SHAW FESTIVAL OPENS WITH A HOME RUN, A TRIPLE AND A BASE HIT

by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

This year’s Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake offers ten productions including a lunchtime performance of a play by J.M. Barrie whose title, Half an Hour, discloses its length.

The Festival’s patron playwright, Bernard Shaw, is again a minority shareholder with only two plays but he does get 50% more than anyone else. The Irish do get three plays, same as the Americans, while the English get two and the Russians and Canadians merit one each.

I saw three productions last week and will review them in order of preference.

HARVEY

Mary Chase’s Harvey is one of those plays that if you see it once you never forget it. In fact even people who have never seen it may know about that play with the six-foot invisible rabbit. Yes, that’s the one and the Shaw Festival has given it a first rate production full of charm and laughter in an almost fairy tale atmosphere.

Elwood P. Dowd (Peter Krantz) is a bachelor who lives somewhere in America and represents utter decency and love of humanity. He tried being smart, he tells us, for about forty years and did not like it. He switched to being nice and has found happiness. Happiness comes with visits to almost every bar in town accompanied by his friend Harvey who happens to be a six-foot plus rabbit. Like all rabbits of that description, Harvey is invisible to the normal eye but his presence is quite palpable to Elwood and, as the evening progresses, perhaps, to some other people.

Elwood’s socially ambitious sister Veta (Mary Haney) finds Elwood and Harvey a bit of an embarrassment and would like to commit the former to a psychiatric facility. She takes him to young Dr. Sanderson (Gray Powell) and old Dr. Chumley (Norman Browning) but Elwood so charms Nurse Kelly (Diana Donnelly) that Veta is committed instead of Elwood.

This calls for a lawsuit and Judge Omar Gaffney (Guy Bannerman) is summoned. The result, aside from hilarity, is a touching parable about human decency, good manners, indeed chivalry, and virtues that are almost never honoured.

Director Joseph Ziegler succeeds in bringing out the humour and humanity of the play in full measure. For Peter Krantz the role of Elwood P. Dowd must be a godsend and a career-defining performance for he excels in it. He brings out both the naiveté and intelligence of Elwood who knows a few things about life despite the apparent impression of almost no-screws left emanating from his relationship with Harvey.

Mary Haney is excellent as his uptight sister assisted in equal measure by Zarrin Darnell-Martin as her daughter Myrtle Mae. Veteran Norman Brown produces much laughter as the arrogant psychiatrist Chumley who is brought down a few pegs by drink and Elwood’s ‘reality’.

Diana Donnelly’s Nurse Kelly is attractive and humane when Dr. Sanderson is dumb and professional and both do excellent work.

The play has two sets, the paneled library of the Dowd mansion and the cold reception room of the psychiatric facility. Aside from well-designed sets by Sue LePage, the crew does heroic and extremely efficient work in changing scenes without intermission.

The Shaw scores a home run and Harvey is, as they say, a must-see.

ONE TOUCH OF VENUS

The production of a musical is de rigueur at the Shaw but great credit is due to Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell for choosing works of substantial quality that have been almost forgotten. This year’s selection is One Touch of Venus by Kurt Weill, Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman. It was a big hit when it opened on Broadway in 1943 but it has been revived only sporadically ever since.

Weill (music), Nash (lyrics) and Nash and Perelman (book) make an all-star team for writing a musical. The result may not have been stellar but it is a work with wit, humour and some superb music. If some of the wit is out of the reach of today’s audience it is not the fault of the writers. Times and context change.

One Touch of Venus is a fairy tale about a statue of the goddess of love coming to life in New York and falling in love with a hapless barber named Rodney Hatch (Kyle Blair).

Venus (Robin Evan Willis) disposes of Rodney’s screeching fiancée Gloria (Julie Martell) - sic transit Gloria – and the two lovers survive some scrapes including a stint in jail. But the two finally come through and are finally free to live happily ever after in a suburb of New York!

The production, in the small but elegant Royal George Theatre, (capacity 328), has the equivalent feel of watching the race scene from Ben-Hur on a 19” TV after seeing it on the big screen. You get the benefit of being close to the stage but that does not make up for the lack of a large stage for a large Broadway musical.

You get a lot of music from a 10-piece orchestra but it is a compromise. How much better would it sound with 28 instruments in a large theatre!

As for the performers, Robin Evan Willis has a gorgeous body that even Venus would have approved of – the Venus de Milo and the slim-hipped, all-too-angelic rendition of Botticelli. If Willis’s face does not quite satisfy one’s image of Venus, it is probably because no woman can. Unfortunately, her vocal ability does not match the curves of her body. She needs to soar at times but, alas, she cannot and all you get is volume instead of high notes.

Kyle Blair does a good comic job as the henpecked barber who has landed a goddess but his voice falls short of expectations. When he attempts to ascend the musical scale, he comes perilously close to releasing a flat screech.

The idea of an incarnated Venus is so delicious it energizes the imagination like a fairy tale remembered from childhood. If the production does not satisfy all our theatrical appetites the way nectar and ambrosia sated the gods, we do not leave the theatre hungry.

No doubt one can visualize a better production of One Touch of Venus just as one can imagine a better Venus but the one is more difficult to achieve than the other. In the meantime, imagination in full throttle, you can start your search in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Give it a triple.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

The Festival opened with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy An Ideal Husband. If you remove the wit, the epigrams and the balanced sentences from the play, you will end up with a melodrama that no Artistic Director would touch with a ten-foot instrument. In the hands of Wilde, however, melodrama became scintillating comedy.

I wish I could say that director Jackie Maxwell and Designer Judith Bowden have put together a production that does justice to the play and to the audience.

Sir Robert Chiltern (Patrick Galligan) is happily married, has a big house, is wealthy and is Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He is a man of rectitude, ability, honour and … well, he is too good to be true. His wife, Lady Chiltern (Catherine McGregor), another upstanding person, simply adores him.

His nemesis quickly appears in the person Mrs. Chevely (Moya O’Connell) who wants to blackmail him. She knows that Sir Robert made his fortune by using insider information and therefore is a fraud. She has a letter to prove it.

How does one stop Mrs. Chevely from wreaking havoc in this man’s life and what will his wife say if she finds out. That is a toughie but the Chiltern’s good friend and man-about-town Lord Goring (Steven Sutcliffe) may find a solution. Where did Mrs. Chevely get that nice brooch that she was wearing last night?

For much of the first two acts, the audience sat in almost funeral silence. They emitted a bit of laughter here and there but not much. During the last two acts there was some more laughter but Wilde’s play was getting a very poor return on its excellent lines.

What went right? Catherine McGregor, dressed beautifully (as were most of the women) managed to exude the upper-crust English hauteur. Moya O’Connell’s Mrs. Chevely was from the same class but a nasty blackmailer and abuser. Well done. Anthony Bekenn managed to get most of the laughs as the imperturbable servant Phipps.

What went wrong? Just about everything else. The play opens in a gorgeous two-story room full of people, in the Chiltern residence. Here we have a dimly lit room, almost all black and seriously in need of a decorator with a modicum of good taste. It is a depressing and simply awful set. Lord Goring’s apartment looks like a warehouse that is about to be converted into lofts and his smoking room looks like a storage area. Again, simply awful.

The play requires the crisp, upper-crust English accent that makes the wit and epigrams sound as if they were cut from glass. Can Canadian actors do such an accent? If they can they are few and far between and there was little evidence of that in this production. Patrick Galligan can play many roles but he does not convince us that he is made of fine-grained prime ministerial timber. Steven Sutcliffe comes closer as Lord Goring but he is a long way from the accent of the nobility. And what was that ridiculous vest with an apron doing on him? He is supposed to be stylish not a dork.

This Ideal Husband needs to lighten up. First, literally by turning up the lights and giving the set a good paint job with light-coloured tints. Then get the actors to pick up the pace, brush up on those accents and generate some energy and some laughter before the season is quite over.

Give it a base hit.

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An Ideal Husband will run until October 31, 2010 at the Festival Theatre. One Touch of Venus and Harvey will run until October 10 and 31, 2010 respectively at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com 1 800-511-SHAW

IDOMENEO DONE BY TRAINEES AND MAGNIFICENT FLYING DUTCHMAN FROM CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY

Erin Fisher as Idamante and Laura Albino as Ilia in Idomeneo. Photo: Michael Cooper.

Reviewed by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com


The Canadian Opera Company wraps up its current season with two operas about the terrible fate of two seamen who tangle with supernatural powers. One of them is a Greek and the other is a Dutchman.

King Idomeneus of Crete runs into a violent storm on his way back from the Trojan War. He vows to the sea god Neptune that if he is saved he will sacrifice the first person that he sees on land. He is saved and the first person he sees is his son Idamantes.

A Dutch sea captain challenges the devil and vows to go around the Cape of Good Hope if it takes forever. He is condemned to sail the high seas and touch land only once every seven years. He can find redemption only if he finds a woman who will love him unto death.

The story of Idomeneus has been captured for the stage by Mozart in his 1781 opera seria Idomeneo and the hapless Dutch captain gained operatic immortality in Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman which premiered in 1843.

Idomeneo is directed by Francois de Carpentries and boasts of Isabel Bayrakdarian, Kristina Szabo and Paul Groves, among others, in the cast. For the May 19th performance, they were all given a night off and were replaced by members of the Ensemble Studio, the training arm of the COC.

The singers were put through a number of weeks of training and rehearsals for the performance and given a chance to perform in a major production. The result was something well beyond an amateur production but it did have some rough edges, some infelicitous singing and awkwardness. Mozart was always at hand to carry the performance, however, warts and all.

Idomeneo being an opera seria the singers are frequently handed lengthy recitatives or arias and left on their own. They provide true tests of one’s mettle.

Tenor Michael Colvin, dressed like a South American dictator, epaulets and all, was a good Idomeneo vocally but I found his stage movements awkward, not to say incomprehensible. He seemed to go all over the place at times and I am not sure if it was for dramatic purposes or for exercise.

The role of Ilia, the captive Trojan Princess in love with Idamante, was split between Laura Albino in the first half and Simone Osborne in the second half. Albino got to do the bulk of the work in the first two acts of the opera but I think Osborne had the vocal edge on her in the third act where the workload is lighter.

Erin Fisher is listed as a mezzo soprano and she sang the role of Idamante. She has a very light, colourless voice and her Idamante came out as simply insipid. The role should probably been given to a tenor as is done frequently or to a fine mezzo soprano.

Ileana Montalbetti sang the role of Electra, the Argive princess. She has a commanding stage presence and a considerable voice. Electra is in love with Idamante and things are not looking good for her. What is worse, the Greek princess is about to lose the Greek prince to Ilia, a foreigner and a former enemy of the Greeks.

The result is that Electra is pretty angry, no, make that furious. Her rage is apparent throughout but really comes out in Act III in her aria “D’Oreste, d’Aiace”. Montalbetti has the vocal range for the role but she could not convey all the rage. Too bad in an otherwise fine performance.

The set was very effective suggesting scenes away from the ship on the right and the ships and sea on the left, including indications of scenes under water.

The Flying Dutchman receives a magnificent production with superb performances from the principals.

The current production is a revival of the COC’s 2000 staging directed by Christopher Alden with Set and Costume designs by Allen Meyer. The dominant stage prop is a ship’s wheel. There is a path stage front leading to the raised platform that serves as a ship’s deck and Daland’s home. It is effective without being overwhelming.

Russian bass baritone Evgeny Nikitin was the distraught Dutchman and he moved with poise and sang with superb sonority. Soprano Julie Makerov’s Senta displayed vocal beauty but her costume made her looking like a cleaning lady. I expected her to grab a mop and pail any minute and start scrubbing the deck.

Swedish bass Mats Almgren was a fine Daland and German tenor Robert Kunzli was very god as the hunter Erik who loses Senta to the Dutchman.

At the end of the opera, the Dutchman becomes convinced that Senta will not be faithful to death – after all she just betrayed Erik. But Senta wants to be faithful and when the Dutchman leaves her behind, she throws herself into the sea. The Dutchman’s ship sinks and he and Senta are transfigured and rise toward heaven. In the COC version, a more practical solution is found. Erik the hunter shoots Senta and the Dutchman goes up the winding stairs to god-knows-where.
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Idomeneo by W. A. Mozart was performed by the Ensemble Studio on May 19, 2010. The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner was performed eight times between April 24 and May 20, 2010 the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel: 416-363-6671. www.coc.ca

FASCINATING PRODUCTION OF AGAMEMNON BY NEW THEATRE COMPANY

Laura Nordin, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio and Michelle Alexander in Agamemnon

Reviewed by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

You can see Aeschylus’s Agamemnon in Toronto!

You may consider the exclamation mark a bit dramatic but try to recall the last time you could see any play by Aeschylus in southern Ontario.

In fact, productions of Greek tragedy in Toronto are about as frequent as balanced budgets – they are almost impossible to find. Or so I thought until a couple of weeks ago and I lived to be proven wrong. The corrective action has been taken by Michael Wighton who has directed a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in a church hall.

Agamemnon was first produced in 458 BC and it is the first part of the Oresteia, the only surviving trilogy from Ancient Greece. It is by all accounts one of the great works of Western literature.

We don’t have much information about how Agamemnon was performed in Aeschylus’ time but we do know that three actors wearing masks played all the roles and there was a Chorus of perhaps a dozen men who spoke, sang and danced. The change of character was indicated by wearing a different mask and no doubt through changes in vocal intonation.

The play has six characters in addition to the Chorus. Wighton produces the play with only three actors who play all the parts. His is a bold re-imagination of the play and quite an achievement. He cuts out the part of Cassandra but otherwise seems to be faithful to the text in Ted Hughes’ translation.

The three actors are Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Laura Nordin and Michelle Alexander. They tackle Aeschylus’ complex language and Hughes’ taut poetry with vigour and conviction. They enunciate clearly and modulate their voices almost operatically. They can tell the difference between speaking verse and mouthing prose and the result is a superb reading of the play.

Under the circumstances, the three actors play the Chorus in addition to all the other roles. There is some chanting, gesturing, screaming and dance movements but for the most part the Chorus becomes another speaking role in this production. The characters of the play are played by more than one actor. Clytemnestra, the central character, is played by all three actors.

There are some quirky moments in the production. One of the choral odes is performed as shadow theatre. A sheet is drawn across the stage and the actors recite their lines and perform dance movements behind the sheet. That is effective enough but it is followed by a rather silly scene where a panel representing the sea is raised and when ships are mentioned papier-mâché models of ships are shown. This produced some giggles and it seemed like a silly gimmick that has no place in Greek tragedy.

Ted Hughes has indicated an Interval near the middle of the play and Wighton has decided to have someone walk across the playing area with a sign that reads “Interval.” The play is performed without an intermission and the “Interval” sign produced giggles.

This is the debut production of Theatre Cipher and it looks like Greek tragedy on a very thin shoestring. The theatre is the hall of a church with a few raised seats that can accommodate about 50 people.

There is a raised area at the back that serves for a stage but the action takes place in the open area close to the audience. Props are minimal and costumes are non-descript.

One cannot have Greek tragedy without a Chorus and perhaps other paraphernalia. About half the lines of the play belong to the Chorus, after all. Michael Wighton has proved, however, that an imaginative director with three superb actors who pay attention to the language of the play can provide a fascinating approach to Greek tragedy.

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Agamemnon by Aeschylus opened on May 22 and will play until June 5, 2010 at the Church Hall, Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Church, 823 Manning Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.theatrecipher.com/

WAITING FOR THE PARADE AND FAITH HEALER FROM SOULPEPPER

Fiona Byrne, Krystin Pellerin, Michelle Monteith in Waiting for the Parade. Photo: Sian Richards

Reviewed by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

Five very different women are waiting for the parade. We area in Calgary during the early 1940’s and the women are waiting for World War II to finish and for the soldiers to come home. Playwright John Murrell built his 1977 play Waiting For The Parade on that rather simple premise. Soulpepper has staged a revival of the play in the Young Centre, in the Distillery District.

The five women tell their stories directly to the audience or engage in the everyday routines while waiting for the war to end and give us details about their lives.

Margaret (Nancy Palk) is an old, tall woman who is dying of loneliness. Her husband was imprisoned before the war and is now dead. One of her sons is in the army and the other one is arrested and imprisoned for distributing seditious flyers.

Catherine (Michelle Monteith) is a factory worker whose husband volunteered to go to war. He is declared missing in action. In her loneliness, Catherine takes up with another man and perhaps many other men.

Janet (Deborah Drakefield) is the officious and self-important supervisor of the work done by the other women for the war effort. She is a hard taskmaster, probably to compensate for her husband who stayed behind to read the news on the radio rather than join the army.

Eve (Krystin Pellerin) is married to a much older man who could not enlist. She is a frustrated woman who, like the rest of the others, is trying to cope. She is also a teacher and equally frustrated at her young students joining the army.

Marta (Fiona Byrne) is the daughter of a German with Nazi sympathies. He has been put in a detention camp and she is ostracized by the community because she is German. Murrell does not shy from depicting the bigotry and ugliness of society towards someone whom they consider different.

The vignettes of life during the war and before are evocative and moving. Murrell eschews any sentimentality and he certainly does not go for the “brave women that kept the home fires burning” syndrome.

The play moves slowly as we learn about the lives of the five women and the ordinary problems that they face in their daily life. The stories range from loneliness, to promiscuity to shame to frustration and physical danger.

Joseph Ziegler directs the five talented actors with finesse. All five women are convincing as characters and convey their lives quite well.

The set consists of a number of wood-paneled closets somewhere in a Red Cross facility where the women roll gauzes and produce other items for the war. Above the panels hang a number of soldiers’ uniforms and helmets. They are a vivid reminder that the men who wear those uniforms so far away from home are the reason for the women’s way of life.

Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, also playing at the Young Centre brings to mind an exercise in advanced creative writing. The project is to create three characters who describe similar events that all three experienced together.

Friel would come up with a marvelous character named Frank who is a faith healer. He is a talented performer, a mountebank, a charlatan and, at times, perhaps, a healer. He has some unsavoury characteristics but he fascinating.

His companion Grace is equally interesting. The daughter of a judge, she puts up with Frank’s travelling show and there is no rational explanation for her actions.

The third character is Teddy, the manager of the travelling show.

Each has a story to tell and Friel has written one lengthy monologue each for Grace and Teddy and two for Frank. He opens and closes the play.

Some of the incidents described, especially from different viewpoints are interesting and Friel’s prose can be excellent but is this really theatre? There is not all that much to distinguish it from a dramatic reading of a short story.

One cannot complain about the quality of the performances. The intense, dramatic showman Frank of Stuart Hughes is a performance to remember. Brenda Robins’ Grace is superb and Diego Matamoros as Teddy makes a very funny, sometimes endearing but always put-upon manager.

I must admit that during the lengthy monologues I found my mind wandering on occasion. Theatre is supposed to dramatize and bring prose or poetry to life. Here we got the prose where the enactment of some of the incidents described would have been incomparably better.

Director Gina Wilkinson mustered the fine performances from the actors but in the end it was a disappointing night at the theatre.

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Waiting for the Parade by John Murrell continues until May 29, 2010: Faith Healer by Brian Friel continues until June 4, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 416 866-8666.

A WEEK AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE IN LONDON – Part 2

ALEX JENNINGS as Henry (Benjamin Britten) and RICHARD GRIFFITHS as Fitz (WH Auden) in The Habit of Art. Photograph by Johan Persson


Reviewed by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

The Habit of Art is theatre at its best. This is Alan Bennett’s new play now showing at the National Theatre’s Lyttleton stage in London.

What justifies such praise? Is it just temporary enthusiasm after an enjoyable evening out or is there enough substance to the play and the production to justify the panegyric?

The answer is “yes” to all. The play is about two famous Englishmen of the twentieth century, the poet W. H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten. The very idea of producing a play about two such people would induce snores. In the hands of Bennett, you are guaranteed some very witty dialogue at least. You get that and more.

Rather than giving us the more gory parts of their lives (they were both homosexuals with a penchant for young boys), Bennett looks at them as colourful human beings without avoiding the dirt under their fingernails.

Bennett becomes a character in his own play (played by Elliot Levey). The Author is watching a rehearsal of his play at the National Theatre. The director is missing and Kay, the Stage Manager (Frances de la Tour) is putting the actors through the script.

Richard Griffiths plays the actor Fitz who plays the part of Auden. Alex Jennings plays the actor Henry who plays the part of Britten. Adrian Scarborough plays the actor Donald who plays Humphrey Carpenter a former BBC interviewer and the biographer of both Britten and Auden.

In other words we have layer upon layer of reality and unreality. The characters in the Author’s play that is being rehearsed become the actors in The Habit of Art.

Richard Griffiths as Fitz and the bizarre Auden gives a defining performance and it would be difficult to imagine anyone else trying the roles. Auden is a boozy, filthy slob (he urinates in the sink) who brings young boys to his residence for oral sex. He is also a brilliant poet and raconteur.

Alex Jennings is the composer who consults Auden about the libretto for his opera Death in Venice. We are treated to a brilliant discussion of the Thomas Mann’s novel and the function of a libretto.

Stephen Wight does a splendid job as the young male prostitute as does Scarborough in the role of Carpenter.

Frances de la Tour has a voice and an accent that I find simply delicious. It is like a superlative cabernet sauvignon wine, properly aged and aerated, which diffuses its taste and aroma upon being swirled around your mouth.

The Habit of Art combines those rare qualities of wit, literate fun, low humour and a theatricality that I unbeatable.

Murder, lust, greed, treachery, rape, poisoning - these were the staples of Jacobean tragedy. They were also the staples of many of Shakespeare’s plays but he did it much better.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) was a prolific writer but only a few of his plays are produced with any regularity. His 1621 tragedy Women Beware Women has received a major revival at the National Theatre.

The clerk Leantio (Samuel Barnett) marries the beautiful and wealthy Bianca (Lauren O’Neill). She gives up wealth and status for love. That’s one plot strand. Next: Isabella (Vanessa Kirby) is forced by her father Fabritio (James Hayes) to marry the moronic Ward (Harry Melling), who makes up in acreage what he lacks in brains.

These marriages go astray pretty quickly. The Duke of Florence (Richard Lintern) sees Bianca and falls in lust with her. Livia (Harriet Walter) arranges for the two to be alone and the Duke “seduces” Bianca. Rape is such an ugly word.

Livia also arranges for Isabella to have an affair with Hippolito, her brother and Isabella’s uncle.
As if that were not enough, Livia ensnares the cuckolded Leantio into her gentle arms and the stage is set for bloodshed.

Director Marianne Elliott and Designer Lez Brotherston have opted for a modern dress production on a monumental set that is all black. The revolving stage can indicate the ducal palace or less palatial scenes and it is very effective.

The plot unravels methodically with superb ensemble acting. Full marks go to Walter as the conniving and evil Livia who can be so charming when she wants to. The other two women are just as much victims of circumstances as aiders and abetters in the evils that befall them.

In a patriarchal society the real pigs are the men and you can choose between Hippolito, the incestuous uncle, the lustful and brutal duke or some of the other creeps of the play.

Really Old, Like Forty Five by Tamsin Oglesby playing in the small Cottesloe Thetare has a misleading title. It sounds like a light comedy with jokes about getting old, wetting your pants, farting etc. It is not. The play is about dementia and although there are many witty lines, it is a deadly serious play.

Perhaps it is two plays but it’s a muddle in any event. It takes place sometime in the future and we have the story of three siblings who are starting it to lose it. Alice (Marcia Warren), Lyn (Judy Parfitt) and their brother Robbie (Gawn Granger) display all the horrible signs of dementia.

We meet some members of their family and the final scenes are in a nursing home with all the concomitant horrors.

The scenes with the siblings are interchanged with scenes showing Monroe (Paul Ritter), a government policy official with an accountant (Paul Bazely) and a researcher (Tanya Franks) address various aspects of aging and dementia.

This is documentary and illustrative theatre about what the future (really the present) holds for the aging population. Interesting and depressing but not very good theatre.

MARIA STUARDA FINALLY COMES TO TORONTO AND HIGH TIME TOO

Alexandrina Pendatchanska as Elisabetta and Serena Farnocchia as Maria Stuarda. Photo: Michael Cooper

Reviewed by James Karas
jameskaras@rogers.com

Mary and Elizabeth were cousins – first cousins, once removed, to be sure. Elizabeth was 11 years older than Mary and the two never met, not even at a family picnic. Eventually Elizabeth signed Mary’s death warrant and the latter was beheaded as was the fashion of the time.

These women were no ordinary mortals. Mary was Queen of Scotland and France and with some luck may have become Queen of England as well. Cousin Elizabeth I terminated that ambition with an axe.

All of which is just fine except for the fact that the two never met. Friedrich Schiller did not like that either and solved the problem in 1800 by writing a play in which the two queens did meet and au revoir historical accuracy.

To be fair, Schiller was more interested in examining philosophical questions such as free will and acceptance of responsibility. Questions like was Elizabeth a prisoner of circumstances and was she able to exercise her free will when she decided upon the fate of Mary? Did she accept responsibility for her actions? Did have one up morally by accepting responsibility for the murder of her husband? Heavy stuff.

A few decades later Giuseppe Bardari, a 17-year old writer (and future chief of police of Naples) fashioned Schiller’s play into a libretto for Gaetano Donizetti and after a somewhat tortuous history it did become his 43rd opera. Schiller’s philosophical baggage was blown away by Donizetti’s marvelous music as was all pretense to historical accuracy. Sadly enough, this is the first time that Maria Stuarda has been produced in Canada.

Maria Stuarda is far from being the best work in the bel canto repertoire but it has enough beautiful melodies and choruses to make you want to see it again and again.

The opera has two major soprano roles in Mary and Elizabeth. The merciless Elizabeth is frequently sung by a mezzo but a soprano with a reasonably big voice and sense of drama is perfectly acceptable. Bulgarian soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska has a lovely, creamy voice that may be just a tad small for the role. She sang beautifully but was short of the dramatic expression that the role demands.

The dramatic passion that Pendatchanska lacks, Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia possesses and delivers in the title role. I wished that the two had changed roles. Farnocchia would have delivered the fire power that Pendatchanska was short of and the latter would have been a sweeter Mary.

American tenor Eric Cutler was a competent Leicester but he has some awkward walking habits. He is a heroic character (both women love him) but he gave the impression of someone who was not quite sure of his footing. American baritone Weston Hurt was a solid Lord Cecil as was bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi as Talbot.

The set by Benoit Dugardyn looked like the interior of an Elizabethan theatre. There is a raised stage in the middle and curtains that are opened and closed reinforcing the idea of a theatre. The set gave the production a nice Elizabethan flavour but the drawbridges that were raised and lowered somewhat haltingly were not as successful.

The costumes designed by Ingeborg Bernerth and worn by Elizabeth and her retinue looked like round coffee tables (wobbly dining room tables was my companion’s description). Paintings of Elizabeth I and ladies of the court do show such dresses but somehow they looked rather awkward in this production.

Director Stephen Lawless made the singers lounge on the steps of the raised stage a bit too often, I thought. But this is bel canto and you have to let the singers get their notes out instead of worrying about plot and such minutiae as acting. There were some highly effective scenes including the final tableau where Mary raises her arms as if she were crucified.

Antony Walker conducted the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and the COC Chorus was simply outstanding.

By the way the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth is relatively short but it does give an opportunity for some fireworks. Go for the whole opera and not the imaginary confrontation.

The important thing is that we finally got a Maria Stuarda in Toronto and a very good one at that.
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Maria Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti opened on May 1 and was performed eight times until May 30, 2010 on various dates at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel: 416-363-6671. http://www.coc.ca/

IN SEARCH OF GREEK DRAMA OR WHERE IN THE WORLD IS HAMMERSMITH

Lisa Stuart as Antigone and Matthew Wade, Chris Gunter, Robert Finlay - Chorus.
Photo: Yannis Katsaris

Reviewed by James Karas

You want to see some Greek drama, right?

Your train does not stop in Greece and you have access to the three cities that mount the largest number of theatrical productions – let’s call it the Triple Crown of Theatre in English – that is Toronto, New York and London.

You start with No. 3, Toronto, a city with a large Greek community, a vibrant theatrical scene and … you come up empty-handed. There is no Greek drama to be had in Canada’s cultural capital.

You are not faint-hearted so you try New York, the Mecca of theatre in North America. Between Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-off Broadway and the Hudson River there has to be at least one production of an Ancient Greek play. Right? Wrong. Even the Classic Stage Company that usually produced Greek plays has gone AWOL or at least Russian.

That does it. You will simply have to go to Numero Uno, London, the theatrical capital of the world. What with West End, Off West End, Fringe and who knows what other venues there has to be enough productions of Greek drama to require the fingers on both hands. Surely those extra-judicially borrowed and temporarily stored in the British Museum Parthenon aka Elgin Marbles encourage production of Greek tragedy and comedy.

There are at least 100 plays that you can see in London. This is in addition to the 38 musicals. If you want to see everything in ten days, you will need to go to the theatre about 14 times a day. You give up that idea quickly and start scouring the lists for Greek drama.

You find only one production and that in Hammersmith. The population center bearing that name is on the subway line and you give a sigh of relief at the thought of getting there without any Odyssean adventures.

In fact you have struck gold. You have found the Theatre Lab Company’s production of Antigone at the Riverside Studios. The production is directed by Anastasia Revi, TLC’s Artistic Director.

Every production of Ancient Greek tragedy is largely a creation of the director’s imagination. We know very little about production practices in the fifth century and know nothing about the music, singing and dancing that were part of the production. Actors wore masks then but rarely put them on these days and we have to settle for a translation and a very different milieu from the Theatre of Dionysus of around 441 B.C.

Revi is faithful to the text and she uses Robert Fagles’ poetic translation. She has limited acting space but makes remarkable use of what is at hand.

Lisa Stuart is an intense, dramatic and reckless Antigone in contrast to the down to earth Ismene of Kathryn Carpenter.

Skinhead George Siena, dressed in black, makes a frightful Creon. He looks and acts the dictator, threatening, sometimes cajoling and always menacing.

The Chorus of Antigone is supposed to consists of Theban elders. Revi either could not find any elder actors or deliberately chose to have a Chorus consisting of three young men. They are athletic and do some dancing and chanting. They are amazingly effective and show what talent and imagination can do. The Chorus is the most difficult aspect of Greek tragedy to deal with and it frequently bombs.

Tobias Deacon made a wonderful and very humorous Sentry. One does not associate too many laughs with Greek tragedy but the poor, terrified Sentry who has to tell Creon that his orders have been disobeyed can be quite funny. Deacon was.

The ageless Tiressias was played by a very young John Buckingham, nude above the waist. I don’t think anyone has ever imagined the blind Tiresias as a man in his twenties.

One of the major strengths of the production was the music composed and performed by Anne Malone and Noah Young. They were on stage all the time, seated on the side. Much of the music consisted of simple but evocative percussion and some vocal composition.

The play takes place in front of the palace of Oedipus but Designer Maira Vazeou has opted for a derelict house with broken windows rather than a more imposing structure.

Revi has been the Artistic Director of TLC since 1998 and the company seems to have made the rounds of a number of European cities. They even touched ground in New York but they have yet to make it to Canada. Too bad.

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Antigone by Sophocles played until May 2, 2010 at the Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, Hammersmith, London. http://www.theatrelab.co.uk/.