HAMLET LIVE FROM THE MET WITH GREAT SINGING AND TOO MANY GHOSTS

James Karas

Marlis Petersen and Simon Keenleyside in Hamlet. Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

“It’s a mystery” says this Hamlet as he launches into his “To be or not to be” aria. This is not Shakespeare’s Hamlet but Ambroise Thomas’ opera. Chances are you have not seen it or even heard of it. You may say that it is not in the top 100 most-produced-operas list. In fact that last time it was produced by the Metropolitan Opera in New York was in 1897. The mystery in this case is not the heart of Hamlet but why has Thomas’s work been ignored for so long.

It is on now and if you can’t dash out to Lincoln Center you can see it in a theatre near you on April 24, 2010 when the live telecast is reprised.

The opera has some great music and two great roles, one for a baritone (Hamlet) and one for a soprano (Ophelia). The role of Gertrude provides some excellent opportunities for a mezzo soprano but it is not as big a part as the other two.

The Metropolitan Opera has struck gold in all three roles. The kingpin is baritone Simon Keenlyside in the title role. He has a fine voice and looks the way you imagine Hamlet. He is a bit disheveled, distraught, confused, slim, agile and, yes, mysterious. In the hands of a less talented singing actor, Hamlet would look wooden and unsatisfactory. This is not a role for a baritone who strikes poses. It is wholly acted and sung performance of the first order.

Soprano Marlis Peterson was a last minute replacement for the more famous Natalie Dessay and was greeted with the usual fears and expectations. Will she bomb or will she give a memorable performance? Happily for her and the audience, Peterson does a marvelous job. She has a pure, clear, lustrous voice and made a superb Ophelia. Thomas gives Ophelia an extended Mad Scene that provides all kinds of opportunities for vocal and acting showmanship. Peterson does a masterly job as she struts around the stage stabbing her chest and slashing her wrists. There is blood all over her white dress as she finally collapses. Lucia di Lammermoor eat your heart out.

Mezzo soprano Jennifer Larmore was very impressive as Queen Gertrude, the woman who poisoned her husband, married his brother and was crowned queen of Denmark. Larmore gave a dramatic and terrific performance. The only small issue with her is that she has a bad habit when not singing of pursing her lips and sucking her cheeks in. Somebody should tell her to stop it. The hideous crown that they plopped on her head does not help her looks even though she is a very attractive woman.

Veteran bass James Morris sang the role of Claudius. It is not a particularly important role and I found his voice mostly colorless at the beginning. I liked him better near the end when his voice resonated much better.

Tenor Toby Spence presented an athletic and well-sung Laertes.

The quality of the production in general is questionable. Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser have produced the opera in Barcelona with Keenlyside and Dessay and it is available on DVD. The current production was initially done for the Grand Theatre of Geneva. They seem to have cornered the market on Hamlet.

They have opted for a production with a minimal set and Lighting Designer Christopher Foray has chosen darkness over light any time of the day or night.

Except for the Mad Scene where a couch, a chandelier and some flowers are in evidence, for the rest of the performance there is almost no set to be seen. A couple of backdrops are put across the stage but what you see all too often is singing heads with nothing but darkness in the background. They could be in outer space or a bunch of ghosts for all one knows.

In other words there is very little context to what you are watching. The great confrontation between Hamlet and his mother in her bedroom could have taken place anywhere. She has no furniture at all except for a portrait of Claudius. Yet, when we get to the grave diggers’ scene, the directors feel it is necessary for a wheel barrow full of dirt to be shovelled on the stage.

As if that were not bad enough, Brian Large who directed the performance for the screen decided to avoid any long shots as if they are the bubonic plague. In the opening scene we see the huge chorus, mostly in the dark, but in an impressive array. After that it is largely head shots with nothing but darkness in the background. It is unnecessary and downright silly. We are watching the performance on the huge screen and we do not want a single head filling up most of it.

I should mention that they do avoid the “happy ending” of the original libretto.

Louis Langree conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Let’s hope we will not have to wait for another century for the next production.

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR TELLS HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I IN MUSIC HALL STYLE

Brendan Wall, Oliver Dennis, Gregory Prest - Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Oh What A Lovely War is not your conventional musical by many standards. All you have to do is look at who created it to realize that this is not just a team effort but a communal endeavour. It was created by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop and Charles Chilton; Research by Gerry Raffles after treatments by Ted Allan and Others. How many people does that make?

The musical opened in London in 1963 and was made into a movie in 1969 directed by Richard Attenborough.

Oh What A Lovely War attempts to give a bird’s eye view of World War I by using popular songs from the early part of the twentieth century. It tells the story of the War from its declaration in 1914 to the bitter and catastrophic end in 1918. The songs and the dancing give the appearance of treating an awful subject with a light hand. R. C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End about life in the trenches was the usual way of representing the war at the time. The idea of songs and satire was quite new.

The current production adds a welcome Canadian angle by mentioning Vimy Ridge. The Canadian soldiers are advised not to go over the ridge not because of insufficient ammunition (and not because they will be killed, presumably) but because of a shortage of coffins. The musical ends with a catalogue of Canadian soldiers killed in the war being projected on the back of the stage.

The songs and the vignettes mirror the high optimism and fervent patriotism at the beginning of the war. “Row, Row, Row,” “Belgium Puts the Kibosh on the Kaiser” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” are belted out with gusto. There is even an extraordinary display of common humanity when the British and German soldiers exchange gifts in No Man’s Land during the first Christmas Eve of the war and sing Christmas carols. It is one of the most touching stories about the war and one that was never permitted to be repeated.

The characters are dressed in pierrot costumes to indicate, ironically of course, that this war is just a lot of fun, a lark in fact. The pierrot costumes are not worn by the army officers such as Sir John French and General Douglas Haig. The musical’s most savage treatment is saved for Haig who ordered massive attacks by British soldiers into German machine guns He was convinced that his decisions were guided by Providence and that he was doing God’s will.

The number of dead projected on a screen jars sharply with some of the songs but brings home the brutal results of some of the military decisions.

Oh What A Lovely War is a Brechtian musical and it needs to show the ugly side of the war more clearly. Several years ago Soulpepper produced Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and failed to evoke the grit and underlying ugliness of the situation. It was a sanitized version of the play and I had the same feeing about Oh What a Lovely War. At times it felt too much like a pleasant musical despite the satire and underlying brutality.

In other words if the war is to be presented as music hall entertainment if should show its teeth lest we miss the point.

Director Albert Schultz has chosen some Soulpepper stalwarts for the production as well as a number of Soulpepper Academy Artists. Oliver Dennis, Michael Hanrahan, Mike Ross and Marek Norman. They generated considerable energy and delivered an enjoyable production. If only it had teeth.

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Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop et. al. opened n March 17 and ran until April 10, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 416 866-8666.

‘ART’ COMBINES INTELLIGENCE WIT AND LOTS OF LAUGHTER IN CANADIAN STAGE COMPANY PRODUCTION

‘Art’, the title of Yasmina Reza’s play is enclosed in single quotation marks to indicate that the word is used ironically. A work of art, a painting in this case, will play a significant role in the play but it will be the catalyst rather than the subject of the piece.

‘Art’ is a brilliant, witty, stimulating and humane play that is based on a very simple idea. Serge (Colin Mochrie), a dermatologist, buys a modern painting for a lot of money. The reaction of his two friends, Marc (Peter Donaldson) and Yvan (Evan Buliung) sets off a series of arguments that reveal a great deal about the men’s characters, their relations with each other and the nature and basis of friendship itself.

That is a lot of territory to cover in a play that lasts only eighty minutes without an intermission. Yet Reza and the current production by Canadian Stage succeed terrifically. The production builds up the humour of the play to gales of laughter and the underlying intelligence of the work and the complexity of the characters is never lost. This is damn good theatre.

Marc, the practical and domineering aeronautics engineer, controlled Serge’s tastes and perhaps thought. Serge has rebelled against that domination and expressed his independence by developing a taste for modern art that Marc finds incomprehensible. He in fact considers Serge’s painting shit.

Yvan is a pathetic character who has moved into the sale of office supplies, a job given to him by his fiancée’s uncle. He is spineless, an amoeba, as his friends call him, a conciliator and a man who wants to please people. When Serge and Marc argue his weak-kneed approach at conciliation causes them to turn on him rather than appreciate his docility.

Is friendship based on shared views and tastes or is it based on people sharing the views of one domineering person at the expense of their own or are human relations based on something more mysterious.

There are a couple of annoying things about the production. The play takes place successively in the apartments of the three characters. The three apartments are identical except for a painting on the wall. That is all that you need for the play.

For some reason director Morris Panych and Set and Costume Designer Ken MacDonald have added projections of the credits as well as black and white videos of the streets of Paris. The videos are shot from a moving vehicle and the Paris Opera and the Arc de Triomphe are recognizable as possible indicators of the part of town where the characters live. We see distorted images of the actors presumably looking through the keyhole at the arriving guests. This is totally out of keeping with the play.

The other annoying item is the pronunciation of the name Yvan. Whatever the pronunciation adopted by Panych for the actors it should be the same for all and all the time. All three of them at one time or another say something that sounds like Eevan, the last syllable being pronounced like a vehicle or Yvonne with the last syllable sounding like von in von Karajan. Get your act together, people.

All three actors provided polished performances. I will start by praising Buliung because Reza provides the poor schmuck with a long speech in which he outlines all the troubles that beset him from his approaching wedding to his whole life. Buliung performs it brilliantly bringing it to a pitch of emotional distress for the character and a summit of laughter for the audience.

Donaldson and Mochrie get great chances for comedy and intelligent repartee and they succeed superbly. Theatre for the thinking and laughing audience. No quotation marks needed.

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‘Art’ by Yasmina Reza opened on March 18 and ran until April 10, 2010 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. www.canstage.com

THE LUCKY CHILD - MARIANNE APOSTOLIDES NOVEL EXAMINES LIFE IN GREECE DURING WORLD WAR II

THE LUCKY CHILD
by Marianne Apostolides
204 pp. Mansfield Press, 2010.


Marianne Apostolides is the daughter and granddaughter of veterinarians. She is the author of The Lucky Child, a marvelous novel that pays tribute to both men through the prism of fiction and borrowed memories.

The novel is set in Greece between 1939 and 1943 although it opens in 1932, the year in which Taki is born, two months after his mother miscarries the first twin. Taki is, of course, the lucky child of the title.

Agamemnon, Taki’s father, is the chief veterinarian of a cavalry unit in Thessaloniki, an upright officer who uses his skills to help poor farmers.

Apostolides gives us vignettes of life in Thessaloniki before and during the war as well as descriptions of life in Zagora where Mary, Agamemnon’s wife, comes from. She uses light, sparing brush strokes. She does not go for lengthy Dickensian descriptions but is happy with economical delineations.

The story seems to be written largely from the viewpoint of Taki. He is almost seven years old when the novel begins and only eleven in the summer of 1943 when the story ends. There are certain events from childhood that stick in our minds vividly and the rest become images that we recall without too much context. This seems to hold true for our protagonist. For example, Taki recalls a number of people going by his house without too much detail but he recalls watching his father neutering of a horse quite vividly.

Apostolides tells the story through an omniscient narrator but when Taki is in the picture the view seems to be largely through his eyes or as it affects him. A good example of Apostolides prose style is her description of the tumultuous events of October 28, 1940 when Italy gave Greece an ultimatum and started invading the country in the wee hours of the morning.

The obvious choice would have been for Apostolides to come up with an outpouring of prose describing the Greek multitudes shouting “No. No, No” to Mussolini in an expression of rapturous patriotism. Instead she combines some banal acts like a boy pedaling past Taki on his bicycle, Taki being jostled by his mother’s arm and being nudged aside by neighbours. This is a level-headed and realistic description and thus more effective than prose in overdrive.

Another example of her spare, subtle narrative style is the announcement of the beginning of World War II when Germany invaded Poland. Taki is in the kitchen with his maternal grandmother. He hears the words Germany, Poland ,,, army … Hitler. The only word he understands is army because of his father and the image in his head of officers dancing in their uniforms at Easter.

Meanwhile the grandmother goes to the sink to clean some carrots. “Her shoulder blade pushed back and forth, repeatedly, back and forth” writes Apostolides. The grandmother knows exactly what is happening and what is coming and Apostolides expresses everything in a few words of simple description.

The everyday life of the Apostolides family and everyone in Greece is lived against the background of some of the most dramatic events in Greek history. First there was the declaration of war against Italy and the spectacular success of the Greek forces followed by the quick capitulation to the Nazis in April 1941. This led to the rise of the Greek resistance and the communist-dominated EAM/ELAS.

Privation and hunger followed and Apostolides provides a beautiful juxtaposition between a child’s view of reality and the mother’s knowledge. Mary does not give Taki another slice of bread because she does not want to spoil his appetite for the evening, she tells him. In the meantime she feels a sudden dizziness as she looks at the loaf of bread that would have to last another day for the entire family. No more is said. No more needs to be said.

Apostolides provides a few images to describe the life under the Nazi occupation: soldiers on the roof, the breadline, a man begging for cigarettes and food and Taki bumping into a body. It turns outs to be that of a woman, his former neighbour who is wearing a yellow star on her chest. Again no more needs to be said.

Sometimes I imagined the novel as a series of black and white photographs from the era. It is a series of images that pass across your eyes and stay there.

Apostolides’ chosen narrative method perhaps did not allow for detailed descriptions of Thessaloniki or Zagora during the war. In fact there is not a single street name mentioned and the setting could be any city in Greece.

I will not reveal what happened to Agamemnon but Taki, we are told in the Epilogue, went to America in 1949 and became a highly successful veterinarian. He was the impetus for the book and in trying to capture her father’s childhood, the author has created a work of fiction that tells the truth without being historically accurate. Her ability to create and recreate, to delineate and pay tribute and to evoke poetically the past and to fuse it with the present, makes one attribute the title of the novel to the author as well as her father.

Marianne Apostolides was born in Long Island, New York and graduated from Princeton University with a major in politics. She has lived in Toronto since 1997.

She has written a novel and not a history or a memoir but since she includes many dates it may be appropriate to correct some of her errors.

The Americans were not landing anywhere in the spring of 1941. They did not get into the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Greek trains ran on coal and not on oil in the 1930’s.

Agamemnon and his officer friends claimed in the spring of 1942 (1941 according to the novel) that they had heard nothing from the Greek government-in-exile in Egypt for sixteen months. Since Greece was invaded in 1941, Apostolides clearly meant 1942. But even if we allow for the typo there are not 16 months between the spring of 1941 and the spring of 1942.

The novel ends in the summer of 1943. Apostolides enters the narrative directly in an Epilogue where she ties up some loose ends and explains her motivation for writing the story. It is just as much a story about life in Greece about seven decades ago as it is about the fate of Greek immigrants today. Taki Apostolides immigrated to the United States in 1949 and did not want to have anything to do with Greece until he was forced to return to his youth by a daughter whose connection to that country was very tenuous.

A few words about Taki’s older sister Loukia. At age 11, Loukia visits an army hospital and is sent to feed men who had limbs amputated. She gives them soup and water until she reaches a soldier, a boy of seventeen, who is too weak to take a drink. She dips her fingers in the water and places her fingertip in the man’s mouth. She tells him to drink and he does. It is a moment of marvelous magnanimity and beauty.

In another scene, Loukia appears as the writer and director of a play about Greek Independence in the platia of Zagora. She combines childish innocence and patriotic fervour as she leads the girls in an imitation of the Dance of Zalogos where the Suliote women with their children in their arms threw themselves off a cliff rather than endure slavery!

Loukia Apostolides is better known in Toronto as Lucy Grigoriades. The child is no doubt mother to the woman and many decades later Lucy remains an exemplar of volunteerism and service to the community with few equals.

The Lucky Child is a significant addition to the growing stock of literature by Greeks of the Diaspora and their descendants.

APARTMENT 2012 - WILD AND HILARIOUS COMEDY WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT IT

Sue Kelvin as Barbara and John Guerrasio as Sam in Aprtment 2012

Apartment 2012 is the unassuming title of a hilarious play which just ended its run at the White Bear Theatre in London. It may be safe to say that the likelihood of most people having heard of the play or the theatre is on the slender side.

The play is the product of the fertile and wild imagination of Julian Sims, a British actor and writer. Apartment 2012 is his second play and it opened at the White Bear on April 6, 2010.

A Jewish family from New York is living in Communist Russia. No, not the the Russia of the late Soviet Union but the Communist Russia of the future. The family survived the nuclear war that destroyed capitalism and is now living somewhere near the Black Sea where the Mafia is running things. For some reason, this part of the world is a low radiation region. That’s just the background.

Barbara (Sue Kelvin) is a classic Jewish wife and mother. She is short and portly, loud, colourful and funny. When someone refers to her as “fat and ugly” her husband helpfully indicates that she is not ugly.

Her husband Sam (John Guerrasio) works in a factory, tries to put up with his wife (including the fact that she screams like a hyena during sex) and looks after the side business of the little garden that he has where he is not growing rutabagas.

Sam and Barbara have a nice-looking son who has a mental disease (according to them) – he is gay and he is caught making love to his boyfriend behind the couch.

Soon enough the Mafia man arrives asking for his cut of Sam’s business. He is willing to forego the debt, however, if he can make love to Barbara. She agrees and convinces him to have sex with her on the balcony – the balcony that Sam never got around to fixing. No clues here but check the floor number of the title.

This is only a partial summary of this hilarious bit of theatre. Kelvin can play Jewish mamas with hilarious results any day of the week. Sam, short and slim is the antithesis of Barbara and the result of course is quite funny.

Drew Hunter as the son Victor is very good. Some of the Russian accents are uncertain although one can hardy argue with Andrei Zayats’ intonations – he is a real Russian. Sam and Barbara speak with a New York accent.

The White Bear Theatre is the back room of a pub. I am being precise. You can have beer and food at The White Bear Pub before the performance and during intermission.

The backroom of the pub is about the size of an average family room. There are two rows of seats in an L-shape and they hold about 50 people. The stated mission of The White Bear Theatre Club, established in 1988, is to focus on new writing and Lost Classics [sic]. Its very existence seems miraculous; its longevity a marvel and the quality of Apartment 2012, the only play that I have seen there, simply exceptional.
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Apartment 2012 by Julian Sims played until April 25, 2010 at The White Bear Theatre, 138 Kennington Park Road, London. SE11 4DJ. http://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, IL TURCO IN ITALIA AND LA BOHEME – OPERA IN TORONTO, LONDON AND HAMILTON

Carla Huhtanen & Olivier Laquerre in The Marriage of Figaro from Opera Atelier
Photo: Bruce Zinger

The Marriage of Figaro in Toronto, La Boheme in Hamilton and Il Turco In Italia in London is not a bad selection of operas to see within a few days of each other.

Opera Atelier’s new production of Figaro is elegant, colourful, well-paced, beautifully sung and in English. Director Marshall Pynkoski has chosen to give a commedia dell’arte-inspired production with lots of humour including some well-placed slapstick.

Bass baritone Olivier Laquerre as Figaro led the wonderful cast. His Figaro is light-footed, fast-thinking and very funny. The tall and lithe Laquerre sang magnificently. Soprano Carla Huhtanen was his lively and intelligent Susanna with baritone Phillip Addis as Count Almaviva and Soprano Peggy Kriha Dye as the Countess, with each one doing excellent work. Well done but I wish they would do something about the Count’s haircut. Wallis Giunta made a lively Cherubino.

The production is sung in English and raises the issue of the language of opera. I am rather schizophrenic on the subject. I resent it when funny situations are lost because they are sung in a foreign language and complain when the musicality of Italian is lost in the guttural horrors of English. This production brings the issue into focus. The comedy is much better because we understand the language. The singing suffers and at times I felt that the singers had molasses in their mouth. Take for example the round o’s of “Dove Sono,” the Countess’s gorgeous aria. Now try singing the same melody to the words “I remember.” It’s like moving from the beautiful, rolling hills of Tuscany to the flat Prairies. There is a myriad of such examples.

Choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg has choreographed several dances as an extra bonus. Conductor David Fallis maintains a measured pace with the Tafelmusik Orchestra in a first-rate production.

What do you do if you are tired of your wife and you want to get rid of her.? Well, if you are a Turk, you sell her. If you are Italian you punch the guy that wants her in the nose.

That at least is the advice given by Gioachino Rossini and his librettist Felice Romani in Il Turco In Italia, the hilarious comic opera now playing at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. There is much more such sage advice.

Rossini’s opera was first produced in 1814 but for some reason it has been overshadowed by his other works and is produced infrequently. That’s too bad

As the title suggests there is a Turk in Italy. Directors Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier have moved the action from the early 19th century to present day Naples. In fact most of the action takes place on the beach where you see cars and Vespa scooters parked on the sand.

Selim the Turk (Ildebrando D’Arcangelo) is visiting Naples. There he finds his misplaced fiancée Zaida (Leah-Marian Jones), the gypsy, accompanied by a lot of other gypsies. The action will get in higher gear when Selim also meets the lovely but empty-headed Fiorilla (Aleksandra Kurzak). To make things more interesting (and to provide a job for a tenor), Fiorilla is also pursued by Don Narciso (Colin Lee), a local playboy. One need hardly add that Don Geronio, Fiorilla’s husband is quite upset about the goings on and he would like to take revenge.

These activities are supervised by a Poet who follows events with great interest because they will provide him with a plot for an opera that he wants to write.

Italian bass-baritone D’Arcangelo is superb as Selim. Tall, dark and handsome, he is just the type that would dazzle women, gypsy, Italian and otherwise. He is vocally well endowed and struts around the stage with panache.

Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak is the perfect foil for both Selim and her husband Don Geronio. She is pert, sassy, agile and the classic airhead. She sang gorgeously.

Much of the comedy in the opera is owed to Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Don Geronio. He is portly and has the expressive face that produces laughter. He has made a specialty of buffoonish characters but also sings a much broader repertoire. In any event, he was the hit of the evening.

The juicy male roles go to the lower voices in this opera but Rossini did cast Don Narciso, a sort of hanger-on, who does get a great aria and hits a high C. A good night for Colin Lee.

Thomas Allen at 66 is still younger than Placido Domingo and he is not ready to hang up his vocal chords. He plays the role of the supervisory Poet, a sort of ring-leader and commentator. He was suave and had no difficulty with the singing.

Set designer Christian Fenouillat chose simple, brightly coloured panels with a swath of blue in the middle to suggest the beach.

Leiser and Caurier used their imagination in providing a couple of plot twists at the end without interfering with the opera.

Conductor Maurizio Benini and the Royal Opera House orchestra kept a brisk pace as they inundated the hall with Rossini’s music.

Hamilton Opera finished its 30th season with Puccini’s La Boheme at Hamilton Place. Unfortunately, there were only two performances.

The evening belonged to tenor Roger Honeywell as Rodolfo. He was vocally and physically suited to the role and turned in a very good performance. I found Miriam Khalil a disappointing Mimi. Her voice did not seem big enough for Hamilton Place although she did display considerable emotion in “Donde lieta uscì” when she separates from Rodolfo.

Virginia Hatfield could have been a livelier Musetta and bass baritone Jon-Paul Decosse was not at his best as Colline.

One of the problems of the production was the set designed by Peter Dean Beck. The freezing garret is realistic enough but it does not cover the entire stage. Thus it looks like an ill-fitting structure that was plopped in the middle of the stage. The explanation may simply be that the set was borrowed and was designed for a different stage.

Michael Cavanagh directed the production and Cal Stewart Kellogg conducted the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and the result, despite the limitations imposed by a limited budget, was an enjoyable evening at the opera.

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The Marriage of Figaro by W. A. Mozart, presented by Opera Atelier, runs until May 1, 2010 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. http://www.operaatelier.com/
La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini was performed on April 22 & 24, 2010 at Hamilton Place, Hamilton, Ontario L8P 4Y2. http://www.operahamilton.ca/

A WEEK AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE IN LONDON - Part 1

Simon Russell Beale in L0ndon Assurance

By James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

The National Theatre of Great Britain lists 14 productions on its three stages between March and June 2010 alone. You can probably see as many as half a dozen productions in one week and the breadth of works ranging from obscure classics to new plays is nothing less than impressive. To put it in context, you can see as many plays at the National Theatre in one week as the Canadian Stage Company produces in a whole season in Toronto.

My planned ten-day visit to London was extended somewhat by the ash spewed by that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland and I was able to see seven plays at the National Theatre alone.

The plays ranged from a 17th century tragedy (Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton) to a new futuristic play about dementia (Really Old, Like Forty Five by Tamsin Oglesby). In between there was a 19th century Irish comedy (London Assurance by Dion Boucicault), an early play by Tennessee Williams (Spring Storm), new plays by Alan Bennett (The Habit of Art) and David Hare (The Power of Yes) and a play by Mikhail Bulgakov (The White Guard). Now there is breadth and depth in the choice of plays.

THE WHITE GUARD


Bulgakov’s play takes place in Kiev during the civil war in Ukraine in the winter of 1918-1919 following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Bulgakov (1881-1940) was born in Kiev and lived to see some adulation and a great deal of derision during Stalin’s regime. The play was first produced in 1926 under a different title and Stalin liked it so much he saw it 20 times.

Bulgakov combines the personal lives of the Turbin family with the chaotic political situation and civil war brilliantly. Alexei Turbin (Daniel Flynn) is an officer in the Tsarist White Guard. His sister Elena (Justine Mitchell) is married to the pro-German Deputy Minister of War (Kevin Doyle). He works for The Hetman (Anthony Calf), the Ukrainian puppet of the occupying Germans.

The Hetman flees to Germany, Ukrainian Nationalists take over, the Bolsheviks arrive, there are numerous changes of regime and chaos and brutality reign.

The National does not shirk from war scenes that are extremely well done and are juxtaposed with scenes at home. This is theatre on a grand scale (really medium scale for the National) where an extraordinary cast provides a splendid theatrical experience all directed by Howard Davies.

LONDON ASSURANCE

If the civil war in Ukraine is too depressing there is much lighter fare in Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance. Ontarians will remember that the play was staged by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2006 as a vehicle for Brian Bedford.

The production at the National is almost pitch-perfect. It is directed by Nicholas Hytner and with the likes of Simon Russell Beale, Fiona Shaw, Nick Sampson and Richard Briers it is comedy at its best.

The plot is as old as comedy itself. Sir Harcourt Courtly (Beale), an old fop from the city goes to the country to marry Grace (Michelle Terry), a teenage heiress. His son Charles (Paul Ready) and his bizarre friend Dazzle (Matt Cross) precede him to the country and Charles falls in love with Grace.

Boucicault treats us to some eccentric country folk like the beautifully named Lady Gay Spanker (Fiona Shaw), the gruff Max Harkaway (Mark Addy) and the doltish but hilarious Mr. Spanker played to wonderful effect by the now elderly Richard Briers.

Beale is simply a master comic. He can pose, do double-takes, preen and just take a few steps and have the audience laughing. A marvel.

My only complaint is about Grace, the lovely, sassy and sexy heiress who knows what she wants and how to get it. Terry can handle the role and her delivery of lines is impeccable. But Grace has to be a pretty maiden over whom fools and gallants would swoon. The almost-flat-chested and toothy Michelle Terry is pretty unlikely to turn heads or hormones in her direction.

Nick Sampson has the relatively minor role of the servant Cool. He is hilarious. He can get a laugh by simply staring and with his utter snobbishness and nose-up-in-the air demeanour he is the perfect example of a good actor maximizing the effect of a small role.

SPRING STORM

Tennessee Williams wrote Spring Storm in 1937 while a student at the University of Iowa. It was found with his papers in 1984. This is the play’s European premiere.

This is youthful Williams and the play is interesting both for its intrinsic value and as a precursor of what was to come from the great playwright. Most of the characters in Spring Storm will re-appear in his later work, more fully developed.

Williams goes for a dramatic setting from the start with the play opening on a windy bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. It is called Lover’s Leap.

The play is centred around the aptly named Heavenly Critchfield (played by the talented Liz White), a young and sexually attractive woman from a small town called Port Tyler on the Mississippi River.

Dick Miles (Michael Thomson) is a young man who is in love with Heavenly and wants to get away from Port Tyler. He is not well-educated and the best job he may be able to get will be as a labourer with the government.

His antithesis is Arthur Shannon (Michael Malarkey), rich, well educated but with some problems of sexual identity. He went to Oxford University but in his childhood he was hounded by his classmates and called a sissy. Heavenly witnessed a dramatic name-calling scene and did nothing about it. The experience still haunts Shannon.

Heavenly’s opposite is Hertha Neilson (Anna Tolputt), who is homely, lacks social status (her mother is a seamstress) and is dying for some attention and affection.

These four people interact with the citizens of Port Taylor. Heavenly is put under considerable pressure to marry Arthur as she is pursued by and has sex with Dick.

The play tends towards verbosity. Scenes go on after we have got the message and there is the tendency towards melodrama. Nevertheless, director Laurie Sansom has delivered a superb production of a play that deserved to be seen.

THE POWER OF YES

David Hare’s play The Power of Yes bears the subtitle “A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis.” That’s very nice, Dave, but why do you assume that we care what you are seeking to understand or if you achieve your goal it will be of interest to us. More importantly, how is that understanding, so eagerly sought by you, going to translate into good theatre?

To be fair, Hare has done a lot of research and talked to many important players in the financial and industrial sectors. Just as many either refused to talk to him or he neglected to get an interview with them. I suspect it was the former.

Before putting his ideas and research down on paper for a stage play, Hare should have offered the fruits of his efforts to say 60 Minutes or the fifth estate. These are well-funded network programmes that are capable of doing investigative journalism of the best kind.

Instead what we get is investigative journalism on stage. Twenty actors represent a couple of dozen (I am not sure of the exact number) known and unknown players in the events leading up to the financial crisis. The Author appears as a character (played well by Anthony Calf) and most of the other people appear as “talking heads” or more accurately “running bodies” on stage that need to be identified to us.

Many of the people he presents refused to have their identity disclosed and we have characters like “A Hedge Fund Manager,” “The Chair of a Mortgage Lender,” “A Leading Industrialist” and so on.

Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Fund appears in a video projection only and only his lips are shown. There are a few Americans including Myron Scholes but most of the talkers are British. The problem here is that the financial collapse was largely an American creation. The British followed suit as did Iceland and much of Europe. The Royal Bank of Scotland through its megalomaniacal CEO Sir Frederick Goodwin became a major player in the disaster almost single-handedly bringing the British economy to its knees.

George Soros, billionaire, philosopher, philanthropist (when you have $11 billion in your piggy bank how difficult can it be to become a philanthropist?) gets good press because he obviously agreed to talk to Hare.

A lot of people run on and off the stage making statements, explaining, defending, debunking. You do get a lot on information in the one hour and forty-minutes that the show runs but this is not particularly good theatre. Call BBC, CBS or CBC.

I will review the rest of the plays in a future article.