Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
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by Michael P. Northey, music by Kyprios & Stylust, directed by Patrick McDonald
Green Thumb Theatre, Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, Toronto
April 22-May 3, 2008
Green Thumb Theatre of Vancouver is currently presenting its powerful hip-hop show Cranked at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. Aimed at an audience aged 13 and up, the 45-minute play by Michael P. Northey with music by Vancouver MC Kyprios and beats by producer Geoff “Stylust” Reich tells the tale of the rise, fall and rise of Stan, a fictional freestyle rapper known as “definition.” The cause of his fall is his addiction to a form of crystal meth called “crank.”
The show has been touring and winning raves from teens ever since its creation in 2006. This would never happen if it fell into the pitfall of preachiness that ruins so many cautionary tales. Instead, Northey keeps the focus simply on Stan. We first meet him backstage at the first freestyle rapping competition he’s entered since completing rehab. As he tries to convince himself he can go on without his usual fix, he re-enacts the descending lows in his life that followed his one success when he won a competition and a record deal. A domineering, adulterous father, his parents’ divorce, insensitive teachers are all brought forth as sources of his dissatisfaction, but he knows he worked out those problems through rap. Instead, the immediate cause of his downfall was his first hit of meth when “he saw God”--a high that happened once and never came back no matter how much he used. Eventually, he’s sleeping on the streets, stealing for drug money and, since meth stays in the skin, eating his own scabs to get high.
Eminem-like Kyle Cameron gives a knock-out performance taking his character through a greater emotional arc in 45 minutes you see in most full-length plays. We see him as an ordinary, rebellious 17-year-old who uses rhyme to organize his life. We also see him in withdrawal, convulsed with gestural tics, hallucinating and feeling like a zombie from the horror movies he loves. In a brilliant contrast he replays a contest he lost playing both the preening MC who wins and himself as a paranoid wreck who can’t stand people watching him. This scene alone blasts any myth that meth is cool or enhances performance. The end is not a Hollywood triumph against all odds to win the title. Rather we cheer Stan on just because he’s won back the strength to compete. So caught up in the story is the audience by the end, they all clap in time to his last song “Stand Up” because he’s clean.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-04-24.
Photo: Kyle Cameron as Stan. ©Hiroko Masuike (New York Times).
2008-04-24
Cranked