A DJ’s-Eye View of Hotel Bar Bacchanalia: ‘ABD with Mark the C’
“I was in the car the other day, listening to music and thinking about loss.” So begins Threshold Theatre’s ABD with Mark the C, a gently humorous memoir of the 60s and 70s delivered from inside a DJ booth. Written and performed by Mark Cassidy and directed by Hume Baugh, the show traces Cassidy’s journey through small-town Ontario as a child of hotel entrepreneurs.
Let’s tackle the title letter by letter. A is for Allistonian—Alliston, ON, the town in Simcoe County where the Cassidy family bought their first hotel. Permanent tenants and colourful lounge performers are glimpsed through Cassidy’s childhood eyes as he and his siblings are shooed away from the action. In Alliston, we get a pungent rundown of the sights and smells—if I never hear the word ‘megabarf’ again it will be too soon—that accompany the hotel’s bacchanalia. For all the wild times Cassidy talks about, something about the storytelling feels a little sleepy—for the moment, it’s middle-of-the-road memoir material.
Things pick up speed when the story hits the highway and heads east for the Thousand Islands. B is for Brockvillian—the Cassidys’ next acquisition is a waterfront property with rooms that face the 401, a beer-absorbent carpet, and Eastern Ontario’s only stained glass dancefloor. Here, the show finds its groove as Mark turns to his days as a teenage disc jockey, learning to follow the perfect formula (three increasingly fast songs followed by two slow songs) and to trust his own revelry meter. Dark jokes and tenderness blend together nicely here—humour and sadness bumping and grinding like intoxicated strangers dancing to Lionel Richie.
Speaking of dancing, D is for Dionysian—the liquor-soaked aura that permeates hotel life. ABD with Mark the C features the types of almost unbelievable characters that, when you live in a small town—or even a small city—you’re bound to encounter. There are highs and lows and things in between, and the funniest stories are some of the most worrying ones. We get a DJ’s-eye view of memorable regulars and hotel bar staff, people working thankless jobs, getting bad news, and coming together to drown their sorrows as they suffer losses large and small.
Other than some shifting lighting, the show’s visual elements are minimal—Cassidy’s journey takes place in the listener’s imagination. ABD with Mark the C is accompanied by a smorgasbord of song snippets from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which give energy and structure to the jokes and anecdotes. At the performance I attended, the timing of the transitions (sound cues operated by Cassidy) was not as sharp as I would have expected from someone who’s been spinning since the 70s, but it seldom detracted from the story. Cassidy’s prose is approachable and his observations are nice and dry—a little bit Stuart McLean, a little bit David Sedaris—and, at moments, surprisingly touching. I could see (or, I suppose, hear) ABD with Mark the C working well as a radio play, or perhaps an audiobook—a good travel companion for a long drive along the highway.
‘ABD with Mark the C’ plays until Sunday, August 11th, 2024 in the TK Fringe Festival as part of the 2024 Kick & Push Festival. More information can be found here.
