Theatre 2022: CanStage - Choir Boy, Little Dickens

Towards the end of 2022, we watched two shows at the theatres owned by the Canadian Stage Company. We always need to take care to check which theatre our shows are playing at, since the Bluma Appel Theatre (on Front St. between Yonge St. and Church St.) and the Berkeley Theatre (near Front Street and Parliament St.) are a good 13 to 15 minutes' walk apart.  Showing up at the wrong theatre would not be an easy mistake to recover from.

Choir Boy is a play first performed in 2012 in London, England and then on Broadway in 2018.  It is a coming-of-age story revolving around five members of a prominent gospel choir at a prestigious all-black school for boys. Pharus, the self-proclaimed best singer and leader of the choir is an effeminate, gay senior whose brash and sassy façade hides a hurt and vulnerable young man who has battled homophobic slurs ever since he was a child.  Bobby, the headmaster’s nephew, is Pharus’ rival for the choir lead, and never misses an opportunity to harass and denigrate his nemesis.  But Pharus finds refuge in the “healing power of music” and takes solace in his belief in his own talent amidst the pressures to conform to social norms.  He is not afraid to push buttons to promote his own ambitious agenda, even when it invokes jealousy and pushback from others like Bobby.

The other members of the choir include “Junior”, who is Bobby’s sidekick and acts as comic relief, David, who intends to become a priest but struggles with his own demons as well as with issues trying to please a strict father, and Anthony, Pharus’ athletic and self-confident roommate, who is generous and accepting of Pharus’ queerness, in strict contrast to Bobby’s reactions.  In the current cast of this show, each of the five choir boys is a well-defined character with very distinctive personality traits and even physical appearance.  It is interesting to note that in an original 2013 staging of the show for Manhattan Theatre Club, there were more boys in the cast. Based on what I saw in Youtube clips, the extra boys were more backup singers and dancers for the musical numbers as opposed to additional characters who contributed to the plot.  I like that the current version of the show focuses on just the five main characters, as I would have found the extra ones to be distracting.

Integrated between dramatic discussions and arguments about identity, ambition, privilege, racism, slavery, and homophobia are beautiful performances of spiritual hymns, sung a capella by the choir in perfect harmony. The only song that sounded familiar to me was “Motherless Child”, and only because John Legend released a jazzy, pop version of it. In Choir Boy, this haunting slave song that laments being taken “a long, long way from home” is sung by the boys while they are in the showers of their dormitory.  In a feat of superb staging, the boys are shown seemingly nude, each behind a frosted shower door, with actual water coming out of the faucets and a horizontal strip of tiles strategically obscuring their private regions. Both symbolically and physically stripped naked of their defenses, this powerful song conveys an extra sense of vulnerability, sorrow and suffering.  This setting plays an important role in a climactic scene towards the end of the show.  This is a deep and thought-provoking play, made even more special by the glorious, soulful choral singing.

We have wanted to watch a marionette show by the renowned Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett for quite some time now.  We finally got our wish with Little Dickens, a raunchy re-telling of The Christmas Carol which comes with the warning that children under age 16 will not be admitted! 

For over 40 years, Burkett has been designing and building his intricate marionettes, as well as writing and performing his own shows that are designated for “adults only”.  Burkett provides all the speaking and singing voices and controls the marionettes while in plain sight, hovering above the “puppet stage” on “the bridge”.  We had the perfect seats to watch Little Dickens, in the centre of the third row from the stage.  We could clearly see Burkett's spread-out fingers manipulating the strings of up to two marionettes at a time. More puppets could be on stage but the ones he was not actively moving were hung loosely from stands protruding from the bridge. It was amazing to watch his dexterity as he could make the head, limbs and occasionally even props move separately or simultaneously, all while providing dialogue for the puppets that propelled the storyline.  It was incredible to witness the energy and stamina that he exerted in singlehandedly carrying on the show for almost two hours without intermission.

Recipient of many awards and honours including the Order of Canada, Ronnie Burkett became fascinated with puppets at an early age.  He was inspired by the puppet show in classic 1965 movie musical The Sound of Music and idolized Bill Baird, the puppeteer behind that iconic scene.  Ronnie confessed in an interview for the Theatre Museum Canada that as a child, he had written to Baird several times offering to move in with him in order to learn from him.  Baird never responded. Burkett laughed ruefully and said that if some random kid wrote to him today offering to come live with him, he would not respond either!  Ronnie eventually did get to perform in New York with Baird’s puppet theatre company.

Earlier in his career, Burkett would write shows with fixed scripts and plots while creating the puppets that would animate each story.  In 2013, he came up with a new concept called “The Daisy Theatre” which involved a set up over 50 marionettes who would perform a show that included vaudeville, burlesque and cabaret acts, but was largely improvised and included audience participation.  Each performance would be different and partially dictated by the reactions of the crowd.

Little Dickens combined his two concepts, using the basic outline of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but casting his Daisy Theatre puppets to play the main characters of the classic tale, as well as some periphery roles that went beyond the well-known story. To set the tone, the first scene of the show featured a mainstay marionette act of the Daisy Theatre. The sultry striptease artist Dolly Wiggler performed a burlesque act while singing the highly sexually suggestive song “Santa Got Stuck in my Chimney”.  As she strutted back and forth across the stage, she would peel off another layer of clothing until she was down to her underwear and pasties. Getting on with the Christmas Carol storyline, another stock puppet character, Esme Massengill, the selfish, self-aggrandizing has-been actress, took on the role of Scrooge.  Other members of the Daisy Theatre entourage played roles such as the alms collectors, Bob Cratchit and the ghosts of Christmas past and present.  Other than Esme, the star of Little Dickens is also the star of the Daisy Theatre.  It is Schnitzel, the tiny elfin fairy-child, playing the role of Tiny Tim complete with a limp and a crutch.  Burkett’s skill was on full display as he manipulated the marionette across the stage, working the arms, legs and crutch with perfect timing.

Supplementing the characters from the main story were various vaudeville acts including a ventriloquist, a Frank Sinatra impersonator, a song by grandmotherly, small-town Alberta redneck Edna Rural dressed up as a Christmas Tree, and even a comedy schtick by no other than Jesus!  There are no boundaries that Burkett does not dare cross! Interlaced between the dialogue are curse words and lewd jokes such as listing all the Christmas carols with the words “come” in the lyrics (All Come all Ye Faithful, Here Comes Santa Claus, Baby Please Come Home for Christmas …).  “I could go on all night”, Burkett quips.

As is common in the Daisy Theatre, there was scenes requiring audience participation. One woman sitting on the front row was asked to come on stage to wind the box that would make a series of “orchestra puppets” pop up and play the background music to Jingle Bells while the rest of the crowd was encouraged to loudly sing along.  In that same skit, a socialite puppet waxed poetically about her shirtless pool-boy Ray. A man on the aisle was persuaded to come on stage to play the part of Ray while wearing a Santa hat and jingling sleigh bells.  Burkett teasingly instructed him to take his sweater off to properly play the role and incredibly, he did (probably to the horror of his wife!).  Being a great sport, this man pranced around shirtless, ringing his bells while we continued to lustily sing the last verses of Jingle Bells.  Afterwards, I leaned over to my husband Rich and whispered, “This is why you never sit in accessible seats and never make eye contact to avoid being picked”.  In another scene, a witch puppet tried to take on the part of one of the Christmas Carol ghosts and was told that the audience would not go for this and would swear at her.  Then en masse, the audience was instructed to yell “F***-you Debbie” at the puppet.  This was probably a common routine of the Daisy Theatre improv shows but it was not clear if our crowd would participate.  When the time came, our entire group yelled out the curse and then roared with laughter as the puppet slunk back off stage.  Another man came on stage to flip lyric cards that prompted us to sing along to the carol "Deck the Halls".  Burkett feigned disappointment when this new volunteer declined to take off his shirt.  After his stint, Ronnie asked the man's wife to come up to play the non-speaking role of the Ghost of Christmas Future, giving her a black robe and a skeletal arm as props. Her job was to point "over here" and "over there" based on verbal cues from Esme, but being sure not to block the puppet with her arm.

Attending and participating in this show in English pantomime style was so much fun and such a unique experience.  After the initial fascination in watching Burkett manipulate the puppets, you eventually get immersed in the show and just watch the marionettes as they act out the story. For most of the show, the action was fast-paced and joyful and hilarious. It was a good thing that we picked a show that was at least partially based on a well-known story like A Christmas Carol, since it gave us some familiarity and structure to follow as we took in the rest of the craziness that accompanied it.

The only part that didn’t work that well for me was the finale where the Christmas Carol part of the story was wrapped up too quickly and unsatisfactorily and then the show slowed right down to try to deliver an “emotional” ending. Schnitzel delivered a speech thanking the audience and then was joined by Esme and Edna to sing a final inspirational song. The ending zapped the energy out of the show and felt like a bit of a letdown to me after everything that came before.  Still, overall I loved the puppetry and would like to see another Ronnie Burkett production.