At Studio 1398 until November 8, 2015
www.eventbrite.ca/Tickets at the door
Posted October 6, 2015
3…2…1, written by Nathan Cuckow and Chris Craddock, is a day in the life of Kyle (Markian Tarasiuk) and Clint (Tom Krushkowski). The setting is a Wetaskiwin, Alberta garage cluttered with boxes, coolers, paint cans, tires etcetera – the flotsam and jetsam of family life. But what the garage most significantly contains is a huge quantity of pharmaceuticals – and I’m not talking about vitamins – that makes London Drugs look like small potatoes. There’s beer, marijuana, cocaine, speed, Jack Daniels, vodka and heroin – enough to kill a guy or a couple of guys. And that seems to be Clint’s plan.
After a lot of jack-assing around – like punching holes in beer cans and drinking from the side whilst slopping beer all over themselves and the room – they settle down to some serious drug use. While they get themselves totally wasted, they talk, fight, argue, insult each other, wrestle, laugh, and discuss their friend Danny whose funeral they’re avoiding as they drink and drug themselves into oblivion. They’re the kind of guys you hope your daughter never, ever brings home.
Okay, so it’s smalltown Alberta and the future does not look particularly bright. Kyle is from a good family; his father runs a car dealership and the only complaint he can dredge up about his mother is that when he was a little kid, she made him eat everything on his plate. Clint is from the other side of the tracks; his father is an alcoholic, his mom shops at the foodbank and what little money there is, his father spends on handguns.
Kyle has got his girlfriend pregnant but while we watch the evening escalate into a sloppier and sloppier booze-up and the two of them get completely trashed, he proclaims, “I’m gonna be a great dad.” Oh, yeah.
Clint is a loose canon. He’s running the show, persuading a reluctant Kyle to imbibe past the point of sanity. Clint alternates between being friendly and explosively confrontational. He extracts a promise from Kyle that will eventually bring this evening to a conclusion.
After a lot of beer-drinking-boys will be beer-drinking-boys – something the mostly young audience found very funny, it turns out 3…2…1 is about homophobia in prairie towns where men are men: oilmen, ranchers, wheat farmers. 3…2…1, by the way, is their countdown to another, debilitating down-the-hatch.
Both Studio 58 graduates, Tarasiuk and Krushkowski wear these roles like a second skin.
Under Kayvon Kelly’s direction, they’re either damned good actors – which is entirely possible – or they’ve been there. Their drunkenness is completely believable; not falling down drunk but rising and falling like the tide with moments of clarity breaking through the drunk and stoned haze. Krushkowski, the dominant one of the pair of characters, is (for those of us not laughing) downright frightening in portraying Clint as a young man with absolutely nothing to lose. Tarasiuk plays the loyal friend who, hesitant to play along but out of misplaced loyalty, lets the evening spin out of control.
It’s very easy for most of us over the age of, say, twenty-five or thirty, to dismiss Clint and Kyle as a couple of idiots. I had real difficulty being sympathetic; I don’t find drunks of any age or any gender funny. But the hopelessness of their situation rings true: Kyle is destined to take over his father’s business and he doesn’t want to. Clint is destined to become an alcoholic like his father and waste his life. Ironically, he believes life is god-given – and he believes in Heaven and Hell but hasn’t the wherewithal or family support to make a better life for himself.
This is the inaugural production of SpeakEasy Theatre under Markian Taraskiuk, Artistic Director, and Mike Gill, Associate Artistic Director. Committed to making theatre accessible to everyone, the company has adopted a Pay What You Decide initiative. After the show, each patron decides what it was worth and pays accordingly: from absolutely nothing – it’s highly unlikely you will feel this way – to turning over your retirement savings – also highly unlikely. Like 3…2…1, the pricing is risky and bold.