Don Juan: A Simple Tale
Living in Calgary at the turn of the millennium brought me few artistic pleasures: the "Calgary Folk Festival":http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/users/folder.asp, "One Yellow Rabbit":http://www.oyr.org/, and the "Old Trout Puppet Workshop":http://www.theoldtrouts.org/. As a globe-trotting arts lover, I felt wretchedly misplaced amongst the stripmall shopping, suburban-dwelling oil profiteers in the Texas of Canada. I clung dearly to the few cultural niches I discovered, and the Old Trouts were one of those nuggets that kept me going until I finished my degree and fled to Vancouver.
As it turns out, Albertan artists have since been making an increasingly larger splash in the national arts scene. This is with thanks, no doubt, to the ever-increasing support of the "Alberta Foundation for the Arts":http://www.affta.ab.ca/index.shtml, which last year gave a whopping $36 million to artists living in the province (take that, BC Liberals!). Feist, the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Catalyst Theatre, Corb Lund, Ronnie Burkett (Ok, he lives in Ontario now, but he’s still counted as “one of them”) are among Alberta’s considerable heavyweights in the national milieu.
The Trouts in particular have garnered considerable accolades in the past couple of years, thanks to their wildly successful touring production of Famous Puppet Death Scenes , which, during two appearances in Vancouver, enjoyed mostly sold out runs. The production encapsulated all that is wonderful about the Trouts: namely, their Edward Gorey-esque aesthetic, incredible creativity, and complete mastery of the puppet form. Following this act with a new show must have been an onerous task. As an audience member I was certainly wary of their ability to top it.
Onwards now to this latest production, The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan. As mentioned in Kevin Brooker’s article in Calgary’s "Swerve Magazine":http://www.theoldtrouts.org/pages/kevin_brooker.html, while creating Don Juan the Trouts sequestered themselves in Mexico for months, drinking mescal and tinkering with ideas and forms until a play developed. The result of this months-long journey is an eighty-minute piece that captures the hallmark Trout style and creativity, but sadly does not strongly follow through with a convincing or engaging story.
We first meet Don Juan in Hell, where he is living the rest of eternity due to his wanton, hedonistic life and constant quest for sexual gratification. His colossal cock trapped in metal casing, a significant proboscis to match (you know what they say about men with large noses, don’t you?), and a sheathed rose by his side, the Don is wonderfully portrayed by Peter Balkwill (co-founder of the Trouts).
To repent for his sins, the Don is made to play out his life for us in order to show the error of his immoral ways. To keep him in check and assist in his production is the large, simple-minded, bearded Devil in furry pants (Pityu Kenderes), and the feisty (but cute!) Demonic Minions (Jackson Andrews and Anne Lalancette) in bulbous shorts and horned, leather skull-caps.
We quickly discover the Don has no intention of repenting; instead, the play he is about to present is to convince us of the wonders of polyamory. The Don’s story unfolds to reveal he was abandoned as a baby and left to be raised by dogs. When the Don reaches a point in his life where he is attracted to the opposite sex — a scene wonderfully portrayed by females swooshing about with framed faces for heads, cooing enticingly —he discovers that women, and sex in particular, enable him to fill a profound, existential loneliness that resides deep within him...if only temporarily.
He marries his first love, the floating, angelic head of Maria Dolores, after a bull-fighting scene that is at first amusing, but drags on too long. Indeed, a few segments of Don Juan seemed too short on substance to fill the musical pieces composed by George Fenwick. Although the use of music throughout the show was intriguing and, for the most part, supportive, it occasionally caused scenes to stagnate as they struggled to fill the time.
Although the Don discovers the dizzying heights of sexual release with his new wife, he soon begins to feel the anguish of his unrelenting loneliness and betrays her shortly thereafter with the passionate Eva Fernandez, a remarkable character made up of floating arms, legs, tits and a head. This fantastic, vibrant character dances around the stage with a swagger that can only be described as part Carmen Miranda, part Alien. Soon after, the Don himself is betrayed by his new love.
Combined with the guilt of leaving his wife, grief takes its toll on the Don. He then discovers that his father was a raging bull and he further ponders his own beastly actions. This leads to a rather quickly reached conclusion that the solution to all his troubles — to all of everybody’s troubles— is love. Love, and sex, will conquer all - the more the better.
And that’s it. That’s the profound conclusion. Non-monogamy is great. The end.
In what could be a complex tale, it’s a simplistic solution with little depth, and, in my humble opinion, a story lacking complexity does little to create a truly gratifying piece of theatre. The Trouts put obvious efforts into their puppets and the set to create a sinister, Catholic-inspired, bleak aesthetic but brusquely gloss over the darker overtones of the Don Juan story for this naïve portrayal of non-monogamy.
Ok, I know – it’s a puppet show. I should get over myself, right? But isn’t that why we’ve all come to love puppet artists like the Old Trout Puppet Workshop and Ronnie Burkett – because they make it so much more than “just a puppet show”?
Don’t get me wrong; overall, The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan is a noteworthy production that is well worth attending. The Trouts continue here with their characteristic brand of imaginative puppetry. Raging bulls on tricycles! Live puppet sex scenes!! The Devil in furry pants!!! How could I resist? I just wish the story was there to back up the visuals.
__The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan plays until May 9 at Performance Works in Vancouver. It is presented by the Cultch. Created by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop: Peter Balkwill, Pityu Kenderes, and Judd Palmer. In collaboration with Mercedes Bátiz-Benét (writing and Mexico Liaison), George Fenwick (music), Jen Gareau (puppet costumes) and Vanessa Porteous (directing). Performed by Peter Balkwill (The Ghost of Don Juan), Pityu Kenderes (the Devil), Jackson Andrews (Demonic Minion) and Anne Lalancette (Demonic Minion)__