Dispatch from Arts Commons: Alberta Kitchen Party

It would be fair to say the world needs a kitchen party.

That’s what they call it down around Halifax, where someone shows up with a fiddle, someone else shows up with a bottle of screech, someone else starts tapping out a backbeat using a couple tablespoons and a can of beans, and musical magic ensues.

That’s the sort of spirit the young, talented quintet of creators of Alberta Kitchen Party are aiming for in Alberta Theatre Projects’ world premiere presentation at Martha Cohen Theatre: a joyous jam session, and for the most part, that’s what they give us.

It’s a good sentiment for the global moment.

In a world inundated with bad news, people need something to remind us of our common humanity, and what better way to do that than through live music? Alberta Kitchen Party delivers both new material written by the performers and also pays homage to some real Canadian classics, including stirring versions of Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" and Alanis Morrisette’s "Hand in My Pocket."

Jeremy Carver-James sets the table, with "Coming Home," a solo while gripping a travel bag about heading home to Alberta that’s a little bit Paul Brandt and a little bit "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Carver-James has a spectacular set of pipes, so it’s a turbulence-free transition from departure gate  to a house in Varsity, where old theatre pal Daniel (Fong) has reassembled a posse that includes Alixandra Cowman, Anna Dalgleish, Kodie Rollan - and Joe Slabe, a pianist three decades older, swilling a glass of red, and not like all the others onstage.

But that’s OK. 

The twist to Alberta Kitchen Party is it drills into the personal backstories of cast members, who share their journeys, trials and tribulations in song and storytelling.

In that way, it’s kind of an Alberta version of Chorus Line, which pulled the anonymous faces in the back row up to downstage centre and had them share their story with the crowd.

Truth be told, it's kind of challenging listening to musical theatre actors tell stories, because musical theatre actors are people whose gift is to sing their feelings, not articulate them.

That’s why they became musical theatre actors in the first place! To skip the dialogue and get right to the redemptive power ballad!

That turns out to be true of  the characters in Alberta Kitchen Party, who gamely but not very entertainingly stop singing to share stories that don’t quite add up to very much of anything.

There’s a failed junior high auditions (Fong, who demonstrates that he’s recovered quite nicely from that blow), voice changes while trying to move up in the boys’ choir (Carver-James), being stuck in admin when all he really wants to do is sing (Rollan, who you root for), having a dreary day job - for a week - (Dalgleish, trying to make a week stuck in a day job sound traumatizing. A week.).

Let’s just say these stories make you look forward to one of these talented young performers breaking into song, and it doesn’t hurt when it’s a Canadian classic like Tom Cochrane’s "Life is a Highway", when Alberta Kitchen Party really finds its high gear.

The truth is, when you’re a musical theatre actor in Canada, life is full of highways, as actors travel across this huge country, going from gig to gig, where they don’t earn quite enough money, but what they don’t have in their pocket they make up for with memories.

If Alberta Kitchen Party leaves us with any memories, it will be the ones about what it was like to once be young, gifted, full of hope and song - and so-so stories.