Written by Kevin Elyot
Directed by Joel Greenberg
Set and costumes by John Thompson
Lighting by Kimberly Purtell
Sound by Garth Helm
Cast: Tim Funnell
Alex Furber
Martin Happer
Jeff Miller
Gray Powell
Jonathan Wilson
My Night With Regis a delicate yet chilling play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic but is timeless because of its handling of male relationships. The production is stylish, beautifully acted and moving.
The Story. London, mid-1980s. Guy is having a flat-warming party (apartment-warming party to North Americans) to celebrate his new digs. He’s invited several old and new men friends. He met the older friends in school and has kept in touch intermittently. John is one old friend and Guy has secretly loved him all those years but didn’t dare tell him.
Guy is single, shy, accommodating to his friends and is the one person they all confide in. John is dashing, charming, rich and very popular. But not as popular as Reg seems to be. All the men in the play are gay and they all have Reg in common.
Over the course of the play there are at least two funerals. Lurking in the background is the spectre of AIDS, which is never mentioned. Because we come with the benefit of hindsight to My Night With Reg we know that the men who died, died of AIDS. Guy often expresses how well he takes care to protect himself. We know from what.
The Production. Everything about John Thompson’s set for Guy’s flat is tasteful, in muted colours. The sofa has two cushions arranged just so. The artwork is conservative and not raunchy. The bar is well stocked because Guy is having a party for friends he hasn’t seen in years. The terrace is being painted by a young fellah named Eric who wanders into and out of the action.
This is a play that can’t be rushed in its production. It is funny, perceptive, subtle and moving. It needs time to reveal the characters, their idiosyncrasies, their relationships to each other and their abundance of secrets.
Joel Greenberg’s direction is full of care and thought. No character is a stereotypical gay man. They are all true to themselves. There is confident affection as friends kiss hello and goodbye. Body language is expansive and joyous in many cases. The acting is superb. Jonathan Wilson creates Guy as a man of shy awkwardness, he is tentative in expressing how he feels, but pulls back when he senses he might embarrass himself. Wilson is a mass of ticks, smiles, shrugs and all consuming sweetness. Guy is the one character we root for from the get go because he’s such a mensch. One realizes how much Jonathan Wilson been missed on a Toronto stage because of this gracious performance.
Gray Powell as John is that dashing, confident man who could appeal to men and women. He has that devil may care attitude. He’s got money. He doesn’t worry about anything except hiding little details of his life from his friends and he handles that with an off-handed aplomb. And yet, you sense a deep sense of regret that he’s attracted to whom he’s attracted. They are all friends there and John really doesn’t want to hurt anybody. It’s just that he can’t help it. It’s a lovely performance of a man who is conflicted.
Jeff Miller plays Daniel with a hint of flamboyance that is more about a man who is confident to be himself, in the company of his friends, rather than a man showing off. Daniel is joyous in his relationship but full of angst that perhaps his lover is cheating, or that a friend of his is cheating with his lover. Daniel experiences a roller-coaster of emotions, and Jeff Miller is such a good actor, he makes the audience feel every plunge and swoop. The whole cast is superb.
Comment. While playwright Kevin Elyot was a prolific playwright and screenwriter, his 1994 breakout award-winning hit play was My Night With Reg. He writes about gay relationships and promiscuity in the age of AIDS. He is never judgemental. His writing is very funny, moving and almost poetic. At one of the funerals the lover of the recently departed says, “The smallest thing will make me miss him.” A feather of a line that pierces the heart.
My Night With Reg starts out to be a play about six friends in the early time of AIDS in London in the mid-1980s. But it develops into a play about relationships and the secrets, lies and hurts that develop when characters hide things from each other. That aspect of the play, the love these men have or had for each, other makes My Night With Reg timeless.
Written by Kevin Elyot
Directed by Joel Greenberg
Set and costumes by John Thompson
Lighting by Kimberly Purtell
Sound by Garth Helm
Cast: Tim Funnell
Alex Furber
Martin Happer
Jeff Miller
Gray Powell
Jonathan Wilson
My Night With Reg is a delicate yet chilling play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic but is timeless because of its handling of male relationships. The production is stylish, beautifully acted, and moving.
London, mid-1980s. The play is about a group of gay friends who are invited to celebrate the new flat of Guy. He is shy, single, accommodating and the one person these friends confide in. Guy has secretly loved John since their school days. John never noticed. He was too busy being dashing and popular. But not as popular as Reg seems to be. All the men in the play have Reg in common. Lurking in the background is the spectre of AIDS, which is never mentioned, but we come to it with the benefit of hindsight.
The play is funny, perceptive, subtle and so moving. It is directed with care by Joel Greenberg. The acting is superb.
Written by Simon Stephens
Directed by Matthew Jocelyn
Set and Costumes by Debra Hanson
Lighting by Michael Walton
Sounds by Thomas Ryder Payne.
Starring: Vivien Endecott-Douglas
Lynne Griffin
Hardee T. Lineham
Molly Parker
Alex Poch-Goldin
Philip Riccio
Izaak Smith
A challenging play about a woman trying to get her bearings in the face of personal upheavals.
The Story. Things are not going well for Harper Regan. Her father is deathly sick in another city and her boss will not give her two days off to see him. She hasn’t seen her father in two years. She hasn’t spoken to her mother in as many years. There was a rift in the family and the folks are not talking to her.
Harper’s husband, Seth, can’t work. He has been shunned by the townsfolk because it’s believed that he is a pedophile. He was caught taking pictures in a park of young girls. He says it was innocent. Harper believes him. Her parents do not, hence the rift. Harper’s husband and daughter, Sarah, don’t want Harper to go and see her dying father. She ignores everybody and goes. She arrives in her parents city that night but does not rush to the hospital. She waits to see him until the next morning when it’s too late. He died the night before, alone.
This sets off a series of events for Harper totally at odds with the kind of person she is. She changes her clothes sense; acts recklessly; confronts her mother and shifts her opinions and returns home ready to deal with what faces her, one assumes.
The Production. This is an odd production. While the press information describes the play as intimate dealing with intimate relationships, Director Matthew Jocelyn and designer Debra Hanson have set this ‘intimate’ play on the full stage which looks the size of an airplane hanger. Hardly intimate.
There are theatre seats at the very back wall of the stage. When actors are not in a scene, they sit at the back watching. Why is a mystery. The point of the play is that each of these characters seems to be isolated and alone in their own worlds. No one is watching, hence their isolation.
The set is on two levels. One level is on the stage, down towards the audience. There is another level reached by a few stairs upstage centre. Stage right is ramp with a considerable rake that also joins the two levels. The only point of that ramp seems to be to expedite the movement of large furniture as characters bring down a table, chairs and other props.
In the first scene, Harper is asking her boss, Elwood Barnes, for some days off to visit her dying father. Molly Parker as Harper is creased with worry, anxiety and frustration as her Elwood Barnes says no. As Elwood, Hardee T. Lineham is curt, matter of fact and totally uninterested in sympathy.
Molly Parker stands on the ramp wearing heels, playing the scene for about 20 minutes. All I can think about is how standing there on that rake in those heels must cause Parker shooting pains up her legs. What an odd placement of a scene. And more odd still is that Parker is stage right on the ramp and Barnes is over there, stage left, sitting in a chair. Again, hardly intimate. Is this placement to accentuate the emotional distance between characters? Surly realizing the play would have done that, without a symbolic huge stage to play it on.
Each scene begins with an ear-splitting explosion of cacophonous heavy metal music. Perhaps this is representative of the jumbled noise in Harper and her family’s lives. Gradually the noise of the music softens until at the end, when Harper has confronted her family and their difficulties head on, the music is lilting and classical, easy to listen to, almost comforting.
Whether Vivien Endicott-Douglas is playing Sarah Regan, Harper’s angry daughter, or she is playing Justine Ross, an overly bubbly nurse at the hospital where Harper’s father died, Endicotte-Douglas is hampered by a lack of variation in both roles. I wish she was urged to temper and vary both parts.
For some reason Alex Poch-Goldin plays both Seth Regan, Harper’s downtrodden husband, and James Fortune, a kindly, casual dalliance Harper has on her way to transformation. Except for an addition of a tie and perhaps a change in clothes, this similar look of the actor in both roles is jarring. I wonder why that choice is made?
Philip Riccio plays Mickey Nestor, another character on Harper’s journey. He is an embittered, racist, hard-drinker with a twitchy leg and a sneer. A vivid performance and it elicits a startling reaction in Harper.
We see in Lynne Griffin’s performance as Harper’s mother, a kindly woman ready to reach out to her daughter to explain things and why she and Harper’s father felt the way they did about Harper’s husband.
And finally Izaak Smith as Tobias, a young student Harper chats up, is all gangly awkwardness, fists jammed into his pockets. He is both wary and intrigued by this woman who it turns out is following him.
Aside from interesting performances for the most part, this is an odd production of an intriguing play.
Comment. Simon Stephens is a celebrated British playwright and rightly so. His plays are vivid, deal deeply with the human psyche, psychology, family dealings and misfits. He writes plays of substance and Harper Regan is certainly that. A woman who has not seen her father in two years is compelling to hazard everything by leaving her job and her family to see him before he dies and make amends. Yet she deliberately waits to see him until it’s too late. Why is that? She goes on a wild journey of change and discovery behaving in a manner so unlike her. Why? She comes home and faces illusions she had about her family and husband. And in a way she finds a kind of peace. I just wish the production was better at bringing out the richness of the play and that director Matthew Jocelyn focused more on the details of the play than on the odd environment of it.
Produced by Canadian Stage
Opened: March 5, 2015 Closes: March 22, 2015 Cast: 7; 4 men, 3 women Running Time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
The following two reviews were broadcast on Friday, Dec. 26, 2014 CIUT FRIDAY MORNING, 89.5 fm. Into the Woods at selected movie theatres. A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, plus a mention of other Shakespeare productions from the Stratford Festival and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, Eng. That will play at selected cinemas over the next few months.
(PHIL)
Good Boxing Day to you. Ordinarily I would say it’s theatre fix time with Lynn Slotkin, our theatre critic and passionate playgoer. But Lynn tells me she’s reviewing films today with a theatrical background. Hi Lynn. Explain.
(LYNN)
Hi Phil. I’m reviewing the film of Into the Woods which opened at selected cinemas yesterday.
And I’m also talking about a filmed performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that played at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.
Most important I have to say that Daniel Garber, our regular film critic, gave me permission to review Into the Woods and I just heard about the film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this week. I don’t think Daniel would mind.
In both cases the films are based on plays that opened in theatres. In both cases the woods factor heavily, but there is a twist.
(PHIL)
Ok we can wait for the twist. Let’s start with Into the Woods. What’s the story?
(LYNN)
In the case of Into the Woods, this is the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical that opened on Broadway in 1987. Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics and James Lapine wrote the book (and also directed the musical for the theatre.
For our purposes for the film, Sondheim and Lapine repeated their writing duties. The film is directed by Rob Marshall.
The story melds several fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk. At the centre of them all is a childless Baker and his Wife. They are desperate to have a child but can’t because the Witch next door put a curse on their house.
It seems that when the Baker was a baby his mother was pregnant again and had a craving for greens. So the Baker’s father stole greens from the Witch’s garden, including some magic beans. To call it square the Witch wanted the soon to be born baby to be turned over to her.
One thing lead to another….she took the baby and put a curse of barrenness on the future line of the Baker and his Wife. But there is a way to reverse the curse.
The Baker has to bring the Witch a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold. That’s how all the other fairy tales meld together and it all happens in the woods.
(PHIL)
Is it a ghost story or something else.
(LYNN)
Being a Stephen Sondheim musical, it’s definitely something else. Sondheim delves into the wounded heart.
He knows about desperation and how to express it in a lyric. His facility with language is astonishing. Everybody in the stories is wishing for something better, something else. The Baker and his Wife wish for a child. Jack wishes his aged cow would give milk. Cinderella wishes to go to the Festival (at this point she’s not even thinking about the Prince). They all realize to be careful what they wish for. Then their wishes change. They don’t want to be alone. Even the Witch wants the child she stole—named Rapunzel—to remain with her and not to leave her alone.
The Baker, who wants to solve the Witch’s riddle on his own, realizes that it’s better to include his Wife in the process. And there’s an irate Giant who terrorizes the nearby village.
They all learn about decency, forgiveness, working together, some change for the better, some don’t.
(PHIL)
Has this been a smooth transition from the stage to the screen?
(LYNN)
Not entirely smooth. A set of the woods was created full of forbidding trees, darkness. The cast is star-studded and exemplary. Meryl Streep plays the Witch with all the flash and dazzle you would expect of that gifted actress. She’s bitter, angry, heartbreaking and sings like a dream. Kudos to the make-up people.
James Corden plays the Baker and his journey is the most profound. He learns how to take charge, be a leader, make hard decisions, and learn that he will not be like his father who deserted him when he needed him. Emily blunt plays the Baker’s Wife and there’s a loving delicacy about her. The Wolf is played by a wily, creepy Johnny Depp. So the acting talent is there.
The problem is director Rob Marshall. In spite of a background in musical theatre, as a film director he can’t get out of the way and let the material speak for itself. He’s so busy moving the camera all over the scene, circling an actor who is singing Sondheim’s difficult lyrics, that it’s all you can do to focus on the person singing.
Aside from the movie stars in the film, there is a host of celebrated British actors in it as well, but you would hardly know it because Marshall has deliberately shot them in gloomy light so you can’t make out their faces.
The Giant is played by a formidable Frances de la Tour, but again Marshall teases us with hints of her face. I found myself sitting forward to try and find the face in the tangle of branches obstructing it. Is Marshall being coy? Don’t show the face at all, if you want to be coy.
We see the Baker’s father in shadow the first time. Then you see his face later in the film in close-up to see that it’s Simon Russell Beale, considered one of the best actors in England. That seems like deliberately sloppy direction for the sake of atmosphere?
(PHIL)
Let’s move to the film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream You said there was a twist between the two films.
(LYNN) Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are filmed versions of plays that originally played in a theatre.
With Into the Woods a whole set was built of the woods, and a village to accommodate the filming of the piece so they were going to adapt the stage play for film.
WithA Midsummer Night’s Dream cameras were set up in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in London last summer and an actual performance was filmed from beginning to end. This is complete with packed audience, including the groundlings, some of whom had their chins resting on their arms which were on the stage as they watched.
The filming of actual performances for broadcasting or showing in a cinema is becoming the norm.
The National Theatre Live series has filmed many of its live productions and broadcast them hours later. The Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is following suit.
Even our own Stratford Festival has filmed three of its productions from last summer: >King Lear, King John, and Antony and Cleopatra and they will be shown in high definition this winter and spring at the Cineplex at Silver City at Young and Eglinton.
(PHIL)
And again the woods factor heavily in the story?
(LYNN)
Yes. Hermia is in love with Lysander and he loves her. Her father wants her to marry Demitrius. She doesn’t want to. Her father therefore says that he is seeking the law of the land that allows him to marry off his daughter to whomever he likes, or have her put to death. A bit harsh, that.
Helena loves Demetrius but he won’t look at her. So to escape all this angst, Hermia and Lysander escape to the woods in Athens—and they are followed by Helena and Demetrius. There are also meddling and warring fairies in that woods and they get involved as well. Emotions are high.
Again a kind of frenzy of emotions swirls through those woods and all manner of mistaken identity; shifting identities; sexual innuendo comes into play.
(PHIL)
As this is a filming of a stage production, how is that transition?
(LYNN)
I think it’s better than most. In a stage play the audience can look anywhere on that stage at any character and glean something about the character or the production as a whole. In film, we look where the director focuses his lens and our attention. In filming a straight production while it’s going on the director has to anticipate where the audience might look. The camera has to be ready to film subtext or subtleties all over the place.
As I said this effort is better than most. It also helps that the production at the Globe is so well done; funny athletic, fall down funny. The stage version is directed by Dominic Dromgoole, the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. It’s one of the funniest productions of this I’ve seen and the camera captures that. The acting is very strong for the most part—the biggest exception is Puck who is not impish, devlish, or funny enough.
This production will be joined later for a showing of The Taming of the Shrew January 24 and The Tempest on February 21. Once again Shakespeare comes to the fore, this time in film.
And if you want to see the genius of Stephen Sondheim and a smart theatrical book by James Lapine then check out Into the Woods.
(PHIL)
Thanks Lynn. That’s Lynn Slotkin, our theatre critic and passionate playgoer. You can read Lynn’s blog at www.slotkinletter.com. Twitter @slotkinletter
Into the Woods the film, plays at various cinemas in the city. Check listings for time and location.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream a filmed performance at Shakespeare’s Globe plays at the Bloor Hot Docs cinema tomorrow, December 27.
Again, check listings for time.
At the Donmar Warehouse, London. Written and directed by Conor McPherson. Designed by Soutra Gilmour. Lighting by Neil Austin. Sound by Gregory Clarke. Starring: Caoilfhionn Dunne, Brian Gleeson, Ciarán Hinds, Michael Mcelhatton, Jim Norton.
Once again Conor McPherson weaves a tale of down and outers who struggle to get by, often missing, but still struggling. Tommy is a sort of handy-man-scam-artist. He lives in a dump that made me feel more positive about the clutter in my apartment. At least I flush my toilet after all uses and don’t keep my dirty dishes in the loo. And if I get puckish I don’t eat dog biscuits with a slather of jam.
Tommy’s partner in business is a simple-minded man named Doc. He is not a doctor but the circuitous route from his real name of Brian to Doc is pure McPherson and hilarious. Tommy has brought Aimee home with him because her bully-thug boyfriend smashed her in the face for some reason and her nose was gushing blood. It wasn’t broken but still damaged. Aimee stayed until her thug boyfriend came looking for her, There is a tough old bird named Maurice who owns the house in which Tommy rents a room. Maurice is a stylish man who drinks to forget how much he misses his late wife.
It’s a play in which the story and dialogue keep you gripped. McPherson writes about people who live in a world of few chances but they keep trying; in which kindness is everywhere; in which a hand is held out; and hope creeps in.
The following review aired on Friday, Oct. 19, 2012 on CIUT FRIDAY MORNING 89.5 FM. MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE. At Hart House Theatre until Oct. 20.
The host was Rose Palmieri.
(ROSE)
1) Good Friday morning. It’s time for our regular theatre from Lynn Slotkin, our theatre critic and passionate playgoer.
Hi Lynn. What are you reviewing today?
(LYNN)
I’m reviewing MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE, a challenging play that opened at Hart House Theatre on Wednesday night and will close tomorrow night. So a short run.
(ROSE)
2) Today will be a bit different because Lynn will do her review, but we will then be joined by Mahsa Alimardani for a panel discussion about the play.
Ok tell us the details of MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE and why it’s so challenging.
(LYNN) MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE is about a young American woman who went to Gaza in 2003 as a volunteer to work with Palestinian families, and offer non-violent resistance to the Israeli military that were bulldozing properties in Gaza.
Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she stood in front of it, trying to prevent it from knocking down a Palestinian house. She was 23.
The play is composed of her writings from her journals, diaries and poems that have been compiled by actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner. We see her social awakening as a young girl to her political activism, to her going to Gaza to help.
There are also other jottings that fill in other aspects to her, her humour, prejudices, her great need for recognition etc. It’s a one person play so conveying what that person is about is a challenge.
It deals with a volatile subject—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is challenging. And it presents a skewered, lopsided picture of what is going on there.
Corrie tells us that the defenceless Palestinians are being victimized by the Israelis. But not once does she ask why? Not once does she wonder why those bulldozers are trying to destroy those houses and there are reasons, but the text doesn’t go there. That leaves a huge hole in the play.
Added to that is that I just think Corrie’s writing is not very good. It’s self-indulgent, naïve, rambling, and often precious. When listening to the play and reading it, it’s obvious that Rachel Corrie wanted her prose to be published. And truth to tell there would be no play if she had lived. Her adoring, grieving parents sent some of her work to the Guardian Newspaper in England to see if they would publish it posthumously. That got the ball rolling for Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner (a journalist at the Guardian) to put the play together out of her writings.
(ROSE)
3) How does it do as a production?
(LYNN)
I found it maddening.
Director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu has directed a production so busy in movement, annoying musical underscoring, and cluttering unreadable projections that it was a wonder you could concentrate on the words at all.
Otu has Rachel scurrying all over the sandy set; hauling props hither and yon; digging in the sand to find a notebook she had forgotten, to check on something she wrote; even going into the audience to talk at break-neck, breathless speed, that you are distracted and distanced from the play.
As I quoted Christopher Plummer a few weeks ago, he was referencing directors who load their productions with bells, whistles and dazzle, resulting in all manner of distraction: “If you give the audience too much to look at, they stop listening to the words.” And listening is why we are in the room.
The most poignant, true moment in that play is at the end when we see a film of the 10-year-old Rachel Corrie making a speech at an event about hunger. In it she says simply what she hopes for the future and how we must all work to end world hunger. It’s heartfelt, true, innocent and charming. But Otu upstages even this moment by having Amelia Sargisson, as Rachel, wander around the upper part of the set (still visible in the darkened stage) and even walk across the front of the projection. Totally distracting.
Amelia Sargisson is youthful, buoyant at times and energetic. But too often she plays Rachel as if she is on the verge of tears; distraught.
Rather than drawing the audience into the emotion of the situation—it alienates them. The actress can ‘indicate’ the fraught emotion of a moment but not to go so overboard that the point is lost.
I will chalk this up to two young artists getting their chance with what looks like a powerful play, wanting so badly to do right by the material, and then because of inexperience let much of it overwhelm them. I want to see their work in another context. I look forward to that.
Put for MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE, I found the evening maddening and frustrating.
The following review of MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH was broadcast on Friday, March 22, 2012; CIUT Friday Morning 89.5 FM. MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH is at the Factory Theatre Mainspace until April 15.
The Host is Rose Palmieri
(ROSE)
1) It’s Friday morning which means that Lynn Slotkin, our theatre critic and Passionate Playgoer is here to tell us what she thinks of what she’s seen in the way of theatre.
Hi Lynn
What kind of week have you had?
(LYNN)
Eclectic. It started on Monday with a reading of PROUD by Michael Healey at Theatre Passe Muraille.
You’ll recall that this is the play that the Tarragon Theatre passed on programming because the Artistic Director Richard Rose, thought the Prime Minister might sue them and their funding might be in jeopardy.
Michael Healey had been a writer-in-residence at Tarragon for years—they did his plays regularly. This lack of programming made him leave Tarragon
for good.
Andy McKim, the Artistic Director of Theatre Passe Muraille, jumped at the chance to produce a reading of the play as a fundraiser.
The place was packed and many people were turned away.
I won’t review the play of course except to say it’s a first draft and full of Healey’s wit, humour and political smarts. He’s producing the play himself in the fall. Should be interesting.
On Wednesday night I saw the filmed version of the Stratford Shakespeare Production of TWELFTH NIGHT
I saw the production at Stratford directed by Des McAnuff and as you know and hated it.
(ROSE)
2) Then why did you see the film?
(LYNN)
Well if I am critical of a director and his productions, then perhaps it will improve with a different director doing the filming.
(ROSE)
3) And was it better?
(LYNN)
No. Barry Avrich directed the film of the staged production and did no one any favours. No subtlety, no nuance, no revelation and annoying camera work. I don’t want to see this play again for a long time thanks to these guys.
And then last night I saw MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH at the Factory Theatre Mainstage. Written by Anosh Irani
(ROSE)
4) What an intriguing title. What’s the story?
(LYNN)
A young man named Nico begins the play by telling us that it all started with a lump. Nico is a hypochondriac, but he developed a lump on his back and he went into the hospital to have it operated on and a biopsy done.
He was originally from Bombay. His parent and grandmother live there. Nico is in Canada taking a course in business. He hasn’t seen his family in two years.
We are lead to believe they are estranged, but hisparents are paying his way and sending him money.
While Nico is in the hospital waiting for the results of the biopsy, his grandmother flies from Bombay to Canada to be with him in the hospital giving him moral support. This is a total surprise to him.
The play shifts back and forth from the hospital room to Bombay where Nico’s parents are waiting for a call from the grandmother to report on Nico’s condition.
Both parents bicker, and drink, all the time. The grandmother travels with a flask full of whiskey. There is a history of alcoholism there. Nico does not drink. He just assumes the worst about his health. So in a way that’s his addiction.
(ROSE)
5) Sounds like a story full of potential. How does it do as a play?
(LYNN) MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH is a dud of a play. Actually the problem is that writer Anosh Irani has not written a play. He’s written a group of underdeveloped characters spouting one liners in sit-com situations. No real characters talk like that.
The grandmother arrives but no truths are told in a credible way. She wanders around telling funny stories that are not connected.
She goes to find the doctor only to report back some ill informed information.
Now really Rose, think about it. Nico is a hypochondriac. He’s just had an operation on a lump. Yet he doesn’t seem to be remotely aware or interested in finding out the results. Not once do we hear him getting that doctor to tell him anything. The Granny does but only as a set up for lame jokes.
And the scenes between the parents are more lame one-liners and improbable conversations after another.
In Act II there are revelations that come from no where substantiated by nothing that has gone before.
Irani’s efforts to be funny are obvious, laboured and fall flat.
Mr. Irani is a successful novelist but MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH is not his shining hour as a playwright, even though he has written plays before. In a word, dire.
(ROSE)
6) Ouch…Lynn does the production help to salvage this?
(LYNN)
Alas no. Director Rosemary Dunsmore is a terrific actress and director in her own right, but if the material is as unforgiving as this is there is little one can do. That said, I found her staging rather odd.
The Granny moves around that set for no reason. The Granny sits in a chair giving lines then gets up and stands centre stage giving more lines.
It’s a hospital room yet set designer John Thompson has furniture, such as chairs, so far away from the centre of the action it’s jarring when they sit way over there talking to Nico way over here.
As for the acting…As Nico, Kawa Ada is personable and engaging as the frustrated young man loving to his Granny and at odds with his parents.
As Granny, Yolande Bavan seems ill at ease with the lines, the jokes and the pacing. Lots of hesitation there and it results in a flat performance.
As the parents, Sanjay Talwar as the father and Veena Sood as the mother are saddled with unfunnylines and ridiculous situations.
Ms Sood as the mother wears many many bracelets that clang whenever she raises or moves her arms, which is constant. So every times she speaks it’s with this annoying, distracting noise.
Is the costumes designer Robin Fisher kidding by having her wear this stuff? Get them off her!
At one point in the show the two actors playing the parents have to go from back stage through the front of the theatre and then enter through the audience.
I heard those noisy bracelets as Ms Sood clambered and clanged through the theatre. Mind-numbing in their annoyance.
TAKE THOSE BRACELETS OFF NOW!
And when your opening night audience is not laughing, as it wasn’t last night, you have to know, if you are the playwright, you have a problem.
You want to say to Anosh Irani—
Why did you write this play? What do you want us to get from it? What truths? Wisdoms?
Now rewrite it; make it shorter, maybe 90 minutes with no intermission.
(ROSE)
Thanks Lynn. That’s Lynn Slotkin our theatre critic and Passionate Playgoer. You can read her blog at www.slotkinletter.com
MY GRANNY THE GOLDFISH runs at Factory Theatre until April 15.
Live and in person at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, 922 Queen St. E, Toronto, Ont. Until March 18, 2023
Note: I first saw these plays when they streamed on demand as part of the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2021. I was delighted to see them live and in person last night (March 7, 2023). I am revising the review from 2021 to reflect aspects of the vibrant live production.
Described as “a Triptych of Uncanny Abduction” involving: “a school haunted by troubled children, the mysterious disappearance of a friend in the woods and an encounter with the unknown on open waters,” these three descriptions just prick your interest and the plays do the rest to hold you in their grip.
The three monologues that make up Dressed as People are: Skinless by Kelly Robson, The Shape of My Teeth by Amal El-Mohtar and Repositioning by A.M. Dellamonica. Dressed as People is produced by Parry Riposte Productions, and all the artists are proudly queer. Their previous production was the wonderful The Elephant Girls by Margo MacDonald about a notorious girl-gang that terrorized London, England for 100 years. Two of the three plays in Dressed as People deal with queer themes and relationships.
All three plays are directed by Mary Ellis and they are performed by Margo MacDonald.
The costumes for each of the three plays hang on three hangers that are suspended from the flies. Margo MacDonald will put on each costume and a wig, if necessary, for each play. She transforms beautifully for each play, dissolving into the character.
Skinless
Written by Kelly Robson
In 1989, while teaching Canadian Literature at a university in Edmonton, a nun and professor, (named Dr. Sheedy or Sister Susan) reveals her past as a young instructor at a haunted school full of troubled children in 1950s Ireland. “Haunted school full of troubled children” isn’t the half of what went on in that school.
Sister Susan calmly engages the students telling them they will study Canadian stories in her English literature class. She says that “students rarely read Canadian books, “now you will be forced to.”
As Sister Susan, Margo MacDonald says that stunning line with such calm and understatement you are caught unawares (MacDonald has a dandy way of doing that in all three plays). She notes a surprise in the students when she tells them she is both a nun and a professor. She is not in the traditional habit and wimple. Here hair is short and blonde. She wears black slacks, a crisp white blouse and black jacket with a prominent cross hanging down in front of her white blouse. “You’re surprised to see me dressed as people” she says. This sense of the normalcy of things that seem exotic and different peppers all three plays.
Sister Susan always wanted to be a nun. She did her training in Ireland in the 1950s at a church named St. Mary’s where she taught the girls. She said ‘I especially love the students I can’t help, no matter how hard I try.” One such student kept trying to escape over the wall near the laundry of the church. Sister Susan was always surprised at how the student could get over the wall, what with being so heavily pregnant.
I suck air when I hear this. I know what this place is. St. Mary’s is one of the notorious Magdalene laundries overseen by the Catholic Church. They were run in Ireland from the 18th Century to the late 20th century. They were also established in other countries. Young women, pregnant and unmarried, would be taken to one of these churches by their fathers, brothers or boyfriends and left there. They would work in the laundry under terrible conditions, working in corrosive materials, lye soaps without benefit of gloves. Their hands would burn until the skin was raw. When they came to term their babies were taken away, never to be seen again. In one instance a mass grave was found with bones from more than 100 corpses. (Echoes of the horrible news of the bodies of 215 Indigenous children found in a mass grave at a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, also run by the Catholic Church). The young women would remain there because their families shunned them.
In Skinless, Sister Susan said that the young women spent four hours in school and six hours working in the laundry. She was particularly taken with this one young woman who tried to escape. Sister Susan staunchly followed the rules of the Church but still took pity on the girl. The girl was found one night clawing at the ground of a hidden area of the grounds. We found out what was there later and it’s chilling.
Kelly Robson’s writing is vivid, stark and startling. She floats a line in so effortlessly and Margo MacDonald’s delivery is so subtle, understated and lacking in judgement, that the juxtaposition of the calm and the horrifying is like a smack in the face. Kudos to director Mary Ellis for her sure hand. Sister Susan says that as a punishment she would “strap the young woman’s hands skinless.” It’s suggested that this young woman might have had a sister who had been at the church earlier. Sister Susan says, “…one sister leaves home and father starts in on the rest.” Two pregnant sisters arrived “one month apart.” Sucking air again.
A stunning story, beautifully done, realizing all its horror.
The Shape of My Teeth
Written by Amal El-Mohtar,
For The Shape of My TeethMargo MacDonald puts on a long curly wig and a full, long coat with red lining. A stool is entwined with wood suggesting a forest. Loved that detail.
In 1827 a woman reflects on her best friend’s mysterious disappearance in Mortimer Forest on the Welsh border. She refuses to be left behind.
A woman tells of her great friendship with her friend Sophie. They were fast friends from girlhood. They know their deep affection for each other is not of the ‘ordinary’ kind. They know their parents want nothing more than for the two girls to marry two brothers and be close as couples. That won’t happen because the women don’t want to marry men.
There was a forest close by, foreboding, perhaps. Intriguing? Definitely. It was rumored to be full of fairies, or the fantastical characters found in stories and books. As the woman tells us as: “What they didn’t know, but would learn soon enough, the forest had no taste for men—girls though…..”
One of the girls suggested they run away and live as they wanted. It was suggested they run away to Canada (I accept this as poetic license since “Canada’ did not exist by that name in 1827). As the women got older their intense love for each other and the efforts to hide it from the outside world, took its toll. Sophie did something drastic and leaves her friend behind. But her friend was so passionate, obsessive in her love, that she refuses to be left behind.
Amal El-Mohtar has created a story of mysticism, intrigue and mystery. She has created the forest as a place of danger and enticement. Her language is full dazzling descriptions, turns of phrases and coded queer references from the times. El-Mohtar has written a compelling story of passion and obsession.
Margo MacDonald has imbued the woman initially with a calm, tempered attitude until later in the play when she refuses to hide her passions. She rages at the world in which Sophie has left her and her determined fierceness at the end is compelling, mesmerizing and dangerous.
Repositioning
By A.M Dellamonica
For this Margo MacDonald wore a short-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the neck and skinny tie.
In the present day, a seasoned entertainer on the lesbian cruise circuit grapples with memories of an encounter with the unknown while on a Pacific Ocean repositioning cruise, headed to Vancouver, B.C. from Sydney, Australia.
Erica Prince is a lesbian comedienne down on her luck and needs a job. She is preparing an audition tape of her act for an agent in the hopes of getting back on the lesbian circuit. Margo MacDonald plays Erica as brash, overly cheerful and accommodating. She does not wear a wig. Her patter seems a bit desperate and mannered. She gives asides to the camera in explanation to the person who will watch it.
Erica was on a previous cruise and there was an incident on her day off. She drank too much and when she woke up in her cabin she was soaking wet. It seems she fell overboard—no she did not jump and try to kill herself, she assures the camera!–and was saved by a mermaid. The mermaid came to life on board and a relationship formed. (This can’t be a spoiler alert since that relationship was so integral to the story).
Erica admits that she has intimacy issues but the bond between Erica and her mermaid is so strong and intense that it continues. The mermaid has issues as well. They try and solve each other’s problems. Promises are made. Erica needs this cruise job in order to keep her promise to her mermaid.
A.M. Dellamonica has created a fantastical story that makes you think it might be real in a way. Again, her language of coded queer references is not intimidating and adds colour to the narrative. Margo MacDonald creates just enough nervous energy in Erica you can’t help but root for her in her quest.
It’s good to see Margo MacDonald performing here in Toronto for a change—she is such a gifted actor. All three stories are a huge accomplishment and well worth your time.
Andrea Scott has written an informative, illuminating play about Viola Desmond and the racism she endured in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, the play is not done justice because of Ray Hogg’s unnecessarily fussy, distracting, attention-grabbing direction.
Background.
I watched, with envy, as playwright Andrea Scott regularly posted on Twitter, her journey to get her play, Controlled Damage produced two years ago at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’sa fascinating play about Viola Desmond, the Canadian civil rights icon, who was from Halifax, so to produce it there was a no brainer. Its run was hugely successful, selling out before it even opened—I suspect that Andrea Scott’s determination to keep the play in the mind’s eye, had a lot to do with its success. And of course, one wants to see the play in Toronto.
The second production of the play was scheduled last year for the Grand Theatre in London, Ont. Andrea Scott’s home town, but COVID postponed that production until this year.
I did the next best thing to reviewing a production of the play, I reviewed (March, 2021) the published text of Controlled Damage and I suspect that Scott had a lot to do with getting it published so quickly.
From the blurb on the text: “Controlled Damage explores the life of Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond and how her act of bravery in a Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946 started a ripple effect that is still felt today. An ordinary woman forced to be extraordinary by an unyielding and racist world. Desmond never gave up—despite the personal cost to her and those who loved her. Andrea Scott’s highly theatrical examination of Desmond and her legacy traces the impact she has had on our culture, but also casts light on the slow progress of the fight for social justice and civil rights in Canada.”
One of the positive aspects of Viola Desmond’s fight for justice is that her story is now known across the country and she is commemorated on the $10 bill.
The Story. Viola Desmond had a rich and varied career. What was consistent with each change is that she excelled in whatever she tried. She was tenacious, determined, inventive, creative and independent. She trained as a teacher in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As Andrea Scott establishes in Controlled Damage, Viola was compassionate, gifted and understanding towards her students. As a Black woman she was fully aware of the world of subtle racism to which those students were subjected. In 1932 Viola Desmond was an eighteen-year-old Black woman when a white superintendent made advances on her that were unwanted. In this situation she stood her ground with resolve.
By 1936 she left teaching to study in Montreal to become a beautician. Her dream was to have her own beauty parlor and create a line of cosmetic products for Black women. She was also in love with Jack Desmond also from Halifax, a man who typically wanted his wife to stay at home and tend her household ‘duties’ while he made the money. She wanted to finish her studies. Viola got her way. Jack had his own barbershop and eventually Viola opened her own beauty parlor; created her line of beauty products for Black women and also taught other Black women how to be beautician. Viola began travelling all over Nova Scotia selling and delivering her beauty products.
It was on one of those trips to Sydney, Nova Scotia that her car broke down in New Glasgow. The repair job required that Viola stay the night. On Nov. 8, 1946, Viola went to the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow to see a movie. She bought a ticket and sat downstairs, as she always did in Halifax, to be close to the screen because she was near sighted.
A female usher told her she had to move to the balcony because she was not allowed to sit downstairs. Viola showed the usher the ticket and was prepared to pay the difference. That was not the issue. The usher said, “Coloureds don’t sit down here.” Such a policy didn’t exist in Halifax. There were no signs to that effect in the Roseland Theatre.
Viola understood immediately. She sat there, quietly defiant and continued to watch the film. The Manager came and Desmond would not move. Then the police came and forcibly removed her from the theatre. She was injured in the transaction. She spent the night in jail. The charge was that she did not pay the proper one cent tax on the ticket. She was found guilty. There were appeals that went badly. Her church reverend wanted her to fight the case and try another appeal. It went to the Supreme Court and was denied because of that technicality of the tax instead of the veiled/unspoken racism of having Blacks sit in the balcony. There were consequences after the trial. Both Jack’s barbershop and Viola’s beauty parlor suffered losses of business. Life was difficult. The marriage suffered.
Controlled Damage is not about the trial as the central theme. It’s about the world that Viola Desmond lived in, the racism she endured from whites and Blacks and the kind of determined woman she was.
The Production. The play takes place between 1917 and 1965, with most of the scenes taking place in 1946. One wonders, then, why set designer Brian Dudkiewicz chose to create an ultramodern square structure made of connected rods suggesting the outline of walls, that were then illuminated in neon. And if you sat on the side of the theatre or perhaps even in the middle, what was projected on the side and back walls might be obscured by the rods. It certainly made reading some of the information on the projections difficult. This structure sat on a raised playing area. Chairs are situated on either side of the playing area. The cast sit there when not in a scene.
Simple set pieces, chairs, a chaise, etc. are carried on and off efficiently. Why then is the outline of the structure necessary?
For some reason, director Ray Hogg has a woman in a coat, shoes and gloves enter the playing area and sit quietly in a chair, center stage as the audience fills in. At one point she takes off her shoes and carefully places them in front of the chair. She walks around. Why? Who is she? The play hasn’t started so who is she and why is she there? We learn it’s Viola Desmond later on, but what are we to make of her presence before? Mystifying, and never explained.
The first scene of the play takes place Dec. 6, 1917, when Viola is 3-years-old. Two ships collide in the narrow Halifax Harbour. One was carrying 2925 tons of munitions. There was an explode and the blast killed 2000 and injured hundreds. Three-year-old Viola was in her highchair in the kitchen, with her back to the window. When her father rushed in to see how she was, she was slumped over, the window blind fell on her head and she was covered in glass and she was not moving. But she was alive. Her father James said: “It’s a miracle, Viola survived that blast. She was spared because the Lord had big plans for my little girl.” Her mother said, “Viola Irene Davis. The girl who lived.” (“The Girl Who Lived” is projected on the back wall). Indeed, that steely resolve at three years-old, imbued her character for her whole life.
This is a very intricate scene that playwright Andrea Scott has fashioned. In the text the scene is noted with the heading: “The Girl Who Lived.” The stage direction is simple: “Multiple spotlights highlight the chorus.” The chorus is noted as “Character A, Character B, and so on until F. But all the characters in the play are indicated in the text as to who they are by name, how old they are etc. Initially each member of the chorus speaks one line in turn that sets up the details of what happened Dec. 1917. Then various characters enter and speak one line of how they were affected (Viola’s father, mother etc.) interspersed with members of the chorus. As I said, it’s intricate.
In the programme at The Grand Theatre all the characters are noted as Woman 1, 2, 3 etc. as are the men, 1, 2, 3. Only Viola (Beck Lloyd) Jack (Stewart Adam McKensy) and the Fiddler (Dominique Leblanc) are noted by name. So, unless one knows who each actor is already to identify who they are also playing during the production, one is out of luck in trying to figure out the name of the character they are playing.
Rather than keep it simple, with the chorus speaking in place, (“Multiple spotlights highlight the chorus,”) director and movement director, Ray Hogg has his chorus of at least nine, flitting all over the stage while saying their one line in turn. Keeping track of who is talking and what they are actually saying clearly is challenging, to say the least. A lot of the story is lost in what turns out to be confusing rather than illuminating.
Viola was a gifted, committed teacher to her students and used clever ways to teach them. One day the superintendent (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) came in to her class to observe and criticized her for the way she was teaching—having the children throw a ball to coax out a fact—and what she was teaching—about the provinces and slavery. He said they were not renewing her contract but if she was more accommodating to him, sweeter, she could keep her job. He attempted to stroke her cheek and she told him in no uncertain terms not to do that.
Andrea Scott is measured in the information of the scene and spare in the way the superintendent made advances. Ray Hogg however, directs the scene with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Not only does the superintendent come on to Viola by stroking her cheek, but he also begins to unbuckle his belt and take out part of his tucked in shirt, until a student comes in and interrupts his intention. Overkill direction to make one suck air and cover one’s eyes. I felt the same way about a scene in Act II when Ray Hogg has three women dance on stage, throw popcorn in the air and soon after return pushing big brooms in an elaborate dance to sweep up the popcorn. Again, Andrea Scott wrote a simple scene. Ray Hogg’s distracting direction/choreography blew it up.
Projections from Videocompany are also problematic. In the text each scene has a heading to describe it: “Truth and Fiction,” for example. There is also a date and location indicating when and where the scene took place. In the production it would have been simple, efficient and clear to have a projection on the back and side walls of the stage with the heading and the date and place. But not here…..The heading is projected on the back wall and the date and place are projected on the two side walls. One had to be quick to read them. One also had to be lucky nothing obstructed one’s view—from my seat, one of the set’s neon rods always cut off some part of the information on the side wall.
In the text, Andrea Scott ends one of the scenes with the caption: “…multiple images of historic, Black Canadians are projected on the set.” Videocompany clutters the idea by projecting the names (not the images) of historic, Black Canadians plus who they were in smaller print. There seemed to be different names on different parts of the walls, so one didn’t have enough time to read them all and note who they are. A shame. That information would have been important to read and consider.
As Viola, Beck Lloyd is poised, composed, clear, confident and in control. She illuminates Viola’s resolve, her tenacity, compassion and concern for her students and the Black women she serves as her clients. It’s a nuanced and multi-dimensional performance that towers over the production. The other actors for the most part seem to be directed to over-act or give overly broad performances.
Andrea Scott illuminates the kind of person Viola was. In her quiet way Viola Desmond (née Davis) was a pioneer as a Black business woman leading the way for others. She was not only a beautician, she created products for Black women and build a business that sold them. It’s noted in the play that you would not find a Black beautician working in a white beauty parlor. But such was Viola’s ability and reputation that she had white and Black customers.
Andrea Scott has written a compelling, thought-provoking, complex play. She explores the racism a Black person had to endure, certainly as it pertained to Viola in that theatre. Scott also explores reverse racism—of her Black friends who consider her “uppity” and “putting on airs” because she’s part white. They don’t want the added attention of this woman who wanted justice for what happened to her at the cinema. They want to forget the incident and go on with their lives.
Scott has fashioned the play as if it was Greek in nature—huge issues are explored—with a Greek chorus that represents the people. Her dialogue is sharp, smart, and vivid. Viola’s case was taken up with her minister (a dignified Cameron Grant) and his wife (a determined Krystle Chance) who said: “Everything is not fine. Being tolerated isn’t enough….As long as we stay silent and let people disrespect our right to live with dignity we’re going to our graves unhappy, dissatisfied and broken.”
Scott also explores the politics of skin colour and the nuances in descriptions. Viola was light-skinned because she was of mixed race: her mother was white and her father was Black. A young student of Viola’s who was darker skinned challenged her about how they were treated differently. There are also pointed comments on wanting to straighten hair to look ‘whiter’. The source of the title Controlled Damage is also interesting. A cream is applied to Black hair to straighten it. “…what we’re doing is breaking down the natural strength in Black hair in order to make it smooth and manageable, which is called controlled damage.” The same could be a metaphor for racism to keep a person of colour down, under one’s thumb and ‘manageable.’
Scott also illuminates the subtle difference between the word “Negro” and its connection to slavery, and the word “coloured” to note the difference and create a distance from slavery.
Comment. As noted in the play, Viola Desmond wasn’t an activist. She says she wasn’t a “Rosa Parks” (who was a true activist and was tireless in her pursuit in changing a racist system). She did continue to take her case higher up the legal ladder because as she says: “I did nothing wrong.” In fact it was others who continued Viola Desmond’s cause long after she died (in 1965 in New York City when she was only 50). But because of the racism she experienced Viola got people to notice and fight for a change. Having her face on the $10 seems a small victory, since racism is still with us in all its ugliness. Still Controlled Damage is an important, necessary play that informs us of how much further we need to go in race relations.
Andrea Scott’s play is terrific. The play deserves to be seen across the country in a much better production, definitely with another director and designer.
It’s that fund-raising time again for CIUT fm. From November 14-20, 2022.
This is my shameless plea to donate to keep the only independent radio station going and to give you radio that covers the arts, unlike any other outlet. The mainstream media has drastically cut down its arts coverage, not CIUT FM.
There are four mainstream daily newspapers that covered theatre regularly. Now there is only one.
On my show, CRITICS CIRCLE on Saturday mornings 9 am to 10 am (formerly CIUT FRIDAY MORNING,) 89.5 fm we do theatre and film reviews every week, plus interviews. I review theatre around the city and the province. I have supported and championed the marginalized voices through their plays for decades. For me, theatre is vital in reflecting the world we live in.
CIUT 89.5 fm gives voice to those who need to be heard. Our shows are all volunteer. Please go to https://ciut.fm and donate—noting CRITICS CIRCLE– so we can continue to provide needed arts coverage.
Added Bonus: The wonderful Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company at the Meridian Centre in North York is offering TWO tickets to the opening night, Nov. 17, to OLD STOCK: A Refugee Love Story, to the first person who donates $250, noting CRITICS CIRCLE in our fundraising. The show is wonderful. Please donate. Thanks.
At the Panasonic Theatre, Toronto, Ont.
