Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Tiger Lady (Stage 1, Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The story is fascinating, snatched from the archives of circus history by the English company Dead Rabbits Theatre (The Dragon, My Love Lies Frozen in the Ice).

In Tiger Lady, we meet Mabel Stark, the circus world’s first-ever female tiger tamer. In the early years of the 20th century, the heyday of the Ringling Brothers, a Kentucky orphan escaped the harsh bonds of her unpromising life, and ran away with the circus. And a star was born.

It’s an exotic story, to be sure. And how a nimble cast of six create something rich and strange (a love story, a comedy with tragic dimensions, a tragedy with comic dimensions) from it is the particular achievement of Tiger Lady. That they create an atmospheric world using three ladders, a sheet, a door, parachute silk, and music is magic. Theatre magic, the kind that happens before your very eyes.    

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Somehow — you won’t quite believe it yourself — you’ll find yourself captivated by the ingenious and playful theatricality that turns a story of crazy courage and ambition born of desperation into … a love story. It happens on the spot; the Dead Rabbits are not about exposition. “It’s funny how the world turns on the smallest of things.”

Mabel (Natisha Williams-Samuels) leaves a world where “the circus is the devil’s work” and discovers a world where love can exist, albeit with a high-risk factor. She falls in love with a tiger, her special tiger Rajah, her baby (puppeteer Eddie Breckinridge). Yes, you will feel fear and awe as Rajah gets bigger and bigger. Yes, your heart will be warmed by the attraction between Mabel and an empathetic human (Abayomi Oniyide). The audience participation in a show about showbiz is fun and unforced.

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

The ensemble populate the circus, including the animal division, with comic gusto: the mouthy and conniving ringmaster Al (Antonio Victoria ) forever holding bankruptcy at bay, along with his much put-upon animal trainer and enabler Louis (James Parker) and his jaded dancer (Chloe Waddilove) who needs the job. Ferdinand the elephant has a particularly memorable entrance.

And then, from time to time, the ensemble pick up instruments — trombone, banjo, washboard, a drum that’s a box — and flesh out the narrative with jaunty jug-band tunes.

It’s a measure of the theatrical expertise at work here that you hold your breath every time that free-standing door opens, a theatrical variation of The Lady, or the Tiger?. As in circuses everywhere, we’re attracted by the allure of danger, the possibility of a fall, a maul, the outcome that can never fully be predicted. It’s only human.

And so is the way a high-spirited comedy is haunted by the thought that the deepest scars are the ones you can’t see. Mesmerizing.