Alexander Ariate as Horse, Lee Boyes as Jacques in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifousl Set by Beyata Hackborn, lighting by Sarah Karpyshin
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Lee Boyes and Alexander Ariate in Horseplay, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
There’s a bright buoyant sparkle to Horseplay, the funny, dreamy, heart-breaker of a season-ender at Workshop West. It’s a new play, about things like friendship and ambition, success and sacrifice, by a young theatre artist whose work you will want to follow from now on: Métis actor/playwright Kole Durnford, who’s originally from Stony Plain.
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Horseplay’s feet, and hooves, are on the grass. Its heart, available for the breaking, is in the air. And, in Heather Inglis’s premiere production it happens under a stunning spiral of tiny flying horses (designer Beyata Hackborn), glowingly lighted by Sarah Karpyshin. As Horse, wonderfully played by Alexander Ariate, says from time to time, “to run is to fly.” That’s already an imaginative leap, beyond the actor perpetually in motion — and there will be more.
Horse’s best friend in the world is jockey Jacques (Lee Boyes, a fine performance too). We meet the former the moment we enter the theatre. He’s already there, just hanging out on grass, amusingly just the way horses do. He’s doing nothing — except having bursts of horse-ly energy, being happy, and engaging in pleasant repartee with us. You know, the way horses do.
Alexander Ariate and Lee Boyes in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
As Horseplay starts — it kind of slides into starting, as signalled by Horse — he and Jacques are together, being jocular (sorry, jock-ular) and sharing carrots. You know, the the way friends do. With the teasing, amiable friends’ banter about playing games with built-in dares, having crushes and denying them, getting a kick out of their shared affection for horse puns. Has anyone ever truly understood “looking a gift horse in the mouth”? Try explaining it. Horse, for one, is baffled.
Durnford’s writing has a clever crackle to it. It’s fun. And that fun is enhanced in performance by the amusement of the characters, who crack each other up.
Alexander Ariate as Horse in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux. Set and costumes Beyata Hackborn, lighting Sarah Karpyshin
Horse has blown off the afternoon’s training in order to stand by the fence, and discuss grass with the fetching show horse in the next field. What does a crush mean, Horse wants to know. What does it feel like to be in love? Is it “meeting someone who loves grass as much as I do?” Jacques tries to explain.“You have to ask her out,” he prompts. “I just can’t,” says Horse, as they jockey around the subject of dating.
They’re brothers, says Horse. “Brothers from another mother,” Jacques amends. Their rapport in motion is captured, with ingenuity, in Amber Borotsik’s outstanding choreography for the pair. They move together in an exhilarating kind of horse ballet; it exudes joyfulness in the interlocking performances. You want them to dance together forever. And while Horse acknowledges that we’re in “an alternative reality” in the free-floating meta-framework of the play — how do horses hang onto monkey bars? with their hands, of course — he assumes that’s true.
But friendship will come under duress from worldly pressures. Horse’s certainty that “we get to stay together forever” gets squeezed by … money. As the bearer of news from the human sphere, which seems always to be about competition and winning, Jacques reluctantly explains “that’s not how the world works.” It’s mere weeks till the big race. And if they don’t start winning, Horse will be sold. There will be “no more whimsical joyful dancing between scenes…. We don’t have time to break the fourth wall.”
If pursuing a dream, your personal Kentucky Derby, means sacrificing something crucial to best-friendship, it had better be worth it. The stakes keep getting raised, in a way that never seems forced, always natural, in the play. Can love withstand relentless pressure? Horseplay horses around with questions like that, in a wistful, heart-tugging way that includes ketamine-fuelled dream sequences. And, anchored to our affection for Horse — and the innocence, charm, and commitment of Ariate’s wide-eyed, exuberantly physical performance — it cuts to the chase. “Maybe we should just enjoy what we have…. Hold your horse.”
In its own cantering off-centre way, Horseplay is a coming-of-age play, with the sadness that implies. Jacques tries to ease Horse into the adult human world of success and money, and inevitable disconnection. “I no longer want to grow up,” Horse says, in a moment that makes your eyes water. “It’s hard to be grown up and know the world.”
Hard and getting harder all the time. An irresistible play about love, friendship, dreams, and a bond beyond the traces is something to cherish.
Meet playwright Kole Durnford in this .ca preview.
REVIEW
Horseplay
Theatre: Workshop West Playwrights Theatre
Written by: Kole Durnford
Directed by: Heather Inglis
Starring: Alexander Ariate, Lee Boyes
Where: Gateway Theatre, 8529 Gateway Blvd.
Running: through June 1
Tickets: workshopwest.org (all tickets are pay-what-you-will, suggested price $40).
