By Guillermo Calderón. Directed by Jenny Larson. A Department of Theatre and Film at UBC production. At the Frederic Wood Theatre on Friday, March 15. Continues until March 30

“We have very little time, so do it slowly,” says Oskar, the film director at the centre of GOLDRAUSCH. This oft-repeated command, a risible paradox, is an appropriate token of Guillermo Calderón’s play, a manifold study in reframed narratives that juxtaposes fantasy and reality to underline the cost of pursuing ideals.

Months into shooting GOLDRAUSCH, a film adaptation of a 1925 novel about John Augustus Sutter, a settler who haplessly instigated the California gold rush, Oskar (Karthik Kadam) experiences a lack of “love and joy” in his film. Assuming his cast will comply, he proceeds to hire two new leads, Erik (Gray Clark) and Marlene (Hannah Everett), to engage in salacious scenarios he assumes his existing talents, Alexander (Matthew Rhodes) and Greta (Tebo Nzeku), would not. Naturally, pandemonium ensues.

Calderón’s script trades in reinvention, and this quality is apparent in every aspect of the play. The gold rush’s prospects and its later decline struck a gruelling divide between fantasy and reality, which the novel Gold subsequently diluted by reinterpreting those events. With the historical events still further remixed by Oskar’s cinematic take, on-set turmoil results in shouting matches that shift into non-sequitur country sing-alongs, complete with karaoke lyrics and dance. Later, the completed film enjoys a rebirth as trenchant commentary, when the cast speaks out at a prerelease press conference.

Such divergences may suggest a kind of willful blindness in ambitious pursuits, as shown by the characters’ foibles. The historical Sutter left his five children and wife Annette overseas while he settled in present-day Sacramento; his callousness is matched by Oskar, a man so driven by his film that he resorts to selling his pet turtle and stealing cheese and cash to survive. Alexander’s devotion to acting renders transgressions moot, as when he is asked to romance a horse, while Greta’s loneliness might stem from the absence of her three kids, who’ve been sent to Disneyland for the duration of the shoot.

Director Jenny Larson offers a smorgasbord of visual, aural, and verbal delights by orchestrating a fantastic team. Luis Bellassai’s set reflects modernity through filmmaking implements and pop-art murals of iconic American symbols, while Vanessa Tang captures the fantastical through her occasionally subversive lighting choices. Zach Levis’s wall-projected video, live-streaming Oskar’s cameras, wonderfully exaggerates the cast’s comic timing, and sound designer Erika Champion rolls out Americana by way of songs from Buck Owens, Jimmy Buffett, and Tammy Wynette.

Densely packed with meaning, GOLDRAUSCH is a play that traverses terrain requiring quick thinking, shuffling as it does between fantasy and reality. Its layered back story, coupled with multiple language leaps, may prove challenging to some audiences, although it is still a romp of punch lines and ensemble singing. Just as Oskar tells his actors at one point, however—declaring “I need your love, your blood, your gold”—you may find more enjoyment if you’re fully invested.