The Hooves Belonged to the Deer: a chance to be thrilled by the unknown
08 Apr 2023

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

When the devil holds you in his fist, it feels like an embrace.

If it feels good, it must be from God.

The Hooves Belonged to the Deer consists of two powerful stories intertwined. The first is a melodramatic coming out story with every soap-opera trope shoe-horned in. A 16-year-old Muslim boy Izzy (Makram Ayache who is also the playwright) in a rural Alberta town falls for his blond boy-next-door Canadian-style best friend Will (Eric Wigston). Their tentative fumblings are heartwarming and sweet. The blossoming relationship is complicated by Pastor Isaac (Ryan Hollyman of Betrayal, Human Animals, and Macbeth) who is on a mission through a seductive youth centre (X-boxes! pizza!)  to convert as many souls to Jesus as possible. Evangelicals are inherently frightening - Will keeps noting that it all seems very cult-like - but Pastor Isaac is softened by his ex-Muslim second wife (Bahareh Yaraghi of Kiss, Blood Weddings, Le Placard) who is struggling to conceive and an estranged son living on the streets of Vancouver. Izzy falls under Pastor Isaac's hellfire for homos influence.

The second story is a riff on the myth of creation. We meet Adam (Noor Hamdi) and Eve/Hawa (Yaraghi) in a Garden of Eden that is not a paradise. Adam ventures out into the desert where he meets a collapsed "man made of light" (Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski) who announces himself as 'Steve' and stirs Adam's loins. The connection between the two stories is made explicit in the finale (as is the play's title), but would have been obvious sooner if I had read the playwright's note in the program carefully. Regardless, the plots intertwine and bounce off each other in intriguing ways and both realities are rendered effectively with minimalistic style and evocative lighting (Whittyn Jason). Ayache the writer makes humorous use of anachronisms to flesh out the creation plot and it works comically as well as thematically. What The Hooves Belonged to the Deer delineates insightfully is the inevitability of gay desire and the incredible damage done by those who try to deny it. And particularly the insidious way that myths, whether from the Bible or the Qur'an, instill guilt and fear that can over-ride all intellectual, logical and emotional capabilities.

A gay melodrama, complete with clever quips, intertwined with a biblical epic is, as expected, frequently exhilarating, and The Hooves Belonged to the Deer races along until collapsing under one fatal mistake and a climactic portentousness. The cast ably switches from the reality of small town Alberta to a fanciful and frightening Eden surrounded by desert and pale-skinned northern colonizers. Yaraghi needs only a scarf to accentuate her transformations, and Shepherd-Gawinsky has the benefit of a t-shirt that can be doffed to turn him instantly into a sexual, and deliciously sexualized, "man of light." Hollyman's duality exists on one plane, as he struggles to believe that prayer can solve anything. His revelation of the faulty futility of his belief system comes at the hands of Izzy. Unfortunately the physical act Izzy commits is a homophobic slur and right wing weapon. It completely upends the play's magic righteousness. Then comes a flurry of spectacular effects that are meant to inspire awe but instead elicited giggles of disbelief. Whether this was in the text/conception or was added by director Peter Hinton-Davis (Bombay Black), the effect is to drive The Hooves Belonged to the Deer to a state beyond high camp but quite short of biblical. 

Until the climax, The Hooves Belonged to the Deer is gloriously staged except for some extraneous miming. Necessary props are found beneath the earth that covers the stage, earth that is also, of course, a metaphor. The dialogue overlaps, sometimes between realities, but always crystal clear and meticulously timed. Ayache frets, Wigston is too earnestly sweet to be true, and Hamdi and Shepherd-Gawinski smoulder out of their shirts. Yaraghi is an explosion waiting to happen and her recitation of various versions of the creation myth is revelatory. The central debate of whether religion is meant to uplift or punish is not resolved - how could it be? - but Will, who is the voice of queer reason, posits a better world, a better reality, where religion doesn't threaten hell or try to control, but is rather "a chance to be thrilled by the unknown." That is what The Hooves Belonged to the Deer strives for and almost achieves. That and the giddy delight of hearing a frustrated Eve/Hawa snap, "Don't fuck with me Adam." That good quip was from God.