Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer reinvents the Queen's bench

Gordon Patrick White, Shakhar Paleja and Juisa Jojic in Theatre Calgary production of Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer (Photo: Trudie Lee)

Anyone who was at opening night of Governor-General award-winning playwright Kevin Loring's Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer will never hear someone summon "The Queen" again in the same way after the big reveal of Friday's boisterous opening night performance.

That was the five-star theatrical moment when Little Red Warrior transformed from a somewhat stumbling sex farce to a fiercely funny political satire right in front of the audience's eyes at Max Bell theatre.

I will try not to give it away, but I grew up watching hockey in Winnipeg Arena, where a gigantic oil painting of Queen Elizabeth hung over the rink like a stern taskmaster, and Friday night, Loring – who directed his own script – liberated me from her colonial gaze, with a twist that was one of the more outrageous, funny and memorable moments ever at Theatre Calgary.

And if it felt liberating for me, it felt exponentially more liberating for Little Red Warrior (Gordon Patrick White), the last surviving member of a First Nation in a part of British Columbia that has been earmarked for condo development and a golf course.

Little Red is a solitary man who lives alone and quietly in a shack in the woods - without running water but with cable - until one day when he learns about the planned development of his people's ancestral lands and loses his temper with a construction worker (Kevin McNulty), clobbering him with a shovel.

That lands Little Red in legal hot water, and soon all he's got is Larry (Shekhar Paleja), a public defender desperate for him to recall his intergenerational traumas to concoct a sympathetic courtroom defence.

Much to Larry's chagrin, Little Red wants to challenge the merits of the case on the historical facts of his land.

It's all further complicated by the fact that Little Red moves in with the lawyer and Desdemona (Luisa Jojic), his corporate lawyer wife, an ambitious, driven alpha female craving sexual attention.

The dirty secret of this story however is that Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer is a smart, imaginative, frequently very funny political satire disguised for a while as a meh sex farce.

Canadian playwright Kevin Loring is pictured at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on Thursday, April 18, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Loring has said Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer was inspired by the Trickster character and stories from Indigenous culture, which leans heavily towards sexual content, so I could understand what his inspiration was, but the sex farce part of this story didn't feel like it landed Friday night.

Rather, it's the window dressing intended to draw an unsuspecting audience into the story, only to have a smart, funny political fantasia pop out when you least expect it.

That is where Little Red Warrior veers into a courtroom drama about an Indigenous land claim, and Loring's script is at the top of his game here.

He uses a lot of theatrical shorthand – a lot of the lawyers' arguments are presented as modern dance – and assumes the audience is familiar with the arguments, like the part where the First Nations of B.C. never actually signed a treaty but somehow the Crown took their land anyways because, well - the Queen (Nick Miami Benz, in a memorable cameo)!

That's when a finely-calibrated sense of political outrage takes over Little Red Warrior, which is resolved in ways that are imaginative, funny and fantastic.

The ship is steered magnificently by McNulty in an assortment of roles. From the moment McNulty ambles on, collecting cans to return for the deposit, he is superb. He is relaxed and listens to the other characters and takes his time with Loring's rapid-fire dialogue – and lands every laugh.

White's Little Red Warrior starts out guileless and idealistic, and by the end of his journey, he has supplanted Desdemona as the bottom-line mogul who never met a system he couldn't bend to his will.

Paleja and Jojic have the unforgiving task of playing lawyers, and to compound matters, they are awful to each other, so don't blame them if you aren't too crazy about them!

Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer is a co-production with Making Treaty 7 and its artistic director Michelle Thrush made a speech Friday saying she hoped to draw more Indigenous folks in to see the show – including a discount code posted on MT7 and Theatre Calgary's website that offers Indigenous peoples $20 tickets to see the show.

The theatre company is also looking for Indigenous greeters to volunteer at each performance of Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, and everyone gets a Making Treaty 7 t-shirt and free entry into the show.

A little bit Enron, Michael Healy's 1979 and Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer is the most fun 90 minutes you'll ever spend with lawyers - and a hero named Little Red Warrior. At Theatre Calgary through Feb.19.