THE BALD SOPRANO – REVIEW OF THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS PRODUCTION OF LA CANTATRICE CHAUVE

Reviewed by James Karas

Théâtre français de Toronto stands at the helm of francophone theatre in Toronto and it is fitting that they produce a play that stands at the forefront of absurdist drama, Eugene Ionesco’s La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano). They give it a fine-tuned, beautifully acted and superbly directed production that takes you into the theatre of the absurd with all its absorbing features, humour, non-linear plot and, well, absurdity. 

We have Mr. and Mrs. Smith, an English couple in an English suburb discussing their supper and other inconsequential and nonsensical subjects in their English home. Director Chanda Gibson has Manuel Verreydt as Mr. Smith and Genevieve Langlois as Mrs. Smith walk on stage in a stilted, unnatural almost robotic manner. They speak almost mechanically without sounding robotic but at all times we will be aware that we are not in a normal world as we perceive it. 

Christina Tannous, Sophie Goulet, Pierre Simpson, Manuel Verreydt, Geneviève Langlois, 

Sébastien Bertrand_Photo_Théo Belnou

The same applies to their visitors Mr. and Mrs. Martin played by Pierre Simpson and Sophie Goulet respectively. They arrive together and we assume that they are a couple but they proceed to converse as if they are complete strangers. The conversation continues until they discover that they live in the same room, sleep in the same bed and have a little girl. The encounter is funny, ridiculous and, again, from another world.

Mary the maid (Christina Tannous) strikes a gong a few times during the performance (the text calls for a clock) and is the audience’s informant. She gives us “the facts” about Mr. and Mrs. Martin. The Smiths join the Martins and the nonsense continues as they relate extraordinary occurrences like seeing a man tying his shoelaces and somehow reading a newspaper.

The nonsense continues with the arrival of the Fire Chief (Sébastien Bertrand) who may or may not have rung the doorbell and may or may not have been at the door for three quarters of an hour and…..well, do not look for sense in the dialogue.

The set designed by Alexandra Lord features a room with a fireplace and a few chairs. There are two doors on each side of the playing area and the whole thing works very well. 

Pierre Simpson, Christina Tannous. Photo -Théo Belnou

Theatre of the absurd is by definition something that is neither linear nor rational but in its nonsense it can be funny and to some extent incomprehensible. But its incomprehensibility is precisely the point of the play and you get to understand that it is the whole point of the play.

The strength of this production is Chanda Gibson’s ability to balance the nonsensical and the ridiculous with the comical and the serious. We may not follow all that is happening on the stage but we know we are not supposed to and that we understand what Ionesco and this superb production intend to do.

The play is produced in the original French with English surtitles making it available for a wider audience.

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The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) by Eugene Ionesco opened on October 23 and will run until November 3, 2019 at the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, 26 Berkeley Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.theatrefrancais.com

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

RUSALKA – REVIEW OF 2019 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

Antonin Dvořák’s Rusalka was first performed by the Canadian Opera Company in 2009, well over 100 years after its premiere in Prague. Yes, I know the COC was not around in 1901 but it was a heck of a wait. Ten years later it is back with a new staging by David McVicar and that makes for some lost time. The Met was not much better. It did not get around to producing it until 1993.

Rusalka needs a damn good Rusalka and the COC has one of the best. To put it in perspective, New York has Renee Fleming, Moscow has Anna Netrebko, Bucharest has Angela Gheorghiu and Toronto has Sondra Radvanovsky. (Yes, I know she was born in Illinois but now she is ours.)

Rusalka is a water nymph or mermaid, if you prefer, who falls in love with a mortal who happens to be a Prince. He falls in love with her too but there are some major obstacles to the union of a mortal with a mermaid. The first obstacle is her father Vodnik who is a water gnome and says NO in Czechoslovakian. The promise of love, a soul and eternal life in the hereafter, impel Rusalka to seek the help of the witch Jezibaba. She can help Rusalka switch to mortal but she will lose her voice, and if the Prince betrays her, he must die and she will be damned forever.

 Sondra Radvanovsky as Rusalka and Pavel Černoch as the Prince.

Photo: Michael Cooper

Radvanovsky dominates the performance with vocal splendour and superb acting. Rusalka goes from pleading for transformation, to the joy of love, to the rebuff by her lover, to the pangs of unrequited love, to the torment of exclusion by her family and her final tragic end. Radvanovsky handles all these convulsive changes with aplomb and at the end gets a well-deserved standing ovation.

Bass Stefan Kocan has a big, resonant voice and he sings a marvelous Vodnik. Tenor Pavel Cernoch has a fine voice with a splendid midrange but it is not a big one. To be fair he did mange some flourishes and the orchestra never drowned him out. We could always hear him but he may have suffered in comparison to the more domineering voices of Radvanovsky and soprano Keri Alkema who sang the part of the Foreign Princess. The latter had good reason to express herself as the would-be bride who did not like the Prince’s infatuation with Rusalka. Mezzo soprano Elena Manistina does a fine job as the colourful witch Jezibaba.

David McVicar does imaginative and superb work with the production. He does not wait for the overture to be over but starts with a minor tale of rejection. We then see the alluring and very active Wood Nymphs (Anna-Sophie Neher, Jamie Groote and Lauren Segal). With judicious use of dances by chorographer Andrew George and the fine cast he is able to maintain a fine pace even with the orchestral passages where there is no singing.

Keri Alkema as the Foreign Princess (background), Pavel Černoch 

and Sondra Radvanovsky. Photo: Michael Cooper

John Macfarlane’s set consists of the indication of a forest with a moon in the background and a meadow with a lake in the foreground. The lake is indicated by a hole in the floor boards with some mist emanating from it. No water on stage.  Simple and effective. The second scene shows the busy kitchen where frantic preparations are made for the wedding. A huge fireplace and carcasses are in view in a colourful array. The palace in the subsequent scene is a grand gothic hall.

Johannes Debus conducts the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and Chorus in Dvořák’s gorgeous, lush score.

This time we had to wait only ten years even if the COC had to borrow a production from the Lyric Opera of Chicago that was first seen there 2014.

By the way, it is worth mentioning that the COC’s production in 2009 was pretty speedy compared to what the redoubtable Royal Opera, Covent Garden did. It staged the opera for a first time in 2012 and set it in a brothel. You can still hear the boos.

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Rusalka by Antonin Dvořák with text by Jaroslav Kvapil is being performed seven times until October 26, 2019 on various dates at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  416-363-6671. www.coc.ca

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

TURANDOT – REVIEW OF 2019 LIVE FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

James Karas

Hot on the heels of Robert Wilson’s production of Turandot for the Canadian Opera Company, Torontonians have the chance to see Zeffirelli’s granddaddy of all stagings at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Zeffiirelli directed the production back in 1987 but is has been repeatedly revived with different casts and is still going strong.

Zeffirelli produced operas on a grand, magnificent and some would say ostentatious scale. Opera houses with a smaller budget (and that should include just about all of them) could not imagine constructing the sets, designing the costumes and hiring the chorus and extras that the Met does for this Turandot. And it can hardly hire second rate singers. 

 The final scene of Puccini's "Turandot" with Yusif Eyvazov as Calàf and 

Christine Goerke in the title role. Photo: Marty Sohl / Met Operaa

The sets, designed by Zeffirelli himself are intricate and colossal. In the opening scene we have the Mandarin (Javier Arrey) reading the law that the pure Princess Turandot will marry only the man of royal blood who can solve the three riddles that she puts to him. If he fails, he will lose his head.

Zeffirelli has massive ramparts viewable in the dark background and masses of people to hear the edict. There is commotion, hubbub, and singing, of course but this is not a simple scene to get the plot going. The mob cries for blood, the Prince of Persia is mercilessly sent to be executed and we have a scene on stage worthy of Cecil B. DeMille.

The first scene of Act II in the private apartments of ministers Ping (Alexey Lavrov), Pang (Tony Stevenson) and Pong (Eduardo Valdes) is almost domestic as they bemoan bloodshed and miss their homes in the provinces.

We then are put inside the imperial palace where we find the old Emperor on the throne and witness imperial grandeur that most emperors could only dream of, but, the Met delivers. The Emperor (Carlo Bosi) in splendid regalia is seated on a gold throne above the rest of the world. There are grand pillars, structures and stairs that fill the stage and dazzle the eye. Turandot appears wearing a huge tiara and a gown studded with jewels. Beautifully gowned ladies are beside her as are guards attired in gold standing beside and below the emperor.

The sages of China in white robes of splendour parade in front and soldiers with masks that make them look menacing are also present.

In such surrounding, singers with big voices and impeccable delivery are a sine qua non and the Met rarely fails to find them. Soprano Christine Goerke has a splendid voice that expresses Turandot’s imperiousness (and nastiness, if you look carefully) but she rises to legendary status as the icy hater of men.

Tenor Yusif Eyvazov makes a powerful and impassioned Calaf who brings the house down with his “Nessun dorma.” Eleonora Buratto as the slave girl Liu is simply splendid with her moving performance and lyrical beauty among the heroics of Calaf and Turandot. James Morris as Timur, approaching his fiftieth anniversary of singing at the Met was met with epic applause by the audience that he certainly deserves.

 A scene from Act I of Puccini's "Turandot." Photo: Marty Sohl / Met Opera

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted his first Puccini at the Met and the Orchestra and Chorus played outstandingly. Turandot is a truly choral opera and the Met Chorus deserves praise on the same level of recognition as the singers.

I have devoted most of my review to the grandiosity of the production because it represents a style that is from the past and a strong indicator of tastes in New York. The Met has been using it for more than 30 years and it still works. It is opera on a grand scale that may be past its apogee and unlikely to be continued very frequently. But there it is without much thought of changing it. You will recall that there was an attempt to shelve Zeffirelli’s Tosca by Luc Bondy’s staging but it was met with derision from the audience and management had e no choice but to run for cover. It was replaced by a more realistic and palatable to New Yorkers approach by David McVicar.

I have seen this production several times as well as other stagings but it still astounds me with its opulence and magnificence, which combined with the choral, orchestral and vocal splendour defines an era at the Met which may be on its way out.

Franco Zeffirelli died on June 15, 2019.

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Turandot by Giacomo Puccini was transmitted Live in HD form the Metropolitan Opera on October 12, 2019 at the Cineplex Odeon Eglinton Town Centre Cinema, Toronto and other theatres across Canada.  It will be shown again in select theatres on November 2, 4, 6 and 10, 2019. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

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

THE FLICK - REVIEW OF OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF ANNIE BAKER’S PLAY

James Karas

Annie Baker’s masterful play The Flick is based on a very simple plotline: the lives of three menial laborers. They work in a rundown movie theatre in Massachusetts that is still showing films using the old reels and projector. The play is set in the rows of seats of the theatre with the projection room above. I need hardly add that the simplicity is deceptive.

Two of the workers, Sam and Avery, sweep under the seats and mop the floor of the theatre and we see them doing that almost throughout the three plus hours of the performance. The third worker, Rose, is a notch above them because she has been promoted to projectionist. There is a fourth character but his role is relatively minor.  

Colin Doyle, Durae McFarlane and Amy Keating. Photo: Dahlia Katz

From this unpromising scenario Baker has crafted a superb play that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2014. Director Mitchell Cushman has produced a delicate, subtle, sensitive, captivating and moving production that amounts to simply outstanding theatre.

The three workers are slowly, deliberately and with great acuity revealed as complex, troubled and deeply human beings who have difficulty establishing meaningful relations with other people.  

Rose is a woman in search of a relationship or some human contact at least. She has resorted to astrology and reads details about the relationships of people based on their zodiac sign. She goes into short, promiscuous affairs and leads a lonely life. Amy Keating’s performance as Rose is stellar. She appears jaunty with a devil-may-care attitude and loose clothes but reveals her inner void and search for contact. Her attempt at sexual contact with Avery is a disaster and her attempt to reach Sam is just as awful in a thoroughly dramatic scene where she yells at him to just get him to turn and look at her.

Colin Doyle gives a nuanced, sensitive and intuitive performance as Sam. He encapsulates his life when asked by Avery, the college student, what he wants to do when he grows up. Sam answers that he is grown up. The line garners a laugh (there is a lot of laughter during the performance) but the reality is that Sam has reached the apogee of his career and he can’t even be promoted to projectionist, a job that is about to disappear in any event.

Amy Keating and Durae McFarlane. Photo: Dahlia Katz 

Avery is perhaps the most complex character in the play and here we have a performance sans pareil by Durae McFarlane. He presents Avery as a slender, awkward, deferential and painfully shy man. But he is very intelligent and a movie aficionado without equal. McFarlane’s portrayal from every body movement, to facial expression to vocal intonation represents the deeply troubled young man. Avery is depressed to the point of attempting suicide and is unable to trust anyone. Worse than that he seems to exist only as a movie buff who uses his knowledge of film as a faux shield against reality. A superb performance by McFarlane.

Movies form the backdrop and are an essential part of the play. Sam and Avery play games testing their knowledge of moves. We hear numerous soundtracks in the outstanding audio system of Crow’s Theatre.

The set and lighting by Nick Blais are impressive. The set consists of about half a dozen rows of theatre seats facing the audience and behind them is the unseen screen on which movies are shown.  

The Flick is a subtle, richly-textured play that gives detailed portrayals of its characters. The atmosphere of being at the movies is created by the physical décor, the music and lighting with superb success.

Director Cushman shows his ability to pay attention to the smallest detail and the slightest nuance in his handling of the cast and the result is an outstanding night at the theatre.

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The Flick by Annie Baker in a production by Outside the March and Crow’s Theatre continues until November 2, 2019 at the Streetcar Crowsnest Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4M 2T1. http://crowstheatre.com/ http://outsidethemarch.ca/

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

THE JUNGLE – REVIEW OF NEW PLAY BY MacMAHON & McKECHNIE AT TARRAGON

Reviewed by James Karas

Can you succeed with a 90-minte play the first hour of which is taken up largely by a lecture on Marxist economics?

YES.

Anthony MacMahon and Thomas McKechnie have done it with their new play The Jungle that is now playing at the Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space.  The play is highly entertaining, funny, moving and, yes, informative. It is shamelessly political and thoroughly Canadian and in fact Torontonian.

 

Matthew Gin and Shannon Currie. Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

The Jungle has two parts. One is the straight, illustrated lecture about economics tied to present day conditions of workers and their employers. The other part is the story of Veronyka (Shannon Currie), a young Moldovan immigrant and Jack (Matthew Gin) a Canadian of Chinese origin.

She is in Canada illegally and has a protector who finds her work under the table and takes a chunk of her pay. Jack is a taxi driver struggling to make ends meet and advance his education. They fall in love, get married to regularize Veronyka’s status and find it increasingly difficult to survive as workers.

Veronyka’s parents and brother need money in Moldova and Jack’s parents are overwhelmed by health problems that make the new couple’s financial problems almost insurmountable.

There is no shortage of comedy as Chinese and Moldovan attitudes about life and money clash. Veronyka’s family is desperately poor but Jack’s parents invite them to visit Canada and in fact pay for their tickets. They come and Jack’s parents, quite reasonably, ask that they put up the down payment for their children to buy a house. That is out of the question, of course, and there is the inevitable blow up.

Shannon Currie and Matthew Gin. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Currie and Gin stop being Veronyka and Jack and step back to the white board at the back of the playing area and using red markers illustrate the Marxist theory of the value of work and bring it up to date. To no one’s surprise, one hopes, it is no secret that the business owners, from small enterprises to the huge multinationals, make the money and their focus is on reducing the cost of making it.

They give us some startling statistics including the fact that in 2017 82% of the wealth generated in the world went to 1% of the population. Try to digest that. Not surprisingly, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting nowhere for the simple reason that the rich decide government policy. As someone observed about The United Sates, it has the best Congress that money can buy.

MacMahon and McKechnie weave the personal story of Veronyka and Jack with the political message intelligently and entertainingly. Their personal story is interesting as they try to get out of their situation as things are getting worse. Parents get ill, political ambitions are involved and we follow almost current events as an election approaches and Jack is deeply involved in campaigning.

The end is ironic and thought provoking.

Currie does a wonderful job as the attractive émigré who switches from a Russian accent to unaccented English. Gin is excellent as a modern Canadian who has to follow old Chinese customs. Superb performances, well directed by Guillermo Verdecchia.

The set by Shannon Lee Doyle is functional for the numerous scenes. The kitchen and living room, the two chars for facing the audience and the white backdrop for illustrating their lecture, all work very well.

And you thought economics is boring! Go see The Jungle.   

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The Jungle by Anthony MacMahon and Thomas McKechnie continues until November 3, 2019 at the Tarragon Theatre, Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario.  www.tarragontheatre.com

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

FREEDOM BESIEGED – REVIEW OF PANAYIOTI YANNITSOS’ FILM

By James Karas 

One image of Greece is the beautiful country of pristine beaches, white-washed villages, seashore taverns and wild joy. That is the image projected by The Greek Tourist Organization and companies that want to attract visitors to Greece.

The other image, the one seen on television and described in other media, especially in the last ten years, resembles more a film noir, dark, somber, gloomy, and pessimistic. Violence in the streets, sections of cities that look as if they had been bombed and people that are fighting to survive or simply leaving the country. That is the “other” Greece.

Producer and director Panayioti Yannitsos has found an original and brilliant way of examining his ancestral fatherland in his extraordinary film Freedom Besieged. The documentary has a large number of people who appear on camera with their diagnoses, commentary, ideas and remedies for the Greece of today and far more importantly, the Greece of tomorrow. These are not people who are trying to attract tourists or condemn the past. They are facing reality and what can be done.

The film opens with as simple question: what does it mean to be a Greek?  A substantial number of people are asked the question from all walks of life and not one of them gives an answer. Yannitsos then turns to the shooting by police of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old student that resulted in widespread riots and extensive property damage. Yannitsos presents a picture of war-like confrontations and gratuitous violence by well-armed police (including gas masks) against unarmed civilians.

The film moves onto interviews with young people who express hardships, difficulties and at times hopelessness at the situation where some forty per cent of them are unemployed and as many as six hundred thousand leave Greece for good.

But Yannitsos has a far broader concern and way of looking at modern Greece. He concentrates on the young and not so young who are looking for a solution instead of bemoaning their outcast state. The answer lies in today’s youth and the people who have ideas and inspiration for them to achieve their potential as individuals.

One example of this is what a former Torontonian named John is doing in his village. John runs a youth basketball camp in his village where he trains, cajoles, yells at and simply inspires young boys and girls as they train and play. He yells, entertains, mildly disciplines but mostly inspires, at no small cost to himself, the young to do their individual best.

Yannitsos finds centers of optimism based on inventiveness and hard work. In the mountains of Euboea, young people have developed a village that emphasizes sustainability. A 15-year old boy from Thessaloniki, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say, has developed an online site for teens to communicate with each other. There are examples where the key to success is originality. The Ancient Greeks were successful because they were original and that may be a good defining feature of a Greek.

There is a stunting array of people that Yannitsos interviews on camera.  Foremost intellectual Noam Chomsky, Michael Dukakis, athletes Pyrros Dimas (Olympic medalist), Yorgos Karagounis (star soccer player), Dimitri Diamantidis (basketball star), doctors, psychologists, engineers, philosophers, and at some length Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister.

The film shows some panoramic views of Greek cities and the countryside that are a pleasure to watch. But the most important aspect is the commitment, the optimism, the dynamism and the enthusiasm shown by the young director and the youth that he found to marry the country of pristine beaches sand white-washed villages with a nation of achievement and progress.

A major accomplishment.

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Freedom Besieged was shown on October 6, 2019 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedombesieged/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/freedombesieged

Website: http://freedombesieged.com/

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

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY – REVIEW OF McPHERSON’S PLAY WITH DYLAN’S MUSIC

James Karas

Girl from the North Country presents an interesting and original marriage of a dramatic play by Conor McPherson with the songs of Bob Dylan. The originality lies in the blending or weaving of the songs into the plot of the play naturally and seamlessly. You will hear some twenty of Dylan’s songs or parts of them but they are sung as integral parts of the play and not as stop-the-show performances and applaud-at-the end.

The other interesting aspect of the musical is the fact we are watching the broadcast of a radio play. In the opening scene, Dr. Walker (Ferdy Roberts) steps up to an old-style microphone and announces that that tonight’s story takes place in a guesthouse in Duluth, Minnesota in the winter of 1934.  He takes the microphone several times during the performance as a character and an omniscient narrator.

The characters who sing also step up to the microphone to perform despite the fact that this is not a concert of Dylan’s hits. McPherson, who also directs the show, calls the musical "a conversation between the songs and the story." 

The cast of GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY. 

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, 2019.

Songs can express what the characters cannot, or describe their true feeling despite what they say. For example, when Katie (Gemma Sutton) leaves Gene (Colin Bates) to marry someone else, they part haltingly and then express their true feelings in the song “I want you.”

The plot that McPherson has crafted is an old-style story about a number of people in a run-down guesthouse during the Depression. But this is no Annie and there is no millionaire Mr. Warbucks. Nick Laine (Donald Sage MacKay) owns the guesthouse. He is broke, about to be foreclosed on by the bank, has a wife with dementia, a rebellious, loser, dreamer of son (Gene played by Colin Bates) and an adopted pregnant daughter. Not to mention the guilt he carries from childhood which is important.

Marianne (Gloria Obianyo), Nick’s adopted daughter, is 19, black, pregnant and refuses to disclose the name of the father. Nick wants her to marry Mr. Perry (Sidney Kean), a shoe mender and a good man in his late sixties. He proposes marriage and she sings the song with the refrain “Has anybody seen my love” and refers to Madame Butterfly, another young girl who was impregnated and abandoned.

Nick’s wife Elizabeth (Katie Brayben) in addition to being demented speaks of her promiscuity and has other issues.

Reverend Marlowe (Finbar Lynch) sells bibles.  Joe Scott is a boxer who did three years in a penitentiary and is now living under bridge and hoping to make a comeback. Mr. and Mrs. Burke (David Ganly and    Anna-Jane Casey respectively) have their share of troubles including serious financial and marital difficulties and their son Elias (Steffan Harri) who is a grown man with the mental capacity of a child. His fate is worthy of attention. 

Katie Brayben and Shaq Taylor in GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY. 

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, 2019.

The interwoven and often tragic stories of the play are drawn with McPherson’s masterful hand and the play alone is worth seeing. Dylan’s songs add a significant layer of subtlety and drama that take the play well out of a good drama.

The performances of the cast are praiseworthy for their depth and variety. They are performing a part in a drama and they also have to step up to microphone and sing. The musicians are on the stage and the set designed by Rae Smith is appropriate without being overladen. After all we are watching a radio play being broadcast from a rundown guesthouse and the impression of the latter is sufficient.

Girl from the North Country has a great deal to offer and is worth seeing more than once. That is the highest compliment one can pay a theatrical work.

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Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson (book) and Bob Dylan (music and lyrics) continues until November 24, 2019 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King St. W. Toronto, Ont. www.mirvish.com

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