An “A” from the Uptown for Skriker

The show may be closed, but good reviews still coming in.  Check out what Jared Storey had to say about the show in his grade “A” review”

“While a fairy is the focus of Caryl Churchill’s 1994 play The Skriker, it’s no children’s fable. Much more threatening than Tinker Bell, The Skriker is an ancient spirit and shape shifter who preys on people by granting them wishes, seducing them with magic, trapping them and eventually driving them mad. In this tale, its victims are two vulnerable young London women: Josie (Charlene Van Beukenhout), who has killed her baby before story’s start and thus is doing some time in the cracker factory, and her friend Lily (Daina Leitold), a pregnant runaway.

Played by six actors, The Skriker morphs from an old beggar (Matthew Tenbruggencate) to an American woman in a bar (Karl Thordarson) to a needy boyfriend (Kevin Klassen), tempting and manipulating the two girls along the way. While speaking English in its human personifications, in its own weird world The Skriker speaks a rapid, rambling, nursery rhyme-inspired language which all actors pull off magnificently.

Despite its strangeness, under Alix Sobler’s direction The Skriker is never that hard to follow, with video and clever lighting keeping things on track. The meaning or message of the play however, is a different story. Themes of temptation, possession and, with Josie, postpartum psychosis do come up, but it is never exactly clear to me what Churchill is trying to say. I wish I knew.”
— Jared Story