Nicole Piotrkowski

Confessions Of A Million Shopaholics | Jesse Gervais and Molly Flood keep the Megalopolis economy afloat in Hello, Hello.

HELLO, HELLO
Directed by Kevin Sutley. Written by Karen Hines. Starring Beth Graham, Nathan Cuckow, Molly Flood, Jesse Gervais. Roxy Theatre (10708-124 St). To Feb 21. Tickets available through the Roxy box office (453-2440).
***1/2

Some interesting messages from the world according to Karen Hines — playwright, actor, horror clown impresario, and author of Kill Your Television’s newest production, Hello, Hello:

“Trust me, doubt yourself.”

“Jangling rings ensure the will to keep on breathing.”

“Just give your flesh to me and I’ll adorn it expertly.”

And who can forget the life-affirming celebration of conception, the song “When a Rabbit Dies”? Complete with big, fat jazz hands and Broadway-style choreography.

Hello, Hello is one of the strangest, most challenging, and disarmingly charming scripts in the contemporary Canadian theatre canon and Kill Your Television beautifully walks the line between pathos and satire, horror and humour.

Fans of Karen Hines, one of the wonderfully twisted brains behind the popular horror clowns Mump and Smoot, will recognize familiar themes of innocence and loss, love and friendship, death and the choice to keep living. Hello, Hello is a terrific send-up of our consumerist culture, set in a world where temperatures fluctuate by 45 degrees in a single day, advertising campaigns dominate the landscape and the pursuit of life in the city (and everything that life entails in Megalopolis or Semi-Residentia) takes precedence over family, friends, and artistic expression.

The play is intended to be satirical. The satire, however, hits close to home — particularly as it addresses earth changes and the related urban drive for consumption. Megalopolis isn’t far off from Edmonton, with our giant malls and unstable climate, both meteorological and economical. This is the true power of satire, to show us our world in the constructed world of the stage and then clearly demonstrate what needs to be done to keep that world in the theatre and far away from our real lives.

Hello, Hello shines a bright light on the current vagaries of our spend-ready culture and points out the absurdity of our desire for yet another piece of jewelry or technology. The cast is wonderful, headed by Beth Graham as Cassandra, the last artist on earth, and Nathan Cuckow as Ben, a singing, dancing advertising executive. Jesse Gervais and Molly Flood narrate the show and play more than 50 characters each, all of whom are consumers and the consumed.

In stark opposition to the luxury-driven aesthetic of the script is the glorious, simple, white-walled set, designed by April Viczko, who also designed the costumes and lights, and deserves a Sterling for her lighting, as it’s the best I’ve seen in Edmonton theatre in years. Hines has joked about the simplicity of the production demands for this piece: sets and props are expensive, she says, and so hardly uses any. “But words are cheap, so I wrote a lot of them.”

The play is wordy. Maybe too wordy. Even the songs would give Stephen Sondheim a run for his money, and perhaps one more edit would have given the play more shape. It is, however, a most enjoyable performance and the messages behind the words are definitely worth listening to.

And heaven forbid, they may even make us think. On the way to the mall, that is.