Bed and Breakfast: a delirious gay farce with purpose
23 Aug 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

In one of those weird coincidences that haunt the zeitgeist, I missed the opening night performance of Bed and Breakfast because I was attending a family reunion in a small northern Ontario town. That experience tainted/enhanced my experience of Bed and Breakfast in three ways:

One: The reviews, pretty consistently deserved raves, are in and Bed and Breakfast has already been extended for an extra two weeks. It is already a hit, so all I can do is add my praise and urge everyone to try to get tickets while there are still some available. In a preview interview, Paolo Santalucia stated that the play is very funny, "an exciting thing for an audience to participate in," and an unusual and important treatment of gay characters. He is absolutely right on all counts.

On the surface, Bed and Breakfast recounts the saga of Brett and Drew as they open a bed and breakfast in a small town. There are the wacky small town characters, the wacky guests, and the moments leading up to the climax escalates deliriously into farce of the frothiest and funniest sort. I had expected to laugh - and many of the lines, situations and physical gags are hilarious - but I had not expected to tear up, not just once, but three times.

Playwright Mark Crawford employs a clever technique of exploiting stereotypes for misdirection, upending them, and earning big laughs and emotional payoff by doing so. Like life, nothing is quite what it is expected to be. The entire play is highly schematic, with clues and important plot points embedded from the beginning to pay off, occasionally patly, later on. Many of them are obvious but the way they pay off almost never is. Veering with whiplash speed from comedy to tragedy to political anger to flat-out farce keeps the entire proceedings off balance, giving it a depth that keeps the audience from being comfortable or able to predict just what comes next.

Two: The audience is drawn into Bed and Breakfast by Gregory Prest (La Bete) and Santalucia (The Taming of the Shrew, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Mustard, Animal Farm, La Bete) who begin narrating the tale. And then begin subsuming themselves into the various encounters the two main characters interact with. It is great fun to watch Santalucia become a small town real estate agent by quickly adding earrings and walking on his toes in an approximation of high heels. And then he dons a baseball cap to become a small town contractor, glasses to become a mother, etc, etc. Prest does the same with a string of beads, a hoodie, more glasses, etc, etc.

Between them they play 20 characters as well as the main protagonists Brett and Drew. Each character is defined by, as well as a small prop, mannerisms and vocal inflections. By the time the tour de force farcical finale is reached, where the props and costume changes are abandoned but the characters continue to live, morph and interact at lightning - and most importantly easily identifiable - speed, the stage is inhabited by a full cast created by a remarkable duo. Not only is it an acting feat and contagiously exuberant, it drives home the play's theme in a conceptual way that is subtle, succinct and breathtaking.

Three: Small towns are unique experiences as is family and relationships. Most of the characters in Bed and Breakfast are doing their best, struggling with the differences between acceptance, tolerance, xenophobia and the most effective way to shatter closet doors. One of the funniest lines in the play is verbatim an exchange I had at my family reunion. Bed and Breakfast is so comic because it is so true. A gay couple, realistically loving and complicated, shouldn't be an oddity on stage. Or in life. But it is, alas, in both. Bed and Breakfast nicely mainstreams that political statement without ever being strident or saccharine.

Prest, Santalucia and director Ann-Marie Kerr are careful to never completely let the actors behind the characters disappear. After all they are narrating the story meta-theatrically, not dazzling us (although they do) with their thespian and clowning skills. They are finding the common humanity in us all and focussing it through the prism of two gay men who discover not only their own, but also a whole small-town-full-of-secret's humanity. We are all interconnected in ways we may not have ever expected. That sincere expression, wrapped in riotous laughter, makes Bed and Breakfast surprisingly moving and gently, urgently powerful.