The Plank Panel encounter The Beekeepers

The Beekeepers do some decorating, photo: safe solvent

The Panel:
Alison Broverman is a playwright and arts reporter. She has a bee block in her backyard.
Andrew Lamb is a Toronto-based director. You should go see In Darfur, the play he has directed for the Summerworks Festival.
Daniel Krolik is an actor and man about town.

The Show:
The Beekeepers, an apocalyptic two-hander about bees and freezing to death by Jeremy Taylor.

Alison: Bees! I'm going to betray my bias here - I think bees are fascinating and I'm a sucker for anything with bees in the title, including that dreadful Jerry Seinfeld cartoon film from last fall. So, The Beekeepers was pretty high on my SummerWorks list from the title alone. It's one of the many apocalypse-themed shows in this year's festival and it's the second show in a row I saw performed in spooky whiteface! It's got zeitgeist written all over it! (I have no idea what that means.)  Now, the show has this sort of self-consciously stilted and absurdist tone that I initially found a little off-putting but it grew on me and by the end I was completely engaged. And I have to admit that for the first 20 minutes I was watching the real-time clock that was in the middle of the stage and I panicked a little once I realized it had stopped.

Andrew: You say stilted and absurdist tone, so allow me to bring everyone up to speed. As you walk into the space the two characters are already on stage suspended in time. Wendy has a phone hanging from her neck, Bert has a thermometer hanging from his and they are both in their pyjamas. She is standing behind a picture frame and he is standing behind his hive of bees. It is sometime in the not-to-distant future where there are record highs and lows of temperatures that are causing "accelerated urban decay". I must say that my favourite part was the bee burial with a humming hymn. As for the clock, you know if you put a working clock on stage people are going to be watching it.

Daniel: Like both of you, it took a little while for Beekeepers to sink in for me. It's very self-consciously theatrical, in dialogue, performance and staging. But once I got into the groove, I totally surrendered to the strengths of the production and performances. This is possibly the most polished piece of new writing I've seen at this year's SummerWorks thus far. And it has enough morbid humour and unsuspecting surprises too offset the potentially jarring theatricality.

And how much did I love both Christine Armstrong and Andy Trithardt? One of the more infuriating aspects of the Toronto theatre scene is, if you stick around long enough, you feel like you're seeing the same old group of actors in every show in the city - on mainstages, in indie theatre and at Fringe and SummerWorks. And that can often get boring and all kinds of incesty. So for me, the biggest pleasure of Beekeepers was discovering two (at least partially) Toronto based actors, whose work I was not familiar with, totally tear up the stage. Armstrong reminded me of Shelley Duvall circa "The Shining" - in the best possible way. So creepy, so oddly moving, so super-intense. And Trithardt is alternatingly pompous, compassionate, and abusive. Both have great command and presence.

If you're willing to forgive its built-in pretensions (and you really should) Beekeepers is funny, surprising, thoughtful theatre.

Alison: It's true, it is always great to see unfamiliar faces onstage in TO and Armstrong and Trithardt were so compelling before the show even started (especially Armstrong, grimacing through that picture frame. What an opening stage picture!). Armstrong's increasing anguish throughout the play was incredible to watch, and by the last 20 minutes her whiteface makeup no longer looked like a weird theatrical pretension: she actually looked like she was freezing to death. The Beekeepers is one of the most haunting things I've seen onstage in quite some time. It really got under my skin.

Andrew:
One of the other things I liked about this piece was Wendy's constant return to Brenda, her sister and the nephews she doesn't see anymore. The phone calls were haunting and dangerous because there was no cord and the call was completely in the character's head. I can see why the heightened language might be difficult for people to get past, and all the repetition does make you want to ask if all of it is necessary, but as the script says science is the one thing you can depend on. My favourite line came when after a dead bee has been discovered Wendy asks Bert, "Does it feel cold to you?" and he responds, "It is the chill of death".

The Beekeepers; Written and Directed by Jeremy Taylor; Presented by Two-Wheeler Productions; Featuring Christine Armstrong, Andy Trithardt. A part of the 2008 SummerWorks Festival. For more information buzz over here.

By Alison Broverman, Andrew Lamb and Daniel Krolik