by AMY BARRATT

Jeremy Hechtman and Patrick Goddard wrote Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque hoping to recapture some of the magic of Montreal’s Golden Age, when Burlesque was Queen, and Capital Letters had their Heyday. It’s clear that the authors pine for those days they never knew—the days of booze flowing in the streets and G-strings flying into the balcony, the days before Jean Drapeau and Expo 67 made an honest woman of this whorish city.

The question is, does their show, which they’re touting as “more of a burlesque of Montreal history than a history of Montreal burlesque” make us pine for those wicked old days? To do so, it needs to pick us up and carry us along on a wave, not of nostalgia, but of pure bawdy delight. Johnny Canuck has its moments, but not enough to create that wave.

I loved the cabaret atmosphere and the live five-piece band on stage. It’s too bad the songs by musical director/pianist Nick Carpenter weren’t catchier. And I can assure you that in real burlesque, singers made themselves heard in much bigger houses than the MainLine Theatre, and nobody wore a body mic. The set (by Jody Burkholder and Louis Fredette), featuring stacks of hinged flats that can be flipped like the pages of a book, is just terrific.

The concept—and I use the term loosely—of this show is that, with the Morality Squad about to shut down the burlesque houses, the performers conjure themselves a saviour in the person of comic book do-gooder Johnny Canuck. He had his moment of glory duking it out with Hitler during World War II, but, reason the artistes, the war is over, so what else has he got to do?

The performers include a double-entendre-spouting mistress of ceremonies known as the Boss (Lisa Lenihan), Lorenzo the magician (Goddard), a mute ballet dancer in a maid’s uniform (Catherine Bérubé) and a perfect blonde stripteaseuse (Patricia Summersett). Aaron Turner plays Johnny Canuck with unnaturally good posture and arms permanently akimbo, and sporting jodhpurs that surely date from WWI or earlier (perhaps a historical example of the shameful under-funding of the Canadian military—recycling uniforms from one war to another). Wanting to do the right thing, innocent Johnny can’t anticipate the fallout from his actions. And speaking of fallout, how about Lenihan in that red dress? Ba-da-boom.

Neil Napier, obviously relishing every minute, plays Hitler, Drapeau and an Irish cop.

The best moment in the show the night I saw it came when Napier, fairly foaming at the mouth as the furious Fuhrer, walked over to his father Murray sitting in the front row and spat, “Remember that time you schpanked me when I was five? Are you happy now?” It’s not a great recommendation for the show that this was an ad-lib.

Napier is about the only person on stage who understands that burlesque means you play it as big as you can, then ramp it up another notch. Paul Van Dyck, who in other shows has taken his clowning over the top and then some, doesn’t go far enough here in the role of Groucho Marx. Perhaps director Hechtman was worried that if he gave Van Dyck an inch he would ad lib a mile-long soliloquy, but the same criticism goes for most of the actors: they need to cut loose, run wild with this thing. Maybe as this three-week run goes on, they’ll achieve just that.

Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque, until Feb. 12 at Mainline Theatre (3997 St-Laurent), $15, see stage listings for showtimes

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