THEATRE REVIEW

OCTOBER 2024 | Volume 244

 

I missed this acclaimed show when it first appeared in Vancouver, and I wasn’t able to see the show at the Gateway this time around until mid-run. Although it closes in a couple of days, I want to say a few words about why it is well worth seeing.

It’s a mystery—possibly a murder mystery—and a myth. The title refers to Baba Yaga, a powerful, mysterious witch figure in Slavic mythology. In Kat Sandler’s play, we’re in a college town where a student, Henry Kalles, has gone missing. Henry’s wealthy family has hired a private detective, Charlie Rapp, to investigate the disappearance. Charlie teams up with a local female cop, Detective Carson, who is skeptical that Henry has suffered anything amiss. But Charlie aggressively pursues the idea that an old Slavic woman in the woods, and maybe her daughter and granddaughter, too, may be involved.

Three actors play all 14 roles in Roy Surette’s elegant Touchstone Theatre production. Aidan Correia is both Charlie and Henry; Genevieve Fleming plays Carson as well as Henry’s girlfriend, another girl he was involved with, and a few more roles; and Colleen Wheeler is a very funny bored waitress, a college professor who may be deeply implicated in Henry’s disappearance, and Yaga: witch? crone? magician? or senile old woman?

Sandler’s script is full of clever plot twists and chronological turns, and Surette has the actors shift roles and scenes with admirable fluidity. The acting is very good, especially Wheeler, who wields her dialogue like a scalpel. The script makes strong and sometimes comic feminist arguments for the power and sexuality of older women—a kind of feminist recuperation of the witch figure—and Wheeler revels in the part.

Ryan Cormack designed the spooky-ish forest set and the mobile furniture for various locales, HinaNishioka’s lighting helps set the mood and mark the time shifts, and Rosie Aiken’s costumes allow for the actors’ many quick changes.

Although the complicated plot set-up in act one lost me for a bit, the play’s smart structure, fearless dialogue and simulated violence—not the kind of material I’m used to seeing at the Gateway—make for a stimulating, entertaining evening of grown-up theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

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