Nathan Cuckow and Doug Mertz in 10 Funerals, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The stage (designer: Even Gilchrist) is hung with rows of black jackets, in every style and shape, bling-ed up or classic.

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It’s the fashion item of necessity in 10 Funerals. In each of the 10 scenes of an entertaining new Darrin Hagen comedy with a morbid undertow, premiering at Shadow Theatre, Jack and Maurice are returning home from a funeral. In each scene they take off a black jacket and have coffee (and the cups like the jackets do accumulate).

After all, Jack and Maurice have been together for 35 plus years; they even hooked up at a funeral, a great place to meet someone as the former notes. Which is to say, they have decades of experience going to funerals together, then reviewing the occasion: the deceased, the ‘family’ (and the “chosen family,” an important distinction in 10 Funerals), the attendance, the state of the gay community,  the catering.… And they’re experts at slinging zingers at each other — about gay stereotypes and their own life growing old together, with possible funeral options. “Fine. You want MacArthur Park. Then make a will.”

Jake Tkaczyk and Josh Travnik in 10 Funerals, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

They argue constantly; they hone their wits on shivs, and they’ve made snide into an art form. Jack  and Maurice — Nathan Cuckow and Doug Mertz as the older version and Jake Tkaczyk and Josh Travnik as the younger — are the gay Bickersons. They’re fuelled by long-term couples chemistry, that slow-cooked, specially seasoned combination of amusement and irritation. And they’re well provided with comic ammunition by Hagen, who’s a funny writer. “You talk about funerals like they’re wedding receptions. The flowers, the music, what the corpse was wearing….”

Says Jack,  “if you throw a funeral for me without my permission, I will get up and walk out.” Says Maurice, the more histrionic one, “you have to have a funeral. It’s my one chance in our miserable lives to plan a gathering where you won’t be able to leave in a huff.”

Jake Tkaczyk and Josh Travnik in 10 Funerals, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

It’s old-school gallows humour, and you’ll laugh; the 85 minutes of 10 Funerals fly by. The premise is a Hagen original. It’s a gay ‘sitcom’ over years, with a melancholy streak, where the ‘com’ is dark and the ‘situation’ is a historical review of the ways gay couples have been located in the culture at large through the decades. It’s a challenging dramatic texture,  couples comedy and a love story that play out against a backdrop of struggle and tragedy. COVID, after all, isn’t the first plague that Jack and Maurice have lived through.

After an orchestral prelude, Hagen’s own score for the piece settles into something bleak,  which seems a bit like editorializing in a piece that gets its dark crackle from juxtaposing the comic and the tragic.

Thanks to a quartet of excellent performances in John Hudson’s production, the two characters in each scene banter away easily, tossing off gay (and straight) stereotype jokes and insults, running couple gags, oblique references to the gay cultural markers of the moment — all volleyed against a Kilroy Was Here wall of history that’s riddled with homophobia, violence, marginalization, and unseasonal death.

And it’s for the actors to find the continuity in the couple as they age together through the decades. The breezy flamboyance of Travnik’s Maurice with his “signature hair” becomes the older version of himself in Mertz. Tkaczyk’s deadpan Jack, the activist of the pair,  becomes Cuckow’s version, with his fading zeal, sweater vests, and prim moustache, who still hasn’t come out to his mother. “You used to find me endlessly fascinating,” sighs Jack. “I used to do cocaine,” says Maurice.

Scenes in the ‘80s and ‘90s, distinguished by apt, witty costume choices and hair (designer: Leona Brausen), are dominated by the death toll of AIDS. It’s funeral after funeral, underscored by fear. Has Wesley lost weight? Will there ever be a cure? Not till straight people start dying, Jack notes grimly.

Nathan Cuckow and Doug Mertz in 10 Funerals, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

By 1987, Jack and Maurice have run out of black outfits. And they’re starting to get nostalgic about the pre-AIDS activism of the homophobic ‘70s. Orange juice boycotts because of Anita Bryant? “That’ll be the last homophobic thing that ever emerges from Florida” gets a big audience laugh.

The coke-fuelled gay party life is reviewed post-funeral in 1984. So is the status of the aging activists who had valiantly battled for equality, a battle that seems to need a comeback tour these days. By 2013, after the funeral of a suicidal friend, Maurice is wondering wryly “did we really fight so hard so we could be as annoying as straight people?” And Jack, for his part, says “activism is exhausting.”

By 2016, attendance at funerals has dwindled — laziness? indifference? the de-population of the gay community? “Where was everyone?” asks Maurice. “That was everyone,” says Jack. And their apartment seems to be getting smaller, crowded with ghosts.

Under the playful flash and bitchy surface comedy of 10 Funerals lie fathoms of sadness. A zestful comic writer and a queer activist/historian meet in the writing of 10 Funerals. It’s a rare combination.

REVIEW

10 Funerals

Theatre: Shadow

Written by: Darrin Hagen

Directed by: John Hudson

Starring: Doug Mertz, Nathan Cuckow, Jake Tkaczyk, Josh Travnik

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: through May 14

Tickets: shadowtheatre.org