THE PENELOPIAD – REVIEW OF HART HOUSE THEATRE PRODUCTION

By James Karas

In her 2005 novel The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood took us on a romp of a retelling of the story of Penelope, the famous wife of the far more famous Odysseus. She gave it a feminist perspective and told the story from the point of view of Penelope and, according to Homer in the Odyssey the twelve servants who betrayed her and were hanged by Odysseus

The novel was turned into a play and was staged at Stratford-upon-Avon, among other places, by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Arts Centre of Canada. It is now playing at Hart House Theatre at the University of Toronto.

The play opens with Penelope in Hades telling us her own story as the unattractive daughter of Icarus and a naiad who was won by Odysseus and packed off to marry him at age 15. She gives us background information not included in the Odyssey. 

Amanda Cordner as Penelope. Photo: Scott Gorman

We see her twelve maids who are also in Hades, accuse her of treachery for not speaking up in their defence. You will recall that the suitors who had invaded Odysseus’s palace during his 20 year absence were pressuring Penelope to marry one of them. Her ruse of weaving a shroud for her father-in-law Laertes was helped by the servants who were in cahoots with her.

The servants cavorted with the suitors and maintained the ruse (mostly) but when Odysseus returned he ordered them executed for treachery.

Amanda Cordner as Penelope tells her story in a dramatic and effective manner. She presents Penelope as intelligent, faithful, patient and wily (like her husband) but also smart enough to pretend that she did not recognize him on his return or did not know about his infidelities.

The twelve maids form a chorus and they sing, dance and speak the light, sometimes burlesque verses that Atwood wrote. Some of the singing is humorous, some of it lyrical and some atrocious. They speak in groups of four or all twelve in unison and I find that approach quite annoying. You prick up your ears to follow what they are saying and it amounts to a lot of trouble for very little. There are a number of times when they sounded as if they were cackling.

 The women of the ensemble, Amanda Cordner as Penelope. Photo: Scott Gorman, 

The cast of thirteen are all women and they play more than a couple of dozen characters. Ellie Posadas is allowed to overact as the beautiful Helen and presents her as a bimbo and a moron. A nice and funny take on the famous slut. Neta J. Rose play the faithful servant Euricleia as an old hag.  

The actors who play Odysseus (Arielle Zamora), Icarus (Shannon Dickens), and Antinous (Julia Hussey) come across as female impersonators which is in keeping with the burlesque take on Homer. They are mostly caricatures resembling something from Monty Python. 

Director Michelle Langille has to deal with the serious, feminist approach to the story as well as the lighter side of Atwood’s verse.

Penelope has been usually (but by no means always) viewed as the ideal wife, a paragon of virtue, patience, fidelity and intelligence. She was the product of the imagination of men in a strictly patriarchal society. The same society did produce men who created heroic women like Antigone and Lysistrata. So that the feminist point of view is not entirely missing.

This transfer from novel to stage is not always successful but the young actors and production team of Hart House Theatre who are almost all amateurs deserve kudos for the production.   

You will get an interesting romp through the world of the Odyssey from a different perspective.

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The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood continues until November 24, 2018 at Hart House Theatre, 7 Hart House Circle, Toronto, Ontario. www.harthousetheatre.ca Telephone (416) 978-8849

MARY POPPINS – REVIEW OF YOUNG PEOPLE’S THEATRE PRODUCTION

By James Karas

Mary Poppins, now playing at Young People’s Theatre, has something for everybody but when it comes to young people, it has everything for all of them. The YPT production is a 90-minute version of the Broadway musical based on the Walt Disney film of 1964 which in turn was based on the children’s books of P.L. Travers.

Those who are of certain age or have read the books will recall that there is chaos in the Banks family in Edwardian England. Mr. and Mrs. Banks (Shane Carty and Jewelle Blackman) cannot find a nanny who will stay for more than a few weeks. They have prepared an ad for the Times. But, as if by magic, Mary Poppins (Vanessa Sears) arrives and offers her services. She comes before the ad appears, knows exactly what the Banks’ children want and need, has no references, is completely self-assured and gets the job.

The cast of Mary Poppins. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Mr. and Mrs. Banks are disciplinarians from the old school but their children Jane (Jessie Cox) and Michael (Hailey Lewis) are a handful. Mary is a no-nonsense nanny who manages to give the children what they want. She is magical in fact and proves her mettle by producing a very long hat stand from her bag. Mouths wide open, please.

Mary appears and disappears from the life of the Banks family as we follow the plot of Mr. Banks’s difficulties with his job, the appearance of the Bird Woman (Aisha Jarvis), the routines involving Bert (Kyle Blair) and those marvelous chimney sweeps, the arrival of the nasty nanny Miss Andrew (Sarah Lynn Strange) until we find a resolution to all the problems and a happy ending.

Mary Poppins has marvelous songs that are probably familiar to most adults from the film and the stage musicals. "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Chim Chim Cher-ee," “Feed the Birds," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," “Brimstone and Treacle" "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and "Step in Time" are a good sampling of the tuneful and memorable songs offered.

The disciplined and talented cast delivers ninety minutes of energy, humour and beautiful singing, and creates a thrilling atmosphere that kept young and old engrossed in the performance.

The songs go from the jolly “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to the threatening “Brimstone and Treacle" of the haughty and ghastly Miss Andrew to the uplifting "Let's Go Fly a Kite” to the rousing and super-energetic "Step in Time."

Pictured in promotional photo: Vanessa Sears as Mary Poppins and Kyle Blair as Bert 

 Photo by Ali Sultani.

Vanessa Sears and Kyle Blair get top honours for their superb performances. Jessie Cox and Hailey Lewis are excellent as the children and Jewelle Blackman and Shane Carty make fine parents from another generation, no doubt.

Thom Allison keeps a brisk pace when appropriate with fine variations in tone and speed when necessary. Kerry Gage’s choreography is outstanding.

The two-story set by Brandon Kleiman represents the Banks’ house and is easily converted into a street scene and even a rooftop scene for the chimney sweeps. It provides space for the musicians and is efficient and effective.

I saw the production with two of my associate reviewers, Ava (I am going to be double digit on April 2 and I am one minute older than my sister) and her twin Hannah. They gave the production and the performance enthusiastic reviews. They did not know anything about Mary Poppins before and interestingly they caught on the moral lessons of the musical. One should never give up and if you don’t try you will not succeed, they commented. They liked the reconciliation of the family when the father and the children went to fly a kite together. They liked the atmosphere of the Banks home. 

They also enjoyed the magical effects and were impressed by the dancing.

With reviews like that, the only possible verdict is a command to take your children and go to see the production

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Mary Poppins, The Broadway Musical, based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney film, by Julian Fellows (book), Richard M Sherman and Robert B. Sherman (original music and lyrics0 and George Stiles and Anthony Drewe (additional songs and music) continues until January 6. 2019 at the Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. 416 862-2222. www.youngpeoplestheatre.ca

HELEN’S NECKLACE - REVIEW OF 2018 CANADIAN REP THEATRE PRODUCTION

James Karas

Helen’s Necklace can be subtitled “The Education of a Shallow, Ignorant Tourist from a Northern Peaceful City in a War-torn City in the Middle East.”

Carole Fréchette’s play has six characters (two women and four men) but all of them can be played by as few as two actors or three. Ken Gass in his Canadian Rep Theatre production has chosen to stage the play with three female actors who play the characters interchangeably and not necessarily to good effect.

Initially, Helen appears as a wide-eyed, shallow, self-absorbed woman in a crowded, bombed and very busy city looking for her lost necklace. In the opening scene she is played as a blonde Caucasian by Helen Taylor and she is approaching people on the street in her search for her lost treasure.

She describes the piece of jewelry in very precise and glowing terms as a priceless treasure that has deep meaning for her to people who may speak little, if any, English. She seems impervious to her surroundings and our reaction is “how dense can this woman be?”

 

Akosua Amo-Adem,  Zorana Sadiq and Helen Taylor 

The role of Helen as with the other five characters, as I indicated, will be played by all three actors, the other two being Akosua Amo-Adem who is black and Zorana Sadiq who has a dark complexion and can pass for someone from the Middle East.

The place where Helen searches for her necklace and displays her blindness to her surroundings is by all descriptions a site of death and devastation.  She can’t recall what day it is, where she has been, to whom she has spoken or much of anything. She is completely absorbed by her necklace and describes it in excruciating detail.

By this time we have lost it with this bimbo but reality will soon visit her in ways that even she cannot completely ignore. In the meantime she meets Nabil, the taxi driver, who simply wants to know where to take her, as she continues jabbering about her necklace. A construction Foreman gives her a brief lesson on the effects of demolition and tells her to go home to her place which has never been bombed.  She understands almost nothing.

Helen meets a Woman looking for a red ball and hears her description of a little boy killed in the cross-fire. The Woman gives her a powerful dose of reality which has some effect on her. The Woman is looking for her son; Helen is looking for a bauble.

Then she meets a Man who has lost everything. It is a difficult concept to absorb but the Man knows it all too well. He tells her to scream “we cannot go on living like this” and she seems to have understood a bit more of reality. I will not spoil the end for you and you may want to see where Fréchette takes us.

The play can deliver a powerful punch to the self-absorbed middle class which has scant idea about what is happening in the Middle East and in other war-torn places in the world. How can we know what it means to lose everything?

But Gass muddles the emotional impact of the play by having three actors perform all the roles interchangeably. It shifts our focus from one actor to the next as we try to keep up with who is doing what and the emotional impact is almost lost or at least seriously diminished. A bad choice.

The actors show that they have the emotional depth and talent to do the play if only Gass would let them do it.

The set consist of an empty stage with some white boxes which can be used as seats in a taxi or to represent the other venues in the city.

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Helen’s Necklace by Carole Fréchette played at the Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre, November 8-11, 2018 and will continue at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre, 440 Locust Street Burlington, ON L7S 1T7 from November 15 to 18, 2018. (905) 681-2551 bpac@burlington.ca/

BAD JEWS – REVIEW OF HARMON’S PLAY AT GREENWIN THEATRE

James Karas

Bad Jews struck me like a mediocre boxer who runs around the rink to avoid his opponent, throws punches that do not hit their target or just flails pointlessly with his arms in a sad attempt at boxing. But in the end, to everyone’s surprise, he lands a solid hook and knocks out his opponent.

Joshua Harmon does land a punch in the final minutes of the play but we can’t forget the rest of it where there are all kinds of problems.

Bad Jews is about three grandchildren who meet after the funeral of their grandfather. They meet in Jonah’s (Jake Goldsbie) studio apartment in Manhattan. His cousin Daphna (Sarah Segal-Lazar) is there and she expresses a great interest in getting her grandfather’s chai.

Jonah’s brother Liam (Jamie Elman) arrives with his girlfriend Melody (Ellen Denny) and after some time arguing about sleeping arrangements in the small apartment and looking for alternatives, the issues among the four characters are joined. The central issue is who will get the chai.

The chai (the word means living or alive) is a gold medallion that was worn by their grandfather around his neck. When he was taken to a Nazi concentration camp, he kept it under his tongue for two years. He gave it to his wife because she gave him life.

Jamie Elman, Jake Goldsbie, Sarah Segal-Lazar and Ellen Denny

Photo by Leslie Schachter

A few words about the characters. Jonah is a dishrag who tries to stay out of the conflicts among Daphna, Liam and Melody. He is a nothing, in other words, until near the end when he does deliver a punch, but it is fortuitous because it is not in character.

Melody is blonde, pretty, and not too swift with German roots. She is not Jewish and that makes her an easy target for the religious Daphna who treats her with contempt largely because she is not Jewish and therefore not worthy of marrying a Jew.

Liam is a modern Jew who points out some issues one may have with the Bible. He is an atheist Jew and has a practical approach to Judaism. He wants the chai and has in fact gained possession of it before his grandfather died. His loyalty to the family is questionable because he did not come for the funeral because he was skiing. He makes a mealy-mouthed excuse for his non-attendance.

The most interesting character is Daphna. She is a devout Jew who wants to return to Israel and become a rabbi. She is a bitch, to put it politely, and her opposition to Liam’s proposed marriage to Melody is that it will adulterate Liam’s Jewish blood. He mercilessly points out to her that she is repeating the language of the Nazis about racial purity. She attacks Jonah spinelessness, Melody for her background and Liam for just about everything from not using his Jewish name (Shlomo), to not attending the funeral, to gaining possession of the chai under false pretenses.    

Bad Jews develops slowly, very slowly, and it lacks a moral center. The chai is symbolic of deep faith that sustains life and love under the most horrific circumstances imaginable. It meant a great deal to their grandfather not just because of how he kept it under his tongue but also because he gave it to his wife as an equally powerful act of love. Daphna despoils even that by offhandedly referring to her grandmother as a bitch.

I will not disclose what happens in the final minutes of the play when there is a type of resolution after about an hour of less-than-exciting development, when the plot comes to life.

The actors do their job and they do it well. If you need someone to represent a bitch, just call Sarah Segal-Lazar. She plays with her hair to the point of distraction and in her ferocious devotion to Jewishness, her attack on her cousins and Melody she is, well, one king-size bitch.

Goldsbie, Elman and Denny play well against her and each other and director Lisa Rubin does the best she can with the play.

In the end, the grandchildren of the Holocaust survivor are not so much bad Jews as unworthy heirs to the strength, faith and love represented by him or of a play, for that matter, that does not do justice to him.

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Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon, in a production by the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts Production, continues until November 11, 2018 at the Greenwin Theatre, Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge St, North York, ON M2N 6R8. www.hgjewishtheatre.com

THEORY – REVIEW OF NORMAN YEUNG’S PLAY AT TARRAGON

Reviewed by James Karas

Theory, Norman Yeung’s new play at the Tarragon Theatre, is so intellectually elevated and so emotionally intense, that you should sharpen your brain cells and tune up your emotional antennae before leaving for the theatre.

Professor Isabella (Sascha Cole) “teaches” film theory at a university. She is young, brilliant, ambitious, a visionary and a rule-breaker who wants to open the minds of students, no make that, she wants them to open their own minds. No, she is not teaching philosophy from Plato to Rawls and she probably considers what many of us may consider teaching as beneath her. She has a large class but we only get to see four of her students.

 

Bilal Baig, Anthony Perpuse, Asha James, Kyle Orzech and Sascha Cole by Cylla von Tiedemann 

The four students are an assorted lot but what really matters is that they are all geniuses. They know all about the films on the course and they can talk in academic lingo that will send you scampering to your elevated intellect to keep up with the academic jargon and you are very smart if you can keep up with them.

But they are also very touchy. With their comprehensive knowledge and ability to express their views, it seems a waste of time for them to attend class. They should all go to the common room and have a complicated or is it integrated coffee and become professors.

The professor teaching the course is white and her wife is black. Or should I say African-Canadian or African-American. I don’t think I can say Negro because, if I understood correctly, the word has been banned from normal conversation regardless of context. And the “n word” has been eradicated and if Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and a myriad of other authors used it in their time and context, they and the word should be consigned a circle of hell for Users of Offensive Words Ex Post Facto.   

The students in the course tackle a large array of films by the likes of   D. W. Griffiths, Sergei Eisenstein and a number of other directors, French, German and Latin American, mostly unfamiliar to me.

The films present political and social commentaries that brilliant professors and razor-sharp students can discern but hoi polloi probably do not.

The students walk out of class, send offensive (really offensive) emails and complain to the dean. The numerous (far too numerous) postings go into dangerous territory when one student posts a photo of the professor that he/she cuts up and covers it with blood from his/her own hand. There is a mystery about who is posting them and it creates considerable tension.

 Sascha Cole and Audrey Dwyer by Cylla von Tiedemann

The question that occurred to me as I watched the plot develop into dangerous territory was this: how can anyone who is so smart be so stupid? Isabella could not see beyond her intellectual arrogance of a know-it-all who pretends to let her students discover things for themselves. When students are complaining about you (some? all?) maybe you should get the message that you are doing something terribly wrong.      

The main plot is about Isabella’s interaction with the four students played by Bilal Baig, Asha James, Kyle Orzech and Anthony Perpuse, and the Dean (Fabrizio Filippo. And there is the subplot about her relations with her wife Lee (Audrey Dwyer).  

Joe Pagnan’s set serves as a classroom that easily converts into Isabella’s apartment. Projection designer Cameron Davis provides us with the countless messages that are shown on the stage as the menace keeps mounting.

Director Esther Jun sets and maintains a brisk pace as actors enter and exit in quick succession frequently slamming doors.

Much of what happens is fodder for a good play and a fine production but much of it is smothered in intellectual and academic dross that takes away from our enjoyment. 

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Theory by Norman Yeung continues until November 25, 2018 at the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario.  www.tarragontheatre.com

ACTÉON AND PYGMALION – REVIEW OF TWO GEMS FROM OPERA ATELIER

James Karas

Opera Atelier has chosen two one-act gems for its fall production. They are Charpentier’s Actéon and Rameau’s Pygmalion, works based on Greek myths that are wonderfully antithetical and complementary. I have a feeling that Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, the Co-Artistic Directors of Opera Atelier, commissioned these works for the current season. Yes, I know that Actéon has been around since 1684 and Pygmalion premiered in 1748, but I have no time to be confused by facts.

Mr. Pynkoski as a director, wanted operas and Ms Zingg as a choreographer wanted ballets. They convinced the two composers to give them operas-cum-ballet or perhaps the other way around to maintain gender equilibrium. Ms Zingg deserves the concession since she is celebrating her 33^rd year with Opera Atelier.

  The company of Actéon. Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Actéon, you will no doubt recall, is the Theban prince who loves hunting but is indifferent to the love of women. He worships Diana (or Artemis for the purists) the virgin goddess of the hunt who prefers the company of nymphs and four-legged creatures in the forest to anyone else’s company. No erotic love, please.

Actéon has heard that a bear is despoiling Diana’s forest and he goes with his friend to get rid of the creature that is harming the goddess that he worships. Completely by happenstance, he sees Diana bathing au naturel. That is verboten and Diana decides to punish him. She turns the hunter Actéon into a stag and his dogs have him for lunch. Not a happy ending.

Pygmalion is different. He is great artist and sculpts a beautiful woman. Being a romantic, he falls in love with the statue and prays to Venus, the goddess of love, to do something about his passion. Enter Eros who brings the statue to life.  His girlfriend Céphise is not too pleased and storms out of his studio. The statue becomes Galatea and is taught to dance, falls in love with Pygmalion and they live happily ever after.

The moral of the stories being that if you interact with goddesses, forget chastity (yours or the god’s), find out how she feels about being seen naked and go for art instead of hunting.

The production of the two gems is a visual and aural delight. Tenor Colin Ainsworth sings Actéon, the chaste but impassioned worshipper of Diana and the equally passionate but perfectly human Pygmalion. He modulates his voice beautifully to the demands of Baroque opera and we enjoy every note of it.

The splendidly-voiced soprano Mireille Asselin, (like Ainsworth, a veteran of Opera Atelier productions) sings the roles of Diana and Eros in beautifully executed performances.      

 Colin Ainsworth and Meghan Lindsay (centre) with Artists of 

Atelier Ballet in Pygmalion. Photo by Bruce Zinger

Soprano Meghan Lindsay sings Aréthuze in Actéon and Galatea in Pygmalion. When a statue is given life by Eros and she tells you that her first desire is to please you, you have a winner and Ms Lindsay convinces us that we do.

The solo vocal singing is supplemented by the Chorus of the University of Toronto Schola Cantorum with members of the Choir of the Theatre of Early Music and they are simply superb.

Ballet forms an integral part of Actéon and Pygmalion. The hunters and the nymphs in Actéon and the dances performed in teaching Galatea to dance in Pygmalion display Ms Zingg’s choreographic talent and the exquisiteness of the Artists of Atelier Ballet. 

Gerard Gauci’s sets emphasize the beauty of the mythical world as do the costumes by Gauci for Actéon and Michael Gianfrancesco for Pygmalion.

The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra conducted by David Fallis brings the full aural pleasure of the music to the fore.

In the end you are transported to, dare I say it, almost magically to the mythical world of Ancient Greece as seen by two Baroque French composers and brought to life, almost Galatea-like, by the artists of Opera Atelier.

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Actéon by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Pygmalion by Jean-Philippe Rameau, presented by Opera Atelier, run until November 3, 2018 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com

THE ROYALE – REVIEW OF SOULPEPPER PRODUCTION OF RAMIREZ’S PLAY

James Karas

The Royale, Marco Ramirez’s play, is inspired by the life of boxer Jack Johnson. In racist America of the early twentieth century, Johnson became the first black Heavyweight Champion. Racist Americans searched for “a great white hope” to defeat Johnson and the best they could do was Jim Jeffries, an undefeated Heavyweight Champion, who came out of retirement to fight Jackson and was defeated.

That may be have been his inspiration, but Ramirez does not write a play about a black boxer who becomes Heavyweight Champion in Jim Crow’s America. 

Alexander Thomas, Dion Johnstone, and Diego Matamoros. Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann.

The play opens in a boxing rink with Jay (as Ramirez calls him) Johnson (played impressively by Dion Johnstone) about to fight a boxer called Fish (Christef Desir). The referee Max (Diego Matamoros) introduces the fighters and the match begins but there are no punches thrown. The two men shadow box while facing the audience and they address us or each other. We hear their thoughts. They speak in short, staccato phrases that are punctuated by rhythmic stomping of feet. The referee and Jack’s trainer Wynton (Alexander Thomas) also throw in brief comments (their thoughts, really) about the fight.

Wynton gives some brief instructions to Jack in the same style as the comments made by all the characters, brief, quick, almost stream-of-consciousness.   

Jay wins and Wynton and Max as a fight promoter have a conversation about boxing, about arranging other matches, about the past, the future and other subjects. They speak frequently in two and three word sentences. We are told that Max has found a challenger who wants ninety percent of the purse, win or lose.

The same style of speaking continues during a press conference where Max, Jay and Wynton are present. The play has only five characters but the clapping, foot stomping and flashing lights give the impression of many more people. The short phrases and the longer speeches are poetic in structure rather than straightforward prose.

Jackson finally gets a chance to fight for the championship and all the issues of a black man fighting a white boxer in utterly racist America come to the fore. Racism is pervasive throughout the play implicitly and explicitly but the arrival of Jackson’s older sister Nina (Sabryn Rock) adds another dimension.

She knows her brother’s vaulting ambition; he is a man who wants the apple from the top of the tree, she tells us. The dialogue becomes naturalistic as she describes the dangerous consequences of his ambition to win. People could get killed, including her family. She wants him to lose. 

Dion Johnstone and Sabryn Rock. Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann.

Intriguingly, Jackson’s opponent for the championship is his sister Nina. She is his sister, she is his opponent and she is the white fighter as the siblings dance around the rink. This is a great summation of all the issues surrounding Americana as it was then and as it is now.

Dion Johnstone as Jay has all the attributes required for the role. He is so well endowed with muscles that he could be mistaken for a boxer. He gives a superb performance as the ambitious, smart, colourful character who breaks down social and racial barriers but does not solve any problems.

Diego Matamoros as Max is a white racist but a good promoter. Christef Desir as Fish as Johnson’s sparring partner and Alexander Thomas as his trainer give fine performances. The most interesting character after Johnson is his sister Nina played by Sabryn Rock. She shines the light on her brother’s character and she is aware of the broader issues and consequences for blacks if he wins. She is intuitively right on all accounts but she is looking at the present and the past. An exceptional performance.     

The set by Ken MacKenzie emphasizes the boxing ring and the sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne and the lighting design by Michelle Ramsey give us the sounds and lights of a boxing match that is happening only symbolically in front of us.

Director Guillermo Verdecchia puts the whole thing together for an exceptional night at the theatre.

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The Royale by Marco Ramirez continues until November 11, 2018 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca