WIDE AWAKE HEARTS - JEALOUSY AND VERBOSITY AT TARRAGON EXTRA SPACE

Reviewed by James Karas

** (out of five)

Brendan Gall’s new play, Wide Awake Hearts, now playing at the Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space, lasts only eighty minutes without an intermission. Unfortunately it feels as if it is twice as long and provides only half the pleasure.

The basic idea behind the plot is as old as comedy or perhaps as old as the movies. A screenwriter is making a movie which involves some torrid love scenes. The female role is played by his wife. For the male lead, he casts his oldest and best friend. Well, we don’t need a crystal ball to deduce the potential problem. Will the passionate on-screen love scenes spill over somewhere that is less public?

The husband does not need an Iago to become suspicious. The problem becomes more severe and the screenwriter’s jealousy and suspicions more acute, when his “best and oldest friend” is invited to stay in the house of the screenwriter and his wife.

An additional plot complication is provided by the arrival of the film’s editor who is clearly “known” to the lead actor.

The plot, however hackneyed, provides all kinds of opportunities for high drama, low melodrama, wit, humour, even suspense. Gall could have chosen any one or a combination of these or some other mode of expression to create and hour or so of theatrical entertainment. He is not particularly successful.

First of all, Gall decides not to give names to his characters. In the programme and on the video screen they are referred to as A, B, C and D. One may charitably assume that they are types, say, Everyman and Everywoman. That would stretch charity beyond the capacity of the play to convince us that the people named after the four letters of the alphabet are representatives of more than their rather shallow selves.

A is the screenwriter, (Gordon Rand), B is his wife (Lesley Faulkner), C is the lead actor, (Raoul Bhaneja) and D is the editor, (Maev Beaty). Tom, Dick and Harriet would have served perfectly well as names and given them a greater representative aura than letters of the alphabet.

Gall seems to be highly enamored of lengthy speeches. In fact the play opens with A talking for what appears an eternity about the behaviour of a couple of four-year olds on a movie set. Is it supposed to be funny, cute, informative, interesting, decent prose, mildly entertaining, somewhat ironic? I am not sure because it was none of the above and Rand delivered it at a fast pace as if he was not sure what it was all about either. Maybe he is just nervous or neurotic and has a galloping tongue syndrome.

When D, the editor, runs into C, the actor, there is a great opportunity for some witty lines by the former lovers. If Gall tried to provide them, they all fell flat. If there was a different intention, the point of the scene simply escaped me.

The play opens and closes with the use of a video designed by Lorenzo Savoini. He wants to give the impression that we are watching one of those old, black and white Hollywood romances. I suppose the reference is meant to be ironic. The kissing in those old chestnuts was passionate mostly in the imagination and not in the superficial labial contact where pressure made up for depth.

Gall and director Gina Wilkinson do provide several rather graphic sexual encounters where much is suggested and a great deal is shown. Well done and fair enough in a play about sexual passion and suspected infidelity but we wanted a little more substance. Bhaneja and Faulkner can definitely put on a love/sex scene whether real or “pretend” and Beaty could have done a great deal with her role if she were given better lines. Rand was stuck playing the garrulous, jealous husband to no good effect.

In the programme, Gall expresses his heartfelt thanks to more than twenty people without whose help the play “could not have been written.” One wonders how much advice one can absorb from so any people and apply it to a fairly short play. He may have been much better off to ignore all of them and write a play in his own voice.
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Wide Awake Hearts by Brendan Gall runs until December 12, 2010 at the Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.tarragontheatre.com

STUDIES IN MOTION: VISUAL AND AURAL ASPECTS OVERRIDE VERBAL COMPONENT

Studies in Motion, Cast. Photo Credit: Bruce Zinger

*** (out of five)

Reviewed by James Karas

Matthew Jocelyn, the Artistic and General Director of Canadian Stage, has turfed conventional theatre out the window in his programming for the Bluma Appel Theatre. He wants to lead Torontonians to a new theatrical landscape away from the familiar classic and modern plays that have been offered for the past few decades.

For his third production at the Bluma Appel he has chosen Kevin Kerr’s Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge, a production of the Electric Company Theatre of Vancouver. It is a bold and original work that goes beyond the limitations of the conventional play.

Muybridge (1830-1904) was an English photographer who spent most of his career in the United States. He discovered that by using multiple cameras he could take sequential pictures of an animal or a person in motion and show them in a gismo he called a zoopraxiscope. In effect this was an early form of a moving picture. His fascination with photographing and capturing locomotion knew no bounds. He took hundreds of thousands of photographs of animals and people in motion and published a number of books. He was able to show that the hooves of a horse are indeed all off the ground when it is galloping.

He also had a colourful personal life including marrying Flora Stone who bore him a son named Floredo Helios. Flora had a lover named Larkyns whom Muybridge killed. He was acquitted of the charge of murder on the grounds of justifiable homicide. The jury felt that he was justified in killing his wife’s lover. Muybridge had doubts about Floredo’s fatherhood and was haunted by his killing of Larkyns.

The title Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge is apt and accurate. Kevin Kerr’s play examines Muybridge’s fascination with motion and his work in that field as well as his haunted life. The music for the play was composed by Patrick Pennefather and choreography was provided by Crystal Pite. Both play a significant part in the production. From primitive looking nude dances to the moving people photographed by Muybridge and his numerous assistants, the capturing of motion plays a key part in the play.

His life is told in short scenes, some almost vignettes, as he moves from place to place around the United States. We see quarrels with colleagues, visits to the orphanage where his son lives, scenes in the dark room and the confrontation with his wife’s lover.

There are a dozen actors in the cast and some of them play several roles. Most of them are part of the “chorus” which plays a significant part by providing the dance movements. Aside from the secondary plot of Muybridge’s life, his career as a groundbreaking photographer is the most important part of the play.

The dominant character of the play is Muybridge played masterfully by Andrew Wheeler. The white-maned and bearded Muybridge is a striking figure and he dominates almost every scene. The rest of the characters, including his wife Flora (Celine Stube), his son Floredo (Julien Galipeau), the three roles played by Allan Morgan and Jonathan Young’s Eakins and Larkyns appear more as props to Muybridge’s vision of photography or his haunted personal life.

The most prominent and interesting aspects of the play are the visual and the aural. The heavy beats of Pennefather’s music brought to mind the primitive rhythms of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and the dances and dance movements were equally fascinating.

The dialogue connecting the strands of Muybridge’s life was serviceable but the development of plot and character were on the shallow and quick side. For those raised in a verbal universe and the more classical approach to theatre that look for plot and character development, this will appear like a major shortcoming.

For those who are more in tune with the modern emphasis on the visual and the quick, the play will have more to offer.

Studies in Motion is live theatre paying homage to a man whose work had an incalculable effect on its fortunes. Muybridge’s work led to the invention of the motion picture and if you want to see the effect on theatre look around you: how many live theatres do you see compared to movie houses?

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Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge by Kevin Kerr opened on November 25 and will run until December 18, 2010 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. www.canstage.com

VOLPONE AND THE DUCHESS OF MALFI ON DVD FROM GREENWICH THEATRE LONDON

*** (out of five)

Reviewed by James Karas

The idea of recording stage performances is as old as the movie camera. There are strips of film of productions from well before the advent of sound but without the dialogue they are of historical value only. Cameras were poised in theatres after sound came to the movies but most of the results were less than perfect. There is a respectable collection of recordings of Broadway productions but they come with a warning. They may represent significant even great performances but the sound and video quality leave a great deal to be desired.

Digital technology may have changed much of that. Recordings of operas on DVD have become commonplace. They can frequently boast superior sound and video quality but there is no shortage of duds. New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company has gone into broadcasting some of its productions live and in high definition around the globe.

Theatres have been slow to jump in partially, I suppose, because of the language barrier. You can broadcast Don Pasquale or Das Rheingold anywhere in the world and opera lovers will enjoy the production thanks to subtitles. King Lear or Tartuffe, even if done by the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Comedie Française, are unlikely to be big hits with people who do not understand English or French.

Happily England’s National Theatre has jumped into the fray with a number of productions that it has broadcast from its London home. All we can hope for is that there will be enough interest and audience generated to make the broadcasts frequent.

Stage on Screen, an English company, has joined in with the production of two DVDs of classic English plays that were produced at The Greenwich Theatre London, a small house with big ambitions.

The plays are Ben Jonson’s Volpone and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. I saw both productions live at The Greenwich last spring. I counted seven (apparently there were eight) cameras spread around the theatre recording the performances for future editing and release. I now have the DVDs and it is interesting to compare the live performance with the recorded one.

There are some clear advantages to the recorded performance. One advantage is the close-up. You can see every facial expression and movement far more clearly on the DVD than live. Jonson’s and Webster’s language can be difficult but you can switch on the subtitles and be helped with the text. You can watch scenes repeatedly and for students the DVDs should be a great boon to studying the plays.

The above advantages have an obverse side as well. The close-ups are decided for you by the video director and there are times when you see more than you want. The reaction of the listener may be more important than the tone of the speaker but you have little choice as to what you will watch. Some shots are clearly lousy but, usually, they are done fairly professionally. The microphones do not record everything evenly and you do get some gaffes.

Actors on stage speak very differently from actors in a movie. The former are speaking to the people in the back row of the theatre whereas the latter have no such restriction and can speak pianissimo or fortissimo as the scene dictates.

All of these pros and cons apply to Volpone and The Duchess of Malfi. The productions had a shared cast and it was interesting to see actors in different roles. Mark Hadfield played the conniving, oily, hand-wringing Mosca in Volpone and the brutal Cardinal in The Duchess. Very different roles delivered with confidence.

Tim Treloar is Voltore and Bosola, Maxwell Hutcheon is Corbaccio and Pescara and Tim Steed plays Corvino and Ferdinand, all respectively and effectively in Volpone and in The Duchess.

Richard Bremmer is a larger-than life example of unbridled rapacity. He simply enjoys taking people’s wealth on the pretext that he is about to die and will leave his wealth to the most generous dupe. Greedy citizens of Venice are prepared to disinherit their sons, give him their daughters and offer their wives on the promise of becoming his sole heir.

Aislin McGuckin played the role of Celia, who is supposed to be a very beautiful woman after whom Volpone lusts. She looked unattractive live and even worse close up on the DVD. She has much better luck as the Duchess of Malfi and gives a superb performance as a strong woman surrounded by evil.

The sets for both productions were rather sparse and meant to be interchangeable. The most visible part is the black and white chequered floor. The vagaries of lighting made the background almost invisible and you ended up watching actors speaking with nothing but darkness behind them. This was so even in the live performance but it is far more pronounced in the DVD.

Elizabeth Freestone directed both productions. The emphasis is on the language and content of the plays and both productions in their own way are minimalist. One can hardly complain for being given the opportunity to hear and experience these marvelous plays that are rarely seen in Canada.

For more information, visit: www.stageonscreen.com

DON PASQUALE WITH ANNA NETREBKO LIVE FROM THE MET

Anna Netrebko and John Del Carlo in "Don Pasquale." Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

A rich old bachelor wants to marry a beautiful young woman. She is in love with a handsome young man and the two must outwit the old fool. There is a clever go-between who will devise a plot to get rid of the old codger and unite the young lovers.

Sounds familiar and in fact could be Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Close enough but in this case we are talking about Gaetano Donizetti’s comic masterpiece Don Pasquale. The opera premiered in Paris in 1843 and was one of the last bel canto operas to be composed. It is also one of the best.

The Metropolitan Opera has an all-star cast for its production at Lincoln Center and, for us less lucky mortals, in movie theaters around the world Live in HD. The production is lively, brisk, funny, well sung and provides several hours of supreme entertainment. One does miss the ambiance of Lincoln Center and New York but you can’t have everything.

Don Pasquale wants to punish his nephew Ernesto for not marrying the woman he has chosen for him. He decides to marry the beautiful widow Norina. But she is in love with Ernesto and we have Dr. Malatesta, the plot mover, who will disguise Norina as a virtuous convent-trained girl and marry her off to Don Pasquale. She will turn into a bitchy spending machine and drive Don Pasquale crazy. He will get rid of her and she will marry Ernesto and we or maybe just they will live happily ever after.

The opera is a storehouse of marvelous melodies, gorgeous arias, duets and trios and some of the fastest patter songs you ever heard. One of them (the duet with Don Pasquale and Malatesta near the end of Act III) is such a perfect example of machine-gun speed parlando delivery, that the singers stop and provide an encore on the spot. Not an everyday occurrence but it was certainly a crowd pleaser.

The star of the show is clearly soprano Anna Netrebko as the widow Norina. There are no qualms about heaping praise on Netrebko's lustrous voice but there was a question mark about her doing this role. Opera buffa is not her natural territory but she showed that she has considerable comic flair and she handled the role with gusto. Her Barbie-doll pretty face is not capable of great expressiveness but she is still a pleasure to watch and a sheer delight to hear.

Bass John Del Carlo sang the name role. He is a Falstaffian comic actor and singer who seems to have been born for the role. He has an expressive face and a voice that is suited to the foolish old man who convinces himself that he can marry a feisty widow.

Tenor Matthew Polenzani is the perfect Ernesto, the young lover who would rather be disinherited by his uncle than marry a woman he does not love. He is earnest, passionate and sings with a lover’s conviction.

The conniving Dr. Malatesta is sung by baritone Mariusz Kwiecien. He is vocally excellent but appears a bit young for the role. I think of him as a Figaro figure but he lacks the barber’s wiles and humour. For some reason he wore sunglasses and I can only assume it was because the lights bothered his eyes and not because the director or designer decided the character needs them.

The main setting for Don Pasquale is a room in his house. Designer Rolf Langenfass’s set gives the impression that Don Pasquale’s house is full of dilapidated furniture occupied by a slob. He should hire a cleaning lady, you say, but he has all those servants. What are they doing? Why the mess? Whatever the answer, the messy set adds nothing to the production.

Director Otto Schenk sticks to a traditional production that lets you enjoy the myriad of melodies and comic business from one of the best examples of the genre.

Gary Halvorson’s handling of the camera angles and close ups was sensible and you could enjoy an outstanding production and start saving for a trip to New York to see the real thing.

The production will be shown in movie theatres again on December 4, 2010 and on January 17, 2011. Go to www.Metopera.org/HDLive or www.cineplex.com/events for more information.

LENIN’S EMBALMERS – DEADLY BLACK COMEDY FROM HAROLD GREEN JEWISH THEATRE

From L to R: James Durham (Apparatchik 1), Hardee T. Lineham (Vladimir Vorobiov), Janine Theriault (Nadia) & Arne MacPherson (Apparatchik 2).

** (out of five)

Reviewed by James Karas


Playwright Vern Thiessen had a brilliant idea: write a play about the heroic embalming of the great leader of the people, Lenin. The outline of the story already existed in a book by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson called Lenin’s Embalmers and all he had to do was shape it into a play with black humour and a satirical look at Russia in 1924. He did that but unfortunately the result was not as happy as the original idea.

Thiessen’s play, Lenin’s Embalmers, opened in New York last March and the Harold Green Jewish Theatre has brought it to Toronto at the Al Green Theatre on Spadina Avenue. The limited virtues of the play are made worse by a creaky production directed by Geoffrey Brumlik.

After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin decided to preserve the body of the great leader forever and put it on display in Red Square, in the heart of Moscow. He rightly guessed that people would line up for hours to see the embalmed remains of the great man. The irony of making an almost holy relic of a dead Communist is simply astounding.

The problem was that no one knew how to preserve a corpse forever and the job was given to Boris Zbarsky and Vladimir Vorobiev, two Jewish scientists. The advantage of giving the job to Jews, aside from the ability to do it, was that they are twice as easy to kill. There was no need to kill them right away, because in the hands of the two scientists the impossible became reality and they became national heroes for their achievement. Their success and influence, like that of many Russians of the day, was short-lived. Stalin shipped them off to a prison camp and they disappeared.

The play is or is intended to be fast-paced with people walking on and off the stage in a quick succession of scenes. The main plot of the embalming is supplemented with a subplot about Stalin’s relations with Trotsky who, as we know, went into exile and was murdered with an ice pick in Mexico.

The problem with the play and the production is that just about nothing works. Thiessen inserts a fair number of jokes in the play, probably a good sign that he had difficulty coming up with decent lines arising from the situation. Examples: What is the difference between capitalism and socialism? In capitalism, man exploits man. In socialism, it is the other way around. Lenin collects jokes that people tell about him; Stalin collects people who tell jokes about him. These may authentic examples of Russian humour of the time but like all jokes they need to be delivered properly. The delivery that Brumlik evinces simply kills the humour.

Near the end of the first act, we see the two scientists embalming the body of Lenin. They put gauzes on his face, pour liquids in a bathtub, put the body in the tub, and presumably spend days or weeks in the process. They do not say a word during the scene which seems to last as long as the actual embalming. The audience waits for something, anything, to happen but nothing does. Surely some dialogue laced with black humour would be á propos.

The scientists and some of the other characters are somewhat buffoonish, indeed budding comedians. Martin Julien as Zbarsky is almost a figure from a farce and Hardee Linehan plays the alcoholic Vorobiov without humour or drama. David Fox struts around as Stalin with little notion of the evil depravity of the man. Arne MacPherson’s Trotsky is not much better while Steve Ratzlaff plays the bureaucrat Krasin and has to deliver some awful dialogue. Harry Nelken is Lenin alive and dead. In the end the characters look as if they came out of a meat grinder. Janine Theriault, the only woman, plays several Nadias but the humour of her metamorphoses gets lost in the dross of the rest of the play and the production

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company is in its fourth year and has had a mixed bag of productions all dealing with the Jewish story. Lenin’s Embalmers will not be counted as one of its successes. Unfortunately, neither the play nor the production merits much praise.

The company’s next production will be Zero Hour, a play about Zero Mostel and it will open on March 26, 2011. It will be followed by To Life, a musical revue, next May.
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Lenin’s Embalmers by Vern Thiessen runs from October 30 to November 21, 2010 at the Al Green Theatre, 750 Spadina Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.hgjewishtheatre.com/

DEATH OF A SALESMAN – OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A MASTERPIECE FROM SOULPEPPER

Tim Campbell, Ari Cohen, Joseph Ziegler, Nancy Palk. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

***** (out of 5)

Reviewed by James Karas

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman premiered 61 years ago which makes the play a couple of years younger than Willy Loman, the salesman of the title. It is one of the masterpieces of the American theatre and Soulpepper’s production at the Young Centre, Toronto, is an extraordinary staging that does justice to the play.

Director Albert Schultz elicits stellar performances from an outstanding cast and the result is, to coin a phrase, a must see production for anyone who cares about the theatre.

Willy Loman is an ordinary man in the extreme. He drives all over New England carrying samples for a New York store and selling whatever he can. He has a wife and two sons and lives in a small house that was once surrounded by greenery but is now hemmed in by high-rise buildings. He has a mortgage and bills to pay and all the ills of a middle class American. But Willy has dreams, ambitions and desires on a grand scale. He does not see himself as an ordinary salesman but as a salesman who is well-liked; he does not have to wait to see the buyer; the cops do not give him tickets; he beats sales records; he is a somebody.

It is this simplicity and complexity, this pathos, exuberance, pathetic ambition and lack of ability in Loman that Joseph Ziegler captures in his defining performance.

Loman conveys some of these qualities to his two sons and they grow up with the faith that they are better than everyone and that they will succeed on character and desire instead of ability and effort. Biff (Ari Cohen) and Happy (Tim Campbell) grow up not just as shallow human beings but as liars and, in the case of Biff, as a thief and a criminal. Campbell plays Happy as the classic narcissistic womanizer who denies his own father to gain favour with a woman. Biff uses the discovery of his father’s infidelity as a crutch to cover his own nothingness.

The Lomans are surrounded by success. Willy’s brother Ben (William Webster) went into the jungle and came out wealthy. What is his secret, asks Willy. His neighbour Charley (Michael Hanrahan) owns a business and his son Bernard (Gregory Prest) becomes a lawyer who is about to argue a case before the Supreme Court and will stay with friends who have their own tennis court. Everybody around him is living Willy’s dream and he cannot pay his bills. He is reduced to begging foe a job from his employer Howard (Brendan Wall), another successful man, who summarily fires him.

Nancy Palk, speaking in her lower register, gives an outstanding performance as Willy’s wife Linda. Linda understands everything, says little and supports her husband to the end.

Set Designer Lorenzo Savoini opts for a small, claustrophobic set. The kitchen and sons’ bedroom in the Loman house are small and there is a panel on one side of the stage to indicate the changes in scenery. The panel shows greenery when Willy remembers the past but displays a forbidding tenement building in the present. The scene in Howard’s office and the restaurant are indicated with a view from a skyscraper and neon lights respectively. Very effective.

Near the end of the play, the travelling salesman imagines his own funeral. He sees people with cars with strange license plates from all over New England coming to pay their last respect to the well-liked Willy Loman. By that time Willy’s dreams and ambitions have all crumbled and the only think left for him is inglorious death and hopefully a funeral becoming someone of his ambitions if not his success. In the end, almost no one attends even his funeral

The final scene of the play is a Requiem for Willy on his grave site. Only his family and neighbours Charley and Bernard are there Biff has reached a cathartic realization that he is a nobody. The play ends with everyone leaving the cemetery. Schultz however wants us to know that Willy has an heir for his vacuous dreams and ambitions: his son Happy stays on the grave site after everyone leaves.

But if Willy was a failure right up to his funeral, he manages to achieve some posthumous success. By committing suicide, he leaves a substantial amount of insurance money for his wife – from a life insurance policy by money he “borrowed” from Charley.

A great night at the theatre.
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Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller opened on October 21 and will continue until November 13, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 416 866-8666.

ACIS AND GALATEA IN GORGEOUS PRODUCTION FROM OPERA ATELIER

Mireille Asselin & Thomas Macleay in Handel's Acis and Galatea. Photo: Bruce Zinger

Reviewed by James Karas

****1/2 (out of five)

For its 25th season, Opera Atelier offers two 18th century works, namely Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito. The first is playing now at the Elgin Theatre; for the second you will have to wait until April 2011.

For the 1732 production of the pastoral opera Acis and Galatea, the advertisement read that “there will be no Action on the Stage, but the scene will represent in a Picturesque Manner, a rural Prospect, with Rocks, Grottos, Fountains and Groves.”

The current production of the work by Opera Atelier pays no heed to the early advertisement and co-artistic directors Marshal Pynkoski an Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg have produced a delightful version of the work. There is considerable humour and action on the stage in the form of dances choreographed by Ms Zingg but unfortunately very little evidence of groves and fountains. More about that later.

Acis and Galatea was first performed in 1718 and it was George Frideric Handel’s first dramatic work in English. His librettist John Gay based the wok on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and tells of the love triangle of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus. Galatea is a Nereid, a sea nymph, one of the 50 daughters of Nereus, the god of the sea.

Somehow she finds herself in Arcadia or Sicily and the semi-divine Galatea has fallen in love with a mortal named Acis. The one-eyed, man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus is also in the same neighborhood and he has fallen in love or more accurately in lust with Galatea. (this is before he took up sheep rearing full time on the island of the Cyclops and dined on some of Odysseus’s men). Polyphemus’s father is the god Poseidon and you know things will not turn out well for the mere mortal Acis.

Acis and Galatea has been variously described as a masque, a serenata, a pastoral and a pastoral opera. It has a number of melodic arias, duets and choruses that tell the story of the love of Acis and Galatea and the fate of the mortal lover in the hands of Polyphemus. There is a fourth character named Damon who is sometimes described as a Shepherd but Pynkoski has wisely chosen to have him played as spirit. He comments on the action and is a connecting link in the plot.

The delight of the evening is soprano Mireille Asselin’s Galatea. Ms Asselin has a lovely voice, rich in tone and colour and she was a pleasure to watch and hear. She was well-matched by tenor Thomas Macleay as Acis. Handel does not require lung-stretching vocal histrionics but he does demand beauty of tone and Macleay delivers some marvelous singing.

Pynkoski has chosen to present the Cyclops Polyphemus as a comic character rather than as a straight villain. Polyphemus is larger than life and he must be either a terrifying monster or a comic burlesque of a monster. Bass Joao Fernandes struts on the stage and overacts as becomes a clownish monster and produces some laugher but he is not larger than life. His singing was good but the character needed to take a more extreme shape to be satisfactory. Tenor Lawrence Wiliford was sprightly physically and vocally as the spirit Damon and a good example of a properly conceived character.

The Tafelmusik Chamber Choir gets some of the best parts of the opera and from the opening chorus of “Oh, the pleasure of the plains” to the final “Galatea, dry thy tears” is simply superb. The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra under the baton of David Fallis is matchless in this repertoire.

The opera has a large number of solo airs and if the singers were allowed to simply sing their numbers there will indeed be no Action on the Stage. Leave it to Choreographer Zingg to devise dances for the Atelier Ballet to accompany the singing. The production becomes a ballet as well as a pastoral opera.

The single backdrop that serves as a set for the entire production looks more like a decaying gothic castle on “a dark and stormy night” rather than anything that remotely resembles any notion one might have of Arcadia. When the choir sings of the pleasures of the plains, there are none to be seen. The center looks like the opening to a cave with overhanging rocks. The sky is dark and menacing and there is no hint of groves. Even the animals that are come bouncing across the stage seem to be running away from an approaching storm rather than happily romping through the dales of Arcady.

Aside from those two complaints, this is a superb production in period style that is worth seeing more than once. By happenstance, I saw it twice and enjoyed it even more the second time.
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Acis and Galatea by George Frideric Handel, presented by Opera Atelier, opened on October 30 and will be performed seven times until November 7, 2010 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com