What do residents of comfortable first-world countries do when confronted with a massive and tragic refugee crisis? If my Facebook feed is any indication, they use it as an opportunity for posturing. One strain of internet argumentation rants and raves about the irreparable damage that bringing in a relatively minuscule number of refugees will do to our country’s social fabric, because Canada has obviously never allowed any foreigners in before. As loathsome and racist as this line of reasoning is, there is something no less annoying about people who appear to only post about the world’s catastrophic events in order to make sure that everyone knows what good and caring people they are. Can we ever truly understand the unimaginable horrors of war and genocide? And how can we help?

Trish Cooper’s new play Social Studies, playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until December 5th, both dissects and celebrates our attempts to do good. Val (Susinn McFarlen) is the kind of hippy-dippy mom who thinks that every­one who has can­cer learns a valu­able les­son from it. She turns saying Grace into a lecture about Western privilege and adopts a South Sudanese Lost Boy named Deng (Richie Diggs). His arrival to her family home coincides with the return of Val’s oldest daughter Jackie (Erin Moon), who is recovering from the dissolution of her marriage and is crestfallen to find a stranger in her childhood bedroom. The family’s younger daughter Sarah (Lili Beaudoin) is much more enthusiastic about Deng’s presence, possibly because her interest in Deng veers from the sociological (her social studies project about the Lost Boys functions as the play’s framing device) to the romantic.

Social Studies has a long running time, and most of its conflict only really gets going after the intermission. Yet the time we spend with this makeshift Winnipeg family pays off, as it gives the script the space to create fully realized and three-dimensional characters. Val slowly reveals the spine behind the drum circles, and shows herself to be a much more attentive mother than her daughters give her credit for. Sarah finds her role as the family’s speaker of uncomfortable truths, culminating in a hilarious and uncomfortable comic set piece when she comes home drunk and discloses what all the family members have been saying behind each other’s backs.

Beaudoin’s comic timing is consistently excellent, and she has strong chemistry with Moon. The script gets great mileage from contrasting Jackie’s entitlement and materialism with her mom’s altruism, and Jackie vocalizes unjust suspicions about Deng and scrutinizes him for holes in his story. But Moon’s committed performance makes the possibly unsympathetic character of Jackie completely believable and even loveable. Equally excellent is Richie Diggs, who fully inhabits the character of Deng. His entire body language transforms from ebullient and grateful at the play’s start to agonized as he realizes that his community’s tragedies have followed him to Canada. This transformation is breathtaking to behold.

First world problems, as one of history’s greatest hashtags has it, lack dignity. And while moving to Winnipeg may sound appealing at first, it has never solved anyone’s problems. Social Studies is at heart a sweet and funny look at the importance of empathy, with a heartwarming finish that may leave your eyes a little damp (just blame it on the rain). While it in no way sugarcoats the difficulty of sponsoring refugees, it makes a stirring case for the importance of doing so. Go see it, and then post about it on Facebook so all your friends know to see it too.

Social Studies is playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until December 5. Tickets and showtimes here. 

On October 13, Pi Theatre’s Artistic Associates Pippa Mackie and Jeff Gladstone and actors Tom Pickett and Barbara Ellen Pollard presented the program for the evening to an eager audience. The crowd listened while marvelling at the party favours in their hands: packets of condoms for both men and women. Each actor was costumed in a simple white top and black bottoms, with a few shirt buttons left open suggestively. Mackie had purposefully put on ripped, black pantyhose.

Welcome to the Sex Edition, the first performance of the daring series Lost Words. That night, the troupe would perform three “very sexy…and twisted” plays which had been banned during the late 19th to 20th century. Lost Words, Mackie and Gladstone explained, would feature cheeky, redacted plays and all the sensitive topics that come along with them. They closed the introduction with a simple question: “What’s more destructive to a society than…a bunch of artists?” The audience clapped and laughed, and the show began.

The performers had selected scenes from Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, Michael McClure’s The Beard, and Thomas Bradshaw’s Intimacy. Orgasms took place on stage, and storylines touched intrepidly on pedophilia, incest, and pornography, yet everything was performed poetically. In between each play, they performed songs which had also once been censored. Renditions of “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” and “Colt 45” (during which my friend said to me, “This song is a masterpiece!”) lightened the mood of an otherwise intense performance.

The audience that night were observably respectful, open-minded, and so ready to have fun. Some of us, admittedly, made uncomfortable noises at moments during the scenes with explicit content—but these were honest, uninhibited reactions, not signs of disapproval. I don’t think the provocative theatre acts I saw that evening would have had the same impact or appeal at a different venue, with a less appreciative and accepting audience—a pleasant assurance for our “no fun” city.

Luckily, there is more to come from Lost Words: on December 1, the cast will tackle another cringe-worthy subject: Religion.

Lost Words: Religion Edition takes place at The Emerald on December 1 at 8:30 pm. Tickets will be available on the Pi Theatre website and at the door.

On opening night Saturday, the party started outside.

It actually started in the theatre about 15 minutes prior as the audience made their way through Andy Warhol’s Factory to their seats on either side of the dance floor. The actors were already in full swing by the time the guests arrived, decked out in shimmery period costumes, the room awash in silver and black–a thoroughly glitzed up industrial look–60s hits blaring from the turntable in the corner, while Andy Warhol, as an ingenious re-imagining of Prince Escalus, looked on in approval. With martini glasses in hand, the Montagues and Capulets effusively welcomed the guests to the party–until the fire alarm went off.

You would have thought it was all part of the show, some kind of immersive theatre, and as it turns out a parking lot is as good a theatre as any: half of the faux-guests waited around with the real ones in their furs, pearls, and high heels, taking drags of their fake cigarettes while the other half gallivanted about in complete character.

The staff handled the situation with poise and a good dose of humour, but in the end, no one seemed all that put out about having to wait outside for 20 minutes, and there was never a dip in the atmosphere. In fact, it was almost heightened by the unexpected hiccup; a humorous prelude to a night of good fun, making it clear this wasn’t going to be a standard or old-fashioned presentation of Shakespeare’s work.

While I can’t promise that the play will have any other unplanned evacuations during the rest of the run, what I can attest to is the palpable enthusiasm of all of the actors and staff involved. The whole building was a buzz of excitement, undoubtedly in celebration of the opening of Studio 58’s 50th season, though there was an undeniable sense of eagerness from the students themselves.

Despite the tragic premise, the performance engendered a sense of optimism and sincerity not always present in play often scoffed at for its ridiculous notions of love. Studio 58’s interpretation brought out all the best parts of the story, including its humour and a delightful level of earnestness.

I do stress the term interpretation though, as the play was certainly condensed and much of the language of the original work was replaced with shorter speeches and sometimes even musical numbers. While I did miss some of my favourite lines (Romeo and Juliet’s speech upon first meeting in particular), the majority of the play’s most recognizable lines were kept in. Where lines were cut, it was done judiciously, and allowed what remained of the original language to stand out. The changes were refreshing and I imagine only the strictest purists could take issue with the update.

The swapping of Romeo’s gender was perhaps the least bold of the changes, though perhaps it only felt that way because it worked so well. Romeo is exceedingly more likeable as played by Camille Legg than he ever was as a lovesick boy. The change added much needed motivation to make Romeo’s flip-flopping on matters of love transform from ridiculous to heartbreakingly sincere. Juliet’s decision too, to end her life, becomes even more profound in light of her parents forcing her to wed a man when she loves a woman instead. While Legg’s Romeo and Adelleh Furseth‘s Juliet were both beautiful and beyond convincing, it was Conor Stinson-O’Gorman’s performance of Mercutio that stole the show for me. No performance of Romeo + Juliet is complete without a proper Queen Mab speech, and he delivered it beyond my expectations.

Romeo + Juliet runs at Langara College until October 18. More information about the play and the rest of Studio 58’s anniversary season can be found here.

Is there a word for the crippling fear of musicals? Librettophobia, maybe? I did not realize I was afflicted by this rare condition until I was sitting through the opening number of Patrick Street Productions and Touchstone Theatre’s entertaining new adaptation of Terry Fallis’ satirical novel about Canadian politics, The Best Laid Plans, playing at The York Theatre until October 3rd. Watching groups of cheerful faces darting around in well-choreographed patterns, singing loud yet comprehensible lyrics about the importance of elections, my face started to flush and my heart tightened. I don’t know why the performers’ unabashed joy produced such fear deep inside me -maybe I thought the audience would have to join them? But after they stopped singing and the audience started wildly applauding (as they did after every song!) I calmed down and allowed myself to enjoy the spectacle, and I’m glad I did. The Best Laid Plans is way funnier than Of Mice and Men.

Its somewhat convoluted story is about Daniel Addison (a very game Nick Fontaine), the idealistic young speechwriter for the Opposition Leader. When the plays starts, Addison has a bright future in politics, with a high-status position and a relationship with political aide Rachel (Shannon Chan-Kent), who he met when they got their lanyards tangled. It all goes down when he discovers Rachel underneath his boss, the slimy campaign manager Dick Warrington (Zahf Paroo), and rest assured this production does not skimp on the Dick jokes. Trying to beat a disgusted retreat from Ottawa, Addison ends up stuck with the Liberal Party’s most undesirable task: finding someone to beat the popular Finance Minister in the (fictional) Conservative stronghold riding Cumberland-Prescott. All he needs to do is run a losing campaign and he will be free from politics. He finally lands on his landlord, the irascible Scottish professor Angus McLintock (the great Andrew Wheeler), who only agrees to run on the condition that Addison takes over his teaching position (his description of teaching English to engineers as the worst form of torture in existence hit home with at least one member of the audience); that no actual campaigning occur; and that there is no chance of him winning. Of course, Addison’s careful plan goes awry…

The musical’s cast is uniformly excellent, with Meaghan Chenosky as Daniel’s love interest Lindsay a standout vocalist. While the lyrics contain perhaps a few too many caucus puns and crowd-pleasing CBC jokes, many of the song concepts are funny and original. A number about the great Canadian novel, which inexplicably includes a bear and Lindsay’s affectionate slam poetry pisstake (“O Canada, did you know politeness was a paintbrush?”) were silly fun. I especially enjoyed the ode/parody of CanCon galas set to our nation’s greatest montage song, “Hallelujah.” When we are first introduced to the characters of Kris and Qris, gender-queers who insist on being referred to as “Zem,” I was worried they would be the basis for puerile transphobic jokes, but Zem (warmly played by Steffanie Davis and Hal Wesley Rogers) turn out to be the play’s conscience. McLintock’s solo number “The Other Side,” mourning the death of his wife, was genuinely moving, and the Conservative Minister’s hypocritical and sexually charged paean to family values was a hoot.

All that said, the adaptation from novel to musical left passages of clumsy exposition, as Addison explained where and when a scene was taking place. The character of Addison probably also worked better on the page, as his spineless passivity and flirtations with entitled “nice guy” misogyny keep him from being too sympathetic of a hero. The attempts to make comedy out of parliamentary procedures and omnibus bills lacked the energy of the election material. Beyond these issues, The Best Laid Plans takes a scattershot approach to political satire in a moment when the country needs a flamethrower. Its central insight is that the populace will fall in love with and then abandon politicians like Angus who are willing to speak difficult truths. That is of course correct, but it’s also a small idea to build a whole play around.

Even if the plot of The Best Laid Plans failed to entirely win my vote, anyone who wants to support well-made and hilarious Canadian musicals should go see it as soon as possible. Furthermore, if you want to meaningfully support Canadian arts for years to come, please please please vote out Stephen Harper on October 19th.

The Best Laid Plans runs until October 3. Tickets and showtimes here: https://thecultch.com/events/the-best-laid-plans-a-musical/