Stories We Tell

On Saturday, I went back to the Next Stage Festival for another show. This time, it was a retelling of Scheherazade by Nobody's Business Theatre. It was obvious immediately that it was a modern take, as a "Bridezilla" took center-stage to recount in details all her materialistic wedding choices from music to food to clothes. Her story was odd though, as it started with an exceptionally nervous father-of-the-bride, and the details got darker.

It turned out to be a nightmare of Dunyazade (Heather Marie Annis) on the eve of her sister's wedding to Shahriyar (Steven McCarthy). However, Scheherazade (Lindsey Clark) had a plan to not become his 1001st dead wife. On the pretext of telling a last story to her younger sister, Scheherazade will attempt to stay her beheading with a new story every night.

Appropriately enough, every scene was actually a story, if sometimes only known after the fact. This led to multi-level of story nesting, though the play did not draw attention to this structure. Similarly, the true events (as imagined by playwright Johnnie Walker) underlying all the tales about Shahriyar, his 1st wife, djinns, and others were also revealed in pieces for the sharp-eared audience member. But this understanding wasn't central to the plot.

The big take-away was all the filthy smut. The stories including Scheherazade's tales as well as the various back-stories (for example, Shahriyar's unfaithful wife) were told with as many 4-letter words and sex acts as possible, and enthusiastically acted out with glee. This led to some amazed laughter from the crowd. But it wasn't all comic romp, since a situation involving a thousand dead women, a tyrannical king, and a desperate new bride was, well, pretty effed up. This was a fun play to watch, although with its triple-X content, would probably not be playing at the larger PG-friendly theatres in town.