Reel Life, Real Ideas: Movies and more…

The View from Above (La vue d’en haut) is a French language play about to start its second week in Vancouver at Théâtre la Seizième (Studio 16).

When I saw it last week, I was impressed with both the set and the acting. The storyline got me there though because it is set in North Vancouver two years after the cancelled Olympic games. Why were they cancelled? Because of the rain, which hasn’t stopped for 3 years!

The play digs deep at our current situation: the poor (mostly referred to as junkies in the play) were rounded up and imprisoned in the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool building on the North Shore before the Olympics. Two years later, they were still imprisoned until the silo is finally blown up from within.

The main character, Stuart (played brilliantly by Joey L’esperance), unquestioningly accepts the science offered by an article he read in a Danish magazine that blames the rain on the poor that were imprisoned. The article claims that when you put junkies and whores together, there is a lot of friction and wetness, which feeds the clouds and creates lots of rain.

Stuart’s wife Marsha (Rachel Robillard, who mesmerizes even before the play even begins) is literally on the edge of both her sanity and the North Shore slopes…she never leaves her house that is about to slide away.

When Stuart and Marsha’s son Roland (Allen Morrison) and his girlfriend Trish (Samantha Madely) return home after escaping from the silo they blew up, we learn that the local real estate agent/neighbourhood security enforcer/thug, Reg Simon, is offering a bonus to homeowners that sell: 1% added to the price of the sale price for each junkie that comes with it.

Stuart’s house has plunged in value, being less than a quarter of it’s pre-Olympic million dollar value, so he comically tries to round up the surviving junkies and sell the house before it slides away.

Perhaps the most powerful point of the show is how it makes clear that food is scarce for everyone now.

There are lots of subtle surprises throughout the show, which plays Wednesday to Saturday (April 5th) at 8pm.

If you speak French and want to see what the dark side of the Olympics can look like, as well as spark your imagination, it’s well worth a look. You can find more information here: www.seizieme.ca

If you don’t speak French, the English language version opens on April 11th with a free preview at Performance Works on Granville Island (and runs until April 27th with 2 for 1 Tuesdays and Wednesdays). It also has a second run beginning April 30th (to May 3rd) at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby. You can find more info at www.rubyslippers.ca