A Downtown Eastside Romeo and Juliet

By Gina Bastone and Mike Stack, with the ensemble. Directed by Gina Bastone. A Vancouver Moving Theatre production. At the Russian Hall on Thursday, April 17. Continues until April 27

This show doesn’t always make sense, but it delivers a remarkably good time.

Mike Stack wrote a 10-minute version of Romeo and Juliet, which opens this two-part performance. It looks fantastic. Gina Bastone, who wrote the rest of the script and directs the whole thing, has also made commedia-style masks. They’re so gorgeous I can’t tell you. With the wild overbite and innocent round face of her mask, and her bouncing curls that look like dog’s ears, Juliet looks like a goofy puppy. And Marina Szijarto’s costumes are extraordinary. Lady Capulet, who wears a wizened, beak-nosed mask, is clad in a period gown of ruby silk and wears a mirrored bird on her head.

Stack’s writing is broadly funny. Everybody gets stabbed all over the place, and every time he opens his mouth, Friar Laurence yelps “Holy St. Francis!” In comedy, nothing works like repetition.

From R and J, the script takes a 90-degree turn into a string of loosely linked scenes set in the Downtown Eastside. Apparently Frenchie, who is homeless, has dreamed the first 10 minutes of the show. Does that mean he’ll fall in love? When Juliet, the poetically nutty daughter of a greedy local developer, shows up in the neighbourhood spouting lines from Shakespeare’s plays, the answer seems clear.

Bastone’s part of the script maintains only the loosest connection to the Bard’s original. Essentially, it’s a collection of skits about being dispossessed. Lack of narrative focus is a problem, and some of the scenes, including the bit in which we meet many of the major characters in a coffee shop, are messy.

This disorganization barely matters, though. That’s because the actors are having so much fun. This is community theatre—most of these folks are residents of the Downtown Eastside and few of them have acted before—but there they are, under Bastone’s direction, giving great big, confident, witty performances.

Masterfully, Bastone uses whatever qualities and talents her company members have to offer. Mike Richter sings a bluesy song he composed himself, and Jim Sands delivers his own clever cabaret number. In a heartbreakingly pretty bit, Kuei-ming Lin, who plays Juliet, dances en pointe wearing a pastel-coloured crinoline, as Frenchie falls hard for her. Grant Chancey shows off his acting chops in a number of roles, including a drag queen and a parody of Global TV’s Mike McCardell. Bastone, who is one of our most gifted clowns, appears as a little girl named Suzy. This woman is a comic genius, and it’s a crime that we don’t see more of her on-stage.