Plenty if you take the plunge, cross one of the bridges to North Vancouver and see the play at the Presentation House Theatre and then visit the show of the photographs of Allen Ginsberg upstairs at the Presentation House Gallery.

I was lured to see this play with my North Vancouver friend Ian Bateson as the excuse to cross that bridge. I told him of the wonderful actress (I am old-fashioned) Lindsey Angell who often appears in plays that push the comfort zone (Venus in Fur). In this day and age of low media exposure of plays and other activities of the arts I knew of the play because I happen to be on Angell’s email list. Thank you Angell for that!

My friend Ian found certain parts of the play odd. Perhaps this was so as the play is not exactly linear and rarely do any of the three actors (Lindsey Angell as Kassandra, Georgia Beatty as Anna Godwin and Munish Sharma ad Halim) interact with each other.

Another interesting feature of this show is the increasingly evident use of choreography (I first noticed this some years back in a play by the Electric Theatre Company that listed Crystal Pite as the choreographer). The actors first move onto the stage occupied by two plastic chairs and a long white sofa. They move back and shift their positions with the grace of modern dancers and so it goes until the end.

Somehow this play brought in the Vancouver housing situation as if I were reading it in the newspapers. The play is about two immigrants and the token white person from here (Anna Godwin). Halim is the un-turbaned East Indian (is he from India or Pakistan?). Kassandra is the cliche hooker from the former Soviet Union (Ukraine, perhaps?) who is not, as she is from Estonia.

I will not go any further to explain the plot except that the “aha! moment” happens when Kassandra from her vantage point of being in a tub in underwear(?) as she tells her story mentions that Anna Godwin enters the bathroom and reaches for the toilet paper on the wrong side.

You are warned by an extremely English young man (with whom I shared little of my language that I call English) before the play opens that we will listen to foul language that is appropriate to the plot. A warning to those who might be shocked but it does involve a meticulously folded American 100 Dollar bill slipped into a woman’s tongue after swallowing.

By the standards of the more staid Arts Club Theatre productions the language in Iceland is indeed foul. But in the mouth of Halim, as played by Munish Sharma it almost sounds normal.  He is a charmer you would never want your daughter to ever meet nor would I ever buy a used car from him.

From my vantage point of first-row-centre the three actors were intense. In the darkness they would stare (I thought at me) and I would uncomfortably move in my seat. No matter how easy it is supposed to be I am always amazed when an actor (Lindsey Angell in this case) cries on demand. As she was uttering a long ramble in Estonian the tears were smearing her eye makeup. Georgia Beaty in her very red hair was a sight to behold as she held on to her hands struggling to tell us her story of a lost home. 

I photographed the cast in their dressing room explaining that I have been doing this sort of pseudo selfie for a while. I did not know that once upstairs I would find that indeed I have this penchant for mirror selfies to have had a parallel with Allen Ginsberg.

I first and lastly heard Ginsberg recite his poetry (and play his awful concertina) sometime in the late 70s at the PNE. I was with (coincidence) Ian Bateson. I did not like Ginsberg and his companion Peter Orloff even less. Perhaps it was my distancing from the American conflict in Vietnam as I thought  no Canadians had anything to do with it. Orloff seemed to be angry and obsessed with Vietnam. And of course now  we cannot afford to distance ourselves from conflicts in other parts of the world.

Just like in the 70s I hated any classical music that was not baroque I found no connection with the beat poets, etc.

And of course with age comes a bit of tolerance and the broadening of horizons. Perhaps it was my love for the books of Charles Bukowski that brought me closer to the beats and helped me appreciate them. It was my friend William Gibson who informed me his writing had been inspired by William S. Burroughs. It was the Life Magazine photographer Harry Redl, who befriended me a couple of years before he died, who told me of his many photographic sessions with the beat poets that brought me around.

And I have Allen Ginsberg to thank for my love for one of my favourite Canadian poets, Gerry Gilbert. He was the warm-up act at the PNE. His voice, a matter-of-fact sort of voice, his rhythm and his language simply charmed me to appreciate poetry. From Gilbert it was easy to move to WilliamCarlos Williams and others.

And thanks to Iceland, my trip to North Vancouver exposed me to the wonderful photographs (better photographer than a concertina player) of Allen Ginsberg. There are photographs of people I have read like R.D. Lang and of photographers that I admire, Robert Frank, a killer photograph of Lou Reed of Richard Avedon and another of Yevtushenko.

It is interesting to note here that almost every photograph has a wide lower white border on which Ginsberg explains in great detail what you are looking at. It seems that his idea came from his friend, photographer Berenice Abbott.

As for anything that leaves you in a quandary and without explanation just say, “Iceland” and nobody will understand your meaning. If you want to find out be aware that the play runs until the 29^th.

Allen Ginsberg - Self-portrait

Is there a connection between Ginsberg and Iceland? I found many. Below is one.

Allen Ginsberg & translation into Icelandic with Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl on Wednesday 28.1 at 18:00

Dear friend of Arkadia, You are warmly invited to join a talk on the American poet Allen Ginsberg with Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl and Mathias Rosenlund on Wednesday 28.1 at 18:00. Eiríkur has recently translated and published into Icelandic selected poems by Ginsberg. Among other topics he will discuss with Mathias the difficulties of translating English poetry into uniform Icelandic as well as the complexity of translating the legendary opening lines of Ginsberg’s poem Howl. He will also explain how Ginsberg’s poetry has influenced his own writing. Welcome! Warm regards, Ian Bourgeot P.S: Entrance is free and green tea will be served Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl was born in Reykjavík on July 1st 1978. He finished his secondary education in Ísafjörður in the Westfjords in Iceland in 1999 and later studied German in Berlin in 2003. As well as being a writer, Eiríkur has done a number of jobs through the years, taught at grade school, done painting jobs at a ship yard, been a night guard at a hotel, worked at homes for handicapped people, been a caregiver at old people’s homes, a cleaner at a cruise ship and a chef at a day care center, to name some. He is one of the founders of Nyhil, a publishing house that focuses on writings by young people and also organizes various cultural events. Mathias Rosenlund is working on a Master’s Degree in Nordic literature at Helsinki University. He has a particular interest in 20th century Central European and American literature.