REVIEW: Trout Stanley by Claudia Dey @ Balagan Theatre. Directed by David Gassner. With Sarah Budge, Angela DiMarco & Ryan Higgins. Playing now through March 6th. Website for Tickets/Info/Directions.
Sex kitten Grace and her fraternal twin sister Sugar, a hyperactive agoraphobe who hasn’t left their rural BC/Canada cabin for 10 years, have co-exhisted in an uneasy co dependence since the bizarre deaths of their parents on their 20th birthday. On the eve of their 30th birthday, the disappearance of a local woman dubbed “the Scrabble Champ Stripper” by the local media and the sudden appearance of a shaggy, sexy, wolf cub of a man named Trout Stanley, a man who flatly declares “I never lie” threatens to destroy the sister’s relationship and expose a lifetime of lies and betrayals and family secrets.
Claudia Dey’s play has been dubbed a “Canadian Gothic” ripe with strong, colorful, larger than life characters and a plot and thematic style familiar to fans of the plays of Sam Shepard or Lanford Wilson. Dey hasn’t quite reached the levels of artistry as practiced by those two playwrights but Trout Stanley is an engaging work by a playwright with great promise. And the attraction for small theater companies is obvious: a three character cast in a simple easy to design setting (shabby cabin) places a minimum of financial demands on theaters barely managing to survive on shoestring budgets. But the play is also a challenge in that it requires three very strong actors and a talented director to successfully navigate the waters of a theatrical piece that veers between the comic and the tragic, the absurd and the practical, the magical and the mundane. The setting is claustrophobic and the intensity of the characters and the long periods of time individual characters have to hold the audience’s attention (each character has long, solo moments alone on stage) and the brutally long monologues each character has to perform (Trout has a five page monologue at one point in the show that explains his backstory) forces theaters to cast very talented actors that are up to the challenge. Happily, Balagan, one of Seattle’s best fringe theaters and a secret delight that deserves larger re known, is more than up to the task of producing this show; Trout Stanley is an artistic triumph and deserves to be seen by a large audience.
And, this is truly an actor’s play and all three performers shine in their roles none more so than Angela DiMarco as the agoraphobic Sugar. It’s a tough part to pull off, the character in the play that is the most obviously unhinged and the one that has the biggest character arc. Sugar’s nervous tics, quirks and fears could be overplayed by less seasoned actors, but DiMarco is able to make Sugar’s twitches both believable and touching. And the luminescence she exudes by the end of the play manages to enlighten not only the character and the play but fills the audience with hope and peace as well. Ms DiMarco manages to pull off the impossible of being an actress equally gifted with the comedic and the dramatic.
Sarah Budge as the sexy sister Grace, self proclaimed “Lion Queen” in some ways has a more difficult role. Grace obviously loves her sister but is the masochistic “top” to Sugar’s passive “bottom”. She’s less obviously likable and aggressively brutal to the other characters and a weak actress might be tempted to either overplay the sexuality and aggression or compensate by trying to underplay it to win the audience’s approval but Budge is a capable actress who balances the contradictions of her character, an introverted extrovert who talks a big talk but who never manages to walk the big walk, and make her believable and ultimately the saddest character in the piece.
The best way to describe the man/character of Trout Stanley, is to compare him, (as director David Gassner does in his Director’s Note in the program) to Paul Bunyan the fabled hero of 19th Century tall tales. But if anything, Trout Stanley is Mr Bunyan’s sweet, cute younger brother; shaggy and lean and awkwardly graceful and loping like a teen aged wolfhound confidently unsure on how to navigate his way through the world. Ryan Higgins’ sexy, puppy dog performance anchors the show with his mountain/hipster charm and the ability to successfully create a likable character you’re never entirely sure you could or should trust but you always hope he turns out to be the wolf cub of your dreams. He’s a fine match with both actresses.
Finally, shoutouts to the director, David Gassner, for his assured staging and to the designers and tech crew for their excellent work and to the designer of the poster art for this show and the rest of the Balagan season. It’s outstanding graphic design. Check out all their fine work at Balagan, now playing Thurs though Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm through March 6th. Most Highly Recommended.
-Michael Strangeways
Photo Credit: Andrea Huysing
About the Author: Michael Strangeways
