UNO FEST: Deck or How I Instigated Then Overcame An Existential Crisis Through Home Improvement – Chris Felling
Lucas Myers in DECK
When things go bad—life-endingly bad—people with high enough credit limits often like to go off and find themselves. And in Deck: Or, How I Instigated Then Overcame An Existential Crisis Through Home Improvement (yes, that’s the actual subtitle), pink-slipped day trader Cliv (writer-performer Lucas Myers), giving up on paying off half a million in credit card debt at McDonald’s, does just this by declaring bankruptcy and transplanting himself and his severely suburban children to BC’s Interior. There they buy a dilapidated house with a structurally unsound deck. In true finding-oneself fashion, Cliv seizes on rebuilding this deck as the key to putting his life back in order. This is what a Wall Street crisis does to people. And trust me, it’s funny.
The humour in Deck comes from a mixture of Cliv’s gross incompetence at everything from parenting to cutting wood, the Bob and Doug McCanadianness of his new neighbours, and Corey (an unemployed carpenter who takes it upon himself to fix both Cliv and Cliv’s deck) and the dark, bizarre speculations Myers thankfully indulges in in the script. Mere slapstick this isn’t: wealth, what it ought to take to take oneself seriously, or whether life can even be taken seriously if, say, the Large Hadron Collider devours the world in 2012, all get touched upon. The sentiments may be familiar, but the timeliness is much appreciated.
Deck’s turning point sticks out as an innovative and cost-efficient advance in actor-audience relations. Myers, as Corey, actually conscripts a small work crew of audience members to finish Cliv’s deck: we’re talking power drills and everything. On opening night, he had this adorable young couple haul wood onstage from the wings: they even cleaned up the mess from the power saw . . . because that’s the right thing to do. Yes, Myers (one of the architects of last year’s Fringe hit Smalltown: A Pickup Musical) uses a power saw to cut wood on stage. On stage! Even the smallest genuine messes on stage excite me; mime can work, it can get the ideas across, but putting real live, real sharp carpentry tools in the hands of questionably competent characters is something else entirely. Going this route, instead of staying satisfied with the usual black-box, blank-slate, empty-hands kind of set really hammers Deck the show flush with what Deck the script offers.
Timely, dark, but always charming, Deck offers a kind of Canadiana I don’t see as often as I’d like. As a one-man show it’s one hell of a piece of craftsmanship. Look, can I just be frank about this? Any show that pulls its audience up for a standing ovation is worth taking notice of, worth spending money on and worth volunteering yourself to engage in some plot-advancing manual labour. It’s something you can really bank on.
But I’ll just stop talking and let you get downtown already.
- Chris Felling
Deck: How I Instigated Then Overcame An Existential Crisis Through Home Improvement
2 hrs, with intermission • PG 14+: coarse language
Metro Studio 1411 Quadra St.
Saturday May 28 7:00 PM
Sunday May 29 7:00 PM
Tickets $10-$17 or $65 for a 5-show pass
250-590-6291
http://ticketrocket.org/uno-fest/
http://intrepidtheatre.com
My friends and I went to the show in Kelowna last night. We were all incredibly moved by Lucas’ ability to be all of the characters. His versatility was impressive. We are small theatre amateurs and know what it takes.
Bravo!!!