Directed by Eileen Sproule. Written by Kristine Nutting. Starring Molly Flood, Jesse Gervais, Kristine Nutting, Kate Boorman. Chez Pierre Nite Club (10040-105 St.).
I hope I don’t sound like a prude, but I felt a bit anxious and uncertain going into Pig, the self-described “backdoor peepshow” by local writer/performer Kristine Nutting.
I’d never seen a burlesque cabaret before, and the poster’s description of the show as a “rock musical replete with pigs, peeps, and religious perversion” seemed like a sure sign that the show would be miles away from the wholesome plays taking place on the other side of the city at the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Hawrelak Park.
Pig, you see, was being performed in the basement of Chez Pierre, Edmonton’s first (and probably sleaziest) strip club. By the end of the show, however, after my sides had recovered from the strain of constant laughter, I had learned one very important lesson: don’t judge a peepshow by its Bible.
After informing you through song that Pig is the “best peep show you’ll ever see,” the show introduces us to Harry P. Cojck (the “j” is silent), a peepshow manager who searches for new performers by posing as a door-to-door Bible salesman. He plays on the insecurities of God-fearing, motherless young girls like Saskatchewan, our naïve protagonist, whose mother left her to become famous. Harry promises to deliver Saskatchewan from her lustful sins if she attends the tent-prayer meetings that take place on the farm owned by a glamourous female evangelist named Eve. Soon, Eve and Harry are grooming Saskatchewan for peepshow stardom—whereupon she discovers a troubling truth about Eve and her farm.
The show’s troubling truth is that its story is thinner than an ultra-slim condom; but while the plot is fairly flaccid, its humour and comic timing are throbbing with hilarity. The jokes include everything from obvious dick jokes to not-so-obvious dick jokes, plenty of religious humour, and a consistent distaste for the prairies. Each character has their own unique quirks, and all of the actors make the most of them—Nutting herself plays Grinder, a homicidal Russian lesbian. My personal favourite, however, has to be the shiksa-loving Jewish peepshow performer, played by Caitlin Fulton, who becomes aroused by non-kosher meat. The humour is pretty obvious and undeniably childish, but it’s bound to appeal to... well, the type of person who’d go to a musical peepshow in the basement of Chez Pierre.
That’s not to say that the show’s exaggerated characterizations completely work. Eve’s role as a glamour-obsessed evangelist, for example, comes off a bit like a rejected Zoolander character idea, and where the final moments attempt to be repulsive, they instead come off as hilarious, like a campy B-grade horror flick. Some of the satire isn’t really all that poignant, either, and the barbs Nutting directs at the hypocrisies of religious leaders have all been said before.
That’s not to say Pig isn’t entertaining. I got a kick out of most of it, and I even found myself reflecting on what kinds of things I find truly repellent. Is it the best peepshow I’ll ever see? Perhaps not, but it’s definitely one I’ll be laughing about for a long while to come.
