Elizabeth and Francesco in Heart Strings
Reviewed by James Karas
Heart Strings, the Musical, opens with a
soprano singing “Nessun Dorma” from Turnandot and the first act finishes
with the explosion of a couple of sticks of dynamite in the drawing room. In
the second act, the butler shoots the master of the house from point blank
range. Despite all that, we still get a happy ending.
Heart Strings is a small musical by Reynold Nathaniel with music by
Chantelle Pike and Hannah Dean. It takes place in the house of Sir William
Cosgrove, a wealthy entrepreneur, in Ireland about a hundred years ago. He has
a nice wife named Victoria, a very pretty and talented daughter named Elizabeth
and a maid and a butler. The maid seems fine but Conrad the butler is a dark,
vengeful, angry character who is up to no good!
Sir William’s “friend” Douglas is a
smart lawyer who has gone over to Satan’s side and has in fact recruited Conrad
to do harm to the Cosgrove family.
Sir William is buying his wife a Phono-Liszt
Violina, a machine that plays 3 violins and a piano. Francesco, a handsome
Italian delivers the machine and falls in love with Elizabeth. No sooner has
the perfect gift for the wife and a lover for the daughter arrived, than there
is a serious explosion in Sir William’s home. Serious injuries and fatalities
result.
Pike and Deane
provide musical numbers and a dance routine. Their songs are a mixture of the tunefully romantic for Elizabeth and
Francesco, the budding lovers, to angry for the vengeful butler and some simple
ballads for the other characters.
David Russell
Elliot as Sir William appeared nervous and kept shifting his weight from one
foot to the other. He is supposed to be a tough business executive who may have
done some unscrupulous things in his life. We are not shown any of that. All we
see is Sir William the decent wimp. A glimpse at his gruff side would be
helpful.
Nicole Marie
McCafferty is pretty and fetching as Elizabeth. She is given the task of
singing a tough tenor aria that frightens many tenors. She does a much better
job than we have the right to expect but why is she given that aria as her
opening number?
Evan Boutsov as
Francesco looked young and eager but his vocal chords may be best used in
speech rather than song.
Lars
Classington plays the plotting lawyer Douglas. He tries consistently to
maintain an Irish accent and is perhaps the most successful at it. The rest of
the actors are less persistent.
The musical has its generous share of miscues, many of them easily correctible. The cast mispronounce words like Leipzig, grazie and Deutschland.
There is some
recorded music but much of the singing is done a cappella. There is no set at
all except for several chairs. In other words, the show cannot boast even a
shoestring budget. Like most amateur theatre, it is flies on a hope and a
dream.
The plot has a
beginning, a middle and an end with a nice twist thrown in the middle to keep
the right tone for a musical.
The Annex
Theatre is small and intimate and you can sit at a table and have a coffee or a
drink. The actors mix with the audience and the playwright is there to greet everyone.
This is amateur theatre and the word has many meanings some of them
condescending. I prefer the original meaning of amateur which means doing something
you love because you love it and not for money. For Nathaniel and the cast and crew Heart
Strings is just that – a work of love.
___Heart Strings, The Musical, by Reynold Nathaniel played from February 12 to 16, 2013 at The Annex Live, 296 Brunswick Ave. Toronto, Ont.
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