Trout Stanley hooks 'em in Vancouver

Claudia Dey's Trout Stanley is playing in Vancouver and it's already receiving spectacular reviews. Read the below review of the Ruby Slippers Theatre's production that appeared in the Vancouver Sun.

TROUT STANLEY
Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright
on Granville Island, to April 22
Tickets $27.50/$24.50, call 604-231-7535!

At the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, April 25 to 28
For tickets, call 604-205-3000

No need to fish for compliments about Ruby Slippers Theatre's presentation of Claudia Dey's exceedingly odd play Trout Stanley. Director Diane Brown and her note-perfect cast have managed to reel in a feisty piece of theatre, serving up a deliciously dark treat.<!--newline-->U.S. critics have uniformly dubbed Dey's style "Canadian Gothic." At first glance that moniker seems appropriate, since Trout Stanley is set in the B.C. woods near Tumbler Ridge and is replete with references to the hardscrabble lives led across our vast northern landscape. Yet the poetic script is so rich with references to universal themes of love and loss that this is a work worthy of international acclaim.

Twin sisters Sugar and Grace Ducharme are nutty enough before the arrival of the title character, who doesn't know why his parents named him for a fish. Jonathon Young has us laughing from his first appearance as Trout, breaking into the Ducharme home with a demeanour so feral that the actor resembles nothing so much as Scrat, the squirrel from the Ice Age movies.

Yet Trout Stanley is actually a profoundly enlightened person, and it's his action as a catalyst that brings resolution to a decade-old mystery. On the birthday they share, the far-from-identical twins are at the breaking point in their bizarre relationship, and across two acts peppered with blazingly amazing monologues, all three characters come to each realize an epiphany.

First, however, we're treated to wild work by the cast. Colleen Wheeler struts the stage as Grace, big and bombastic with her breasts barely contained in a tight zip-up outfit. Barking like a a drill sergeant, Grace runs the Tumbler Ridge town dump and appears on a billboard for a gun shop; appropriate for a woman with violence boiling beneath her skin.

Sugar couldn't be more different, and Lois Anderson's performance as the simpering sister who wears her dead mother's housecoat (and hasn't been out of the house since Mom died a decade ago) is an amazing counterpoint to Wheeler's work. Sugar is sweet, sure, but so strange that it takes a great actress like Anderson to evoke all the nuance in this nuttiness.

Young plays Trout with a deadpan practicality, perfect for illuminating the transcendence of Dey's way with words. Dense with dreamscape imagery and yet grounded in the real grit of life, this is truly theatre for the new millennium.

The David Roberts set is a tidy slice of shabby living, lit with elan by Itai Erdal. Projections by Tim Matheson on a big upstage screen don't come into their full effect until, as mayhem builds in the second act, a full moon prowls the skies above what looks alarmingly like a tragedy at Tumbler Ridge.

Wait for the coda, however, as Dey pulls a funny-bunny ending from her hat. Catch Trout Stanley and you'll come away happy to have scratched your head at this trippy treat.

Sun Theatre Critic