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Perhaps the unencumbered (and undraped) free spirit that dwells on Wreck Beach just can't make it across all that unforgiving granite to the chilly white wastes of Alberta.
Whatever is it, instead of enveloping us in the freedom and innocence of what we are told is a West Coast Eden, Wreck Beach - the musical play - drifts in like a Pacific mist and floats away leaving little behind.
Wreck Beach is a Vancouver shoreline where clothes and conventional attitudes are optional.
On a dark August night in 1993, a 20-year-old beer vendor was raped and murdered on the bluff overlooking the beach. Playwright/composer David Rhymer, who had seen the woman that day on the beach, was profoundly affected.
A couple of years ago, he strung together a collection of songs, vignettes and poems for directors Sandhano Schultze (Edmonton's Northern Light Theatre) and Wayne Specht (Vancouver's Axis Theatre).
Unfortunately, Wreck Beach doesn't seem to have progressed much beyond that point.
I'm not sure at what level we are to access the work. It's too sketchy to engage us dramatically. Each of the participants seems to be assigned one characteristic - the innocent, the down-and-dirty dope seller, the mystic, the free spirit -- and that's as far as they develop.
Is this a poetic evocation of a time when life was simpler, a metaphor for the fall of Man, a philosophical meditation on the evil that men do, a ghost story with metaphysical pretensions or a collection of interesting West Coast eccentrics?
It has bits and pieces of all of the above but fulfils none in a satisfactory manner.
The co-directors have assembled an ingratiating cast. Sara May Redmond has a lovely voice and a strong presence. Steve Pirot (last seem here as the menacing serial killer in the Citadels' Popcorn) snarls convincingly as the hate-filled beach rat who squeezes out a living selling dope. Kim Tuson is a compelling dancer and mounted such a spirited rationale for nudity that I'm surprised the audience didn't rise as one and doff their clothes.
The work swirls around Cailin Stadnyk as the murdered girl and her ghost. Stadnyk projects a haunting youth and vulnerability. Her journey to shake free of her inhibitions comes the closest that anything in this unfocused work does to actually reach out and involve us.
But not even this appealing performer can locate a beating heart in this chaotic tumble.
Wreck Beach, a co-production of Axis and Northern Light Theatres, runs through April 9 at La Cite Francophone.