I suspect Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer - a satirical comedy by award-winning Canadian playwright Kevin Loring - is one of those shows audiences will either love or hate.
The 85-minute play, now at the Belfry Theatre, follows the misadventures of Little Red Warrior, the sole remaining member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation.
One day Little Red, played by Sam Bob on Thursday night, spies an engineer from a land development team on his territory. Enraged, he bonks him on the head with a shovel.
Little Red is arrested for assault. Larry (Shekhar Paleja), his court-appointed lawyer, invites him to stay with him and his wife. Shenanigans ensue. Larry’s wife Desdemona (Luisa Jojic), a money-grubbing lawyer like her husband, becomes enamoured with Little Red and lures him into a torrid affair. The trial turns out to be a gong show and the play concludes in riotous fashion.
At one point lawyer Larry wonders aloud: “What the hell is going on here?” I felt poor ol’ Larry’s pain. Directed by Loring, Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer is an exasperating hodgepodge, a dog’s breakfast hampered by an uneven script and a cast of varying abilities.
It’s something of a headscratcher. In 2010 the Belfry mounted Loring’s excellent Where the Blood Mixes, a powerful and moving examination of the residential school legacy that won a Governor General’s Award. A member of sa国际传媒’s Nlaka’pamux Nation, Loring in 2017 became the first artistic director of Indigenous theatre at the National Arts Centre. He’s a talented fellow - one can only assume this play is a misstep.
With Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer, Loring has opted for a heightened, broad style of comedy (arguably influenced by commedia dell’arte) that gleefully shrugs off naturalism. The greedy lawyers are presented as two-dimensional caricatures. The fourth wall is toppled when the play ‘s narrator - a pop-can-scavenging guy called Floyd (Kevin McNulty) - addresses the audience directly. Little Red, meanwhile, sometimes exudes the fairy dust of the supernatural trickster (the published script’s full title Is Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer: A Trickster Land Claim Fable).
Humour is a matter of taste. Little Red mocks Larry’s choice of vehicle, calling his Volvo a “vulva.” He describes a relative’s tragic encounter with a cougar, who (oh yes!) turns out to be an older woman. When Little Red becomes perturbed at the prospect of a possible prison term, Larry teases him by saying, “What’s the matter, can’t handle penal love?” Get it? All male prison. Yup.
This stuff is comedy gold… if you’re a 13-year-old boy. Can a case be made for Loring’s brand of funny? Perhaps it’s a satiric poke at juvenile humour - or intended to be so bad it’s good. Or maybe it’s just a series of sophomoric laughs that fall distressingly flat.
There’s no question the land claims issue is a worthy of examination. White society continues to run rough-shod over First Nations people. Land occupied by aboriginals for thousands of years continues to be scooped up and monetized shamefully.
Employing a satirical/comedic approach is also fine and dandy. Yet, while Little Red does upend the status quo as Loring intends, the play lacks originality- the fundamental sense a fresh perspective is being offered.
Towards the end, the cracks in Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer break wide open with a surprise appearance from a familiar member of the monarchy. Suffice to say thigh-high red dominatrix boots feature large here. It’s a spectacle all right, but one that reeks of desperation. (It didn’t help when a glitter ball appeared to malfunction opening night.)
As Desdemona, the talented Jojic works hard to make the best of a bad situation. She was particularly amusing during dance sequences that seem arbitrarily tacked on. Bob, playing Little Red, is an imposing presence who doesn’t quite convince as Desdemona’s love interest.
For Wednesday and Saturday matinees the role of Little Red is played by Gordon Patrick Price (originally enlisted in case Bob didn’t recover from a back injury that delayed the opening). All in-person performances of Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer are sold out; however, the shows can be seen via live stream.
The play — a co-production of the Belfry, Savage Society and NAC Indigenous Theatre — will also be presented at Vancouver's York Theatre March 3 to 13.
