Comic book writer twists his life into a geeky play
With a new comic book movie out every month you’d think theatre would be another good fit for comic books. Costumes changes colourful backdrops heightened emotions. And yet comic book plays are few and far between. Calgary’s Ethan Cole wrote the charming musical The Astonishing Adventures of Awesome Girl and Radical Boy . But does anything else spring to mind?
Perhaps it’s fitting then that the one to bridge the gap is an actual comic book writer. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa writes for Marvel Comics but he’s also published 10 plays. Oh and he writes for HBO’s Big Love . His play is about an aspiring New York playwright who happens to write for DC Comics when a chance phone call from Hollywood offers a movie deal. It is in all likelihood just as the title suggests: Based On a Totally True Story .
It’s interesting how passive Aguirre-Sacasa writes his alter-ego Ethan (Hans Wackershauser). He spends much of the play being told what to do. His screenwriting agent demands endless artistic compromises in adapting his play into a film. He takes story direction from his boss at DC. His dad confides in Ethan about his affair with a married woman because Ethan is the “sensitive artist.” But then there is his boyfriend and fellow writer Michael (Ryan Irving).
Irving is quietly and perfectly charming as Ethan’s boyfriend — a calm cool counterpart to Wackershauser’s frenzied emotions. It ends up being one of the most natural relationships onstage from the first meet to the long-distance phone calls. Their attraction is one that is both highly intellectual and caring and their fights are strained because they aren’t properly communicating.
Local poet and spoken-word guru Sheri-D Wilson is endlessly energetic as the cheery agent delivering good and bad news with the same perma-smile. Both her and Jermaine Bucknor (in three roles no less) deliver much of the comedy every time they step on or off the stage.
The set is fittingly a blank slate of large comic book panels. Walls and tables sharp and white are filled in with colours or projections as the play progresses. A few flashing lights and it’s a subway train in motion. A soft blue projection and some muzak and they’re in the Apple Store shopping for Final Draft 7 for Ethan’s iMac. Sleek and simple.
And it is details like Final Draft 7 that makes Totally True Story a total geek play written by an absolute geek. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s hard to capture that kind of dialogue. There’s a listing off of Japanese horror films and a book-versus-movie comparison of Cujo . There’s Ethan’s Transformers T-shirt and even quotes and namedropping of Edward Albee and Joyce Carol Oates. These are people and conversations that every guy has had at one point in his basement most likely decked out with his personal home entertainment system. And there’s no shame in that.
All in all it’s a solid play deftly juggling a handful of plots and timelines. But as Ethan admits in the opening narration it’s a slightly familiar story. There is artistic integrity versus big money. There are affairs gone bad and relationship woes. Hollywood teaches Ethan that “nobody likes anything too different or challenging.” But that is what keeps Aguirre-Sacasa’s play from being groundbreaking. Then again how many writers for Spiderman and Fantastic Four are looking to change the world?
