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Crawford kills

What a week for Gavin Crawford. Days before winning his second Dora Award for his beautifully observed turn in Sky Gilbert’s play A Few Brittle Leaves, the versatile performer wrapped up a two-night run of his new solo show, part of Buddies in Bad Times’ Pride month programming.

Sh**ting Rainbows was one of the funniest and smartest shows we’ve seen this or any other year.

Crawford and director/co-writer Kyle Tingley sent up lots of queer-related topics, and were so timely they even integrated a series of digs at Rufus Wainwright (in a reprise of his infamous impression) and his husband, Jorn Weisbrodt, into the show to coincide with the Luminato Festival, which of course Weisbrodt now helms. With a nasally condescension that was palpable, a bored-to-be-in-Toronto Crawford’s Wainwright crooned a song called Luminato to the melody of his daughter’s grandfather’s song, Hallelujah. Genius.

There was a more gentle humour at play in his opening bit, a sweet look at a gay Revenue Canada worker’s botched Botox job that has left him with a face so disfigured he ends up talking like Cher and hence doing a half-assed Cher interpretation (complete with go-go boys).

Crawford’s characters are always carefully detailed, their pronouncements full of subtext. That was especially true of his Danish captain, who performs a marriage ceremony for two shirtless men on a gay cruise (played by those same go-go boys).

In one of his famous accents, Crawford’s captain says, “We all know that first time love never fades,” his cynical tone suggesting otherwise.

Celebrity impersonations included a routine about Hugh Jackman professing his straightness too much in the song I’m Not Gay (to the tune of Les Misérables’ Bring Him Home). And Crawford nailed each character from the series Downton Abbey to the melody from Petula Clark’s Downtown.

The strongest bits, however, concerned politics. His video Pride message from Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne – now on YouTube – was satire worthy of his days on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

And he deserves a special Dora for his take on Rob Ford as Lord Of The Rings’ conflicted Gollum, with the creature’s “precious” of course being a crack pipe, and the mayor’s musings on gays, Olivia Chow and a future election getting non-stop laughs.

Crawford takes a version of the show to Just For Laughs in July and the Edinburgh Festival in August. Look for an airing of his CBC pilot Wild West on July 6. And he’s just been announced as a special guest at the Yuk Yuk’s Laugh Out Proud night on Saturday (June 29) at 8 pm. See Comedy Listings.

Brilliant Bennett

Since we don’t see the work of British writer Alan Bennett often enough, it’s a shame that a double bill including one of his plays only ran five days, closing June 23.

The production also offered a chance to see some talented women in action.

Elaine May’s The Way Of All Fish and Bennett’s Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, presented by Kourage Theatre, Cric Crac Collective and Crazy Folk Productions, explore characters with different senses of their own power.

In Fish, directed by Dian Marie Bridge, high-powered executive Ms Asquith and her secretary, Miss Riverton (Elva Mai Hoover and Tracy Rankin – and those titles help define the characters) find themselves spending an unexpected evening together over a few bottles of wine.

The boss is just that, bossy, and initially her secretary, who so much wants to be an assistant instead, is a mousy extension of her employer. But May’s theme is shifting power relations, and the two are soon jockeying for supremacy. Along the way we discover that Riverton’s ambition is to be famous she thinks killing someone famous is the way to win renown.

There’s occasional subtlety here, but May’s writing lacks depth. She has Asquith open up to her employee way too early, even before the two begin drinking, and Riverton is largely two-dimensional.

Hoover is memorable as the condescending Asquith, indifferent to the feelings and the attitudes of those around her but able at times to show some heart.

There’s much more to work with in Bennett’s play, one of the series of TV monologues Talking Heads. Miss Fozzard (Nonnie Griffin) is an older single woman living with her brother, who’s had a stroke and requires constant attention. Apart from her work in a department store, which gives her some social time with and connections to others, her main pleasure is visiting her chiropodist.

At the start of the show, she’s just learned that her doctor is moving away, leaving her in the hands of another man, Mr. Dunderdale, to whom she must warm. Turns out that handling feet is more than his job – it’s his fetish, a fact that Miss Fozzard doesn’t grasp until later in the show.

In fact, she’s oblivious to the subtext in most of the conversations going on around her, both at home and at work. Bennett’s portrait of Miss Fozzard blends gentle humour and humanity, and though Terry Tweed’s direction can be slow, she and Griffin give a warm glow to the character’s growth from passive innocent to someone who knows, at some level, how much power she really has.

Griffin provides a number of voices for the various characters – the bassoon-like Mr. Dunderdale is a treat – and she knows just how to balance the end of the show, giving full ironic meaning to the phrase “payment for services rendered” and revealing that Miss Fozzard is no longer as naive as she was at the start.

New spice at Soulpepper

The new members of the Soulpepper Academy come from across the country and across the range of theatre artists, including people both onstage and behind the scenes.

The two-year program brings together 16 people, the largest number ever, who will be mentored by members of the Soulpepper team and also work in the company’s arts education and youth outreach arms. And of course, they’ll present their own shows and also be integrated into other Soulpepper productions.

Half of the Academy members are actors: Mikaela Davies, Peter Fernandes, Katherine Gauthier, Hailey Gillis, Gordon Hecht, Richard Lam, Oyin Oladejo (who won a performance Dora on Monday for In This World) and Colin Christopher Palangio.

The other eight are working in directing (Erin Brandenburg and Frank Cox-O’Connell), design (Anahita Debonehie and Shannon Lea Doyle), playwriting (Anthony MacMahon and Thomas McKechnie) and producing (Kelly Read and Jordana Weiss).

Look for exciting things from these people, especially now that they’ve been given the opportunity to work with Soulpepper.

stage@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi

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