July 2005
Monthly Archive
Vasily the luckless
Posted by squirrley on 31 Jul 2005 | Tagged as: home
Vasily the Luckless started this weekend in Stanley Park. Free, and already 3/4 booked up … I still have the postcard from The Last Stand, another of Boca Del Lupo’s outings in Stanley Park. I stick it up on the fridge whenever I have a fridge of my own to clutter.
The Last Stand was brilliant, possibly the best ‘performance art/outdoor theatre’ show I may ever see. It started on a hillock in Stanley Park, with a huge, over two storey high wooden beam bunk bed, and a squirmy little boy who couldn’t get to sleep. I still remember the boy bounding off up the hill and through some trick (ropes? stilts? it escapes me now) popping up and down out of the treetops as he was squired away into adventure …
The whole show was like that –fantastical, oversized, full of images: strange policeman chasing characters through the forest; a fully costumed couple ballroom dancing over a log; the incredible duet of the spiders, who spun up from a forest floor path to conduct a ballet in wire webs hung from the treetops of ancient douglas firs. Even a character who got caught in a lasso, and hung upside-down struggling for several minutes.
What was best was that the performance it drew on fables, on the archtypes from middle Europe that creep inside the bedtime, childhood selves of any kid who grew up on Hans Christien Anderson or other uncensored fairy stories. And then it played these dark chords out in a fantastical forest, using the ferns and rotting logs and gigantic trees as the perfect set.
I wish I could go see Vasily the Luckless … that would be a perfect birthday!!