Arts & Entertainment

March 17, 2008

Luke Simcoe
aeditor@ gmail.com

 

 

Women, sex and Jesus... all in a day’s

work for Canuck comic

Maxim & Cosmo, featuring T.J. Dawe
Surrey Arts Centre, March 14

By Laura Kelsey, Assistant Editor

ri. loves giving chocolate, back rubs, and little
notes—if he didn’t look like Danny Tanner from Full
House then T.J. Dawe would be the perfect husband.
But according to Dawe, looks aren’t as important to
women as they are to men; and if that’s true, then he
gets a lot of pussy.

Dawe is an actor/comedian/writer/director and
quasi-women’s rights activist who has done over 700
solo performances in his life. He performed his current
show, Maxim & Cosmo, on Friday, March 14, to a
mostly female crowd in the sex capital of the world:
Surrey.

Perched on a stool between sparse background
props, Dawe began his animated dialogue by admitting
he judges people by scanning the titles on their
bookshelves: literally judging a book by its cover. But
by doing this, he started noticing that women all owned
the same books and one day he started reading chick
lit—and he discovered his feminine side, which has
helped him on and off the stage.

“Here’s the thing,” said Dawe in an interview
with the Other Press, “the things I describe as “what
women want” aren’t hard. Backrubs—I love giving
backrubs. A seemingly selfless reason for a woman to
take her shirt off? And let me touch her? Sign me up!
Chocolate—I used to keep a chocolate bar hidden in
the apartment at all times for my girlfriend. She’d get
to craving chocolate, I’d disappear into anther room,
bring it out—and voila! It was as if I presented her with
a diamond.”

Although Dawe admits he doesn’t like
sports, dogs, strippers, or guns, (and likes Rush
and foreplay), he is still very much a man—a
slob who loves sex with women. Nothing is
left sacred in his routine, and he talks about
why North American swear words are body and
church based (holy shit, asshole, cock), society’s
pressure on women to face up to an impossible
standard (the Virgin Mother), and why there is no
patron saint of sex (“Where is Samantha, patron
saint of girls who like to fuck?”).

Dawe writes his own monologue, which
is inspired by personal experience. “I stopped
trying to be a regular actor because I wanted
to say my own lines. It’s much more fun, much
more satisfying to me to talk about what happens
to me or to people I’ve talked to. The everyday lives of
people are incredibly interesting to me. So the show’s
an extension of me talking to a friend, or a group of
friends.”

The hour-and-a-half-long act also has serious
overtones, where Dawe shows as much empathy for
women’s plights (rape, sexism, lack of orgasms) as
only a man can. But his most humorous moments come
when he imitates himself having sex, and when he
acts as a freshly-laid Jesus and proclaims the “second-
coming.” Hearing a man yell out to a hundred people
that he has “struck cunt!” or wants someone to fill him
with sperm is pretty amusing, too.

There may be “no flying kicks, no falling
chandeliers, no dance sequences” and “no slipping

 

on a banana peel,” but Dawes reminds those that may
crave action that “there are dick jokes” in Maxim &
Cosmo; and although sometimes predictable, the peals
of laughter emitting from the crowd shows his spoken
humour makes up for the lack of physical shtick and
banana peels.

Dawe publishes all of his previous scripts, and
they are available through his website, www.tjdawe.
com. (If he publishes Maxim & Cosmo, it will be the
perfect stocking stuffer for any woman’s boyfriend—it
should actually be required reading for guys in high
school.) He is also looking ahead. “I’m memorizing for
my next show (which takes months of practice), I’ve
got a summer tour booked for it, and I hit the road in
May.” Let’s hope Dawe strikes cunt again with his next
performance.

 

 

 

College’s “Dracula” both artistically

and technically pleasing
Douglas College Theatre, March 15-22

By Liam Britten

 

Te Douglas College Theatre
Program’s triumphant 100" performance
is indeed, well, a triumph. The College’s
production of Stephen Dietz’s Dracula
(adapted, of course, from Bram Stoker’s
famous novel) is successful both in
terms of performances and _ technical

 

achievement, and certainly lives up to all
the pomp and circumstance surrounding
the event.

Dracula tells the story of how the
famous Count from Transylvania made
his way to England while searching for
fresh blood to feed upon. Dracula (played
by David Quest) longs to see the “teeming
masses” of London, and uses unwitting
an solicitor, Jonathan Harker, (Mitchell
Kanski), to get there. When he arrives,
his presence causes local aristocrat Lucy
Westenra (Clarissa Long) to fall ill. Her
suitor, asylum warden John Seaward
(Andrew Job), calls in his friend and
mentor Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Jake
Brown) to find the cause of her illness,
and it is Van Helsing, with help from
Jonathan’s fiancée Mina (Becca Strom)
that discovers the supernatural source of
her illness.

The play unfolds in a variety of ways.
Much of the plot plays out in real time,
following Lucy’s descent into illness
at the Count’s hands, but much is also
revealed through flashback, through the
journal of Jonathan. There is also the
input of asylum patient Renfield (played

by Nicholas McKechnie), who worships
Dracula and shares an almost psychic
connection with him. The stage’s set-
up, divided into thirds, allows these
sources to reveal themselves almost
simultaneously; the action flows very
nicely, and the energy never drops
for a second. Of particular note is the
flashback sequence, when Van Helsing
and Mina read Jonathan’s journal. As
they look to the past, they are interrupted
by Renfield’s mad ravings in the present,
giving urgency to their discoveries. Even
though they are learning the truth, it
might be too late already.

The sound design is without reproach
in Dracula. The wind, haunting laughter,
wolves, spirits, and the inner voices
of madmen all come to life in this
production. That said, there were at least
two very noticeable slip-ups in the audio
booth, as well. They were not major
slip-ups, but because the rest of the play
had established such a high standard of
quality, the audience was all the more
sensitive to such minor hiccups.

The cast was solid all around. I
thought Jake Brown did a very good job

with Van Helsing, which is a character
that doesn’t really offer much to work
with. He’s just around to kill vampires
and be a professional—think of him as
a 19"-century Samuel L. Jackson (“Yes
those vampires deserved to die, and
I hope they burn in Hell!”). Andrew
Job was an interesting Dr. Seward. He
played the doctor as a superbly two-
faced Victorian gentleman; he can speak
poetically to his love one minute, then
begin cavalierly shackling madmen and
defending vivisection the next. He goes
from Shakespeare to Machiavelli in
the blink of an eye, for to him, all ends
justify the means in the world of science.
Clarissa Long’s Lucy was another great
portrayal; the virtuous, chaste girl is the
embodiment of Victorian modesty, but
has a “secret life” as it is referred to in
the play, a repressed sensual nature that
needs only the intervention of a certain
man to come rising to the surface.

An excellent production all around,
Douglas’ Dracula will certainly not
disappoint.

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