Theatre review: Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer weaves irreverent Trickster tale
Nlaka’pamux playwright Kevin Loring mines stereotypes for sharp comedy and dark insights on an absurd world
Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer. Photo by Trudie Lee
The Cultch presents Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer to March 16 at the York Theatre
AT THE BEGINNING OF Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, our narrator casually strolls onto the stage, pushing a shopping cart filled with tchotchkes. Throughout the play, he pulls out items, like tricks from a bag, using them to slip into different roles. He’s a reluctant spirit guide, an aloof developer, a BDSM-enthusiast judge. “Do you want to hear a story?” he asks innocently. We agree, unaware of what we’re getting ourselves into.
In the show’s notes, writer and director Kevin Loring aptly calls his play a Trickster tale, inspired by the spirit of N’shinkayep, the Coyote, a figure in Nlaka’pamux storytelling known for transforming the world around him. And sure enough, our narrator’s cheeky smile throughout says it all. The most obvious Trickster, maybe, but definitely not the only one, as the play itself moves with the same irreverence—throwing expectations off course and finding the joke in every turn.
The first thing transforming here is the nonspeaking, central character: the land. The once quiet and sprawling home of Little Red (Gordon Patrick White), who’s the last surviving member of the Red Warriors tribe, is suddenly upended by heavy machinery cutting through it “like a scar”. “Holy shit!” are Little Red’s first words, not long before he grabs a shovel and clocks a developer in the head.
For that, he gets arrested—charged with assault and, somehow, trespassing on his own land. In jail, he meets Larry (Shekhar Paleja), a court-appointed lawyer who offers to help him fight for it back. Larry convinces his wife, Desdemona (Luisa Jojic), to let the “righteous criminal” crash in their basement while they build his case. But the married pair, both lawyers, aren’t exactly in it out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re career-driven, greedy, and fully expecting a piece of Red’s land claim.
The play mines the character stereotypes for laughs, and some of the humour is sharp, some of it broad, a lot of it raunchy. Whether it all lands depends on each viewer’s sensibilities, but judging by the cackles, there’s no denying how much the cast sells it. Paleja and Jojic’s smugly progressive couple are both hilariously tightly-wound. Jojic has particularly great comedic timing and throws in fully unhinged bits of physical comedy, especially during the land trial.
The whole cast is locked in for the show’s uninterrupted 80 minutes, even as all the original dynamics start flipping on their heads, including Desdemona and Little Red developing a tense, R-rated relationship. Through it all, White’s Little Red keeps his eyebrows furrowed, navigating his both historically charged and absurd predicament with gritty stubbornness.
But if you’ve been paying attention, you know to expect the unexpected—and maybe Red has something up his flannel sleeve, too. There’s the ending, a conclusion that leans cynical but leaves plenty to unpack on the way home—just like Nick Miami Benz’s unforgettable performance as pleaser-clad Lizzy. Yes, that Lizzy.
One thing’s for sure: in a world this absurd, sometimes the way to fight back is to lean into the absurdity. Beyond the characters, their transformations, and the choices they make, the play is also about the systems around them. And it’s no subtle coincidence that the figure embodying those systems—the development firms, the courts, the powers that be—is played by Kevin McNulty, coolly slipping into his role of the sly and cunning Coyote.
Candelario Andrade’s projection design keeps just enough realism in the mix, alongside Samantha McCue’s wonderfully stereotyped costumes and John Doucet’s more abstract set design—wind pipes shaped like trees, a looming, oversized, chintzy crown. The projections show hyperrealistic images of environments like the lawyers’ lavishly modern house and the Supreme Court, almost like AI-generated stock photos. Most grounded and poignant are brief flashes of real-life land defenders. Troy Slocum’s sound design adds to this, punctuating some of Little Red’s actions with bits of traditional music and celebration.
Getting tricked, when done well, is fun. Farce has lasted for centuries because, while maybe not gentle, it is entertaining in how it goes about exposing our own absurdities. Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer reminds us that Trickster stories have also long played with turning norms upside down. People still go to Shakespeare and Molière for that—so why not see a play that does it for the things happening in our own backyard? This one’s an easy yes. 
Related Articles
