Theatre review: In magical-realist YAGA, strong cast brings folk-tale characters to complex, contemporary life
Colleen Wheeler, Aidan Correia, and Genevieve Fleming are outstanding playing multiple roles each in a play that reimagines the wicked old witch
Colleen Wheeler, Aidan Correia, and Genevieve Flemming in Yaga. Photo by Pedro Augusto-Meza
Touchstone Theatre presents YAGA at The Cultch Historic Theatre until November 5
FAIRY TALES, AS DISTILLATIONS of the human condition, often take broad strokes, painting good or evil as defining characteristics of the dramatis personae. Yet our reality is not so clearly demarcated—one can argue a truth of reality is its nature as a grey area, open to varying interpretation from person to person. Kat Sandler’s play YAGA, a magical realist reimagining of the Slavic folk figure of Baba Yaga, is an exploration of that equivocal state, where the titular character is much more than the stories told about her.
Charlie Rapp (Aidan Correia), a fresh-faced private detective, descends on the small town of Whittock to investigate the disappearance of Henry Kalles, a university student. Working with the local detective, Carson (Genevieve Fleming), they begin to piece together his last days, tracing them to Katherine Yazov (Colleen Wheeler), an eccentric professor specializing in bones whom Henry interviewed for a podcast. As their search winds them around the colourful townsfolk, talks of the supernatural and witches abound, romance and dark secrets emerge, and danger seems imminent at every turn.
Contextualized within patriarchal expectations—at one point, Katherine laments, “history doesn’t record women who live alone in the woods unless they do something for men”—Sandler paints an indignant Yaga, in touch with her sexuality and unafraid to question the assumptions people have of her as an ogress, a cannibal of children, and an infertile witch. Sandler reinvents the mythical figure for modern times, adding new dimensions of wit and humour and shifting her from a monster to a complex individual with agency. Given a comic treatment, the story is a whodunit with plenty of quips to enjoy amid a backdrop of empowered voices.
On a planked stage tightly clustered by birch trees—a set conceived by designer Ryan Cormack—some stellar acting unfolds. Playing multiple roles, the three cast members deliver sharp performances characterized by a total commitment to the idiosyncrasies of some 14 characters.
Director Roy Surette keeps the action breezy with half-fade transitions, quick to launch into the next scenes, aided by lighting designer Hina Nishioka’s atmospheric colour washes in blue and green. Sound designer Mary Jane Coomber conjures sounds of the occult through whispering and chants, complemented by pop and jazz standards to establish space, while Sheila White’s costumes are an attractive blend of floral-patterned and loud-hued garbs.
A strong female figure, the protagonist of YAGA defies historic subjugation to find a new power in embracing herself fully, analogous to the cultural shifts occurring on a societal scale. In crafting a more nuanced Baba Yaga, not only does Sandler create a being with deeper layers of experience, she is also able to better mirror reality as a contemporary fairy tale—more true-to-life, relevant in all its irreducible intricacy.
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