Trout Stanley: grotesque tragedies spun into a whimsical Canadian gothic
25 Oct 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Joseph Michael Photography

The Ducharme sisters, non-identical twins, are celebrating their 30th birthday which also happens to be "Death Day," the day that another woman sharing their birthday is mysteriously murdered. This has happened every year since their parents died a decade ago. On that same day Sugar Ducharme put on her dead mother's track suit and has yet to take it off. Or to leave the house. Grace Ducharme is a hyper-confident model who also supervises the local garbage dump. Their idyllic, if dysfunctional, life in the backwoods of British Columbia, and their birthday plans, are disrupted by the disappearance of a Scrabble champion/stripper. Foul play is suspected.

On the eve of their birthday, while waiting for Grace to arrive home from work, Sugar dances to Heart's "Magic Man," which proves to be a premonition about another disruption. A wandering stranger, clad in a torn police uniform and hailing from somewhere "between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley," breaks into the house then returns to fall in love with Sugar who is attempting to hang herself. She eagerly returns his affections. 

Trout Stanley is an odd little play that mixes backwoods Canadian melodrama with southern gothic spiked with a lot of self-conscious whimsy and quirkiness. The balance between comic and disturbing is intriguing, but unfortunately the revelations and plot lead nowhere, and the majority of the play consists of monologues dredging up the kooky/tragic history of the characters. There is a lot of symbolism but playwright Claudia Dey seems to be using the touchstones as poetic devices instead of metaphors. Sometimes it works by grounding the play and making connections, sometimes it is repetitive, sometimes sumptuous passages of magic realism text just exist. If the connection between the beauty of snails having sex and tectonic plates colliding fascinates, and/or the one-liner "I mate snakes with cats and call them cakes" makes you laugh, Trout Stanley will tickle.

This Trout Stanley takes place on a hyper-realistic set, Canadiana rustic, dominated by shelves and shelves of miniature sculptures. There is a reason for the figurines, one metaphor that pays off emotionally, and the familiar surroundings ground the setting in order for the wackiness to feel plausible. At one point one of the figurines tumbles from its shelf and, attached by a string, begins to descend until it disappears behind a couch. It is a heartstopping illustration of the characters' existences. The figurines are an eerie mix of kitschy Canadiana souvenirs and African folk art, a concise visual metaphor for the stated aim of director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) to reframe Trout Stanley through "a first generation African Canadian immigrant lens."

The cast - Shakura Dickson (Girls Like That), Natasha Mumba and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (Towards Youth, Erased, Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom, Black Boys) - bring a great deal of physicality, both comic and dramatic, to Trout Stanley. A dance seduction, the chase and fight scenes, and Grace's modelling poses, are striking, pointed and hilarious. But far too often a monologue stretches on, leaving the other two on the stage to attempt to react without drawing focus or going slack. The scenes where the characters interact, whether through dialogue or physicality, snap with an electric energy and occasionally acrobatics. Jackman-Torkoff brings a particularly kinetic energy to the titular character and is a whirlwind that, like his conquest of Sugar, is impossible to resist even as it frightens. 

All three bite into the monologues and give them compelling life. If only the secrets revealed were as consistently riveting, and we didn't have to see the actors sweat to make the words connect. Because so little is at stake, which is odd in a play full of death and murder, and even the most heinous events are played for laughs, Trout Stanley should spin in a farcical swirl. Or move at a brisk enough pace that the audience doesn't have the chance to think. Or to stop laughing. Or gasping. When this Trout Stanley achieves those giddy heights, when grotesque tragedy is piled on to escalate into comedic spiked cotton candy, it is a disorienting delight. When it falls flat, it is still diverting but lacks the tension that would make it a Canadian gothic classic.