New incarnation of Robin Hood ‘engaging and spectacular’
Wrapping up a superlative season at the Citadel, Artistic Director Daryl Cloran decided to go out on a high. Like, really high. Three stories high.
Back at the beginning of the year, as new Artistic Director, he was getting to know various players on our theatrical scene. One he contacted was Mieko Ouchi – the award-winning playwright/filmmaker/educator. The two confessed to a love of classical children’s literature such as Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island.
Robin Hood, of course, came up. But, the times they are a’changin’ and, not wanting to mount just a new version of a hoary old tale, they began to forge off in all directions. How about Sir Robin of Locksley as a woman? Why stop there – how about a woman with a wooden leg? Edmonton just happens to have Kristi Hansen, a multi-talented singer, dancer-actress who fits that bill right here. The new bandit of Sherwood Forest is now known as Maid Bina Fitzooth.
Merry Men? Not on your Lincoln green cross-stitch leggings – not in this day of empowerment and ethnic celebration. To followers of the legend, most of Robin’s band (Will Scarlett/Little John/Much, the Miller’s son) will be recognizable but then turn out to be various sexes, sizes and colours – a female Japanese Ninja warrior, a pugnacious kid, an inventor, a bard and the aforementioned one-legged maiden.
If nothing else, the past season at the Citadel proved the protean Cloran to be a director who relished movement and dance in his productions (Ubuntu!). Now, if they were to stage the final show in the Maclab theatre with its thrust stage, and fill it with movement and sword fights and archery contests and rousing battles between the Outlaws and the Normans, there was all that space above the stage he had to fill with something.
No one fills space above a stage better than Annie Dugan, an expert in combining circus arts with theatrical narrative and whose graduates from her Edmonton theatre and circus school, Firefly, have gone on to perform amazing feats high in the air for such organizations as Cirque du Soleil. Annie just happened to have a couple of working local actors (Stephanie Wolfe/Kevin Ouellet) who had been studying in her aerial academy.
Then, for spectacle, why not add in the participants in the Citadel/Banff School Professional Theatre Program? Send them off to Banff to brush up on their sword fighting and derring-do and then send them aloft. Sword fighting in 3 dimensions – what a concept.
The production demanded music. During the early stages when the subject was brought up someone would observe, “What we need is someone like Hawksley Workman.” Workman is the two-time Juno Award-winning infant-terrible of Canadian rock who combines a poetic, dramatic element to his concerts. So, Cloran phoned him and the result is six Workman songs to grace the production.
The whole theatrical mosaic, now called The Silver Arrow, opened this week at the Citadel. (Robin Hood fans may remember that Robin, a famed archer, won a golden arrow in a contest. Since the Citadel’s exhaustive research has discovered that the 600-year-old Briton was a woman – the prize is now a silver arrow.)
Designer Drew Facey has decided to give the production a steampunk setting. He creates a nice, workable set with lots of levels and areas where action can be staged and is eye-catching with its huge ratchets, cogs, and wheels. There’s a fringe of green around the bottom and some trees that handily become Sherwood Forest.
The plot is a puzzler to figure out (and includes some dramatic sidebars and a long explanation of warring medieval martial arts organizations) but generally follows the age-old story. Prince John has declared himself to be King now that his brother, Richard the Lionheart, is off on the crusades. John (Victor Dolhai) a snavely, oily usurper if ever there was one, rules with an iron hand squeezing tribute from the poor locals. In this, he is aided by the very hissable Sheriff of Nottingham (the very hissable Jesse Gervais). Later a deadly hitman is introduced, Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Michael Dufays), who is tasked with unmasking Robin at the tournament, then dispatching him. And so, the jolly men (and women) of the forest who rise to “rob from the rich and give to the poor” are born out of discontent.
There is a moment early in the first half when two performers mount a trapeze and perform a very graceful pas de deux which was the high point of the aerial work. Under Dugan’s direction, the company works hard and successfully to make all their efforts with silks and ropes aloft, seem effortless and dazzling. Maid Marian is played by a most winsome aerialist/actor Katelyn McCulloch. The Citadel found her, in silks, playing an aerial version of Ben Gunn in a recent production of Treasure Island at Stratford. Her work, meters off the surface of the stage, is impressive. Camila Diaz-Varela, standing in for the traditional minstrel, Alan-A-dale, spins the tale of Robin Hood with a lovely voice while strumming an expressive stringed instrument.
Much is made of Hansen’s one leg – indeed she performs the first part of the show without a prosthetic. This gives the production a good moment when she first straps the mechanical wonder on and it is transformational, in the way that Spidey’s radioactive spider changed his life. She’s a forceful performer, wearing the mantle of the emancipated woman with dignity and flourish, and we cheer her on.
Hawksley Workman’s songs are lyrical and quite lovely – but they seem somewhat the same and a long way from the visceral appeal of his rock work.
The earnest final result sometimes flies and sometimes is resolutely earthbound. Often it is engaging and spectacular – at others needlessly complex while exhibiting the playwright’s roots in children’s theatre.
The Silver Arrow: The Untold Story of Robin Hood frolics in the Maclab Theatre of the Citadel through May 13. Purchase tickets HERE.
Photos by David Cooper
