LES BELLES-SOEURS – REVIEW OF 2023 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Les Belles-Soeurs is an iconic Canadian play that gives a penetrating and piercingly accurate portrait of Quebec society in the 1960s. The Stratford Festival gives us a superb production of Michel Tremblay’s play which premiered in Montreal in 1968. It is directed by Esther Jun and has a cast of fifteen actors representing working class women.   

Germaine Lauzon (Lucy Peacock) has won one million stamps and they have just been delivered to her home. She is deliriously and deliciously happy dreaming and planning what she will do with her wealth. Her working-class imagination takes flight but it stays in her kitchen and her house. New appliances and furnishings are basically what she dreams of buying.

Germaine invites her sisters Rose Ouimet and Gabrielle Jodoin, her sister-in-law Thérèse Dubuc, and friends and neighbours. Her sister Pierrette Guérin is not invited but she comes anyway. Together with Germaine’s daughter Linda, and friends and neighbours, there are fifteen women in her kitchen to paste the stamps in books.

Members of the company in Les Belles-Soeurs.

Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou.

The women discuss a huge array of subjects over the course of the play with rancor, candor, humour and pathos. What evolves is a picture of the lives of the women and by extension a portrait of Quebec society of the period.

Tremblay draws the women’s characters succinctly and beautifully. Aside from the individual characteristics of the women we get a  depiction of the social order that they occupy. There are differences among the women but they all seem to be living lives of quiet desperation.

Lucy Peacock gives a powerful performance as Germaine, a woman married to an alcoholic husband with two children who do not listen to her. But having won one million stamps she sees a way out and for some hours she dreams of a better life after acquiring the things that money can bring. Her dream comes crashing around her when her friends want to share in her “happiness” and things do not turn out as she imagined. I will not disclose the end of the play.

Seana McKenna gives a superb performance as Rose Ouimet, a religious widow who is concerned about other-worldly matters.  

Allison Edwards-Crewe plays a flamboyant Pierette who works in a bar and is shunned by the other women. The young Lise (Marissa Orjalo) reveals that she is pregnant, a shocking state at the time. Pierette has the decency to offer to find a doctor to perform an abortion instead of getting a back-alley procedure that seemed to be the only choice. Pierette reveals that shocking news that Angeline frequents the club where she works. The news sends shockwaves among the religious women and they shun the pathetic Angeline.    

Irene Poole plays Therese who arrives with her mother-in-law Olivine (Diana Leblanc) and proceeds to abuse the poor woman who is slumped in a wheelchair and makes unwelcome noises.   Lisette de Courval likes nice clothes and sex but not with her husband. Jealousy is a common underlying characteristic of most of the women and combined with greed it is the catalyst that brings the finale of the play.

From left: Irene Poole, Shannon Taylor, Lucy Peacock, 

Jennifer Villaverde, Seana McKenna and Jane Luk in 

Les Belles-Soeurs. Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou

Religion plays an important role in the lives of all of them and they kneel and cross themselves when they hear the rosary on the radio. One method of escaping their reality is to play bingo at the church and there is an extended and hilarious scene of that pastime.

Tremblay provides a number of monologues, choral passages one might say, where the lights are dimmed and a spotlight is shone on a character who speaks about her life directly to the audience. This is a brilliant way of pacing the play which otherwise is a noise fest with the fifteen women speaking cacophonously at times.

The set design by Joanna Yu shows a simple 1960s kitchen with a table and chairs. Michelle Bohn’s costumes represent working class clothes that are suitable for the era and the production.

Les Belles-Soeurs is a richly-layered play that appears very simple. Director Esther Jun handles a talented cast judiciously and expertly through the crowded dialogues and movements as well as the monologues.  It is a superb production of a theatrical landmark.

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Les Belle-Soeurs by Michel Tremblay opened on August 25 and continues until October 28, 2023, at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario www.stratfordfestival.ca

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

THE AMEN CORNER - REVIEW OF 2023 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Amen Corner is a play by James Baldwin (1924-1987) that he wrote in 1954 and has been largely ignored. Baldwin was a prolific novelist, essayist and short story writer but he made only two forays into drama. The production of The Amen Corner by the Shaw Festival may be the first time the play is seen in Canada. A tip of the hat to the Shaw for producing the play.

The play is about a Black evangelical congregation in Harlem in the 1950’s. It deals with religious fervour, fanaticism, ambition, jealousy, hypocrisy and love. It focuses on Pastor Margaret Alexander (Janelle Cooper), her family and the relationship with the congregation. The Pastor lives in an unprepossessing tenement with her apartment on the main floor and the church above. Set Designer Anahita Dehbonehie shows us both with stairs providing easy access from each unit to the other.

The congregation consists of ladies dressed in their Sunday outfits with small hats, nice dresses and petticoats. The men wear suits and all are dressed to go to church, to use an outdated phrase. The members of the congregation refer to each other as Brother and Sister. This is a deeply religious group.

We hear many hymns and of course Pastor Alexander’s sermons. She is deeply religious and strict in her demands for obedience and observance of the laws of God. No drinking is de rigueur but even driving a truck for a liquor company is a sin. You are helping people go to hell by delivering the substance of sin. Reading the funny papers is sinful because your mind is not on the Lord and Satan may cause you to fall.

Janelle Cooper as Margaret Alexander, Jenni Burke as Sister Boxer and David Alan

Anderson as Brother Boxer with the cast of The Amen Corner (Shaw Festival, 2023).

Photo by David Cooper.

Ida Jackson (Caitlyn McInnis) comes to church with a sick baby and asks the Pastor to pray and save her child. Margaret advises her to leave her husband (the way she did, it turns out). The child dies and Ida returns to Pastor Margaret asking why the Lord took her child. Margaret can offer little more than platitudes and tell her to pray.

But Pastor Margaret has a couple of secrets. She was married to Luke (Allan Louis), an alcoholic jazz musician and David (Andrew Broderick) her teenage son is beginning to stray away from the strictures of her preaching. He smokes and goes out with his friends. The congregation consists of poor Black people and they have the characteristics found in many of us: jealousy, envy, ambition. Pastor Margaret goes to Philadelphia to visit a sick colleague. That costs money. Unlike her parishioners, she has a Frigidaire refrigerator! Her husband Luke returns home, a sick and dying man. Did he abandon her or did she throw him out for the sake of keeping her position?

Sister Moore (Monica Parks) tells us that she is humble and brags that no man has laid a finger on her. When the time comes, she will tell Jesus that she lived and died a virgin.

Ardent faith and reality clash. Brother Boxer is as zealous as anyone, but he wants the job of delivering liquor. The Pastor objects. Her sick husband returns and we find out the truth about the breakup of her marriage. And how did she afford that fancy fridge as a pastor of a poor congregation?

Margaret is a human being like the rest of them. She wants the appearance of her self-righteousness to raise her above her congregation. It does not because it cannot do that anymore than the prayers, the hymns and the protestations of faith can raise the rest of the people above their common humanity or save Ida’s child.

Alana Bridgewater as Odessa and Janelle Cooper as Margaret Alexander

 with the cast of The Amen Corner (Shaw Festival, 2023). Photo by David Cooper.

The fine cast brings forth the religious and human conflicts of the play with sensitivity and superb acting. Anderson as Brother Boxer is both selfish and self-righteous but also human. Margaret Bridgwater as Margaret’s sister Odessa is rational but in a sea of fervent believers there is not much she can do. Allan Louis is a moving Luke who followed a career as a musician and no doubt a sinner but he never stopped loving his family and he did not abandon them. He was thrown out.

Parks as sister Moore is conniving and hypocritical the way many people are and manages to get ahead with their hypocrisy intact.

Director Kimberley Rampersad does superb work with a play that depends on hymns and has some creaky structural problems. Luke’s deaths scene is overdone and not every scene is convincing. Nevertheless, it is a great opportunity to see a play by a great American writer who did not follow his ambition to become a playwright. Perhaps he realized it was simply not his forte.

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The Amen Corner by James Baldwin continues until October 8, 2023, at the Festival 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

THE GAME OF LOVE AND CHANCE - REVIEW OF 2023 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Game of Love and Chance is a classic comedy by Pierre Marivaux that was first produced in Paris in 1730. You may have seen it before and are itching to see it again or are about to see it for the first time. You are probably aware that it is on the roster of plays at the Shaw Festival for the current season and do not intend to miss it.

You should see it, but it may not be quite what you expect. Tim Carroll, the Shaw Festival’s Artistic Director, is offering a seriously improvised version of the play which is inventive, unorthodox and hilarious – but bears only partial fidelity to what Marivaux wrote.

Marivaux’s play has seven characters, mostly from commedia dell’arte stock comedy. Silvia, the daughter of the wealthy Orgon is supposed to marry the wealthy Dorante, Dorante and Silvia have never met and he is on his way to visit her. Silvia is understandably nervous about this arranged marriage and wants to make sure she really wants to marry him. To be on the safe side, she arranges to change places with her maid Lisette. She will pretend to be Silvia and let’s see what happens.

Well, Dorante has the same concern, and he changes places his servant Arlequin or Wes (or whatever his name is) and the comedy begins. Orgon and his son Mario are in on the change of identities, and they have no objections.

That is what Marivaux wrote. 

Martin Happer and Deborah Hay as Ensemble in 

The Game of Love and Chance. Photo by Emily Cooper.

At the Shaw Festival eight actors, “The Shaw Festival Ensemble” under the direction of Carroll improvise the plot with hilarious results. The basic plot remains but not the way Marivaux wrote it. Much has changed and what you get depends on the wit, imagination, and inventiveness of the actors. I am reminded of an incident when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were making one of their movies. The showed total disrespect for the script and at one time one of them quipped to the writer that “if you hear any of your lines, yell Bingo.”

The actors of the Ensemble are, in alphabetical order: Kristopher Bowman, Sochi Fried, Martin Happer, Deborah Hay, Rebecca Northan, Travis Seetoo, Graeme Somerville, Jenny L. Wright. What roles they play is decided before the performance “begins” by rolling dice or whatever comes to mind. It is part of the fun, and the audience is involved in rolling the dice. That presumably means that each actor gets a different role most times.

The play is improvised in the relaxed atmosphere of the Spiegeltent, a tent with a bar and a playing area that provides for laidback performances, crowd participation and resourcefulness by the players. They can improvise, horse around and adlib but keep the essentials of the plot going. The night I saw it Jenny L. Wright played Silvia pretending to be the maid Lisette and Travis Seeto played Dorante pretending to be the servant Arlequin. The randy Lisette was played by Rebecca Northan and the boorish Arlequin was played by Graeme Somerville. Mario, played by Deborah Hay, explained to his father Orgon (Martin Happer) that he is no longer a virgin thanks to Lisette’s largesse. Orgon may have partaken of her largesse or perhaps displayed the same weakness as his son. Kristopher Bowman played the servant.

Ensemble in The Game of Love and Chance 

(Shaw Festival, 2023). Photo by Emily Cooper.

Some of the humour arose from Marivaux’s plot but as much or more came from the actors’ interaction with the audience or from adlibbing and sharing the fun with a responsive audience.

The costumes for the tomfoolery are designed by Sim Suzer and they looked like eighteenth century non-descript foundation wear. They did the job admirably.

I will settle for giving kudos to the ensemble rather than trying to zero in on individual players. The performance followed the title of the play as the game of improvisation and chance with great success. Carroll deserves huge credit for the idea alone. Rebecca Northan in her first season at the Shaw is credited for her “Improv Coaching.” Judging by the success of the production that seems like a backhanded compliment for a show that is so dependent on improvisation. Alexis Milligan directed movement and the laughter evoked by the actors’ activities may not tell us all that she did. 

It is a production worth seeing and enjoying and you can tell your friends that you saw a play by Marivaux.

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The Game of Love and Chance by Pierre Marivaux improvised by the Shaw Festival Ensemble continues until October 8, 2023, at the Spiegeltent 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

BLITHE SPIRIT – REVIEW OF 2023 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Shaw Festival has produced Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. A wonderful play about a séance with a professional psychic, that brings a man’s first wife back from “the other side” as a spirit. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable production that does have a few headscratchers.

In case you forgot the plot entirely, Ruth (Donna Soares) and her husband Charles (Damin Atkins) are enjoying their second marriage in a beautiful house in the English countryside. Charles  wants to write a novel that involves psychics and invites Madame Arcati (Deborah Hay), a local professional in the field, for a séance so he can get some of the language and tricks of the trade. The result is that his first wife Elvira (Julia Course) appears as a spirit that can be seen and heard only by him. You can imagine the complications when he speaks to Elvira and Ruthe but the latter cannot hear what the spirit is saying.

It is a funny play starting with the behaviour of Edith (Katherine Gauthier), a Navy girl, who dashes from place to place in the house as if she were racing. Atkins and Soares handle Coward’s repartee expertly as they spar about the virtues and vices of Charles’s first wife. The conversation continues with the arrival of their friends Dr. Bradman (David Adams) and his wife (Jenny L. Wright).

Jenny L. Wright, Damien Atkin, Deborah Hay, 

Donna Soares and David Adams. Photo by David Cooper.

The main event is the arrival of the eccentric psychic who presides over a bizarre ritual that establishes contact with the other world. It is a difficult scene to stage not because of the lights, noises and reactions but because of how Madame Arcati acts. Director Mike Payette gives us an exuberant, at times robust Madame Arcati that means a lot of overacting by Deborah Hay. The problem is  that much of it, be it overdone or underdone, is not funny. Many great actresses from Margaret Rutherford to Judi Dench have tackled the role with mixed results that depend as much on the director as on the talent of the performer. It is in that context the I place Hay’s and Payette’s success as fair.

The final headscratcher is the behavior of Edith when she greets people at the door and she bows almost to the floor. Charles and Ruth advised her not to sprint across the house; they would not allow her to do such a ridiculous form of greeting, that is not funny.

The exasperated Charles and Ruth, faced with the cool and infuriating Elvira bring the laughs that make the production enjoyable.

Damien Atkins as Charles and Deborah Hay as Madame Arcati 

with Julia Course as Elvira. Photo by David Cooper.

The set and costumes are designed by James Lavoie. The set is aggressively green, I mean completely green. Some people may find it far too green but I did not mind it at all. It is tastefully if economically furnished with large curtains and windows at the back for spirits to walk though.

The costumes are something else. In the first scene Charles and Ruth receive the Bradmans for dinner. The suits that Charles and Dr. Bradman wear are so hideous that I venture to guess they must have been designed by a committee. In the next scene, Charles appears in his pajamas and house coat that was clearly chosen by the same committee. The ladies are dressed tastefully and Madame Arcati wildly, as becomes her character.

The headscratchers are just that in an otherwise fine production of a play that has been produced only twice before in Niagara-on-the-Lake, in 1979 and and 1993. What is wrong with you people?
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Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward continues until October 8, 2023, at the Festival Theatre, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com

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

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD - REVIEW OF 2023 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

The Playboy of the Western World is a wonderful play by J.M. Synge that takes place in a bar (a pub, if you prefer) on the western edge of Ireland in County Mayo. It premiered in 1907 and it involves a loser and liar named Christy Mahon telling people that he killed his father and becoming a local hero.

I have much to say about the production but let me begin by praising the language of the play and its delivery by the cast. The musicality of the Irish accent in this isolated pub frequented by simple people is like listening to a violin sonata. I did not understand everything that they were saying (the program provides a glossary of the meaning of a few words but it is not enough) but hearing the lovely intonation of the language kept me rapt.

The plot is simple. Christy Mahon (Qasim Khan) reveals that he murdered his father by using a loy, a long, narrow spade for working in stony areas. Christy looks like a loser and we need not worry for long as to how and why he becomes “the playboy of the western world.” Just look around at what people believe from shady televangelists to corrupt politicians  and are prepared to commit crimes in support of some of them. To enhance our perception that this is not a freak event in a rural community in 1907 but something that is happening here and now, director Jackie Maxwell and Costume Designer Judith Bowden, have the characters wear  modern clothing. Whatever his clothes, Christy is a wonderful story-teller and speaks in poetic tones regardless of his appearance.

Marla McLean as Pegeen Mike, Fiona Byrne
 as Widow Quin and Qasim Khan as Christy Mahon
 Photo by Emily Cooper.

Pegeen Mike (Marla McLean) who operates the pub is no fool yet she becomes attracted to Christy, as does Widow Quinn (Fiona Byrne), an attractive woman who tries to win Christy over. There is also a chorus of young girls namely Sarah Tansey (Alexandra Gratton), Susan Brady (Jane Repeta) and Honor Blake (Kiana Woo) who react to him as if he were  rock star.

Pegeen is a smart and assertive woman who is engaged to marry Shawn Keogh (Andrew Lawrie) a religious local farmer and a dishrag of a man and the relationship founders in the presence of Christy.

Michael James (Sanjay Talwar), Pegeen’s father and the owner of the pub, wants her to marry Shawn but his primary interest is drinking. Philly O’Cullen (Jonathan Tan) and Jimmy Farrell (Shane Carty) are his friends and drinking companions. 

I will not reveal the rest of the plot. You should see the play and enjoy the humour, the wonderful acting and the musical rendition of the Irish accent. Jeffrey Simlett is the Voice and Dialect Coach and I give him top marks for being able to get Canadian actors to speak so beautifully in an accent that I suppose is foreign to most of them.

The play is performed in the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre and that creates problems of its own. The rectangular playing area has a bar at one end and a door at the other with some furniture in the middle. The door to the storage area of the pub is behind the bar and people enter the bar from the opposite end. This was somehow forgotten and people started coming and going through “the wall” on one side of the stage. Why?

The greatest credit and praise must go to director Jackie Maxwell. She has assembled and coached a superb cast to act like a well-trained team in giving us the feel and of an isolated Irish pub, proving the humour and the marvels of Synge’s masterpiece. It is a major achievement.

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The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge continues until October 7, 2023, at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre at the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

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

THE APPLE CART and VILLAGE WOOING – REVIEW OF TWO GEMS AT 2023 SHAW FESTIVAL

Reviewed by James Karas

This year the Shaw Festival offers two plays by the playwright after whom it is named, Village Wooing and The Apple  Cart, and both receive superb productions. You may see the short Village Woong at 11:30 in the morning and the full-length Apple Cart in the afternoon and enjoy splendid theatre.

Shaw subtitled The Apple Cart “A political extravaganza” and so it is. The central figure of the play is King Magnus of England (Tom Rooney) who must deal with a rebellious cabinet that wants to demote him, an ambitious mistress who wants to become queen  and an American ambassador who proposes to unite England and the United States and forget the the Declaration of Independence and all that. Magnus deals with these crises with intelligence, diplomacy and a debonair style that defeats his opponents and entertains the audience with extraordinary performances, especially Rooney’s.

His first encounter is with Billy Boanerges (Martin Happer), a crude, working class labour leader, recently elected to Parliament and been made a new cabinet minister. With a red hat and working-class clothes Boanerges is self-assured and aggressive and Martin Happer handles the mannerisms and accent of the man superbly.

The encounter with Boanerges is merely a warmup for Magnus’s meeting with Prime Minister Proteus (Graeme Somerville) and his cabinet. In matching suits and bowlers, the ministers pride themselves on being the elected people who run the country. They are having a problem with the king who overreaches his powers, they think, by vetoing legislation and talking to the public over their heads. They have an ultimatum demanding that His Majesty cease and desist or else!

The cabinet are a querulous bunch who bicker among themselves with accusations of corruption, nepotism and incompetence. They have heavy-duty Roman names such as Crassus (Neil Barclay), the Colonial Secretary, Pliny (Kelly Wong), the Chancellor of the Exchequer), Nicobar (Travis Seetoo), the Foreign Secretary, Balbus (Richard Lam) the Colonia Secretary, Lysistrata (Sharry Flett), Powermistress General, Amanda (Rebecca Northan), Postmistress General. They are an argumentative, dysfunctional bunch who give democracy a bad name. But they make bloody good theatre. 

Tom Rooney as King Magnus with the cast members of 

The Apple Cart (Shaw Festival, 2023). Photo by David Cooper

The play has an “interlude” where Magnus sees his mistress Orinthia. After the king, Orinthia is probably the best role is the play. Sochi Fried  plays an attractive, sexually magnetic, assertive, intelligent and ambitious Orinthia who wants Magnus to dump Queen Jemima (Bahareh Yaraghi) and make her his consort. We get some magnificent acting and a marvelous scene as Orinthia goes on the offensive with all her artillery.

Magnus still has the battle with the cabinet to fight but he has to deal with the overenthusiastic U.S. Ambassador Vanhattan (Andre Morin) who offers the re-union of the U.S. with the British Empire. A tantalizing idea that Magnus must stick handle with his usual intelligence, diplomacy and aplomb.

The final confrontation with the cabinet arrives and the ever-inventive Magnus summons all his resources and you should see and enjoy the play to find out the outcome.

The play is done in the theatre-in-the-round Jackie Maxwell Studio and the set and costumes are by Sophie Bowden. White attire for the king and Queen Jemima, somber suits for the men in the cabinet. Orinthia gets a sensual turquoise robe that she uses as if she were a Homeric siren trying to seduce Odysseus. Magnus, like Odysseus, is no fool to fall for it.   

The all-white set consists of some chairs and tables that are easily moved around. It is more a mythical setting rather than any any attempt to suggest a palatial setting where the action is supposed take place.

Director Eda Holmes does outstanding work in handling the intelligent and diplomatic king, the numerous egos and arguments of the play and maintaining a brisk pace where necessary and and a thoroughly enjoyable production throughout.       

 

Kyle Blair, Donna Soares and Julia Course as Ensemble in 
Village Wooing (Shaw Festival, 2023). Photo by David Cooper.

Village Wooing is a one-act playlet by Shaw that you can see at 11:30 on select dates and it is simply a gem of a production. Shaw wrote it in 1933 and described it as a “commediatina for two voices in three conversations. The voices are those of a man simply described as A and a woman called Z. The conversations take place on the deck of the luxury liner Empress, in a village shop and post office in rural England where Z works and A goes to purchase some items. The third conversation takes place in the same shop that has been purchased by A and Z continues to work there.

That tells you very little about the wonderful performances by David Adams as A and   Donna Soares as Z.  A is a writer of travel books and is content to be left alone in his lounge chair making notes. Z wants to talk to him and she razzes him into a conversation. Shaw gave them some good lines but Adams and Soares raised them to wonderful comedy. Soares is charmingly pushy, determined and wonderful. Adams tries to resist her but he is outgunned by her persistence and humour.

In the second conversation they meet in a village shop and post office. He does not recall ever seeing her, he claims, and again we have a wonderful repartee and humour. In the third conversation, the dynamics have changed because he is her employer but the wonderful atmosphere of the play is maintained.

Village Wooing is written for two characters. The programme lists six actors, which means that there are three couples in various configurations on the stage. Why six actors for a two-hander is a question to be asked and the answer may be that someone felt like it. My complaint is not about that but about the fact that the other four actors were on stage most of the time. They were moving props that did not need to be moved, they stood in the wings and peered from behind the store shelves. They had no business being there and the politest thing I can say is that they were annoying. Their presence was not enough to ruin the production. The programme has photographs of all the actors and shows possible couplings for their performances. There is no photograph of Adams and Soares together. Kyle Blair is one of the six and i have no idea what Julia Course is doing behind the fruit shelves.    

Director Selma Dimitrijevic kept the timing, the pace, the physical movements and the atmosphere of the production under wonderful control for a delightful one-hour production.

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The Apple Cart and Village Wooing  by Bernard Shaw continue until October 7, 2023, at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre and the Royal George Theatre respectively at the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

RINALDO – REVIEW OF 2023 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

There are times when you see a production of an opera where the imagination of the director has taken such a leap that it leaves you breathless. It does not happen often but it does in Louisa Proske’s production of Handel’s Rinaldo at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York.

Rinaldo premiered in 1711 and is an opera seria that was sung by castrati. It has a plot about war, love and sorcery around 1099 during the Crusades. Briefly, the hero Rinaldo loves Almirena, the daughter of King Goffredo. The enemy is led by Argante who is told by the sorceress Armida that the only way he can win is is by capturing Rinaldo. She agrees to capture him herself and she abducts Almirena as well.

Moving on, Argante is in love with Armida and sorceress falls in love with her prisoner Rinaldo, The Christians also have a Sorcerer and, you may have guessed it, Rinaldo and Almirena are rescued and they all live happily ever after,

Handel and his librettist Giacomo Rossi call for a magic castle, a mountain, views of Jerusalem and paraphernalia that Cecil B. de Mille would have been hard put to provide.

Proske and Set Designer Montana Blanco  do away with most of that and leave it to our imagination. The opera opens in a modern hospital room with two youngsters in separate beds, One of  them is unconscious and the other one is awake and dreaming of the heroic deeds of the knights who fought in the Crusades and specifically of Rinaldo. His imagination takes flight and knights jump in through the window of his hospital room. They outfit him as a knight and we see Goffredo outfitted as a leader of the crusades. 

The cast of the 2023 Glimmerglass Festival production of Rinaldo.
 Photo Credit: Evan Zimmerman/The Glimmerglass Festival

The two youngsters become Rinaldo and Almirena. The hospital staff and visitors become the rest of the characters of the opera. The large window at the back is used as a screen for the projection of photographs and videos including a cartoon representation of the climb of Goffredo and his followers up the steep mountain to fight the sorceress, Armida. They are blown away. The Sorcerer on Rinaldo’s side arms them with injection needles  and they go back and blow the Armida side off.

The imaginative transformation of two youngsters in a hospital into the main characters of the opera and the ability to carry the whole idea to the end struck me as brilliant. The opera begins and ends in the hospital room where the hospital staff and visitors who became the medieval characters revert to their modern selves.

The staging and directing are accompanied by some extraordinary singing. The production boasts three countertenors. Even in Handel’s time, the castrati who sang the major male roles were rotated by undamaged singers but for this production Glimmerglass found three outstanding countertenors. Rinaldo is sung by Anthony Roth Costanzo who has a delicate physique and a voice of surpassing beauty and versatility that manages all the trills with utter ease.  The same high praise belongs to countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon  who sings Goffredo as well as countertenor Nicholas Kelliher who sings the smaller role of Sorcerer.

Peter Murphy, Kyle Sanchez Tingzon, Madison Hertel, and Anthony 

Roth Costanzo. Photo Credit: Evan Zimmerman/The Glimmerglass Festiva

Jasmine Habersham sings Almirena in a fine performance. But when it comes to female characters, the show is stolen by soprano Keely Futterer as the sorceress Armida. Dressed in black and accompanied by three Furies dressed completely in black, she plays up the role and manages magical appearances and disappearances as Almirena. A robust and vocally accomplished performance.

Bass-baritone Korin Thomas-Smith sings Argante, the leader of the “other side’ who is in love with Armida. Fine, resonant voice and superb performance.

I make no secret of my admiration of Louisa Proske’s imaginative treatment of the opera. But in all fairness, I should mention that there was a production of Rinaldo at Glyndebourne in 2011 that bears some resemblance to Proske’s It was directed by Robert Carsen and it set in an English private school where the students take on the roles of the opera. It is not as well thought through as Proske’s and the singers are more conventional. But that production is more Monty Python’s Spamalot than Handel.

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Rinaldo George Frideric Handel is being performed five times between July 28 and August 17, 2023, at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. www.glimmerglass.org

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