Show: Homeless
Written and performed by: Jeremy Baumung
Directed and accompanied by: Ken Brown
Presented by: Azimuth Theatre, www.azimuththeatre.com
Performed: April 5, 2008 Fundraiser Performance 

4 ½ Stars

Reviewed by: Darren Paul (Edmonton Correspondent - Canada)

Edmonton's own Azimuth Theatre's mandate for social action, and twenty year history of presenting and producing exclusively work by Edmonton playwrights has made them a great partner for one man mission Jeremy Baumung. Murray Utas, artistic producer for Azimuth, started getting ideas about adding Homeless to the season when he saw Baumung's performance at the Edmonton Fringe Festival. A serendipitous encounter in the Friend's Neighborhood Café had them booked in no time at all.

This run of Homeless is significant as a social action piece. Several of the performances are not available to the public, but instead performed for organizations such as Aboriginal Services and Canadian Mental Health who are on the front lines of dealing with issues concerned. The fundraiser itself was for Azimuth Theatre and the George Spady centre, a shelter for those under the influence of drugs or alcohol to stabilize in a safe and non-judgmental environment where Jeremy worked for a year and a half. Sponsorship by the Edmonton Real Estate Board is a home run for Azimuth Theatre in pushing for action on the homeless front.

Homeless itself is a one man show written and performed by Baumung where the character of the narrator is he, himself, growing up from a fundamentalist sheltered Christian youth unfamiliar and fearful of the worlds of drugs, alcohol and homelessness, into a man with first hand experience looking to help others. There are scenes of storytelling of Jeremy's own encounters, shifting seamlessly into direct representations of events on the streets or at the door of the George Spady centre.  

A couple of dozen different characters are taken on by Jeremy. While some of the teenage troublemakers he plays come off as caricatures, Martin, Terry Verbeck, Mike, and other guests of the shelter are almost channeled through Jeremy. They carry with them every ounce of the weight of their troubles and are played straight, complete with their senses of humour. Baumung's addicts at times feel sorry for themselves, rage at the world for their problems, seek a comforting word, find strength, fall apart, and grasp onto whatever remains important to them. His characters are the shadowed men and women of the street brought into the light, their stories told, not with a sense of pity, but with openness. On top of this the narrator's own struggles with crystal meth, and seeking God are all the more poignant.

The show's structure is fluid and dynamic, seamlessly transforming into new scenes, some horrifying in their brutality, some touching in their generosity, and others truly tragic. The show is musically accompanied by Ken Brown (who is also the show's director) on an acoustic guitar. The sounds he produces go far beyond playing a guitar as he produces crashes, the sounds of a beating, and sets scenes with emotional ambience. Some simple lighting effects are used to highlight transitions into new worlds as well. The choices are predictable (red for a scene where a character is enraged or vicious, blue for a scene with a tragic reveal), but subtle and effective.

Homeless stays nonjudgmental to the end. Instead of finishing with a call to action, or a demand from the audience, it ends on a prayer for the safety of the homeless. Having told honest stories, by the close of the show it has already moved the audience and needs not bang them over the head with instructions on how to be a good person. Jeremy Baumung's show is topical, truthful, powerful, and a fine and entertaining piece of theatre to boot.

 Homeless' remaining public performances are April 11 and 12.