DON GIOVANNI – REVIEW OF LIVE TRANSMISSION OF 2023 MET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

New York’s Metropolitan Opera has brought its stunning new production of Don Giovanni to a theatre near millions of people around the world who could otherwise not imagine seeing it. There are many things one can say about Ivo van Hove’s vision of the opera. Idiosyncratic, perhaps eccentric, maybe unorthodox, highly imaginative, thought-provoking, even controversial. You can choose other descriptions but the conclusion should be that this is an extraordinary production of a great opera.

It is a modern dress production but the suits and ordinary dresses worn by the cast with few exceptions are just the beginning. The pretty country girl Zerlina and the bumpkin Masetto that she is about to marry are dressed in ordinary clothes with no indication of class difference between them and the aristocratic Don Giovanni and the other upper crust members.

The set goes further in capturing van Hove’s bleak view. Several stark concrete buildings form a cul-de sac. There are openings for doors and windows but they are just gaping holes. The set is rotated at some points but there are no interior scenes and no indication of wealth or views of the countryside. Simple concrete.

What kind of Don Giovanni do we get? I think the best way to describe him is as a relative of Donald Trump. He is a slimy lecher who considers women as sex objects to be had and discarded. You can forget any notions of the romantic lover. He is no doubt a talented seducer with money and status to fool most women but they represent the proverbial notches on the headboard of his bed and are not worthy of more consideration. 

A scene from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" Photo: Karen Almond / Met Opera

Take the opening scene where the beautiful Donna Anna (Federica Lombardi) is grabbing Don Giovanni as he tries to get away from her room where they had sex. She wants to know who he is and he refuses to identify himself. We see how he operates when he tries to seduce the innocent Zerlina, a country girl who is about to get married. She falls for his devilish lies. Did he pull the same stunt on Donna Anna and she fell in love with him? Now that he had his “notch” he is no longer interested.

The same story is seen in his relationship with Donna Elvira (Ana Maria Martinez). She is a previous victim looking for him, not to punish him, but to get him back. This Donna Elvira is constructed terrifically by van Hove and sung and acted superbly by Martinez. She is not a young woman but one that is almost ready to be put on the proverbial shelf and there is desperation on her search for her lost and perhaps last love. This Donna Elvira is much more credible than an irate woman looking for revenge.

When Leporello (Adam Plachetka) reads out the catalogue of Don Giovanni’s “conquests” to Donna Elvira, it is in fact a list of victims who believed his grotesque lies and served his momentary sexual lust before being discarded like a used napkin.

Near the end of the opera, Donna Anna tells her patient and loving fiancée Don Ottavio (Ben Bliss) that she will postpone their wedding for a year. I have thought that this postponement is prompted by her love of Don Giovanni. In this production she shows genuine affection for Don Ottavio and it may be another twist by van Hove.

The singing is outstanding. Baritone Peter Mattei, wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie, delivers a stunningly sung Trumpian scumbag of a Don Giovanni. He just loves women, he tells us. Bass-baritone Adam Plachetka is a superb Leporello, long-suffering with sparks of decency but unable to do much. In the end I thought he would walk off with Donna Elvira bur servants don’t get aristocratic women.

Federica Lombardi as Donna Anna is gorgeous in her singing and acting. We can decide for ourselves the motivations of the Commendatore’s (Alexander Tsymbalyuk) daughter but we can only heap praise on Lombardi for her silk voice and marvellous performance.

Martinez’s Donna Elvira who can be seen as a woman raging with ire and passion is here a lady in pain looking for a lost, and as I said, perhaps, last love. Martinez has been made to look the part and her performance is simply stellar.

Soprano Ying Fang’s Zerlina is very pretty, sings beautifully, is ambitious but not very bright. We love her regardless and we applaud her when she persuades the oafish Masetto of Alfred Walker that she still loves him even though she bolted almost from the altar. Just wonderful.

A simply marvellous production.

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Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart was shown Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on May 20 and will be rebroadcast on June 10, 2023 at various Cineplex theatres.  For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

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

L-E-A-K - REVIEW OF SARA PORTER PRODUCTION AT THE THEATRE CENTRE

Reviewed by James Karas

Sara Porter’s creation L-E-A-K comes with some intriguing publicity. “An absurdist poetic lesbian letter to the ocean” reads the program card. “What if I fell in love with the ocean? What would you wear to the wedding” asks the same card.   

The production is based in or around Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy and we are given some information about the bay and about the universe  going back several billion  years. It is not particularly clear, especially when it is spoken through a microphone. But “absurdist poetic lesbian letter to the ocean” stretches the imagination. It no doubt exists in the mind and imagination of Porter but I am not sure how much of it is effectively communicated to the audience. 

As to the perhaps rhetorical question of falling in love with the ocean and asking us what we would wear to the wedding, it is an absurdist notion that you would have to stretch your imagination to find an answer based on the caption in the program only.

Costume does play an important part in the creation and the two dancers, Sara Porter and Jessie Garon, don several outfits during the performance. They range from dancing with seagulls on their heads to what looked like bridal dresses to beach clothing.  

A significant part of the show is taken by dancing and poetry and prose are not as abundant or comprehensible as one may have expected. The poetry may be much better if read but on a single hearing with no particular emphasis, most of it did not reach me.

The show plays in the small Franco Boni Theatre in The Theatre Centre produced with considerable assets. Porter is the main force behind it. In addition to being the Choreographer and one of the performers, she collaborated in or contributed to the video design, the costume design and the Gallery Exhibit Photography.

The Video Designers were Linnea Swann and Jeremy Minmagh that showed some amazing images of the sky and the ocean with seagulls on the shore projected on a huge screen in the background.

The sound designer is Jeremy Minmagh, after Phil Strong and the complex lighting is credited to Rebecca Picherack. Sara Torrie is the creator of the seagull dress.

I mention all the artistic group to impress the fact that this is not a show that was slapped together willy-nilly. There is some excellent comedy, especially the scene where Porter describes labour pain on the beach. Unfortunately, the play that is “inspired by the ecosexual notions of falling in love with the earth” did not resonate with me. I would have liked to have seen it more than once with better audio of the poetry.

I think there was an explanation of what the acronym L-E-A-K stands for, it was not very clear or I simply did not get it.

For the rest, you will have to see it and decide for yourself.

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L-E-A-K,  created by Sara Porter with creative collaborator Katherine Duncanson, in a production by Sara Porter Productions, runs until May 21, 2023, in the Franco Boni Theatre  at The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St. West, Toronto, Ontario. www.theatrecentre.org,  www.saraporter.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review apeared in the newspaper.

THE SOUND INSIDE - REVIEW OF COAL MINE THEATRE PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

 
Coal Mine Theatre has found another gem to produce at its new location in the east end of Toronto. The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp is the type of play and masterful production you dream of seeing that does not always materialize.
 
The Sound Inside has a simple plot but it is so rich in allusions, literary references and erudition that move you, make you laugh, enthral you and dazzle you. It has two characters, Bella, a fiftyish professor of creative writing at Yale University and Christopher, one of her students.
 
Moya O’Connell gives an outstanding performance as an attractive, smart, knowledgeable professor who, on the surface, appears to have everything. She speaks directly to the audience and we may wonder (as does) Christopher about her life outside the classroom. She has never married and has no children. Is she lesbian? Does she have any friends? Is there a problem? She has not had sex for two years. She does pick up or gets picked up by a construction worker and has coitus in a hotel room that she is able to describe in some detail to us and garner many laughs. It was not terrible but we wonder how satisfying it was.
 

Aidan Correia and Moya O'Connell in The Sound Inside. 

Photo: Tim Leyes

In other words, Bella is a complex person with some underlying issues. But there is one issue that is obvious and excruciating. She has cancer with a small chance of survival. What are her choices between excruciating treatment and …what?
 
Christopher (in an astute and marvellous portrayal by Aidan Correia) is a tall, gangling and eccentric student. He does not believe in making appointments and is not up to scratch in his use of modern instruments like a mobile phone or a computer. He balks at their use and he is just plain eccentric, we guess, but as usual in such circumstances we are wrong and not particularly perceptive. We have difficulty comprehending this complex person. How do we account for his penchant for drawing naked toddlers?
 
Christopher wants to be a writer and he shows promise that he will be a good one. Bella is attracted to him and invites him to dinner. A friendship develops and Bella’s attraction to him, after a few glasses of wine, is sexual but not fulfilled for many good reasons. (For one, it would spoil the play).
 
Christopher does write a wonderful novella and Correia tells us the plot outline. It is a fascinating book but it shows us far more than Christopher’s ability to write. The underlying problems that Bella and Christopher have, eventually, bring the two together in an unexpected way with unpredictable results.
 
I will stop disclosing any further details about the plot.
The structure of the play allows each character to address the audience directly, even when the two are together, and then continue interacting. The structure works well because we ger more detailed information than we could during a dialogue.
 
The set by Wes Babcock (who also handles Lighting and Prop Design) represents Bella’s office and her apartment. A desk and a couple of chairs is all that the play needs with a few props for the scene on her apartment. A rug is opened up where the two characters sit in her apartment drinking wine and loosening up.
 
I cannot heap enough praise on O’Connell and Correia for their performances and on Leora Morris for her splendid directing. There is perceptive discussion of literature and writers in the play but our attention never lags because we want to know more about Bella and Christopher.  Gripping the attention of the reader or captivating the audience in the theatre   are great attributes of any literary or dramatic work. The context of The Sound Inside is a riveting work in that respect and the production by Coal Mine Theatre an extraordinary success.
 
Note about the program. It has helpful notes about the books mentioned in the play and gives us a definition of metatextuality which every literature major will enjoy. The Sound Inside premiered at Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2018. The play was commissioned by the Lincoln Centre Theatre.
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The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp, continues until May 28, 2023, at the Coal Mine Theatre, 2076 Danforth Ave. Toronto, (northwest corner of Woodbine and Danforth)  www.coalminetheatre.com

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

TOSCA – REVIEW OF 2023 COC REVIVAL OF PAUL CURRAN PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

The Canadian Opera Company opens an amazing production of Puccini’s Tosca that together with Macbeth wraps up the current season. This is the third revival of Paul Curran’s 2008 production. It has earned its staying power and garnered a standing ovation.

Any production of Tosca requires three outstanding singers: a tenor for the hero Mario Cavaradossi, a soprano for the heroine Flora Tosca and a baritone for the despicable Baron Scarpia. There are other roles who need to entertain us such as the Sacristan who is a comic character and needs to sing, make gestures and facial grimaces to get some laughs and bass Donato di Stefano does a fine job..

There is also the desperate Angelotti of bass baritone Christian Pursell and the lovely tones of the Shepherd Boy sung by Olivia Pady from the Canadian Children’s Opera Company. If you ever wondered what a shepherd is doing in the middle of a seriously built-up area of Rome in the Castel Sant’Angelo, wonder no more. The area around the castle was not built at all around 1800, the time of the opera, and there were flocks of sheep around there.

 

Keri Alkema as Tosca and Stefano La Colla as Cavaradossi. Photo: Michael Cooper

Let me praise the singers. Tenor Stefano La Colla in his debut with the COC sang a superb Cavaradossi that was a thrill to listen to. After the insolence and comic business of the Sacristan, he breaks out with “Recondita armonia” and lets out nothing less than vocal pyrotechnics. He waxes romantic and alluring as the jealous Tosca accuses him of infidelity. He reaches for the stars when he sings Vittoria and ends with the luminous “E lucevan le stelle.”

American soprano Keri Alkema is reprising her 2017 performance as Tosca and gives a superb performance. It is a role that makes serious demands on the soprano. She starts as the jealous, suspicious and histrionic woman who loves Cavaradossi. In a nice touch, she will not let him kiss her in front of the Madonna. In the second act Alkema/Tosca meets the challenge of psychological torture leading to betrayal as Scarpia forces her to disclose the whereabouts of the escaped Angelotti.   

She is driven to the edge of despair and finds the strength and vocal beauty in “Vissi d’arte” to sing about living for  art and beauty. A gorgeous rendition. Then comes the attempted rape, the horror and the triumphant stabbing of the creep. Scarpia pleads for help and as he is dying, Tosca leans over him and says “Die with my curse! Die..die..die!” Alkema delivers these words almost matter-of-factly. I think they should contain venomous, demonic triumph as she gets even with him. It is the only disappointing moment in her performance.

Scottish baritone Roland Wood as Scarpia encapsulates lust, evil, torture and deceit. He was so convincing that some people booed him during curtain call, confusing the singer-actor with the character that he portrayed. Marvelous performance.

Curran and Set and Costume Designer Curran opt for an effective production eschewing Zeffirellian excesses. The set from the church scene to Scarpia’s office to the roof of the Sant’Angelo castle are appropriate without being ostentatious. The COC Orchestra is conducted by Giuliano Carella.   

The production does have an alternate Tosca sung by Sinead Campbell-Wallace and a Shepherd Boy sung by Zoya Avramova.

This is a truly outstanding production that does credit to the COC. In the words of Oliver “More, please.”

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Tosca by Giacomo Puccini opened on May 5 and will be performed eight times until May 27, 2023, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca

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

THE CHINESE LADY - REVIEW OF LLOYD SUH’S PLAY AT CROW’S THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

Have you heard of Afong Moy? Have you heard of The Chinese Lady, a play by Lloyd Suh?

I bow my head in shame in admitting to knowing nothing about Afong Moy or the play about her life. Both those deficiencies were cured by seeing the play in a beautiful and moving production by Studio 180 Theatre and Fu-Gen Sian Canadian Theatre companies at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. The play premiered  in 2018 and has been produced across the United States.

The play is based on the incredible and deeply moving life of Afong Moy. She has been billed as the first Chinese woman to reach the United States. She was 14 years old when she was brought to the states by Nathaniel and Frederic Carne, two merchants who were looking for a way to market their products.

When we enter the tiny Studio Theatre at Crow’s we see a young Chinese woman in colorful attire seated  on the stage and a Chinese man on the side. Afong Moy (Rosie Simon) “tells” us her story with the “irrelevant” (her word) Atung (John Ng) acting as her interpreter and assistant. Afong Moy does not know English but speaks beautifully. What she says are the words put in her mouth by her employers and her assistant Atung.

One of the ironies of the play is that we rarely if ever hear Afong Moy’s own thoughts or own “voice”. Atung tells us that he really interprets what Afong is saying rather than translating it. We learn a lot about Afong Moy but we are not sure that what she says are her own words or her own thoughts.

John Ng and Rosie Simon. Photo: Dahlia Katz

On her arrival in the United Sates, Afong Moy tells us she was put on display wearing beautiful Chinese clothes and she told Americans about life in China. She described how her feet were bound when she was a child, breaking and resetting her bones for a year to create small feet. She displays how she walks in tiny, elegant steps as a result. That is what the higher social classes do.

She shows us how she eats with chopsticks in contrast to the barbaric forks that are just good for stabbing used in America. She drinks tea  and gives us a good idea of what she did for the Carnes. Atung provides some humour as he stands by her in her show for the merchants.

The play advances through the 19^th century. At age 16, when she was supposed to be returned to Chine, she is not. She tells us about some strange American customs like sleeping on a raised bed and she goes on tour around major cities on the east coast.

She explains some Chinese traditions may seem controversial but America has some entrenched and perhaps controversial traditions like women wearing corsets and the slave trade. She meets President Andrew Jackson who she thinks is the Emperor of the U.S. Later she finds out that he is the President and may have a controversial history in his treatment of native Americans.

Afong Moy is dismissed by the Carnes brothers and hired by P. T. Barnum who uses her as an item of interest in his American Museum show. She has become almost a freak show but we argue that she was that from the beginning. She visits the Cincinnati zoo and wonders if she is in a cage. If so, “what sort of an animal am I” she wonders - a swan or a peacock, with adornments to be admired? Or is she an ox or a donkey or some other beast of burden. She is none of these but a human being, she tells us, and this seems to be her realization of her life in the U.S.

The California Gold Rush brought thousands of Chinese men who ended up working on the construction of the railroad, she informs us. She refers to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Liberty Bell of Philadelphia. Is there liberty and equality in America?

Most of the time, however, Afong Moy smiles affably like a woman promoting a product in a modern day commercial. All she does is perform. She tells us about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that lasted into the twentieth century. We do not know when Afong Moy died but Suh through her, makes sure we have no doubts about racism in America.

Simon gives a stunning performance as the restrained, affable and  smiling Afong Moy while underneath there is much ugliness that we see only indirectly. Ng joins her in performing superbly in this simple and wonderful play. Director Marjorie Chan keeps the story interesting and entertaining as we watch the surface of a story while knowing all the time the deeper strata of a deeper life hidden by a stage performance.

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The Chinese Play by Lloyd Suh in a production by Studio 180 Theatre and Fu-Gen Sian Canadian Theatre continues until May 21, 2023, at Streetcar/Crowsnest Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.  http://crowstheatre.com/

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

TRUE CRIME - REVIEW OF CASTLETON MASSIVE PRODUCTION AT CROW’S THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas 

When you see True Crime as the title of a play, you probably expect a whodunnit production with the telling of a story based on, as the title states, true crime. Crow’s Theatre presents the Castleton Massive Production of True Crime and one expects what I just wrote.

A glance at the cast list informs you that Torquil Campbell and Chris Abraham are the Co-Creators in collaboration with Julian Brown who is also listed as Composer and Musician.

Author, please! There is no writer credited but creators can be writers as well, I suppose, but can they tell us about the basis for the creation?

What you get in True Crime is a one-actor performance by Campbell with some musical accompaniment by Julian Brown. Let me heap praise on Campbell for  his bravura solo performance that lasts for more than ninety minutes. He sings several songs but they are simply breaks in the arduous task of telling a complex and circuitous story and always keeping the audience with him. Variations in tone, volume, startling quips and use of the stage are Campbell’s trademark ways of keeping an audience’s unfailing attention. He does it superbly.

He digresses frequently with information about himself. His father was the famous Douglas Campbell of Stratford Festival and Canadian theatre  renown in general. He mentions his wife who cannot understand his obsession with the criminal that he talks about and he makes references to local theatre. In other words, he sneaks stuff into the narrative.

Torquil Campbell. Photo: Dahlia Katz

True Crime does indeed tell the story of a notorious criminal by the name of Christian Gerhartsrtsreiter. He was a master impostor using numerous aliases such as Christopher Chichester, Charles Smith and Clark Rockefeller. Yes, the Rockefellers. He has a long criminal record including first degree murder and he is in a penitentiary now and may well end his life behind bars.

The story of Gerhartsrtsreiter’s criminal life can fill volumes but Campbell and Abraham are not interested in a lineal telling of his life. Campbell tells us that he became obsessed with Gerhartsrtsreiter life and composed songs about him and wanted to or started writing a play about him and much of the monologue is about Campbell’s attempts to communicate with him including two trips to the penitentiary where the criminal resides. The play is as much about  Campbell pursuing and meeting the Criminal as it is about Gerhartsrtsreiter. Maybe.

Campbell is a man of many talents including that of a musician, a composer, a singer and a writer. He wanted to meet Gerhartsrtsreiter artist to artist. In fact, Gerhartsrtsreiter told him that  the two became partners in whatever Campbell composed. That sounds interesting if it were true. Is it?

Is there anything true about what Campbell tells us? I don’t know and Campbell makes sure that I and presumably the audience do not know. There is no danger of me breaking the rules of a whodunnit and disclosing the culprit. I really have no idea how much of what Campbell tells us is about his search for and relationship with Gerhartsrtsreiter is totally fictitious. The latter’s criminal life is well documented of course.

Most of the details of the production, at times complex, frequently entertaining, will fade quickly but Campbell’s bravura performance will stay with me.

And when it comes to whodunit, this is a resounding success. You leave the theatre clueless.

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True Crime created  by Torquil Campbell and Chris Abraham in a Castleton Massive Production will run until May 7, 2023, at Streetcar/Crowsnest Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.  http://crowstheatre.com/

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

MACBETH – REVIEW OF CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY 2023 PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Verdi’s Macbeth was last produced by the Canadian Opera Company in 2005 in its final season at the unmourned and unmissed Hummingbird Centre. The production left mixed memories but the farewell to the Hummingbird was sheer joy. The COC now has a marvellous new production of the opera with an impressive cast directed by David McVicar and under the baton of Speranza Scappucci.

Verdi famously thought that Macbeth had three roles: Lady Macbeth, Macbeth and the Chorus. You may disagree but he was not far wrong. I will pay homage to them in reverse order. The COC Chorus is a star in in the production. From the The Witches’ Chorus, to “Schiude, inferno” to “Patria oppressa” and the final rousing chorus they sing with beautiful lyricism, strength and triumphal sound. An outstanding Chorus at its best.

A scene from the COC’s production of 

Macbeth, 2023, photo: Michael Cooper

American baritone Quinn Kelsey sang an impressive Macbeth. We follow him from his first surprising encounter with the witches to his reluctant conversion into a murderer under the influence of his wife, to his transformation into an evil person and his final downfall.  Macbeth never loses his humanity completely and I am ready to blame his wife regardless of his complicity and actions. In a stunning performance Kelsey shows the evil that overtakes Macbeth but also his innate reluctance to be consumed. He is consumed but his seeing Banquo’s ghost and fainting during the banquet scene show that there is another side to Macbeth. His vocal performance is superb as he negotiates through his emotional turmoil from victorious general, to ambitious and arrogant murderer and finally to a defeated human being.   

Reviewing Bulgarian soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska’s performance as Lady Macbeth poses a problem. We were advised that she was indisposed and we are honour-bound to respect and overlook any vocal issues. I don’t think we were short-changed because Pendatchanska did superb work in delivering Lady Macbeth’s vocal flourishes and she was convincing in the Mad Scene and in her display of ambition. The rest must be overlooked.

Turkish bass Onay Kose sang a sonorous Banquo, Macbeth’s friend who is murdered but appears at Macbeth’s celebratory dinner after the killing of the legitimate king. Canadian tenor Matthew Cairns as Macduff delivers “Ah la paterna mano” one of the most affecting arias on learning of the massacre of his wife and children.

David McVicar, one of the  best directors in the business, directs this coproduction with the Chicago Lyric Opera. The scene opens in an abandoned and crumbling church where the witches are gathered. With some changes in detail the run-down church serves as the focal point of the production.

With Set Designer John Macfarlane and Costume Designer Moritz Junge, McVicar delivers a dark, bleak, menacing and horrific atmosphere. The bleakness of the world of Scotland is not relieved by anything until the last scene when the chorus sings praise to the new king and gives thanks to God for their deliverance from evil.

Speranza Scappucci conducted the COC Orchestra at a brisk and superb pace.

This is a marvelous production and one that is worth seeing.

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Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi is being performed seven times on various dates until May 20, 2023, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca

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

NEW – REVIEW OF PRODUCTION AT BERKELEY ST. THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas 

Pamela Mala Sinha’s play New received its debut in Toronto at the Berkeley St. Theatre. It is an interesting play dealing with topics that are of great interest to immigrants. The issue for most newcomers to Canada is the pull of the old country where the immigrants try to maintain the traditions and customs they were raised with, on one hand, and the desire to integrate but not assimilate with the culture of the older Canadians.  

Sinha has chosen to base her play on a specific group of well-educated Indians who lived in Winnipeg in 1970. There are three couples, Ash and Aisha, Sachin and Sita and Qasim and… well, this where the complications begin. Qasim is a doctor and is in love with Abby, a non-Indian nurse. We learn in the opening scene of the play that Qasim is getting into a long-distance marriage with Nuzha, a woman in India whom he has never met. His mother has arranged the marriage and convinced or is it emotionally blackmailed Qasim into marrying the woman.

As we can imagine Qasim is not keen on marrying the unknown woman but his mother knew which buttons to push to get her way. He displays his lack of enthusiasm by refusing to consummate the marriage.  

The cast of New. Necessary Angel Theatre Company

with Canadian Stage and RMTC. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

We also have Ash (Shelly Antony) and Aisha (Dalal Badr) who have issues of their own. Aisha wants to have a child but she knows that she cannot do it alone. Ash is uncooperative, to put it politely, and he becomes attracted to Nuzha and this could lead to many complications.

Then there is Sachin (Fuad Ahmed) and Sita (Pamela Mala Sinha, the author) who are traumatized by their still-born child. These are serious and at times heart-wrenching problems among the three couples that do not lend themselves easily to Neil Simonesque repartee. There are a few belly laughs but they do not dominate the play.

Three couples with various issues and Abby, the third member of of the Qasim-Abby-Nuzha triangle, whose problems will entertain us and must be resolved before the end of the show. We should note that all of them are well-educated and far from any stereotypical Indian that we may be tempted to imagine.

The most interesting character is Nuzha, a woman thrown into a strange land with a “husband” who refuses to go near her. She is no fool and starts learning about getting around Winnipeg and searching for cultural and educational outlets. We admire her gumption in a situation where she has become a “ruined” woman and cannot return to India and is in a terrible relationship in Canada.

We sympathize to some extent with Qasim’s quandary as he paints a grim picture of his mother’s sacrifices to raise him and her primordial desire to see him marry and provide her with grandchildren. We may have some difficulty understanding him or her but that is a sign of our ignorance of their cultural background and not of the legitimacy of Qasim’s mother’s feelings and her son’s agreement to please her.

The play does touch on the deep religious and political differences that have torn India since its partition after getting rid of British rule but my understanding of it may be perfunctory.

As I said, New offers scope for comedy and there are some great laughs but not enough. The acoustics of the Berkeley Street Theatre do not help because the speakers often sound as if they are in a cave.

The acting is excellent and enjoyable. Mirabella Sundar Singh makes a very affecting and admirably courageous  Nuzha. Ali Kazmi as Qasim is a distraught man in an impossible situation who gets our sympathy and our anger. His treatment of Abby (Alicia Johnson) and Nuzha make high demands on the actor. Fuad Ahmed as Sachin, the author as Sita, Shelly Antony as Ash and Dalal Badr as Aisha deserve unstinting praise for their performances.  

Sinha has cut the play into numerous scenes and the lights go down for a scene change with the names of the location of the scene displayed in large letters above the playing area. It is all done in one set (kitchen, living room, bedroom, designed by Lorenzo Savoini) and one wonders if the flow of the action would not have gained significantly without so many changes.

Alan Dilworth does a fine job directing but there is little he can do with the numerous scene changes that slow the action down. New is a production of Necessary Angel Theatre Company in association with Canadian Stage and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. It premiered in Winnipeg.

There is a growing body of plays based on the life of immigrants in Canada but by no means enough. This is the first one that I have seen about Indian immigrants and I hope it is not the only one that has been produced. Let’s say we need more from the numerous ethnic, religious and cultural groups that make up what we like to describe as a multi-cultural nation.   

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New by Pamela Mala Sinha continues until May 14, 2023, at the Berkeley Street Theatre Toronto, Ontario. https://www.necessaryangel.com/

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