Bed & Breakfast

Arts Club Granville Island Stage until May 4, 2019
Tickets from $29 at artsclub.com or 604-687-1644

Posted April 12, 2019

Some B&Bs are truly memorable. You know, the ones where the host has left a stove-top espresso maker and half-a-pound of Illy coffee for you. Or leaves a list of bakeries within walking distance where you can get fresh croissants at 7AM.

Bed & Breakfast, directed by Ashlie Corcoran and now running at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage, isn’t truly memorable but you don’t have to take a plane or train to get there and it’s pleasant. It’s a two-hander and the performances by Mark Crawford (also the playwright) and Paul Dunn are terrific. We like these two characters – Brett (Crawford) and Drew (Dunn) – and we’re rooting for them.

We meet them first in their Toronto apartment (set design by Dana Osborne, lighting by Rebecca Picherack): spare, mostly white, mostly a big king-size bed. They’re hoping to buy a place but good luck finding an affordable place in TO. Brett is an interior designer who gives advice to unimaginative callers on TV; Drew is on the front desk of a downtown hotel. Are they happy? With each other? Yes. With their jobs? Not so much.

When Brett’s dearly beloved Aunt Maggie dies, everything changes.

There aren’t many surprises in this script – well, one, but my guest saw it coming a mile away. It’s gently funny – not the huge guffaw kind of humourous, but funny – so the best part of this show is in performance.

Crawford and Dunn play so many characters you can’t keep count. At the same time, you never lose track of who’s who. They are all broadly done, using a technique director Corcoran refers to as “vocal masque.” While the term may be unfamiliar, the technique is not: vocal and gestural switches to indicate a different character. Crawford and Dunn take it to the max in one scene in which they switch so quickly, you begin to really believe there are more than two of them on stage.

Aunt Maggie, it turns out, has no heir and she leaves her old, smalltown Victorian house – some distance from Toronto –  to nephew Brett. Weary of trying to buy a house in the city, they decide to quit their jobs, fix the old place up and run a B&B. After all, they have the necessary skill sets.

However, a small town isn’t always inviting to gay guys and blending in isn’t easy. But they make friends. There’s pregnant Alison who runs the coffee shop and bow-legged Doug who’s the local handyman/contractor. There are a couple of realtors, various relatives – including Brett’s teenaged nephew Cody, whose response to all questions is a shrug and “I dunno”, and young-and-confused Dustin who always arrives with fresh baking.

The transformations are exaggerated and stereotypical but that also makes them readily recognizable.

Bed & Breakfast arose out of a playwriting initiative at Thousand Islands Playhouse (Gananoque, Ontario) where Corcoran was the artistic director for five years prior to her recent appointment as Artistic Director of the Arts Club. On opening night, Corcoran announced the donor-funded Emerging Playwrights’ Unit – “designed for Vancouver playwrights in the early stages of their careers”. Scott Button, Bronwyn Carradine, Mily Mumford and Zahida Rahemtulla have been selected for residency that runs from January to December, culminating in publicly staged readings on the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre. Working with Corcoran and the four resident playwrights will be Stephen Drover, Associate Artistic Director of the Arts Club.

This is a charming enough Bed & Breakfast: tender and well-realized. However, if you like your theatre a little more challenging or a little rough around the edges, you might want to check into another place.