A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE - REVIEW OF YOUNG VIC PRODUCTION LIVE FROM LONDON

Phoebe Fox, Mark Strong and Nicola Walker. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

Reviewed by James Karas

The Young Vic production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge has reached Canada by way of a live transmission from England. It is a breathtaking production despite some sloppy camera work.

Director Ivo van Hove has pared the play to its bare essentials and produced a drama that is akin to Greek tragedy.

The play takes place in Brooklyn in the 1950s and is set on a street and the living room-dining room of Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman, originally from Italy. Miller gives directions for a single set that includes a desk for the lawyer Alfieri, a telephone booth, furniture, a ramp leading to the street and a stairway leading to the upstairs apartments.  

Van Hove and designer Jan Versweyveld have done away with all of that and reduced the playing area to a small square on the stage. There is a door at the back and there are no props except for a chair that is brought in as an essential item.

When the curtain goes up, we see two men taking a shower. They dry themselves off as the lawyer Alfieri (Michael Gould), (he is the chorus in the play), enters and gives us some background information about that part of Brooklyn. He will stay on stage throughout the performance (unless he disappears and we in the movie theatre simply do not see it).

In the small, brightly lit playing area we will see Eddie Carbone (Mark Strong) greeted by his young niece Catherine (Phoebe Fox) who jumps in his arms and wraps her lags around his waist. She is agile, pretty and curious about men. Eddie is clearly attracted to her but his attraction is more illicit passion than an uncle’s protective attitude.

Rodolfo (Luke Norris) and Marco (Emun Elliott), two cousins, arrive from Italy and stay illegally working as longshoremen to pay off their debt to the people who “fixed” everything for them.

Catherine falls in love with Rodolfo and Eddie is driven to distraction with subconscious jealousy and anger against Rodolfo. His furor leads him to betray Rodolfo and Marco to the immigration authorities so that they can be deported.

That is ultimate treachery and when Marco finds out he spits on Eddie. Eddie becomes not just a social pariah but is in fact dehumanized.  “I want my name back” he screams. The original context for the play was Senator Joseph McCarthy witch-hunts by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Miller condemned those who appeared before the committee and betrayed their friends by naming names.

Strong gives a powerful performance as Eddie. He has piercing eyes that glow with seething passion, anger and hatred. In the end he is left with nothing as he tries to regain some self-respect.

Fox is a waif of a girl, innocent, curious, attractive and alluring. She falls in love easily with the handsome and just as innocent Rodolfo of Luke Norris.

Eddie’s wife Beatrice (Nicola Walker) is caught in the middle between Eddie who ignores her sexually but demands obedience and “respect” and the realization of her husband’s attraction to Catherine. Walker gives a sympathetic portrayal of the distraught woman.

The play moves towards the inescapable conclusion with the inevitability of Greek tragedy which it consciously emulates. Van Hove eschews the violence of the final scene by choreographing the bloody encounter of the characters. All of them end up bunched together as blood starts dripping on them. This is a return to the tableau of the opening scene. The characters slowly fall to the ground and we see Beatrice grasping Eddie’s dead body.

Van Hove has reimagined Miller’s play and done away with the Mediterranean emotionalism and has given a strikingly fresh approach that is a triumph of directing.  

Now for the bad news. There are always issues when transmitting a theatre production to a movie house. Camera angles and shots have to be considered, close-ups and long shots must be chosen judiciously and more. The transmission of A View was simply sloppy. We could be stuck watching someone’s back; looking at the person spoken to instead of the speaker and some basic errors that should not be made. Let’s just say that there is room for improvement.

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A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller was transmitted from Wyndham;s Theatre, London, England in production by the Young Vic on March 26, 2015 at the Cineplex VIP Don Mills Shops at Don Mills, 12 Marie Labatte Road, Toronto Ontario M3C 0H9 and other theatres. It will be shown again on May 2, 2015 at select theatres.. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE – REVIEW OF DURANG PLAY AT PANASONIC

By James Karas

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a hilarious play by Christopher Durang done exceptional well at the Panasonic Theatre.

Vanya, Sonia and Masha of the title are, of course, characters in Anton Chekhov’s plays. Durang has borrowed them along with Nina, added Cassandra as a nod to Greek tragedy and Spike, a hunk and failed actor, as a gesture to modern trashy entertainment. The result is a funny play with interesting allusions to Chekhov.

Vanya (Steve Sutcliffe) and Sonia (Fiona Reid) live in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania and they tell us that they have no lives. The looked after their parents through old age and Alzheimer’s (only his parents really because Sonia was adopted) and now are miserable, broke, bickering and in danger of being thrown out on the street if the house is sold.          

The house is owned by sister Masha, the successful actress, who pays all the bills. She arrives with Spike (Luke Humphrey), a toy boy with a sculpted body, the morals of an alley cat and the brains of a moron. He wants to be an actor and so far his success amounts to almost getting a role once.

There is also Cassandra (Audrey Dwyer) who cleans the house but mostly practices what her name and status in Greek mythology dictates: foretelling the dire future without anyone listening to her.   

The fine cast delivers superb performances. Fiona Reid, by any standard one of the finest comic actors, excels in the delivery of every line, every gesture and every movement. Her Sonia is touchy, comically bitter, easily riled and just plain funny. She does an amazing imitation of Maggie Smith and you want her on stage for her intonation, the perfect phrasing and her superb timing.

Steven Sutcliffe as the old Vanya has a mellifluous voice that serves him well as the repressed gay and ever-suffering brother of Sonia. At times he cannot do anything right as he tries to go through his miserable life. But he, Sutcliffe that is, can produce laughter with ease and gives a marvelous performance.

 

Jenifer Dale’s Masha is a successful actress but she is well beyond her best-before date. She reminds one of Norma Desmond, the faded star of Sunset Boulevard who tries desperately to hold on to her past glories. Dale does an excellent job in portraying the shallow, self-centered, egotistical former star whose idiosyncrasies are quite entertaining. This is the Masha from The Three Sisters who wants to go to Moscow.

Audrey Dwyer is given free range as Cassandra. She can scream her prophecies, yell when she feels like it and do all the comic business that an officious servant can perform.

Humphrey as Spike and Ellen Denny as the young and pretty Nina have more limited opportunities for comic shenanigans but no one can complain about their performances.

Much of the comedy of Vanya and Sonia depends on timing, gesture, intonation and motion. Those are largely dependent on the director and Dean Paul Gibson deserves full credit for orchestrating all moves with intelligence and finesse.

The set by Sue LePage consists of the living room of a farmhouse and it is appropriate and becoming.

The Panasonic is a small theatre but for some reason the actors were miked.     

If you want a funny, literate and intelligent comedy, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is your ticket.

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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, by Christopher Durang opened on March 17 and will run until April 5, 2015 at the Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com

LA DONNA DEL LAGO – REVIEW OF LIVE FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

John Osborn as Rodrigo, Joyce DiDonato as Elena, and Juan Diego Flórez as Giacomo V in Rossini's "La Donna del Lago." Photo: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera

Reviewed by James Karas

Rossini’s La Donna del Lago premiered in 1819. It was first produced at the Metropolitan Opera this year - a mere four years short of two centuries later.

There may be good reasons for giving the opera a wide berth but after the Met’s production the artistic reasons should be reduced even if the financial demands may discourage productions in the less well-heeled houses.

The Met production capitalizes on all the virtues of the opera – its outstanding music and superb solo and ensemble vocal pieces and minimizes the static nature of the opera which can make it appear like a set piece which can, in the long run, be deadly.

Let’s start with cast. The cast is as good as you can get. Joyce DiDonato delivers such vocal finesse, prowess and beauty that her interpretation of Elena becomes a defining performance. With her red hair she looks like a Scottish lass whose conflict between love and duty is preformed superbly.

Juan Diego Flores does not sing; he soars and his King James V is virile, romantic and sung to perfection. If Flores deserves to be called King of the High C’s, John Osborn as Rodrigo is right up there with him. Combined with a fine voice he has an expressive face and a nice tendency to raise his eyebrows when making a point.

La Donna is a ménage a quatre instead of the frequently met soprano being pursued by a tenor and a baritone and the latter going home empty handed if not dead. Here we have two tenors vying for the hand of Elena and the winner is a mezzo-soprano. The winner is Malcolm sung by mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona. She has a beautiful and expressive voice and she made a good Malcolm.

Rossini makes serious demands on the choruses and the Met has the wherewithal to fulfill the needs of the opera. The end of the first act requires three choruses and the scene is as thrilling and magisterial as you are likely to get in opera.

Splendid as the individual pieces can be La Donna can become static. Director Paul Curry has managed to reduce that danger dramatically. He makes the singers interact and no scene is permitted to linger with singers sitting on different parts of the stage as if their feet were nailed to the boards. He creates drama through interaction and brings the opera to life the way Rossini may or may not have imagined.

Michele Mariotti conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at a brisk pace without hurrying through the arias that require a slower pace.

The set by Kevin Knight gives the lie to the title. Elena may be called the lady of the lake but she is more the lady of the mountains. There is some indication of a body of water in the background but Gary Halverson, the director for the cinema, does not really want us to see it.

Knight’s design shows us barren mountains and there is no attempt to prettify them. If you don’t care about the title of the opera and Rossini’s directions, you will not mind. But Rossini had a specific vision of the set with a densely wooded mountains rising above a valley where there is a lake and a bridge. Elena is in a boat and she is watching the morning light and commiserating about her love. Forget the boat and the rest of Rossini’s ideas for the set and enjoy the production.

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La Donna del Lago by Gioachino Rossini was transmitted Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera in New York on March 14, 2015 at the Cineplex VIP Don Mills Shops at Don Mills, 12 Marie Labatte Road, Toronto Ontario M3C 0H9 and other theatres. Encores will be shown on May 9 and May 11, 2015 at select theatres.. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

TIME STANDS STILL – REVIEW OF MARGULIES PLAY AT PASSE MURAILLE

Kirstin Hinton and Carleigh Beverly in Time Stands Still

Reviewed by James Karas

“I live off the suffering of others” is how a photographer who records the horrific lives and death of victims of the wars in the Middle East sums up her profession.

On another occasion she defends her photography as a necessary record of suffering, as a tool for making the world aware of the tragedy and effecting change.

These are the two polarities in David Margulies’s play Time Stands Still now playing at Theater Passe Muraille.

Sarah (Kirstin Rae Hinton) was blown up and seriously injured by a road bomb while working as a photographer in the Middle East. James (Jason Jazrawy), her partner of some eight years and a journalist in the same area, returns to the U.S. after having a mental breakdown. When the play opens she is returning to Brooklyn on a crutch with serious injuries to her leg and arm.

The obverse side of Sarah and James is Richard (Sam Rosenthal), a photo editor for a magazine and his new love Mandy (Carleigh Beverly) who is young, pretty and a bimbo. Richard and Mandy face the horrors of war vicariously. They marry, have a child and will settle for middle class life.

James and Sarah also get married but she cannot accept life away from the scenes of death and mutilation. Is she photographing reality or is she rebelling against her rich father and his trust fund?

The issues that Margulies tackles are current, interesting and compelling and he intertwines them with the personal lives of his characters. The play has a sputtering beginning with pedestrian dialogue that does not go into high gear very quickly. Director Jordan Merkur seems content to let the plot drag for a while.

When the plot does get in gear we do get some impressive performances. Sarah is torn by feelings of guilt about the suffering that she witnesses and simply photographs. Some of the people that she uses for her job do not want to be photographed whatever her noble motives, real or imagined.

Jazrawy’s James is a man with a bad conscience about leaving Sarah behind and some jealousy at discovering that she had an affair and indeed fell in love with her interpreter.

Rosenthal as Richard is a true friend and supporter of Sarah and James and Mandy develops into a loving mother.

The play and the production have some compelling scenes but there were some occasions when the action flags for short periods. What was missing most on the night that I saw it was the magic link between stage and audience. It is something indescribable when it happens and unfortunate when there seems to be little reaction from the people watching.

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Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies opened on March 12 and will run until March 29, 2015 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. www.passemuraille.on.ca (416) 504-7529

CAKE AND DIRT – REVIEW OF MACIVOR PLAY AT TARRAGON

Bethany Jillard, Maggie Huculak, David Storch, Laara Sadiq, Patrick Kwok-Choon in Cake and Dirt 

(Photo by Jeremie Warshafky)

Reviewed by James Karas

Cake and Dirt, Daniel MacIvor’s new play, is a mystery wrapped in a bunch of rich and obnoxious jerks. By the time the mystery is unraveled you have ceased being interested in the people involved or their fate. That is not a healthy recipe for a play even if the cake is spiked and the dirt serves to (almost) conceal something terrible.

Bryn (Maggie Huculak) and Jeff (David Storch) are rich and separated and she lives in a ritzy condominium across the street from a park. Their daughter Riley (Bethany Jillard) is a bit cuckoo – she takes drugs, pretends to go to school, has two phones and records everything.

Jeff is married to Naline (Laara Sadiq) who is also rich and very horny. He has resumed sexual relations with his wife and she may be up to something with Jason (Patrick Kowk-Choon) the local city councilor, who has gained the name of Mr. Flip-flop, welcome to Toronto’s obnoxious upper crust.   

There is also Nina (Maria Vacratsis) the irreverent Greek maid who is refreshingly sane in the midst of the wackos.

The mysteries: what happened to the homeless man who was killed in the park and who communicates with people after his death? What happened to the expensive earrings that Jeff bought for Riley? Why did Jason change his vote to bulldoze Jeff’s  beloved park when initially he opposed it? What has happened to Riley?

The mysteries are hidden in conversations about cake, earrings, receipts, the park, the dead homeless person, money and drugs. A big part of the play takes place during Jeff’s 50^th birthday party where he shows up very drunk and thoroughly insufferable. If you were to meet him at a party you would give him a wide berth. In the theatre you have no choice but to sit through his idiotic, offensive and unamusing conduct until Jason finally knocks him down.

 David Storch, Bethany Jillard in Cake and Dirt (Photo by Jeremie Warshafsky)

The play is set in Toronto and the action takes place on a Saturday afternoon and the night before giving some added interest to the unravelling of the mysteries.

The acting is excellent but not enough to give us a completely satisfactory play. Storch can do a superb drunk and Huculak and Sadiq are very good as upper crust woman. Huculak’s nose is stuck so high, it may have never seen the ground. Kwok-Choon is a cool and controlled politician until his true character is revealed in the final scene. Jillard is more than satisfactory as the bratty daughter who lies and snorts drugs.

Vacratsis gets the juicy part of the maid who gets to swear in Greek and paly the devil-may-care servant who is both humane and funny.

The play would have gained a great deal if it managed to have much more genuine humour but laughs were few and far apart.

The set design by Kimberly Purtell was more indicative of a tight budget than the milieu that the play is set in. The ritzy condominiums were furnished with a counter for the first and a bookshelf for the second. We can’t really complain because there is simply no money for much more. That’s just a wild guess and I stand to be corrected.

Amiel Gladstone direction was adept but we had to sit through the shenanigans of a drunk and by the time we figured out the importance of the cake and the dirt and the answers to some of our other queries our attention had unfortunately waned.

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Cake and Dirt by Daniel MacIvor opened on March 11 and will play until April 15, 2015 at the Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario.  www.tarragontheatre.com

BLOOD WEDDING - REVIEW OF MODERN TIMES STAGE COMPANY / ALUNA THEATRE PRODUCTION

(l-r) Steven Bush, Beatriz Pizano, Sebastian Marziali, Jani Lauzon, Bahareh Yaraghi, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Liz Peterson, Derek Kwan, Mina James. Photo: Brian Damude

Reviewed by James Karas

Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding is a milepost in 20^th century drama and director Soheil Parsa has taken the brave task of producing the play with his Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre. The result is a dramatic and interesting production that may have little to do with Lorca’s play.

Blood Wedding is a poetic play with overwhelming passion, dense images of blood and an inexorable march towards destruction and death. The problem is how to capture the poetry and the tragedy without descending to melodrama. Parsa makes some attempt but in the end the production misfires.

Given the choice between overacting and underacting, Parsa frequently chooses overacting. Instead of concentrating on Lorca’s poetry, the actors overemote, overuse their arms and torsos and the result is frequently and undesirably comic.

The play opens auspiciously. A woman is sleeping on a small bench and we hear the sound of horse’s hooves. She wakes up startled. The horse is a central image in the play which takes place in the desolate plains and hills of Spain. It is a traditional, almost primitive society where honour, virtue and old custom are essential elements.

The woman who wakes up is the Mother (Beatriz Pizano) of the Bridegroom (Derek Kwan). The characters do not have names except for Leonardo (Carlos Gonzales-Vio). The Bridegroom (who is ridiculously and misleadingly called Boy in the programme) wants to marry The Bride (Bahareh Yaraghi), a woman who had a relationship with Leonardo when she was fifteen years old. (She is a woman in her twenties and, again, in the programme is referred to as Girl).

Leonardo is married to his Wife (Sochi Fried) and has a son but he is still in love with The Bride. He will ride his horse the long distance to The Bridegroom’s wedding and run off with The Bride. The overpowering passion that leads these two people to break the moral code of their society will lead inevitably to tragedy and, of course, it does.

The play has all the elements of a melodrama and it is in fact based on a true story. But Lorca wrote poetry, not melodrama. There is richly textured imagery of blood, flowers, violent passions and death. The second scene of the play the dialogue between Leonardo’s wife and his mother is written mostly in evocative verse and there is poetry interspersed throughout the play. In fact the whole play should be viewed as a poem.

Pizano as the Mother is a woman who has seen tragedy in her life and is fearful of more misfortune in the future. Pizano looks too young for the role and her vigorous use of her arms betrays an energetic and at times comic woman instead of a tragic figure. She becomes almost a nagging mother instead of a woman of stature.           

Kawn as The Bridegroom is a vigorous young man who is eager to marry The Bride. But there is no indication that he is a bit of water compared to Leonardo who is like a river. She runs off with Leonardo despite her better judgement, knowing fully well that it is wrong but she is simply unable to control her passion.

Yaraghi was a convincing Bride who carried her poetry well. She convinces us that she lost all sense of morality when she looked at Leonardo’s beauty.

Gonzalez-Vio makes a dark and brooding Leonardo. He is gruff, seething with passion and violence and a man who is possessed by his passion. He reminded me of Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff.

The set (designed by Trevor Schwellnus who is called a Scenographer in the programme) consists of a couple of benches with several panels of opaque glass. The yellow room of the first scene or the pink room of the second scene are not to be seen for easily forgivable reasons. But Lorca calls for a cross of large flowers. These can foretell a celebration such as a wedding or a funeral. Parsa and Schwellnus omit this and do nothing about giving the feel of a church in the final seen.

There are some strong performances in the production but Parsa’s overall vision of the play misses much of what Lorca put in it. Parsa’s conception may be described as idiosyncratic and personal but it is not Lorkaesque.

I should note that I saw the first preview of the production and there may be some changes before opening night on March 13, 2015.  

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Blood Wedding  by Federico Garcia Lorca in a production by Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre runs until March 29, 2015  at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto, Ontario.  416 975-855

HARPER REGAN – REVIEW CANADIAN STAGE PRODUCTION OF STEPHENS PLAY

  Vivien Endicott-Douglas and Molly Parker in Harper Regan photo by David Hou

Reviewed by James Karas

Harper Regan is an interesting play by Simon Stephens and Canadian Stage has given it a noteworthy production. As usual with anything chosen and directed by Matthew Jocelyn it is a play that breaks most of the rules of entertainment-as-usual-for-the-tired businessman and even for the seasoned theatre goer.

The premise of the play is fairly simple. Harper Regan, a woman of 41 with a husband and teenage daughter wants to get leave from her employer so she can see her dying father. Her boss denies it and she goes to see her father in any event. She lives near London and her parents are in Manchester.

Harper has her share of troubles. She does not get along with her daughter; her husband is unemployed because he was caught photographing children bathing and is on the child molesters register; she hates her mother and she cannot make emotional contact with anyone. She manages to make some kind of contact with a man that she picks up on an internet site and they have sex in a hotel.

Stephens tells Harper’s story in a number of episodes with Harper interacting with most people one on one. Her first encounter is with her employer Mr. Barnes (Hardee T. Lineham) a gruff employer.

Her relationship with her daughter Sarah (Vivien Endicott-Douglas is strained and her relationship with her husband is pathetic.

She has an awkward meeting with a college student whom she accosts on a bridge. He is nervous and awkward as she tries to establish some contact with him but fails. The pattern is repeated. She goes to a bar at 11:00 a.m. and meets Mickey (Philip Riccio) who lends her his leather jacket and asks her for sex. She breaks a glass on his neck and leaves with his jacket. She becomes attached to that jacket even though she tried to murder its previous owner.

Harper does not see her father and her encounter with her mother changes her view of her idolized father.

She returns to her husband and daughter and confesses her adultery in the hotel in some detail. Her husband starts dreaming of moving to the country. The opening scene is the beginning of the play but where is the middle and where is the end? It is a continuum of episodes which should add up to a complete play but somehow fail to do so.

The set by Debra Hanson consists of a dark backdrop with seven chairs in the semi-darkness where the actors sit when not in the playing area close to the audience.    

The episodes are divided by crashing noises as Harper moves from one encounter to the next with not necessarily increasing interest on part of the audience.

Harper leads a non-life in a non-world. The outburst against the man in the bar where morality takes the upper hand is followed by the seedy encounter with the man in the hotel. She does say later that her one-night sexual partner was a tender lover and you feel that it may be as close as she has been to a feeling of emotional connection.

That may be the whole point of the play but, if so, it is more interesting analyzing it than watching it.  

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Harper Regan by Simon Stephens will run until March 22, 2015 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. www.canadianstage.com

PINOCCHIO – REVIEW OF YPT PRODUCTION

The Cat, The Fox and Pinocchio at YPT

Reviewed by James Karas

When you attend a Young People’s Theatre production you are likely to get two great shows for the price of one.

If you attend on a day when the theatre is full of primary school pupils representing a cross-section of Toronto and they like the show, you will be treated to such unbridled enthusiasm and joy that you can only admire and wish you could emulate.

The other show, of course, is what is on stage.

Hugo Bélanger has created (and directed) a show based on Carlo Collodi’s marvelous tale about the mischievous marionette Pinocchio.     

Four actors play ten characters with energy, physical agility, limited vocal variety and just plain fun as the wooden marionette meets various characters from the moment of his creation until he develops into a human being. That is what is supposed to happen, in any event.

Krystal Descary as Pinocchio carries and manipulates the wooden puppet through his misadventures and she is good at it.

Milva Ménard moves and rolls on the floor as The Cat and entertains as Candlewick and The Blue Fairy. Claude Tremblay goes from Geppetto, the elderly carpenter who carves Pinocchio from a pine log, to the ever-present and wise Talking Cricket, the gruff Mangiafuoco and the aptly named Mischievous Boy.

Gabriel DeSantis-Caron plays the wily Fox and the Jolly Man.

The characters are colourful, achieve fast changes of costume and demeanor befitting the person that they represent. The single set is changed simply, quickly and effectively to indicate scene changes and it is a show that should have enthralled the school groups that attended the opening performance.

The show opens with Geppetto trying to straighten up the sign on the door to his carpentry shop. The sign keeps tilting from left to right. The audience finds this simple bit of business simply hilarious and they are led to expect more, much more comedy. It does not come. Except for a few giggles here and there, comic scenes are almost non-existent.. Did Bélanger intend this to be a serious retelling of the story?

Pinocchio’s signature characteristic – his nose growing when he lies – occurred only once or twice and it too failed to generate much merriment.

There is good didactic value in Pinocchio. Go to school, be honest, work hard, be decent – all are welcome lessons. But when a kid says he does not want to go school, the scene should be invested with humour. What kid would not recognize him/herself in the desire to play hookey now and then?

The play has to be funny, or scary or charming or all of those things. This Pinocchio does not achieve any of those characteristics in any appreciable quantity. There are some musical numbers sung indifferently and the Cat and the Fox are amusing but there is not sufficient quantity to make a truly enjoyable children’s theatre production..

Eventually the little tykes started fidgeting and when the actors took their bows the applause was polite. It should have been thunderous.

The play was written in French and we saw a translation by Bobby Theodore and I am not sure if that was the problem. The production is by a Quebec company called Tout à Trac in coproduction with Place des Arts and Tennessee Perfuming Arts Center.

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Pinocchio by Hugo Bélanger based on the story by Carlo Collodi opened on March 3 and will play until March 21, 2015 at the Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. 416 862-2222. www.youngpeoplestheatre.ca