At the Firehall Arts Centre until October 8, 2016
604-689-0926/firehallartscentre.ca
Posted October 2, 2016
And then there’s Cathy Jones, a Canadian comedy icon from Newfoundland who has been keeping us laughing since 1973 when she joined the Codco comedy troupe in Toronto. Later, in 1988, Codco and Jones went to CBC-TV with her brother Andy Jones, Greg Malone, Tommy Sexton and Mary Walsh; the show ran for five hilarious seasons. Eventually she moved on to This Hour Has 22 Minutes where you can still catch her in all her wackiness.
Jones says she has ADD but it works like a damn for her on stage. She just keeps zinging from one crazy observation to another. “Sunday night is like a funeral for the weekend”, “The only reason I can see for having a fella is for someone to go out and see what that noise is” or, regarding her homeless boyfriend, ‘It’s great, you can drop him off anywhere”. She’s even considered “moving out” with him.
Now 61, she’s officially kept us in stitches for forty-three years but I’ll bet she was knocking ‘em dead in kindergarten. She’s funny, fearless, ferocious and she’s not afraid to use the F-word.
After a brief ‘prologue’ where she plays both her psychiatrist and her manager, Jones comes out kicking ass: skin-tight black vinyl pants, baggy t-shirt and boots. She stomps back and forth on the stage, belting out a song, punching the air defiantly. She’s a rocker. And a grandmother. And although the 70-minute show looks as wild as the storms off Newfoundland, it’s carefully crafted. It rises and falls, gets sexy then coy: it has a rhythm even when she’s down on the floor howling.
She has a lot to say about marriage and men – all of them funny. “I’d rather have the shingles than have someone asking, “What’s for supper?” Sex in Newfoundland? “You go ahead and come. I’ll come half an hour later.”
Those of us who have been following Jones for years will remember her Indian shtick in front of a fake fire or her “Just goofin’ around” gal but probably the real favourite was geriatric Enid, part of the old 22 Minutes before that other great Newfoundland funny girl Mary Walsh left the show. In a tightly permed grey wig, potty little hat, handbag, woolen overcoat and fur-trimmed rain boots, Jones tut-tutted over the contemporary scene from pot to politics. Jones wraps this show with Enid, now in a seniors’ home (“all you can eat Arrowroot”), with comments about some of the gents “not worth putting your teeth in for”. But Geoffrey, the male nurse? “Oh my god, if eyes could come.”
There’s life in Enid yet and there’s sure a lot of life in Cathy Jones. Intermittently working on a book titled, “Get Help, You Sick Fuck”, she says she’s a stranger to hard work but a show this polished doesn’t just happen. In her sixth decade, she’s proud to say she’s still “fuckable”; the night I saw the show, the Firehall audience was on its feet for Cathy Jones who is still very, very funny.