Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner in Rat Academy 2 – Gnaw and Order, Batrabbit Collective. Photo supplied
Rat Academy 2 – Gnaw and Order (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
The last time we saw them, the last two rats in Alberta, Fingers (Dayna Lea Hoffmann) and Shrimp (Katie Yoner), were in a back alley, their natural habitat. And the alley-wise former, ever wary, ever vigilante, was coaching the latter, a naive recent lab escapee, in such life skills as how to be steal.
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
They have managed to survive in a dangerous world. But rats, marginalized outsiders in a rat-free province (with enforcers), have dreams too. Fingers and Shrimp are back, with a sequel to their much-travelled 2023 hit, and they want more than Whyte Avenue back alley garbage bins. They want a home sweet home to call their own. Is real estate (and, you know, freedom from arrest), too much to want in Alberta?
And at the start of this very funny Batrabbit Collective production, Rat Academy 2 – Gnaw and Order, the pair scuttle onstage to show off what they have achieved (design by Claire Conmor), and celebrate a house-warming. But not before the scrappy, congenitally suspicious Fingers points accusingly at someone in the audience front row. “Are you a cop? Don’t you lie to me!”
In this very funny, imagined world created in zestful comic detail by two expert clowns, the mentor-pupil dynamic drives the new show too. Fingers, always on the edge of exasperation with his distractible protegé and our rapport with Shrimp, can read the increasingly ominous eviction notices. “No, it’s not a party invitation!” When Shrimp has a bright idea — and these have an inspired lunacy about them — lighting designer Whittyn Jason steps up accordingly.
They decide to buy (it’s the Alberta way), and, first-time buyers, they’re up against it. There’s an amusing ingenuity to the way quick-witted Hoffmann and Yoner, who are first-rate improvisers, build audience consultation into the fabric of their story. And they press their luck with their own premise, in a hilarious way, by upping the ante, incrementally, as two rats, hitherto law avoiders extraordinaire, venture into politics, and the Alberta justice system. I won’t spoil your fun, except to say that at the performance I saw, revealingly, almost no one in the sold-out audience, except one histrionic volunteer, wanted to undertake a defence of Alberta. And so Fingers and Shrimp are born-again rodent satirists, who even scavenge a scrap or two of poignance from their plight.
Non-stop laughter from an audience, me among them, having a very good time: a sound that’s music to a fringer’s ears. Seek it out.
