Oct. 26, 2010 - Issue #784 : You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

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Night terror

Any Night asks some chilling questions

Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com
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The emphasis on sleepwalking in all the lead-up press for Any Night feels a bit like a red herring in the thereafter. I don't mean that in terms of plot, as it's certainly a crux, but as to where the most interesting aspects of DualMinds' productions' script lie, the play is most gripping when plugged into questions of trust in the 21st century: in an age when we can have every electrical impulse monitored closely to try and understand what lies in sleeping minds, where do you pull the plug, so to speak? What about the divide between what we do and what we dream we do? Any Night is clever enough to make it more than just a Halloween-season-appropriate thriller, a work that, while pretty simple, reaches beyond its genre thanks to a couple of chilling fingers on our modern, anxious pulse.

The story follows Anna (Medina Hahn), a dancer, as she moves into her new basement suite residence. She's a sleepwalker, and not the type to just wander around harmlessly: she talks, dances, creeps and finds her way to the knife drawer all while mid-40 winks. That doesn't seem particularly off-putting to Patrick (Daniel Arnold), a helpful fellow tenant who doubles as the building's caretaker. Romance starts to simmer, but then you start to get the sneaking suspicion that something's amiss in the picture: Anna's ex starts lurking in the background, and what we learn through flashbacks to her time in a sleep lab threaten to derail the developing romance with danger.

Truthfully, the show feels a little slow off the top, but it picks up as Anna and Patrick's relationship does, and Ron Jenkins' direction keeps the rest of Any Night moving swiftly—a feat, considering the constantly shifting set pieces. Arnold's Patrick is a little simple off the top, but finds the character's groove, as well as every other character's, while Hahn's Anna is a cleverly layered performance. Dimensions and depth emerge from a pretty standard troubled-girl springboard. And once they do, it's a thoroughly engrossing, creepy thriller to propagate the seasonal mood.

Can't say too much, though: the twist is legitimately unexpected, yet justified. And perfectly creepy, in its own modern way. V

Until Sun, Oct 31 (8 pm)
Any Night
Directed Ron Jenkins
Written and Performed by Daniel Arnold, Medina Hahn
TransAlta Arts Barns (Westbury Theatre), $19 – $23
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