ACIS AND GALATEA – REVIEW OF 2024 OPERA ATELIER EXQUISITE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Seeing Acis and Galatea by George Frideric Handel at the gorgeous Elgin Theatre in Toronto is like being handed a bouquet of gorgeous roses by a knight dressed in finery or a beautiful lady in an elegant gown.  It is a beautiful opera, a wonderful love story and in the hands of Opera Atelier’s  co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski  and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg it is much more than even that.

It was Handel’s first work in English and was first produced in 1718 and went through numerous changes but its 1732 version seems to have carried the day. There is no agreement as to what it is and it has been called a masque, a pastoral, a serenata and other names but who cares. In the hands of Pynkoski and Zingg it becomes an opera-ballet.

The work is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and involves the beautiful love of the mortal shepherd Acis (marvelous tenor Antonin Rondepierre) and the demi-goddess water nymph Galatea (superb soprano (Meghan Lindsay). Their pure love is suffused with sexual desire. The beauties of the plain of Arcadia are not enough to cool her love (i.e. sexual desire) and the singing birds “kindle fierce desire” in her. Acis is looking for her and imagines her bathing in crystal fountains. He sees love panting on her breast that swells with soft desire. This is beautiful orgasmic attraction.  

Acis and Galatea in 2024 Opera Atelier production. Photo: Bruce Zinger 

The Chorus (The Nathaniel Dett Chorale) steps in to announce Fate’s decree that Acis and Galatea’s love will not last. The cyclops Polyphemus (funny and resonant bass-baritone Douglas Williams) feels the same way about Galatea in an uncouth and barbaric way. We can descent to crude language with him – he is just horny. Damon (tenor Blaise Rantoanina)   pours cold water on human passion and even instructs Polyphemus on how to woo Galatea. 

Polyphemus does kill Acis and we hear some of the most beautiful grieving by the Chorus and Galatea. Acis is turned into a river god which provides some consolation to Galatea and immortality to her lover.

The arias, duets and recitatives are almost all accompanied by a dozen members of The Atelier Ballet corps dancing in their gorgeous gowns. The singing and music are beautiful enough but the dances, choreographed by Zingg are a significant, added pleasure That is why I say Acis and Galatea is an opera-ballet. The dancing like the singing is exquisite.  

Acis the shepherd wrongly tending goats instead of sheep! 

Photo: Bruce Zinger

Rondepierre and Lindsay sing with delicacy, erotic desire, and passion Douglas Williams  is played for laughs. He is a lumbering oaf with primitive sexual urges but manages to provide some laughs before the tragic end of Acis.

About twenty members of the Tafelmusik orchestra are crammed in what passes for a pit and conducted by Christopher Bagan. They produce all the beautiful sounds that Handel composed for them.

The set and costumes by Gerard Gauci enhance the beauty of the production and the result is a delightful night at the opera

Postscript I must add a comment about the opening scene. As the action is about to begin a bunch of goats go across the stge. Okay, they are not real but they have no business being there. Acis is a shepherd, a herder of sheep not of goats. In that case he would be a goatherd. Goats are usually found on mountains and not on the verdant plains of Arcadia where Acis and Galatea live and not, heaven forfend, near Mount Etna in Sicily. I state this with the authority of the only one in the audience who has first-hand experience as a (bad) sheep herder and suggest that in the future the faux pas must be corrected. 

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Acis and Galatea by George Frideric Handel, presented by Opera Atelier, played from October 24 to 27, 2024 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press.

GROUNDED – REVIEW OF 2024 LIVE FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Grounded is a powerful new opera by Jeanine Tesori (music) and George Brant (libretto) that was commissioned and developed by The Metropolitan Operas. It is sung in English and deals with remote warfare by the U.S. Airforce. That makes it a quintessentially American product that gets a grand production by one of the greatest opera companies. The bonus for us is that it is brought to a movie theatre in our neighborhood, something that most of us could only dream of seeing live in New York.

It is a modern, high-tech production with videos and special effects that are dazzling. We learn and see how remote war occurs with a fighter pilot destroying terrorists in the Middle East from a seat in Las Vegas with deadly accuracy and the ability to see the body parts of the targets flying and the bloodshed.

The central character is a women called Jess (Emily D’Angelo) who becomes an extraordinary ace fighter pilot handling a conventional F16 plane in the sky. We are told that she is one of the very few women doing it but her mastery is undoubted.

The other side of the opera and Jess is her meeting a rancher, falling in love and having a baby girl. She leaves the Air Force to be with her child and returns after a five-years absence. In the meantime. the world has changed and she can carry one her duties as a fighter pilot from a chair in Las Vegas where with a Sensor (Kyle Miller) beside her, she will be called to destroy enemies on the ground in the Middle East.  One example is the sighting of an American convoy on the road and some people working on the road that appear to be enemies planting explosives. She must destroy them and save the lives of the Americans. She does. 

Ben Bliss as Eric, Lucy LoBue as Sam, and Emily D'Angelo as Jess.

 Photo: Ken Howard / Met Opera

We see Jess as a pilot under the control of the rough and ready Commander (Greer Grimsley). But we also see her with her husband Eric (Ben Bliss) taking care of their little girl Sam. Jess lives in two worlds, the fighter pilot killing people remotely and being unable to talk about it with her husband (it is classified), and her domestic life. the wife and mother in the idyllic ranch.

Jess’s two worlds are emphasized by the appearance of her “other” self simply called Also Jess (soprano Ellie Dehn).

These two worlds clash when Jess pursues the Serpent, presumably a terrorist leader. He is in a car going somewhere. She follows him and waits for him to step out of the car and confirm his identity before liquidating him. The car stops but the Serpent does not step out of it. Jess sees a little girl running to the car (her father?) and she is ordered to shoot. I  will not spoil the ending for you and you should really see the opera to get the full effect.

We are told that Tesori wrote the opera specifically for Torontonian Emily D’Angelo and the mezzo soprano delivers an unforgettable performance. We see her as a dedicated, fearless, outstanding fighter pilot that relishes the experience of flying the free world of the sky. We se her as a wife and lover in tender scenes with her husband and her daughter. The clash between the two worlds becomes heart-wrenching. D’Angelo presents outstanding acting and stunning singing. Her vocal prowess covers the gamut from the tender and loving wife/mother to the tough and ambitious pilot and perhaps killer. That is where her world becomes unraveled.

Tenor Ben Bliss looks and acts like a benign and loving rancher. He met a nice girl and brought her to his ranch knowing little about whom he married. He sings splendidly and his overall performance is excellent.

Baritone Kyle Miller is the Sensor, the man who sits beside Jess as the (cameraman?) (who gets) get information and orders about where she is to unleash the deadly power of the drones. When she first meets him, Jess asks him if he is twelve years old. He is not of course, but he does look like one and this has a comic side. He does well as such and as a competent Sensor and a very good singer

Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley is the heavy and stentorian Commander giving orders in an authoritative voice. You do not argue with the Commander as Air Force brass or Grimsley as a singer.

Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras are co-projection designers and their videos representing Air Force pilots and effects of drones releasing and unleashing bombs remotely are terrifying even in the comfort of a theatre.

There are vigorous dance routines choreographed by David Neumann and a kaleidoscope of special effects that dazzle the mind. This is no simple opera but a production that tested the limits of an opera company with the most resources in the field.

Michael Mayer directs the mind-boggling complexities of the production with a firm hand and mind-blowing imagination.     

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met Orchestra in all the facets and complexities  of the score. It is almost impossible to absorb the music on a single hearing regardless of how impressive and enjoyable it is. Unlike familiar operas, I remember very little of the  music except that I enjoyed listening to it. Modern operas have the problem of needing to be produced or heard numerous times before they are put in the drawer and all but forgotten. How many of them have joined the standard repertoire? Grounded has an army of advantages. It deals with a current American subject; its characters are recognizable Americans and it is sung in comprehensible English. It may be a candidate for the standard repertoire but it is difficult to say how many opera companies have the resources to produce it on a regular basis.

In the meantime, seeing the Met production, live or on the screen is a good start. _______________________________
Grounded by Jeanine Tesori (music) and George Brant (libretto)was shown Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on October 19 , 2024 in various Cineplex theaters It will be reprised in encores starting from November 9,  2024, in various Cineplex theatres. For more information go to www.cineplex.com/events/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press

LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN – REVIEW OF 2024 LIVE FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Live from the Met in HD is back with eight productions streamed directly from New York to a theatre near you. This year’s opener is Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman, a lavish and extraordinary revival of Bartlett Sher’s 2009 production. It has a cast of outstanding singers, and production values that only a handful of opera companies can dream of equaling. It is opera as we dream of seeing it. 

Les Contes d’Hoffman has some unique features that we don’t usually associate with grand opera. The hero, E.T.A. Hoffmann (Benjamin Bernheim) is a poet, a dreamer, a lover  and a romantic, an interesting combination but not the stuff of a classic opera hero. The opera itself has several aspects that take it out of the mold. We have good and evil opposing each other as if we are dealing with medieval themes. Offenbach was a great operetta composer and he has inserted scenes that are right out of that genre. Offenbach’s great music subsumes all these parts into a grand and thoroughly enjoyable opera and Sher takes advantage of them all on a grand scale.

Bernheimer gives an outstanding performance as the troubled, passionate Hoffman who soars vocally and suffers personally. He is lanky with tousled hair representing the romantic poet perfectly. A stunning performance.

Hoffmann has three great loves in Les Contes who are sometimes sung by one singer but) the roles are frequently shared by three as in this production. The opera starts with a Prologue that takes place in a bar and that provides the opportunity for hoopla, dancing, drinking and singing by the chorus of course. Sher takes advantage of that and provides superb entertainment in the process.

Hoffmann’s first great love is Olympia (soprano Erin Morley) a mechanical doll. Morley moves like a doll, needs to be wound up, sings the gorgeous “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” impeccably and dances. You may see elements of operetta here and marvel at  the dance routines by chronographer Dou Dou Huang. Alas, the mechanical doll will be trashed and Hoffmann allowed to see his second love. 

Erin Morley as Olympia, Benjamin Bernheim as Hoffmann, and 

Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (background) as Nicklausse. 

Photo: Karen Almond / Met Opera

Hoffmann moves from the mechanical doll to Antonia (the stupendous soprano Pretty Yende). It is a supremely ironic and tragic situation. Antonia has a marvelous voice inherited from her mother but she also has a weak heart and singing may kill her. She and Hoffmann sing a beautiful duet but the nasty Dr. Miracle convinces her to sing by magically bringing the voice of her dead mother (Eve Gigliotti). Antonia sings and dies.

From the tragic Antonia, Hofmann moves to Giulietta (mezzo soprano Clémentine Margaine), a Venetian courtesan. Courtesans do what they do but in this act, we move to the supernatural. Giulietta has stolen the shadow of her current lover Schlemil (Jeongcheol Chal) and the evil Dapertutto bribes her to steal Hoffmann’s reflection. She does and Hofmann loses his other self, kills Schlemil and is rejected by Giulietta. Margaine is dressed like a courtesan and sings robustly in the role.

Most of the singers play more than one role. I have mentioned two villains, Dr. Miracle and Dapertutto but there are in fact four with Lindorf and Coppelius. Those are juicy parts and bass-baritone Chistian Van Horn sings all of them with relish and marvelous resonance.

Tenor Aaron Blake takes on four roles, Andrés, Cochenille, Frantz and Pitichinaccio,   that are right out of operetta. Several other singers take two roles each.

Mezzo-soprano Vasilisa Berzhanskaya deserves special credit for her superb performance as Hofmann’s friend Nicklasse and as the Muse of Poetry. She is Hofmann’s companion and friend and tries to protect him. Berzhanskaya gives a steady, perfectly pitched performance that is a pleasure to watch and hear. For record keepers, note that this was her Met debut.   

For the theatricality of the production, credit goes and remains with Bartlett Sher and revival director Gina Lapinski. Set Designer Michael Yeargan, Costume Designer Catherine Zuber and Lighting Designer James F. Ingalls deserve kudos as part of the team that brought this outstanding production to life and to us.

And nothing less than a standing ovation will do for Conductor Marco Armiliato and the Met Orchestra and Chorus sine qua non.   
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Les Contes d’Hoffman (The Tales of Hoffmann) by Jacques Offenbach was shown Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on October 5 , 2024. It will be reprised in encores starting from October 26, 2024, in various Cineplex theatres. For more information go to www.cineplex.com/events/
 James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press

LA CLEMENZA DI TITO – REVIEW OF 2024 PACIFIC OPERA PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is a city of fewer than one hundred thousand residents, that has a rich and civilized ambience and a lively cultural life. Pacific Opera Victoria produces three operas per season and they are given four performances each. With the Victoria Symphony providing the music in the lovely 1400-seat Royal Theatre that represents a highly commendable cultural achievement.

Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Portman’s The Little Prince and Verdi’s Rigoletto are the operas offered in October 2024, February and April 2025 respectively. Judicious choices.

La Clemenza was put together in 1791 by an ill and broke Mozart. He accepted the commission to write an opera for the coronation of a king of Bohemia while he was working on the Magic Flute and La Clemenza may be described as a quickie. New York’s Metropolitan Opera did not produce it until 1984 and that should give you a good idea of its popularity.

Pacific Opera Victoria gives the work a redoubtable production sung by an all-Canadian cast that has many virtues including and especially being thoroughly enjoyable. The opera has six characters, four male and two female but in keeping with 18th century practices two of the men’s roles are sung by women. Remember the castrati?

As Tito, tenor Andrew Haji gives a commendable performance as an emperor who wants to be decent even in the face of treachery and attempted assassination by a friend. The much-buffeted man rises above treachery and espouses virtue especially in his signature aria “Se all'impero, amici Dei.”  Haji is imperious and tender as he expresses his credo that if he cannot be decent, he does not want the empire. A convincing performance in general and of the tough aria.

Vitellia is a central role in the opera by being evil and bitchy. She is the daughter of the late Emperor Vitellius who was deposed by Tito’s father and she wants the throne. She orders her lover and Tito’s friend Sesto to assassinate Tito because he will not marry her. Then she finds out that Tito has dumped his prospective wife and calls the assassination off and then reinstates it. Soprano Tracy Cantin with wonderful intonations and conviction gets her way as Vitellia. When she sings “Deh, se piacer mi vuoi” (If you want to please me”) she is not thinking of the first thing that may come to your mind. And when she tells her lover “Non piu di fiori” (No more flowers) she is not worried about the cost of roses. She wants murder and Cantin gives a wonderful performance.  

Vitellia and Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito in Victoria

Mezzo soprano Taylor Raven sings the role of the hapless Sesto, a friend of Tito (whom he agrees to assassinate) and in love with the wonderful Vitellia! His aria “Parto, parto” (I’m going, I’m going) gives a clue to his character that Raven sings well. But Raven reaches the pinnacle as Sesto in the beautiful aria “Deh, per questo istante solo” (Ah, for this single moment) where he begs Tito for forgiveness. Raven sings gorgeously and melts Tito into clemency under difficult circumstances. It is perhaps the most beautiful and moving aria in the opera done superbly.

Soprano Reilly Nelson puts on pants and lends her lovely voice to Annio who is a friend of Sesto and in love with his sister Servilia. But when Tito says he wants her for his wife, he steps back nobly. Again, a well-sung performance. Servilia is the nice but brave woman who tells Tito who wants to marry her that she is already spoken for, he backs off. Well done as singer and character. Bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus plays Publio,  the Captain of the Praetorian Guard, with relatively little to do but Mozart does not deprive him of an opportunity to sing. “Tardi s’avvede d’un tradimento” (He is late to notice betrayal) describes Tito as an honorable man who believes people are incapable of disloyalty. Hegedus sings with beautiful sonority and with no rancor after he arrests Sesto. 

High praise for conductor Giuseppe Petraroia and the Victoria Symphony. The Chorus did not seem that successful on occasion. Too much movement on and off the stage?

Director Jennifer Tarver did superb work with an opera that sometimes seems stitched together. Tarver kept it going well. Set and Costume Designer Camellia Koo did  superb job with a single set of two yellow circles above and something similar below. But the costumes left me scratching my head. We have women in pants roles. Fine. But Vitellia is a woman played by a woman. Why is she wearing pants? With the other women, we know they are women but why not let us pretend they are men. Emphasizing their chests is not the way. It is a small point but worth making.

I make no secret of how thoroughly I enjoyed the production and with some luck I may see more products in the beautiful capital of British Columbia.
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La Clemenza di Tito by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (music) and libretto by Pietro Metastasio revised by Caterino Mazzola opened on October 16 and will play until October 20 at the Royal Theatre, Victoria B.C. For more information: www.pacificopera.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

GIFFT 2024 – REVIEW OF LISTEN AND LISTEN TO WHO’S TALKING

 Reviewed by James Karas 

The Greek International Film Festival Tour (GIFFT) is back for the month of October 2024 featuring a wide range of films, shorts and documentaries. They are all shown in 11 cities across Canada from Vancouver to Ottawa in cinemas or online. The Festival shows a feat of organization that few can match let alone surpass. It all originated with Stan Papulkas who has found dozens of sponsors, volunteers and venues to be able to state that it is the only Festival of its kind in Canada.   

 I saw two feature-length films and my reviews follow.

                                                            LISTEN

Listen is about Valmira (Efthalia Papacosta), a pretty 16-year who became deaf when she was a child. Her mother died around the same time and her father Stamos (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos) married Tania (Yoana Bukovska-Davidova), a Bulgarian woman who has a son Aris (Dimitris Kitsos). Financial issues force the family to move from Athens to their derelict village on an island. Valmira attended a school for the deaf in Athens but in the village, she is forced to attend the local high school.

 

The drama centres around Valmira, the students at her school and her dysfunctional family. At school Valmira faces bigotry, abuse and alienation from students who find her deafness as something to ridicule and to treat her abominably. She tries dancing and playing soccer with the students (she is good at both) but they look at her as a lesser human being. She shows considerable strength but she is crushed by the cruelty that she encounters. Papacosta has an attractive face that registers emotion and pain beautifully. A superb performance.

Most of her classmates are plain goons and a disgusting sight. She does find Mario (Nikos Koukas), an apparently decent student and they fall in love. The bigotry of the students spreads to Aris, the Bulgarian, and the atmosphere of ridicule and cruelty spreads.

Stamos and Tania do not get along and Aris gets in a fist fight with Mario and Aris is expelled from the school based on Mario’s and Valmira’s lies.  The picture of bigotry is completed with the conduct of the school’s Director (Evangelia Andreadaki) who is mostly concerned with keeping her job rather than upholding fairness and integrity.

The film is shot in the  derelict village, the beautiful coast, the school and Valmira’s house. Director and writer Maria Douza overdoes the cruelty of the students and in general. Almost no one is untouched with the bigotry and cruelty inherent in the situation. Nevertheless, it is a moving film.

                             LISTEN TO WHO’S TALKING

Listen To Who’s Talking is a film by Thodoris Niarchos (his first) that manages to get some laughs but its thin plot carries it only so far before it slows down to a walk when it should be galloping. The level of laughter should be increasing but it does not. 

It looks like a low budget production with scenes in the protagonist’s bedroom and office and the bakery where the heroine works. There are a few outdoor scenes of relative insignificance.

Fotis (Ilias Meletis) is a Life Coach in Athens and doing financially just fine but he realizes that he has no life. To be precise, he is told by his Voice (his subconscious his Spirit?) telling him to straighten out his life. He has no friends, no family and lives with a dog.

We see him in his office seeing some wacky people. He calls them clients and not patients because he is not qualified to practice anything but what he learned from life. One of them is a priest who is troubled by his failing faith and his habit of drinking the leftover communion wine after the Sunday service. As much as a bottle of of it. Another client is middle-aged man who coaches a team of attractive volleyball girls. The girls are butt-endowed and the coach finds that part of their anatomy extremely attractive - a bit too attractive. Fotis advise him to practice self-control.

Another client is a soccer game official whose whistle is blown in favour of the team that helps him live well by working only two days a week. The technical word for that is bribery. His clients find Fotis’s advice wise and helpful. But we know that he is working too hard and missing out on life.

In the meantime, the Voice tells him to stop working so hard and find a woman. Fotis tries to follow that advice and finds his clients ridiculous, laughs in their face and they abandon him. He finds a woman, Chrysanthi (Xanthi Georgiou), who serves him pastry every morning in the local bakery but he has never looked at her for some 200 days. When he does open his eyes and sees her, she turns out to be attractive, personable and smart. She has friends who are coaching her to get a life so that she and Fotis have that in common as well.

Fotis the Life Coach turns into a bowl of jelly at the thought of asking Chrysanthi for a date. He becomes nervous, uncertain, reluctant, in fact he acts like a nerdy teenager approaching a girl for the first time. Really?  The two actors do a fine job despite the limitations of the script and there is considerable laughter generated.
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Listen and Listen to Who’s Talking are shown as part of the 2024 Greek International Film Festival Tour in Toronto and cities across Canada. The Festival runs from October 1 to 31, 2024.   For more information about GIFFT and the films shown visit www.gifft.ca

 James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press

 

  

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY - REVIEW OF 2024 PRODUCTION AT CAA THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

The Thanksgiving Play is a weird play that I have difficulty classifying. It is a satire no doubt about ambitious, ignorant, perhaps well-meaning people trying to create and put on a play in an elementary school. The play is to represent the first Thanksgiving Day dinner of the puritans and the Natives after the former had arrived in Norh America. That is quite an idea but it says very little about the play.

It is a parody of putting on a play, it is a satire and a parody of what they are doing and in the end the laugh is on them and frequently not shared by the audience.

The play is a four-hander with some interesting videos but I will stick to the characters on the stage. All four are shallow, pretentious, ditzy, living in a world that many of us may find unreal, ridiculous and perhaps stupid. Some people may find them entertaining but at times they are too ridiculous to funny.

Logan (Rachel Cairns) is a high school drama teacher who has managed to get grants from all kinds of organizations to direct a play about the first Thanksgiving dinner. She is confident that she will succeed despite the fact she has almost nothing more than a title and is (Colin A. Doyle) facing 300 signatures demanding her dismissal.

Her boyfriend Jaxton (Colin A. Doyle)  is a street performer who considers himself a man of the theatre. He and Logan have acquired mannerisms, positions and tics that are interesting, annoying, ridiculous and far too many.

Alicia (Jada Rifkin) is an attractive and sexually provocative actress who is hired by Logan because she is a native and a play about Native Culture Month must have a native performer. Problem: she is not indigenous and only acts the part. Oops. 

Craig Lauzon, Colin A. Doyle, Jada Rifkin, and Rachel Cairns 

in The Thanksgiving Play. Photo Credit: Dahlia Katz

Caden (Craig Lauzon) is a history teacher who has written 60 plays, not a word of which has been read by a professional actor and not even by a youngster who can read a word with three syllables. All of these characters are parodies of parodies and that may be a step too far.

They try to find a way of representing the first thanksgiving dinner in North America but Caden, the playwright, wants to start a few thousand years ago. He is brough to earth and eventually agrees to set his play  AFTER 1600 AD when the first natives/puritans dinner  may have taken place. It should be noted that there is no play, no script, nothing and the four are getting together to start rehearsals.

The four characters go through many ideas and possible presentation of the event without an indigenous person, with the Caucasians pretending there is a space for the natives on stage without any natives and other ridiculous, amateurish and perhaps plain stupid ideas. All the latter elements could potentially be side-splittingly hilarious. The problem is that they are  not funny.

The Thanksgiving Play is written by Larissa FastHorse an indigenous person who has every right to satirize and ridicule a pathetic attempt at celebrating Native Culture Month by people who are ignorant, incompetent and just plain fools.

The problem may be with director Vinetta Strombergs’ decision to give the actors mannerisms, poses and movements that make them so ridiculous they cease being funny. The play and the situation is funny without gilding the lily to an outrageous extent.
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The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse  continues until October 20,2024 at the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto, Ontario. For more information go to:www.mirvish.com/the-thanksgiving-play/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

ROBERTO ZUCCO – REVIEW OF 2024 BUDDIES IN BAD TIMES PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The blurb on the website of Buddies in Bad Time Theatre about Bernard-Marie Koltes’ play Roberto Zucco reads as follows:

Witness the living through the eyes of the dead. Roberto Zucco lures us into the wet streets and gloomy rooms of 1980s Europe, where a charming antihero battles his cosmic urge to kill. Written as he was dying in 1989, Koltès’ sordid swan song is Greek tragedy kissed by Gregg Araki—breathlessly violent but with a pitch-black wit and occasional syrupy sweetness that leaves you disarmed. Caught between the realms of true crime and grotesque fantasy, the play shines a blistering sun on our darkest impulses; by the end, you’ll wonder if we’re just flightless birds in the face of our fates.

Living through the eyes of the dead, cosmic urge to kill, the play shines a blistering sun on our darkest impulses, by the end, you’ll wonder if we’re just flightless birds in the face of our fates?

Regretfully, I experienced none of the above as I tried to follow the plot that seemed to be devoid of all of them. I am still trying to figure out who is living through whose dead eyes, what is a cosmic urge to kill and how does a murderer become an anti-hero, whatever that is. The rest of the blurb makes even less sense but so be it.

The play opens on a dark stage with two actors with a microphone stand in front of them conversing about what they are seeing or should be looking at. They are prison guards and tell us that escaping from their prison is all but impossible. But they notice someone on the roof doing just that. The fugitive murdered his father and after escaping visits his mother and murders her too. By the end of the 100 minutes or so he murders a child and a police officer. He must have a really bad case of the cosmic urge.

Fiona Highet and Jakob Ehman in “Roberto Zucco” 
Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh

We learn his name, Roberto Zucco, and hear his stories or fantasies about himself. We know he is a murderer who looks on the four killings with dispassion. Turning morality and the value of human life, including the lives of your parents, on their head in a play is an attention getter to be sure. Zuccaro can be a charming lover, a secret agent, and a rapist. In one scene he sits on a bench with an elegant lady and demands the keys to her Mercedes. He threatens to shoot her child (and he does) but she is attracted to him and goes along with him. Again, turning morality on its head.

The play has 21 characters acted by seven actors, Jakob Ehman, Samantha Brown, Fiona Highet, Daniel MacIvor, Kwaku Okyere, and Oyin Oladejo. The program does not give us any details about who plays what role in the play’s fifteen scenes. Most of the scenes are short and the dialogues, the philosophizing and the situations are mostly brief and as becomes Koltes’ attitude are removed from the logic we may expect from human beings.

Koltes wrote the play in 1989, moths before he died of an AIDS-related disease. The character of Zuccaro is based on a real serial killer that Koltes molded into his world view.

The  set consisted of a gray wall with a roof at the back that came crashing after Zuccaro escaped. A well-lit table and chairs were the scene for two women talking, a simple bench for the scene with the elegant woman and rooms for other scenes.

ted witzel directed Martin Crimp’s translation of the play. I watched the performance with interest but I cannot say that I enjoyed the fast-moving scene changes and weirdness of the characters and the play. Perhaps a different production may strike the right chord in me.
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Roberto Zucco by Bernard-Marie Koltes played until October 5 2024 at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre,  12 Alexander Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.buddiesinbadtimes.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

1939 – REVIEW OF 2024 CANADIAN STAGE PRODUCTION AT BERKELEY ST. THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas 

Canada’s residential schools constitute one of the most disgraceful chapters in our history. Any recitation of the fundamental aims of the schools and their cruel existence and procedures sends shivers down your spine. And that is before you reach the grotesque abuses suffered by the children in the hands of Catholic priests and Anglican ministers.

1939 is a play by Joni Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan, now playing at the Berkeley St. Theatre in Toronto, that is set in an Indian Anglican Residential School in which the appalling system starts as mere background. The ostensible story is about King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visiting the school in 1939, before the outbreak of World War II.

The school decides to put on a play by Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, to showcase the school, impress the royals and help with raising funds for the crumbling institution. 

The play has eight characters, 5 students and three adults. The students come from different tribes but as far as anyone is concerned, they are Indian and all Indians are the same. The students are Susan Blackbird (Brefny Caribou), Cree, Evelyne Rice (Merewyn Comeau), Mohawk, Beth Summers (Grace Lamarche), Ojibwe, Jean Delorme (John Wamsley), Algonquin Metis, and Joseph Summers (Richard Comeau), Ojibwe, a former student.

The adults are Sian, Ap Darfydd (Catherine Fitch), the English teacher who is bent on producing her vision of All’s Well with English accents and proper pronunciation of iambic pentameters. Callum Williams (Nathan Howe) an Anglican priest who is desperate to get a parish of his own and Madge Macbeth (Madge Lisman), a journalist who writes about an Indian production of a Shakespeare’s play. The word “Indian” has all but ceased to be used to describe Canada’s natives but the law controlling their lives was The Indian Act and the ministry in charge of it was the Ministry of Indian Affairs. I use the word Indian as it is used in 1939 and continued to be used for decades after that.

L-R: Richard Comeau, Merewyn Comeau, Brefny Caribou, 

Nathan Howe, John Wamsley, Grace Lamarche, Catherine Fitch.

Miss Ap Dafydd raises enthusiasm as she assigns the roles to the students and starts rehearsing Shakespeare. Her heart was probably in the right place and she was following government policy of raising Indian children with the Indian removed from them.

Father Williams is played as clown, overacting horribly and running around as if he were in a French farce. Unfortunately, he did not evoke too many laughs. He got a better reaction with his habitual flatulence when under pressure but that is one of the lowest forms of humour

Madge Macbeth was an efficient journalist who wanted to help the school raise funds. Her ideas?  How about an Indian Shakespeare, with feathers, long hair and all the paraphernalia of Indians (never mind the fact that each tribe has its own traditions and clothes.) The clothes are made by a women’s organization that does not have a clue about Indian dress and they make whatever they consider “Indian.” It is an abomination, of course.

The students are hopeless in reading Shakespeare let alone tackling his iambic pentameters. For the pentameters they are told to pretend they are riding a horse. They know what it is like being on a horse but not how to make sense of Shakespeare’s meter. This should be hilarious but it barely registered with the opening night audience. All the actors playing the roles of students are indigenous, as Lauzon demands in any production of her play. She has the right do that but in this production the result was not entirely successful. The actors sounded uneasy when speaking their lines and only came to life when they realized that the parts they play have parallels to their situation. They rebelled against what Miss Dafydd was giving them and discarded their ridiculous “Indian” costumes designed by the white ladies’ association. They made All’s Well an Indian play.

By the time of the arrival of the costumes, we realized that the play was not to impress King George in 1939 but to give us a punch in the stomach and remind us of what the residential schools did to indigenous children. What I missed was making us roar with laughter at the butchering of Shakespeare’s language, the rebellion against the ridiculous play in the hands of indigenous students who find their own meaning. The play has all the elements of hilarity and serious drama. This production did not do justice to the hilarity.

The set designed by Joanna Yu consisted of three large blackboards on which messages were written and quickly erased – like the culture and background (and much more) of the children that were forced to attend them. Chairs and tables to represent classrooms are appropriate parts of the set.

For the record, Co-author Jani Lauzon also directed this production of the play which premiered in 2022 at the Stratford Festival.       
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1939 by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan opened on September 19 and continues until October 12, 2024, at the Berkeley St. Theatre, 26 Berkeley St.  Toronto, Ont. https://www.canadianstage.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press