THE GOAT OR WHO IS SYLVIA – REVIEW OF SOULPEPEPR PRODUCTION OF ALBEE’S PLAY

James Karas

Happy families are all alike, according to Leo Tolstoy, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Take the Gray family. At age 50, Martin is a successful architect who has won the Nobel Prize equivalent in his field and has been chosen to design The World City, a two-hundred billion project in the wheat fields of the Middle West. His world success is matched by his happy home life. He is married to Stevie who is beautiful, articulate and in short a dream wife. They are deeply in love with each other and completely faithful. They have a gay son which may or may not be an issue for them but everything about the Grays’ success is practically mythical.

But there is a flaw in the ointment. A flaw that Albee wants us to know goes beyond a passing mortal sin like infidelity or one of the frequently encountered problems in a marriage. The parenthetical subtitle of the play is “Notes towards the definition of tragedy.” Early in the play Martin refers to the Eumenides as pursuing someone relentlessly. They are the furies of vengeance in Greek tragedy who pursue most famously Orestes for the killing his father.

 

  Raquel Duffy and Albert Schultz, photo: Cylla Von Tiedemann

The flaw in the ideal marriage of the Grays is that Martin is in love with a goat. Albee raises the admittedly carnal relationship to something spiritual and out of the control of Martin. If you want to be grandiloquent, it may refer to Aristotle’s idea hamartia, a fatal flaw or an error in a character that leads to a reversal of fortune and a tragic end.

Alan Dilworth directs the current Soulpepper production which has some issues but brings much of the drama out. Rquel Duffy gives a bravura performance as Stevie, Martin’s wife who understandably freaks out when he gives her a detailed description of his physical and spiritual relationship with the goat Sylvia. Stevie, always articulate, frequently witty, goes from shock to rage to avenging fury punctuated with agony at the incomprehensible treachery that she faces. It is a tremendous range for an actress to cover and Duffy does it all. From disbelief, to sarcastic remarks to a heart-wrenching howl, Duffy gives a stunning performance.

 Albert Schultz and Derek Boyes, photo: Cylla Von Tiedemann

Albert Schultz as Martin is fine in the lighter portions of the play but he fails to rise to the tragic dimension demanded of the character. His reaction and his howl as he is destroyed by the avenging fury fails to reach the heights that we hope to see.

Derek Boyes plays Ross, the friend of the family who tells Stevie what her husband has done. Paolo Santalucia plays Billy, the Grays’ teenage son who has his own sexual problems but with his father madly in love with a goat there is not much room to examine them. Boyes and Santatlucia give good performances in their respective roles.

Dilworth does a good job in directing a difficult play but there seems to be a lack of disciplined acting in some of the scenes. Some more intonation in some scenes, a slower pace in others may be of minor nature but it would be nice to have them.

The set by Lorenzo Savoini shows a brightly lit sitting room with a couch, a coffee table and some furniture pieces that evoke the home of a well-off modern house.       

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The Goat or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee continues until November 18, 2017 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario M5A 3C4. www.soulpepper.ca

KING CHARLES III - REVIEW OF ARTS THEATRE PRODUCTION IN VANCOUVER

James Karas

Alas, poor Charles, we know thee well. Thou hast the distinction of being the longest serving Prince of Wales and were married to Diana, Princess of Wales, beautiful, not too bright and beloved of the people. You are not the sharpest knife in the royal drawer either and with your stiff bearing, floppy ears and frequent overextensions of your limited intellectual prowess, you earned our neglect of you.

But not forever. Mike Bartlett has paid you the compliment of writing a futuristic play set in the imaginary, if not too far off future, when you are King Charles III. The programme cover promises that this is a “JOVIAL POLITICAL SATIRE” and we believe it.

 The Queen is dead and the cast of King Charles III are there. Photo by David Cooper.

As it must, King Charles III opens with the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of Prince Charles to the throne. The new king is asked to perform one of his traditional roles that of signing his assent to legislation passed by parliament. The new law purports to limit the freedom of the press. The king, who is supposed to be a serious, principled and an intelligent monarch, refuses to give his assent and thus precipitates a serious constitutional crisis. Not too many laughs so far.

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition state that the King has no right to refuse to sign the legislation and the king is just as adamant that he will not do it. How will we get out of this quandary?

We have a subplot involving   Prince Harry who mixes with the people, falls in love with a commoner whose naked-in-bed photos are available for publication and who does her best to appear obnoxious. He wants to give up everything and live with her like a normal worker. In other words he takes Windsor family thickness some distance down from the low norm.

Bartlett’s play creaks on with an almost empty tank as he tries to manufacture material to keep it chugging along. Jovial political satire? Let me know if you find any. This is a serious constitutional and political impasse that could dispatch the British monarchy to the dustbin of history. Caution: spoiler. The king makes the crisis worse by using an ancient right of his to dissolve parliament. There is violence in the streets, hints of military takeover, perhaps civil war and our concern for the outcome causes our blood pressure to soar downwards.

The play may be better than it seemed in this production. The Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage’s acoustics made some of the actors sound as if they spoke in a tunnel. Some of them failed to enunciate or speak loudly enough and that is not a great recommendation.

Ted Cole’s King Charles III who gives the initial impression of being smart and principled turns out to be a weakling who commands neither authority nor regal majesty. But Bartlett tells us that he is also a troubled and articulate workaholic We agree with his position on the restriction of press freedom but he does not convince us. He reminded me of Shakespeare’s Richard II who took his anointment seriously and thought that he was appointed by God.

Simon Webb as Prime Minister Evans is a caricature of a leftist with his ill-fitting grey suit and bow tie and boorish manners. Christine Wiles as the Leader of the Opposition is a classic politician who talks from both sides of her mouth without stretching a muscle.

Charles Rice with his rumbling voice plays the tall Prince William but we could have done with more consistent enunciation. Katherine Gauthier’s Kate is a clever, touchy-feely and manipulative feminist.

 

Ted Cole and Gwynyth Walsh in King Charles III. Photo by David Cooper.

Charlie Gallant’s Prince Harry in a red wig and a plebeian Jess (Agnes Tong) is a caricature of the dumb royal as is Jess of the common people.

The play has numerous Shakespearean  overtones, none so bizarre as the appearance of a Ghost (Lauren Bowler). This is the ghost of Diana who is very corporeal as she hugs and kisses her son William and Charles. She mysteriously tells both of them that they will be the greatest kings ever. Jovial satire, eh?

Gwynyth Walsh appears as Camilla wearing a ridiculous hat in the first scene but settles down to being a supportive wife of the hapless Charles.

The play is done on an empty stage designed by Kevin McAllister dominated by a large copper globe with a cross on top symbolizing the crown.

Kevin Bennett expresses his enthusiasm for the play in the programme but it may have seemed better in his imagination than he has brought on the stage. The play may have nuggets of humour and appear less sluggish in a different production. As it is in this production, it makes for a bad night at the theatre.

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King Charles III by Mike Bartlett, in a production by Arts Club Theatre Company, continues until November 19, 2017 at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage, 2750 Granville St. Vancouver, B.C.   

THE MAGIC FLUTE - REVIEW OF LIVE FROM THE MET BROADCAST

James Karas

Julie Taymor’s production of The Magic Flute for The Metropolitan Opera which was transmitted worldwide on October 14, 2017 tries to be a magical, fantastic staging with extensive use of puppets and some high tech. Many of the things she does smack of an overreaching attempt to entertain children and some of the other aspects of the production with the emphasis on darkness made the production seem heavy-footed.

Taymor, in addition to directing, also designed the costumes and, with Michael Curry, she designed the puppets. In other words this is a Julie Taymor production through and through. It premiered in 2004 and seems to have staying power.

 Charles Castronovo as Tamino in Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte." 

Photo: Richard Termine/Metropolitan Opera

The use of puppets and the necessary presence of puppeteers was so extensive that I found it rather tiresome. Some of it was effective, like the huge dragon which threatens Tamino in the opening scene. The Three Ladies (soprano Wendt Bryn Harmer, mezzo Sarah Mesko and mezzo Tamara Mumford) appear dressed in black with blackened faces sporting puppet heads (or are they skulls) on their heads. The heads can also be held in their hands.

The Three Spirits are all white in contrast to the Three Ladies, I suppose. They have spiked white hair, white underwear that could be diapers and white beards that reach to below their knees. They commute on the back of a goose or perhaps the skeleton of a goose. When the Queen of the Night sings her famous aria, there are banners (her head gear) twirling around her head. She hits her high notes and gets rousing approval from the audience and should be left to sing without extraneous tricks.

There are numerous birds, monsters, bears and other creatures that fly around the stage. Even so, the emphasis is on darkness which no doubt is meant to make the emergence into light by our hero Tamino and heroine Pamina all the more pleasant. It does not.

All is fair in love and opera productions but it does no harm to recall that The Magic Flute is a play with songs written for the popular theatre. Yes, there is a Masonic connection for those who can discern it or care about it but emphasizing the darkness and the progression towards virtue and light in conjunction with generous use of presumably more entertaining puppets takes away from the joy of the opera that is not lifted by those ubiquitous puppets.

A scene from  Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte." Photo: Richard Termine/Metropolitan Opera

The makeup is something else. Tamino and Pamina are about the only ones who have not been painted over as if they are from another dimension.

The underlying ideas of living for love, rejecting hatred and vengeance, espousing high morals and the idea of forgiveness are not virtues monopolized by the Masons. The people who first saw the play with songs on September 30, 1791 in the Theater auf der Wieden in suburban Vienna probably got all the virtues that are promulgated and all the low humour and enjoyed the songs.

If the use of puppets is intended to attract and entertain children, why is the production sung in German? How many children (and adults) can enjoy the low comedy while trying to read the subtitles? Even if you know the opera well, humour in subtitles does not come out well. There is no reason for The Magic Flute to be done in German except snobbery.

The production has a fine cast that is helped by James Levine conducting the Met orchestra. He is a local hero, and deservedly so, who has molded the Met orchestra into a superb ensemble.

Tenor Charles Castronovo is the romantic (love at first sight of her portrait) prince who is determined to go through fire, water, to keep quiet when told to, and do all to qualify for the title “mensch” and marry Pamina. Castronovo is heroically convincing both vocally and theatrically. Soprano Golda Schultz is the lovely, delicate and patient Pamina who sings beautifully and asserts herself. She deserves Tamino.

Baritone Markus Werba has a comic sense and a superb voice for the bird catcher Papageno but he is hampered by speaking in a foreign language. Taymor treats the would-be Harvey Weinstein Monostatos (Greg Fedderly) like a clown. He has the usual gobs of makeup and his real intentions towards Pamina are underplayed, to put it politely.

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The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder was transmitted Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on October 14, 2017 at the Cineplex VIP Don Mills Shops at Don Mills, 12 Marie Labatte Road, Toronto Ontario M3C 0H9 and other theatres. Encores will be shown on November 11, 27, 29 and December 10 and 16, 2017 at various theatres. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

TITLE AND DEED – REVIEW OF NIGHTFALL THEATRICS PRODUCTION

James Karas

Title and Deed is a one-man show now playing in the Tarragon Theatre Workspace in a production by Nightfall Theatrics. It is an interesting monologue, difficult to follow and not amenable to logical analysis.

Title is the legal right to own property and deed is the evidence of your title. That’s clear enough.

In the small Workplace with about a dozen spectators, Christopher Staunton delivers his one hour and ten minute monologue that covers a myriad of points that are not easy to follow and even harder to recall. The point is that this is impressionistic theatre and what matters is the image that author Will Eno and Stanton want to leave us with.

Stanton comes to the playing area and tells us that he going through customs and visiting for pleasure. Presumably he is coming “here” to our country from another country. We have similarities and differences with his country but we are never sure what they are.

There are philosophical musings, childhood memories general comments about existence. The subject is changed quickly and seamlessly. The performer has a bag in which he carries a stick and an empty lunch box. Protection and nourishment? Perhaps.

Stanton deserves a standing ovation for memorizing he script alone. He deserves credit for performing the confusing script in which he goes through a number of emotions and gives us some humour.

Aside from that I cannot say I got much more out of the play.

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Title and Deed by Will Eno played in the Tarragon Theatre Workspace, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario between September 19 and October 8, 2017 in a production by Nightfall Theatrics. This review is posted disgustingly late. Mea culpa.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO – REVIEW OF OPERA ATELIER PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

In a recent survey conducted by BBC Music Magazine “172 of the world’s finest opera singers” (according to BBC) chose The Marriage of Figaro as the greatest opera ever written.  Opera Atelier was not waiting for a survey to be  persuaded to revive its 2010 production of The Marriage of Figaro but no one can possibly complain that it did.

Director Marshall Pynkoski has chosen to produce the opera in English and use Jeremy Sams’ fluid and colloquial translation. Excellent choices. Many directors move the date of an opera forward from today to some futuristic, robotic era. Pynkoski moves The Marriage back to the era and distinctive style of commedia dell’arte. The end  result is an outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable night at the opera.

 

Peggy Kriha Dye (Countess Almaviva) and Stephen Hegedus (Count Almaviva). Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Choosing the commedia dell’arte style has many advantages. It allows for comic business, including some slapstick that provides healthy laughter. The elegant costumes by Martha Mann and colourful sets by Gerard Gauci are perfect accompaniments for Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg’s choreography. Thus we get the best of both worlds: the comic business of commedia dell’arte and the grace and sophistication of baroque.

Opera in English is still the exception and there are good reasons for being reluctant to indulge in full-scale Anglicized libretti. Jeremy Sams’ translation does illustrate some of the issues. The open vowels of “La vendetta” and the rounded o’s of “Dove sono” are not available in the English translation but some of the awkwardness we feel may be simply a matter of habit. If we heard The Marriage of Figaro, say, twenty times in Italian, hearing it in English may sound stranger than it really is. Try the reverse.  

Pynkoski has assembled a cast that can act and sing. Start with the heroes of the piece. Bass-baritone Douglas Williams as Figaro has to be wily, smart (but not as smart as his fiancée Susanna) and display vocal and physical agility. Williams delivers a delightful Figaro.

Soprano Mireille Asselin’s Susanna has intuitive intelligence, splendid vocal delivery and a marvelous comic delineation of the clever servant. Soprano Peggy Kriha Dye gives us a mature and moving Countess who married for love and lives with the Count’s gross infidelity. She sings her lament for lost love “Porgi, amor” (“Hear my prayer, humbly I beg you”) and “Dove Sono” (“I remember his love so tender”) where memory of past happiness and hopes for future joy and love blend gorgeously. I could have done with a bit less movement in the latter aria but that’s just quibbling.

Bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus’s Count Almaviva is a jealous, quick-tempered and lithe Lothario for whom a skirt is a target and fidelity is a nuisance. We enjoy his singing and shenanigans and find extra pleasure in his ultimate comeuppance which provides a scene of forgiveness and redemption that becomes a moment of grace and enchantment.

 

Mireille Asselin (Susanna) and Douglas Williams (Figaro). Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel was full of hormonal energy as Cherubino. Laura Pudwell as Marcellina, Gustav Andreassen as Bartolo, Olivier Laquerre as Antonio and Christopher Enns as Basilio and Don Curio delivered the comedy and singing assigned to them unfailingly. And Grace Lee as barbarian gets to sing the aria “I have lost it, I am so stupid” very effectively.

The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra does its usual fine work under the baton of David Fallis.

A few words to dampen your enthusiasm about The Marriage of Figaro being chosen as the greatest opera ever. La Boheme came in second and Tosca placed sixth. Verdi sneaked in ninth place with Otello and Wagner made the grade with Tristan und Isolde in tenth place. Chacun à son goût, as they say, but those are head-scratching choices by any operatic measuring stick.

In any event, the highest accolade one can pay to Opera Atelier’s production of The Marriage of Figaro is that it is an expression of civilization. Kenneth Clark in his famous series Civilization said that he could not give a definition of civilization but he recognized it when he saw it. You may not be able to define a stunning and wonderful opera production but when you see this Marriage of Figaro you will recognize it. And it is civilized. 

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The Marriage of Figaro  by W. A. Mozart, presented by Opera Atelier, opened on October 26 and will until November 4, 2017 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com

OTHER SIDE OF THE GAME – REVIEW OF NEW PLAY BY AMANDA PARRIS

Other Side of the Game is a new play by Amanda Parris. It is her first play and it deals with the plight of blacks especially in Toronto. There is a great deal to cheer about a first play by a Canadian that examines the sorry plight of a segment of Canada’s population.

The play opens on a scene in front of a high chain link fence where five people are sitting on folding chairs. They say nothing for a few seconds, then they scream simultaneously or individually, yawn, fidget and show signs of frustration. They are in the waiting room of a jail waiting to see a prisoner and they face the faceless and rude bureaucrat who corrals or is supposed to corral them to the visiting area. Corral may not do justice to the description of the way they are treated. The scene lasts longer than it needs to but the message is unmistakable.

 

Ryan Rosery, Virgilia Griffith, Ordena Stephens-Thompson, 

Shakura Dickson, Peter Bailey - photo by Dahlia Katz

Other Side has a cast of five (three men and two women) and they each play two roles. There are two parallel plots and the actors change from one role to the other seamlessly and at times confusingly. I had difficulty following the two plots all the time.

Beverly (Shakura Dickson), a bright-eyed girl form Halifax, wants to join the movement. She meets Khalil (Ryan Rosery) and Akilah (Virginia Griffin) who grill her about her knowledge about the issue.

We quickly find out that these people are involved in starting a revolution. Is it Trotskyite or Leninist, we are not sure, but they are talking the language if not the rant of a bygone era when people advocated the uprising of the proletariat against capitalism. They are erudite and knowledgeable and can put a policeman in his place by quoting case law to her face.

We know or think we know something about racism and mistreatment of blacks and other minorities. The behaviour of the police department of “tolerant” Toronto towards blacks is frequently nothing short of disgraceful and it is continuing. That is one small example of what is happening in a fair city on our fair country.

Parris thus attacks a grand subject and as I said deserves credit for attempting to deal with it. Unfortunately what we get is a bit of muddle. There is no reasonable daycare for a black mother’s child. There is no reasonable daycare for anyone making low wages. The young man who did not finish high school and has a minor criminal record cannot get a job because of racism. Touché.

Virgilia Griffith, Shakura Dickson 2 - photo by Dahlia Katz

Parris mixes the political with the domestic and throws in a love interest but the whole thing lacks focus and appears like a number of short scenes that lead nowhere.

Director Nigel Shawn Williams tries hard to bring the whole thing together and gets good performances from the five actors. Peter Bailey plays Elder who has been around and knows the mechanics and the politics of protest. But he does have a shortcoming: he is living with a white woman. He also plays Winston, a shady character in the community.

Virginia Griffith is the tough and savvy member of the movement and a distraught mother trying to raise a child. Ordena Stephens-Thompson plays the cop and the social worker. She is black and is abusing blacks. The revolution needs to convince its natural followers to follow it, it seems.

People are arrested, kept in pre-trial custody, and sent to jail with no mention of what offence they committed. Canada may have faults, but no one is kept in custody without cause and no one is jailed without a charge and a conviction after a trial. Parris rides roughshod over all details and the idea of a few Marxists of whatever shade overthrowing everything struck me as jaded and hollow.

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Other Side of the Game by Amanda Parris in a co-production by Cahoots Theatre and Obsidian Theatre opened on October 18 and continues at Aki Studio, Native Earth Performing Arts, 585 Dundas St. East, Toronto, Ont. 

THE ELIXIR OF LOVE – REVIEW OF 2017 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

The Canadian Opera Company serves us a delightful, delectable and delicious Elixir of Love with a strong Canadian flavor, scrumptious singing and most of it done by Canadians. More about the last bit further down.

Donizetti’s enchanting comedy requires five singers who must create and exude a sense of innocence, an atmosphere of geniality and a pleasant community that exists mostly in our imagination. Where can you find a place like that? Easy. Visit a small, rural town in southern Ontario on a sunny day before World War I. That is where director James Robinson sets this production. It all started in a small town in the United States but, there being no travel bans yet, they all moved to the friendlier realm of Canada. Well, Robinson changed the locale to Ontario.    

 

Simone Osborne as Adina (at left) with Gordon Bintner as Belcore 

and Andrew Haji as Nemorino (at right). Photo: Michael Cooper

Nemorino (Andrew Haji) has an ice cream truck and consumes what he sells with considerable generosity. But he is an innocent, lovable bumpkin who is love-struck with the very pretty Adina. His profession and girth, do not give him a head start in the race for Adina’s heart. Haji has a dulcet, light tenor voice and he conveys the innocence, ardour and total lovability of Nemorino perfectly.

Adina is rich, beautiful and flirtatious, the type of girl that any red-blooded Ontarian from Dundalk to Dorset would give up his acreage for. Soprano Simone Osborne embodies all the qualities we want to see in Adina and gives her an agile, honeyed voice that is an aural delight.

Sergeant Belcore is a swaggering, mustachioed recruiting officer in a well-pressed uniform that would burst at the seams if his ego were any bigger. Baritone Gordon Bintner’s voice resonates with confidence and we (almost) forgive Adina for falling for the cad.

Baritone Andrew Shore takes on the role of the quack Dr. Dulcamara who sells an elixir guaranteed to get you any woman. It is a fine comic role and Shore does a very good job in that regard. Unfortunately, he was in poor vocal form on the date that I saw the production (October 17), especially at the beginning. He was better near the end.

Soprano Laura Eberwein displayed her beautiful voice in the relatively small role of Giannetta and no doubt we will be seeing much more of her in the future.

 Andrew Haji as Nemorino in the The Elixir of Love, 2017, photo: Michael Cooper

The opera is set, as I said, in a small town in Ontario. The set (designed by Allen Moyer) focuses on the town’s bandstand, decorated with banners and flags. The town people are dressed in festive attire of the period, the sun is shining and life is good. Is it July 1, 1914? We have a cheerful, happy atmosphere with the townspeople (the marvelous COC Chorus) providing a social milieu and vocal pleasure.

Yves Abel conducts the COC Orchestra.

One does not usually make too much fuss about the origins of the cast except perhaps to add, say, Russian or America before a singer’s name. There is a difference here. Most of the cast is young and Canadian. In fact the conductor and four of the five singers (Andrew Shore s the exception) are young Canadians. This is not pointless flag waving. It is a round of applause to the COC and in general for Canada for nurturing a crop of musical talent especially in opera, a form of entertainment that is struggling to maintain and increase its fan base and is usually dominated by non-Canadians.

The Elixir of Love presents Canada on the operatic stage in every respect and does a damn good job.

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The Elixir of Love by Gaetano Donizetti (music) and Felice Romani (libretto), opened on October 11 and will be performed eight times until November 4, 2017 on various dates at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  416-363-6671. www.coc.ca