Theatre Reviews

By Cande Andrade, Owen Belton, Camille Gingras, Craig Hall, James Long, Anita Rochon, Jonathan Ryder, and Maiko Bae Yamamoto. Produced by Rumble Productions and Theatre Replacement. At Performance Works as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival on Wednesday, January 30. No remaining performances

In 2005, James Long found a suitcase full of photo albums and travel journals in an alley near his place in East Vancouver. When he carted the case home and opened it, mouldy fumes arose, as did nostalgia for other people’s lives.

As the primary performer in Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Long wears a grotesque bunny suit like the one that appears in one of the pics, and he imagines a seductively pure life for the family in the snapshots. Their time at a cabin reminds him of the joy of swimming in the soundless underwater world of an Okanagan lake. But Clark and I explores the unreliability of the stories we use to construct meaning, as well as their emotional resonance. Can we trust the bunny? In film clips, other people also appear in the bunny suit—sans the head—and repeat a memory that Long’s character has recounted at the beginning. Their variations on the tale of a child killing a suffering puppy are as different as the speakers themselves. Interpretation is everything—or almost everything, because the ideas of cruelty and compassion remain constant.

They are recurring themes in the larger script. Are the writers cannibalizing the family pictured in the albums? The grisly tale of a Japanese murderer, who ate a woman after shooting her in the back of the head on their second date, snakes its way through the bunny material.

Members of the family raised the issue of artistic responsibility in stark terms this past Christmas Eve, when they threatened to sue Long if he proceeded with the project. His struggle to resolve that conflict is the core of the story. That core could be more fully developed, and Clark and I could use a good editor.

Still, Long is one of the best actors you’ll ever watch. His physical business as the bunny is hilarious. You should see him trying to set up a projection screen.

And the staging of this piece is constantly surprising. Cande Andrade contributes gorgeous textures using various forms of projection. In one of my favourite live passages, Andrade and Long do a lovely little gestural dance as a singer croons: “Red sails in the sunset/Way out on the sea/Oh carry my loved one/Home safely to me.” They hug at the end, and that’s the key to Clark and I: its affectionate mocking of sentimentality is part of a strategy that enables it to embrace innocence.

Presumably to avoid legal action, Long names the photo subjects only with gestures and phrases. He identifies a beautiful young mom by patting his chest, just below his shoulder. “She’s a colour,” he says. “She’s important.” These signifiers evoke ineffable, essential qualities. They also speak to the visceral and ephemeral nature of human connection—including shared theatrical experience. The bunny takes a photo of the audience. We see it projected, then we watch as the image disintegrates, just as the moment it tried to capture has passed, and just as many of the images in the original albums were washed away by the rain.