The One that Got Away
The One that Got Away is the story “of a girl with a fish where her heart should be” – a captivating yarn, spun by local playwright and performer Kendra Fanconi.
The play is enormous in scope, both in the wild history it traces and in its design around a shimmering indoor swimming pool complex at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre.
The story is loosely based on the fast life of her late great Jewish grandfather. A man of extremes, Everett Wile was a millionaire, pauper, sage, addict, philanthropist, miser, and scam artist whose ninth wife remarked of him:
“He was a bastard every day of his life, but on the last day he was an angel.”
Fanconi adds: “This play begins on that last day. When bastards become angels and a life of misery changes into a good story.”
From the watery depths of memory and myth, the past and future of Everett Wile float up to haunt him: his ex-wives, his granddaughter, and his waterlogged narrators.
Rich in physical and visual imagery, the production is a “deep” and heavily chlorinated experience.
A water chorus, a perambulating audience, a submerged set, a water soundscape and water videography are all elements of this fantastical tale as the Electric Company continues to play with new forms in unique places.
