Pommes and Restes Shipwrecked…etc…Latest from the Company of Fools is tightly ordered chaos

Photo. Barb Gray .

Like its title, the latest, slightly unhinged show by A Company of Fools contains everything but the kitchen sink.

There’s Prospero and Miranda from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest as well as that play’s shipwreck and island, that island being the setting for most of this play. Spunky, red-haired Anne magically appears from Green Gables. Ditto Captain Hook from Peter Pan. Puns, visual gags, slapstick humour, and a talking potato and carrot pepper the story. There’s a reference to the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and lines plucked from Shakespeare’s King Lear.

And, as the title promises, at the centre of it all are those red-nosed, trouble-courting clowns Pomme Frites and ‘Restes, the former as imperious as he was when he first appeared in the Fools’ The Danish Play years ago and the latter still as gullible but sweet as when he first clumped into view in the same show. They, together with Prospero and Miranda, were on a cruise ship (don’t ask) when it was swamped in a storm and all four were cast up on the island.

Chaotic? Yes, but also tightly ordered, smartly executed and one of the best things the Fools have done.

Scott Florence (Pomme), Margo MacDonald (‘Restes) and AL Connors (director) wrote the show, which was commissioned by and co-developed with GCTC and is making its world premiere. The script is buoyant and well-honed with lines, characters and events as colourful as John Doucet’s cartoonish (in a good way) island set and Vanessa Imeson’s costumes.

Pierre Brault is Prospero, a fading magician of the showy David Copperfield school whose lines are for the most part taken directly from The Tempest and whose character, at one point veering close to megalomania, is the straight man in a comedy. It’s Brault’s first time in a Fools’ show and he totally gets it.

Katie Ryerson plays both Miranda and Anne, the former desperate to establish her own identity separate from her controlling father Prospero and the latter as theatrically imaginative as the original Anne. On second thought, the original Anne looks like a drudge next to this one.

Hook, all insinuation and flamboyance with a magnificent mane of curling black hair, is played with wonderful physicality by Jesse Buck, a former member of Cirque du Soleil. Like Ryerson, he’s a familiar face in Fools’ shows.

The cast is consistently excellent, eager to explore the subversion and revel in the sheer fun that is the Fools when they’re at the top of their game.

The show also weaves in themes of chaos and order, illusion and reality, family and isolation as does The Tempest. The show spoofs those themes and the original play – not to mention Lucy Maud Montgomery, J.M. Barrie and pretty much the entire human race — as much as it pays tribute to them.

Pomme and ‘Restes are the through line for all this as they attempt to navigate life and their marooned existence on the island.

Pomme, a mincing drama queen with an absurdly tragic view of himself, professes a desire to be self-sufficient but, in a touching moment, reveals otherwise. ‘Restes, afflicted with a perpetually stuffed nose and a brain frequently in neutral, wants what we all do: friendship, ice cream and a warm bed at night.

They attempt to control the world – in this case, one of magic, conflict and over-the-top literary figures – and themselves. They shoot from the hip and miss. They squabble and fret. They are us.

Continues until Dec. 14. Tickets: GCTC box office, 613-236-5196, gctc.ca

Published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 29, 2014.