No subject

[Ches Skinner]

Twisted thrills
TARANTINO-ESQUE DRAMA WILL KEEP YOU RIVETED

By COLIN MACLEAN, EDMONTON SUN


 17 Dogs is an astonishing piece of writing.

Lethbridge playwright Ron Chambers turns five men of varying temperaments,
intellect and moral attitudes loose in an auto wrecker's shop and invites
us to watch as they twist and turn in a wind that blows straight from
hell.

Chambers has a Tarantino-like ability to make us laugh, while chilling our
blood - to perform glib magician's tricks with words while wrapping his
characters with thick layers of sub-text. In this he is aided greatly by
Ron Jenkins's production, which seethes with raw energy and life.

Cal (Frederick Zbryski) runs a grimy, junk-filled auto-wrecking business
(brilliantly conceived onstage by Narda McCarroll). For 44 years he has
harboured a simmering hatred of Lawson (Duval Lang), his onetime partner
who ran off with all their money. With the urging of the mysterious Ed
(Jeff Haslam) Lawson plans to find Cal to torture and murder him.

Ed is a steady customer for Cal's car crusher. He's a hit man who provides
a stream of cars to be stripped and crushed - each with locked trunks that
drip red when they are flattened.

Working for Cal is Henry (Richard Gishler) who is several tools short of a
full set. He's an innocent who wandered in many years before with a dead
canary and just stayed. Joe (Kevin Kruchkywich) is a kid who bought a
malfunctioning car from Lawson and who just manages to turn up at the
wrong time.

The first act sets up the characters using Chambers's deft and often
hilarious dialogue. Zbryski gives us an arrested Cal who never grew beyond
his obsession. He creates a familiar portrait - we all know a Cal
somewhere. Gishler's Henry may be slow, but he can still find beauty in an
impossibly dirty world.

The consistently surprising Jeff Haslam fashions an indelible character.
His hair is bleached white with a clipped Van Dyke beard, and he is
dressed impeccably in leather coat and pressed suit - once again, this
brave actor takes it to the edge to shape a flamboyant but nuanced
individual. His awesomely articulate Ed speaks in torrents of words,
fashioning intricate metaphors and word-pictures. Under the showy
exterior, however, is the puppet master - a cold and soulless psychopath
who controls all around him.

The playwright obviously had as much fun writing this one as Haslam has in
bringing him to creepy life.

Chambers underwrites both Joe and Lawson, who serve mostly as plot
devices, as director Jenkins skilfully shifts the focus of power from one
character to the other.

The second act finds Lawson chained to a huge motor and Cal with a club in
his hand. As he begins to work out his lifetime of repressed rage on his
helpless victim, the darkness hinted at in Act 1 leads to a very
disturbing and sinister place.

You will not be bored.

17 Dogs, a production of Workshop West, plays in the Kaasa Theatre through
Oct. 19.

17 DOGS - 4 SUNS (out of 5)