The Back Kitchen Release Party

By Trevor Devall. Original music by Alison Jenkins, Don Noble, Tracey Power, and the Back Kitchen. Directed by Don Noble. An Arts Club production. At the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage on Wednesday, June 25. Continues until August 2

The show, The Back Kitchen Release Party, leaves you feeling good about it. But that’s only going to work for people who don’t go home at intermission.

The original production of Back Kitchen was a hit at the 2004 Vancouver Fringe Festival. It was also a one-act in a tiny venue. It has now been expanded to two acts and is being asked to fill the barnlike Granville Island Stage. The stretch marks are showing.

The premise remains intact. An amiable Newfoundlander named Ned reunites his old party band, the Back Kitchen, so that they can play at the memorial service that’s being held in Vancouver for Kate, a former member. He wants them to gig their way across the country.

The central event in Act 1 doesn’t work. The participation of Maggie, the fiddle player, is crucial to the tour’s success, but she refuses Ned’s entreaties and the band heads off without her. It’s obvious that Maggie will relent, and when she finally makes her entrance, just in time for her fiddle solo, director Don Noble has her arrive through the back doors of the theatre, and parade all the way down the aisle, sawing away, lit as if she were freshly released from heaven. Corny? It’s an avalanche of niblets.

Fortunately, all of the characters and all of the actors are charming. Playwright Trevor Devall plays Ned like a mischievous dog. Sarah Donald (Maggie) radiates beauty, health, and common sense. These two romantic leads—they’re old flames—are accompanied by a pair of surprising clowns: Jonathan Teague as the Star Trek–obsessed Seamus, and Sarah May Redmond as Gurinder, a white woman from Newfoundland who thinks that she’s Indian.

But because the characters have so little to do, their charm wears thin. Noble has an unfortunate habit of lining them up like suspect criminals. And he only gives them one mike, which makes it hard for the band’s stompin’ Celtic music to get into your bones.

Remarkably, Act 2 comes to life. It starts with the band playing a hilarious gig at a Star Trek convention. The group’s long ride, where the members are stuffed into an old van, provides visual variety and conceptual focus, achieving the intimacy that has previously been lacking.

And there’s a nice running gag: Seamus is terrified of getting ever farther away from home; driving across the Prairies, he thinks that he can see the curvature of the Earth. The love story between Ned and Maggie gains some depth—although, annoyingly, Maggie repeatedly refers to a betrayal, which is never named.

It’s the ending that’s the clincher, though. Partly that’s because the music, “Kate’s Song”, is so lovely—like much of the original and borrowed material in this show. But the ending is moving mostly because, at its heart, The Back Kitchen Release Party is about the nonsexual love between a man and woman—straight ones at that. It’s as beautiful as it is rare to see such a friendship celebrated.