Sending a Dove to Noah: a review of Craig’s List Cantata

The exploration of “acquisition and attrition” which was my experience of Craig’s List Cantata, played itself out under lights suspended from the ceiling. A pulley system lifted the lighting-rig as the show began and the scavenged, salvaged, pre-loved, gently-used, antique lamps with their fringed shades hanging soft, laced and beaded, illuminated the stage.

There then ensued so many brilliant turns of phrase, insightful wit and improbable “stuff-for-sale-trade-barter-free-please-tell-me-tell-me-you-did-you-did-see-me!”s, that there is no sense in writing them here. Let this review simply say:

The constant return to the fundamental question: “do you want what I have got” translated with insightful coherence the desire and longing, so much a part of our human experience. It did all this while allowing the hilarious absurdity or poignant certainty of each component listing, render the experience Da-da-esque in the extreme.

I loved it!

…there was fun dance and choreography, with a tight gestural vocabulary. This allowed narrative threads to patch-work-stitch the quilt, providing structure to the experience. The phrases and movements which repeated throughout the piece, eg: the movement signifying Noah tossing a dove every morning, hoping her return would bring with it signs of land, signs of peace, respite from the storm – revealed their potential for meaning-making, increasing the relevance of the over-arching narrative.

With its poignancy and light-hearted humor, together with the “slightly disturbing and/or perverse in a tasty kind of way” flavors, I related resonated resisted retaliated returned….

I may have wanted there to be a bit more attention to gender and race type-casting but even so, who am I to really know who showed up to which audition and what riffed off of what?! Overall, I think that Bill Richardson, Veda Hille and all the players as well as technicians made some amazing choices. Themes were easy to follow, the aesthetic contemporary and engaging (viz: a florid, fluorescent-pink thong awakening the desire for to hear The Thong of Tholomon.)

A testament to Vancouver’s interdisciplinary cultural community, on opening night, Do You Want What I Have Got, A Craig’s List Cantata, deservedly, got a standing ovation. Woot!