Vertigo Theatre is launching their season with the ghostly tale The Brothers Paranormal by Prince Gomolvilas that runs until October 26th. Tickets are available online at vertigotheatre.com or by calling the box office at 403.221.3708.
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There are certainly a lot of ghosts haunting Calgary stages this Halloween season including a malevolent supernatural spirit whose intentions are far from friendly. Heidi Damayo takes on the role of this supernatural being in a physically demanding performance that sees this twisted force emerge and take an active role in haunting and terrorizing Delia and Felix, a couple who fled their hometown of New Orleans shortly before it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Delia, played by Jamillah Ross and Felix, played by Ray Strachan are displaced people in their own country having been born and raised in New Orleans and now finding themselves with only a collection of records and one other significant item rescued from the destruction. The failure of America to respond to Katrina and the ensuing loss of life and destruction of the city illustrates the lack of help that many Americans, even those born in America, experience in the land of opportunity.
This too is an experience that many immigrants feel as they leave behind their own culture and come to a new land seeking a better life. And that’s exactly the story we hear about from Max, his brother Visarut, and their mother Tasanee who came to American because her husband also dreamed of a better life and more opportunity.
Unfortunately, in regards to immigration there are certain aspects of this play that resonate with much of our current social and political climate, making the haunting all the more timely and relevant to an audience in 2025. Twenty years after the events of Katrina. However, the play does not at all dwell on those things. This is more my observation that any intention by the playwright.
Daniel Fong plays Max. Max is the younger brother to Visarut played by Aaron Refugio who still retains much of his Thai accent and deeper ties to his culture than does Max. Max was born in America after his mother Tasanee played by Carolyn Fe and his father immigrated to the states. Whereas Visarut had been born thirteen years earlier in Thailand, long before his family moved to America.
Max finds himself returning to live with his mother and brother when both of them run into a crisis and need Max’s help in order to deal with the situation. Finding himself back at home Max, in spite of being a skeptic, decides to, along with his brother who is the expert in such matters, start up a Paranormal Detection and Debunking business.
Unfortunately, business doesn’t go that well and after six months it looks like The Brothers Paranormal might have to shut down. That is until Delia appears seeking Max’s help to rid her and Felix’s apartment of a malevolent force. Delia is uncertain about hiring Max at first but after Max delivers his best sales pitch, he manages to get Delia to hire him and his brother so they can investigate the apartment to determine if they can find any evidence of such a spirit.
In order for a ghost story to work and be entertaining you have to care about the characters and there have to be twists and turns and unexpected moments of horror and danger that make the story compelling and fun for an audience. And the good news is we learn enough about these characters to care about them.
After all it is a ghost story, and we want to be scared. Not just for us but for Delia and Felix as well. Delia who has hardly slept in six months is being haunted by this spirit that seems intent on making her life hell. But why the spirit is there and what the spirit actually wants is one of the revelations you’ll need to see the play in order to discover.
The cast is terrific, and I really enjoyed Ray Strachan as Felix and Jamillah Ross as Delia whose marriage and love for each other comes across on stage, and there are some beautiful moments between the two as they talk about how they met as they cuddle together feeling safe in each others’ arms.
Carolyn Fe plays Tasanee, the family matriarch, with a sense of humour and a love for her boys while her performance is coloured by her mourning the loss of her husband.
Aaron Refugio as the older brother Visarut, plays him with a bit of big brother teasing while still being haunted by his past when he had chosen alcohol to help him deal with life’s problems.
Daniel Fong plays Max who is on a journey to discover who he really is and what his family and culture really means to him with a real feeling of emotional depth.
And of course, as I’ve already mentioned Heidi Damayo takes on the physically demanding role of Jai with a haunting intensity as the spirt at the centre of this ghostly tale.
Bringing this altogether is Director Esther Jun who effectively guides us through this ghostly tale and all the twists and turns and revelations that Prince Gomolvilas has skillfully incorporated into a story about family, identity, and the unseen forces that haunt us from both a supernatural and emotional point of view.
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The Brothers Paranormal by Prince Gomolvilas runs until October 26th at Vertigo Theatre. Performances are Tuesdays to Saturdays at 7:30 pm with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 pm. Tickets start at $32 and are available online at vertigotheatre.com or by calling the box office at 403.221.3708.
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So, as I was leaving the theatre I found myself thinking about some of the ghost stories I’ve heard about our own city of Calgary. You see not only can people be haunted but places and things can be haunted as well.
There are two ghost stories that I know of and have encountered over the years. Not in person mind you but from my sister and a friend of mine who worked for Calgary Transit back in the 80s and who claims to have seen a ghostly apparition on the CTrain. You may already be familiar with both of these supernatural stories as they certainly aren’t anything new.
Anyway, I had a friend Chevan Kozar who worked for Calgary Transit for about ten years from the early 80s through to the early 90s. This was when they were building the South bound CTrain leg of the system, and he told me that a ghostly apparition would sometimes appear on the CTrain as it enters the tunnel beneath Union Cemetery and disappears when you emerge. It’s a woman and child both dressed in outfits from the turn of the last century.
No one is sure who they are or what their story is but there is one gravesite in the cemetery containing a mother and child by the names of Emma and Grace Miller that perished from the 1918 flu epidemic that some people have speculated might be these spirits.
From my understanding these spirits don’t appear all that often and if and when they do the train car is usually almost empty. As the play The Brothers Paranormal points out it takes a lot of energy for a spirit to manifest, and I assume that such spirits prefer to visit this realm when things are quiet and not after the trains are packed with Flames fans returning home from a game.
The second story I have about paranormal activity involves my youngest sister and her time working in the Prince House at Heritage Park. These days the Prince House is known as a haunted place but when my sister originally worked for Heritage Park, it wasn’t.
She worked three summers at Heritage Park from 1969 to 1971 while she was going to the University of Calgary. Each of those summers she worked at the Prince House. The first two summers nothing happened.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Nothing.
But the third year she worked in the Prince House they added a China tea set from the 1890s to the furnishings. This tea set of which no one knows the origins was kept on the hutch in the dining room. And in fact, it’s still there today.
Anyway, after that tea set was placed in the house, my sister would sometimes hear voices on the second floor even though no one was upstairs. Sometimes she heard footsteps on the third floor even though the stairway to the third floor was locked. And sometimes on the landing leading to the second floor and in the front parlour there would be the faint smell of pipe tobacco.
But the strangest thing of all was that some mornings when she opened up the house the tea set would be sitting in the kitchen with the kettle on the stove as if someone was going to make a pot of tea.
Florence would return the teapot and the teacups to their place on the hutch in the dining room but three times over the course of that summer when she arrived in the morning the tea set was in the kitchen.
Explain that.
As far as I know these ghosts in Heritage Park have never been malevolent, but clearly, they are restless spirits.
And you never know if the misfortune that has trapped them between this world and the next might not be passed on to the living.
So, I would always recommend that you honour the dead and not give them any reason to focus their attention on you. Because you never know when they could become angry or seek vengeance on the living as such spirits, as clearly illustrated in The Brothers Paranormal, can bring misfortune and harm to those who disrespect or ignore them.
It’s the final week of The Brothers Paranormal by Prince Gomolvilas at Vertigo Theatre. Tickets start at $32 and are available online at vertigotheatre.com or by calling the box office at 403.221.3708.
