Dan Chameroy & Raquel Duffy
Reviewed by James
Karas
There are many
good reasons for producing Idiot’s Delight, Robert E.
Sherwood’s 1936 play that almost predicted World War II and won a Pulitzer
Prize. Soulpepper deserves full marks for reviving a long-forgotten piece.
Unfortunately the extent of our gratitude for the revival is not quite matched
by our reaction to the quality of the production.
Sherwood’s play
takes place in a pretentious second-rate hotel in northern Italy near the
borders of Switzerland, Austria and Germany. There are over twenty characters that
represent almost a European summit. We have representatives from England,
Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy and the United States, assuming I did not miss
a country.
There are
romantic subplots and a vaudeville show but the core of the play is the
political situation in Europe and the impending war. Fascism, the production of
munitions and lack of social justice are threatening the peace of Europe and a
tense situation prevails at the hotel as people try to get out of Italy.
The central
character is Harry Van (Dan Chameroy), a decent and likeable American who is
travelling with Les Blondes, a vaudeville show that he is taking around Europe.
Van has a somewhat shady past but in the end he is the voice of reason and
honourable conduct. Chameroy’s performance is quite good.
Raquel Duffy
plays the stunning-looking Irene, a woman who has pretensions to royal
connections but is in fact a pathological liar and fantasizer. That does not
make her unattractive and in the end she redeems herself by finding love, we
hope, with Van. Duffy has the physical attributes for Irene and she can act the
part if only Irene were not Russian. Duffy, like almost all the cast that has
to attempt other than North American pronunciation, is incapable of a
consistent accent.
The actors,
except for the American characters, have to speak Italian (there is quite a bit
of it) or imitate Italian, Russian, German or English accents. The accents
range from the inept to, let’s just say, much worse. Some of them are not even
consistently inept as they veer off into their native mode of speech. We have
the right to expect better.
Raquel Duffy, Paolo Santalucia & Diego
Matamoros
The production
has many veteran actors whom we see regularly and we know they can do superb
work. Not so in this production. Let me list them alphabetically: Evan Buliung
as the waiter Dumpsty attempts an Austrian or is it Italian accent; Mikaela
Davis and Gordon Hecht as the English honeymooning couple try an English
accent; Diego Matamoros as Achille Weber, the munitions tycoon, attempts some
kind of accent that he should not; Gregory Prest as Quillery, the Communist
revolutionary, tortures French pronunciation; William Webster as a German
doctor proves that he cannot do a German accent. There are a number of roles
that require Italian accents but find little satisfaction from the actors.
Jeff Lillico is
lucky because he plays the American Navadel, the rather snarky Social Director
of the resort and he has no accent issue.
The accents are
not the main problem. Director Albert Schultz simply fails to find the pace and
mood to draw us into the play’s world of the 1930s. The theatrical magic that
is the communication between stage and audience was simply lacking and instead
of being enraptured we were looking at our watches.
Van and Les
Blondes do some singing and dancing and the production requires, in addition to
the usual artistic team, a Musical Director (Mike Ross), a Choreographer (Julia
Aplin) and a Dialect Coach (Diana Pitblado).
In the end, one
is glad to have seen the play and wishes that it had been given a better
production.
Footnote: the play is
rightly admired for its prescience about World War II. When the play was
published in 1936, Sherwood wrote a Postscript expressing his “conviction that
those who shrug and say, “War is inevitable,” are false prophets. I believe
that the world is populated largely by decent people, and decent people don’t
want war.”
____
Idiot’s Delight by Robert E Sherwood opened on January 30 and will
run until May 1, 2014 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank
House Lane, Distillery District, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 416 944-1740
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