Knight of the Bat 2: Act of the Assemblers is writer/director Dan Bray’s hilarious sequel featuring playwright/playboy Will Shakepeare as the Knight of the Bat with his sidekick Dick. (And if you think that name is up for lots of comedy, you’re absolutely right.)
Bray writes with a manic pace, delicious word-jam and comic brilliance sending up Shakespeare and the Marvel superhero universe.
In this version Shakespeare and Dick – based on Batman and Robin – have almost run out of villains in 1600s London when the time-travelling Assemblers arrive on the scene with their devious plans. (Time travel is de rigueur in Knight of the Bat and accomplished via a green fringed hula hoop and a trident that is part toilet plunger.)
Some of Halifax’s favourite actors and theatre photographer Stoo Metz stepping out from behind the camera (as strongman Walter Raleigh) portray these wacky, egotistical superheroes who force Shakespeare to write plays celebrating each of them: Jacob Sampson as Guy Hawkes, a fierce character in a horse mask, Rooks Field-Green as the cerebral, seemingly friendly, blood-sucking Dr. Richard Masters; Leah Prichard as the master of disguise (just by changing hats!) Susan Hyde and Liliona Quarmyne as the sizzling, all-powerful Cleopatra.
Ira Henderson is great as the vain, needy and ever-posturing Will Shakespeare while Rachel Lloyd offers a performance of comic brilliance as Dick portrayed as a small, kinetic child with great facial expressions. Colleen MacIsaac is Shakespeare’s doting, domineering housekeeper who longs to be a partner in crime.
All the actors are adept at comedy and Bray keeps the action scenes fast and funny.
Key to the show are Noella Murphy’s homemade-looking costumes as if Knight of the Bat were a mutant, amateur-hour creation for a school fundraiser – mummy bandages and a leopard print suit for Cleopatra, red pool noodles with hands for Dr. Masters, a wild horse costume for Guy Hawkes including an Iliad-like horse’s head and a My Little Pony braided tail and a perfect Robin Hood costume, just like the flour company’s logo, for Dick. This is a case where the costumes ideally suit the play and the director’s concept.
Knight of the Bat 2 opened to a sold out audience and runs tonight (Sept. 6), 10.45 p.m.; Sept. 7, 9:15 p.m., Sept. 8, 9 p.m., and Sept. 10, 8.45 p.m., in the Bus Stop Theatre.
The Object at Trash Beach
Colleen MacIsaac, who runs Villains Theatre with Dan Bray, has written a 30-minute comic, but pointed, environmental play for kids and adults, produced by The Villains Theatre and The Unnatural Disaster Theatre Company
The Object at Trash Beach is staged outdoors at Shakespeare by the Sea’s spot at Cambridge Battery, Point Pleasant Park. Seats face the SBTS storage container which becomes a wall next to a trash-strewn beach.
A lonely lifeguard (Abby Weisbrot) enters the tiny, unvisited beach and settles in only to be disturbed by a metal detectorist/scientist (Ryan Nielsen). She is rescued by a visit from her lively, best friend (Vaishali Sachdeva). When they see what looks like a flying saucer approaching them, they freak out and try to explain it away in all sorts of terms.
Is it an invading alien spaceship demanding humans save themselves and the planet? Is it a drone? Is it a blimp with an advertisement to shop? Of course, they can’t get through to 311 or the airport in this age of high communication.
The point is less the answer and more a presentation of different views on climate crisis from the best friend’s “it’s-too-late-let’s-party” attitude to the scientist’s “we’ve got to do something” stance. It’s his message that rings the loudest. But MacIsaac’s play is full of fun and not didactic at all.
The Object at Trash Beach is well directed by Logan Robins for a lot of high energy and comical physical movement as the three characters crowd in on one another. It runs Sept. 6 and 7, 6 p.m.; Sept. 9, 2 and 4 p.m.; Sept 10, 2 p.m.
I’d like to give a shout out to A Side of Rice, Winnipeg actor Nick Rice’s highly engaging and deeply moving autobiographical play, wrapping up its run tonight (Sept. 6), 7:15 p.m., in the Bus Stop’s Community Room (a space at the back of theatre accessed off of Maitland Street).
I went to this show in order to get revved up for The Knight of the Bat and was totally charmed and taken in by the artistry and emotion in this story. Rice has been an actor for about 50 years and he explores his childhood, the moment he got the acting bug, growing up in Winnipeg, his relationship with his mother, the pain of infertility and the challenges of a career on stage.
He acts as if everyone in the audience is an old friend and he’s happy to explain the cultural references a younger audience might not get.
Rice is an excellent storyteller – something he obviously got from his mother, widowed when Rice was a five-year-old and a complex, flawed character whom Rice clearly still adores. His mother’s belief that Jews and Scots are alike and get along well is thoroughly and satisfactorily explained.
Seemingly a collection of random stories, A Side of Rice is in fact a beautifully structured piece of writing that ends where it began.
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NS reviews 
I’m so glad to read about this, I love when people support and appreciate Art.
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