The Grand Theatre London Review: Cliff Cardinal’s Huff

By Ross

The far-off static sound of television catches our attention. We focus in, searching the space for a source, but only see signs of a struggle; maybe internal. Maybe not. There is an overturned chair, a beer case, an old discarded white towel, and a beer bottle open on a black milk crate waiting for its receiver to drink it in. He, Cliff Cardinal (VideoCabaret’s (Everyone I Love…), the writer and solo performer of Huff, now playing at the Grand Theatre in my hometown of London, Ontario, holds us there, enticingly, making us lean in, almost against our will, in anticipation of what will be exhaled in this 70min one-person show. We feel it coming, even through our uneasiness.

It’s a compelling beginning, filled with deadly fumes of something coming, and then we are startled into awareness by the screeching of duct tape being stretched and unwound. All this before driving music leads us fully into this life-and-death situation in that square of white light, and it becomes as clear as a plastic freezer bag pulled tight around a pained face, that this ride is going to be a wild one. Cold and weird, in a funny, disturbing kinda way that will resonate and remain in your senses like the smell of gasoline huffed for the pseudo-pleasure of pure escapism. Not actual pleasure, but the determined desperate way one would turn to in order to cope with the pain and intense hurt of neglect, abuse, and the lingering effects of loss and addiction.

Spun out in a space that becomes more crystal clear as this tale unwinds, with the same electric nervousness of that duct tape removal (I must say that I was glad to be situated in the third row, and not just for the fact that my note taking could be a distraction – just ask that one young lady who was doing just that in the front row), Huff flies forward with a tense fierce chaoticness that delivers. It’s a tense unraveling, ignited by flung cigarettes and drenched in gasoline, just waiting to blow up and destroy. It’s sharp and sinewy in its humor, but complicated in its rapid-fire unveiling. Cardinal, the performer, merges his essence and scent with those he portrays, mingling his own persona with all those affected inside the story of three brothers growing up in an indigenous community in northern Ontario. It’s not a safe space, this home, and the actor unleashes them all at us with a kinetic force, giving access to their wildly violent dysfunction and abuse with a deliberate edge that is both compelling and utterly disturbing to witness.

The boundaries shift relentlessly, sometimes too quickly, as if the fear that attracts the Trickster, will summon more destruction than this middle child can bear. Is this his own story, or one that he needs to tell, loudly and aggressively, from the fume-induced perspective of a pair of underprivileged indigenous children, tortured casually by alcoholics, directed to the privileged, non-indigenous viewer, or as he calls us, his imaginary friends? Cardinal engages us directly and with force from the very beginning, drawing us into the character’s world via an in-the-moment suicide attempt. He makes us complicit to the attempt, tightening the situation around us all, and depriving himself, and the room, of oxygen, in order to really make us feel his pain, and his dark imaginative humor.

A solid storyteller, wrapped in frantic chaotic energy and directed with a wild force by Karin Randoja (Theatre Centre’s Jacinto; VideoCabaret’s (Everyone I Love…), Cardinal unleashes a world of violence and abuse, but within the fumes of imagination and hope, possessing sacred gifts bestowed on us, as they may have been to the youngest son who can make one laugh just by blowing. The energy takes us down deep, into that deserted motel room and makes us almost sniff the siphoned-off petrol that the two youngest use for entertainment, like a demented game show run amuck, in between playing the fumiest game of all, semi-asphyxiation, all for some fun and distraction. The pain and horror of their upbringing fill the space like invisible smoke, except for the moments when hope slips into the toxic smell. It sneaks in brandishing an old-spirited cane, breathing life back in through the protective acts of a determined grandmother and a younger brother willing to do anything to draw the abuse away from this middle child, our central character, and the one that Cardinal truly wants us to know.

Somewhere between myth and reality, the mythical Trickster sneaks in, as he always does (so we are told), forcing a battle between hope and horror; life and death. The fraught chaos is relentless and real, assisted by the fine work done by set and costume designer Jackie Chau (Factory Theatre’s Wildfire), lighting designer Michelle Ramsay (Theatre Rusticle’s The Tempest), technical director Allan Day (Three Ships Collective/Soup Can Theatre’s A Christmas Carol), and sound designer Alex Williams (TPM’s Fare Game), sometimes to its detriment, hazing us in its hallucinogenic fumes, when a tad more focus could have crystalized the disturbance more. But Cardinal is relentless in his approach, forever changing form in his continual recalibration of what he wants us to hear, see, smell, and feel with determined talent. There is nothing comfortable or conventional in Cardinal’s Huff, but he does manage to draw us into his deprivation of oxygen, making us all gasp a little for breath once the lights go down and the ovation ignites.