Now, while the world looks to Vancouver with wide-eyed wonder, is a perfect time to see something from Canada that's both foreign and familiar. Trout Stanley, a 2005 play by Claudia Dey, could have been set in any Bumfuck, Washington, town west of the mountains. A moody love story about a vagrant, a vanished stripper, and a pair of twins who live by the dump, Trout Stanley isn't a Canadian play. It's a Northwest play.

Bad family hoodoo haunts the hick sisters Grace and Sugar Ducharme: curses, drowned parents, recurring murders. (It started in the womb. "We were supposed to be triplets, but my third sister died in the birth canal," Sugar explains.) They're observing their 30th birthday when traveling vagrant Trout Stanley bursts into their lives by saving Sugar as she tries to commit suicide. Sugar and Trout fall in love, two weirdos magnetically attracted to each other, pissing off the overprotective, pinup gorgeous Grace (Sarah Budge). The resulting swirl of lies, jealousy, and everything love-triangle-related is the guts of the play.

You would think that Stanley (Ryan Higgins), a drifter in a cop uniform and a facial-hair/sunglasses combo that would make Ted Kaczynski proud, would be the most memorable character—far from it. Though he rolls and prowls around the stage like a bearded puma, the magic would be lacking without Angela DiMarco's portrayal of the mentally frayed shut-in Sugar. Frail and borderline suicidal, she oscillates seamlessly between glee and sorrow.

Change is the flavor of Trout Stanley. Balagan transformed its concrete-basement theater into the sisters' cabin, complete with creepy rows of hanging handmade dolls and a battered screen door. Characters flow beautifully as their roles shift, flip, and tumble—the only static element is the title character. Trout is enlightened and absurd, but doesn't really grow as the play progresses. Instead, his absurdity leaches into the sisters, allowing DiMarco in particular to shine. He's the catalyst of the sisters' tension, but it is the star.