Clown sisters explore a classic

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This article was published 10/11/2017 (3219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anyone who has wept their way through the crushing final act of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men — whether on screen, on stage or on the page — knows it’s not the kind of material that naturally lends itself to comedy.

That’s the perverse impetus that drove Canuck clown sisters Morro and Jasp (respectively, Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee) to make the attempt with Of Mice and Morro and Jasp. The personal dynamic between the clown sisters is roughly equivalent to the relationship between the down-at-heels protagonists of Steinbeck’s 1937 novel. Hence Jasp, the smarter, dominant sister adopts the persona of George and Morro becomes the trouble-prone, intellectually challenged Lenny, unintentional killer of rodents.

The clown comedy, which Lee and Annis created with director/dramaturge Byron Laviolette, refracts the story through a Canadian culture lens. The clown sisters are enduring hard times due to cutbacks in arts funding. (The play was conceived in 2012 during Stephen Harper’s tight-fisted, arts-averse reign.) While bumming quarters on the street, they hit on the idea of mounting their own production of Of Mice and Men, though poor Morro hasn’t read all the way to the end and gamely proceeds without a grasp of what’s in store for her character.

The work is performed in different versions, depending on their audience, which means the MTYP show is more or less PG-rated, recommended for audiences 13 years of age and up. That actually allows some narrative freedom to go a little darker than usual on the MTYP stage — oh, yes, there will be dead mice used as comic props.

Expect some audience participation as well, as when the distraught Jasp enlists an audience member to help drown her sorrows over a bottle of Coke.

It’s all good fun, presented with the understanding that young audiences have probably been familiarized with the original book via classroom curriculum. Annis and Lee recreate scenes from the novel, each one with a twist. Instead of working at a ranch, they work at a carnival, where Jasp in particular feels the pain of a circus clown’s existence right down to her squeaky shoes.

The duo also layer a feminist sensibility on the masculine-centred story, which explains why the oversexed, underwritten character of “Curly’s Wife” is represented by a sex doll.

While Lee and Annis are first-rate clowns, the overall one-hour work often feels stalled, either due to its episodic nature or its reliance on audience members, which can often be a hit-and-miss proposition. Bravely, Morro and Jasp pay respect to the original story by staging the tragic conclusion, albeit in a gentle way. They also add one last bit of audience participation that takes the sting away in rousing fashion.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing