Search: Dark Heart

l-r: Daniel Brooks, Kim Collier
Photo: Kyle Purcell

 

At the Theatre Centre, Toronto, Ont.

Created and performed by Daniel Brook and Kim Collier

Consulting director and dramaturg, Jennifer Tarver

Composition and sound by Andrew Creeggan

Additional composition and sound by Debashis Sinha

Designer, Ken Mackenzie

A beautifully designed production with ceremonial, symbolic moments in which Daniel Brooks and Kim Collier discourse, examine, and philosophize on love that ultimately reduces  the whole event into pretentious twaddle. 

The Story. Theatre creators Daniel Brooks and Kim Collier are a couple in love. They are so fascinated by the whole notion of love they went on a spiritual quest to India to explore, question, examine and delve into the idea and philosophy of love, armed with the poetry of Persian poet Hafez, the writings of French philosopher Alain Badiou and questions: what do you think about when you think about love? What is the nature of love? How does one talk about love?  The challenge was to live for 40 days and 40 nights making all choices based on love.

The Production.  There are instructions for the audience posted outside the Franco Boni Theatre where this event takes place. We are to enter the dark space, find a mat onto which we put our shoes, coats, purses and anything else we will not need during the performance. We are then instructed to find the bell to ‘ring’ to announcing our entering the performance space, and then we sit in one of the chairs around the space. This is a bit tricky for one with not perfect-eyesight. There are dark curtains surrounding the whole playing space with a dimly lighted opening in the curtains.  Only when I hear the ‘gong’ of the bell do I realize that a person (Kim Collier) dressed in a bathrobe, is standing in the dimly lighted area, smiling, holding the gong to tap the bell suspended above the opening. That done we find a seat.

Scenographer, Ken Mackenzie has created a beautiful space. The black curtains around the space give one the sense of being in a cocooned tent. There are two huge, vibrant Persian rugs on the floor. A circle of glasses containing clear liquid are on one of the rugs. There are vibrant coloured pillows that  will be scattered on the rugs. Up from that is a bench and behind that is a table on which are lit candles (?) bowls of powders, pitchers and other props that will be used for the performance.

Daniel Brooks, also in a bathrobe, asks people in one row to pick a number and he then reads a poem in the book by Hafez corresponding to the number. When everybody has entered the space, Kim Collier beckons us to pick up a glass and drink the liquid then put the glass back on the rug. She brings a glass to those people reluctant to pick up a glass. While still standing, Daniel Brooks reads out questions: “If you have fallen in love within the last 40 days, sit down. If you have been with your lover for 40 years, sit down.” Questions of that sort are asked until everyone is seated.

Brooks and Collier exchange ideas about love; they reference the poems of Hafez; they discourse on French philosopher Alain Badiou in minute, detailed examination of love; they have a section that seems to be a ‘lightening round’ of ‘profound ideas’  of love, with Brooks and Collier conveying a sense of self-satisfaction at the cleverness of the idea.

We are each given a tray on which is a neatly folded maroon cloth napkin on which is a piece of chalk. There is also a small light to switch on and off later, and a few small flowers.

The audience is often engaged to answer questions regarding love; to write comments with the chalk on the floor about love, to experience the pain of love.

There are moments of exquisite tenderness between Daniel Brooks and Kim Collier: fingers delicately touching, a caress of the face, a committed hug. They speak in quiet tones. She is engaging, generous. He is soft-spoken, a bit methodical in his ‘performance’, a touch smug. Andrew Creeggan’s lilting ethereal music plays almost throughout: tinkling piano, beautifully melodic, atmospherically gorgeous.  The lighting is also beautifully moody, warm cocooning—I assume Ken Mackenzie has created the lighting as well since he is listed as “designer and no one is listed separately as “lighting designer.”

There is a whole sense of the various components to the ‘event’, being ceremonial, symbolic, ritualistic etc. (the drinking of the glass of liquid, experiencing pain, taking off of shoes).

Comment. Audiences are so giving, so accommodating, so eager to engage in an event to make it work. They unquestioningly take off shoes to enter the space, gong a bell to announce their presence, drink glasses of liquid, answer questions, ask them, engage fully, without question.

I wonder what is the meaning of taking off one’s shoes, or the symbolism of the bell ringing, or the pouring of hot water on a mound of something that dissolves while Collier in the back, unseen, reveals the unraveling of love over years between a couple. Collier and Brooks give no hints about the meanings and surely such information would deepen the experience.

Towards the very end of the performance Kim Collier forms a circle with sand in the middle of the playing space. We are invited to throw the flowers on our trays into the sand as an offering to love.

Then something fascinating happens. The music that has been playing for the whole performance stops.  Collier calls out softly to the back asking an unseen person/stage manager? if the music has run out, if the computer has crashed. She asks if they can go back to the previous cue. She wants that music. She says it’s so beautiful. A soft voice from the back says, “we’ll try.”  One wise man in the audience close to me whispers almost inaudibly, “can’t we imagine it (the music)?” (exactly, I think). Anxious moments pass. Collier asks towards the back  how they are doing. Daniel Brooks says quietly from one corner of the space, “Four people are working on it. One of them has degrees.” And I think, “That isn’t very loving of you Mr. Brooks.”

The music miraculously comes on, lilting loveliness. People toss their flowers into the circle and quietly leave the space. But the mood is broken and the truth is clear. For all the meaningful philosophy and the poetry readings and the discourse between these two loving theatre makers, 40 Days and 40 Nights is all show and it’s pretentious. Something as indescribable, as intoxicating as love has been so examined here, so minutely philosophized that the heart and soul of this vibrant subject is rendered lifeless. And so is this self-indulgent, navel gaze of a show.

Co-produced by Necessary Angel Theatre Company, Electric Company Theatre and The Theatre Centre.

Opened: April 27, 2018.

Closes: May 6, 2018.

Running Time: 90 minutes.

www.theatrecentre.org

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At the Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto, Ont.

Based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol

Music by James Rolfe

Libretto and direction by Morris Panych

Set by Ken MacDonald

Costumes by Nancy Bryant

Lighting by Alan Brodie

Movement by Wendy Gorling

Conducted by Leslie Dala

Cast: Aaron Durand

Colin Heath

Erica Iris Huang

Keith Klassen

Andrea Ludwig

Peter McGillivray

Meher Pavri

Magali Simard-Galdes

Geoffrey Sirett

Asitha Tennekoon

Giles Tomkins

Caitlin Wood

First this was a movement-dance piece that has been reworked into an opera. It’s a bracing new presentation about a life of loneliness, obsession and how clothes don’t necessarily make the man.

The Story. Akakiy Akakievitch Bashmatchkin lived a lonely, solitary life.  He was a lowly bookkeeper in a big office. His smarmy fellow bookkeepers bullied him and made fun of him because he was so hard working and especially because of his ratty overcoat. Then his boss rewarded him for his diligence and gave him a bonus. Akakiy took the money and had an overcoat made to measure. It changed his life and outlook.

The Production.  A production of The Overcoat  last played at Canadian Stage in 2007 with Morris Panych directing and Ken MacDonald doing the set. It was a mime/dance piece with Wendy Goring doing the movement. It was cast with actors and performers.  The music was by Dmitri Shostakovich.

The same group has joined together again only this time the piece is an opera with the wonderful title: The Overcoat: a musical tailoring.  James Rolfe wrote the music. Morris Panych wrote the libretto and directed again. This time it was cast with singers who could handle the operatic nature of the music as well as act. Because opera is not my forte I will be commenting only on the acting, direction, production etc.

Again, Panych has created the sweep and bustle of the world Akakiy lives in. He rushes to get to work, bumped and pushed by those also rushing to get to work. People stand, bop and sway, as they stretch one arm up holding up a pole that is parallel to the floor, and voilà we are watching people on a tram.

Akakiy (Geoffrey Sirett) is lost in thought in his ever-present notebook. He writes down numbers. He is consumed by them; mystified and mesmerized by their precision. It is this meticulous attention to numbers that makes him a diligent employee. His colleagues make fun of him and chide him for making them look bad—they are lazy louts. But Petrovich, the Head of the Department (an imperious, self-satisfied Peter McGillivray) gives him a bonus as thanks that Akakiy will now use to have a glorious overcoat made.

When he gets the new overcoat Geoffrey Sirett as Akakiy suddenly looks up from his book and notices life around him. He preens. He struts. He dances with his coat as he would with a lover.  He is proud of himself and confident for the first time, or as confident as an insecure man can be. Those around him change too. They don’t chide him. He is now one of them. They sidle up to him, include him in their circle, ply him with champagne. That’s his undoing.

Panych directs the cast of singes as he would any actor, in a way that serves the libretto/opera. Geoffrey Sirett captures and conveys Akakiy’s many emotions and the sides to his life. He is a man bewildered by the world around him and the people in it. He finds comfort and solace in the rigor of numbers. They are mysterious and yet simple. They either add up or they don’t.

Ken MacDonald’s set of floating screens at the back suggest an office that perhaps has seen better days. The screens are composed of squares, some of which are boarded up and some are transparent, as if made from glass. Could the boarded up squares mean that the glass was broken out? Simple set pieces are quickly moved on and off by dazed characters wearing white garb that is too small. They look like they might be from a mental institute. Is this foreshadowing? The movement is swift, jarring and almost balletic. Akakiy’s landlady, played by Andrea Ludwig is a slinky, slip-wearing, cigarette-smoking seductress who fancies Akakiy and he shies away, afraid.

Gogol’s original story is dark, oppressive and swirls along. The production captures that sense, along with a certain gloomy humour.

Comment.  Morris Panych’s libretto is clever, sharp and as pristine as a number. Akakiy is diligent in writing his numbers down to come to an equation to solve a problem. The libretto illuminates a man obsessed with the clarity of a number, how the numbers repeat themselves and how they carry him along to the inevitable conclusion.

It’s a work of grandness about a man who is anything but. It is in no way sentimental but it is heartbreaking. Terrific piece of theatre.

Canadian Stage in a co-production with Tapestry Opera and Vancouver Opera.

Opened: March 29, 2018.

Closes: April 14, 2018.

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Approx.

www.canadianstage.com

 

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Peter Farbridge
Photo: John Launer

 

At Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Guillermo Verdecchia

Directed by Soheil Parsa

Set and costumes and video designs by Anahita Dehbonehie

Sound and composed by Thomas Ryder Payne

Lighting by Michelle Ramsay

Cast: Peter Farbridge

Liz Peterson

Kim Nelson

A dark world after a catastrophe; a stunning production; a poetic script but for all its gripping atmosphere, I thought bloom lacked a dramatic punch.

 The Story. War has devastated everything in the dark world of Guillermo Verdecchia’s poetic play bloom. The sun never shines. There is thunder but no rain to help anything grow. Gerontion was a war veteran who killed many innocent people and is now suffering the results. He is haunted by memories. He is bitter, blind, sits in a wheel-chair and tries to forget what he did in the war and even who he loved. He is not without humanity in that he saved The Boy in the conflagration and is his protector. The Boy is trying to remember his past while Gerontion is trying to forget his.

The Production. As with any production directed by Soheil Parsa bloom  is full of thought, detail, vivid imagery and an atmosphere that illuminates the play. Gerontion (Peter Farbridge) sits in his wheel chair, looking out to us, glum, wild hair. He is surrounded by darkness. Michelle Ramsay’s stunning lighting design creates a stark, forbidding world.

The roar of an airplane zooms overhead, startling and infuriating Gerontion so that he is shaking his fists at it. It reminds him of an earlier time when he was flying one of those planes, destroying what ever was in his path. There is thunder (kudos to Thomas Ryder Payne for his wonderful sound design) but no rain.

The Boy (Liz Peterson) appears in baggy overalls such as a car mechanic would wear. He wants Gerontion to tell him what happened to him, where he came from, how he came to this place. Gerontion doesn’t/can’t remember. Gerontion recites “Beowulf” to The Boy because he can’t see to read, to pass the time. When Gerontion does remember his past we see Marie (Kim Nelson) up at the back, in modern, smart clothes with hints of a stylish apartment with books. Anahita Dehbonehie performs her wizardry with the set, costumes and videos that conjure the two worlds of desolation in the present, and a comfortable world with some colour in the past.

As Gerontion, Peter Farbridge expresses the poetry of Guillermo Verdecchia’s script with verve and a consuming passion for the words. But while Farbridge imbues the words with emotion he says them with a flat, robotic cadence, sometimes haltingly and that takes the life out of the lines. Interestingly Liz Peterson as The Boy also has that halting cadence in her speech, which would seem to be deliberate since Gerontion would be an influence on The Boy from the time he found him. Peterson has an expressive way of conveying the life of The Boy without dialogue that makes her performance more arresting in a way. Kim Nelson as Marie, a woman from Gerontion’s past, is sophisticated and compelling.

Comment. Soheil Parsa, the gifted artistic director of Modern Times Stage Company, is producing bloom again after doing it originally 12 years ago. The play is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a long poem about disillusionment and despair, to put it simply.   Parsa feels what is happening in our world today makes the play timely.

My concern is that while playwright Guillermo Verdecchia fills the play with elegant poetic writing and emotion, drama and tension are missing except when Gerontion wrestles with his own demons. The result seems flat, though well-intentioned.

I do love the guts and heart of Soheil Parsa and his vibrant company. They have done many bracing productions. To me bloom is a rare miss-step.

Presented by Modern Times Stage Company

Opened: March 27, 2018.

Closes: April 8, 2018.

Running Time: 90 minutes.

www.moderntimesstage.com

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At the Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs, Toronto, Ont.

Conceived and sung by Fides Krucker

Choreographed and danced by: Peggy Baker

Laurence Lemeux

Heidi Strauss

Musicians: Rob Clutton

Tania Gill

Germaine Liu

Facilitating director, Katherine Duncanson

Lighting and set co-ordination by Rebecca Picherack

Costumes by Caroline O’Brien

Renowned interpreter of vocal music, Fides Krucker has conceived this show of 15 songs by Canadian writers that charts the often painful, often joyous journey of love from a female prospective. Twelve of the songs were written by women such as: Leslie Feist (“Let It Die”), Joni Mitchell (“Both Sides Now”), k.d. lang (Constant Craving), Sarah McLachlan (“Ice Cream”) and Kate McGarrigle (“Mother Mother”). But those songs written by men:  Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”,  Hawksley Workman’s “Striptease” and Neil Young’s “Helpless” for example offer a different female perspective as well.

The short run of In This Body is part of the Voices³ series of concerts at Canadian Stage. Fides Krucker’s point with her selections from the programme: “This programme’s songs give voice to a particularly Canadian geography of joy, pain, loss, wisdom, humour and hope.”  Krucker’s voice soars and swoops with expression, often changing register mid-song. In its way that change of register adds another layer to the rocky road to love and loss. She interprets the darker side of love with sensitivity and thoughtfulness. As Krucker enters the theatre from the audience she sings the haunting “Soon This Space Will Be Too Small” by Lhasa de Sela, which establishes the mood for most of the evening.

The band: Rob Clutton on bass, Tania Gill on piano, accordion, melodica and trumpet, and Germaine Liu, percussion, provide the music and sound effects that enhance each song. The three dancers: Peggy Baker, Laurence Lemieux and Heidi Strauss have choreographed and dance their own interpretations of the songs that Krucker sings. Heidi Strauss is a tangle of emotion as she interprets in dance the loss of a lover. Laurence Lemieux is elegant and subtle when dancing to Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” And the incomparable Peggy Baker is all angles and sinew and she interprets Joni Mitchell’s heartbreaking “Both Sides Now.” Baker is also hilarious as she ‘illustrates’ the points of a song Krucker sings by bringing various things out of a box. She manipulates two dolls that are in a clinch suggesting love; later she drops red rose petals on a doll suggesting it has ‘passed on.” The various things in the box are brought out quickly for funny effect. It’s a shame one doesn’t know the list of songs clearly beforehand and who dances to them for some context. We are given a list of the songs at the end of the show.

While the reason for the show is interesting—to present a female, Canadian perspective on love in all its variations—and the artists involved are all wonderful individually, In This Body proves to be an excess of riches that works against clarity of vision instead of serving it. The show is simply overproduced.

Katherine Duncanson is listed as the ‘facilitating director’, a term I find mystifying since the direction is at best scattered, unfocused and frustrating. Too often Krucker is centre stage singing with one of the dancers behind her interpreting the song in dance. Excuse me, but Peggy Baker, Laurence Lemieux and Heidi Strauss are not background dancers, and that’s what it seems like too often.

At the end of the show Peggy Baker starts off centre stage dancing a plaintive interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” with Krucker a bit off to the side, allowing Baker her rightful place as the focus of the song, but then Krucker moves into Baker’s space, pulling focus. Where do we look? Whose scene is it because it can’t be both of theirs? Clarity and focus are in order.

Frequently Krucker sings and plays the piano along side Tania Gill. Then Gill gets up to play another instrument and at another part of the stage either one or all three dancers are interpreting a song. Again, where is the focus?

The accomplished band provides all sorts of sound effects, for example a tinkling sound for one of the songs made by Germaine Liu as she crunches tin foil it seems, that finally lead me to think ‘this is just too much.’

All the artists involved are stellar in their own right. Fides Krucker’s conception of doing a show about the rocky journey of love in song and dance is a good one. But there is so much going on at all times here that the songs and their message get lost in the jumble of activity. Clarify. Focus. Simplify. Please.

Presented by Good Hair Day Productions and Canadian Stage:

 Opened: March 14, 2018.

Closes: March 18, 2018.

Running Time: 75 minutes.

www.canadianstage.com

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At the Red Sandcastle Theatre, 922 Queen St. E, Toronto, Ont.

Written by George F. Walker

Directed by Wes Berger

Starring: Marisa Crockett

Emmelia Gordon

Wes Berger’s production and the acting are  indeed fierce but the credibility of  George F. Walker’s premise left me scratching my head in disbelief.

The Story. Jayne is an angry, unrepentant druggie who is at the centre of an accident. The judge in the case has sent Jayne to see Maggie, a psychiatrist, for assessment to see how to proceed. When they meet there are fireworks. Jayne is perceptive, knows how to zero into a person’s weaknesses and to work them to her advantage. She knows secrets about Maggie (she’s looked her up and done her research). Maggie fights back finding out secrets about Jayne that reveal the cause of her anger. Both women are fierce in their combative wrangling with each other.

 The Production. Director Wes Berger knows the work of George F. Walker inside out, both as an actor and a director. He has a keen sense of the intensity of Walker’s situations and his characters in those situations. It’s all there in his direction of Fierce.

 Berger makes the most of the small space at the Red Sandcastle Theatre. Maggie’s office is neat, inviting with plants on the shelves, certificates on the walls, and a comfortable couch and chair for the ‘patient’ and psychiatrist.

Jayne (Emmelia Gordon) is in prison-garb-dark sweatpants and sweat shirt. Her hair is disheveled and unwashed. She stands, starring down Maggie (Marisa Crockett). Jayne won’t sit as suggested so from the get go she takes control of the goings on. She is watchful and susses out a situation and people. The judge used too much makeup and so Jayne thinks she’s hiding something and is insecure. She has looked up all manner of information about Maggie’s past and holds that up to her, again, challenging her power. Jayne toys with Maggie about what really happened on the night of the accident, why she takes drugs, and what happened in her life. Maggie struggles to break down Jayne’s defences, to get to the truth.

Both actresses are fine. Emmelia Gordon as Jayne is angry, feisty, belligerent, wounded and hurting. Marisa Crockett as Maggie is uptight, self-contained but easily broken. When both actresses wrangle and argue it is ‘fierce’ of course, as expected.

Director Wes Berger guides the two actresses to their explosive revelations—occasionally as does happen the dialogue is so fast one wonders if the two characters are listening to each other in order to answer. Always a tricky proposition.

 Comment. Playwright, George F. Walker is a champion of the marginalized, not just the underdog. His characters are on the edges of society, but they function well in their own way with their demons. Jayne and Maggie are two such typical Walker characters. Jayne is haunted by a death in her family and is mysterious about revealing who or what that was to Maggie. She obviously has a heart as we see in her dealings with her students when she was a teacher.  Maggie has her own demons she has to live with and has tried to overcome them by moving on and becoming a psychiatrist.

In a way, Jayne hanging on to her rage through drugs and not wanting to let go of her demons is the fiercer of the two. While Maggie should be the one in control of the situation—seeing a patient in her office for counselling—because of her training, it’s really Jayne who is calling the shots and controlling the proceedings. It’s Jayne who makes a suggestion about their relationship that Maggie seems to go along with.

That’s my problem. I don’t believe the situation in that psychiatrist’s office, or that Maggie is so inept in dealing with such a manipulative, wily character as Jayne. I don’t believe that she would go along with Jayne’s incredible suggestion at the end of the play.

If Jayne can break down her psychiatrist so easily, how is it possible the judge recommended that Jayne see Maggie of all people? If Jayne can find out such details about Maggie’s background as if it’s a secret, how can we believe no one else wouldn’t know? Are we also to believe that no one else would have known about Jayne’s troubled family life before she saw Maggie, her psychiatrist? Sorry, I just don’t believe this and I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to accommodate this unbelievable stuff.

If there is disbelief in the truth, credibility of the characters, then the whole structure of the play collapses. Truly, what am I supposed to glean from Walker’s play and his fierce characters? It’s a mystery and that makes for a disappointing experience in the theatre.

Criminal Girlfriends presents:

Opened: Feb. 17, 2018.

Closes: March 10, 2018.

Running Time: 70 minutes.

fiercetoronto.brownpapertickets.com

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At the Five Points Theatre, (formerly the Mady Centre), Barrie, Ont.

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Esther Jun

Set and lights by Joe Pagnan

Costumes by Michelle Bohn

Sound by Joshua Doerksen

Cast: David Coomber

Izad Etemadi

Alana Hibbert

Amy Keating

Ash Knight

Alex Poch-Goldin

Amelia Sargisson

Jonathan Tan.

A stunning production directed by Esther Jun who so serves the play in spades with sensitive, intelligent direction, with fine acting, a breathtaking design resulting in brilliant theatre. Its beating heart is beautiful.

 The Story. Vienna, November 1823 and in recall1781-1791. Antonio Salieri is dying. In his day he was the top composer, music maven in Vienna in the court of Joseph II, the Emperor of Austria. He was celebrated, promoted, honoured and respected. On this last night of his life, he mumbles for forgiveness of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who died 32 years before. Salieri in his dying crazed mind confesses that he killed Mozart. His reputation is such that everybody is talking and gossiping about this confession. The play then reverts to the decade of 1781-1791.

At that time Salieri was a robust, successful man who asked God to make him a composer and to be famous at it. In return he, Salieri, would serve mankind and devote himself to serving God. Salieri thrived and prospered in the court of the Emperor as the court composer. And then he met this odious, child-man named Mozart and his life changed. Salieri realized that for all his piety to serve God with his music etc. next to Mozart, he was a mediocrity. Mozart, this hideously rude, immature man, effortlessly produced music that was touched by God and Salieri was livid at this betrayal.  He vowed to take revenge with no less an opponent than God. He would get even by destroying Mozart all the while seemingly to champion him.

 The Production. Joe Pagnan is the wunderkind who designed this exquisite set that is simple yet suggests the whole complex sweep and richness of the court of the Emperor. Two suspended structures with fine wood spokes that look like sweeping staircases spread out stage left and right, culminating in two swirled structures on either end. Upstage centre is a large framed structure offering places to enter and exit or a frame behind which appear silhouette ‘characters’ who add to the production. Because the production is in period costumes (bravo Michelle Bohn), the silhouettes of characters are quite striking and classy.

If actors fill all the parts you could have a cast of about 20. Director Esther Jun accomplished the same task with eight actors. Silhouettes are used to suggest characters; double casting and quick changes do the trick in other ways. Jun handles it all with fluid efficiency. But it is her keen vision and imagination that dazzles and conjures the richness of the court of Joseph II with the simplest of props: a smart table or chairs stage left or a piano stage right are really all that’s needed to suggest the lushness of the court, or the high society in which Salieri moved.

The casting is inspired and every single gesture or movement is of the time of the play—no mean feat, that. Esther Jun’s attention to detail in this production is stunning. David Coomber is a giddy, hyper-active Amadeus Mozart. One almost thinks he has Attention Deficit Disorder or might be on the autistic spectrum, it’s such a big, bold performance. But Coomber can break your heart in a thrice when he is crushed by disappointment after disappointment. His enthusiasm for his projects; his championing of the common people in his operas; his impishness when he’s being risqué and his staunch defence of his work, create a wonderful performance of a genius.

Alex Poch-Goldin as Salieri is determined to destroy Mozart. We hear Mozart’s music keenly by the way Salieri describes its perfection when he first hears it (“The Adagio of the Serenade for Thirteen Wind Instruments”). Salieri first describes it breathlessly as if that exquisite music causes pain, shatters the listener. Because of the delicate, gripping way Poch-Goldin describes that music, I hear it again for the first time and get weepy. That never happened to me before with this play. Shattering.

As the Venticelli (gossips) Alana Hibbert and Jonathan Tan have that smugness of the malicious gossip. They play off each other riffing on the rumours that are swirling around, mainly thanks to their efforts. Tan also plays Emperor Joseph II, the well-intentioned but dimly insensitive patron of Mozart’s art. He always has a self-serving smile, he so pleased with himself.

Amy Keating plays a snide, sneering Count Strack (Groom of the Imperial Chamber—chin in the air, grimacing as if “he” smelled something bad, chest puffed out, bent arm in the air for effect—a beauty of a creation of a pompous ass. Izad Etemadi plays Count Orsini-Rosenberg, the Director of the Imperial Opera. His main complaint about Mozart’s work is that there are too many notes. (Ya gotta love that guy.) Izad Etemadi plays Count Orsini-Rosenberg with that self-important sneer as well, but with flair. He has a subtle curl of hair in the middle of his forehead with the rest of his hair fluffed to within an inch of its life. And when the Count gives a look of disdain Etemadi does it by shooting beams from the whites of his eyes and nailing you with a stare from the darkness of those orbs. Quite astonishing. Ash Knight plays Baron Van Swieten, Mozart’s true champion who appreciates his work. Knight plays him with compassion and sensitivity. Amelia Sargisson plays Constanza, Mozart’s wife, the love of his life, his playmate in silly games, his protector, his sparring partner in frustration and his heartbroken partner at the end. It’s a lovely, varied, charming performance of a complex character.

 Comment. Before this production, I thought Amadeus was just one more tedious play by Peter Shaffer in which he writes about the gifted outcast either with envy or with disappointment. In Equus the psychiatrist envies the passion of the young man he has to treat, who blinded several horses, because the psychiatrist has no passion for anything. In Amadeus Salieri devotes himself to God for making him a famous composer only to find that God gave the hideous Mozart all the talent for no reason and he’s going to get even. Before this production I always thought: “Oh get a grip and grow up!” But Esther Jun’s production (of which they are using Shaffer’s revised text) makes me go deeper and see the angst of both men who just want to make music. She makes me see the depth of the minds of the characters and their devotion to the arts and music. And again, I got weepy.

 This production is a gift. See it.

Produced by Talk is Free Theatre

Opened: Feb. 16, 2018.

Closes: Feb. 24, 2018.

Running Time:  2 hours, 40 minutes.

www.tift.ca

 

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l-r: Jon Barrie and Melissa Taylor
Photo: Scott Gorman

 

 

At Hart House Theatre, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by Michael Rubinstein

Set by Chris Penna

Costumes by Brandon Kleiman

Lighting by C.J. Astronomo

Sound by Jeremy Hutton

Cast: Jon Berrie

Anthony Botelho

Abigail Craven

Joanna Decc

Thomas Gough

Tomas Ketchum

Courtney Lamanna

Allyson Landy

Charlin McIsaac

Brandon Nicoletti

David John Phillips

Tom Anthony Quinn

Nicholas Koy Santillo

Melissa Taylor

Nina Rose Taylor

Magda Uculmana-Falcon

Marilyn Willock

A bracing, provocatively imagined production of Arthur Miller’s troubling play because it always seems to be so timely.

 The Story. In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts was a town of God fearing, church going folks but something was going wrong. Rumour, innuendo and gossip ruled the town in which several of the town’s teenaged girls acted as if they were possessed by the devil. Decent town’s folks were implicated. Reputations were ruined in spite of no proof. People were sentenced by the courts to be hanged.

John Proctor, a flawed but decent man, was forced to confess he saw the devil and was asked to name those of his friends who saw the devil too. His moral dilemma as to what to do weighed on him mightily. What would he do?

 The Production. Director Michael Rubinstein says he has set this brooding, dark drama in an almost fairy-tale world. “Fairy-tale world” suggests something pleasant. Rubinstein’s striking, evocative production conjures something that is closer to darkly ‘otherworldly’ which is a more fitting word. The trees are bare, the branches spindly-spooky.

The play opens at night in the woods and many young women are dancing in a frenzy, screaming when they are overcome.  Some townsmen spy this and imagine all manner of weird behaviour. This sets off a chain of events in which the townsfolk try to understand what is happening to these young women and when they can’t find a reasonable answer, the whole notion of witchcraft and the devil are cited.

The acting is variable but there are standouts. As Abigail Williams the leader of the frenzied women, Courtney Lamanna is a cold-eyed, calculating woman who will ruin anyone who gets in her way. Her stare can pin a man to the spot. Mary Warren is also one of the girls and as played by Nina Rose Taylor, she is both crazed when under Mary Warren’s influence  and fragile-minded when John Proctor tries to make her tell the truth. Jon Barrie as John Proctor is a sturdy, conflicted man. He knows he has erred when he strayed from his wife, but is gripped with remorse when he’s faced with his transgression. He’s quite moving when he shows Proctor’s steady character and how he can’t sign his name to his confession. It’s one of Arthur Miller’s most stirring speeches and Barrie says it beautifully. Melissa Taylor plays Elizabeth Proctor, John Proctor’s upright, straight-laced, rigid wife with compassion, sensitivity and a breaking heart.

Guiding it all with a sure hand and a keen eye for the telling detail is director Michael Rubinstein. He stages and directs this difficult show beautifully. His concept serves the play well and his ability to ring every bit of emotion from fraught moments is beautifully done. I want to see more of his work for sure.

Comment.  Playwright Arthur Miller used the McCarthy witch hunts in the early 1950’s as his model for the play, in which rumour and innuendo condemned people to prison, saying people were communists. Friends were asked to name names and turn in their friends. Some refused. Some ratted on their friends.

In this day and age of inappropriate behaviour and the swiftness in condemning people without a trial Miller’s play is very prescient and timely. Alas one wonders if it will ever go out of fashion.

Produced by Hart House Theatre.

 Opened: Jan. 19, 2018.

Closes: Feb. 3, 2018.

Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes approx.

www.harthousetheatre.ca

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I’m in Dublin for the first week of the Dublin Theatre Festival. The Festival began Sept. 28 and will conclude Oct. 14.

At the Gate Theatre, Dublin, Ireland

Written by Nina Raine
Directed by Oonagh Murphy
Set and costumes by Conor Murphy
Lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin
Sound by Ivan Birthistle
Video designer, Conan McIvor
Cast: Fiona Bell
Gavin Drea
Clare Dunne
Nick Dunning
Gráinne Keenan
Alex Nowak

Nina Raine writes about the politics of deafness in this bristling, pulsing, challenging play. Billy was born deaf. His parents were determined to treat him as if he were ‘normal.’ Then he met Sylvia who was losing her hearing and taught Billy how to do sign language. And all hell broke out as a result.

Conor Murphy’s set is black for the most part: black dinner table, black chairs and black piano. There are three banks of panels above the stage. Sometimes what people are thinking is printed on a panel. Sometimes what Billy is saying is noted there too. Sometimes projections of a character’s hands are shown or characters floating underwater.

The main use is much subtler. Lighting designer Mimi Jordan Sherin illuminates the panels in soft coloured light for the scenes with the hearing family and in black or white light for scenes with Billy alone or with another character. Director Oonagh Murphy and her design team are certainly ‘illuminating’ the text with this clever use of light and the darkness of the set.

Alex Nowak as Billy is in fact a hearing impaired actor. Every actor I’ve seen play Billy in other productions is deaf. They would have to be. Mr. Nowak is the most difficult to understand of the other two production of Tribes I’ve seen. But that just means I have to work harder to hear and listen to what he’s saying. Occasionally in this production what he is saying is noted in letters illuminated above the stage but not always. To be able to read what Billy is saying would make things easier. But Tribes is not meant to make things easier. It’s meant to challenge and engage and that it does in spades.

At the beginning of the play the family is at the dinner table arguing about some niggling point or other. Christopher, the pompous father (he writes critical books winging about all manner of stuff) is holding court and shouting everyone down, as is his style. Beth, his wife (trying to write novels) is arguing back. Daniel and Ruth are their two grown children who have come home to live—Daniel is a lost soul writing the twelfth version of an esoteric thesis and Ruth is trying to be an opera singer. They all flit around the table and the room, animated. Billy sits with his back to us quietly eating, not engaging. He wears a hearing aid behind each ear lobe. Director Oonagh Murphy makes him prominent because his back is to us, his head is tilted down as he eats quietly and is still for the most part.

When they do talk to Billy they look at him and he reads their lips. That is how they communicate. His mother taught him to speak when he was young and he had to learn to lip read then too. The family refused to have him learn sign language because that would make him different, set him apart. He did go to a deaf school initially but he didn’t like it and the family stopped sending him. Billy, also an adult, lives at home.

Then he meets Sylvia who is losing her hearing and Billy is smitten. He learns sign language for her. His physical manner becomes more animated, athletic even as he signs with passion, gusto and pent up emotion. Billy finds his voice in a sense through signing.

But we also see Billy’s continued isolation at the end of Act I. Sylvia is desperate to hang on to her hearing. She plays the piano at Billy’s house when she is first invited. She plays “Clare de Lune.” It’s beautiful. The family gathers around the piano, reveling in the music, except Billy, who sits at the table, obviously uncomfortable and not included because he can’t hear the beautiful playing. This time instead of tuning out his family, he is desperate to be included and he isn’t. Poignant and heartbreaking.

With his new voice is the obvious wish that his family learn sign language to communicate with him and him with them. Another wrinkle in this wonderfully layered play, is that Daniel is obviously got issues. He hears voices. He is probably schizophrenic. He has a stammer so severe that it prevents him from speaking. Sign language might be his only recourse. Ironic.

Alex Nowak as Billy is watchful and graceful in his body language. When he signs he is energetic. As Sylvia, Clare Dunne has as many layers to her character as Nowak does. She is almost sensual when signing ideas and sentences that Christopher throws out to her. She speaks loudly to the family as one might do if one is going deaf. Dunne illuminates Sylvia’s quiet desperation at how her world is shutting down. You ache for her and Billy.

Nina Raine’s play continues to challenge and present all sides of a difficult situation. The production beautifully illuminates the arguments and the subtleties of the situation.

Presented by the Gate Theatre, Ireland.

Closes: Oct. 14, 2017.

Running Time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

www.dublintheatrefestival.com

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At Tarragon Theatre Workspace, Toronto, Ont.

Written by Will Eno
Directed by Stewart Arnott
Starring: Christopher Stanton

NOTE: I reviewed this in Dec. 2015 when it played at another venue with the same gifted actor and director. I’m revising the review here to reflect the new location and the depth of the performance.

An ache of a play about missing home, loneliness and solitude with a heart-squeezing performance by Christopher Stanton.

The Story. A man has come by airplane from another place? country? we’re not really sure. He gives us few but subtle clues. He is here alone and he is missing home. The interrogation at customs (“Business or Pleasure?”) is matter-of-fact and not welcoming. Our Narrator is so lonely it could crush him if he stood still. He speaks to us in a kind of intelligent stream of consciousness, flitting from one subject to another and they are tenuously connected.

He speaks of language and how words are strange if you think about it. We take words for granted. “Horse”—strange word. He talks of a woman he was close to but who isn’t with him. And when he isn’t shifting from one subject to another, I guess in an effort to forget how lonely he is, he comes back to that very subject—home, loneliness, solitude.

The Production. When we file into the Workspace of the Tarragon Theatre there are chairs around several rugs on the floor. There are also chairs up on risers facing the playing area. There are several lamps around the space; some standing, some on tables. Our Narrator is there in the shadows, pacing. He is dressed in a dark jacket, a black vest and shirt, neat dark pants and brown leather boots (it seems).

Our Narrator turns some of the lamps on and off during the performance for appropriate effect. I love this activity that director Stewart Arnott has Christopher Stanton, the Narrator, engage in. Again it keeps him so busy talking and turning lights on and off, that the poor man will be distracted, albeit momentarily, from his crushing loneliness. It also suggests an impishness in our Narrator, that perhaps he is feeling welcomed in our presence to he can ‘play’ and have fun. The collaboration between actor and director is tight and so effective.

I said when I first reviewed this in December, 2015, “I can’t think of a better actor to play this quirky, awkward, sweetly-sad Narrator than Christopher Stanton. “Otherworldly” but definitely of our world seems to be his stock and trade. He has a quick smile and an equally quick look of concern, loss and anguish.” I feel that again and more. He paces back and forth in the space and sometimes around it. In the subtlest of reactions he edits himself, trying to express clearly how he is feeling and where that comes from. It’s not a stammering, jerking performance, but one of a character trying to convey the impossible. He incorporates those people in the riser section as he seems to look every person in the room right in the eyes.

The Narrator tries so hard to fit in but by his own account he doesn’t even though we would consider him one of us. It is this thinking of being apart that makes Stanton’s performance so heartfelt and engaging. Wonderful work again.

Comment. When Title and Deed first played two years ago it opened at a time when there was a flurry of openings, many double and triple booked. The show got little attention, which was a shame. But through determination and tenacity Christopher Stanton, Stewart Arnott and their team made another production happen. Lucky us to see it again, or for the first time.

Will Eno plays with words, he has a malleable facility with them. His characters make the words sound delicious. They tumble out of their mouths; they flow, they flip and curve over each other. And those words make us aware of them for their own sake. This is so evident in The Realistic Joneses, Middletown and Title and Deed.

Title and Deed—what a wonderful title for a play about exile and loneliness. To have a title and deed to someplace means you have roots, a place to have/build a home. Our narrator has no such possession here. Eno’s words have an elegant sturdiness, compelling us to listen hard and think deeper to what our narrator is saying. We don’t know how or why he is here. But certainly in light of recent events it makes us think of refugees escaping a horrible place; immigrants choosing someplace better; people expelled from their homes. We listen hard to understand and be compassionate. It still can’t ease our Narrator’s sense of loneliness and that is sobering for both of us. Compelling theatre does that.

This piece and certainly Christopher Stanton’s performance had particular impact yesterday. I saw it after attending the joyous, heartfelt, moving memorial for Jon Kaplan. The sense of loss, whether for home or the absent of a cherished someone, the yearning ache of it all bubbled up and I wept all the way home.

Nightfall Theatrics Presents:

Closes: Oct. 8, 2017.
Cast: 1 gifted actor.
Running Time: 65 minutes.

www.tarragontheatre.com

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