Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✩
by Evalyn Parry, directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre with OutSpoke Productions, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
March 16-27, 2011
“Two-Wheeled Words”
Evalyn Parry’s SPIN is a cabaret-like performance piece that uses song, poetry, spoken word and video projections in praise of the bicycle and social changes related to it. It is a delightfully quirky, highly inventive 80-minute work and would be well nigh perfect if it did not go off track in its last ten minutes.
To present SPIN, Evalyn Parry stands in the centre of a small stage in Buddies in Bad Times’s Cabaret space flanked on on one side by Anna Friz and on the other by Brad Hart. Both Friz and Hart act as musicians and backup singers, but Hart’s instrument both singularly appropriate and extremely unusual--it is a bicycle itself. The bike has been wired to amplify the sounds Hart makes when ringing its bells, striking its handlebars, cross-bar, fenders or seat with drumsticks, whirling it pedal or plucking its spokes. The sound are then manipulated by sound artist Anna Friz. This literally adds multiple notes of whimsy to every song until, part way through the piece, we fully accept it as a unique percussion instrument.
This process of acceptance mirrors what happens in the course of Parry’s show. A show to honour the bicycle may, at first, seem as if it is meant to be humorous--as Parry’s initial semi-serious delivery seems to further this notion. But as the show progresses, the implications Parry draws from the lore and legend of bicycles becomes more far-reaching and important. Bicycle imagery has social, and psychological implications: resistance is necessary to move forward and to ride you must not look down but ahead. From singing about the feeling of flying that she felt as a girl when first learning to ride, Parry moves on to tell us about Miss Frances Willard, who wrote a book of instructions on how to ride a bike with the purpose of encouraging women’s freedom of movement and independence. Parry actually sets Willard’s instructions to music. The themes of freedom of movement and bike riding lead Parry to explore the influence of Amelia Bloomer (1818-94), who invented the ballooning pantaloons that bear her name as part of the women’s dress reform movement. Parry’s most extended sequence is a ballad about the adventurer and self-publicist Annie Londonderry who in 1894 not only became the first women to ride a bicycle around the world but beat the previous male record for the feat.
The show, which has dwelt on the bicycling fad of the 1890s, seems about to wind up with the contemporary tale of Igor Kenk, Toronto’s most notorious bicycle thief. Parry had her bike stolen during his reign of terror, but there was no proof that he was the culprit. Yet, Parry launches into a long personal story about how stealing that bike was like stealing a part of her life since it reminded her of the death of her father, the affair she fell into and out of with an older woman and the accident she had on the bike. The problem is that, unlike the rest of the show, the section is not really bicycle-specific. The briefcase I had with all my notes in it that was stolen just before finals, a watch, a ring, a bracelet--any object received or bought at a key moment in someone’s life that is later stolen or lost--would have the same effect. Parry may wish to give the show a more personal spin, but, in fact, her wry master-of-ceremonies persona and her evident love of the subject have already made her personal connection clear. Excising this lengthy spoken word detour and skipping directly to the reprise of “She Rides” would tighten the show and enhance its cyclical imagery.
Parry clear voice and clever word play “to wield words” (“two-wheeled words”) are a constant pleasure as is Hart’s inventions on the bicycle-as-instrument. Friz does her electronic work along with playing the kalimba, melodica, harmonica, accordion and a strange contraption made of bicycle parts that makes a clanking sound along with zapping a small tail light. Behind Parry is a screen on Beth Kates’s set is a screen where Melissa Joakim’s whimsical projections are displayed. The use of moving cutouts of Victorian illustrations is often reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s work for Monty Python. All together, SPIN is an enormously clever and informative show that deserves a wide audience.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Evalyn Parry. ©Jeremy Mimnagh.
2011-03-18
SPIN