Reviewed by James Karas
Bremen Town is a new play by Gregry Prest now playing at Tarragon Theatre. The town is the destination of some travelers and the play may more appropriately be called the The Adventures on the Road to Bremen but Mr. Prest did not consult me on the title and we have to settle for his choice.
The play is very loosely based on The Bremen Town Musicians, a folk tale by the Brothers Grimm about mistreated animals. They go to Bremen to become musicians as a way of making a living. Prest has animals in his play but people are trying to go to Bremen.
Frau Esel (Nancy Palk) was a housekeeper and was unceremoniously dismissed after 45 years of service. She decides to go to Bremen Town to live with her estranged son who is a clarinet player in a local orchestra. She tries to get on a train but is told that the train is not in service.
The information comes from Caspar Hund (Oliver Dennis), an elderly man who makes a living as a magician and street entertainer. He is not good at it and when he tries to make a girl disappear, he ends up beating her. Frau Esel hires him to lead her to Bremen on foot. It is a long journey and they will meet many people and have numerous adventures on the way in a play that lasts about ninety minutes.
The other characters are the elderly Herr
Katze (William Webster) and his old sister Frau Sophia Henne (Sheila McCarthy).
Vogel (Tatjana Cornij) opens the play with a song and plays the accordion frequently. She addresses the audience directly as our host and provides an obligato on her accordion.
There are also three players described as Young Actor 1 (Dan Mousseau), Young Actor 2 (Veronica Hortiguela) and Young Actor 3 (Farhang Ghajar). They play the dozens of people that the other characters meet on the journey to Bremen. Like Odysseus’s return to his home this return to Ithaca will be full of adventure and full of discovery with an uncertain result.
Frau Esel meets Herr Hund in Hanover. As I said, he is a fraudster as a magician and beats up a child and in turn he gets a sound thrashing from the townspeople. On to Bremen on foot.
On the road, they meet someone carrying a monkey in a cage. Hund buys the monkey which happens to be dead. Then they meet Herr Katze in the wilderness. In a scene that could be from Waiting for Godot, he explains that he just buried his wife and child and the field where he is standing is where his village was and that all the inhabitants are dead. He joins the travelers.
A bear and its owner appear and it seems obvious that the animal is mistreated.
Frau Henne (Sheila McCarthy) is pulled on stage by a rope, her hands tied, by her adult children and it seems she is worse off than the bear. Her children try to sell Frau Henne by auction and get only a button for her from Frau Esel. Frau Henne joins the other 3 travelers.
Frau Esel finds her companions unpleasant and leaves them in the forest. She finds a woman tied up in a bag and releases her. She turns out to have been Frau Esel’s replacement at her former job. Frau Esel is joined by her three former companions. They join a kite festival where they see the bear and its owner. He beats the bear when it disobeys and finally shoots it.
Frau Esel leaves all her fellow travelers behind and makes it to Bremen. Bremen, like Ithaca, does not have much to offer Frau Esel and the journey is over. I will not disclose the ending.
Bremen Town is obviously a folk tale and Prest has placed it in Germany in the 19th century. There are trains but no other form of transportation available and the travelers go through several towns that exist more in the imagination than in reality even if one can locate Hanover and Bremen on the map.
As with most good folk tales, what it’s about is largely in the imagination of the reader/viewer. The mistreatment of animals like the money and the bear is an obvious message but what are we to make of the presence of the white dove that we see many times? The mistreatment of people from beatings to the sale of a mother by her children as if she were an animal?
Prest adds accordion music composed and played by Tatjana Cornij that we hear while the characters speak. Cornij as Vogel is also our host or perhaps the chorus if we want to go back to Ancient Greek drama.
The eight actors, five playing named characters and three playing the numerous other parts do superb work under the direction of Prest.
Like any good folk story, Bremen
Town takes you in as a simple tale and then leaves you pondering about all
the things it can be about beneath the surface.
____________________
Bremen Town by Gregory Prest continues until October 26, 2025, at the Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.tarragontheatre.com
James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press, Toronto
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