Gillian Moon in Heist, Citadel/Grand Theatre co-production. Photo by Nanc Price. Set design by Beyata Hackborn, lighting by Siobhán Sleath, projection and video by Corwin Ferguson, costumes by Jessica Oostergo.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
There’s complicated high-level thievery going on at the Citadel.
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Just for fun, a genre has been lifted, improbably, right from under the nose of the cinema, its natural owner. Heist is a theft on behalf of live big-budget theatre, for your amusement. It comes with the trimmings — a crazily convoluted plot and stop-motion flashbacks to its set-up, a gang of criminal specialists, an appetite for technology, an assortment of double-crosses that might be triples. Ah yes, and a con (or two, or three) with the bends, and the cheeky theatre add-on of speculation designed to make you wonder who’s an actor “acting,” and who’s an actor acting but “real.”
Live theatre stealing from cinema is kind of like running a half-marathon uphill with a broad-sword attached to your ankle, hoping you don’t nick an artery en route. Or so you’d think. Read on.
All-Canadian in its creation and execution, Heist, by the Calgary-based playwright Arun Lakra, is no mere back-alley stickup. Judging by the ingenious, visually lavish Citadel/Grand Theatre co-production directed by Haysam Kadri, it’s more like high-tech graduate studies in shell games, incidentally the lowball street-level fall-back of one of the gang who’s fallen on hard times. What you see (and it’s an eyeful) is not what you see.
Alexander Ariate, Devin MacKinnon, Gillian Moon, Callan McKenna Potter in Heist, Citadel and Grand Theatres. Photo by Nanc Price. Set design by Beyata Hackborn, lighting by Siobhán Sleath, projection and video by Corwin Ferguson, costumes by Jessica Oostergo
As connoisseurs appreciate — Ocean’s Eleven being the industry standard — heists are all about humans exercising their wits against formidable odds, in pursuit of the apparently unattainable. Naturally, this is even more gratifying if the target is morally suspect (i.e. filthy rich and crooked, as opposed to some worthy not-for-profit regional theatre), which gives a Robin Hood lustre to the whole enterprise. But really that’s hardly a necessity. As Marvin (Devin MacKinnon) the gang boss notes, “it’s not the pay-off, it’s the thrill.” And part of that thrill, the ’can they pull it off?’ suspense, is, in this case, the sheer unlikeliness that the heist is live onstage.
A heist is the ultimate test of what the endlessly overused corporate jargon of the age calls “strategic planning” and everyone else calls “planning.” And as Heist begins Marvin, a bluff guy with a shifting Irish accent in MacKinnon’s performance, is assembling a team, member by member, a process that includes, in an assortment of flashbacks that involved either random chance (or is it?) or personal baggage with each other. The goal: to steal a big-ass ruby encased in glass and lasers, and every other kind of sophisticated security.
Priya Narine, Gillian Moon, Alexander Ariate, Devin MacKinnon in Heist, Citadel and Grand Theatres. Photo by Nanc Price
Angie (Gillian Moon, who thinks nothing of conversing upside down from a wire) is the impossibly agile aerialist Angie, the “Mary-Ann,” whose skills are crucial to any jewel heist. Ryan (Callan McKenna Potter) is the “Gilligan,” the handsome but unthreatening guy with the con-person gift of likeability. Kruger (Alexander Ariate) is the “Popeye,” the muscle, crappy at shell games and on a short fuse. He’s a big-mouth blusterer who gets the funniest lines (and Lakra is a witty writer). Fiona (Priya Narine, genuinely amusing) is the “Geek, a be-spectacled awkward IT brainiac with no social skills (and an unlimited data plan), attached permanently to her laptop.
Developments (I’m being vague here on purpose, on your behalf), setbacks, dissension within the ranks, shifting alliances, doubts ensue. Is there perhaps a traitor on Marvin’s team? A second heist is set in motion, the plucking of an even more valuable diamond on a mission even more impossible.
Lakra’s heist plot is elaborately formed and layered; I predict you won’t see developments coming (at least I sure didn’t), until later, and even then…. You have to unspool the scenes in retrospect, in flashbacks — six months, two weeks, two days — that pause the ongoing action.
Anyhow, we meet the second target, the Spider. She’s formidably self-possessed, polished, and possibly lethal, of mysterious mittel-European provenance, the collector of expensive wines. And, as Belinda Cornish’s wonderfully icy performance atop red-high-heeled boots (costume designer Jessica Oostergo) makes clear, not to be trifled with. Scruples? Are you kidding? She even defrauded UNICEF. She’s bad. She arches a perfect eyebrow with incredulity at the activity of the Keystone Kriminals at work. And by then, it’s Act II, and we’re inclined to agree with her.
Priya Narine, Alexander Ariate, Devin MacKinnon, Callan McKenna Potter, Gillian Moon in Heist, Citadel and Grand Theatres. Photo by Nanc Price.
The visual preface to Kadri’s production, including an amusing set of projected credits (hey, just like in the movies!), is outstanding — swooping aerial shots of the magic kingdom of Manhattan, a swoop down toward the twinkling cap of the Chrysler Building, glittering urban streets at night from every angle, close-ups and long shots. They transform, back and forth, into the imagery of labyrinthine computer blueprints and circuitry. This 3-D illusionist wizardry, that puts us at constantly shifting distances from the action, is the brilliant work of projection and video designer Corwin Ferguson, partnering with Beyata Hackborn’s set.
Her design, lighted by Siobhán Sleath, is dominated by a screens — one large and two towers of multi-angled smaller screens — and an angled staircase that cuts the space like a wink at the audience. A lot of plexiglass died for this production.
The music (score, composer, sound designer Richard Feren) references James Bond and The Pink Panther, and is underscored with a suspenseful thudding cinematic heartbeat.
What seems a little cumbersome in the production by contrast is the deliberate way the plot loops back to re-visit scenes and reassemble the disbanded team — by repeating the member by member enlistment after they’ve been dispersed. It’s not because the script is deficient in ingenuity. Partly a certain sense of theatrical unwieldiness is because the characters have a tendency to bellow at each other in group scenes. They may be able to detect the sound resonances from a diamond in a hidden safe (who knew?). But when you next hire a team of top-drawer criminals for a secret mission to steal one, you might want to consider operatives who talk less, and more softly, than this shout-y bunch.
It’s a commonplace that live theatre should be wary about trying to imitate what cinema does best; cultural appropriation of that sort tends to be self-defeating. It’s entertaining, though, to see what happens when theatre defies the wisdom of the ages, and steps up, brazenly (big budget in hand), to that kind of larceny. Heist looks great; it unleashes big-theatre resources and a creative team at the top of their game and gives them a playground for their impressive skills.
The dramatic scenes … well …. It’s true that the broadness of the acting is partly at the service of a plot that, in a comic nod to the theatre, deliberately wonders about acting as a form of deception. Or is it a satirical shiv at the tropes of heist movies? Marvin even says, in tribute to the aerialist’s alleged histrionic chops, that of all the skills of master criminal con-persons, acting is the most under-valued. Maybe that’s true here, too.
REVIEW
Heist
Theatre: Citadel Theatre and Grand Theatre
Written by: Arun Lakri
Directed by: Haysam Kadri
Set design: Beyata Hackborn; Costume design: Jessica Oostergo; Lighting design: Siobhán Sleath; Projection design: Corwin Ferguson; Sound design and composer: Richard Feren
Starring: Alexander Ariate, Belinda Cornish, Devin MacKinnon, Callan McKenna Potter, Gillian Moon, Priya Narine
Running: through April 13
Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820
