Liars at a Funeral

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – Liars at a Funeral

Playwright – Sophia Fabiilli

Production Company/Theatre space – (professional) Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Commons

Length – 2 ACT (2 hours and 25 minutes, one intermission.)

Genre/s – Comedy/farce

Premise – In order to heal family rifts the matriarch decides to fake her funeral so that her family will wish they had a second chance and indeed they do.

Why this play? Why now? – It’s always good planning to end the season with a laugh and a strong show, because you want to entice season ticket holders to renew and new audience members to subscribe - which I’m confident they will.

Curiosities – I wondered if Tyrell Crews will ever leave Calgary to be on bigger stages? Crews, who plays a partial beard, has a partial beard – a choice or am I reading too much into that?  

Notable Moment – The “ghost” scenes are fun.

Notable writing –The trick of having people play different characters and twins is as old as Shakespeare and still works. Sophia Fabiilli, known as Ms Fab, is certainly that. The script is well written with a fun premise. Farce is the second hardest genre to write; it has to be musical in its beats, and it is quite a feat to pull off the intricacies in a fresh way. Fabiilli’s denouement may be too long; it shifts the genre imperceptibly with shades of drama and flits on to more serious topics like cancer and alcoholism.

Notable performances – Helen Knight, who was so fabulous in Theatre Calgary’s Meteor Shower, showers us with her comic talents once again. There is a reason Tyrell Crews gets cast as the lead at TC to a lead at ATP; he is one of our finest actors.  Crews understands that acting is about listening and reacting rather than acting. Maureen Thomas, who has been in 100 productions over the past 50 years, is amazing even if she is a little wobbly with lines. Joel David Taylor is a great poster boy for the acting program at the U of A and why it is one of the best in Canada.

Notable design/Production – Abbie Brokenshire should come out in the curtain call to take a bow for her quick-change costumes. I’m sure Raynah Bourne is also backstage keeping the wheels running under Laurel Oneil’s stage management - well done women!

Notable direction – Clare Preuss starts things off at quite a high pitch so that it’s hard to build up from that. The characters in farce can’t be too broad or stereotypical and here she is dead good. I didn’t understand the dancing with the chairs bit – was that just an artsy set change? If it was it didn’t fit with the play if it was a metaphor it was lost on me.

One reason to see this show – ATP puts the fun in funeral.