Slaying the Eternal Hydra

The discovery of a long-lost modernist masterpiece sparks an exploration of art, identity and truth in Eternal Hydra at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto.

The eponymous book was authored by the fictional Gordias Carbunkle. His character and book are based on James Joyce; unfortunately, the play too frequently tips its hat to Joyce’s style. It’s long and the plot jumps back and forth in time and place, between the characters’ reality and passages from the book. There are plenty of high ideas floating around about the nature of art, truth and morality, including a subplot about racism that feels awkwardly tacked on. But the ideas, while compelling, don’t quite connect with the plot or the audience.

The play starts well. An obsessive scholar, Vivian Ezra (Liisa Repo-Martell), presents her closely guarded prize to a publisher. It’s the legendary book Eternal Hydra, penned by the fictional modernist Gordias Carbunkle (David Ferry) 70 years ago. Vivian has brooded over the manuscript for six years, annotating and footnoting all 99 dense chapters. So extreme is her devotion that she believes the spirit of Carbuncle speaks to her and lives with her. Carbunkle appears onstage with her. The other characters only interact with him during scenes from Gordias’ life or novel.

The plot starts to go off the rails somewhere during the second act. Playwright Anton Piatigorsky is trying to look at modernism through post-modernism eyes. The result is that as each character tells their unique part of the story, plot threads are picked up and dropped far too quickly.

The same set is used throughout the play: an oblong table, four chairs, two benches. It functions effectively as a board room, Vivian’s office, Carbunkle’s Paris flat, and a cobbler’s workshop in 19th century New Orleans.

The actors are excellent, despite unconvincing Irish and Creole accents. This is a workshop production, according to director Chris Abraham, with new lines being added and others removed after each performance. The changes didn’t seem to faze the cast. Even when the plot dragged they kept the audience’s attention with subtly nuanced performances.

The play debuted in 2002 as a one act show at the Stratford Festival.

Eternal Hydra’s big ideas get a bit lost in the shifting points of view and plot twists. It’s a work in progress, and it feels like one. Piatigorsky and Abraham haven’t slain their hydra yet.

Gorey Tales

PHOTO BY PERMISSION OF THE OSBORNE COLLECTION OF EARLY CHILDREN'S LITERATURE AND THE GOREY CHARITABLE TRUST
Edward Gorey's illustrations for Little Red Riding Hood

Gorey Tales, a new exhibit at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Literature in Toronto, explores the more playful side of artist Edward Gorey.

Gorey is best known for his illustrations of faintly ridiculous Edwardian socialites, mustachioed men in long fur coats, unfortunate children and many cats. His art combines macabre subject matter with a dry wit to create a whimsical and sinister world. His illustrations and set designs for Dracula, and the opening credit animation for the long-running PBS series Mystery! made him famous. He has also stamped his unmistakable style on children’s book illustrations.

The Osborne Collection is located at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library. Over 80,000 rare children’s books are housed here, along with an accompanying gallery. Leslie McGrath, the department head at the Osborne Collection, said Gorey’s popularity has been drawing healthy crowds to the library.

“I think it’s been one of our best attended exhibits in years because his appeal is so broad,” she said.

A version of Little Red Riding Hood demonstrates Gorey’s versatility. The tiny figure of Red Riding Hood on the cover looks both innocent and slightly worried, but the heavy cross-hatching that usually characterizes his drawings is absent. While definitely Gorey, it’s much lighter than other pieces.

In The Dwindling Party, Gorey’s mordant humor is much more obvious. Pictures and pop-up pages illustrate the unhappy demise of the MacFizzit family during vacation, leaving only young Neville alive at the end.

Some of the miniature books Gorey has illustrated are scattered among the larger picture books. They’re merely an inch long, but the thumbnail sized illustrations are detailed and impressive.
Other children’s books, with darker themes from the Osborne Collection, are also on display. They help to anchor Gorey’s work firmly in the tradition of illustrated children’s books. Early versions of familiar fairy tales and popular Punch and Judy stories have distinctly dark undertones. McGrath said that’s something she hopes people will appreciate in this exhibit.

“There’s a long, fascinating tradition of this type of material in children’s publishing,” she said. “You can go right back to early materials to the world upside down […] on through Struwwelpeter, and even through Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark. There’s a long tradition of the macabre and the interesting, cautionary tales, in children’s books.”

The exhibit also includes some of his best known work, like a first edition of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest, and a toy theatre Gorey based on his award-winning costumes and set design for Dracula.

The variety of material in Gorey Tales creates a picture of an artist able to apply his idiosyncratic style to the serious and whimsical alike. It’s been a pleasant surprise for many visitors, McGrath said.

“People can come in who don’t think about this person as a children’s illustrator, and they realize a good illustrator is a good illustrator, whether he’s doing adult books, children’s books, doesn’t really matter,” she said.

Orn at the Smiling Buddha

Orn filled the Smiling Buddha in Toronto with a palpable wall of doom last Friday night. Dense waves of feedback and a low-end throb were felt as much as heard by the enthusiastic crowd that packed the venue. They played a two-song set that still clocked in at 30 minutes.

Orn isn’t quite your typical doom metal band. The long, droning songs and the tortured wail of vocalist Adam Cooper are classic doom. But the structure is minimal to the point of being avant-garde. Cooper, guitarist Dan Ross and drummer Justin Smith created an affecting soundscape of feedback and simple, heavy beats.

The three of them started the band a year ago, and have only played one other show. Ross, a shaggy, bearded political science doctoral candidate, commented on Orn’s slow, steady pace before the show.

“Like all things in doom metal we move very, very slowly,” Ross said.

They drew a surprisingly mixed crowd. The usual metal heads in bullet belts and ratty hair rubbed shoulders with hipsters in bandanas and Cons. Doom metal has gotten a stamp of approval from magazines like Vice, and another Toronto-based doom outfit, Nadja, has gotten coverage in mainstream media.

Everyone seemed equally caught up in the music though. Any song that can hold your attention for 20 minutes has to be good. The crowd pressed right up to the edge of the stage, and even the most detached hipsters rocked out to the pulses of noise.

Orn have just released an EP, Teeth/Knowing. They plan to gig around Toronto and eventually release a full-length album.

Unlike other bands in the doom scene, like Sunn 0))), who put on pretentious, conceptualized shows, an Orn show is refreshingly down to earth. They’re just three guys in black playing their hearts out, no props or robes needed.

“There’s nothing complicated or tricky, it doesn’t ask you to be over-sophisticated or to intellectualize what you’re looking to do,” Ross said. “It’s just big, loud, stupid music. I think sometimes people just want to listen to big, loud, stupid music.”

Toronto After Dark Film Festival '07

Festival director Adam Lopez and Murder Party star Chris Sharp answered questions from the audience. Photo: Nicole Votta

Conjoined twins, brown knights, zombie chickens and philosopher donkeys. Where do you find them? The Toronto After Dark Film Festival.

The second Toronto After Dark Film Festival opened Oct. 19 and wrapped up Oct. 25 at the Bloor Cinema. The festival, which shines a light on independent horror, fantasy and science fiction films, featured 14 films and over 30 short films.

Communications director Chris Emery said the festival organizers and fans have one standard they hold the films to.

“We always say that our film festival is based on thrilling cinema,” Emery said. “They like the thrilling cinema, they like seeing the film where you’re walking down the dark corridor and you’re not sure what’s going to jump out or try to kill you.”

A Taste for BrainsThe festival opened with the Canadian premier of the highly anticipated Mulberry Street. Set in New York City, Mulberry Street is a zombie movie in the vein of Land of the Dead and 28 Days Later. A virus spread by rats takes over the city and the victims turn into rodent like zombies. It’s a solid movie and the audience clearly loved it. But it feels a bit too familiar. Maybe the zombie genre needs a break.

However, two more zombie movies were on the bill, the zombie chicken comedy Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and Automaton Transfusion. Directed by Steven C. Miller, Automaton Transfusion is definitely low-budget and the cast isn’t quite Oscar worthy. It contains a political slant that works surprising well, though. These zombies were developed by the United States military. The experiment goes horrifically awry and a remarkable amount of gore ensues.

Wolfhound was billed as one of the festival’s highlights. Rumored to be the highest budget Russian film ever made and with a plot line that owes more to Beastmaster or Kull than Lord of the Rings how could it go wrong? If you went into the film expecting highbrow fantasy, you would have come out disappointed. This is cheesy sword and sorcery fun.

Most pleasantly surprising were the shorts. Short films were shown before each feature and in blocks of nine on Saturday and Sunday. While some of the features regrettably fell into clichés, the shorts were daring and visually arresting. Some of the most notable were the surrealist An Introduction to Lucid Dreaming and A Very Sunny Morning, the gas-masked dystopian fantasy Ambassador’s Day, and the morality tale The Tragic Story of Nling. Latchkey’s Lament and Operation: Fish were easily the most visually appealing films.

The festival wrapped up with Murder Party. Festival director Adam Lopez took the stage to cheers and applause, as he declared the festival a success. According to Lopez, over 5,000 people attended the festival, a figure well beyond their expectations.

While thanking staff, volunteers and audience, Lopez said their enthusiasm and love of thrills was what keeps the festival going.

“We do it all for you guys,” he said.

Lopez promised the festival would be back next year, same time, same place. Whatever monster or madman reigns supreme next year, there will be gore and horror and audience chants.
What do we want? Kills!

Canzine '07

The art of zine making at Canzine. Photo: Nicole Votta

A cacophony of noise greeted visitors at this year’s Canzine, where hundreds of zine makers discussed the finer points of zine culture, and took in readings and a free noise band who did interpretations of Metallica.

The twelfth annual Canzine was held on Oct . 28 at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. Staged by Broken Pencil, Canzine is a multimedia celebration of independent art and print zines.
Broken Pencil editor Lindsay Gibb said Canzine offers a chance for zine makers and underground artists in Toronto to come together.

“It started out as an oasis for zine people and what’s going on in the zine world and what zines are out there,” she said. “That’s what Canzine is all about, allowing people to get together and sell their zines.”

Judging by attendance, Toronto’s zine culture is alive and well. Two floors were crammed with tables of zines and underground comics. The narrow aisles were so packed people could barely squeeze by each other. This year’s Canzine featured a horror theme to coincide with the Halloween issue of Broken Pencil. Though Canzine is usually held at the end of October, Gibb said this was the first time they’d tried to add a spooky touch to the event.

“It just happened this year that we did a horror issue […] and we thought we would do it to coincide with Canzine,” Gibb said. “Canzine always falls toward the end of October.”

Readings, art installations and workshops were held on the second floor. Local writers read horror stories and a pair of make-up artists demonstrated the fine art of making intestines out of nylons and cotton balls. One installation challenged viewers to solve a murder. Artist Tara Bursey created a haunted room with worry bead diet pills and soaps inscribed with the word ‘imperfect’.

On both floors the atmosphere was friendly and chaotic. Members of the band Friendly Rich and the Lollipop People wandered up and down the stairs with rolls of packing tape and crank organs. Zine vendors spilled out onto the landings. An artist in a commercial pilot’s uniform sat behind his table sketching an intricate pattern of people and dense, curving lines amidst the chaos.

The printed zine doesn’t seem to be in any danger of disappearing, says Gibb.“I [thought] that online would change the face of zines and what people are creating. And for sure it has changed a little bit, like you see people making t-shirts and purses and whatever, things instead of just zines,” she said. “But we have more zines here than anything else. People are still making physical zines, not just online.”