Lush laughs

>>A Diva takes a dive in Bedraggled,
and an ad-man beams up in Space Jail

by Amy Barratt

The Balustrade is such a beautiful performance space; it’s too bad about the drunks.

Last year, unsuspecting theatre patrons were greeted by actor Holly O’Brien as Celia, roaming from table to table in the intimate cabaret space and telling the story of her fall into alcoholism. (O’Brien won the 2005–2006 Best Actress MECCA for her powerful performance in Last Call.) This week, the funky venue two flights up at the Monument National has been taken over by a snaggle-toothed vagrant calling herself la Diva.

In Bedraggled, Gabrielle Maes’s tone is more broadly comic than O’Brien’s, even though the character she portrays is, if anything, more hopeless. While O’Brien only occasionally sang along with the jukebox, Maes’s tale is told predominantly in song. Turns out la Diva’s life has been a whirlwind tour of musical genres, from her days as a child prodigy being taught arias by a flatulent crone, to a stint as a sultry nightclub singer, to the Latin soundtrack that marks her love affair with an Argentinean musician.

Maes has been honing this material for a while. She performed the show briefly in Montreal last spring and then at the Halifax Fringe. For this latest incarnation, she has been working with French director Pierre Carniaux, whom she met while living and working in Paris. Pianist Ari Snyder becomes a character in his own right in the piece.

Maes is that rare breed of classically trained singer who can pull off more popular styles of music. Her interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s notoriously difficult “Lush Life” anchors the story. In the past, there were some problems with costumes and props getting in the way of the performance. Although Maes is adept at getting fake teeth in and out of her mouth as she moves between past and present, I hope she resorts to them less often in this version.

The Balustrade should be the ideal venue for this unique piece of theatre. Bedraggled is playing only three nights, so drink up!

OUTER LIMITS

They have so much fun at that Théâtre Ste-Catherine, it ought to be illegal. A resident improv troupe puts on shows every Sunday, and many of the same actor-comedians are involved in Two by Four Productions. As with Homeroom and Shit Job, Etan Muskat and Brent Skagford are the credited writers on Space Jail, a play with improvised elements currently playing at Eric Amber’s scrappy little space.

The plot goes something like this: Ben Dern, a disillusioned ad writer from the present day, is abducted into a future in which the Earth has been ravaged by the Great Moisture Wars and humans have colonized space. Thrown into galactic prison, Dern slowly realizes his—and the universe’s—only hope is to overthrow the evil Drokk, Prime Warden of Space Jail.

Okay, so maybe it ain’t Strindberg: you know you want some of this.

Bedraggled, Feb. 22–24 at La Balustrade
DU Monument National (1182 ST-LAURENT),
$15, (514) 871-2224

Space Jail, THROUGH FEB. 24, 8 p.m., at
THÉÂTRE STE-CATHERINE (264 STE-CATHERINE E.),
$15, (514) 284-3939