Chickens

Jericho Arts Centre to September 29, 2024
Tickets $15-$35 at the door or www.unitedplayers.com
Reservations recommended

Posted September 7, 2024

Hands down, Chickens will be the goofiest 2024-25 season opener anywhere in the city. Written by award-winning Canadian actor and playwright Lucia Frangione back when she was a student at Alberta’s Rosebud School of the Arts back in the late 80s or early 90s, Chickens is so ‘country’ you can almost smell the hay and the chicken shit. With music by Royal Sproule (provided by a lively onstage band comprising Tim Howe, Casey Por, Carlina Dykstra and Gordon Roberts), farmer Pal Grandfield (Joel Garner), his wife Liza (Jennifer Suratos) and their four chickens do everything from jitterbug to tango. And I’m not just pulling your drumstick.

Frangione has two parallel stories going on in the Grandfield farmyard: Pal and Liza, unable to pay their taxes, are on the verge of losing the family farm. Pal, obsessed with the exotic chickens he’s purchased against Liza’s better judgement, has not been paying enough attention to her. “I bought you a surprise”, he tells her. “It’s white.” “A dishwasher?”, she asks excitedly. “A chicken”, he replies. “Oh.” She hasn’t had a new dress in five years.

And the chickens – Butter Ball (Cassie Unger), His Nibs (David Johnston), Alphonso (Dustin Freeland) and Stewer (Aunya Jayde) – have problems of their own. Stewer, an escapee from a poultry factory farm, hasn’t laid an egg for seven months; Butter Ball has a crush on His Nibs who’s so insecure he can’t even cock-a-doodle-do; and Elvis-like Alphonso isn’t getting anywhere with Butter Ball despite his best pelvis-gyrating efforts. And, if things don’t get better on the farm, the chickens face the axe. And that’s not just like losing your job; it’s the real deal.

Like a chicken with its head off, metaphors are running around everywhere. Believe in yourself. Love one another. Take risks. All this is pretty much ‘on the nose’, as we say – or on the beak in this case. Not a whole lot of subtlety. But there’s a lot of heart, something Frangione is famous for.

Directed by Chris King for United Players, the production is colourful and tuneful and the cast so talented it almost makes it through the nearly two hours, including intermission.

Suratos tugs at the heartstrings with “Honey I’m Home”; she also has the most engaging emotional arc although David Johnston, singing about his character’s desire to fly, runs a close second. Garner gives a salt-of-the-earthiness to Pal.  Unger is a flirty bird while Freeland flies the coop in an over-the-top performance as Alphonso. Jayde, as Stewer, introduces some reality to the life of chickens out there in the real world: plucked, basted, roasted, fried or BBQed. She’s not about to fall for any finger lickin’, sweet-clucking rooster. It’s a foul, fowl world, after all.

But it is the chicken-ness of the chicken characters that really steals the show. The physicality is fantastic: pecking, outstretched necks, scraping feet, scratching, elbows bent like clipped wings. Rosie Aiken’s costumes – featuring bright red combs atop the actors heads and black and white tailfeathers – add tremendously. And it all takes place on Emily Dotson’s cockeyed barn and farmhouse ‘skeleton’ backlit in red by Brad Trenaman and Jamie Sweeney.

The opening night audience responded with gales of laughter.  As with poultry, I prefer ‘dark meat’ theatre; give me a beefy tragedy any day, something to chew on. But I respect the desire for chuckles or ‘cluckles’ and, generously seasoned with farmyard puns, this production will be a winner for United Players. Over the years it has been produced elsewhere in Canada, in the USA and Australia.

And would you believe it?  It’s National Chicken Month in Canada. Run for your lives, feathered friends!