Improv troupe Mantown chugs while a sparkler-waving crowd cheers. Photo by Steve Hobbs.

MUSIC: You could pay through the nose to see Snoop Dogg’s new incarnation as “Snoop Lion,” or to see the sold-out Jesus and Mary Chain show. But how about this instead? Moon Valley Pictures is looking to shoot a short film later this summer, and has put together a packed bill of music, comedy and more tonight to fund the flick. Its Friday Night Soundtrack event will include performances from popular local bands Jumple and Dinosaur Dinosaur, a raffle, hosts The Trumpeters, and more. The Garrison (1197 Dundas Street West), doors at 9 p.m., $10.

COMEDY: Late-night laughs are always in abundance at Comedy Bar. Tonight, in the cabaret, frequent producer and technician Darryl Pring presents a preview of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Darryl), before he takes his one-man show on the road to the Edmonton Fringe Festival. Meanwhile, in the main theatre, the perpetual frat boys of Mantown host their monthly booze-soaked improv show, with guest host Ely Henry. Comedy Bar (945 Bloor Street West), 10 p.m. onwards, PWYC–$10.

Urban Planner is Torontoist‘s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.

PJ Prudat and James Cade in Tara Beagan's free as injuns. Photo by Juan Camilo Palacio.

free as injuns
Native Earth Performing Arts
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street)
February 28 to March 18
PWYC–$20

Native Earth’s free as injuns is as layered as dramatic productions come. The play is “loosely inspired” by Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, which itself incorporates elements of the Greek Phaedra myth, and earlier parallels to it from the Biblical Book of Hosea. Beagan’s adaptation, directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones, uses abbreviations of O’Neill’s character names and follows the same plot, though it quickly becomes clear that this play’s characters have substantially different motivations than O’Neill’s. Having familiarized ourselves with O’Neill’s play since watching injuns, we’re still not sure whether a familiarity with the source material is a plus or minus in assaying Tara Beagan’s new play.

injuns opens on Even (James Cade) waking from disturbing dreams, seemingly lying on or in a coffin (we eventually learn it’s his broom closet of a room). He and his two older half brothers, Pete (Ash Knight) and Sim (John Ng), are toiling on the family farm while their three-time widower father is away in parts unknown. None of the three brothers is happy with their lot in life, but they continue to work the farm out of lifelong habit, and a grudging respect for their driven and hardhearted father. Pete and Sim dream of heading West to seek their fortune, but Even, whose mother has died most recently, is obsessed with inheriting the farm; it’s on the ancestral lands of his mother’s people, and he communes with her frequently—her voice echoes in his head in voice-overs by former Native Earth artistic director Yvette Nolan. His brothers have their own complicated relationships with their own deceased mothers, but trace their heritage along patriarchal lines. (The fact that all three sons have different mothers neatly dovetails with the actors’ diverse ethnic backgrounds, and the colour-aware choice of actors adds considerable depth to the cast.)

Into this morass of bitterness and resentment comes Be (PJ Prudat), the much younger new wife of Ephraim (veteran actor Jerry Franken), who returns just as Even seems to have convinced his brothers to take his savings and leave the farm. Prudat’s Be, who initially seems to be a bored seductress who immediately fixes her sights on Even, turns out to be, like Even, a “half-breed,” and a pragmatic survivor who longs to reconnect to the land, if not her people. “The law sees me as white, no matter what I have to say about it,” she complains to him about how she’s been forced to abandon her heritage. The two soon fall deeply in love and lust (Prudat and Cade have played lovers on stage before, in Falen Johnson’s Salt Baby, and their chemistry is palpable), and Be convinces Even that if she bears his child, they can eventually together reclaim the land and start anew. “We’ll make our own ceremony,” she promises him.

Ask Knight (L), James Cade (C), and John Ng (R) as the three half-brothers in free as injuns. Photo by Juan Camila Palacio.

It’s a plan which neither seems to feel any moral qualms about, cuckolding the tyrannical head of the house—there’s none of the guilt or shame present in their secret love that O’Neill’s characters suffered. But the jealousy Even feels towards his overbearing father grows worse with the arrival of his baby. He loses his connection to his mother, and in his sullen rage cannot grasp that he has transferred it to Be and his new family.

In the second act, the play’s pacing slows significantly, with Even’s inner turmoil slowly simmering until things come to a head. While Knight and Ng’s presence does help ratchet up the stakes, the actors don’t have much to play; we’re still not quite sure why, apart from petty jealousy of their youngest brother, Pete and Sim don’t take the money and leave. Prudat’s Be seems entirely focused on Even, and her own issues with sharing a bed with the grandfather of her child don’t seem to factor until relatively late in the game.

We’d be remiss in not mentioning the impressive stage and lighting design by Andy Moro, who lights the cavernous space to suggest both small rooms in the farmhouse and the open fields the men toil in, as they track actual dirt across the boards. Our first thought upon entering the Buddies in Bad Times Chamber was, “we’re in the Thunderdome!” But open conflict never quite erupts in the in-the-round space. It’s clear to us that the characters’ fixation on the simple possession of the land doesn’t fill their need for connection and community; the two older brothers never learned the concept of family from their father in the absence of their mothers, and Even struggles to transfer his mother’s unconditional love to another as an adult himself. But it takes a long while to make those points in injuns, especially in the second half. They’re themes we’d like to see more of from Beagan and Native Earth, but perhaps not grafted onto the complex themes already present in O’Neill’s work.

Nate (Jeffrey Wetsch) gets the spark going for Jim (Margaret Evans) in Jesus Chrysler. Photo by Will O'Hare.

Jesus Chrysler
Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace (16 Ryerson Avenue)
November 29 to December 11
Evenings at 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.
$15 to $20

Eugenia “Jim” Watts lived a life of legend. She inherited a small fortune from her grandfather in a time of economic depression, wrote and directed plays for the rabble-rousing theatre troupe Theatre of Action, had a play banned by the prime minister, reported from the grounds of the Spanish Civil War, during which she also drove an ambulance. Of course, this was after she spent years touring her anti-fascist shows from town to town in Southern Ontario, performing in front of union groups, sometimes getting run out by the authorities, in her car christened Jesus Chrysler.

Really, it’s about time someone told the story of Jim Watts. So kudos to Praxis Theatre and playwright Tara Beagan for recognizing this unsung Torontonian titan of a woman in their current show at the Theatre Passe Muraille Studio, Jesus Chrysler.

However, as rich in material as Watts is, we still leave the production wondering who she is, and what she is about.

While it touches upon the creation of Theatre of Action’s iconic production Waiting for Lefty, the script of Jesus Chrysler focuses on the romantic relationship Watts strenuously maintains with her childhood friend, poet Dorothy Livesay. Watts (played by Margaret Evans) flashes between hot and cold toward Livesay (Aviva Armour-Ostroff), who staunchly (or in cowardly fashion) stands by her friend until the day Watts disappears completely. Their “are-we-or-aren’t-we” relationship is thrown into even more confusion with the arrival of Nate (Jeffrey Wetsch), who at first has eyes for Livesay but quickly becomes entangled within Watts’s innate ability to manipulate and/or seduce and/or inspire those around her to join her cause.

We say all this with the caution, however, that we still aren’t sure exactly how Watts and Livesay really feel about each other, since our attention often wandered to pressing discussions taking place on stage about the Depression and the politics of the era. And really, we wish we had been able to focus on them more. Yes, it is important to create well-rounded characters when dealing with historical figures, but with figures as obscure as Watts, a little more context and a little less relationship talk would have helped in a huge way. It would give Watts’s character more oomph, more bravado, instead of leaving us to see her as emotionally weak and confused in the midst of her romantic woes. A “maybe” love story just can’t carry an entire play.

Much like the story of Watts’s life, there is great potential in Scott Penner’s practically revolutionary set design. If you’ve ever been to the backspace at Theatre Passe Muraille, you’d never know it was the same space. The audience is turned on its side, half sitting on stage with the actors (in Theatre of Action’s rehearsal hall), half along the length of the side wall. The balcony is turned into a second floor of the set—the living room and bathroom of Livesay’s home, which she retreats to when distancing herself from Watts’s erratic behaviour. Unfortunately, as impressed as we were upon entering the theatre, the set is disappointingly underutilized.

“We seek out our tragedies if we haven’t been blessed or cursed with them,” Watts announces, bookending the script with similar statements. Moments like these are cherished, making her a little clearer and understandable, and work well in tandem with clever use of a radio that plays back past moments in the script that show how she literally dramatizes her life and relationships. But perhaps the script should have taken this statement to heart—there’s enough drama right in Watts’s life to fuel a production, there’s no need to create any extra.