Yukon Ho!

The Hawth, Crawley
February 8, 2022

I must begin by declaring potential bias here. I was glued to Northern Exposure when it aired in the UK, spent money that I could not afford on the (humungous) box set. Six seasons, all binge-watched. I would really love Cicely, AL to exist but I know that cold climes, the most glorious of habitats, often bring out the worst in the people who live there and gravitate towards them. I had no illusions, then, when seeing Yukon Ho!; just a desire to hear about it first hand, because the temptation of Cicely has never faded.

There is not much dance in the show but it is a show about how dance led the protagonist, Jennifer Irons, out of the Yukon and undoubtedly saved her life. Sounds melodramatic? Don’t you believe it. If the grizzlies don’t get ya, the drugs, alcohol, climate or speeding mining trucks probably will.

Calvin and Hobbes have a collection of cartoons also called Yukon Ho! with their own Yukon song (“We’re going where it snows all year, where life can have real meaning”). The characters here are going to escape their parents. Irons is also in a way escaping her parents and all that life means in the Yukon. By the time she was a teenager, thirteen friends and relatives had died, including her father.

Irons evaded her inability to cope with the pressures of northern life by dancing. Initially in drug and drink-fuelled bedroom sessions and then inside and outside of school. By the time she was 19, she was one of the Diamond Tooth Gerties dancing the cancan for payment in shots (alcoholic) and poker chips. The gambling stood her in good stead when she partly funded her dance education in London by playing Black Jack.

The structure of the show works well. As Irons says, in these climes if there’s anything that you can’t carry, it doesn’t make it in. She unpacks her large backpack to setup the stage and ropes the audience into squirrel skinning (theoretical) and roaring along to her Yukon song. The real meaning in her song differs somewhat from Calvin and Hobbes’: there are a million ways to die in the land of the midnight sun…and the tease of the cancan? Well, inevitably it was going to end the show. In one sense it’s also its biggest weakness. Irons struggled with the evening’s longest section of dance and, even without a strained hamstring, the grand écart and port d’arme failed. That’s rather the point though.

The edges are rough, but the survival is all.

But there is an unexpected poignancy to Yukon Ho! that makes it a meaningful hour or so and gives much pause for thought. Bereavement is brought home for everyone and, even if few will die pursuing caribou or under a mining semi, most of us have come slap up against at least the immediate possibility in the last couple of years.

I can skin a squirrel without throwing up (and have, yep, butt end first) and am not squeamish about drinking alcohol containing a frostbitten toe, but that is not enough to survive the Yukon and become a Sour Dough. Cicely remans a fantasy and it’s good to be reminded of it. Would I go there? You bet!

Yukon Ho! continues on tour. Visit www.jenniferironss.co.uk for dates and details.