When The Chill is in The Bone Not Much Can Warm You

Werewolves opens November 4 at Performance Works

During the Second World War, with so many millions brutalized, terrorized, enslaved and murdered, the social order was effectively broken down and civilization was shown to be a thin veneer. Life proved fragile, uncertain and worthless. People were revealed to be monsters or completely ineffective in dealing with monsters.

Teresa Lubkeiwicz-Urbanowicz wrote her play,Werewolves, in 1974 inspired by a story from her husband’s past - a hovel in war ravaged Belarus, a coffin, a dead woman, and a desperate immoral gaiety, drinking and dancing around the corpse.

The play itself opens with Thrush, a fortyish man doomed to farm a thistle patch, as he builds a spring-loaded leg hold trap with sharp teeth designed to cut through a thick leather winter boot, through muscle and tendon and all the way to bone. His mother sits in a chair nearby and recalls that he was an angry child even in the womb with his violent kicks.

Foreshadowing the coming social and personal disintegration he asks her if she has noticed that he no longer bothers to conceal his dark intentions from her. When she complains she is old and tired he mocks her, challenging her to climb into her ready made coffin leaning in a corner of their chilled hovel.

And she does die and the professional mourners do come and she’s laid in her coffin and her open coffin is placed on the kitchen table. The mourners squabble and quarrel and everyone eats too much, they become drunk and licentious. No one notices that Thrush is a monster, with dark sexual appetites, not even in the end.

I kept thinking of the murders at the Pickton farm and the hungry pigs all during the opening performance of Werewolves. When the Wolf-men arrive, with their Nazi overtones, I half-expected Thrush to join up with them and run with the pack. But he doesn’t. Perhaps because they are already inside him.

Werewolves blends the emotional, physical, and spirit-world and the combination creates a magic-realism or maybe its an eighteenth century Gothic gloom. Pi Theatre chose Lubkiewicz-Urbanowicz’ play for its Emerging Artists Showcase, called Prime@Pi. The actors, stage managers, lighting and costume designers are all rightfully considered to be the up-and-coming talent pool.

Werewolves, directed by Tammy Isaacson, runs until November 18th at Granville Island’s Performance Works. Tix are $16 for students or maybe you can convince your cash-laden boyfriend or girlfriend to buy a See Seven Pass (seven plays for $87). Performances at 8PM.

Pi Theatre
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