Summary Of Kiss And Cry At The Bluma Appeal Theatre By Toby Regbo

Some loves are like onions. They start dry, then you cry, then you get used to it – but there are things you can’t digest.

That is the short, unusual simile expressed by narrator, Toby Regbo as he accounts for one of the heroine’s love affairs. Charleroi Danses’ Kiss and Cry at the Bluma Appeal Theatre in Toronto is all that unusual, amusing, magical, and much more. It is a story of Gisele - an old, lonely woman reminiscing over her past lovers and memories surrounding them. Her first love, she recalls, was a 14-year-old boy she met when she was 12 and whose hand she momentarily touched in a crowded train. Since then, she searches for love, and we are introduced to her four other partners, for whom her feelings never match the intensity of the first.
The story is almost entirely depicted through hands and hand gestures that become remarkably meaningful and expressive.
Throughout the story, the pair of hands dance, get furious, dispute and reconcile. Astonishingly, the hands manage to say a lot without saying anything at all. Standing on two fingers, they transform into lovers taking tentative steps towards one another, touching and erotically dancing in a club, hugging and kissing, craving and rejecting intimacy. At times, these scenes are rather amusing and the audience gets a good laugh. And although one may think so, it is not these hands that hold the show together. Rather it is in the live screening of an almost dreamlike journey through Gisele’s life and reminiscence that lays the core beauty and essence of this show – the fact that the entire thing is being screened as it is
shot.

Throughout the show, your eyes will be marvelously shifted between the filming of the show and the screen display as the on-stage crew builds and crafts the film live by changing cameras and manipulating sets. The stage crew thrives in constructing the most wonderful tiny, scenarios and merging one into the other. The various, wonderfully crafted scenes, which include a dream-like Victorian house, a mini train station, a circus, a beach, a desert are all so incredibly unique and delightful. The little railroad, which is set downstage center, is complete with tiny cameras situated inside the one of the train compartments to almost give you the feeling of really being on board. It’s absolutely ingenious – hands turn and spin through smoke, sand and water, as well as the sound of the beautiful background score. Besides all this, the most beautiful moment of the show comes when two characters are shown dancing, from head to toe, in real space, while their silhouettes are beautifully captured on the screen as if we were peeking at them through a window. The perfectly in sync movements, embraces and kisses between the two makes you want to sway to the calm caress of the music and the chemistry is so scorching that it almost makes you want to fall in love. The narration manages to make the audience laugh with some quirky witty similes – one in which the narrator claims that “some love affairs are like a cheese crater: great for cheese, useless for anything else”. Perhaps the only downside to Kiss and Cry is that the story seems to drag on a little too much towards the end. Other than that, “Kiss and Cry” is a magnificent cinematic experience for all ages. The imagery is splendid and the story will transport you to a whole new world.