GIRLS LIKE THAT – REVIEW OF TARRAGON THEATRE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Girls Like That by Evan Placey is a play about bullying in school but the word is never mentioned. The setting is St. Helen’s School for Girls, in England, which accepts only twenty gifted and creative girls each year. They are admitted at age five and consider themselves special and they make a pact that they will be friends for life.

Scarlett is a fat girl whose naked picture is posted on the internet. Her friends for life turn on her and in the opening scene chant “slut, skank, whore, tart, harlot” and a number of other words that I do not understand but assume that they mean pretty much the same thing.

 

The cast of Girls Like That. Photo: Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

The attack on Scarlett by the girls attains a viciousness that should give pause to anyone with a scintilla of humanity. The girls appear to have none as they describe Scarlett’s body with sadistic glee and find fault with her appearance which assures them of their own superiority.

The play can be performed by as many as 20 actors or fewer. Director Esther Jun has chosen to do it with seven actors and they are enough. Except for Scarlett, the girls have no names and the lines of the script are distributed among them as the director chooses. They often speak in unison and perform a number of dance routines to rock music and are very good at it.

Ensemble acting dominates the play and the girls address the audience frequently, describe conversations and often do not follow the rules of ordinary dialogue. They reminded me of the avenging Furies in Greek drama and myth who pursued wrong doers until they drive them mad. The goddess Athena transformed them into Erynies (the kindly ones) but she is nowhere to be found in Girls Like That. The girls we meet at age five are the same at age 45.

Scarlett, the victim of the Furies, is the exception. In the end she takes her own revenge on her tormentors. In a fine speech she describes what humanity, maturity and success mean. I will not give more details about it. The issue I have with the play is that there is nothing in it beyond the vicious cruelty of the girls to prepare us for the revenge.

 

Shakura Dickson, Tess Benger, Rachel VanDuzer, Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks, Lucy Hill and 

Nadine Bhabha. Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

The characters, aside from Scarlett, are described as Girls and they are played by Tess Banger, Nadine Bhabha, Shakura Dickson, Allison Edwards-Crewe, Lucy Hill, Cynthia Jimmenez-Hicks and Rachel VanDuzer. They do fine work as chanting furies, screaming students, dancers and representatives of one of the worst features of our society – bullying.

Director Esther Jun had her work cut out to coordinate the numerous moves, scene changes and handling of the dialogue demanded by the play and to keep a fairly frenetic pace without the actors falling over each other. Well done but that did not improve the play which makes its point about bullies but fails to develop the characters or give some depth to the issue.      

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Girls Like That by Evan Placey opened on April 25 and will play until May 27, 2018 at the Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario.  www.tarragontheatre.com

THE BEAUTIFUL HELEN - REVIEW OF TORONTO OPERETTA THEATRE PRODUCTION

James Karas

Let’s get back to the good old days and I don’t mean the 1990s. I mean the really good old days before the Trojan War when men were kings (and idiots), women were goddesses and goddesses could help you get a date.

We all remember with nostalgia Paris, Prince of Troy, who was promised the most beautiful woman in the world by the goddess Venus. He judged her more beautiful than Minerva and Juno (and boy, they were ticked off) and his prize was none other than Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. I need hardly repeat that she was the most gorgeous woman in the world.

 Beste Kalender as Helen. Photo Gilberto Prioste

So the story begins in Jacques Offenbach’s burlesque of the ancient Greek myth in La Belle Hélène which Toronto Operetta Theatre offers for three performances in an English version by Geoffrey Dunn.

TOT General Director as Stage Director, Lighting Designer and Set Designer has to deal with (not to mention cast) half a dozen kings, two Princes, a High Priest, a few lesser mortals and of course the Beautiful Helen.

He starts on a high note with mezzo soprano Beste Kalender as Helen. She delivers a beautifully sung, energetic and delightful Helen who can blame her husband for entering her bedroom and finding her with another man and get away with it. Kalender gives an outstanding performance.

We agree with her attitude towards Menelaus because he is a comic doofus in the hands of Gregory Finney. With a foolish husband like that, no wonder she gives in to Paris. Finney is funny and gives a commendable performance.

 Beste Kalender, Gregory Finney, Adam Fisher and Matthew Zadow. Photo: Gilberto Prioste

Paris is not funny but he is the romantic seducer who persuades Helen to eventually go on a boat ride with him. Tenor Adam Fisher is a hunk and a bit of a hulk (he pretends to be a shepherd) with a good midrange.

David Boan’s Achilles is lumbering oaf and don’t bother looking for Brad Pitt. Offenbach treats some of the other major characters with a straight face but with that many, there is no time for all of them. The business at hand as all of us know is to get away with Helen so the real fun can begin. I mean the Trojan War.  

The Orchestra with a mere nine musicians under Peter Tiefenbach does its level best and the TOT Chorus of eleven singers has to enlist eight soloists for the job. They do well but there are limitations in every aspect of the production.

I can never write about TOT without commending their work in keeping the candle of operetta lit for Toronto audiences. As usual, a deep bow is due to Silva-Main for not giving up against what appear almost insurmountable odds. Their next production will be Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss opening on December 28, 2018 for five performances.

With only three performances, it became impossible to review the production before it closed. Mea culpa. 

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The Beautiful Helen (La Belle Hélène  by Jacques Offenbach was performed three times on April 27, 28 and 29, 2018 at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts,  27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  (416) 922-2912. www.torontooperetta.com

PRAIRIE NURSE – REVIEW OF FACTORY THEATRE PRODUCTION

James Karas

Factory Theatre wraps up its 2017//18 season with Prairie Nurse by Marie Beath Badian, a reasonably entertaining sitcom/farce that has a pleasant romantic story told by stock comedy characters. The three doors for well-timed entrances and quick exits are there as are the complications of misunderstanding, the letter getting in the wrong hands and the like. This is a coproduction by Factory Theatre and Thousand Islands Playhouse and that’s a clue about the eminent suitability of the play for summer stock.

The play is set Arborfield in the boonies of Saskatchewan, the town that is a three-hour drive from Saskatoon. Going to Saskatoon for the people of Arborfield is the equivalent of going to Paris or New York.

There is great excitement in the local hospital because two nurses are arriving from the Philippines. We meet the exaggerated, goofy, loveable characters who can walk onto the set of a 1960’s sitcom and fit right in. Corner Gas, a sitcom based in the Prairies comes to mind and Prairie nurse is in the same league of comedy.

The two nurses, Penny (Isabel Kanaan) and Puring (Belinda Corpuz) are attractive and come from different ends of the Filipino social ladder. Penny is a standoffish snob with pretensions to social standing whereas Puring comes from a working class background. The really positive aspect of the play is that it shows Filipino professionals rather than the usual, anecdotally or in reality, importation of nannies.

Marie (Catherine Fitch), the hospital nurse and “boss” tries to run the unit which has as many mishaps as Toronto has potholes in the spring. She has to deal with the Candy Striper Patsy (Janelle Hanna), an over-excited teenage volunteer who tries to be a matchmaker with (un)expected results.

The lab technician Wilf (Matt Shaw tests men’s samples for pregnancy, women’s samples for cholesterol instead of pregnancy, drops a tray of samples on the floor, is accused of having relations with the Filipino nurse and Patsy while engaged to another woman and is slapped around by Charlie the maintenance man (Layne Coleman). Is that enough?

Dr. Miles (Mark Crawford) loves hunting, fishing and bear trapping with a passion and looks and acts like a goof in classic sitcom fashion where getting a laugh is the only thing that counts.

Charlie the maintenance man (Layne Coleman) is the sole of decency and upholder of local morality. He does smack around Wilf who is engaged when he romances another woman. Heavens!

    

The play is inspired by the author’s mother’s immigration story but is obviously fictional. Love at first sight (Wilf and Puring), farcical complications with a happy ending. We are treated to the usual yahoo comments. The locals can’t tell the two nurses apart and cannot remember their names but all of the characters are essentially decent and the mayhem caused by bobbling and misunderstandings are the classic fodder of comedy.

Director Sue Miner did not skimp on any of the comic business of a sitcom or farce and she produced a good deal of laughter. The cast does its best with the material and leaves us reasonably entertained.

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Prairie Nurse  by Marie Beath Badian in a Factory Theatre and Thousand Islands Playhouse coproduction opened on April 26 and will run until May 13, 2018 at the Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.factorytheatre.ca/

THE NIGHTINGALE AND OTHER SHORT FABLES – REVIEW OF CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

There are some opera directors who have brilliant minds, fertile imaginations, an unerring sense of theatre and the ability to recreate classical works to appear astonishingly new. But how many have the imagination and artistic prowess to leap into a creative approach that few mortals can conceive and even fewer can achieve? Not many.

Robert Lepage is one of the few who can and his production of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables is submitted as Exhibit 1. Have you ever seen an opera performed in a pool with puppets and shadow theatre?? The current production by the Canadian Opera Company is a revival of the 2009 premiere in Toronto and it does that and much more.

 Jane Archibald as the Nightingale, Oleg Tsibulko as the Emperor (centre) and 

Lindsay Ammann as Death. Photo: Michael Cooper

The Nightingale is a short work and we are therefore treated to some delicious aperitifs that make up the Other Short Fables. These are eight short pieces and a 15-minute opera, The Fox. We have several concert pieces such as Ragtime and Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet, and Four Russian Peasant Songs.

The Fox tells the story of the cocky and stupid cock who is fooled into leaving his perch twice by the wily fox. He is saved by the goat and the cat.  It includes some athletic dancing and splendid shadow theatre to accompany the fine singing of tenors Miles Mykkanen and Owen McCausland, and baritones Bruno Roy and Oleg Tsibulko. 

The Nightingale is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s Nightingale and tells the story of the fisherman (McCausland) who, in the stillness of the moonlit dawn, listens to the delicate and magical singing of that bird. Lepage sets the opera in a pool and The Fisherman is manipulating a puppet. Soprano Jane Archibald who sings the mesmerizing notes of the nightingale is on a raised platform on the side of the stage and we see the little bird flitting around.

 Jane Archibald as the Nightingale and Oleg Tsibulko as the Emperor. Photo: Michael Cooper

The nightingale is taken to the Emperor of China (Oleg Tsibulko) who is enchanted by its singing and offers it an award of a golden slipper.

The combined visual and vocal effects are quite stunning. The colorful costumes that are worn by the characters and the entire chorus, the pool and the music create an unrealistic, magical atmosphere that is farm removed from the ordinary world and placed in the fabulous milieu of the story.

The shimmering water of the pool is projected onto the ceiling of the theatre but the magic is shattered when Japanese envoys bring a mechanical nightingale and the real one flies away. Nightingales are banished by the emperor. Death (Lindsay Ammann) appears represented by a huge skull and outstretched bony arms ready to claim the sick emperor.

The nightingale returns and there is restoration, resurrection and re-instatement of the nightingale which will sing to the emperor in the stillness of the night forever.

Jane Archibald sings such a haunting, delicate and ethereal nightingale that we forget her presence on stage and imagine the flitting puppet as doing the singing. McCausland’s Fisherman is lyrical in his nostalgia for his companion and the Tsbulko’s Emperor is commanding. The rest of the cast including the chorus do fine work.

Johannes Debus conducts the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra in a production that pushes the visual boundaries of opera that a Robert Lepage and few other directors are capable of producing. 

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The Nightingale and Other Short Fables by Igor Stravinsky continues on various dates until May 19, 2018 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES – REVIEW OF OPERA ATELIER PRODUCTION

James Karas

Opera Atelier has brought back its 2007 production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses and applause is due to its co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse-Zingg.  The production is mostly well-sung, colourful, finely directed, and gorgeously danced as well as judiciously edited to keep the running time under three hours.

Librettist Giacomo Badoaro relied on a fairly conventional retelling of the second half of Homer’s Odyssey where the Greek hero Ulysses (Odysseus, to the purists), after many adventures, returns to Ithaca. He finds his kingdom in disarray with his wife being pursued by the local nobility who are eating him out of house and home, as they say.

 

Kevin Skelton (Jupiter) and Meghan Lindsay (Minerva).Photo: Bruce Zinger

We can assume that he will eventually get rid of the men who lust after his wife, reestablish his authority and find connubial bliss after a twenty year absence but with Neptune (bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus) and so much else against him, he has his work cut out.

Prologue, please.  With the stars shimmering in the firmament in the background, we see the personification of Human Frailty (tenor Isaiah Bell), Time (impressive bass-baritone Douglas Williams who also plays the aggressive Antinoo, an early version of Trump), Fortune (soprano Carla Huhtanen who also does fine work as the treacherous servant Melanto), and Love (soprano Meghan Lindsay who is even better as Minerva). The latter three deride Human Frailty and claim that they control the fate of people who are weak in any event. Pynkoski directs the scene intelligently by having the taunters be quite active rather than singing with their feet screwed to the stage floor. A good start.

The opera proper begins on a high note with Penelope’s (splendidly sung by mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel) passionate recitative lamenting her husband’s long absence. The statuesque Lebel gives us an outpouring of emotions and display of strength that entitle her to be called The Temple of Chastity.

The scene moves from the palace with its grand columns to the sea where we see the wild waves painted in the background. From there (to do justice to the sets) we move to the countryside where we find the faithful shepherd Eumete (tenor Aaron Sheehan who sings well and don’t tell me he looks too young for the role this is a myth, not CNN). The goddess Minerva descends from the sky in grand style as does Kevin Skelton as Jupiter. The sets by Gerard Gauci are colourful and appealing and are strictly seventeenth century impressions of Ithaca, the gods and the sea with no attempt, quite rightly, to strive for representations of mythical Greece. Marvelous work by Gauci.

Pynkoski uses twelve singers for the twenty characters that appear in the opera and that is achieved by doubling the roles taken by many of the singers. Tenor Krešimir Špicer gives us a well-sung Ulysses. Pynkoski opts for a human and unheroic take of the opera and it serves us well. We appreciate Ulysses’ cunning and there are no heroics even in the stringing of his bow or his execution of the suitors. Lajeunesse-Zingg choreographs the scene so that it runs smoothly without any unnecessary heroics. Špicer’s Ulysses is a subtle and human hero and we are most happy about his return.

With a large cast, some unevenness in the singing is inevitable. Some could not project as well as we would have liked and other were not at their best. But they were the exception to an otherwise superb cast.

Lajeunesse-Zingg has as usual choreographed dance sequences for The Artists of the Atelier Ballet in which the dancers perform with grace, agility, lightness and sheer beauty.

Michelle Ramsay’s lighting design was uneven. She seems to like darkness and shadows but we want to see everything all the time. Penelope should not walk in and out of shadows.

The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra is conducted by David Fallis. The only score of the opera is unhelpful as to orchestration and Fallis has opted for a small orchestra. We may be attuned to larger ensembles but some authenticity is appreciated.

Final assessment: an exquisite production.       

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The Return of Ulysses by Claudio Monteverdi, presented by Opera Atelier, opened on April 19 and will run until April 28, 2018 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com

FUN HOME - REVIEW OF MUSICAL STAGE PRODUCTION AT CAA THEATRE

By James Karas

Fun Home is anything but fun though it does tell a compelling story about coming of age, sexual awakening, concealment of homosexuality and the consequences of sex with underage boys. No, it is not about Catholic priests. It is well-acted, subtle and marvelous theatre. It is also an award-winning musical, a phrase that I hate but in this case it is appropriate what with accolades from the New York Drama Critics, an Obie, Tony awards and others.

Fun Home is written by Lisa Kron based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. The story is told by Alison (Laura Condlin) as a mature woman looking back on her childhood as Small Alison (Hannah Levinson), as young woman in college, Medium Alison (Sara Farb) and life with her father Bruce (Evan Buliung) and her mother Helen (Cynthia Dale).   

 

Evan Buliung and Hannah Levinson in FUN HOME Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

The story is told in a number of vignettes in non-chronological order that focus on events in the history of the Bechdel family. All is well, of course. Small Alison wants to play airplane with her father, the mother is playing the piano and the big house that has been restored and renovated by Bruce is becoming historical. The family runs a funeral business as well which is good fodder for some comedy.

Soon cracks appear in the happy family. Bruce is a closet homosexual who seduces a young student and goes cruising in the middle of the night. Disaster looms at every turn.

Medium Alison goes to college and slowly, painfully and joyously she discovers that she is a lesbian. She falls in love with Joan (Sabryn Rock) and finds sexual fulfillment. She tries to tell her father and there is biting sadness and irony in the attempted communication by one homosexual to another.

Helen, like most women, knows instinctively what is happening but she cannot say anything.

Buliung is very effective as the bisexual father who veers away from simple homosexuality and seeks sex with boys. He is arrested, goes to a psychiatrist and is basically destroyed by his sexual orientation. He does not need any music or singing to bring out his personal problems.

Which brings us to the “award winning musical.” Many people have expressed great admiration for the music and songs of Fun Home and I do not share it. No doubt it has its moments, but much of it is recitative that is eminently forgettable and, as I said, the play may be served better with dramatic prose.

 Laura Condlln, Cynthia Dale, Hannah Levinson and Evan Buliung. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Sara Farb as Medium Alison gives us an emotional and moving portrayal of a college student discovering that she is lesbian. Her agony and subsequent happiness are not helped by the music even if “Changing My Major” is supposed to describe her elation at discovering sexual pleasure.  

“It All Comes Back,” the opening number, is no more than an immediately forgettable recitative that rises to stentorian levels and all it conveys can be told in simple prose.

"Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue," an ensemble piece with spoken words by Bruce and "Not Too Bad" sung by Medium Alison, are two songs I could have done without them.

"Come to the Fun Home" sung by John (Liam MacDonald),  Christian (Jasper Lincoln) and Small Alison as they jump in and out of a casket and dance generates considerable energy and fun as a parody of a commercial for a funeral home. That is one of the few exceptions.

Helen the mother is a secondary character and Cynthia Dale in the role gets only one big number, “Days and Days” and she does it well.  

The musical does have a dramatic end but you need to see it to find out what it is.

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Fun Home by Jeanine Tesori (music), Lisa Kron (book and lyrics, based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel) continues until May 28, 2018 at the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com

MR. TRUTH – REVIEW OF LESTER TRIPS PRODUCTION AT THEATRE CENTRE

Reviewed by James Karas

Mr. Truth, created and performed by Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton, is experimental theatre. That means what you see could be unusual, unexpected, bewildering, confusing or simply incomprehensible. Mr. Truth has all these attributes and perhaps more. I did say incomprehensible?

The show starts with some music and one of the performers running around the stage and among the audience in the tiny BMO Incubator rallying us to get involved. She repeats phrases like “Are you ready to have fun?” and tells a couple not particularly funny jokes which are received with ecstatic guffaws by some in the audience.

On a large screen we see some women running in a forest for a couple of minutes. Gillis and Hutton appear and we are treated to a lengthy illustrated lecture on masturbation.  We get an almost clinical description of clitoral stimulation by one of the performers while she is performing the act on the other one (Sorry, I don’t know who is who). The actual site being stimulated is judiciously hidden from the crowd but the description is quite vivid and detailed.

Sex dominates the play in various descriptive forms from dream sequences (which I did not get) to the sado-masochistic which I understood better. The two performers take on a large array of characters both male and female and they display highly developed acting techniques and an ability to jump from one characterization to the next. You may want to complain that the characters that they take on are neither developed nor understood and even in a seventy-minute show you are hard pressed to remember much of what is happening or who is who.

But the all-pervasive sex with suitable raunchy language does stay with you.

We see a tall person in a black cape with a white hoodie and hollow black face walk across the stage. I don’t know what provokes him or what his presence indicates. Presumably he is Mr. Truth and I have no idea why he is not Ms Truth or perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Truth.

The dream sequences are illustrated with what looks like an electrocardiograph on the screen and I am not sure what the squiggles on it meant, if anything.

As I said, a few members of the audience reacted enthusiastically and laughed with unalloyed exuberance at the beginning on lines that were devoid of comedy. That is pretty much expected from some people on opening night and you wait to see how much stamina they have to maintain their vigour. By the end of Mr. Truth even the most enthusiastic had petered out into almost complete (and blessed) silence.

After writing this I read the Creators’ Note in the programme which bears repeating:

If someone told you that this show was structured rhythmically and dramaturgically to resemble a female orgasm, or a woman’s orgasm, or a feminine orgasm, or any orgasm of the non-aristotelian variety, would that change your viewing experience?

I don’t know the differences among a female, a woman’s and feminine orgasm let alone the rhythm or dramaturgical structure of an orgasm. 

I stand by what I said in my first paragraph and wonder how many attributes I missed. That is the whole point of experimental theatre.

Mr. Truth is part of the 2018 Riser Project that includes Tell Me What It’s Called, Speaking of Sneaking and Everything I Couldn’t Tell You.

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Mr. Truth, created and performed by Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton continues until November 24, 2018 at The Theatre Centre, BMO Incubator, 1115 Queen St. West, Toronto, Ontario. www.theatrecentre.org.