Michael Schade and Laura Tucker. Photo: Michael Cooper
Reviewed
by James Karas
** (out of five)
A huge pocket watch swings
ominously stage right and a woman is tossing in a large, fancy bed, stage left.
Time or watches will play a significant role in this production. The woman is
obviously dreaming but what about? She may be dreaming about what is happening
in her life or having a nightmare about the production of Die Fledermaus by the
Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto.
The woman is Rosalinde Eisenstein
(Tamara Wilson), one of the main characters in Johann Strauss II’s comic
operetta directed by Christopher Alden. Did I say “comic? Alden believes that
the word “comic” is inapplicable to this dark, Freudian psychodrama and
proceeds to prove it over the next couple of hours.
Let’s get back to the bed (or is
it a psychiatrist’s couch) and keep a keen eye on it. It will be on stage
almost all evening.
There is great turmoil in the
well-off Eisenstein house. Rosalinde’s
husband Gabriel (Michael Schade) is about to go to jail for a few nights. Her feisty maid Adele (Mireille Asselin) wants
to go to a party and fibs about having to see a sick aunt in order to get the
night off. Alfred (David Pomeroy), a horny opera tenor is courting Rosalinde
with Italian passion (and arias) and has in fact made it to her bed. To make
things worse, he is wearing her husband’s dressing gown. That is what you call comic confusion – sorry,
make that a dark, shadowy plot for Freudian analysis.
The Eisensteins have a friend
called Dr. Falke (Peter Barrett) and a bad lawyer called Dr. Blind (David
Cangelosi). The latter is the papier-mâché type of bumbling fool who manages to
sneak in a few laughs in the psychodrama.
Amid the dark shades, the shadows
of bats and Dr. Falke dressed up as a bat, we see a crack in the back wall of
the stage and a party breaks out (or is supposed to break out) in Prince
Orlofsky’s (played by Laura Tucker) pad. Even here Alden does his best to make
sure that the jollity is kept within bounds and laughter is limited to a few
twitters.
Operetta is perceived by some as “popular”
entertainment – good for the masses but lacking the hauteur and cultural
superiority of opera. Light, effervescent, melodic music, a silly but funny
plot, broad humour – those are the ingredients that some of us look for in an
operetta. If it lacks the snobbish appeal of opera, we have the strength of
character to enjoy it.
Alden and perhaps the COC want to
have it both ways. They want us to keep our snobbery by producing an operetta
at a high-toned opera house and make sure we do not enjoy it too much by
removing most of the elements that make operetta such fun.
Happily, there is rebellion in
the ranks. The first to rebel against Alden’s deadly approach is Strauss himself.
Those marvelous tunes, wonderful waltzes and some of the humour simply breaks
through and you find yourself enjoying the piece.
Tamara Wilson as Roselinde is
fairly irrepressible and Mireille Asselin is funny and sings well as the maid.
Michael Schade can sing but he falls a bit short in his comic acting as
Eisenstein. There are lots of opportunities for broad humour with James Westman
as Frank, the prison warden, Jan Pohl as the jailer and Claire de Sevigne as
Adele’s sister Ida but most of them are squashed.
The plot is based on mistaken
identities, farcical situations and verbal humour. Humour rarely survives
surtitles and Alden goes for the jugular by doing the production in German. This
is enough to give snobbery a bad name and laughter the door.
The Canadian Company Chorus was
corralled around the stage for reasons that escaped me. Alden gives them a
pillow fight for reasons best known to him but effectively hidden from me. They
rebelled by singing well Conductor Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra ignored
all Freudian problems and stuck to the lively music.
For Sigmund Freud everything in
human conduct was caused, or affected by, sex. Almost everything. The
cigar-smoking psychiatrist was once asked if the big stogie in his mouth was
not a sexual symbol.
The astute Freud replied that
sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Alden should have listened to the old master: sometimes an operetta is just an operetta.
_____
Die Fledermaus by Johann
Strauss II
opened on October 4 and will be performed eleven times until
November 3, 2012 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen
Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca
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