Review: Shadow Theatre's Yaga ripples with creepy energy and October fun

Out in the woods, between the creaking branches and the whispering wind, is a cabin standing on chicken legs. Inside lives a witch, an old crone who helps some but terrifies others and is misunderstood by everyone. This is the tale of Baba Yaga.

Kat Sandler’s popular re-work of the Slavic fairy tale makes its way to the Varscona, where Yaga runs through Nov. 1. Shadow Theatre’s season opener comes just a week before the television adaptation premieres on Crave, the perfect time for Edmonton audiences to catch this creepy, unsettling and amazing show in the heart of the Halloween season.

The young heir to a yogurt empire has gone missing and Rapp has been hired to track down his whereabouts. It’s not the first time he’s disappeared, but some things just don’t add up this time. What he finds in the small town of Whitlock is unnerving and unsettling, a mystery that piles more questions onto the fire before any answers pop out.

Rapp reaches out for help from the local police, who weren’t able to find the young heir when he initially disappeared, and talks through what he finds with Detective Carson. Rapp quickly focuses his questions on a professor at the college, an older woman with a history of sleeping with young students; not her students, she’s clear, but students from the larger college body. There’s a whole cast of supporting characters and suspects, a rabbit hole of interviews and motivations for our intrepid private investigator to fall down.

Weaving through it all, binding everything together and popping into the narrative more than a few times, is the myth of Baba Yaga. The young heir had interviewed the old professor about the myth right before he disappeared, foreshadowing layered on so thick you could cut it with a knife.

The story twists and turns, unexpected outcomes and new information throwing everything into disarray. The unnerving sound design adds a weird pressure to the performance, an undertone of discomfort that makes you wonder what will crazy twists will pop out next and adds perfectly to the mood of the show.

While there are multiple characters, just three actors take on all of the roles in Yaga. Emily Howard plays Detective Carson but also a slew of young female characters, while Maxwell Vesely is Rapp and shows up as the young yogurt heir in flashbacks.

At the centre of it all is N. Girgis, at turns powerful and manipulative as the “Boner Beast” professor or creepy and cackling as the decrepit crone narrating between scenes. It’s a powerful performance that anchors the show and make it feel like there’s more than just the three thespians upon the stage.

That stage is set, literally, out in the woods. What designer Cindi Zuby has constructed entirely with fallen branches and logs is incredible, grounding the show in nature and making the whole thing feel like its taking place out in the woods. We’re reminded at every turn of the story of Baba Yaga and her home in the woods, literally staring back at us on the stage at every turn.

Yaga is the perfect addition to a terrifying October, a funny and frightening show about subverted expectations and the biases that can seep into our decision making. And, of course, it has a witch living out in the woods, and what’s scarier than that?

Director: Lana Michelle Hughes

Written by: Kat Sandler

Starring: N. Girgis, Emily Howard, Maxwell Vessely

Where: The Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

When: until Nov. 1

Tickets: Available from $40, $36 for seniors at shadowtheatre.org