silent film into a talking film. When that fails due to Lina’s horrific and obnoxious voice, Cosmo gets the idea to over-dub her voice with Lockwood’s new love interest Kathy Selden’s (Tannis Laatsch) voice, much to Lina’s annoyance. As Lina attempts to steal the spotlight from Kathy, it is revealed who the true voice of the star is, and all is right. 

Before I discuss the performances, I feel that I really must start with the sound design and operation. One of the hardest things for any production, but especially community theatre, to accomplish is a perfect sound design. That being said however, the sound for Singin' in the Rain completely failed the show. Characters' voices were muffled to the point where they could not be understood, and the volume levels and EQ were weak. Voices did not punch over the orchestra clearly in many cases and the orchestra itself did not have any life to it, to the point where the only instrument you could clearly distinguish from any other was the drums. That being said for a community theatre it’s wonderful to see that they had a live orchestra and while the sound was not as clear as it should have been, it is better to have the orchestra than to use click tracks, so Front Row Centre should be commended for that choice. 

Review: (Calgary) Evil Dead: The Musical

Bloody Hell!

by Joe Vermeulen

Evil Dead the Musical is back to swallow Calgary’s soul! A hilarious romp through the highlights of the “Evil Dead” movie franchises, Evil Dead the Musical (EDTM) documents the story of a group of friends who go to an old “Cabin in the Woods” for a Spring break vacation. Ash along with his girlfriend Linda and their friend Scott with his “Girl I picked up drunk at a bar three days ago” Shelly, and Ash’s sister Cheryl are expecting a week of drinking and sex, but instead unwittingly stir up a historic evil. The show does a good job of sending up the historic clichés of the genre; for example as soon as the group enters the cabin a ghostly voice cries out “Join Us”, which immediately makes Cheryl want to go home instead of investigate. Along the same lines the next time the ghostly voice calls out, Cheryl says what everyone is thinking: “Now mother always said that whenever you hear a dark threatening and ghostly voice coming from the dark woods there is only one thing you should do. Not wake the others and go investigate it alone”. While there are some serious scenes from the movies in the show, such as the chase through the forest, director Mike Griffin lets the atmosphere get just scary enough before immediately switching gears and letting the laughs flow. However, the number of “In one” scene changes started to feel a little tiresome after the fourth or fifth time they were used, and kept the pace of some scene transitions very slow. That being said, the show is awesomely campy and hilarious.