by AMY BARRATT

It's early autumn, 2005, and, what's this? Why, it seems as if the guys and gals of SaBooge Theatre are in a playful mood. Ladies and gents, you can catch their act just until this Saturday as they tread the boards in Speak Easy, an artistic extravaganza set in the era of bobbed hair, bathtub gin and Yes! We Have No Bananas.

SaBooge's way of working demands that they perform the work before an audience at various stages in its development; what we're seeing in this New Classical Theatre Festival production is a workshop performance. Some will grumble about being offered half-baked goods, others will delight in being given a sneak peak at the creative process.

At this point at least, Speak Easy bears little resemblance to last year's Fathom, except perhaps that it features a tight ensemble cast, one of the trademarks of the company. Although there is always humour in a SaBooge show, this one really plays up the laughs. There is little attempt to portray the 1920s as they actually might have been. Rather, the writing spoofs the witty, slangy, often over-written dialogue of movies and radio broadcasts of the time.

The story is presented as a radio drama, with Andrew Shaver as the Announcer, whose voiceovers are full of run-on sentences and mixed metaphors: "They're bound to discover that what lurks within is a thorny trail that can only lead to the road to ruin," he'll say, his face frozen in a permanent grin. Speak Easy is the story of Ruby (Kayla Fell) who has checked in to the Schuldhaus sanatorium in search of a cure for her suicidal urges.

Naturally, the home is populated by many intriguing and mysterious characters. It also offers a unique, patented treatment for troubled patients: a machine whose main feature is a large gramophone horn into which they are encouraged to speak. Easy!

The production makes good use of minimal set elements but it lacks the visual impact, the magical transformations we saw in Fathom and Hatched. The structure of the piece still needs work to achieve the sense of events building to a denouement. In the current version, secrets are revealed but somehow their impact is dissipated.

That said, SaBooge has a wealth of good material to work with and an immensely talented company. Speak Easy is well worth the low ticket price being charged at this festival. I look forward to seeing phase two. Vo-do-dee-o-do.

Elephant ride

The Circus of the Elephants is a clown piece set in Italy during WWII. It's performed in a jumble of English, Italian, French and Spanish, uses found props and costumes. Carmela and Bea are apparently all that is left of Circo Elefante and they try to keep the old act going while they wait, like Estragon and Vladimir, for the return of someone named Antonio. Their only contact with the outside world is through a transistor radio, its signals fading in and out. The two performers, Fiora Blasi and Jennifer Sargent, are very good at what they do, but the piece left me cold.

Speak Easy and Circus Of The Elephants are at Parc Lafontaine's Théâtre Calixa-Lavalée until Sept. 10, $8–$10, 540-0774 for info and showtimes

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