Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
✭✭✭✩✩
by Kevin Drew, directed by Chris Abraham
Crow’s Theatre, Streetcar Crowsnest, Toronto
November 24-December 9, 2017
Soft Angel: “Give us a suicider who wants to live”
If you’re in the mood for a dark comedy with one of the most charmingly loony premises ever, A&R Angels now playing at the Streetcar Crowsnest could be for you. The play is the first play written by Kevin Drew, co-founder and de facto bandleader of Canada’s baroque-pop collective Broken Social Scene, and it still carries signs of its being a first play. The dialogue needs editing and the structure needs rethinking. Nevertheless, it is still very funny in its own absurdist way that satirizes the self-importance of the recording industry as one that literally saves lives.
The most unusual aspect of A&R Angels is that Drew leaves the exposition until the end of the play. That means we are thrust immediately into a series of events and have to concoct our own theories of what is happening before our theories are confirmed or refuted when the play concludes. For a reviewer this makes things difficult because giving too much away will spoil one of main sources of fun, i.e. trying to figure out exactly what is happening on stage.
Focussing simply on the first two events in the action, we note a man (Gordon S. Miller) enter, put a noose around his neck and stand on a chair. Immediately, Kevin Drew as Loud Angel and Ben Kowalewicz, front man for the group Billy Talent, as Soft Angel enter with a crew that sets up speakers, mics and and an electric keyboard. A form detailing the reasons for the man’s wish to commit suicide is read out and the appropriate song to use for the situation debated. Mics are tested and then Soft Angel, the vocalist, and Loud Angel, the accompanist, enter into a long, comically drawn out discussion of how to perform the song to prevent the man from committing suicide. It is comically extended with disputes about every aspect of the chosen song – where to sing the verses, where to put the pre-chorus, whether to include a bridge, what key to sing it – to the point where we wonder if the duo will ever get around to singing. Finally, they start, but to no avail.
The next scene is set in what seems to be a heavenly sauna with Maurice Dean Wint as the head of A&R (that is, the Artist and Repertory manager in charge of overseeing the artistic development of a label’s songwriters). Joining him is Graham Cuthbertson as his data collector. The two are aware there is a problem with the two Angels. They’ve had 22 hits in their career but nothing lately. The disaster we just witnessed was their eleventh in a row where the song they played failed to give the “suicider” enough hope to abandon the attempt and carry on. Directives from on high have reduced the number of c permissible consecutive failures from 17 to 13. That means the Angels have only two more chances before they have to give up songwriting to become (shudder) “mentors”.
The A&R boss communicates all this to the Angels, who blame the change in music listening culture in the digital world where individualized downloaded playlists have replaced a central set of broadcast hit songs that everyone hears, knows and forms an emotional connection with. Soft Angel complains that the boss has been giving them particularly difficult cases and begs to have an easy one for a change.
As one might expect, the angelic duo botch their 12th chance and reach their 13th which is literally “do or die”, especially as concerns the “suicider” and figuratively as concerns the future of the duo.
The problem is that the 12th and 13th cases amount to a replay of the same debates we have already heard for the 11th case. Loud Angel has to stroke Soft Angel’s ego in the same ways and Soft Angel has to psych himself up to perform in the same way. At least there is a twist with the 13th case, but this is also when Drew decides to spell out clearly what role exactly the A&R Angels play, what the rules are as to when they are and are not visible and numerous other details. The 13th case begins as particularly emotionally charged but ends up as rather too talky.
Drew and Kowalewicz, who bravely make their stage debuts with this piece, show surprising acting talent and deliver Drew’s lines as if they were improvised. It is clear that both are more familiar with using mics than not. When off mic, they fail to project and, especially when they are at the back of Julie Fox’s clever set, their words are not quite audible. The two do have a great rapport and they do give the petty disputes that Drew has chronicled a ring of truth.
Maurice Dean Wint and Graham Cuthbertson are well-matched as the boss and his assistant. Wint brings a parody of Morgan-Freemanesque gravitas to his afterlife A&R manager that is quite amusing and Cuthbertson as his nerdy, deferential numbers guy adds to the fun.
Gordon S. Miller as cases 11 and 12 has little or nothing to say, but Ngozi Paul as case 13, though a quirk in the plot, has the chance to paint a moving portrait of despair that has grown so overwhelming that suicide seems the only way out. Paul is equally moving when she begins to reflect on why life may be worth living after all and thus provides the show with a much-needed dose of true feeling amidst all the parody.
Chris Abraham has given the show the clear, perceptive direction he is known for although one wonders if the scene changes signalled by blinding cues in Kimberly Purtell’s lighting and deafening cues in Thomas Ryder Paine’s sound design need really be so painful.
What would really send audiences out on a high note is if we could finally hear the first song played live that the two Angels have been bickering over throughout the play and that we never get to hear all the way through. Hearing it over the speakers as we applaud just isn’t as satisfying. If if those on stage had to make a sudden costume change to impersonate a boy band, it would leave us feeling much more exhilarated.
Part of the excitement of first plays is how their authors don’t necessarily play by the rules. Drew takes many risks more staid playwrights would not and these make the show feel fresh. Others, like repetition of similar situations, call out for the aid of a dramaturg. Nevertheless, A&R Angels is fun for its out of left field humour and satisfying for the second song that Drew and Kowalewicz perform all the way through, giving proof, if any were needed, of why their music careers have been so successful.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Ben Kowalewicz and Kevin Drew; Graham Cuthbertson, Kevin Drew, Ben Kowalewicz, and Maurice Dean Wint. ©2017 Dahlia Katz.
For tickets, visit www.crowstheatre.com.
2017-11-25
A&R Angels