Not the Muppets

>> Sex and death in the strangest places

by AMY BARRATT

Anyone who saw Tinka's New Dress last year at Usine C knows that Ronnie Burkett's Theatre of Marionettes ain't no Muppet Show. That piece dealt with the suppression of art by a totalitarian regime and featured puppets in drag. Hmm, some might argue that Miss Piggy... but I digress.

Happy, which opened last night, is the third piece in a trilogy--which began with Tinka --by innovative Calgary puppeteer Burkett. The middle show, Street of Blood, has yet to be seen here, but has caused a sensation in Toronto and elsewhere (it's a finalist for the Ontario Arts Council's annual Chalmers award for best Canadian Play, winner to be announced May 15). That one deals with what happens in a sleepy prairie town when a woman pricks her finger, bleeds on her sewing and sees the face of Christ in the stain. Happy follows an old guy with a tendency to wander into other people's lives just as they are experiencing intense sorrow or pain. It's meant to examine whether happiness is all a matter of luck or whether it can be achieved and maintained by hard work.

Controversial coup

You just need to look at the production credits to realize that Reading Hebron is the theatrical coup of the season. If, under the circumstances, the politically charged word "coup" is ill-chosen, the alternative, "miracle" is equally sensitive. Reading Hebron, a Teesri Duniya production opening tonight (May 4), takes on the powder-keg of religion and politics that we so inadequately refer to as the "Middle East conflict." The ground-breaking, always politically involved company has brought together a cast of North American Jews (with one exception, Harry Standjofski, whom some of the other cast members have taken to calling their "shabbos goy") and placed a Lebanese Christian in the director's chair. Under the circumstances, the fact that the bad boy genius of the French theatre scene, Wajdi Mouawad, is working for the first time with English actors seems almost insignificant.

Montreal-born, Toronto-based playwright Jason Sherman's play jumps off from one of the darkest days in a half-century of terror and bloodshed: the slaughter of 29 worshippers at the al-Ibrahimi mosque in 1994 in the West Bank city of Hebron. The play is less about Israel and Palestine than it is about a North American Jew, Nathan (played by Howard Rosenstein) trying to situate himself in relation to events in the Holy Land. Sherman--who is also the author of Three in the Back, Two in the Head, and Patience--does not write diatribes or dry social studies lectures.

"There's something to offend everybody," is how one of the actors in this production put it. That Sherman tackles the subject with humour is in itself shocking to some people. Wait till they get a load of the sex. If no one walks out of the Teesri Duniya production, the company will not be doing their job.

You can read a scene from Reading Hebron online at the Playwrights Workshop Montreal Web site: www. playwrightsworkshop.org/ drafts.html. :

Happy, until May 13, 8 pm at Usine C; Tickets $18-25. 521-4493
Reading Hebron, to May 21. Wednesday-Saturday 8:30 pm, Sunday 2:30 pm, 7:30 pm at
Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI);
Tickets $12-18. 982-3386