Catalyst Playwright’s Artistic Vision Comes to Life in Stunning Spy Thriller
Edmonton’s edgy and adventurous Catalyst Theatre has been pushing toward its new production The Invisible – Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare since its earliest beginnings. Over the years it has excelled in award-winning forays into Gothic thrillers (like Frankenstein, Hunchback, and Nevermore) and with its last production here about the Black Donnellys (based on the 19th Century Ontario outlaws), it ventured into a gritty new form of expression.
With the current show The Invisible the company has parachuted into the dark netherworld of secret agents, sabotage and espionage. This is a handsome production, compellingly original in concept and carried off in the company’s hyper-intense strikingly visual style, notable for its eloquent theatricality and rigorous performance standards. It runs in the Citadel’s Maclab Theatre through Feb. 23.
Catalyst Theatre was created by, and has provided a platform for its prodigiously talented artistic director Jonathan Christenson. You may not see him onstage but he hovers like a benign puppet master over the show. He wrote the book, music, lyrics and functions as music supervisor and stage director. His music ranges over an impressive number of sources and is complex – often offering thrilling, tight vocal harmonies. There is a bright jazzy French chanson, a Kurt Weill cabaret number, pop and rock, a touch of hip hop, and the occasional appearance of patented rousing anthems and big power ballads. All are filtered through the composer’s contemporary edge.
The story comes from years of research. A coalition of 50 women, known as “Churchill’s Secret Army” was recruited from all over the world – to be spies. Christenson evokes the persona of some real spooks and creates several composite portmanteau characters to fill out his covert coven. Spymistress Evelyn Ash (real name Vera Atkins, played by Melissa MacPherson) is in charge of the recruits. There’s a suggestion that the knowledgeable and efficient Atkins was the basis for Bond’s Miss Moneypenny.
Christenson’s production is its own creation, while giving a nod to many influences: William Stevenson’s book The Man Called Intrepid, superhero movies, Agent Carter, graphic novels, any WWII spy movie, a touch of film noir, and ace choreographer Bob Fosse (of Cabaret). The plot of The Invisible is not unfamiliar, but Christenson sure knows how to tell a story.
Every performer on the stage is female and the range of talent is astonishing. MacPherson’s Ash is a stand-out performance as singer and actor. In fact, it is so good that it underlines a problem. Despite the take-no-prisoners excellence of the cast, they seldom get the chance to develop beyond their tasks – you know, blowing up tanks, bridges, factories and seducing German officers. That last comment is a little misleading. Although the offer of sex for secrets does emerge in the story, Christenson takes pains to point out that these “ladies from hell” are not sexual victims, but real cloak-and-dagger secret agents.
The squad includes East-Indian Anna (Marie Mahabal), whose ferocious intelligence makes for an ideal spy, but her inability to tell a lie makes her a dubious choice. The lifespan of a secret agent behind German lines was about six weeks. Betty (Amanda Trapp), who likes to blow things up, is a Western Canadian Cree, a victim of the residential school system and empathizes with the French, occupied and subjected in their own land. The French Madeline (Tara Jackson) is a former night-club performer and courtesan who is not above using her feminine wiles. Others in the cast include Kristi Hansen, Melanie Piatocha and Justine Westby. This is a super troupe of equals.
MacPherson gets the big Marlene Dietrich number. and Jackson delivers Gallic delight in the French chanteuse song. The excellent melodies just keep coming. There’s a lovely melancholic moment just before the troupe sets off over the Channel as they sing about the combining of the English Rose and the French Lilly. Piatocha creates a needed quiet moment with a poignant ballad she delivers in Act II. The entire cast sing with an energy and passion that often reach operatic proportions, accompanied on stage by a hardworking all-female trio of musicians who at times manage to sound like a full-on Broadway pit orchestra.
Another force much on display is designer Bretta Gerecke – whose distinctive visual touch has added so much to Catalyst productions over the years. She uses chairs that occasionally hang in the air and combine on stage to become any environment the shows demands. The idea is not only visually ingenious but provides the director with instant sets. Fused with some spectacular projections, the effects keep the evening fluid and ever moving. Another key member of the creative team is Laura Krewski, whose energetic, precise and resourceful choreography is a continuing delight.
Since a kind of heightened reality is used here, there’s a need for the performers to be grounded and real. Much of the credit for that goes to language coach Doug Mertz for the performers unerring ability to zero in on the musicality of the multitude of accents.
The Invisible comes to the Citadel after award winning runs in Fort McMurray and Calgary, and has been re-written for the Edmonton production by the playwright himself – a restless perfectionist.
Photos by dbphotographics
