YAGA

The Cultch until November 5, 2022
Tickets from $39 (Pay-what-you-can, November 2, 1PM) at www.thecultch.com or 604-251-1363

Posted November 1, 2022

There’s so much genre-blending and bending in YAGA that you’re likely to get whiplash trying to follow all the threads. But fun? So much fun!

Written by Kat Sandler and presented by Touchstone Theatre, the source material is the Slavic folktale going back hundreds of years. Baba Yaga  was – or is – an old woman who reportedly lives alone in the forest in a hut built on chicken legs; she gets around by flying in a mortar, holding a pestle that she uses to grind the bones of those she has killed – usually naughty children – and then eaten. Probably every culture has a similar character created to keep kids in line.

But Sandler takes the story and turns it into a thriller, a cop story and a celebration of women. Sexy, nasty, older women.

Who better to embody Baba Yaga than actor Colleen Wheeler – not that she’s nasty or old. The greatest pleasure in YAGA is watching Wheeler at the top of her game switching characters as different as powerful, scary Baba Yaga and sexy osteology professor Katherine Yasov to one-grunt waitress Geena and vodka-swilling old crone Elena. Her transformations are so slick, so perfectly crafted it’s like watching a magic show.

Wheeler, as Baba Yaga, begins by telling us what history has made of her, repeating again and again, “You say. . . ” ending with “You say, who could love such a beast? You say I am the grandmother of the Devil so I must have been fucked.” Ah. Switch to brilliant professor Katherine (“I have had sex – a lot of it”) being interviewed for a podcast by overly-eager university student Henry (Aidan Correia) who subsequently goes missing.

Suddenly we are in the midst of a homicide investigation with Detective Carson (Genevieve Fleming) and private investigator Charlie Rapp (Correia again).

While Wheeler’s energy drives this production, directed by Roy Surette, Fleming and Correia definitely hold their own. Fleming has six characters – the most successful one being beautiful Detective Carson who turns out to be – but I’m not going to spoil the fun. And Correia is terrific as nerdy, pod-casting Henry as well as cocksure Charlie, sprawling, legs apart, almost fondling his genitals.

As the plot twists and turns, it’s easy to get lost but the ride is so much fun, who’s going to care who dunnit or if, indeed, anyone did it.

Playwright Sandler loves to play with words; she riffs of “infinity” and “affinity” and pokes fun at those who continue to pronounce ‘pestle’ as “pest-ill”. And she makes some pointed comments about single women who “live in the woods on their own” saying later of such women, “Men who tell our stories are scared of us”.

Ryan Cormack sets the action in a forest of more than a dozen dazzling white birch trunks – like so many telephone poles but white with peeling bark. Lighting designer Hina Nishioka moves us around from Katherine’s office to the cop shop, the diner and various other locations.

I would have understood the conclusion better had I known where ‘the horns’ fit into the myth but at that point, I didn’t care. I had been so thoroughly entertained by a smart script, a clever blending of genres and the brilliant performances, that I was abuzz with all the fun I’d had.

Closes on November 5 and is quickly selling out.