There was this joke going around before Christmas: "What do you buy for the guys on your Christmas list?" Answer: "Anything that plugs in or has batteries."

It was a bit like that on the Vancouver theatre scene in 2010, too. Lots of high tech visual and sound effects, video projections, film and animation blended with live action. Some of it was breathtaking: the Electric Company Theatre's Tear the Curtain!, for example, merged full-screen, filmed close-ups of actors with the same actors live and on stage. It was stunningly effective.

But the best part of Tear the Curtain! was actor/writer Jonathan Young standing alone, addressing us directly about the function of theatre. I've never heard it so movingly articulated. Theatre, he suggested, is like communion, a gathering together and bearing witness to the human experience in all its agony and ecstasy, its joy and peril. Of course, sometimes it's just about having a good laugh at it all.

But take the bells and whistles away and it all comes down to story; most of the shows that surprised and excited me were low tech.

A couple of low tech (or no tech) shows that packed a punch were A Lie of the Mind and American Buffalo, both produced by Main Street Theatre Equity Co-op and directed by Stephen Malloy. This seat-of-its-pants but loaded-with-talent company really nailed the distinctive styles of American playwrights Sam Shepard and David Mamet, and the acting trio of Josh Drebit, Ryan Beil and Daryl King in both shows was dynamite. It's well worth shoehorning yourself into the tiny, slightly skuzzy Little Mountain Studio for anything that this company produces.

Deceptively simple but fresh and original was writer/performer Andrew Bailey's Limbo, part of the Fringe Festival. A solo performer sharing his character's deepest fears--he suspects he is a rapist because he wants to grope some schoolgirl's breasts--Bailey was manic, sweet and quirky and took us to a profound place: "Pain, when shared, is a blessing, a holy thing"--which takes us right back to Jonathon Young's remarks about theatre and shared, human experience.

Another Fringe offering was 7(x1) Samurai, written and performed by David Gaines. "Bloody marvelous," was what I wrote about it. In one magical hour, Gaines re-enacted the entire Seven Samurai film, portraying everyone from terrified peasants, wicked brigands and each of the seven samurai. Gaines is a graduate of L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and it showed. It was a swashbuckling treat for samurai film devotees.

Also low tech was A Life in the Theatre, a complete but delightful surprise mounted in the subterranean Vancouver Playhouse recital hall and directed by six of Vancouver's best directors for Theatre Co-op. An early Mamet play about an aging actor on his way out (played by David Bloom) and a younger, ambitious actor on his way up (Ryan Beil), it had Bloom and Beil rushing between two simple sets: their characters' shared dressing room and a tiny stage where they performed six closing scenes that spoofed everything from Chekhov to Shakespeare. Intelligent and slightly melancholy, A Life in the Theatre prompted reflections of life's inevitability--the old order changeth, giving place to new and all that.

When it comes to story it's hard to beat Sweeney Todd, a grizzly tale about the infamous demon barber of Fleet Street, set to music by the incomparable Stephen Sondheim. On a shoestring, Fighting Chance Production's artistic director Ryan Mooney pulled it off and, once the word was out, it was the hottest ticket in town.

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The set was simple, the costumes were cheap chic but the voices were grand: Alex McMorran, Cathy Wilmot, Chris Harvey and Krista Gibbard. Director Mooney kept all the darkness, the sexiness and the violence but found lots of comedy, too.

Hamlet, in the tiny Havana Theatres, was a fresh as the salads served up in the Commercial Drive restaurant out front. Emerging director Kevin Bennett and set designer Jennifer Stewart shrouded the whole space in white fabric. Heads popped in and out of "windows" giving the effect of Shakespeare by way of Cirque du Soleil. Rhys Finnick was a younger, hipper Hamlet than some others in this Honest Fishmongers Equity Co-op production. In spite of all the dead bodies at the end, Hamlet has never been this much fun before.

The rain held off for Leaky Heaven Circus's A Streetcar Named Desire staged as a peep show with the audience peering through the windows of a Woodland Drive two-storey house. Director Steven Hill used some projections, but the play was otherwise much the way Tennessee Williams wrote it. Lois Anderson was an unlikely-- but interesting--Blanche Dubois, Billy Marchenski was Stanley and Sasa Brown was Stella. The most provocative theme was Hill's conflating of voyeurism with attending the theatre. As Blanche said, looking out the window at all of us standing outside looking in, "If you had a shred of decency, you'd all go home." Thought-provoking, even subversive, stuff.

A real sleeper was Kismet from One to One Hundred, written by Emelia Symington Fedy, Daryl King, Anita Rochon and Hazel Venzon. On a road tour, the creators posed a core set of questions to 100 people ranging from kids to old timers all over the country and then assembled the responses and re-enacted them with some projections and audiotape. The idea was so simple but went straight to the heart of what has always troubled us: do we believe in fate? Or are we masters of our own destiny? Truly relevant was the question posed by the always brave and open Symington Fedy: "How can I believe in something when things are constantly changing?"

Created by Australians Jessica Wilson and Catherine Fargher, Dr. Egg and the Man with No Ear was a whimsical exploration of genetic engineering using puppets, animation and actors. Unforgettable images like the puppet swimming joyfully in a tank of water lingered long after the show ended. When the "merbaby"--part baby, part fish--was born and flapping frantically on the table, the question was raised, "Keep it or kill it?" We were suddenly thrust into the arena of bio-ethics. Do we really know what we're doing?

And, finally, for the sheer fun of a spy thriller spoof, the Arts Club's The 39 Steps seriously tickled my funnybone. Director Dean Paul Gibson put his uniquely creative stamp on this production. Best of all were Shawn Macdonald and David Marr who kept us laughing at their antics. Not soon forgotten was the scene with Marr's head out the train window, his cheeks flapping in the wind. Terrific physical theatre, inventive use of minimal props, fine performances and a good story. That's the bottom line.

Other highlights: Lucia Frangione knocking 'em dead in Brief Encounter; The Patron Saint of Stanley Park for local flavour; irrepressible Jennifer Lines in all her petticoats in Touchstone Theatre's Mimi; Alessandro Juliani's Bard on the Beach tour de force--Prince Hal and Henry V back-to-back plus reprising his role as Froggie in After the Quake; Deborah Williams' bust-a-gut-funny pantyhose scene in Becky's New Car; Lori Triolo's wonderfully nuanced performance as Olivia in Twelfth Night; Zachary Williams' flat-out, explosive performance in Buddy; Roy Surette's direction, David Roberts' set, Sheila White's costumes and Peter Anderson's performance in Don Quixote; Kendra Fanconi's NiX for its site-specific innovation; John Mann's performance, Bretta Gerecke's monumental set, Bruce Ruddell and Bill Henderson's score for Ruddell's world premiere of Beyond Eden; director Adam Henderson for taking what playwright David Hare admits "is not a play" and turning it into a fascinating production of The Power of Yes; Conrad Alexandrowicz for introducing me to Harry Partch and the concept of micro-tonal music; Gabrielle Rose, Kevin McNulty, Craig Erickson and especially Meg Roe in Blackbird Theatre's scorching production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; outrageous costumes (again) by Bretta Gerecke, and Scott Shpeley's performance in Catalyst Theatre's Gothic opera Nevermore; wonderful language and puppetry in the Old Trouts Puppet Workshop production of The Tooth Fairy; the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed production at Studio 58 of The Park; Fear of Flight; The Drowning Girls; and The Wild Party.

And to all, a good night--at the theatre!

joled@telus.net