Search: Rant, How our World and our Theatre is going to hell

At the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Michael Frayn
Directed by Ted Dykstra
Set by Patrick Clark
Costumes by Erika Connor
Lighting by Kaileigh Krysztofiak
Sound by Creighton Doane
Cast: Oliver Dennis
Raquel Duffy
Matthew Edison
Christopher Morris
Oyin Oladejo
Anand Rajaram
Brenda Robins
Myrthin Stagg
David Storch

HEHEHEHEHE (gasping for breath)HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, (OH God) (gulping air) hehehehHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE, (bent over paralyzed with laughing) (red-faced—BREATHE!! (gasp—gulp air) laugh some more. Which is a long way of saying that the production of Noises Off at the Young Centre is rib-busting funny.

The Story. A group of ‘B’ actors are stumbling through the dress/tech rehearsal for a play that they will tour for several months around the British provinces. It’s not going well. The leading lady forgets her lines, the order of business and endless plates of sardines. The stereotypical dumb blonde loses her way in the show and her contact lens. One senior actor drinks and the trick is to prevent him. Disruptions are many and the director is about to explode or kill someone.

Act II takes place backstage a month later, during a matinee of the same play. The leading lady is having a hissy fit in her dressing room and won’t come out. She was having an affair with a young actor in the company and it has been rocky. The director was having a fling with the blonde and that’s going badly and he arrives to make it up to her. Meanwhile, the stage manager has had a fling with the same director and she needs to speak with him urgently. Animosity between actors is high. The show is going on on stage while all hell is breaking out back stage where all the dialogue is indicated in extravagant mime, as talking is not allowed while the show goes on. A big axe figures prominently.

Act III is two months later at the end of the run. Everyone is exhausted and on automatic pilot. We are on stage again watching a performance from hell. Props don’t work. Cues are missed. The sardines fall on the floor and actors accidentally slip in them. Doors malfunction, as a matter of fact, everything malfunctions.

The Production. Director Ted Dykstra knows from comedy. His gifted cast knows from comedy. Together they have taken Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s exquisitely funny 1982 farce and ramped up the laughs. While there might be a Frayn laugh every 50 seconds, Dykstra adds stage business, visual humour and witty detail every 10 seconds. Resistance is futile.

A character slides down a banister. Another falls down a flight of stairs. Other characters bang into beams. There is that ubiquitous and disappearing plate of sardines. The production is not just in your face high jinx, there is wondrous subtlety too. Each character has a signature ‘look’ because of the smart, gifted actor playing him/her and that seriously attentive director guiding them. Oliver Dennis plays Selsdon Mowbray, the senior actor, with a slouch, a distracted look, and a longing gaze at any bottle of liquor. Raquel Duffy plays the always smiling Belinda Blair, who knows everybody’s secrets. She’s kind, quiet and watchful. Matthew Edison plays Garry Lejeune, a boyish, eye-glasses-adjusting man who never met a sentence he could finish. His speech is peppered with “you know” which is obvious nobody knows what he’s talking about. Christopher Morris as Frederick Fellowes makes an art-form of posing with swivelled hips and professing how silly he is about plot and reasons for doing a line the way he is asked. Oyin Oladejo plays Poppy Norton-Taylor, the harried stage manager, who cries easily and has cause to cry as well. Anand Rajaram is Tim Algood, the sole tech/administrator/jack of every single trade in the world. Rajaram is a master of comedy. He can bulge his eyes in terror/surprise and get a laugh by just shuddering. Brenda Robins plays Dotty Otley. She is confused about where that damned plate of sardines is; when to take that damned plate off stage and when to leave it. She is the actress who needs this job for her old age. You can see the quiet desperation in Robins wonderful performance. Myrthin Stagg plays Brooke Ashton, the stereotypical blonde who plays her part mainly in her ‘smalls’. She has that vacant look, especially when she is on stage, but ‘not in the scene’, that is masterful. She is wispy voiced, ‘air-headed’ and wonderful. David Storch plays Lloyd Dallas, the director, frantic to get the rehearsal over with before the actual opening night performance. Psychology aside in trying to manoeuvre all these difference personalities, Lloyd Dallas is an educated man relegated to directing third rate plays for second rate actors, even though they give it their all. Each and every one of these characters is made flesh, blood and beating heart by this gifted cast.

Comment. Michael Frayn got the idea for the play while watching a farce from backstage. On the surface Noises Off is considered one of the funniest farces of all time, if not the funniest. I don’t know how you decide that—by vote? By a collection of sore ribs from laughing?

Noises Off, in the play-within-the-play, is also a reflection of the subjects, prejudices and uncomfortable situations of its time, the 1970s. There are racist references to Arabs. There is the sexist assumption that blondes are stupid and just sexual beings. There is the suggestion that theatre people jump into and out of a raft of changing beds. Farce is provocative as the extraordinary note from the company of Noises Off suggests. It reflects the changing world. But first you will laugh.

You will laugh so hard your cheeks will hurt—all of them.

Presented by Soulpepper

Opened: Sept.29, 2016.
Closes: Oct. 22, 2016.
Cast: 9; 5 men, 4 women
Running Time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

www.soulpepper.ca

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At the Broadway Theatre, New York City

Book by Joseph Stein
Music by Jerry Bock
Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick
Based on the Sholom Aleichem stories.
Directed by Bartlett Sher
Choreography by Hofesh Shechter
Music director and new orchestrations by Ted Sperling
Sets by Michael Yeargan
Costumes by Catherine Zuber
Lighting by Donald Holder
Sound by Scott Lehrer
Cast: Danny Burstein
Jessica Hecht
Adam Kantor
Karl Kenzler
Alix Korey
Samantha Massell
Melanie Moore
George Psomas
Nick Rehberger
Alexandra Silber

A beautifully moving, deeply thought production of a classic that looks at the subject matter in a new light, considering what is going on in the world.

The Story. You know the story. We are in a shtetl (small village with a mostly Jewish population) in Anatevka, Russia in 1905. Tevye is a poor Jewish dairyman. He has been married to Golde for 25 years and they have five daughters. Five! He believes in the traditions that have guided his people for centuries. He believes this is how you become a good Jew. He believes that the father decides who his daughters will marry; that marriages are arranged; that if love is involved, the daughter’s intended asks her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage; that never do you marry outside the faith. But times are changing and Tevye’s three older daughters (Tzeitel, Hodel and Chava) are challenging that tradition. They want to marry whom they wish, and for love. Sometimes it’s out of the faith even though the intended is a good, decent respectful person. At its heart Fiddler on the Roof is about love, forgiveness and resilience. But mostly love.

The Production. Director Bartlett Sher has created a production that is brimming with the pulsing life of that village. The majority share a bond because they are Jewish. There is their common good-will of people experiencing the same things: poverty, family matters, and a grudging patience when dealing with busy-bodies such as Yente the matchmaker. Rumours spread easily. There always seems to be a heightened anxiety of who said what about whom. Later, subtly, we will also realize that all is not rosy in Anatevka. There is a wariness of, and distance from, those who aren’t Jewish. And there are the police and the fear of them. It’s 1905 in Russia, all is not peaceful for Jews. It all comes out in Sher’s sobering, moving production.

The stage is bare except for a simple wood chair stage right, with a peasant cap hanging off a corner of the back of the chair. There is a grey, worn backdrop with the name “Ahatebka” framed, as if it is a railroad station sign announcing the town’s name. I assume the name as spelled is a combination English/Russian hybrid—but we assume the town is “Anatevka.”

A man appears wearing a red parka, circa now. He reads out loud from a book. He’s probably reading from “Tevye and his Daughters and other stories (or “Tevye the Dairyman”) by Sholem Aleichem, on whose stories Fiddler on the Roof is based. The man reading sets up the scene. He is Danny Burstein who, when he takes off the parka, will reveal he’s in costume as Tevye, the dairyman; shirt, vest, pants, cap and prayer shawl braids hanging down from under his shirt.

With that we are taken back to Anatevka in 1905. In Michael Yeargan’s simple evocative set, clusters of dilapidated houses occasionally hover in the air reminiscent of a Marc Chagall painting. Tevye and Golda’s house is old and rundown. Poor people live here. Catherine Zuber’s costumes of sturdy peasant garb seem too pristine for such poverty, but she’s such a good designer I’ll chalk that up as a quibble.

Tevye is a man who has lived his life adhering to the traditions passed down to him from his father and his father’s father. He will pass those traditions to his five daughters. He thinks about what makes a good Jew. He talks to God for solace. He talks about money a lot because he doesn’t have any. But most important, he is loved and he loves. He has the respect of his village. And he has those traditions to anchor him. Indeed, traditions and the strict adherence to them are beautifully set up in the first song, “Tradition,” Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick’s (lyrics) which immediately establishes one of the themes of the show.

Danny Burstein’s performance as Tevye bursts with good will and love for his family; irreverence at times when conversing with God, and resilience. When his carthorse becomes lame, Tevye pulls the wagon himself, resigned. He endures and he’s representative of a people who endure.

His short-tempered, efficient, hard-working wife Golde, rules that home but gives the impression it’s all for her husband. Hmmmmm. Jessica Hecht is a whirlwind of industry, always working, always planning, arranging, cooking, smoothing things out for her family. She has no time for small talk….”Do I love you?” Such a question after 25 years after she has washed for him and cooked for him and the other things a dutiful wife does. “I suppose I do.” Irritated at first but then almost like a revelation. Lovely.

A quibble: In one of the scenes two beds are rolled out, one for Tevye and one for Golde, I think in the scene in which an apparition comes to Tevye. Why two beds? I know that Golde sings in “Do I Love You?” that she has shared her bed with him. Does that mean she has one and so does Tevye and when they wanted to ‘get closer’ he came over to her bed? Just wondering.

Hofesh Shechter, the celebrated Israeli-British choreographer, has choreographed the show with a tip of the hat to the original choreography of Jerome Robbins, but also with his own sense of panache. His choreography for “Tradition” for the “Papa,” arms in the air, bent at the elbow, feet stamping, confident, proud and commanding, says it all for the men who think they are the head of the family. The women who are “The Mama” are demure, graceful, quiet, even obsequious. I am struck at how graceful the women are. Of course the ironic joke here, if Golde is any indication, is that the Mama rules the family. The sons and the daughters follow next in the same manner as their Papas and Mamas.

When Tzeitel (a feisty Alexandra Silber) marries her love, Motel the tailor (a timid but eventually confident Adam Kantor), there is a wedding of course full of tradition. And there is “The Bottle Dance.” The men in their fine black coats, pants, and formal black hats, come out en masse with a bottle in their hands. The point of the dance is that they have to do a slow, muscular dance in unison, while balancing the bottles in a groove in their hats. The music is particularly dramatic. The dance fits the music perfectly. Three men line up mid-stage, parallel to the front of the stage. The man in the middle slowly sinks to his knees, the bottle balanced in his hat on his head. His right leg shoots straight out on an angle to the side, about 45 degrees. His other leg is still bent under him. The heel of the right leg ‘digs’ into the stage, anchoring him, as that outstretched leg bends slowly bringing the body towards the heel. The men on either side of our ‘squatting fellah’ put their hands under his arms and drag him in the direction of his bending leg, giving the impression of sliding along the floor more than what the leg could have done. Then the squatting fellah turns to the left and repeats the movement with his left leg, shooting out straight on a 45 degree angle. The heel anchors the leg, pulls the body forward and is also helped again by the guys on either side of him. The image is so fluid, graceful and dramatic, my jaw dropped.

Then the full component of young men at the wedding spread across the stage, bottles placed in unison on their hats to balance. On the downbeat of the music they sink to the floor and put one arm around their neighbour on the right and the other arm around their neighbour on the left. On another dramatic note their right legs shoot out on the angle; the heels dig in and in unison the bodies slide forward on the floor until the right leg is bent. They turn and shoot their left legs out, heels dug, then they slide forward

What is there about this dance that grips me, squeezes my heart and just makes me weep when I hear the first note of music? Jerome Robbins and now Hofesh Shechter know what grabs an audience. A chorus line of high kickers will always get a round of applause. The high kicking line is just a cliché and the audience falls for it every time. That’s fine. The choreography of The Bottle Dance goes further. What’s going on here is art. And that’s worth getting teary about.

Needless to say, the songs have stood the test of time, and many weddings. Of the sixteen songs, nine are classics. They come from a time in musical theatre history in which songs do have a life of their own. As musicals have developed into something deeper (Hello Sondheim) and the music and lyrics are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the show and are not meant to be taken on their own it’s more common to have one or two songs that can stand the test of their own time. That’s not a bad thing, just an observation. But in musical theatre lore, Fiddler on the Roof stands above most musicals.

As for the direction by Bartlett Sher, there is always such detail in it that reveals so much more about a show you think you know inside and out. The Constable is the Russian police presence in the village. He seems affable enough. He likes Tevye. Tevye is polite but wary. Sher illustrates this in a small, quiet, devastating scene. The Constable leisurely appears behind Tevye, walking toward him. Tevye is unaware of his presence until he senses the Constable behind him. Tevye turns, sees him, flinches and automatically scurries forward a few steps to ‘escape’ him. Then he relaxes when he realizes this might send the wrong message. But that reaction stuns me. So small a bit of business and so resounding in illuminating how frightening that police presence is. I put my hand over my mouth. How come my hand over my mouth makes me weepy.

The Constable is coming to tell Tevye that there will be a bit of a ‘dust-up’ in the village. Tevye interprets this with terror, “You mean a pogrom!” The Constable tries to assure him that it is not. But of course it is, and it takes place at Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding.

Tevye can grudgingly accept the changing world of his daughters, but he cannot and will not accept that Chava, his beloved daughter, wants to marry a non-Jew, Fyedka. He will not accept it and considers her dead. When the Jews must leave the village in three days, Chava and Fyedka try to get through to him. They are leaving too. They can’t stay there when people are so cruel. Tevye ignores her, tying up their goods in the cart. Golde kisses her good-bye, not once, but 10 times in quick succession. It’s a parting of painful heartache. Tevye sees it and quietly says “God be with you” as she has almost walked off, and he continues to tie the goods to his cart. When he can’t stand it any longer he rushes after her as well, but she is gone and this crushes him. He bends over in grief. Bartlett Sher ramping up the emotion of a scene. The whole village them walks around the stage from upstage to downstage, in a circle, pulling their carts, hauling their goods, leaving their homes. The man in the red parka appears again watching them, the book opened at the last page, the end of the story, or so it seems. He closes the book gently and hugs it to his chest. He has a creased look on his face—grief? Emotion? Whatever it is, it’s so moving.

Fiddler on the Roof rips the heart out of you. Bartlett Sher raises that emotional level Is this sentimental? Fine.

Comment. Ok, why would I see such a chestnut of a show, beloved notwithstanding? Because Bartlett Sher directed it. He has such a gift for getting to the heart of a show. He always goes deeper into a work if it’s well known and realizes deeper meanings. Fiddler on the Roof is a case in point. By framing it with a modern man in a parka at the beginning and end of a story that takes place in 1907, Sher is showing the relevance of it in 2016. This is a refugee story, a story of immigrants driven from their homes, forced to find ‘home’ elsewhere, even in a different country with relatives they barely know. I think we can appreciate a story like that in 2016. Loved this production.

Opened: December 20, 2015.
I saw it: April 1, 2016.
Closes: open ended
Cast: 31, 18 men, 13 women
Running Time: 3 hours.

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At Studio 102, 376 Dufferin, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Jen Silverman
Directed by Ali Joy Richardson
Set and Costume Design by Michelle Tracey
Sound by Nicolas Potter
Lighting by Steve Vargo
Cast: Christopher Allen
Alicia Richardson
Julie Tepperman
Annemieke Wade

Jen Silverman is a young playwright with interesting ideas that are only touched on in her play. She needs to focus on one or two things in this play, not four, to make the work cohesive and not seem scattered. The cast is valiant.

The Story. Constantinople is a wide-eyed, exuberant, wonder-filled baby who is two days old. In fact he was still born and has been dead two days but he considers himself two days old. He has gone looking for his mother who played the Ramones when she was pregnant, which he liked. He also hears her crying now which he doesn’t like. He is on a journey to soak in the wonders of this world he can’t really enjoy because he’s, well, dead.

His mother, Morgan, is grieving. She is a 41-year-old university rofessor, divorced, who wanted to have the baby at home by mid-wife but there was trouble. An ambulance was called and Morgan was rushed to the hospital where Constantinople was still born. Morgan wants to bury her son but is told that the hospital can’t find him. This naturally freaks her out. We know where the baby is; he’s on his journey to find his mother.

Dolores is a young dominatrix. She dresses in a provocative black leather get up with leather hot pants; a leather bra and various leather straps joining it all. She wears the requisite boots as well. She’s just found out that she’s pregnant and wants to get rid of the baby.

Elena is the mid-wife involved in Constantinople’s birth. Because something went wrong—we never actually find out what—Elena wants to do penance, to be punished, so she comes to Dolores to be abused.

Eventually Constantinople meets Dolores and they bond, perhaps as two young children bond, because in a way they are. Constantinople asks Dolores to write a letter for him, to his mother, and to deliver it. When Dolores goes to give Morgan the letter—a perfect stranger in this strange get-up has to introducer herself to this grieving woman—Dolores chickens out, the first time. But during the course of the meeting and after, Dolores and Morgan bond, as a child and a parent would bond.

The Production. I have never seen the usually gloomy space at Studio 102 look so good, thanks to Michelle Tracey’s set. There is a stone back wall, comfortable furniture that represents Morgan’s home; and a black table stage left, representing Dolores’ digs. She does her dominating on that table. And the lighting is bright and warm, not garish.

Constantinople is played by an efflorescent, always smiling Christopher Allen. He wears a short smock covering made of opaque plastic. He is barefoot. Voila the still born baby. His first encounter with a person is Dolores, played by Alicia Richardson with attitude and a gift for the quick barb. This character is in peril of being a one note tough-on-the-outside-mush-on-the-inside kind of woman, but Richardson and her director Ali Joy Richardson make sure that doesn’t happen.

Julie Tepperman brings great humanity to the role of Elena, the disgraced mid-wife. The playwright, Jen Silverman has not really fleshed out the character of Elena—there is so much we want to know about her—that at times Elena sounds overly self-critical and it comes from no-where.

Finally as Morgan, the grieving mother, Annemieke Wade is a walking wound of sorrow and anger. She revisits painful memories in an effort to discover if she could have prevented what happened. That she’s not sure adds to her grief.

Director Ali Joy Richardson, also the force behind this project, is an unfussy director, not show-offy. She manoeuvres her cast with ease and confidence. There are lovely touches in the production—Morgan at one point wears an unbuttoned shirt over a t-shirt. You can see a bit of the t-shirt and it says “Ramones” on it. Lovely touch.

Comment. This is Jen Silverman’s first play and the first professional performance of it. Presumably Silverman wrote this while in university. The play won the 2013 Yale Drama Series Award. It was also performed at the Juilliard School in February 2016.

It’s based in part on the true story of Lisa Heineman (a writer and professor) and her experience giving birth to a still born son. Silverman collaborated with Heineman on the play. In her program note Silverman says that she was trying to reflect the intense emotions in the various situations and that as such truthful representation of events becomes distorted. Her last thought is: “I found that in order to be truthful to tone, I could not be factual about events.” Fair enough.

Silverman has an intriguing sense of humour. Her dialogue for Dolores is sharp, bright, witty and funny in an aggressive way. She has certainly captured the emotional pain and sense of loss of Morgan. The effects of a stillborn birth on the mother—now there are at least 10 plays there.

But the dialogue for Constantinople for the most part is a breathy “Wow.” “Wow.” “The world is wonderful.” “Wow” and ‘wonderful’ are frequently repeated and truth to tell it becomes boring. Why have the character of the dead baby at all if he is going to talk as if he is a person with limited means of expression? Silverman starts off interestingly enough with Constantinople repeating complex words he heard while in the womb, but then looses momentum with Constantinople when he really goes no where in his observations and journey. Sure, I know the character is young and inquisitive. But the fact that he is dead two days and wandering around looking for his mother would suggest that the quirky playwright could do better dialogue for him.

The character of Elena is woefully underwritten. If we don’t have any idea of the problem in the birthing, then how can we have any idea of the character except that she is a flake who wants to be punished? A bit contrived, I think. And the problem with the birth must have been serious for there to be such consequences for Elena.

I am always wary when the playwright has a note telling us the intentions of her play. Intensions aside, the reality in Still, is that it is definitely the play of an inexperienced playwright. I can appreciate Silverman wanting to cover huge chunks of experiences for all four characters. But she doesn’t actually go deep enough or dwell on them equally and therefore the play seems scattered and unfocused. Do we need four stories with two of them tenuous? Is the play supposed to be about the stillborn birth? A re-write might help answer the questions and focus the play.

Presented by Binocular Theatre.

First performance: March 4, 2016.
Closes: March 13, 2016.
Cast: 4, 1 man, 3 women.
Running Time: 90 minutes.

still.brownpapertickets.com

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At Hart House Theatre, Toronto, Ont.

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine
Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick
Directed by Jeremy Hutton
Music director, Giustin MacLean
Set by Joe Pagnan
Costumes by Michelle Tracey
Lighting by Simon Rossiter
Choreography by Michele Shuster
Sound by JayLynn Hines
Cast: Colin Asuncion
Nevada Banks
Moulan Bourke
Saphire Demitro
Sarite Harris
Bradley Hoover
James King
Matt Lacas
Michelle Nash
Chiano Panth
Jayne Peters
Alexandra Reed
Hugh Ritchie
Jaymie Sampa
Maksym Shkvorets
Amy Swift
Korin Thomas-Smith
Erin Winsor
Rachel Wood

What a herculean challenge and so well met by the cast. Lots of imagination here but I so wish that imaginative director Jeremy Hutton got out of the way and let the show be.

NOTE: Because of a major technical glitch the day before the opening, the cast did not have a proper dress rehearsal. So the proposed opening night became that dress rehearsal. There was one little technical hiccup last night (‘opening’) but I am reviewing it as if it was the opening, with that one ‘note’, because the production is so accomplished.

The Story. Into the Woods, the 1987 collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine is a mashup of several Grimm’s fairy tales. Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstrock, Cinderella and Rapunzel among others.

It starts with a Baker and his Wife. They are desperate for a child but the Witch next door put a curse on the Baker’s family. It seems that the Baker’s father stole some beans from the Witch’s garden and she put a curse on the whole family in which no children would be born. To reverse the curse (thank you Stephen Sondheim for that impish, elegant rhyme), The Baker and his Wife have to go into the woods and gather four things the Witch needs to dispel the spell. That is where they meet all the other characters connected to the story. This being Sondheim and Lapine, there is philosophy, intellectual musings, musings on life, family, children, teaching, listening, mishaps, disappointment and loving. And they sing about it all.

The Production. There are images of clocks on the three walls of Joe Pagnan’s huge set, with a large clock face up stage centre with only one hand it seems pointing to the 12. Various characters move door frames abound to establish the various locations of the characters. The Baker and his Wife are stage right. Jack and his mother are stage left.

The Narrator enters carrying something in his hand. He sits at the edge of the stage and fiddles with it, tweaking here, arranging something there. If a person is in the first two rows they can see that what the Narrator is holding is a model of the set. I am sitting seven rows back and couldn’t make head nor tail of what the Narrator is holding and certainly not when he sits down. Not a good beginning.

Time seems to be a metaphor for this show, what with all the clocks. There are frequent ticking sounds as well. That’s a bit mystifying since time is only of the essence in Act One when The Baker and his Wife have three days to gather the four items. And since the book references the passage of time adding clocks and ticking seems overkill.

If a character travels from one place to another, as Little Red Riding Hood does as she skips to her grandmother’s house, then trees move up along each side of her (noisily on their rollers), then veer away from her, turn back and then up along the side of her again etc. suggesting distance travelled. Other times when there is much movement there is also a spiralling lighting effect that adds to the activity.

The Witch (a spirited Saphire Demitro) sings of how The Baker’s father was: “Rooting through my rutabaga/Raiding my arugula and/Ripping up the rampion/(My champion! My favourite!)/I should have laid a spell on him” a killer patter song, that details the wrongs done to her and later how the Baker and his Wife can reverse curse by bringing her the items she needs. There is so much movement/choreography, with a rap of her staff on some words, and the speed with which she thinks she has to sing it, that occasionally the words are lost in Saphire Demitro’s energetic performance. Later her singing of “Stay With Me” sung to her daughter Rapunzel, is haunting and heartbreaking.

The cast is very strong and committed. They sing beautifully, albeit with microphones—it’s sad that voice projection taught in theatre schools seems a thing of the past—with James King as the Baker, Colin Asuncion as Jack and Michelle Nash as Cinderella as standouts in a standout cast.

I can appreciate that going into the woods to find, lose and find things again is an energetic journey and Michelle Shuster’s choreography is vibrant and lively in suggesting that journey. I can also appreciate the huge effort and imagination required by director Jeremy Hutton to imagine the world of the play and to negotiating his cast through that world. But I couldn’t help thinking with all the moving trees, props, spiralling lighting effects, ticking, whirring, clanging sound effects that it is all too much for a show already loaded with a lot of stuff to contend with. One needed Gravol for the motion sickness one got watching all that activity on stage. And it’s very telling that the most effective scenes, whether sung or just talked, were those scenes without all the attendant distracting effects and frantic movement.

Comment. Into the Woods is a beast of a show. Sondheim’s lyrics and music alone are a challenge. Of all his shows this one seems to me that he is riffing on himself. Even with huge respect and appreciation for his brilliance I think he goes overboard. Whether it’s the Witch’s song about her ravaged garden, or “It Takes Two”, or any song in the forest that goes on and on, often I thought that Sondheim had stated his case nicely but still went on to belabour the obvious. Still he’s a genius.

My concerns about over-directing aside, I thought the cast and all the creatives of this show, did the piece proud.

Presented by Hart House Theatre

Opened: January 15, 2016.
Closes: January 30, 2016.
Cast: 19; 8 men, 11 women
Running Time: 2 hours 40 minutes.

www.harthousetheatre.ca

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At Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Jonathan Garfinkel and Christopher Morris
Conceived by Human Cargo
Directed by Christopher Morris
Set and Costumes by Gillian Gallow
Lighting by Michelle Ramsay
Sound and Music by Richard Feren
Cast: Beau Dixon
Christine Horne
Andrew Lawrie
Cheri Maracle
Samiya Mumtaz
Parwin Mushtael
Sanjay Talwar

A gripping play that clearly illuminates the complexity of the war in Afghanistan and the utter futility in trying to solve its many thorny questions.

The Story. The program note distils the story down to the basics. “A child suicide bomber in Pakistan; a Canadian soldier in Kandahar; an Afghan immigrant in Toronto. Three worlds that collide in a play about love and loss in the time of war.” All the incidents in the play are based on actual events and they are connected. For example, a noted actress in Afghanistan tells the harrowing story of how her husband was killed and his body dumped outside their house. She finds him there. She is brought to Canada with her son by a kindly sponsor who has his own connections to Afghanistan. He puts them in a nice apartment that is two subway stops from the Afghan community. He doesn’t establish them in that community because it’s dangerous (drugs and gangs) and the lodgings are slum-like. So the woman has no one to talk to in her own language and she feels isolated.

While all the stories are based on true incidents, one is particularly special. Parwin Mushtael is playing the Afghani actress and it’s based on Mushtael’s own story. Her resolve, guts and courage in the light of her harrowing experience, leaves you shaken.

The Production. The audience is led to a holding space before they enter the playing space. Signs illuminate statistics: how many Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan; how many other military have died ; how many Afghan civilians have died (more than 20,000). Compared to the huge number of civilians, the number of dead soldiers is much less (any is too many, but still).

We are led into the playing area with two rows of chairs on the four sides of the space. Sand is in the centre of the space (really bits of brown rubber that when piled on the floor look like sand. A young man in Afghan garb wanders the space, his right arm is bent and held close to his body. The arm seems damaged. He peers hard at people. I look back just as hard. The rest of the audience does not take notice of him. I’m reminded of the young man who was in the theatre, watching us go in, during The 20th of November, the show about a young man in Germany who opened fire on his school. No one in the audience seemed to watch him when they filed in either.

What follows are short scenes involving a young teenaged boy whom a humanitarian organization wants to protect. The Taliban want to recruit him as a suicide bomber. Two Canadian soldiers ready to deploy to Afghanistan spend the last few days with their wives loving each other. The Afghan actress sits on a rug from Ikea recalling how she found her husband outside their house. The ghost of the man appears dramatically and lies on the mat.

Director Christopher Morris uses the space well and Michelle Ramsay lights it beautifully and carefully. Moments of poignant stillness juxtaposed with moments of tension again illuminate the upheaval of Afghanistan. There is a beautiful scene when a young widow is allowed to see her dead soldier husband that is very touching, but having the husband naked is a distraction that is unnecessary.

The cast is a mix of Canadians, Afghans and Pakistanis. Beau Dixon in several roles, especially that of a Canadian soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, mines those troubled waters and portrays a man who is so emotionally fragile he leaves you limp in your seat. As Doctor Choudry, Samiya Mumtaz conveys a woman who knows the urgency of helping youth that no one wants. She is committed, direct and takes no prisoners when crossed. Just watching Parwin Mushtael play her own story, is uplifting and impressive. The rest of the cast of Christine Horne, Andrew Lawrie, Cheri Maracle and Sanjay Talwar acquit themselves well.

Comment. Writers Jonathan Garfinkel and Christopher Morris want to show the effects of the war in Afghanistan on women and children. They’ve done that in spades. They have also shown the incomprehensibility of the place. People from ‘outside’, Canada in this case, don’t get it. The need to help is genuine, but the realization that they aren’t wanted there doesn’t really register.

The reasons given by the two Canadian soldiers who are going to Afghanistan to fight are also vague, misguided and simplistic, but I am not surprised.

It’s obvious many soldiers there suffer from Post Dramatic Stress Disorder; family members are consumed by grief when one of their sons/husbands does not come home. Many civilians are damaged by the war and we don’t see any of them get help. Again, this is not the point of the play and its absence from the play does not in any way diminish it. The point is to see the human damage.

When Afghan refugees are sponsored to come to Canada, in this case, Toronto, the Canadian sponsor’s perspective of what is for the best is imposed on the assumption that it’s better to live in a clean apartment, than two subway stops away from the Afghan speaking community, even though the area is full of drug and gang crimes. If feeling isolated from your own people is not addressed, how can that be considered ‘for the best?’

Garfinkel and Morris deliberately do not offer solutions to the endless problems in Afghanistan because that is not their thesis. Showing the tangle of conflict, the ill-informed Canadian perspective on the Afghan culture; even showing the confusion of why Canada is there in the first place is only part of it. The effects of that war on women and children specifically, and everyone else generally is the focus and it comes out loud and painfully, movingly clear.

Crow’s Theatre presents a Human Cargo Production:

Opened: Nov. 14, 2015.
Closes: Nov. 29, 32015.
Cast: 7; 3 men, 4 women
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

http://buddiesinbadtimes.com/show/the-road-to-paradise

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At Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto, Ont.

Conceived and directed by Jacquie PA Thomas
Written by Michael Spence with the Ensemble
And contributions by Kat Sandler
Set by Michael Spence
Costumes by Melanie McNeill
Lighting and projections by Laird MacDonald
Sound by John Gzowski
Cast: Patrick Howarth
Pam Patel
Michelle Polak
Michael Spence

A play about greed and avarice by the physically inventive Theatre Gargantua, but the script is too sprawling and not focused enough. The result is confusing.

The Story. The ensemble researched greed, avarice and the disproportionate divide between those fabulously wealthy and the larger numbers who are poor. They used as their model the greed and wealth that built Antilia, the most expensive, largest private house in the world. It cost $1 billion (US), is 26 double stories high and overlooks a slum in Mumbai. It was built using graft, bribes, mendacity and corruption.

The story is described as a fable. It is set in the fictional town of Antilla. The richest, most powerful man lives in his fortress of 26 floors and rules his world from there. He controls the economy he is so powerful. His assistant is devoted to him and perhaps in love with him. His mother lives there too and is concerned about her son and what is happening outside. The house overlooks the most wretched poverty. People are starving. A man below eats an ear of corn that he grew. He has the secret of curing starvation in that ear of corn.

The Production. As with all Theatre Gargantua productions, it is intensely physical, using a combination of dance and gymnastics. Music and sound factor heavily as does technology, video, animation etc. The stage is full of stacks and stacks of card board boxes. They represent the accumulation of stuff the wretchedly rich man has accumulated. Many of the boxes have never been open. Accumulation is more important than usefulness.

The cast of four charges out in movement/dance formations, stretching on the floor with their arms stretched behind them. They are in perfect unison. They are energetic, flipping and gliding from one end of the stage to the other. I have no idea what the significance is. Beginning a show with confusion and knitted eyebrows is not a good move, it seems to me.

Great use is made of varying sized Pilates exercise balls. The cast stretch on them; flip over them; toss them. They do the same with the boxes which are shifted, tossed, thrown and heaved into various configurations. Sometimes the towers of boxes keep growing upward.

Jacquie PA Thomas’s direction is forceful, vivid in its images and in constant motion. Michael Spence’s set of the boxes and the Pilates balls is also impressive. John Gzowski’s sound scape is compelling as he always is. The cast is totally committed and so suited for this physical kind of theatre.

I just had a terrible time with the script. While the movement is compelling and goes at break-neck speed, I found the script by Michael Spence with the Ensemble and a contribution by Kat Sandler, to be confusing, unfocused and muddy in its intent. Perhaps it is all that activity going on that might have pulled focus. The rich man is unhappy even though he can acquire anything he wants in all shapes, sizes and colours, needing none of it, of course. He gets his jollies controlling the economy single-handedly. His fortress is finally ‘broken into’ by the meek, innocent and outraged outside world, but again I found it murky as to how that would affect him and his greed.

Comment. Director Jacquie PA Thomas says in her director’s note that in the research the group discovered that “85 people hold more wealth than half the world’s population” and cited the billionaire who used his power and money to bribe officials, steamroll over laws and illegally destroyed an orphanage to built his house. One can’t criticize the production because it references a universally recognized corrupt situation that allows such flagrant flaunting of the law, and not reference something closer to home; something more recognizable. I think a better script would have been helpful. While I like the work of Theatre Gargantua, this one missed for me.

Presented by Theatre Gargantua.

Opened: Nov. 5, 2015.
Closes: Nov. 21, 2015.
Cast: 4; 2 men, 2 women.
Running Time: 90 minutes approx.

www.theatregargantua.ca

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At the Factory Theatre, Mainspace, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman and Joseph Jomo Pierre
Directed by Nigel Shawn Williams
Set by Denyse Karn
Costumes by Michelle Bailey
Lighting by Simon Rossiter
Projections by Simeon Taole
Sound by Richard Lee
Composer, Hagler
Starring: Susanna Fournier
Ngabo Nabea

A twist on Dickens’ Oliver Twist, set in Toronto now, with cell phones, texts, sex, and drugs set in the seamier side of the city.

The Story. It’s set in Toronto. Nancy is 21. She met a man named Sikes on the internet and he enticed her to come to Toronto. He lured her into the world of internet porn and got her hooked on drugs. She also procures young teens for Sikes’ internet porn activities. Dodger is a member of Sikes’ gang and provides Nancy with her drugs, for a price of course. Nancy recruits a young girl name Rose for Sikes but can’t go through with turning her over to him. She enlists the help of her friend Oliver. Oliver is a 17 year old. He was brought up in foster homes and the safest one was with a woman he calls “Big Bird.” Oliver is also in Sikes’ circle. He loves Nancy and yearns to get out of Sikes’ gang and take Nancy with him. But first Nancy needs to get Rose to a safe house and enlists Oliver to take Rose to Big Bird’s. When Sikes finds out things turn nasty.

The Production. Denyse Karn has designed a set that is an aerial view of Toronto. A series of small right angled shapes are laid out on the upstage wall of the set. Both Nancy and Oliver skip from one shape to another, suggesting they are skipping from building top to building top.

Nancy and Oliver soliloquize in their own style of language. Nancy’s is a tough kind of slang that is almost literary in its expression. Oliver expresses himself in hip hop complete with athletic moves. When the two communicate with each other it’s mainly in text messaging. First Nancy’s thumbs twitch over the keys of her cell phone. When she gives a snapping motion with the phone we know she’s finished texting and has sent the message to Oliver. What she has texted is then projected on the back wall so the audience can read it. Then it’s Oliver’s turn to send his message. Thumbs twitch. He too makes a snapping motion. Message finished and sent to Nancy. Occasionally they talk on the phone. The conversations are spare, sometimes one word exchanges. They meet once. It’s the first indication of them touching; the first show of intimacy. Most of the play takes place for them in the sterile, isolated world of the cell phone.

Nancy is white and Oliver is black but there is only one reference to skin colour and it comes from Oliver. He says to Big Bird that white women show their age, but she doesn’t. That’s the only indication of skin colour in the play. To Nancy it doesn’t matter and she never mentions it. The playwrights, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman and Joseph Jomo Pierre, live in these worlds. Corbeil-Coleman is white and Pierre is black.

Twisted is directed by Nigel Shawn Williams. There certainly is a sense of foreboding when Nancy stands in her room going through the motions of internet erotica when there is a banging on her door. She knows it’s Sikes coming for revenge. The banging gets louder and more frantic. Simon Rossiter’s lighting gives a sense of foreboding. Talk about ramping up the suspense.

As Nancy Susanna Fournier is locked into scowling and saying everything with anger. There is little variation in her performance. As Oliver, Ngabo Nabea is more varied, more nuanced. I think he handles the intricate hip hop language nicely.

Comment. Modernizing Oliver Twist by setting it in Toronto using cell phones to text as the main means of communication, with the occasional monosyllabic phone calls, certainly will have resonance with many young people in the audience. The problem with this ‘modernization’ is that it makes for deadly theatre. The pace of the show is glacial. Watching the thumbs of Nancy twitch out a text to Oliver, the audience then reading the text on the back wall, then watching Oliver reply by text, then the audience reading that message, just slows the pace down to a crawl. It’s deadly to the story, the momentum of the show, and makes each new turn in the story seem like an eternity. Each character is stuck in their own isolated, sterile, lonely world. When Nancy and Oliver have that one meeting, it seems tacked on and too late for us to have an investment in them. Nancy saying that she loves Sikes ever though he beats her has not been properly established to be believed.

Twisted is more like a tangled rendering of Oliver Twist. Neither the original work or this modernization of it are well served by this experiment.

Produced by Factory Theatre

From: Jan. 31, 2015.
Saw it: Feb 6, 2015.
Closes: Feb. 22, 2015.
Cast: 2; 1 man, 1 woman.
Running Time: 80 min. approx.

www.factorytheatre.ca