Stinking up the entire show is a pack of unruly East Van skunks, led hilariously by Panto veteran Mark Chavez’s gothy-fascist Skunk King, sporting a long leather jacket, dark Trent Reznor locks, and clawed gloves. Perfecting the double take, Davis’s semi-kidnapped Belle basically asks, “Exactly how is getting the Beast back to human form my responsibility?” If you’re familiar with the writers’ work (Quintana just wrapped up her clever Cyrano twist Someone Like Youat the Arts Club), you are aware this team is going to upend the more dated gender dynamics of the fairy tale. Just know that as the Fujiya 50-percent-off stickers appear and time starts running out, the Beast has to learn to change his ways. We’re not going to reveal the Beast’s form here-let’s leave that to other fun-spoilers. In a running joke, she literally puts people to sleep talking about it-especially her artist father (Munish Sharma). Soon a pink-haired fairy (a pitch-perfect Maiko Yamamoto) puts a curse on his privileged ass-accidentally turning all of Fujiya’s clerks and customers into Japanese food items in the process.Īlso not quite fitting into the neighbourhood, Belle totes around an algebra textbook and dreams of getting into finance. As June Mirochnick hilariously scoffs from the drumkit throughout the show: “That guy SUCKS.” Off the top, we meet Sakaki’s West Vancouver snob, terrified to be slumming it in East Van. Writers Christine Quintana and Jiv Parasram, penning their first Panto, bring just the right portions of huge heart and shameless absurdity to the story. The fact that gifted leads Steffanie Davis as Belle and Jason Sakaki as the Beast belt out some unexpectedly soaring musical numbers is just the added ikura on a wonderfully jam-packed maki. Past triumphs have made the Panto a well-deserved local holiday tradition, but this Anita Rochon-directed rendition ups an already pretty-much-perfect game. It’s clear from this spin on Beauty and the Beast that after 11 whacked-out years, the Panto team not only knows every minute corner of the neighbourhood, but how to put on a riotously entertaining show. THEATRE REPLACEMENT’S LATEST installment of the East Van Panto is hilariously, outrageously locked to Clark and Venables-finding next-level visual and thematic inspiration from a favourite Japanese-food emporium and a famously bull-averse mattress outlet.ĭancing miso soup and no-flip mattresses as a metaphor for life? Count yourself lucky that only in East Van could such creative insanity take place.
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