A Hundred Words for Snow

At Jericho Arts Centre (and online) until October 4, 2020
Tickets from $26 at unitedplayers.com or 604-224-8007. Due to Covid 19, reservations are required for both in-theatre and online presentations

Posted September 12, 2020

United Players, the little theatre company that could, has done it again. Toph Marshall, the newly-appointed artistic director, was thrilled to announce that the company would proceed with a 2020-2021 season that includes a “high-quality online version” of each show should patrons prefer to see the production from the safety of their own home.

A Hundred Words for Snow opened September 11 at the Jericho Arts Centre and it was with some trepidation I logged in to watch the online version. Could a small non-professional company with limited resources pull it off? In a word, “Yes.”

Premiered by British playwright Tatty Hennessy in 2018, A Hundred Words for Snow traces the geographical as well as the emotional journey of Rory, a fifteen-year-old girl, from London to the North Pole via Norway. Having just  lost her father in a car accident, Rory discovers that her dad, a geography teacher, had planned a trip for both of them to the Geographic North Pole (there are, apparently, five different North Poles). With his ashes in a large metal urn, Rory steals her mother’s credit card, dons a small backpack and flies north to Tromsø, Norway, where she has her first sexual experience – described in intimate detail – and then on to Longyearbyen, the jumping off place for the Pole.

It’s a sweet coming of age story told directly to the audience by actor Hana Joi. Playwright Hennessy packs the script with lots of historical detail about various white male explorers who died trying to make the journey in the past, as well as bone-chilling descriptions of ice, snow and profound cold for which Rory is unprepared.

The story is fairly predictable after Rory’s mother catches up with her and so the success of the play is completely dependent on the charm of the performer. Joi has charm and stage presence in abundance. Over eighty uninterrupted minutes Joi holds our attention, at times taking on the personas and accents of Norwegian young adults, her father and her mother, plus a wise, sympathetic, grey-haired woman scientist/painter she meets enroute. Rory’s language is the language of young London teenagers. “Wasn’t the funeral service [for Rory’s dad] lovely?”, asks a relative. “No, it was rubbish”, replies Rory. “My hair is shit”, she moans, upon meeting some beautiful Norwegian girls. And when weighing the pros and cons of losing her virginity to the handsomest of the Norwegian boys, she says, “Fuck it!” and goes for it although she admits putting a condom on him is not at all like putting a condom on a cucumber as they were taught back in school.

The explicit details of this encounter don’t take the plot anywhere but what is interesting are Rory’s thoughts on all women, all over the world, and all through time having their first sexual experience.

There are some irritating plot gaps. A fifteen-year-old travelling alone with her mother’s credit card and an urn? Surely flags would go up at the airline counter. The time frame is sketchy but it seems to take Rory’s mother too long to track her down; the stolen credit card would put her on the trail right away. Rory has money to buy plane tickets but no money for food? She’s not dressed for the cold. And how does she get that metal urn through all those metal detectors?

But, nitpicking aside, the story holds and actor Hana Joi makes it work.

Set design by Graham Ockley and Tamara McCarthy (who also directs) is spare and simple: a white wall with a jagged crack through it forms the background. Lighting design by Ockley plays colour against the wall, ranging from icy blue and white through violet and warmer hues. Incidental sound/music is by Nico Dicecco.

Three cameras, under the technical direction of Chase Padgett (correction) capture the action; the online experience is extremely good with wide-angle and zooming alternating. Best of all – better, in fact, than the in-theatre experience – are the close-ups of Joi whose face is so expressive.

Virtual theatre sets up challenges that companies will now be taking into account: how big is the cast, how complicated the set, how epic or intimate is the play. Audiences will probably be seeing a completely different theatre season with the focus on intimacy and smaller casts. That could be a real boon to both audiences and theatre companies that have been facing financial disaster.

With Covid 19 in mind, the company has put in place protocols to keep audiences safe for those who choose to venture out to the Jericho Arts Centre: distancing, lobby restrictions, no food or drink available, staggered entry and exit from the theatre, thorough cleaning and more. Reservations are necessary for both actual and virtual presentations; and, due to the conditions set out when obtaining the rights, the online version will cost the same as the actual performance.

Next up for United Players is The Red Priest (Eight Ways to Say Goodbye), a play about Antonio Vivaldi and a violin student. It’s a two-hander – plus a violinist – by  Canadian playwright Mieko Ouchi and it opens in both Jericho Arts Centre and on your various devices on November 13.