A Most Unusual Season

For Vancouver, anyhow

By Steven Walling

Ah, fall. The time when the rainy days of the Pacific Northwest return. The time when the days of wine and jazz in Esther Short have passed, and the overcast skies drive the ‘Couve’s arts patrons indoors once more to view our city’s theatrical milieu. In fervid anticipation of the upcoming theatre season, The Voice has chosen to highlight what is perhaps Vancouver’s most unique lineup of plays for 2007—those on the docket at Arts Equity Inc. at The Main Street Theatre. Not to poo-poo The Pirates of Penzance, but it is a strong harbinger of the continued growth of the SW Washington arts scene when its theatrical organizations step away from community theatre’s stock repertoire. We spoke with one half of Arts Equity’s producing team, Llewellyn Rhoe, on the intention behind his selections.

First up for Arts Equity is Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Seascape (see dates for this month in our Performance Listings), a play that has been critically styled as “philosophical whimsy.” (A pair of humanoid talking lizards certainly sounds whimsical to this critic.) Rhoe commented that he thought the play was “probably Albee’s only comedy.” Though perhaps one of Albee’s less popular works, Seascape enjoyed a successful 2005 revival on Broadway, receiving the ‘06 Tony for Best Revival and Best Costume Design. I for one am anxious to see how Arts Equity will execute two believable lizard characters and a functional beach onstage at The Main Street Theatre.

Next is a November-December run of Willy Russel’s offbeat musical Blood Brothers, which chronicles the separation at birth of twin brothers in Liverpool. A musical in a very similar vein to Arts Equity’s dark, one-man extravaganza Herringbone, this isn’t the play for those who live and breathe to hear “Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’!”

A new flavor of political subtext enters into the Vancouver theatre scene with Arts Eq’s January-February production of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King. While those familiar with Ionesco may most fondly remember the more madcap absurdist methods of The Bald Soprano or The Chairs, this meditation on the demise of absolute power has parallels with the impending end of the Bush administration that should surely stir the pot.

To wrap up the season, Arts Equity will be performing Nikolai Gogol’s satirical classic The Inspector General. Written as a commentary on the bumbling bureaucracy of Tsarist Russia, it is one of the few political plays that needs little-to-no adaptation to reverberate with modern audiences. Rhoe related that it would be necessary to perform this work like Arts Equity’s rendition of O’Neill’s “Sea Plays,” in other words, with a rotating cast of nine actors performing approximately 30 roles.

Constrained by the limitations of budget and working space—such as city code prohibiting the Main Street Theatre from performing any work that exceeds the onstage capacity of thirteen people at a time—Rhoe said that he was, in the end, choosing plays that he had simply not performed or produced previously. He amusingly called it something along the lines of “if I were gonna die tomorrow” theatre; plays he had always had a desire to bring to life. Though in New York or L.A. plays such as these would almost be considered de rigueur, here in Vancouver they constitute a new and exciting billing. See you there.