 |
 |
CALGARY - Realwheels' production of Skydive, currently running at Theatre Calgary, is proof positive that when imaginations soar, theatre knows no bounds.
The play opens with actors James Saunders and Bob Frazer spinning, diving, looping and rolling through the air with unbridled exuberance to match the pulsating rock music that guides their antics.
Saunders and Frazer are attached to giant machinery called ES Dance Instruments created by Sven Johansson and operated by technicians Jethelo Cabilete, Christopher Frary, Shane Snow and Lee Vincent.
For most of the play's 90-minute running time, Adrian Muir's dynamic lighting and Johansson's ingenious choreography hide the machines.
When they and directors Roy Surette and Stephen Drover allow the machines and operators to be glimpsed, it's to add even more humour to this rollicking story of a pair of brothers trying to understand the conflicts that have made them strangers.
Skydive may be a story about coming to terms with demons and death, but it's as boyuant as its actors because Kevin Kerr's script refuses to be morbid or maudlin.
|
In this tale of odd-couple siblings, Saunders is essentially the straight man who sets Frazer up for some hilarious punch lines and even funnier antics, including impersonations of Angelina Jolie in a blonde wig and Jennifer Beals from Flashdance.
Not to be upstaged, Saunders goes outrageous with his lip sync version of Madonna's Like a Prayer though he tends to be the play's moralizer.
Skydive demands to be seen because it is theatre that glories in creativity from its audacious concept to its gravity-defying execution.