Presented by Vancouver theatre company Ordinary Productions, The Hunger Moon: An Evening of Short Plays – allows audiences to enjoy four very creative plays, both in-person and online. I enjoyed watching all the plays, as I found the concepts for each quite unique. And even when there were elements that I thought could be further worked on, after a year of limited theatrical productions in Vancouver (as well as everywhere else), it was really nice to see stories come alive onstage again. I applaud director and producer Larisse Campbell and her team at Ordinary Productions for fighting to keep theatre alive.
I watched The Hunger Moon virtually and I enjoyed the digital delivery of it. The visuals were clear, the sound was a bit quiet but acceptable overall, and I felt I was in the actual theatre because there wasn’t a lot of close-ups of the actors. Instead, I felt that I could choose where I wanted to look onstage, as if I was sitting in the audience.
Highlights of the evening were the outstanding performances of Ricardo Pequenino and Kalayna Kozak. Below are my reviews of each of the plays, all directed by Campbell.
The Barely Wives Club by Sarah Segal-Lazar
The idea behind The Barely Wives Club is fun and quirky. Two famous, tragic heroines from classic literature – Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet) and Eurydice (Greek mythology character, whose husband Orpheus tried to save her from the underworld) are confined to a chamber as roommates in an Underworld for Fictional Characters.
In this chamber, there is a wall of TV screens that show all the various versions of the two women’s tales – movies, ballets, plays, etc. The TVs never turn off, and Juliet and Eurydice are basically stuck in this room forever. Outside the chamber is a continuous rain storm which makes it impossible for Juliet and Eurydice to go anywhere; and every now and then Hades, king of the underworld, will come check in on the two women. He always takes on different personas, and on this particular day, he’s a handyman by the name Ralph.
The play is amusing right off the bat, with Juliet (Chantal M. Marie) and Eurydice (Nikita Inniss-Boston) poking fun at the different versions of their stories in the media, including a lesbian-version of Romeo & Juliet, and references to the swimming pool interpretation of the balcony scene in the Baz Luhrmann film version.
But after the novelty of the situation has been played out, the plot doesn’t go much further. Hades (Brian Hinson) makes an appearance as the evil villain, but even Juliet and Eurydice admit that as menacing as Hades is, it’s not actually him who’s holding them captive – it’s the quill. So, in other words, the playwright.
In the program notes, the description of the play reads that show will dive into how Juliet and Eurydice have developed from the meek women they were originally portrayed as, including how the two have influenced each other.
Unfortunately, this piece didn’t seem to ever get there. The two women throw witty remarks and casual conversation at each other, but at no point did I see them connect with each other on a deeper level, nor did I really get an understanding of how they have changed over the centuries. I also don’t know if this was a COVID-19 measure, but the two women always seemed physically distant from each other, which further made it difficult to really see their connection with each other.
All three performers, Marie, Inniss-Boston, and Hinson, are fun to watch, and I would love to see Marie and Inniss-Boston play Juliet and Eurydice in actual productions of their respective stories.
too close to the sun by Kullen Brunet
The concept of this play really intrigued me, because of the creepy, sci-fi nature of it and the fact that I was constantly trying to analyze what was going on. The play is about two brothers (Ricardo Pequenino and Kenneth Tynan) living in the middle of nowhere.
Every day starts the same – the brothers playfully run into this nowhere space, grab chalk; and then an eerie figure known as Rememberance (Kalayna Kozak) shows up. Rememberance lists off a bunch of words and the two brothers have 30 seconds to draw a story of what the words mean. On this day, the story is that of the Greek mythology character Icarus, who flies too close to the sun and pays the repercussions.
I won’t give away how the story pans out, but there’s an element of thrill and I was really pulled into the story. There was also a constant feeling that the stakes were high, even though I didn’t exactly know what the stakes involved.
Pequenino and Tynan are excellent in their roles of the brothers. They bring great energy, which is what the play needs from those two characters in order to keep up the thrill element. Kozak, only 8-years-old, is equally wonderful. She presents herself with poise and coldness to give her character the chilling vibe needed.
Did I quite understand the play in the end? Nope. But I enjoyed watching it both for the cool concept and the outstanding performances.
Old Wives’ Tail by John Busser
This best part of this play is the standout performance by Kalayna Kozak. As mentioned, Kozak is only 8-years-old, but she possesses strong acting skills with maturity and polish beyond her years. She also demonstrates amazing versatility. Only moments before this play, she’s seen as the dark, mysterious character of Rememberance in too close to the sun. A few minutes later, after a quick costume change, she’s transformed into Cassie, a young girl brought to the hospital by her mom to visit her grandma.
Cassie’s grandpa (Brian Hinson) is already in the waiting room. When Cassie’s mom Brenda (Chantal M. Marie) needs to go to another room to call her sister, Cassie is left alone with her grandpa.
The program notes specify that grandpa will tell Cassie the real reason behind her grandma’s trip to the hospital. Since the play establishes early on that grandma is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack – I was intrigued about what the “real reason” is.
In the end, I felt unsatisfied by this play. I won’t discuss what the real reason for grandma’s hospitalization is, but there are other issues here, namely grandpa’s dialogue, which rambles a lot. The play comes across as a first draft – a plunking of ideas that haven’t been refined and cleaned up to only include the bits needed to drive the story.
About three quarters of the way through, grandpa finally gets to his point – and it has little to do with all the other stuff he had been talking about before. And even though I admire plays with quirky elements to them, the resolve of the play didn’t resonate with me. I wasn’t sure what to feel. If Busser was going for a heartfelt feeling between grandpa and granddaughter, it was doomed from the start, given grandpa’s threats of physical violence, which made me cringe.
The best part of Old Wives’ Tail is Kozak’s performance as Cassie, which is endearing and impressively mature for such a young actor.
Hashtag Jones by Olivia Matthews
This play is short and to the point, and I liked it. The story is about Jamal Jones, a young black man who has been killed; through the use of #JamalJones on Twitter, we hear different perspectives about him, including cries for social justice as well as racist comments. Even though the play is short, it states its case loud and clear, and Ricardo Pequenino delivers a fine performance as Jamal. Combined with his earlier performance in too close to the sun, The Hunger Moon play series has been great vehicle for Pequenino to showcase his acting chops and versatility.
The Hunger Moon: An Evening of Short Plays runs until March 21, closing with a 7pm performance. Visit the site for tickets, including livestream info.