Caroline Kid entertains

Prime Stock Theatre's The Caroline Kid had its world premier in Kurt Browning's home town last Friday. "They gave us a vote of confidence," says director Thomas Usher. "About 100 people showed up - including members of Kurt's family. It was like a church social."

Which is about 85 more than showed up for it's second performance in Edmonton last Saturday. Too bad, because what Prime Stock has produced is an energetic and involving evening of theatre. This is about us; this city, this province and one of our few real, internationally certified heroes. Perhaps Robert Clinton's adaptation doesn't tell us much we don't already know about the Alberta skating phenomenon but he tells it with verve - aided by Usher's constantly ingenious production and Tony Eyamie's ingratiating performance.

If The Caroline Kid never skates to emotional heights it is never less than interesting.

For those who spent the last decade in a Russian gulag, Caroline's Kurt Browning was a congenial kid who loved to skate: "It was natural for me. It was part of growing up." When he couldn't get enough ice time, his family enrolled him in figure skating - figuring it would make him a better hockey player. His first performance was at the age of six playing a skunk in the local ice show. He moved to Edmonton and the Royal Glenora Club and thence to a career in figure skating. He was four time world and Canadian champion, three time Olympian and so on.

Through it all he kept his head, his sense of humour and his audience.

The burly Eyamie looks as much like the five-foot-seven, 145 pound Browning as I resemble Brad Pitt, but his lively, physical performance certainly captures the essence of the man. And my, how he has the moves. Skateless on stage, he recreates entire Browning routines (courtesy ex-skater Kathryn Osterburg) with balletic grace.

Roger Schultz's spartan production design uses a number of wardrobes and trunks. Eyamie ceaselessly moves them around turning them into everything from blackboards to Olympic podiums. Clothes hangers become skate blades, a piano stool a platform for spins and an old sock turns into a hand puppet.

Besides Browning, Eyamie also plays 14 other characters, including Browning's parents Neva and Dewey. Browning himself comes off as the ultimate rink rat, a regular kid who loves his mom and pop, works hard, respects his audience and loves to skate. As anyone who has met him knows, he's charming, witty and respectful and that too is captured. If there is anything more to him, you won't find it here. If there is a dark side to Kurt Browning, if there are any demons in his life, they never appear on stage.

To be fair, I suspect Clinton's source material was pretty much the same sort of stuff. This likeable rancher's son from rural Alberta is in no hurry to let us into the locker room of his soul. So The Caroline Kid is the straight-ahead story of Kurt's growing up and performance triumphs and failures with few psychological insights to get in the way.

What saves the production from being merely a chronology is that Browning himself is such a darn likeable sort, his story of the small town boy who makes good on an international stage is that gumption and determination and this sure-footed, entertaining and theatrical production from Prime Stock.