Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre to August 15, 2021
Tickets from $39 at www.artsclub.com or 604-687-1644
Posted July 31, 2021
Just when I began to wonder if I, Claudia – delightful as it is – was going to go anywhere, it started to go somewhere. And that somewhere is funny and sad and, best of all, true to life.
Solo actor Lili Beaudoin, not so long out of her own teens, breathes life into the twelve-going-on-thirteen-year-old Claudia as well as three others with quick, on-stage costume changes: coveralls for Drachman, the elementary school janitor; short, private-school pleated plaid skirt and beret for Claudia; old-style belted dressing gown for Claudia’s Grandpa Douglas; and a power-suit jacket and red stilettos for Claudia’s father’s girlfriend Leslie. Along with the bits of costumes, though, comes body language and speech patterns/rhythms for each of the characters. Beaudoin’s is a remarkable, impeccable performance.
Claudia is going through puberty; “It’s so disgustingly embarrassing”, she declares. After school on Mondays she gets to stay overnight at her dad’s place and hang out with him. She loves her dad and wishes her mom and dad would get together again. Each Tuesday morning before leaving for school she filches something from her dad’s place; usually a single sock which she stashes away in her school’s boiler room because, at home, her mother goes through Claudia’s things, “with a fine-tooth comb”, looking, perhaps, for drugs or whatever it is twelve year old girls get into.
Once, however, Claudia takes a pair of shockingly bright, shiny red high heels. Dad has a girlfriend that he has not told Claudia about. Worse, he plans to marry her. Even worse, Claudia has to be the flower girl. Ugh.
I, Claudia is much more than just a child’s reckoning with change: puberty, separation of her parents and the remarriage of her father. The other characters are all dealing with their own transitions, too: Drachman, the janitor, was an actor back in his homeland and he now sweeps and cleans a school – plus keeping a sympathetic, watchful eye on Claudia; Grandpa Douglas is coping with growing old; and Leslie, the homewrecking party-girl, is hoping this marriage will bring stability and respectability at long last.
Moving through I, Claudia, Beaudoin and playwright Kristen Thomson show us how these characters are coping with life changes. No one who draws breath hasn’t experienced change and so the play really gets us where we feel, where we hurt, where we hope.
Beaudoin wears Melody Anderson’s half-masks; from chubby and pug-nosed to foxy and heavily made-up, Beaudoin becomes the masks and the masks become Beaudoin. It all happens right before our eyes.
What remains most remarkable, however, are Beaudoin’s transformations from gangly, awkward yet cocky, sort of faux street-smart Claudia, bouncing off the walls to sexy yet insecure Leslie grooving and dancing, drink in hand; from wise refugee Drachman to doddering Douglas. One would think Beaudoin is too young to know these characters so intimately. But under the direction of Marie Farsi, the significant people in Claudia’s life are lifted from the page to full realization.
I, Claudia is an inspired re-entry into the theatre as we are making our own transition from lockdown to tentative ventures into inside spaces. Protocols are in place; masks are recommended. Seating is at 50% capacity. The bar is closed. The washrooms are open. One hour and thirty minutes of theatre magic.
The show is poignant without being cloying. We know these characters; perhaps we are – or have been – these characters. Beaudoin is amazing. Welcome back, Arts Club Theatre.