It was a tough night for a group of cave dwellers at the Vernon Winter Carnival Dinner Theatre on Wednesday night at the Village Green Hotel.
Besides having to club and skin a meatless chicken for their supper and wear barely-there animal print “togas,” they had to deal with the loss of a voice when one of their clan, Keiryn Young, came down with that nasty cold that’s going around.
Not the best way to celebrate the opening night for this year’s Carnival play, Post Prehistoric Cave Dudes, but one that proved that these dudes, and in this case, dudette, are a tough breed.
Young ended up enacting her role in the physical, while a voice off stage read her lines.
It was just the start of what was an out-of-the-ordinary experience.
The show could best be described as Lost meets Lost in Space, but in this case it’s caves, as the Dude from the title (director/actor Phillip Wagner) and his son, Leroy (Daniel Mellows) are needing a woman’s touch to keep their cavernous abode from falling apart.
Enter Lilly (Regina Picco), not exactly the woman they had in mind, who wanders in one day after she hears strange clicking noises emitting from the men’s cave. She also has a club and is looking for a kill — of the animal kind. It later turns out she has escaped from the other side of the river where the “Others” live, and Dude goes off to investigate.
If this sounds like a certain TV show that starred a bunch of plane wreck survivors who had to fight off a group called the Others, and ended as strangely as it begun, then keep reading: It gets more surreal.
When fellow cave dwellers Loretta (Elcita Young) and her sister Lolita (Young’s daughter in real life, Keiryn) also enter Dude and Leroy’s cave, they discover the numbers 108 (another homage to Lost, however those numbers were more lottery like), and the strange music they evoke.
The music isn’t actually that strange, but a collection of modern pop and funk hits that the cave people can’t help but dance to with all extremities convulsing and shaking like it’s the end of time.
The dance numbers also lead themselves into musical numbers, and one in particular performed by Elcita Young, Don’t Rain on My Parade from Funny Girl, is impressive. This fancy dress loving troglodyte has a fantastic voice, it turns out.
Leroy does end up finding love in Clara (Mikaela Kemper), another modern-dressed escapee from the Others, and the two share a lovely duo. But in all honesty, by then I had been so confused by the actual dance numbers to follow what was exactly going on in the plot.
However, I must commend the valiant effort by the cast, who through loss of voices, skimpy clothing, “dino”mite dance moves and even a trombone solo, made the most of Carnival’s prehistoric theme. And now I must get out my DVDs of Lost.
Post Prehistoric Cave Dudes continues at the Village Green Hotel’s Sierra Room as part of Winter Carnival, tonight and Saturday. Dinner theatre and some theatre-only tickets are still available at the Carnival office. Call 250-545-2236 or visit vernonwintercarnival.com.
