Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre until December 22, 2019
Tickets from $29 at artsclub.com or 604-687-1644
Posted November 28, 2019
If you’re dreading all that frantic, late-night Christmas Eve gift wrapping, just take a look at Lauchlin Johnston’s set for this festive Arts Club offering and be grateful it wasn’t your job: a veritable mountain of silver foil-wrapped boxes forms the backdrop for Marcus Youssef’s seasonal family drama. It extends from stage left to stage right and floor to ceiling. Santa’s little elves must have worked their tiny fingers to the bone wrapping all those presents; I wouldn’t be surprised if they refuse to fill stockings come Christmas Eve. Add Conor Moore’s spectacular lighting and what you get is silvery, glittering eye candy.
But all that glitters is not gold: there’s trouble in this family. To begin with, Esther, the grandmother, is dead. “I’m not really here”, Esther (Nicola Lipman) confides in us right at the start. In fact, she (and we) are in the “line-up” to get into Heaven. The wait, she warns us, is 365 days.
But hold on, when Esther reaches the Pearly Gates, it’s not St. Peter, it’s Salena (Ghazal Azarbad), a former hedge fund manager. Moreover, God has retired and Aretha Franklin has moved into the job. And oops, Esther is denied entry because of “unresolved family issues”.
Oh, Hell. Exactly. But Salena pulls some strings and Esther is sent back from the afterlife to fix things with teenaged granddaughter Chloe (Matreya Scarrwener) who, says Salena, is in trouble following the divorce of her parents, Miriam (Jennifer Lines) and Steven (Jovanni Sy).
Credit: David Cooper
Shades of Dickens with Esther, like Scrooge, having her nose rubbed in her earthly shortcomings – mainly her failure with daughter Miriam.
Playwright Youssef tackles a whole lot in It’s a Wonderful Christmas-ish Holiday Miracle from whether or not Chloe is allowed a smartphone (big source of disagreement between Mom and Dad), Simon’s (Glen Gordon) disappointment with his Christmas present (he really wanted but didn’t get an Xbox), Chloe’s class-skipping and dope-smoking, Miriam’s preference for a menorah rather than a Christmas tree and Esther’s confusion over the multi-stage “apps” Salena guides her through (remotely, from Heaven, on the contentious smartphone) toward family reconciliation. It’s a lot to grasp.
If you’re not into apps and games, you might want to doze off until near the end when it all starts to get real again.
But put Nicola Lipman on stage and you’ve got yourself a play. Lipman is the Queen of Crankiness; she can be prickly, acerbic and dry-as-dust funny. In this play she’s a dope-smoking grannie and an old hippie (with a terrific wardrobe by Jessica Oostergo). Slightly hunched, Lipman moves around the multi-leveled stage like a spry old gal with, probably, joint problems. Oh, you know, that other kind of joint.
Scarrwener, as Chloe, is the kind of teenager you love to send to boarding school: petulant, mouthy, demanding and rude: ”You’re the biggest bitch I ever met in my whole life,” she screams at her mother when the smartphone is taken away and Mom cottons on to the dope-smoking. Gordon, as young Simon, is underwritten in this story that is really about three generations of women: Esther, Miriam and Chloe. Sy, too, doesn’t have a lot to say for Steven although in a video game sequence, Sy (now dressed as robotic Joseph in a Nativity scene) repeats, “The camel bit me. Ow. The camel bit me. Ow. The camel bit me. Ow.”
Azarbad, as Salena, is appropriate gushy and enthusiastic, and lovely Lines, as Miriam, gets to be (against type) sort of a mean, uptight mom.
In his program notes, the playwright says he didn’t figure he’d ever be inspired by a song called “Christmas Unicorn”. Nor had he ever heard of songwriter Sufjan Stevens – nor had I. But, under the direction of Anton Lipovetsky, Stevens’ songs are sprinkled throughout, nicely performed and sung by the cast.
Credit: David Cooper
When CBC’s Peter Gzowski retired, he said he didn’t like the music of Alanis Morissette and he thought he ought to. While I’m not about to retire, I confess I don’t much like plays that rely heavily on apps or video games or a lot of other techie/robotic stuff. And I think I ought to. Forget the bells and whistles: just give me a good story.
Directed by Chelsea Haberlin for the Arts Club, there are probably a couple of good stories in here and they are liberally sprinkled with laughter as well as family discord. Thank God, or Aretha Franklin, for Nicola Lipman. Portraying the heart and soul of this trouble family, she’s also the heart and soul of It’s a Wonderful Christmas-ish Holiday Miracle. Let’s give a Hallelujah! for Lipman.