goestoshow

So I may be a little late to this party, but I have just read Mack Male and Sharon Yeo‘s posts about their experience literally being heckled by a performer (Jeff Haslam, who is no small fry. He’s the Director of Programming at the Varscona Theatre) in the Edmonton theatre community for having the gall to review their plays and not be completely glowing in their reviews.

Obviously, as someone who casually reviews plays on this blog, this hits pretty close to home for me. Especially as someone who is not an expert in theatre, nor insulated by connections to people in the theatre community. I see the shows I want to see, I pay for my tickets almost every time, and I’m as entitled to say my piece about those shows as anyone else who does the same. I have been fortunate enough to only receive positive feedback from artists who I’ve reviewed, but to be fair because I tend to avoid plays I know I won’t like my average rating for shows I see is probably higher than most.

But I do call it like I see it when I see a play that I don’t enjoy, and while I know that reviews like that are very painful for people who put time and effort into the work they do, I feel that it’s very very important to respect your audience. Respecting your audience means accepting that sometimes they won’t like your work. And that means sometimes your play won’t do very well, because you miscalculated or because of the weather or because that glowing review you needed didn’t come in until late in the run.

To lash out at an audience member who paid you for the seat they sat in in your theatre is not respecting your audience. Though those of us who blog about our theatre experiences may make ourselves more obvious targets, what you’re telling everyone in your audience by lashing out like this is that they are not entitled to their opinion because they’re not educated enough to “get it.” These are the people who pay your bills.

I’m going to go one step further than Mack and Sharon. I’m not attending any performance at the Varscona until somehow this is resolved. Not for the rest of this Fringe, not for the next theatre season, and not at next Fringe. I’m sure my warm butt in their seats won’t be missed, because the Varscona is always home to popular shows (probably in part due to their pulling out of official Fringe venue status to become a BYOV so they can hand pick their shows), but I can’t support a theatre with a Director of Programming who apparently loathes his audience. That’s just not acceptable.

And that’s a shame, because there were things I was looking forward to seeing there still and it’s a great venue. But really, my money can go to artists who respect me.

Poster Boys is based loosely on the true story of a VanCity Credit Union advertising campaign that featured gay couples (or, as the play calls it occasionally and self-consciously, “cultural diversity”). Apparently the campaign angered Catholics and caused the church to pull out their backing for a banking program for children at the credit union.

I wanted to get that out of the way because this play is not really about those events. Though the issues of gay rights and the morality of corporate sponsorship of activist causes (one that recently affected Edmonton when the Pride Parade this year was labeled, on Facebook, as the “TD Canada Trust Gay Pride Parade”) are important and topical, they could easily be exchanged with just about any cause and just about any well-meaning outsiders combined with trying-to-live-their-lives insiders to that cause.

These events are just used as a frame for a story about people who get caught up in something bigger than themselves. And that’s what really matters here. Every character in the play is faced with their innocent desires turning their lives upside down as they become the focus of a major controversy. The characters want to find peace with their past but get caught up in the blaring noise of activism.

In that respect, the play is excellent. It creates compelling characters who are well acted by the cast. The production design looks far more expensive than it probably is, and for the most part the expansive multimedia (four very expensive projectors are used to create the visual touches the play) is well used and effective.

If it were only that, I would give this play 5 stars. Unfortunately, the play manages to be more ambitious than it can deliver on a couple of points. The first, and easiest to explain, is that for a play about gay people there is very little actual gayness. It suffers from the same problem a lot of media about gay couples does, and I can sum it up thusly: Straight people have sex, gay people flirt. We see the two straight people in the play in their underwear at least twice, while the gay men stay fully clothed and rarely do more than reach in for a peck on the cheek. I feel like this is pandering to a straight audience, but also that it shouldn’t really be necessary at this point in this medium. I also feel that it undermines the authenticity of the story as well as the credibility of the relationship.

The next problem, for me, is the inner monologue of the main character. It seems strange that it should be represented by a drag queen. Someone else who saw this play told me they felt like it was an attempt to make the play ‘more gay,’ and I can’t help but agree. Her presence never really added anything to the plot but a highly stereotypical queen voice. Possibly it was intended as comic relief, but mostly the jokes were too over the top for the tone of the play.

And last, but not least, there is a metaphor that runs through the entire play and culminates in a large multimedia display towards the end. Unfortunately, the display itself looks underproduced and feels painfully unnecessary to the plot. It doesn’t tie in in any meaningful way, it’s just there and gives an excuse for a loud noise at the climax of the play. I can’t say much more about this without spoiling the play, but suffice to say that you will probably know it when you see it.

But overall, I really liked this play and definitely recommend it. There’s a 2-for-1 ($13 each) Tuesday next week, as well as a bunch of other normal showings until the end of next weekend ($25). You can buy tickets at the door or from their website. Go see it!