SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE - REVIEW OF 2025 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The Glimmerglass Festival once again tips its hat to Broadway by producing Sunday In The Park With George, the 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine.  The musical has won a carload of awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985.

George of the title is French painter Georges Seurat who painted A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte between 1884 and 1886. The island is in the Seine and was frequented by ordinary Parisians on Sundays and Seurat wanted to capture them promenading there. The plot of the musical is fictional so don’t try to learn anything about Seurat from it.

In the opening scene of the musical, George (John Riddle) tells us what a painter faces: "White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge: bring order to the whole, through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony." It is a tall order for the painter who is sitting in front of an easel and sketching his model Dot (Marina Pires). She is bored and frustrated (and very funny) at having to get up early every Sunday and stand still and pose as ordered by George. She is also his mistress. Parisians start arriving on the island.

An Old Lady (Lauretta Bybee) comes with her Nurse (Taylor-Alexis DuPont)and the latter plops her on the ground with some difficulty. The Old Lady turns out to be George’s Mother. The musical has 36 characters played by 17 singers/actors but many of them are inconsequential.

The action picks up and we see numerous vignettes. Artist Jules (Marc Webster) and his wife Yovonne (Claire McCahan) opine that George’s painting has “No life,” Dot befriends Louis, the baker, the two Celestes (Angela Yam and SarahAnn Duffy) argue over who will get the better-looking soldier and so on. George continues painting. 

John Riddle as George with the painting A Sunday Afternoon on
 the Island of La Grande Jatte. 
Photo by Brent DeLanoy/The Glimmerglass Festival

A pair of American tourists Betty (Claire McCahan and Bob Greenberg (Marc Webste) represent one view of the stupid American tourist from the South and they are very funny.

The plot complications recur and develop while George and Dot reach an impasse. She is carrying his child and she wants to marry Louis (Sahel Salam) and go to the United States. Jules sneaks away for a bit of fun with Frieda (Viviana Aurelia Goodwin) and his wife Yvonne finds out about it. Oops. Mayhem breaks out on the island. George takes control, after all it is his painting, and its subjects take their place in A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which will end up in the Art Institute of Chicago.

That is the first act of the musical with some humour, drama and numerous complications and the appropriate ending with the completion of the work.

But Sondheim and Lapine add a second act that takes place 100 years later, in 1984. with George’s great-grandson also called George. The latter has a machine called "Chromolume #7" and he is showing his great-grandfather’s work with that machine and with the help of his 98-year-old grandmother Marie (Marina Pires), the daughter of Dot. Marie tells us what her mother told her on her deathbed.  Then Marie speaks to her mother in the painting.  Then a vision of Dot appears and by that time I have lost almost all interest in what is going on.

There are excellent performances by the cast. John Riddle is a dedicated, serious minded almost obsessed artist. He is lithe of foot and voice and a distinguished performer. The Americans provide good humour and Julius and Yvonne are notable for their work.

The sets by John Conklin are minimalist but effective. He set the standard for set design for all the season’s operas and deserves a standing ovation.

Director Ethan Heard does a fine job in the first act but I got diminishing returns in the second act that all but killed it for me.

Conductor Michael Ellis Ingram led the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra for an enthusiastic audience.  
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Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book) is being performed six times until August 17, 2025, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater as part of the Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, New York. More information www.glimmerglass.org

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET – REVIEW OF 2025 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas 

The House On Mango Street is a new opera by Derek Bermel (music) and Sandra Cisneros and Derek Bermel (libretto) It is based on Cisneros’ novel and it had its premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival in July of 2025.

The opera has thirty characters played by 22 actors/singers and is set in a poor, immigrant neighborhood of Chicago. The opera, like the novel, is episodic and deals with an array of events and personal stories in the lives of the residents of the community.

The main character is Esperanza (Mikaela Bennett), a young woman and aspiring writer. The opera opens with her at an old-fashioned typewriter pecking away stories about her life. The novel was published in 1984 and predates computers but the central message of the opera and the novel is Esperanza’s desire to get out of the hellish neighborhood.

Sally (Taylor Alexis-Dupont) is an adolescent who wants to have fun with the boys of the neighborhood but the two sides may have different ideas about fun. Sally, we learn, wants to keep the boys at bay but her real problem is an abusive father that she keeps as a secret.

We have Lucy (Samantha Sosa) and Rachel (Kaylan Hernandez) who are prepared to be Esperanza’s friends forever. But that will only happen if she gives them five dollars to buy a bike. Are they from Sicily?

Cast of House on Mango Street. 
Photo by Kayleen Bertrand/The Glimmerglass Festival.

Geraldo (Angelo Silva), a young, undocumented street vendor has the most tragic end. He is killed in a street scuffle and the people  who witnessed the shooting “saw nothing. 

As I said, the opera has some thirty characters and the plotline becomes  unfocused and confusing. It would be pointless to name them all. The music seems to emanate from numerous styles that I could not recognize. More focus would have been better.

Set Designer John Conklin went to market in his set design. Two brightly lit towers represent two houses or whatever else you want. Extensive use of lighting patterns, projections by Greg Emetaz and by Lighting Designer Amith Chandrashaker provide a dizzying kaleidoscope of effects. Is there such a result as too much of a good thing? We get the life of a poor immigrant community, individual stories from many of them, an array of musical styles  -  it is too much to absorb on the first viewing of a new opera.

Costume Designer Erik Teague provides costumes that represent poor teenagers as well as more elaborate costumes for some who have different tastes. There is no issue with his designs.

Director Chia Patino manages the thirty characters in the two towers and on stage with efficiency. She does a fine job with the street fight and handling the emotional and humorous parts of the opera.   

Conductor Nicole Paiement conducts the Glimmerglass Festival Opera through the many musical styles that the score calls for.

It may seem that I did not enjoy the new opera at all. That is not entirely true and totally unfair for a new and thus unfamiliar work. The Glimmerglass Festival deserves kudos for commissioning the work and Bermel and Cisneros for creating an opera from her novel. There was exceptionally high-quality singing and some of stories were moving, tragic and funny. Unfortunately, I found the work as a whole disappointing.
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The House on Mango Street by Derek Bermel (music) and Sandra Cisneros and Derek Bermel (libretto) is being performed six times until August 16, 2025, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater as part of the Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, New York. More information www.glimmerglass.org

James Karas is the Senior Editor Culture of The Greek Press

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN – 2025 REVIEW OF ALMEIDA THEATRE PRODUCTON

Reviewed by James Karas

The Almeida Theatre is a very small venue in London but it stages some of the finest productions in London. It tackled Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon For The Misbegotten with mixed results. I should mention at the outset that the play is so creaky that it almost guarantees mixed results.

O’Neill finished what turned out to be his last play in 1943. It has been produced a handful of times including a production at the Shaw Festival in 2009 but producers have stayed clear of it most of the time. The production Directed by Rebecca Frecknall with a talented cast attempt to bring the play to life but it must work with their hands tied behind their backs.

The play is set in a farmhouse in Connecticut where Josie Hogan (Ruth Wilson) and her father Phil Hogan (David  Threlfall) live. Don’t look at the script if you can avoid it. But if you did check it, you will note O’Neill’s description of Josie as “so oversize for a woman that she is almost a freak – five feet eleven in her stockings and weighs around one hundred and eighty.” He adds that “she is more powerful than any but an exceptionally strong man …. But there is no mannish quality about her. She is all woman.” No need to imagine the freak because in this production, Josie is played by an attractive Ruth Wilson who has none of the attributes described by O’Neill.

That is positive but the play itself is dominated by verbosity and booze and by characters who are largely incapable of any meaningful contact or communication. Phil is a foulmouthed drunkard, who is so violent at times that his daughter has to use a stick to protect herself. His son Mike (Peter Corby) escapes furtively from the farm after stealing some of his father’s money and runs away to freedom. Phil is capable of some affection towards Josie and plots a way to get title to the farm, but overall, he is an unsavory and disgusting person.

Ruth Wilson and David Threlfall. Photograph: Marc Brenner

Josie is the central character and she is sexually active and very proudly permissive with sexual wares. If she looked like O’Neill describes her, she would have very few takers. Despite her foul mouth and slutty habits, she does have a positive side and she probably does fall in love with James Tyrone (Michael Shannon), the would-be owner of the farm (waiting for the probate of his mother’s will). But she and Tyrone are so inarticulate or beyond the ability to express affection that the only thing that comes out of their relationship is boredom.

Tyrone is usually stone drunk and spends a night with Josie who is trying to have him seduce her so she can claim the farm. One does not know what to make of the two emotional losers.

In fairness I should mention that Phil does show affection towards his daughter and Tyrone’s drinking may be the result of his feelings of guilt. But the writing is so turgid that not much comes across to the audience.

The set by Tom Scutt  shows a dilapidated house with a raised platform that may be a bedroom. There are ladders and boards around the stage indicating the lack of an orderly house.

Director Rebecca Frecknall  could not save the production from its booze and verbosity and in the end, we applauded because it was over.
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A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill continues until August 16, 2025,  at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, Islington, London, England. https://almeida.co.uk

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

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS – REVIEW OF 2025 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

  Reviewed by James Karas

The Glimmerglass Festival has staged a powerful and stunning production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress during the 50^th anniversary season at the Alice Busch Opera Theatre in Cooperstown, New York. The production features a strong cast directed by Eric Sean Fogel and the Glimmerglass Festival Opera and Chorus conducted by Joseph Colaneri.

The Rake’s Progress was a series of paintings by the eighteenth-century English painter Thomas Hogarth who charted the life of Tom Rakewell, “the rake.” Progress is meant ironically because Tom went from the heir to a large fortune to a life of luxury, waste, prostitution and loss of everything including his sanity. The aptly named Anne Trulove, the beautiful woman that he loved and abandoned continued to love him to the bitter end.

Igor Stravinsky was quite taken by the paintings and he decided to turn them into an opera. The libretto based on Hogarth’s paintings was prepared by the august W. H. Auden and Chester Simon Kallman  and was first performed in 1951 in Venice.

The Glimmerglass Festival production features Canadian tenor Adrian Kramer as Tom Rakewell. (The Glimmerglass Festival Program says he is from New York, New York! This is not the time to make mistakes like that.) He is from Toronto). Regardless of his origin, he turns in an energetic performance physically and especially vocally. He fulfills Rakewell’s complex role with superb singing and acting through the many stages of the rake’s life. It was a delight to hear and watch him

The lovely Anne is the antithesis of Rakewell and I pay tribute to soprano Lydia Grindatto. She plays the faithful and pure lover of Rakewell and pursues him until his bitter end. She sings the arias and duets with beauty and splendid vocal finesse. She makes the most difficult phrase appear simple, natural, and beautiful.

 

Aleksey Bogdanov (Nick Shadow), Adrian Kramer (Tom Rakewell)

Photo © The Glimmerglass Festival | Kayleen Bertrand

And we have the Mephistopheles of the opera, Nick Shadow (baritone Aleksey Bogdanov). He has the attire and manners of an English gentleman and tells the lazy lout Rakewell that he has inherited a large fortune. He invites him to enjoy the life that money can provide and Rakewell follows him to London to a “better life” in a brothel. Bogdanov has a sonorous and convincing baritone voice and manages to control Rakewell to the bitter end when he asks him for his soul in payment for his services. A marvelous performance by Bogdanov.

The first step that Rakewell takes on his way down is at the brothel where he meets Baba the Turk (mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel). She has a big voice and a pronounced presence on the stage. She may be considered nasty but she has, as they say, about members of her profession (and I mean prostitutes and not singers), a heart of gold. Baba marries Rakewell but when Anne shows up, she speaks well of him. I have no doubt that Deborah too has a heart of gold and she gives a grand performance.

Anne’s father Trulove (bass Marc Webster) sings with gorgeous sonority and sensitivity as the concerned parent who finds a job for the wastrel Rakewell. He has a relatively small roll but he makes the most of it. Well done.

The set by John Conklin is minimalist and unrealistic. The lighting by Robert Wierzel features generous use of projections illustrating certain events. They do the job. In the opening scene we see a cutout of the Venus de Milo statue, the one of the goddess of love with the missing arms. It disappears when Rakewell goes astray but at the end of the opera he thinks he is Adonis, the beautiful youth that Venus loved passionately.

Director Fogel handles the complex plot and characters with an eye to detail and drama. He gives us a coherent and splendidly done production.

Colaneri conducts the Glimmerglass Festival Opera and Chorus through Stravinsky’s multifaceted and complicated score brilliantly. We are left with a production to remember.
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The Rake’s Progress by Igor Stravinsky is being performed six times until August 15, 2025, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater as part of the Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information at www.glimmerglass.org/

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

TOSCA – REVIEW OF 2025 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

 The Glimmerglass Festival is celebrating its 50^th anniversary season and that speaks of its longevity and the high quality of its productions. For those who have not been there, it is held in the Alice Busch Opera Theatre on the shores of Lake Otsego in upstate New York. Doesn’t ring a bell? How about it is next door to Cooperstown, the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame? That’s better.

 This year the Festival offers four operas among other events. The operas represent the usual eclectic choice this year of the effervescent Artistic and General Director Rob Ainsley. Puccini’s Tosca is the staple. Sunday In The Park With George is the American classic musical. Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress is the adventurous 20^th century classic  and The House on Mango Street with music by Derek Merkel and libretto by Sandra Cisneros and Bermel is a new opera.

Director Louisa Proske and Designer John Conklin offer a unique, imaginative and brilliant production of Puccini’s masterpiece. They have their own take on the opera and despite some aspects that may strike us as unorthodox or head-scratching the result is a marvelous production.

First, the singers. You can’t have a Tosca without a highly qualified soprano. American soprano Michelle Bradley delivers a stunning performance in the lead role. She has a big, brilliant and expressive voice that simply knocks you over. She can be the jealous woman who goes crazy over the idea that her lover Cavaradossi is painting another beauty, a passionate lover in her duets with the same man and a fury when confronted by a sadistic would-be rapist. She can belt out her phrases and express tender memories as in “Vissi d’arte”.    

The other essential part of the opera is the sadistic Scarpia sung here by American bass-baritone Greer Grimsley. Scarpia relishes his lust and tells us he prefers force over consent. He is a rapist. He has the great scene with Tosca where he tries to seduce her and rape her. He thunders his joy at torturing people and at his absolute control over them. We watch with delight as Tosca stabs him to death on the bed in his office where he had a woman before Tosca arrived.

 

Greer Grimsley as Baron Scarpia, Yongzhao Yu as 

Mario Cavaradossi, and Kellan Dunlap as Spoletta. 

Photo Credit: Kayleen Bertrand/The Glimmerglass Festival

American tenor Yongzhao Yu sings a fine Cavaradossi. He sings a sound E lucevan le stelle but he is out sung in his duets with Tosca.

Proske and Conklin put their own stamp on the production. As the lights go on, the set appears and it seems that the monumental interior of the Church of St. Andrea where the first act is set is being renovated. There are tarps and scaffolding all around except for the back of a large easel and a small Madonna on a pedestal. We never see what Cavaradossi is painting. The tarps do fall for the Te Deum at the end of the act but there is no spectacular splendor.

The second act is in Scarpia’s presumably opulent office. The furniture is ordinary to cheap and there is a bed with a women getting dressed after having finished the obvious. There is a table, a bathroom with a shower and a cheap desk. The torture room is in the back.

All the furniture from Scarpia’s office is removed for the third act which is supposed to take place atop the Castel Sant’Angelo. It does not. There is no parapet for Tosca to jump off and Proske solves the problem with a gun. Tosca shoots herself.

We may miss the Zeffirellian grandeur but surprisingly the changes do not take away from the drama and effectiveness of the production. There are many nice touches. When the sacristan Sergio Martinez sees Cavaradossi’s painting he is startled and when he sweeps the floor, he pushes the dirt under the tarps. Funny.

For the Shepherd’s Song, Proske develops a scene with a small angel, a priest and a ritual with the Madonna (I think) appearing. It is cute and necessary for the stage to be cleared for  the following scene.

Proske along with Conklin gives us an original and stunning production of an old chestnut.

Conductor Joseph Colaneri leads the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra and Chorus to a rousing performance that earns them all a standing ovation.

The Glimmerglass Festival strikes a significant note for freedom and democracy. The cover of its impressive 158-page program shows an unprepossessing picture of a wall. In fact, it is the space where Cavaradossi will be killed and Tosca commits suicide. The photograph on the program is not an accident. Tosca is about political oppression, abuse of power and murder and torture of people.

Before the opera begins, we read projected on a screen the words Prof. Timothy Snyder about tyranny. I do not recall the exact text but these words from him give you the idea: We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. He is talking about America today and the Festival shows guts where many Americans cave in to despotism.

Bravo Glimmerglass Festival.

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Tosca by Giacomo Puccini is being performed ten times until August 16, 2025, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater as part of the Glimmerglass Festival Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information www.glimmerglass.org

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto 

GNIT – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Gnit is a play by Will Eno that was first produced in 2013. Its production by the Shaw Festival, directed by Artistic Director Tim Carroll, marks the play’s first appearance in Canada. Carroll seems to have a high opinion  of the play and hence its Canadian debut.

The Shaw’s program informs us that the play is based on Henrik Ibsen’ s Peer Gynt.

Upon entering the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, I asked the volunteer welcomer at the door what the word Gnit means. She did not know but told me it is a play about the mind. After being told by Peter Gnit, the main character in the play, that his name is the result of a typo, I figured out that the error resulted in Gynt becoming Gnit. Peter and Peer are obvious.

There are extremely rare occasions when you watch a performance and understand very little, get almost nothing out it and wonder on what criteria the play was selected for production.

Mike Nadajewski as International Man, Qasim Khan as Peter and 

Julia Course as Bartender. Photo by Michael Cooper.

Gnit has six characters and I will set out the names of the actors and the roles they played.

Qasim Khan is the only actor who plays one role, Peter Gnit, and we see him in his youth and later life. He tells us that does not know who he is and we never get a grip of his identity either. In the opening scene we see him with his mother in a dialogue that can come from Samuel Becket or some absurdist play. He decides that he wants to marry a woman that he loves (?) but his mother informs him that she is getting married that day. Peter attends the wedding and elopes with the Bride on that very date. We do not see any of this but we do see the bride a number of times after that without understanding much of anything. That at least looks like a plot. 

Julia Course: she plays six characters. They are Solvay, Bartender, Lady of Interest, Gravedigger, Auctioneer and Gabrielle. I think I recognized most of these characters but shoot me if I can say very much about them.

Nehassaiu deGannes: she played four roles - Mother. Uncle Joe, Beggar and Local Person. Let’s just say my acquaintance with most of them is nebulous.

Patrick Galligan: he played ten roles. Strangers 1 and 3, Moynihan, Voice, Hunter, Robber, Sphinx, Shackleton, Pale Man and Reporter. Nice to have met them but who are they all?

Mike Nadajewski: Town, Green Family, International Man, Begriffin. Come again?

Gabriella Sundar Singh has twelve roles: Stranger 2, Bridesmaid, Bride, Outdoorswoman, Woman in Green, Helen, Case Worker, Anitra, Pastor, Bremer, Anina.

If my counting is correct, the six actors had to represent 37 characters. I tip my hat to them in admiration for being able to do some fast costume changes and represent characters often  for only a minute or so. As I key in the names of the characters from the program, I have no idea who many of them were or what they did for the play.

As for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, no doubt there were people in the audience who know the play well and could relate Gnit to that play. I have seen Peer Gynt twice and have read it, but I could not relate the one play with the other except superficially.

Caroll sets a brisk pace for the almost countless scenes of the play. Some scenes last for less than a minute, I think, and there are others that last minutes. How they are connected escaped me. Once again, I commend the six actors who changed costumes and roles with amazing speed and tremendous acting ability.  

The set design by Hanne Loosen consists  of about a dozen easily moveable boxes and tubes hanging from above. There was a variety of costumes of all descriptions for the 37 characters that passed before our eyes.

I confess that I got nothing out of the play and have no idea what Carroll had in mind when he added the play to this year’s program.
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Gnit by Will Eno will run in repertory until October 4,  2025, at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre as part of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

WAIT UNTIL DARK – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Wait Until Dark is a suspense thriller by Frederick Knott, adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher. It involves Susan (Sochi Fried), a young, blind woman who lives in a basement apartment in Greenwich Village, New York in 1945. She has a young neighbor called Gloria (Eponine Lee) who lives on the floor above her and her husband Sam (JJ Gerber). The play has three other characters: Mike (Kristopher Bowman), Carlino (Martin Happer) and Roat (Bruce Horak).

The idea of a suspense thriller is just that, suspense, surprise, shock and on-the-edge-of-your-seat anticipation of what might happen next. A revelation in a review of facts about the characters may lead the astute to figuring out the plot  and after that they may want to do to the reviewer what Macbeth did to Duncan. Let’s see how much I can say without revealing anything of substance.

The play takes place over Friday and Saturday afternoon. It is tightly plotted. The basement apartment has two large windows and messages are probably conveyed by opening and closing the blinds, but can we be sure? A dead body is discovered in a closet in the apartment and there is a safe whose contents and combination are unknown. Pretty suspicious, I would say. 

Sochi Fried as Susan, Kristopher Bowman as Mike and 

Martin Happer as Carlino in Wait Until Dark (Shaw Festival, 2025). 

Photo by Michael Cooper.

There are some questions about Susan’s husband and somebody (one, two or all three men) wants to get something from Susan. The deck is loaded and it will take about two hours and twenty minutes to unravel everything. In the meantime, there will be a few scary, shocking and gasping incidents. No facts divulged by me.

Sochi Fried as Susan is intelligent, astute and a potential victim of violence. There are shocking and breath-stopping events that I will tell you nothing about. The three actors do superb work in their roles but I refuse to tell you more than that.    

Bowman, Gerber, Happer and Horak give outstanding performances and i say this without my tongue in my cheek. Eponine Lee as Gloria runs up and down the stairs at great speed and gives a superb performance.

The set by Lorenzo Savoini shows a credible image of a 1940’s basement apartment and the lighting design by Louise Guinand is well done to represent the plot development involving the blind occupant.

The thriller is directed expertly by Sanjay Talwar with a sharp eye on timing and pacing,

For the rest, you will just have to see the play. 
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Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, adapted for the stage by Jeffrey Hatcher continues at the Festival Theatre until October 5, 2025, as part of the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

MAJOR BARBARA – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake may bear Bernard Shaw’s name but out of the dozen productions this season including the two Holiday offerings only one play is by him. And even that is staged in the small Royal George Theatre which will close for demolition at the end of this year. This is the seventh time that Major Barbara is produced at the Shaw Festival and most of the previous ones (except the 2013 productions) were at the Festival Theatre. The Shaw is not a good place to see a lot of plays by Bernard Shaw.

The current production of Major Barbara directed by Peter Hinton-Davis has some superb acting and imaginative touches that make a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake exceptionally worthwhile even if you have some complaints about it.

Hinton-Davis sets the play precisely between January 5 and 7, 1906 (a year after it was written) whereas Shaw was content with less exacting timing, The director adds some hymns that were sung with relish by the cast without adding much to the production but the play is about the Salvation Army so there you go.

The first act is set in the library of Lady Britomart Undershaft (Fiona Byrne), the wife of the millionaire arms manufacturer, Andrew Undershaft (Patrick Galligan). Undershaft is an unabashed capitalist who is in the business of providing weapons that kill people to whoever is willing to pay for them. He is separated from his family and does not even recognize his children, son Stephen (Taurian Teelucksingh) and daughters Barbara (Gabriella Sundar Singh) and Sarah (Lindsay Wu).

Our attention is drawn to  Barbara, a major in the Salvation Army whose goal in life is to save people’s souls. Her father believes in providing food, shelter and the amenities of life for workers without worrying about their souls. Barbara and her father reach a climax when the Salvation Army accepts money from him, the purveyor of instruments of war and death. 

André Morin as Adolphus Cusins, Gabriella Sundar Singh

as Barbara Undershaft, Taurian Teelucksingh as 

Stephen Undershaft and Patrick Galligan as Andrew 

Undershaft. Shaw Festival, 2025). Photo by David Cooper

The first act belongs to Fiona Byrne as the imperious, sarcastic and marvelous Lady Britomart. She comes from aristocratic lineage but must rely on her estranged husband for the money required to maintain her lifestyle. Byrne displays strength of character, wit, and intelligence, and dominates the act with a stunning performance.

Galligan keeps his own as does Andre Morin as the classicist Adolphus Cusins but their turn to express the position of their characters will wait until the final act of the play. They do superb work. I had problems with Gabriella Sundar Singh’s portrayal of Major Barbara. She seemed to lack the power to create a convincing and commanding woman. She seemed to disappear in the crowd even when she took the principled decision to leave the Salvation Army when it accepted money from her father. She eventually “sees the light” but I did not feel the strength and conviction of her faith in the Army or her conversion to capitalism.

In the final act all arguments come to a head with Galligan taking control of the situation with conviction and assurance. He gives an outstanding performance. Morin gives a fine performance as a man of strength and ability and gives us a Cusins who can run a large industry even though he is not sure if three-fifths is more than one-half. He is deeply learned man with a command of Ancient Greek and he joined the Salvation Army because he was attracted to Barbara and not out of any religious conviction.

The set by Gillian Gallow is unrealistic featuring a blue background with steps on each side. In the first act the back of the stage features a flowery background with a photograph of half of the face of a woman. The scene changes to the Salvation Army shelter and then to the Undershaft arms factory are achieved economically with minimal fuss and the whole thing works well except for the scene in the factory where Hinton-Davis adds the cacophonous bellowing of a hymn while in the background we hear music from Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung.  Very annoying.

Shaw could not be knocked off the soap box once he got on it and it holds true for Major Barbara. But fine acting and directing do the job and we enjoy the arguments and the exceptional production
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Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw continues at the Royal George Theatre as part of The Shaw Festival until October 5. 2025 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press, Toronto

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 - REVIEW OF 2025 PRODUCTION AT ROYAL ALEXANDRA THEATRE

 Reviewed by James Karas

 Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 closed about a year and a half ago at Crowsnest Theatre, Toronto  but it proved so popular that the Mirvish company has revived it at the Royal Alexandra Theatre for a run to August 25, 2025. Dave Malloy is the composer, librettist and orchestrator as well as a borrower from Tolstoy of a work that has many of the hallmarks of an opera but calling it that may leave a lot of empty seats in the theatre.

The Great Comet, despite its vaunted provenance from War and Peace, involves love stories and complications that require a Family Tree in the program with arrows pointing around eleven photographs of the characters to tell us who is who. The aristocratic Natasha (Hailey Gillis) is engaged to Andrey (Marcus Nance) but falls in love with the playboy Anatole (George Krissa) and plans to elope with him. They are prevented from eloping and depressed Pierre (Evan Buliung) steps in to console Natasha. They both see the Great Comet of 1812 as a sign of good hope but the two and a half hours of the show are over and you will have to read War and Peace for the rest.

In the beginning, Natasha and cousin Sonya (Vanessa Sears) arrive in Moscow to stay with Marya (Louise Pitre), Natasha’s godmother. Marya advises Natasha to visit her future in-laws, Prince Bolkonsky (Marcus Nance again) and his daughter Mary (Heeyun Park). Good reason: they are loaded. Bad result: the Prince is a miserly jerk and the visit is calamitous.  

Hailey Gillis and George Krissa in Natasha, Pierre & 

the Great Comet of 1812. Photo: Dahlia Katz

In the meantime, we need more complications. Anatole and friend Dolokhov (Lawrence Libor) along with Pierre go drinking and meet Helene who happens to be Anatole’s sister and Pierre’s wife. Helene is too chummy with Dolokhov and Pierre  challenges him to a duel. Bang. No one is dead.

We need to unravel things. Elopement thwarted. Natasha takes poison but not enough. Anatole gets his comeuppance and Andrey returns but does not forgive Natasha. She and Pierre see The Great Comet of 1812 and they consider it good news and so do we.

Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is sung through with a rich variety of songs, recitatives and music styles. Some of the songs have a Russian folk song flavour, sung with vigour and accompanied by accordions.

Director Chris Abraham wants to provide us with a fast moving and boisterous program with rich use of audience participation. Actors run up and down the aisles of the theatre. They interact with audience members, including dancing with them. There are audience members on the stage and the actors encourage and lead the audience in applauding the performance and laughing. There are roving guitar, violin, viola, cello and accordion “players”. They show enthusiasm and create enthusiasm in the audience. Abraham does not want the level of audience involvement and excitement to lag or diminish and all the frantic activity is infectious.

It is one hell of a show. The singing is very good and the ensemble acting is outstanding.

Set Designers Julie Fox and Joshua Quinlan provide a two-story set that wraps around the stage. It suggests opulence without overdoing it. The costumes by Ming Wong suggest aristocratic attire and appear appropriate for the nineteenth century Russian setting.

It is a rousing, rip-roaring show that had the audience in the palm of its hand and was given an enthusiastic standing ovation.
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Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy (composer, librettist and orchestrator and borrower from Tolstoy) in a production by Crow’s Theatre and The Musical Stage Company  continues until August 25, 2025, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. 260 King St. W. Toronto, Ont. www.mirvish.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION – REVIEW OF 2025 LONDON PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession gets a redoubtable production at the Garrick Theatre in London, directed by Dominic Cooke. It boasts the star power of Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Warren and it is a fine reminder what Bernard Shaw could do at his best.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession is in fact Shaw’s third play. He wrote it 1893-94 and published it in 1898 with his first two pieces under the title Plays Unpleasant. Producers treated it like the plague, and it was produced privately in 1902 and promptly banned from public performance. Its first production in the United Sates had the same fate. Its second production in the United States had a worse fate. It was banned and the cast were arrested and charged with “offending public decency.”

What did the play show that offended the delicate sense of decency of late 19^th century Britain and America? Many women at the bottom of the social ladder were paid so poorly that they had to resort to extreme measures to survive. A second job was inevitable and at times the only thing left for some women was to sell their body. The impolite word for that is prostitution.

Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter in Mrs Warren’s Profession. 
Photograph: Johan Persson

Mrs. Warren’s Profession deals with that subject but on such a rarefied level that one hardly recognizes what it is talking about. We first meet Vivie Warren (Bessie Carter). She is an attractive, self-assured woman living in an upper-crust house (we see her in a garden) and enjoying the life of the well-to-do. Mr. Praed (Sid Sagar) a successful architect and gentleman, comes by, looking for Mrs. Warren. So does Sir George Crofts (Roger Glenister), a mature man who is above a gentleman, he is a knight of the realm.

This is high society, and they are friends of Mrs. Warren. Vivie and we slowly become acquainted with Mrs. Warren’s profession. She is the managing director of Private Hotels across Europe. Come again? Well, they are bordellos, or to stoop to unacceptable language for some, they are brothels or whorehouses. Mrs. Warren started at the bottom of that profession and has risen to the top. She did have a child in the process, but we do not know the identity of Vivie’s father. What the women did and why is fine as long as no one mentions it and offends public decency.

We meet the respectable town rector, the Rev. Samuel Garner (Kevin Doyle) and his useless son Frank (Reuben Joseph). The latter is infatuated with Vivie. The reverend is a comic figure and played for laughs, but he does have a secret that solves the infatuation issue and a mystery.

The crux of the play is Mrs. Warren’s defence of her present position in the profession (poverty forced her to practice it when young) and Vivie’s reaction to finding out the source of the money for her lifestyle. Mrs. Warren showed strength and resilience in her ability to rise to the top and is refusing to give it up. Vivie displays revulsion and strength in her refusal to continue living on the avails of her mother’s job.

The other side of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Photo: Johan Persson

Sir George, a man of 60, wants to marry the attractive Vivie and give her a good life without her getting mixed up in the reality of what he does. His offer of marriage is based on “I have money, what more do you want” which Vivie rejects out of hand and proceeds to find a way of supporting herself.

Cooke has made a significant addition to the production: a chorus of ten women dressed in white underclothes, who appear, to change the stage props and walk around as samples of the women who work in the bordellos that Mrs. Warren and Company operate.  

Staunton and Carter give powerful performances as the opposing mother and daughter. Glenister gives a prime example of the apologist for mistreatment of people and the father and son Rev. Samuel and Frank Gardner are comic figures with an extra layer for the reverend who maintained the respectable appearance while partaking of the pleasure provided by the abused women.

Set and Costume designer Chloe Lamford has created an atmosphere of wealth and comfort in sharp contrast to the underlying reality of the play. Brilliant.

Dominic Cooke has directed a stunning production of one of Shaw’s best plays that will not offend anyone’s delicate decency but should point to a reality that has not been entirely eradicated.
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Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw continues until August 16, 2025 at the  Garrick Theatre, 2 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0HH. https://thegarricktheatre.co.uk/tickets/mrs-warrens-profession/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

THE DEEP BLUE SEA – REVIEW OF 2025 THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea gets a major revival at the gorgeous Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. It is directed by veteran director Lindsay Posner with set and costume designs by Peter McIntosh. It stars Tamsin Greig as Hester Collyer, Hadley Fraser as Freddie and Nicholas Farrell as Sir William Collyer.

The plot is simple. Hester is found unconscious in her apartment after her landlady smelled gas. She entered the apartment and found an empty bottle of sleeping pills and concluded that Hester had attempted to kill herself. It is true, she did.

The rest of the play attempts to explain the reasons for her attempt. Hester is the daughter of a minister and has some painting talent. She was married to Sir William Collyer, a judge of the High Court whom she left. Farrell gives a fine performance as the decent man who loves his wife but did not and perhaps could not offer her the sexual satisfaction that she needs.

Her way out was a relationship with Freddie, and it is difficult to say anything positive about him. He is an incipient alcoholic, selfish, unemployed, thoughtless and lazy. He may have made an impression as a test pilot at the beginning. He no longer loves her, but he is still good in bed. Fraser is superb as the swaggering, former test pilot who is looking for work when he is no longer capable of doing it. Superb performance.

Scene from The Deep Blue Sea. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Her husband (they are not divorced yet) is a gentleman, successful, thoughtful and generous. We get glimpses of their married life and there is no doubt that for all his sterling qualities Sir William was not a passionate lover. Freddie is and his main attraction is probably his sexual prowess. At its lowest, it seems that Hester leaves her husband for sexual pleasure. The politer version would be love and perhaps at the beginning a more exciting life. All of that is in the past and at present Freddie is a jerk.

His friend Jack Jackson (Marc Elliott) sets an example of living well and being responsible, but that view does not register with Freddie.

Hester’s neighbor Miller (Finbar Lynch) gives an example of decency with a sense of humour. He studied medicine but is no longer permitted to practice. No explanation is  given but his current job as a bookie. He helps Hester medically but when asked if she might do it again, he replies “I am not a prophet. He has an instinctive understanding and empathy for Hester’s condition. Haltingly he tries to give some insight to Hester about her life and life in general and in the end, he appears to have some success. 

I was not entirely satisfied with Tamsin Greig’s performance as Hester. She is a deeply troubled woman who took a brave step in leaving life at the top with a High Court judge and a knight. She fell in love  (give her credit for it) and it was a disastrous decision but she cannot easily extricate herself from it. Greig did not display the strength of character  and at times appeared almost mousy. She is not. Unfortunately, Greig did not define the role of Hester for me and was not a convincing protagonist.

The set by McIntosh consisted of a large but rundown apartment that looked appropriate for a woman in bad financial straits. The rent had not been paid for a month and she was trying to sell some paintings to make ends meet. Freddie offered nothing.

Lindsay Posner is an experienced director and does superb work with the production but he may not have got the best out of Greig in her portrayal of Hester.

There is an autobiographical and mythical angle to the play. The mythological angel that occurs to me is that of Helen of Troy who left her husband King Menelaus to run off with Paris. Was Menelaus a bore in bed? Unlike Hester, Helen went back to her husband and we don’t know how he felt.

The play may hark back to Greek mythology but for Terence Rattigan it had an autobiographical inspiration. The gay playwright was abandoned by his young lover for another man. He could not very well write a play about homosexual love in 1952 but this was his way of expiating a terrible chapter in his life. Menelaus would have understood. 

A very good night at the theatre.

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The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan played at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 18 Suffolk Street London SW1Y 4HT London, England. www.trh.co.uk

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

THE CONSTANT WIFE – REVIEW OF 2025 ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Many people will recall a play by W. Somerset Maugham called The Constant Wife that opened in Ohio in 1926 and has often been  revived. It is a pleasant comedy about a constant and wonderful wife and an equally wonderful husband with one fly in the ointment, as they say. The husband, you see, is having an affair with the best friend of the constant wife. And she finds out and the play is taken up with the unravelling of that indiscretion.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has decided to revise Maugham’s play by having it updated by Laura Wade and providing a version based on the original.

The facts please.

Constance Middleton (Rose Leslie) and her husband John (Luke Norris) have it made. They are happily married, well off (he is a Harley Street $$$$ surgeon) and the sun is shining and all is well. There is the small issue of John’s roving pecker which has found a nest of repose in the arms Marie-Louise (Emma McDonald) who happens to be Constance’s’ best friend.

ROSE LESLIE AS THE CONSTANT WIFE. Photo: Johan Persson 

That’s bad only if “discovered” as they say and if you want a play, it must be discovered. In this case the Christopher Columbuses are Constance’s blabbermouth younger sister Martha (Amy Morgan) and her more discreet mother Mrs. Culver (Kate Burton). And you guessed it, Martha tells Constance that her husband is unfaithful, and Constance does not go to Texas to buy a gun. We are in civilized London after all.

We need a couple more twists for laughter and a plot to entertain us for a couple of hours of crisp dialogue and funny situations.

Fifteen years ago, Constance knew Bernard (Raj Bajaj) who went abroad and is now back and wants to relight the candle that he had for Constance then. He is handsome, rich and has a Saville Row tailor. What more can one ask for?

Marie-Louise’s oafish husband Mortimer (Daniel Millar) found John’s cigarette case under his wife’s pillow, and he is very suspicious about how it got there. So are we, but please, let’s keep it clean. He barges into the well-appointed Middleton home making seditious accusations about a cigarette case under a pillow. The clever Constance explains that it was she who put the cigarette case there and not her husband who should not be smoking at all let alone before or after coitus or in someone else’s bedroom.

You think about that. (I want to know what they were doing at the precise moment that the cigarette case fell under her pillow but as I said we will behave,) In the meantime, we get a crisp, finely paced and acted comedy. Just watch the textbook-perfectly accented butler Bently (Mark Meadows) then enjoy the beautiful performance of the spunky, intelligent Rose Leslie as Constance. We like Emma McDonal for her fine acting but disapprove of her raunchy character. Well, maybe. Bajaj is the perfect gentleman, and the rest of the cast are wonderful actors at light comedy.

Director Tamara Harvey puts everything together from pace to timing to give us a superb light comedy.

One more fact. Mortimer’s unfounded but factually accurate suspicions are assuaged and Marie-Louise’s predisposition to adultery is or will be satisfied by a non-doctor and they will have their fun, and we will enjoy light comedy at its best. I had to tell you that lest you were concerned about the ending.
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The Constant Wife by Laura Wade based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham continues until August 2, 2025 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.  https://www.rsc.org.uk/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Torono

THE ORESTEIA – REVIEW OF 2025 NATIONAL THEATRE OF GREECE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD

The National Theatre of Greece has staged a production of the three plays, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides that make up Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy in the Theatro Dassous in Thessaloniki.  This is the only extant trilogy from Ancient Greece, and it was played in one evening lasting over three hours without intermission. It is a major theatrical event. The trilogy is rarely performed on the same evening. I saw all three parts in the same theatre in 2019, but they were done over two evenings and were directed by different directors.

Director and dramaturge Theodoros Terzopoulos brings his own take on the great trilogy that inevitably needs adaptations, changes and deletions to make it palatable to modern audiences. We do not know enough about Ancient Greek music and dance to approach the original opera-type production and must rely on modern ideas. Terzopoulos has many of them. 

The Oresteia is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest dramatic works in the west. It tells the story of The House of Atreus, specifically about the return of King Agamemnon of Argus, the victorious commander-in chief of the Greek forces that won the Trojan War and destroyed the city of Troy.

Agamemnon returns to Argos with his trophy, Princess Cassandra, where his bitter wife Clytemnestra slays him. Her son Orestes avenges the killing of his father by killing his mother and her lover Augustus. He is in turn pursued by the avenging Furies and in the last play he ends up in court in Athens where the goddess Athena pardons him and establishes a system of justice for the great city. It is a long and great story that has travelled over thousands of years.

Agamemnon begins memorably with a tired old Watchman (Tasos Dimas) on the roof of the Palace of Argos complaining about his fate and telling us that he is watching for a light signal that is to be sent to Argos from Troy announcing the Greek victory over the Trojans. The light signal is sent from mountain peak to mountain peak across hundreds of kilometers, a feat of imagination and planning if there ever was one. 

A scene of the Chorus in The Oresteia

As the Watchman relates his story in measured emphatic tones, the Chorus of Argives, dressed in black, enters the round playing area of the Theatro Dassous in slow steps, stop and face each other. The lengthy choral episode that follows in the text is eliminated as Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill), the Husband Slayer enters imperiously. She wants us to believe that she is the much-suffering faithful wife and tells us how Agamemnon slew their daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the gods and get a fair wind to sail off to Troy with the Greek forces. Hill plays an unforgettable Clytemnestra.

The Chorus does engage in Dialogue with Clytemnestra, but its use is limited. The Chorus lie or roll on the ground, they engage is some heavy breathing or grunting and perform some arm gestures and movements but there is almost no chanting of the great verses that Aeschylus wrote for them. They do engage in vigorous argument over the guilt of Orestes’ murder of his mother but that is near the end.

Agamemnon (Savvas Stroumpos) and Aegisthus (David Malteze) speak in enunciatory tones but are given a maniacal laugh that I found curious. Why does the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces sound slightly unhinged? And why does his cuckolder Aegisthus sound the same? Otherwise, they give impressive performances. 

The poor Cassandra (Evelyn Assouad), the Trojan princess who is brought by Agamemnon as his concubine, is first shown lying at his feet. He stands on a raised part of the stage announcing his return and she lies on the steps at his feet. During her scene she crawls along the ground and tells us her story very dramatically. A stunning performance by Assouad.

Orestes (Babis Alefantis) is a young man ready to defend his murder of his mother. But the Furies cannot forgive such egregious crimes, and they intend to punish him. The Chorus turns into Furies (Erinyes), gesticulating, falling and rolling on the ground, waving their hair, grunting menacingly and turning into vengeful creatures.

In The Eumenides, the final play of the trilogy, Orestes is brought to trial in Athens before an Athenian citizen (Tasos Dimas) with Apollo (Nikos Dasis) and Athena (Aglaia Pappas). The Ghost of Clytemnestra (Sophia Hill again) appears for the prosecution. As is well known, the end of The Eumenides has a political angle. It was as much a salute to the establishment of a system of justice in Athens as to a winding up of the story of The House of Atreus. The Furies or Erinyes are turned into the kindly Eumenides.

Except for a few characters dressed in white, the costumes are strictly black. My only comment is that Orestes is not part of the Chorus and he should have a costume differentiating him from them.

Terzopoulos makes the ending of his production of The Oresteia into a powerful political statement of his own. When the trilogy finishes, we hear a loud announcement in English: WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD. What follows, still in English, was a recitation of American financial successes such the price index increases of S & P, the New York Stock Exchange and the like. All are intended to be vigorously anti-American. That explained the singing of a song in Arabic during the performance that I did not get.

The audience gave the production a tumultuous round of applause and started chanting. I could not get the words initially, but they soon became clearer. They were all chanting FREE PALESTINE. Terzopoulos was making a no-holds-barred political statement.

The production, however translated and dramaturged by Eleni Varopoulou and the numerous behind-the-scenes artists, represents the vision of The Oresteia of Terzopoulos. It is a coherent vision (politics aside) that may not satisfy everyone in every respect. That is inevitable considering the complexity of the work, the theatre for which it was written two and a half thousand years ago and the twenty-first century.

It is worth mentioning that the production opened in Budapest in May 6, 2025 and then travelled to China, around Greece and it will finish its tour in Aeschylus’s birthplace, Elefsina, in September. That is a total of 12 venues in four months with one or two performances in each theatre.

I saw the performance at the Theatro Dassous in Thessaloniki on July 17, 2025

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James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toromto