THEATRE REVIEW: THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING
17 Nov'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

She still fancies herself, it seems, and frankly, we wouldn't want it any other way.

Not when the 'she' in question is Elsa, the wee lass who, with her mother and father, left her native Iceland in their wake and made Scotland -- specifically the streets and tenements of Edinburgh -- their home in a show titled YOU FANCY YOURSELF. A child of playwright/performer Maja Ardal's imagination (and to some degree, her memory, for many of the broader details of Elsa's life mesh with Ardal's own), Elsa sprang to life on the stage of Theatre Passe Muraille's Backspace almost two years ago. And the brash and bossy young Elsa (delightfully played by Ardal) was soon the toast of the town -- or towns, for Ardal built on Toronto success with an international tour that culminated at the Edinburgh Fringe, where audiences embraced Elsa like the native daughter she is.

And now, Elsa and Ardal are back in the TPM Backspace -- both a little older, perhaps a little wiser, but certainly no less delightful for all that -- in a show titled THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING, which opened Tuesday.

Ardal for her part seems largely untouched by the intervening two years -- but Elsa has left childhood far behind and is firmly in the throes of puberty when the show begins. It is 1962, and young Elsa, it seems, has discovered the Beatles in a big way and is about to dazzle her schoolmates with a new pair of Beatles' tights on which she's blown an entire pay packet -- proceeds from Saturdays spent doling out minced lamb in miniscule portions in the local butcher shop. Whether it's the tights or not is unclear, but this all happens on the very same day that Shena, the coolest girl in the school, befriends Elsa, thereby granting her entry into a clique that will bring the insecure young girl into a more intimate orbit with the high school lad who has caught her eye. But before she can get around to living happily ever after, fate trips her up.

First off, the music teacher assigns instruments for the school band, and while Elsa yearns to play the flute, her musical acumen ensures she is lumbered with the French horn instead. And if that's not enough, when Elsa arrives home from school, she finds her normally oh-so-attentive parents glued to the radio and the world around her smack bang in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. If the world is going to end, our young heroine decides, she's going out in a blaze of glory -- the musical strains of the Beatles and the clipped tones of John F. Kennedy comprising the soundtrack of a too short adult life of training bras and panti-girdles and utterly devoid of sex and liquor.

Without a whole lot of fanfare, Ardal sheds Elsa's innocence and leaves it behind, and working in a darker, deeper emotional palette, gives us a more mature Elsa -- no less flawed or lovable and ferociously hungry for the adventure life and her imagination promise. As they did with YFY, Ardal and director Mary Francis Moore tackle a broad range of characters, working on an even emptier stage than in their first production and limiting themselves this time to a single costume, both courtesy of designer Julia Tribe. Yet the show emerges as not only a rich emotional tapestry but a visual feast as well, thanks to Ardal's consummate skill as storyteller and actress. One has to be very, very good to be this simple.

It may not actually be the cure for everything, but chances are, spending 71 minutes with Ardal and Elsa is going to do a lot for whatever ails you.