Hop on The Number 14 for laugh-fuelled ride

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The Number 14 bus, with its wacky band of riders, is stopping at Manitoba Theatre for Young People until April 1. (DAVID COOPER)

Theatre Review

The Number 14

Manitoba Theatre for Young People

To April 1

Tickets $14.50 at 942-8898

Four stars out of five

ANYONE who rides the bus regularly knows it can be a circus.

Your personal space is invaded by loud, smelly, unpredictable strangers of all ages and backgrounds. You're part of a captive audience for wrenching pathos, bizarre comedy and simmering violence.

The vehicle's lurching can turn you into a human projectile. And you can't escape the pageant of craziness until you tumble out at your stop.

The clownish vignettes in The Number 14 are exaggerated for comic effect. But they're recognizable to any urban transit rider, and that has helped make the one-hour production by Vancouver's Axis Theatre an award-winning hit that has toured North America, Europe and Asia.

Take, for instance, the woman who's running so late that she not only applies her makeup in transit, but boards the bus in her bathrobe and slippers and gets dressed. Her contortions to wriggle into pantyhose are priceless.

Then there's the guy with a disgusting cold whose nasal discharge becomes a germophobe's nightmare.

Other portraits are more fanciful, like the lovely, Martin Short-like solo in which a man finds that every seat or pole he touches makes him emit the voice of a passenger who has been there before. There's something moving about the idea of an endless chain of individuals who briefly inhabit the same space.

The Number 14 has been to Winnipeg before, but it's making another welcome stop until April 1 as the spring-break show at Manitoba Theatre for Young People. It's targeted to all ages, but much more suitable for school-age kids than preschoolers.

It's a series of fast-flowing skits incorporating terrific masks, as well as mime, gymnastics, physical comedy, puppetry, song and dance, performed by a two-woman, four-man cast.

The wonderfully realistic cutaway bus set is complete with front- and side-facing padded seats, advertisements, operable doors, a farebox and pull-cords. The sound effects are perfect, recreating the engine-roaring, brake-squealing, bell-dinging ambience of a transit experience.

The six performers play more than 30 diverse characters who board the No. 14 in various combinations, interact and then disembark, giving the show the ever-surprising feel of an actual ride.

There are drone-like businessmen, slow-moving seniors, a hyperactive boy who sings along with the music on his headphones, unruly kindergarten kids on a field trip with a highly unprofessional teacher, a labourer with his lunch kit, a sleepy old baba, a young mother with a baby and a toddler, and an anarchic gang of youths with spray-paint cans.

The gang's invasion of the space is a powerful visceral jolt. Who hasn't felt themselves go on alert when a posse suddenly boards their bus?

The six are not trained dancers, and precision is lacking in some of the choreographed movement. The performer who plays the stilt-walking teacher under-projects his voice.

A clever bit in which the actors form a line to shield costume-changing behind them could be tightened up, as there are gaps in the visual barrier.

A wordless routine in which a man and woman hold fast-changing magazine photos over their faces and move their bodies to match would provoke a "wow" response if it were refined.

The Number 14, then, could use a slight tune-up. But it's still a funny, entertaining ride for families during spring break.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 24, 2012 G6