The Cave: a cabaret of animals almost on fire
19 June 2019

by Drew Rowsome -

One of the great adventures of a festival like Luminato (or the upcoming Summerworks and Fringe) is the opportunity to see works by admired artists that are in the process of being created. Productions that may grow into something magnificent, or that may, tragically, never be seen again. The Cave boasts a stellar pedigree with a book by Martha Ross, lyrics by Tomson Highway (The (Post) Mistress), music by John Millard (Rose), direction by Adam Paolozza (Paolozzapedia, Flashing Lights), and performances by powerhouses Neema Bickersteth, Andrea Koziol, Derek Kwan (Blood Weddings, Mr Shi and His Lover, A Synonym for Love) and Alex Samaras.

Add a quirky Cabaret meets Tom Waits  orchestra rehearsing in Sarah McLachlan's garage, led by Greg Oh, and it really doesn't matter what the plot or intentions of The Cave are. The premise is that the cabaret is being staged by a group of animals trapped in the eponymous cave by a forest fire. They sing their stories and - spoiler alert - deliver some pointed environmental messages. It is a grisly premise: cute furries (wonderful Lion King-riffing costuming by Allie Marshall) sing and dance before being burnt to a crisp. But cabaret, at its best, tackles dark topics with fearless bravado and defiance.  

Individual songs and concepts soar and sear. Koziol, an extraordinarily engaging performer, inhabits a snake mother who laments that she has no hands with which to rescue her 77 babies. Samaras, as a raven in love with a fox trapped below in the flames, turns the thrust stage into an airborne catwalk of anguish. Kwan's wolf howls against his bloodlust. And Bickersteth applies her gossamer soprano to the kohkominah (the Cree word for spider and, yes, the explanation is crucial) spinning a web of elegant fortitude and resignation. A chorus of back-up chickadees are a masterclass in clowning and avian distillation.

While Highway's lyrics are concise and subversively comic - "I'm a lump on a trunk, a skunk in a funk" - the melodies meander and are never given the chance to build to the succession of 11 o'clock numbers the cast is capable of. One longs to hear any of the four tear the roof off the cave with the emotional strength and vocal power their performances just begin to tap into. Millard does mulitple-duty as a banjo/guitar player, a domesticated dog, and as the narrator. The narration, sadly necessary because the production doesn't have the courage to conceptualize, strives for a lightly comic tone to offset the heaviness of the plot. Sometimes it works but mostly it feels like little jokes to distract the young ones from the impending apocalypse, Disney-esque defusing of the death and destruction.

There are more ideas - the evolution of the fire as told in sound effects by percussionist Germain Liu is a mesmerizing moment and a potent metaphor for recycling - than The Cave has time to tackle. It will be intriguing to see what further life The Cave has. The core work is daring and powerful and smoulders with potential, but it just hasn't gelled in time for this festival. At one point Koziol's snake moves into a Garden of Eden parable, and it feels like the whole production will snap into a cathartic coherent whole - in time, I bet it will. But meanwhile the audience is left with haunting images, sounds, and realizations: the ominous crackling of the flames reflected in Koziol and Samara's piercing or pleading eyes, the catch in Kwan's voice, and Bicersteth's quiet assertion that "I was there."