I can do nothing but apologise for how ridiculously late this review is coming out. I have a backlog of reviews stretching back the past couple months that I'm going to be finishing and shooting out over the next few days, and they'll end up on the blog somewhat out of chronological order. I have no excuses, but the best I can do is get them out now.
Better Living is a peculiar play. I went in knowing nothing about it, except that it comes from the mind of notable Canadian playwright George F. Walker, who has a talent for taking the less savoury aspects of society and churning them into his own sort of poetry. He takes characters who are deeply flawed and cast aside by society, yet still clinging to hope. This play comes out of that idea; part of the "looking for the light" phase, as Natasha Martina points out in her director's notes. It is an exploration of the madness of modern living, and in that tradition, it is a mad play.
We meet a poor Toronto family in a dilapidated home at a very strained moment in their lives. The matriarch Nora has gone off the deep-end and begun work expanding their basement for unclear reasons and without any skill or experience in construction. The youngest daughter Gail is in a mixed-up rebellious phase, shacking up with rocker (but not really) dude Junior and loudly announcing her plans to drop out of community college in the hopes that someone will care enough to talk her out of it. Middle daughter Mary Ann is an emotional wreck returning home after a failed marriage, while eldest daughter Elizabeth is on her way to becoming a lawyer and interested in putting her past as far behind herself as possible. Their lives are shaken up when their estranged father returns home to rule the roost once again, and starts spinning a web of manipulation. To make matters worse, Nora is still convinced her husband is dead, and thinks this new stranger merely bears a striking resemblance.
The story takes plenty of odd turns as home life for the dysfunctional family as their home situation becomes cult-like. Loyalties split, relationships fracture, and Nora becomes more and more deluded. Throughout the story, the strange renovations in the basement remain in the centre. Nora's attempt to create something good on her own merits is hijacked by her old husband Tom, who has grand visions for the "sanctuary" (from what and for what is not entirely certain). His indomitable presence infects the lives of everyone in the family, re-sculpting them accordingly; but the one thing that is endlessly troubling is that you're never really sure if the family is better or worse off with him there.
Better Living is a peculiar play, as I said before. The metaphorical curtain opens on a very intricate set (probably the most intricate domestic set I've seen since Jim Guedo's Rabbit Hole) of a house that is either half-complete or half-fallen apart. That sets the tone for a play about broken relationships and broken people, where you're trying to figure out if they are in the process of pulling together, or about to go completely nuts. But the intricacies are there, characters building levels upon levels; mostly we see a certain side of them, but like the open walls of the house we get glimpses into their internal workings. As the house continues to get battered in the hopes of building something better, characters are also smashed and mangled, but leading on with the hope that there is something better waiting ahead.
With a cast of 7, this is one of smaller Greystone productions, like Eurydice. But unlike Eurydice, where characters were separated into distinct strata, in Better Living there is a much more even ebb and flow. We enter the story tangentially, starting with a conversation between youngest daughter Gail and her uncle Jack. It takes time for the characters and the scene to settle into a groove, so the first few minutes don't feel right, like they don't fit anywhere. But as all the characters flow in and converge on the centre, the cast builds to something complex and intriguing.
Kyle Kuchirka plays Junior, the shiftless slacker who turns into an eager workhorse. I don't know Kyle personally, but he seems well-suited for this role. He is full of energy, combining rock & roll slacker with a twist of bright-eyed innocence. He convincingly plays dumb, but attacks every scene with lovable commitment. Wade Klassen as uncle Jack, the priest, is a bit like a walking IV of cynicism. He's the least engaged of all characters, and mostly he is content to let scenes happen around him, but his dry, sardonic wit always adds some black humour to the scene. Then Kashtin Moen as the estranged father Tom is gruff and indomitable, grounded and confident in the way he handles the stage. While he spends his time playing a dour, emotionally abusive jackass, he injects the character with just enough folksy charm that you feel yourself slightly drawn towards him.
But it's the women who run the show. Lauren May is the youngest sister Gail, bright and perky but with a rebellious streak. She is still untested, and has a bit of trouble dropping into the character, but she maintains a good level of energy throughout the play. Jalisa Gonie is the timid middle sister Mary Ann. She is reminiscent of Alyson Hannigan with her scattered confidence and general anxiety. She spends a lot of time off to the side looking fearful, but stays connected the whole time; and when she does step forward, her innocence and out-of-sorts personality drive a lot of humour. Then Anna Mazurik is dynamite as Elizabeth, the oldest daughter. She struts her lawyery confidence early on, but demonstrates a real fire once Tom is back in the picture. She has a lot of control over her own stage presence, whether burning bright or smouldering quietly, and she handles a range of emotions deftly. There were some character issues that did not sit so well with me, like how Gail and Elizabeth both experience major character reversals in the second act, though they don't seem to follow from anything in particular. But I assign that problem more to the text than the performance.
And naturally, Elizabeth Nepjuk steals the show. She plays the grand old matriarch, Nora, obsessed with home renovations. She is the source of a lot of the comedy in the play with her excellent timing and stage intuition. But she also carries many of the more poignant and philosophical moments. Nora is, to be blunt, totally nuts, and her severe mental discombobulation provides a lot of humour; but Nepjuk's performance does not lampoon these mental issues. She gives the character a bright-eyed dignity, and the sense that her disconnection from conventional reality gives her a sort of clarity that the other characters lack, embroiled in earthly concerns.
This is a more reserved play for Natasha Martina, lacking the movement choreography she is best known for in the department. But it definitely contains her personality. There is a subtler direction of movement going on, the way it embodies the state of the characters at various points. The movement is also played for humour, like the attempt at moving a giant wooden beam down to the basement. And the whole domestic chaos of Better Living is imbued with Natasha's playful spirit. It creates a skewed sense of reality, not to the extent of Ends of the Earth or Attempts on her Life, but something just odd enough that we can laugh at it, yet feel enlightened by it.
Better Living is a peculiar play, yes. It makes some jumps and turns that I can't find an adequate explanation for, and it's abound with more than a couple inconsistencies. But the production pulls together very well, with a tremendous cast that has enough chemistry that it can nail all the dark humour and create a fun play.
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Saturday 19 October 2013
Beirut
Theatre is about vulnerability. A play will not work if the people involved are too restrained. Actors need to be able to put themselves in intimate positions in public spaces, but like with all things, some plays are going to require more vulnerability than others. Beirut is like an exposed nerve ending with a glass of ice water hovering precariously over it.
This year's Live Five seasons begins with Hectik Theatre's presentation of a crushingly bleak dystopian future and the painful search for love and fulfillment within it. Beirut was penned by New York playwright Alan Bowne back in 1987, in response to the still-mysterious AIDS epidemic (and is all the more tragic in light of the fact that Bowne died from AIDS two years later). It takes place in a non-specific future when the United States (or possibly the whole world) is in the throes of paranoia over a terrifying new disease that is spread through intimate contact. All those who carry the infection are rounded up and sealed inside ghettos to await death. Those who aren't infected are "free" in a sense, but live in fear under constant monitoring, and are forbidden to have sex with anyone. The two characters are Torch and Blue (good 1980s dystopian New York names). Torch is a "P" (for positive) shut away in a ghetto with the other infected waiting for his skin to start falling off. His old flame Blue is still "N" (negative), but she has grown sick of the banal existence outside and has broken into the sick camp to be with Torch.
Beirut digs deep into its themes of mortality and freedom. It raises the question of what, precisely, makes life worth living. Blue breaks into the ghetto ready to accept a potentially agonising death in exchange for a brief period of what she considers real living. Torch, meanwhile, is ready to send her away, condemning himself to die in solitude, in the interest of saving her from disease. As time goes on, he is forced to choose what he values more: Blue's life or her spirit. Should he grant her happiness in what is tantamount to killing her, or should he save her and let her go on being miserable. Beirut raises the bold and potentially dangerous question of how recklessly we should treat our lives in pursuit of exhilaration. But the outside, illness-free world is made to sound so hopeless and lifeless, we have no choice but to take Blue's side. I feel that is the one weakness in the script; it could have been more ambiguous about the quality of life of the "N"s and gone to a darker place by leaving us to feel more ambivalent about Blue's self-sacrifice.
The director Kenn McLeod mentioned in his notes that he has been thinking about doing this play for some time, and I can understand why. It is not a production to be mounted lightly. A thorough grokking of the script is bound to take time, then one has to wait for the perfect climate, for the right people to come along who can trust each other intimately. This production requires a lot of trust.
McLeod created an elegant blend of romance and horror onstage. The set is a dilapidated urban hovel that looks like it belongs to a homeless person squatting in an old warehouse. A single stained mattress is the focal point of the room, surrounded by scenic array of cracked walls and tin cans. At an instant, it feels dirty. But the way the two characters revolve around the makeshift bed gives the set a sense of primal sensuality; this feeling is buttressed by the use of candlelight.
The pathos of Beirut is grounded in raw, sexual energy. But it never gets exploitative, or even particularly sexy, because this is always an uncomfortable undercurrent stemming from the darkness of the play's story. The actors have to be vulnerable, both physically (they spend the whole play in varying states of undress) and emotionally, but they strike a remarkable balance by maintaining that energy as well as the darkness. The scene gets intimate without ever being too graphic. There are times this balance works better than others. The play opens with a simulated masturbation scene which was on one hand kind of explicit, but on the other hand so cursory that in the effort to avoid getting to graphic it didn't seem at all accurate; it probably could have been framed differently to be less explicit but more convincing. Probably the most deftly handled moment of tension is when a guard (played by Jacob Yaworski, who had to step in last minute but delivers a chilling performance all the same) comes by for an "inspection". It's the most sexually graphic part of the play, all handled in low light, and really drags the sexual energy into its darkest place, leaving the audience horrified and squirming.
Munish Sharma is Torch. I am not familiar with Sharma's past work, but he definitely brings an air of experience to this play. He portrays the frayed nerve endings of someone who used to have it all together but now finds himself hanging on the precipice. He's endearing in his dreams about life outside the prison; he can bring out little moments of humour throughout. He's powerful, but crumbling. Sharma invigorates Torch with passion worthy of his name, but he can also dial it back to a very soft place.
I have seen Kate Herriot once previously, in Bottome's Dream, and while I knew she was talented I couldn't have imagined her doing something like this. As Blue, Herriot is fearless. She's fiery. From her pithy comments early on to her impassioned pleas toward the climax, she launches herself into this role. Every moment is connected from the way she explores Torch's room to how she entices him toward her, she is centred in the moment and all of her movements are fluid and natural. She lays so much of herself bare, I can't imagine what her process was, but it comes together seamlessly. She goes out onstage like a firecracker but never loses the feeling of fragility.
But talking about the two actors separately is only half the story. Beirut never would have worked if they couldn't have worked well together. But Herriot and Sharma are electric. The play is like a skeleton track, and the two of them hurtle down it, head-first, with no fear. Their moments together are so intimate and genuine that it is like the whole theatre dissolves away. But they also play off each other in snappy banter, bouncing between notes of love and anger. There was clearly a lot of trust built into this production, and each actor had to give everything to their stage partner. The end result is elegant, intimate, and smouldering.
I don't know how well this level of energy could have sustained itself, but coming it at a little under an hour, Beirut keeps its candle burning just as long as it needs to. It doesn't feel at all rushed or cut short, but lies in perfect balance.
This year's Live Five seasons begins with Hectik Theatre's presentation of a crushingly bleak dystopian future and the painful search for love and fulfillment within it. Beirut was penned by New York playwright Alan Bowne back in 1987, in response to the still-mysterious AIDS epidemic (and is all the more tragic in light of the fact that Bowne died from AIDS two years later). It takes place in a non-specific future when the United States (or possibly the whole world) is in the throes of paranoia over a terrifying new disease that is spread through intimate contact. All those who carry the infection are rounded up and sealed inside ghettos to await death. Those who aren't infected are "free" in a sense, but live in fear under constant monitoring, and are forbidden to have sex with anyone. The two characters are Torch and Blue (good 1980s dystopian New York names). Torch is a "P" (for positive) shut away in a ghetto with the other infected waiting for his skin to start falling off. His old flame Blue is still "N" (negative), but she has grown sick of the banal existence outside and has broken into the sick camp to be with Torch.
Beirut digs deep into its themes of mortality and freedom. It raises the question of what, precisely, makes life worth living. Blue breaks into the ghetto ready to accept a potentially agonising death in exchange for a brief period of what she considers real living. Torch, meanwhile, is ready to send her away, condemning himself to die in solitude, in the interest of saving her from disease. As time goes on, he is forced to choose what he values more: Blue's life or her spirit. Should he grant her happiness in what is tantamount to killing her, or should he save her and let her go on being miserable. Beirut raises the bold and potentially dangerous question of how recklessly we should treat our lives in pursuit of exhilaration. But the outside, illness-free world is made to sound so hopeless and lifeless, we have no choice but to take Blue's side. I feel that is the one weakness in the script; it could have been more ambiguous about the quality of life of the "N"s and gone to a darker place by leaving us to feel more ambivalent about Blue's self-sacrifice.
The director Kenn McLeod mentioned in his notes that he has been thinking about doing this play for some time, and I can understand why. It is not a production to be mounted lightly. A thorough grokking of the script is bound to take time, then one has to wait for the perfect climate, for the right people to come along who can trust each other intimately. This production requires a lot of trust.
McLeod created an elegant blend of romance and horror onstage. The set is a dilapidated urban hovel that looks like it belongs to a homeless person squatting in an old warehouse. A single stained mattress is the focal point of the room, surrounded by scenic array of cracked walls and tin cans. At an instant, it feels dirty. But the way the two characters revolve around the makeshift bed gives the set a sense of primal sensuality; this feeling is buttressed by the use of candlelight.
The pathos of Beirut is grounded in raw, sexual energy. But it never gets exploitative, or even particularly sexy, because this is always an uncomfortable undercurrent stemming from the darkness of the play's story. The actors have to be vulnerable, both physically (they spend the whole play in varying states of undress) and emotionally, but they strike a remarkable balance by maintaining that energy as well as the darkness. The scene gets intimate without ever being too graphic. There are times this balance works better than others. The play opens with a simulated masturbation scene which was on one hand kind of explicit, but on the other hand so cursory that in the effort to avoid getting to graphic it didn't seem at all accurate; it probably could have been framed differently to be less explicit but more convincing. Probably the most deftly handled moment of tension is when a guard (played by Jacob Yaworski, who had to step in last minute but delivers a chilling performance all the same) comes by for an "inspection". It's the most sexually graphic part of the play, all handled in low light, and really drags the sexual energy into its darkest place, leaving the audience horrified and squirming.
Munish Sharma is Torch. I am not familiar with Sharma's past work, but he definitely brings an air of experience to this play. He portrays the frayed nerve endings of someone who used to have it all together but now finds himself hanging on the precipice. He's endearing in his dreams about life outside the prison; he can bring out little moments of humour throughout. He's powerful, but crumbling. Sharma invigorates Torch with passion worthy of his name, but he can also dial it back to a very soft place.
I have seen Kate Herriot once previously, in Bottome's Dream, and while I knew she was talented I couldn't have imagined her doing something like this. As Blue, Herriot is fearless. She's fiery. From her pithy comments early on to her impassioned pleas toward the climax, she launches herself into this role. Every moment is connected from the way she explores Torch's room to how she entices him toward her, she is centred in the moment and all of her movements are fluid and natural. She lays so much of herself bare, I can't imagine what her process was, but it comes together seamlessly. She goes out onstage like a firecracker but never loses the feeling of fragility.
But talking about the two actors separately is only half the story. Beirut never would have worked if they couldn't have worked well together. But Herriot and Sharma are electric. The play is like a skeleton track, and the two of them hurtle down it, head-first, with no fear. Their moments together are so intimate and genuine that it is like the whole theatre dissolves away. But they also play off each other in snappy banter, bouncing between notes of love and anger. There was clearly a lot of trust built into this production, and each actor had to give everything to their stage partner. The end result is elegant, intimate, and smouldering.
I don't know how well this level of energy could have sustained itself, but coming it at a little under an hour, Beirut keeps its candle burning just as long as it needs to. It doesn't feel at all rushed or cut short, but lies in perfect balance.
Monday 14 October 2013
Eurydice
Whimsically tragic. Yes, that is the most concise way of putting it. A tale of loss and longing, the power of words, and family bonds that echo through eternity.
Eurydice marks the beginning of the 69th Greystone Theatre season (and the 7th that I have had the privilege to witness). Our fair troupe tackles Sara Ruhl's modernised version of the old Orpheus myth. It's a poignant travelogue to the depths of Hades where the titular character finds herself cut off from the land of the living, fighting to retain her identity.
The traditional Orpheus myth involves the most legendary singer in Greece, Orpheus, and his beloved bride, Eurydice. When Eurydice dies tragically on their wedding night, Orpheus ventures deep into the underworld, playing his music, to bargain for her release. But he finds her freedom is not without a catch.
In Ruhl's adaptation, the couple are young lovers in the 1960s (ish?). When tragedy strikes, Eurydice finds herself cast down to Hades where she makes the long trip to her final resting place, first on a boat, then down a raining elevator, and then on a train that is not a train but rather the opposite of a train (we're not told what that is, but we're also not told that it isn't a giraffe). Nonetheless, after her abstract journey through the underworld, Eurydice arrives with no knowledge of who she is. There she unknowingly encounters her father, who uses his secret knowledge of the language of the living to restore her identity to her. I won't go into specifics about the play's ending, but I'll ask everyone to remember that we're in the realm of Greek tragedy where it's considered a happy ending if someone turns into a plant.
Sara Ruhl's script brings an ethereal quality to the character interactions. She refers to her plays as "3D poems". It's a provocative concept, but upon examination it's not particularly useful. It's a vague description, but this play capitalises on vague. It spends time discussing the word "interesting", which is interesting, because I also have a habit of overusing the word interesting, interestingly enough. Beginning with the discussion between Orpheus and Eurydice on the subject of interesting arguments, and then leading up to Eurydice's fateful encounter with the Interesting Man on her wedding night, our sense of language becomes fuzzy. "Interesting" does not pass judgement of something being either good or bad; it's just a term we throw around when we feel that something is worth talking about, but we aren't sure why. Eurydice starts off pursuing this vague sense of the "interesting" and it takes her to a place where nothing seems to mean anything.
The journey through Hades brings travellers to stop at the River Lethe, where they wash away the knowledge of their previous lives and begin their existence as the dead. Eurydice's father, for reasons that are not entirely clear, managed to avoid the river and retain all of his living knowledge, including the understanding of how to read and write. After we see his poignant lamentations in the early part of the play, it is heart-breaking to see Eurydice arrive and look at her father without any idea who he is. From there we move into an exploration of the nature of death, language, and memory. The true death represented in Eurydice is not physical death, but it is the moment the spirit is dipped in the River Lethe and is divorced of their memories.
The power of language is a running theme throughout the play, the way it unites and separates us. Eurydice and Orpheus have trouble communicating in the first scene of the play, with Orpheus never quite getting the meaning behind Eurydice's words. Eurydice starts to feel distance between them, and she is tempted by the words of the Interesting Man before realising they didn't mean what she thought they did. When she arrives in the underworld her language becomes so limited that interaction involves a confusing web of talking around things (such as the "opposite of a train"). When her father is trying to explain who he is, the closest word he can get to "father" that she understands is "tree". In one darkly comic but terribly haunting scene, Eurydice finds a book in Hades but, without memory of how to read, she angrily throws it down and screams "What are you?!" Language is ally and enemy; its circumspect nature is used to both nurture and injure. But when they don't have language they don't have anything to make them human. They become as "stones".
Ruhl's script has the resonance of verse. Her 3D poem wrangles this hyperreal, weighty rhetoric loaded with pathos where no word means precisely what it seems at first. The play is a whirlwind of abstract symbolism but still anchored in this very physical and immediate connection between family members. The dialogue isn't without fault, though. The first scene with Orpheus and Eurydice on a beach has the same unrealistic sense to the dialogue without sliding into the emotional gravitas, so it comes across as half B-movie, half children's book, and half philosophical musing (yes, that's three halves, and you should count yourself lucky if that's the strangest thing you read in this review). By the time Eurydice arrives in Hades and meets her father, the dialogue slides in and out of metaphors with much greater ease and builds to a forlorn emotional intensity.
Dwayne Brenna helms this production as director. He gives it a disturbed, dream-like feel similar to what he did with Woyzeck in 2011, but also plays with the classical Greek work he did in Love of the Nightingale. He blends the 1950s/60s aesthetic with dark fantasy and a little tinge of ancient Greece. What results is a tragic and enchanting play that feels something like a Hayao Miyazaki movie filtered through the lens of Edgar Allen Poe. Dark and tragic, but still with a very magical quality.
Bev Kobelsky's costuming starts off light and airy, getting darker as we travel into the underworld. Eurydice's wedding dress is slim and sleek, which gives her wispy and ghost-like feel. However, most of the imagination in the costume department went to the three "stones", our play's twisted Greek chorus. They appear onstage dressed ostentatiously in a Victorian disco pirate gothic chic, with rigid and ruffled jet black costumes and ghoulish makeup, looking very much like they just stepped off the set of a Catalyst Theatre production.
The set is remarkable. Collin Konrath's design plays on both the abstract and the grounded planes. Large picture frames contain the Stones as they stand vigil over the unfolding narrative. A large, ominous gate is fixed in the centre of the stage, used only seldom, but remaining as this focal point to make the whole stage seem a little oppressive. The aesthetic changes going from right to left, where we have the train station and elevator, which has actual rain pouring inside it when Eurydice arrives (my hat goes off to that trick). Then a curving staircase on stage right creates a bridge to a second level; the differing heights are used to great effect to emphasise the separation between the living and the dead. So the whole set creates a series of barriers: physical, like the different heights, or abstract like the picture frames or the "room" that Eurydice's father constructs for her. Our sense of security, longing, and alienation are all bound up in the subtle shifts between these constructs onstage.
Robert Grier is an endearing Orpheus. He starts off bright and shining with innocence, although not that bright. He's the free-spirited counterpart to Eurydice's more intellectual nature. In his grief he is lost and child-like, and creates a delicate balance with the sombre reflection going on below him. Connor Brousseau plays the opposite. When he shows up as the Interesting Man, he appears mature and intellectual, but with something very menacing underneath. He succeeds at playing both charming and threatening. When Brousseau shows up later as Hades (or perhaps he was Hades all along), he is dressed like a small child, in a morbid parody of Orpheus' genuine innocence. Hades acts with the emotional immaturity of a child, but still feels very evil. The two actors complement each other very well, representing opposing facets of Eurydice's anti-intellectual plane. They also have their share of comedic moments, but Grier makes the comedy endearing, while Brousseau makes you so uncomfortable you're not sure what else to do but laugh.
The three Stones embody the dark humour of this play. On one hand, they make the most insane Greek Chorus ever to grace the stage, but on the other they represent something very tragic and sinister: the oppressive nature of death itself. They spend most of their time railing against the attempts of Eurydice and her father to reclaim pieces of their living selves, but the Stones are so over-the-top they're fun to watch. Jenna Berenbaum is shrill and Banshee-like as the Little Stone, maintaining an implausibly rigid poise and always hovering in line of emotional intensity between lamenting mother and angry crow. Kashtin Moen as the Big Stone seems less smart than the other stones, but he has a tremendous command of the stage that always makes his lines ring out. And Mikael Steponchev as the Loud Stone is the most powerful voice of the trio. He sustains a huge amount of energy through the entire play and can rattle the audience to their bones. The whole dark, Burtonesque threesome do an excellent job of delivering comic relief and dark thematic material.
Torien C Cafferata plays Eurydice's father, a bit of a dry intellectual but with a profound sense of heart underneath. He begins the play in a state of sadness, writing mournful letters that he doesn't know how to send. Upon meeting Eurydice, he pauses in a moment of defeat, seeing her lack of recognition. But small bits of vibrancy well to the surface as he begins to get through to her. More than any single element of the production, Cafferata evinces the sad, whimsical Miyazaki nature of Eurydice. So much emotion exists in small, quiet moments, such as when he is imagining walking his daughter down the aisle, or the sustained scenes of him wrapping twine around four posts to give Eurydice a makeshift room. One moment in particular where he places his hat on Eurydice's head, like she's a little girl, captured the balance of enchanting and heart-breaking. A scene near the end where he remembers the directions to the river is probably the most delicate and profound delivery of Ruhl's subtle verse.
And then, of course, there is Ciara. Ciara Richardson takes the helm of Eurydice as the title heroine. On one level, she plays a socialite princess, frustrated with Orpheus, demanding a bellhop when she arrives in the underworld. But it's clear that underneath that veneer is a sense of sadness and loneliness which Richardson carries around with her in the weight of her step. This sadness occasionally spikes into anger, which she needs to ramp up to in a very short time to bust out of the general slowness of the rest of the play. But she does it. And she really opens up in those enchanting scenes with her father, where she is reawoken to child-like delight and innocence (in constrast to Orpheus' increasing grief). It's a vulnerable performance always weighted by tragedy but lightly flitting through an array of emotions.
The music is very good. It was all performed live in a darkened corner of the stage by the musical director Rodolfo Pino-Robles and Jesse Fulcher Gagnon (who alternates with Grier to play Orpheus). The music is soft with a few spikes in it, emulating the whimsical and tragic nature of the play as a whole. My complaint would be that the music should have been brought forward more into the play itself. Considering that Orpheus is such a legendary musician, the actor's musical talents should have been put to use in the character, instead of just on nights when he wasn't acting.
Eurydice is a full play, which has the power to drag us down into the depths of despair. But for all its sadness, it is a magical experience which highlights our own humanity and reminds of those things that make us who we are - our language, our memories, our connections - and why we hold them dear.
Eurydice marks the beginning of the 69th Greystone Theatre season (and the 7th that I have had the privilege to witness). Our fair troupe tackles Sara Ruhl's modernised version of the old Orpheus myth. It's a poignant travelogue to the depths of Hades where the titular character finds herself cut off from the land of the living, fighting to retain her identity.
The traditional Orpheus myth involves the most legendary singer in Greece, Orpheus, and his beloved bride, Eurydice. When Eurydice dies tragically on their wedding night, Orpheus ventures deep into the underworld, playing his music, to bargain for her release. But he finds her freedom is not without a catch.
In Ruhl's adaptation, the couple are young lovers in the 1960s (ish?). When tragedy strikes, Eurydice finds herself cast down to Hades where she makes the long trip to her final resting place, first on a boat, then down a raining elevator, and then on a train that is not a train but rather the opposite of a train (we're not told what that is, but we're also not told that it isn't a giraffe). Nonetheless, after her abstract journey through the underworld, Eurydice arrives with no knowledge of who she is. There she unknowingly encounters her father, who uses his secret knowledge of the language of the living to restore her identity to her. I won't go into specifics about the play's ending, but I'll ask everyone to remember that we're in the realm of Greek tragedy where it's considered a happy ending if someone turns into a plant.
Sara Ruhl's script brings an ethereal quality to the character interactions. She refers to her plays as "3D poems". It's a provocative concept, but upon examination it's not particularly useful. It's a vague description, but this play capitalises on vague. It spends time discussing the word "interesting", which is interesting, because I also have a habit of overusing the word interesting, interestingly enough. Beginning with the discussion between Orpheus and Eurydice on the subject of interesting arguments, and then leading up to Eurydice's fateful encounter with the Interesting Man on her wedding night, our sense of language becomes fuzzy. "Interesting" does not pass judgement of something being either good or bad; it's just a term we throw around when we feel that something is worth talking about, but we aren't sure why. Eurydice starts off pursuing this vague sense of the "interesting" and it takes her to a place where nothing seems to mean anything.
The journey through Hades brings travellers to stop at the River Lethe, where they wash away the knowledge of their previous lives and begin their existence as the dead. Eurydice's father, for reasons that are not entirely clear, managed to avoid the river and retain all of his living knowledge, including the understanding of how to read and write. After we see his poignant lamentations in the early part of the play, it is heart-breaking to see Eurydice arrive and look at her father without any idea who he is. From there we move into an exploration of the nature of death, language, and memory. The true death represented in Eurydice is not physical death, but it is the moment the spirit is dipped in the River Lethe and is divorced of their memories.
The power of language is a running theme throughout the play, the way it unites and separates us. Eurydice and Orpheus have trouble communicating in the first scene of the play, with Orpheus never quite getting the meaning behind Eurydice's words. Eurydice starts to feel distance between them, and she is tempted by the words of the Interesting Man before realising they didn't mean what she thought they did. When she arrives in the underworld her language becomes so limited that interaction involves a confusing web of talking around things (such as the "opposite of a train"). When her father is trying to explain who he is, the closest word he can get to "father" that she understands is "tree". In one darkly comic but terribly haunting scene, Eurydice finds a book in Hades but, without memory of how to read, she angrily throws it down and screams "What are you?!" Language is ally and enemy; its circumspect nature is used to both nurture and injure. But when they don't have language they don't have anything to make them human. They become as "stones".
Ruhl's script has the resonance of verse. Her 3D poem wrangles this hyperreal, weighty rhetoric loaded with pathos where no word means precisely what it seems at first. The play is a whirlwind of abstract symbolism but still anchored in this very physical and immediate connection between family members. The dialogue isn't without fault, though. The first scene with Orpheus and Eurydice on a beach has the same unrealistic sense to the dialogue without sliding into the emotional gravitas, so it comes across as half B-movie, half children's book, and half philosophical musing (yes, that's three halves, and you should count yourself lucky if that's the strangest thing you read in this review). By the time Eurydice arrives in Hades and meets her father, the dialogue slides in and out of metaphors with much greater ease and builds to a forlorn emotional intensity.
Dwayne Brenna helms this production as director. He gives it a disturbed, dream-like feel similar to what he did with Woyzeck in 2011, but also plays with the classical Greek work he did in Love of the Nightingale. He blends the 1950s/60s aesthetic with dark fantasy and a little tinge of ancient Greece. What results is a tragic and enchanting play that feels something like a Hayao Miyazaki movie filtered through the lens of Edgar Allen Poe. Dark and tragic, but still with a very magical quality.
Bev Kobelsky's costuming starts off light and airy, getting darker as we travel into the underworld. Eurydice's wedding dress is slim and sleek, which gives her wispy and ghost-like feel. However, most of the imagination in the costume department went to the three "stones", our play's twisted Greek chorus. They appear onstage dressed ostentatiously in a Victorian disco pirate gothic chic, with rigid and ruffled jet black costumes and ghoulish makeup, looking very much like they just stepped off the set of a Catalyst Theatre production.
The set is remarkable. Collin Konrath's design plays on both the abstract and the grounded planes. Large picture frames contain the Stones as they stand vigil over the unfolding narrative. A large, ominous gate is fixed in the centre of the stage, used only seldom, but remaining as this focal point to make the whole stage seem a little oppressive. The aesthetic changes going from right to left, where we have the train station and elevator, which has actual rain pouring inside it when Eurydice arrives (my hat goes off to that trick). Then a curving staircase on stage right creates a bridge to a second level; the differing heights are used to great effect to emphasise the separation between the living and the dead. So the whole set creates a series of barriers: physical, like the different heights, or abstract like the picture frames or the "room" that Eurydice's father constructs for her. Our sense of security, longing, and alienation are all bound up in the subtle shifts between these constructs onstage.
Robert Grier is an endearing Orpheus. He starts off bright and shining with innocence, although not that bright. He's the free-spirited counterpart to Eurydice's more intellectual nature. In his grief he is lost and child-like, and creates a delicate balance with the sombre reflection going on below him. Connor Brousseau plays the opposite. When he shows up as the Interesting Man, he appears mature and intellectual, but with something very menacing underneath. He succeeds at playing both charming and threatening. When Brousseau shows up later as Hades (or perhaps he was Hades all along), he is dressed like a small child, in a morbid parody of Orpheus' genuine innocence. Hades acts with the emotional immaturity of a child, but still feels very evil. The two actors complement each other very well, representing opposing facets of Eurydice's anti-intellectual plane. They also have their share of comedic moments, but Grier makes the comedy endearing, while Brousseau makes you so uncomfortable you're not sure what else to do but laugh.
The three Stones embody the dark humour of this play. On one hand, they make the most insane Greek Chorus ever to grace the stage, but on the other they represent something very tragic and sinister: the oppressive nature of death itself. They spend most of their time railing against the attempts of Eurydice and her father to reclaim pieces of their living selves, but the Stones are so over-the-top they're fun to watch. Jenna Berenbaum is shrill and Banshee-like as the Little Stone, maintaining an implausibly rigid poise and always hovering in line of emotional intensity between lamenting mother and angry crow. Kashtin Moen as the Big Stone seems less smart than the other stones, but he has a tremendous command of the stage that always makes his lines ring out. And Mikael Steponchev as the Loud Stone is the most powerful voice of the trio. He sustains a huge amount of energy through the entire play and can rattle the audience to their bones. The whole dark, Burtonesque threesome do an excellent job of delivering comic relief and dark thematic material.
Torien C Cafferata plays Eurydice's father, a bit of a dry intellectual but with a profound sense of heart underneath. He begins the play in a state of sadness, writing mournful letters that he doesn't know how to send. Upon meeting Eurydice, he pauses in a moment of defeat, seeing her lack of recognition. But small bits of vibrancy well to the surface as he begins to get through to her. More than any single element of the production, Cafferata evinces the sad, whimsical Miyazaki nature of Eurydice. So much emotion exists in small, quiet moments, such as when he is imagining walking his daughter down the aisle, or the sustained scenes of him wrapping twine around four posts to give Eurydice a makeshift room. One moment in particular where he places his hat on Eurydice's head, like she's a little girl, captured the balance of enchanting and heart-breaking. A scene near the end where he remembers the directions to the river is probably the most delicate and profound delivery of Ruhl's subtle verse.
And then, of course, there is Ciara. Ciara Richardson takes the helm of Eurydice as the title heroine. On one level, she plays a socialite princess, frustrated with Orpheus, demanding a bellhop when she arrives in the underworld. But it's clear that underneath that veneer is a sense of sadness and loneliness which Richardson carries around with her in the weight of her step. This sadness occasionally spikes into anger, which she needs to ramp up to in a very short time to bust out of the general slowness of the rest of the play. But she does it. And she really opens up in those enchanting scenes with her father, where she is reawoken to child-like delight and innocence (in constrast to Orpheus' increasing grief). It's a vulnerable performance always weighted by tragedy but lightly flitting through an array of emotions.
The music is very good. It was all performed live in a darkened corner of the stage by the musical director Rodolfo Pino-Robles and Jesse Fulcher Gagnon (who alternates with Grier to play Orpheus). The music is soft with a few spikes in it, emulating the whimsical and tragic nature of the play as a whole. My complaint would be that the music should have been brought forward more into the play itself. Considering that Orpheus is such a legendary musician, the actor's musical talents should have been put to use in the character, instead of just on nights when he wasn't acting.
Eurydice is a full play, which has the power to drag us down into the depths of despair. But for all its sadness, it is a magical experience which highlights our own humanity and reminds of those things that make us who we are - our language, our memories, our connections - and why we hold them dear.
Saturday 5 October 2013
My Chernobyl
As it turned out, I chose a suitably grey and dismal day to attend a play called My Chernobyl. I stepped in out of the dreary rain into the warm embrace of Persephone Theatre, and I was greeted by the sight of a cartoonish cooling tower and a mushroom cloud of cyrilic lettering above it. And I had to remind myself that I was about to watch a raucous comedy about an irradiated wasteland.
My Chernobyl is a recent Canadian play which came out of Victoria five short years ago. It offers to provide a Canadian perspective on the nuclear disaster (sort of). Our main character is David, a nice guy Canadian who has been charged with delivering his own inheritance to a cousin in Belarus. And he's doing it, presumably because he's so nice. Soon, his nice nature gets him taken advantage of by a pair of scheming locals, and wrapped up with his old relation's comely daughter, who sees wedding bells when the rich Canadian comes knocking.
It is a peculiar play. On one hand it is a tragedy of a country in shambles with its people forgotten (and the value they place on American culture is somewhat amusing given recent events). On the other hand it is a rollicking semi-Vaudevillian comedy with a little bit of fairy tale mixed in. Our setting is the edge of the "exclusion zone" - the 30km radius around Chernobyl deemed uninhabitable. People in this area are prone to cancer but unfortunately lacking in super powers. It's as hardscrabble a life as you can imagine. So when we watch the scheming supporting characters manoeuvre for more of David's money, we do so with the knowledge that they are clawing through the dirt for survival; a classic stock crook is underscored with a real sense of tragedy. All set to a soundscape of Bryan Adams music.
Despite its basis in a real-world disaster (even more immediate now with the recent disaster in Japan), My Chernobyl maintains a whimsical feel. Scene transitions are accompanied by folk dancing interludes, where U of S acting alumna Alex Hartshorn puts her authentic Ukrainian dance skills to work keeping the stage vibrant with some beautiful choreography. When there is no dancing, we get these cartoonish scenes of "potato bandits" sneaking around the countryside. These transitions make the whole set feel alive, shifting from one place to another. And the way the actors themselves are involved in the set movement creates a cohesive feeling, like the flora and fauna of the play are all bound together in one large choreography.
The plot unfolds in a storybook fashion. With the quick 90 minute runtime we don't have a lot of opportunity to digest the dramatic developments; we cling to them as they whisk us from one scene to another. We see a fairy tale romance unfold from the opposing perspective. David is thrust into this world and finds himself held up as a young damsel's saviour without really understanding what he is in for, and he seems oddly amenable to the idea. As the flaws in the fairy tale image begin to show, we want to caution David away, but he is too wrapped up by that point to make an escape.
Elizabeth Nepjuk commands the stage as Natasha. I can see some of Puck in her, because she is a trickster character in her own way, albeit here her sly nature is tangled up with a truly tragic past. She provides the emotional centre of the play and some of its most spirited action. She has to ride the line of comedy and tragedy and seamlessly slips from one to the other. Every moment is filled with energy, and she keeps the action moving while playing off of Beaudry's comparatively subdued David.
Blaine Hart and Pamela Haig Bartley both take on scene-stealing roles as the scheming locals Yuri and Katrina. Hart brings a lot of weight to his role and really delivers on the dark humour. He's great with the comic antics, but also slows for sombre moments. Haig Bartley is a bit more over-the-top, embodying her off-centre character with clumsy grace. Her comedic timing is impeccable, and she truly sinks in to Katrina's mismatched socks. I'm reminded of the question she often poses to her acting students: "to what end?" That piece of advice shows, as all of her choices are really followed through. Then Darren Zimmer shows up late in the show, countering the zanier characters with a drier sort of humour, in his personality-deprived government official.
Josh Beaudry is often remembered for his colourful supporting characters, so it was a departure for me to see him in a low-key leading role. He succeeds at playing a very genuine character, and manages to add some small nuance to the general state of bewilderment that David always finds himself in. Then his final eruption right near the end is fun to watch.
My Chernobyl is kind of directionless, and I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. As a criticism, I mean that sections of this play that are entertaining on their own are strung together in a way that doesn't achieve much. Hart and Haig Bartley have a couple dialogues at different points in the play, largely divorced from the main action. The scenes are very funny and the actors showcase great chemistry, but ultimately gives off the sense of "meanwhile in a different play". And a lot of David's trajectory is disjointed. His actual personality is hard to pinpoint. As a compliment, I mean that there is an overall tone of directionlessness that ties the plot together. We have entered a hopeless world where David appears as this possible saviour, but people have been without hope for so long they don't know how to react.
At its core, this is a very dark play for everyone involved. We see David being taken advantage of right at the beginning, but it's hard to get upset when we see the dreadful existence of the locals. They have been left behind to die by the rest of the world, and David will never know their suffering. But it's also frustrating to see them charging blindly forward in pursuit of money without considering what they will do with it. Katrina keeps talking about buying a new truck, but no amount of money she swindles appears to get her any closer to buying. Yuri articulates the problem clearly: "I always want more money. It's in my nature." They are the refuse of capitalist society, driven to desire money but far away from a place where it will do them any good.
Before I started writing this review, I spoke about the play with my good friend Torien Cafferata, and he first put me on to the idea of a Russian fairytale. The more I think about that idea, the more it seems to tie the threads of this play together. The problem with reading Grimm fairy tales in their close-to-original form is that they are so incredibly frustrating. The main characters are typically stupid and bereft of personality, stumbling their way through events to some heroic or gruesome end; the stories take weird, inexplicable twists and have sometimes incomprehensible endings that reflect back on the values of a culture totally alien to us. Taking that perspective, the disjointed nature of this play makes more sense. David is a minimalist protagonist, who begins the play on a quest to carry out the wishes of his father against all human rationality (as fairy tale characters do) and he is swept from one scene to another, tacitly accepting his circumstance, until he finds his princess. Then the fairy tale begins to unravel (it has a meltdown, if you will allow me to be crass), that veneer, for whatever it was worth, is lifted, and we find ourselves staring into the heart of the troubled culture that created the tale in the first place.
My Chernobyl has a lot of things going for it, with the talented cast and heavy themes. But it suffers from not entirely knowing what it's doing. There were ideas and commentaries in the script that could have been punched further, and character arcs that needed to be cleaned up. The direction could have darkened the comedy by a couple shades to make the grim ending less of a hairpin turn. Still, it's an entertaining, emotional ride that makes good viewing for a dreary evening.
My Chernobyl is a recent Canadian play which came out of Victoria five short years ago. It offers to provide a Canadian perspective on the nuclear disaster (sort of). Our main character is David, a nice guy Canadian who has been charged with delivering his own inheritance to a cousin in Belarus. And he's doing it, presumably because he's so nice. Soon, his nice nature gets him taken advantage of by a pair of scheming locals, and wrapped up with his old relation's comely daughter, who sees wedding bells when the rich Canadian comes knocking.
It is a peculiar play. On one hand it is a tragedy of a country in shambles with its people forgotten (and the value they place on American culture is somewhat amusing given recent events). On the other hand it is a rollicking semi-Vaudevillian comedy with a little bit of fairy tale mixed in. Our setting is the edge of the "exclusion zone" - the 30km radius around Chernobyl deemed uninhabitable. People in this area are prone to cancer but unfortunately lacking in super powers. It's as hardscrabble a life as you can imagine. So when we watch the scheming supporting characters manoeuvre for more of David's money, we do so with the knowledge that they are clawing through the dirt for survival; a classic stock crook is underscored with a real sense of tragedy. All set to a soundscape of Bryan Adams music.
Despite its basis in a real-world disaster (even more immediate now with the recent disaster in Japan), My Chernobyl maintains a whimsical feel. Scene transitions are accompanied by folk dancing interludes, where U of S acting alumna Alex Hartshorn puts her authentic Ukrainian dance skills to work keeping the stage vibrant with some beautiful choreography. When there is no dancing, we get these cartoonish scenes of "potato bandits" sneaking around the countryside. These transitions make the whole set feel alive, shifting from one place to another. And the way the actors themselves are involved in the set movement creates a cohesive feeling, like the flora and fauna of the play are all bound together in one large choreography.
The plot unfolds in a storybook fashion. With the quick 90 minute runtime we don't have a lot of opportunity to digest the dramatic developments; we cling to them as they whisk us from one scene to another. We see a fairy tale romance unfold from the opposing perspective. David is thrust into this world and finds himself held up as a young damsel's saviour without really understanding what he is in for, and he seems oddly amenable to the idea. As the flaws in the fairy tale image begin to show, we want to caution David away, but he is too wrapped up by that point to make an escape.
Elizabeth Nepjuk commands the stage as Natasha. I can see some of Puck in her, because she is a trickster character in her own way, albeit here her sly nature is tangled up with a truly tragic past. She provides the emotional centre of the play and some of its most spirited action. She has to ride the line of comedy and tragedy and seamlessly slips from one to the other. Every moment is filled with energy, and she keeps the action moving while playing off of Beaudry's comparatively subdued David.
Blaine Hart and Pamela Haig Bartley both take on scene-stealing roles as the scheming locals Yuri and Katrina. Hart brings a lot of weight to his role and really delivers on the dark humour. He's great with the comic antics, but also slows for sombre moments. Haig Bartley is a bit more over-the-top, embodying her off-centre character with clumsy grace. Her comedic timing is impeccable, and she truly sinks in to Katrina's mismatched socks. I'm reminded of the question she often poses to her acting students: "to what end?" That piece of advice shows, as all of her choices are really followed through. Then Darren Zimmer shows up late in the show, countering the zanier characters with a drier sort of humour, in his personality-deprived government official.
Josh Beaudry is often remembered for his colourful supporting characters, so it was a departure for me to see him in a low-key leading role. He succeeds at playing a very genuine character, and manages to add some small nuance to the general state of bewilderment that David always finds himself in. Then his final eruption right near the end is fun to watch.
My Chernobyl is kind of directionless, and I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. As a criticism, I mean that sections of this play that are entertaining on their own are strung together in a way that doesn't achieve much. Hart and Haig Bartley have a couple dialogues at different points in the play, largely divorced from the main action. The scenes are very funny and the actors showcase great chemistry, but ultimately gives off the sense of "meanwhile in a different play". And a lot of David's trajectory is disjointed. His actual personality is hard to pinpoint. As a compliment, I mean that there is an overall tone of directionlessness that ties the plot together. We have entered a hopeless world where David appears as this possible saviour, but people have been without hope for so long they don't know how to react.
At its core, this is a very dark play for everyone involved. We see David being taken advantage of right at the beginning, but it's hard to get upset when we see the dreadful existence of the locals. They have been left behind to die by the rest of the world, and David will never know their suffering. But it's also frustrating to see them charging blindly forward in pursuit of money without considering what they will do with it. Katrina keeps talking about buying a new truck, but no amount of money she swindles appears to get her any closer to buying. Yuri articulates the problem clearly: "I always want more money. It's in my nature." They are the refuse of capitalist society, driven to desire money but far away from a place where it will do them any good.
Before I started writing this review, I spoke about the play with my good friend Torien Cafferata, and he first put me on to the idea of a Russian fairytale. The more I think about that idea, the more it seems to tie the threads of this play together. The problem with reading Grimm fairy tales in their close-to-original form is that they are so incredibly frustrating. The main characters are typically stupid and bereft of personality, stumbling their way through events to some heroic or gruesome end; the stories take weird, inexplicable twists and have sometimes incomprehensible endings that reflect back on the values of a culture totally alien to us. Taking that perspective, the disjointed nature of this play makes more sense. David is a minimalist protagonist, who begins the play on a quest to carry out the wishes of his father against all human rationality (as fairy tale characters do) and he is swept from one scene to another, tacitly accepting his circumstance, until he finds his princess. Then the fairy tale begins to unravel (it has a meltdown, if you will allow me to be crass), that veneer, for whatever it was worth, is lifted, and we find ourselves staring into the heart of the troubled culture that created the tale in the first place.
My Chernobyl has a lot of things going for it, with the talented cast and heavy themes. But it suffers from not entirely knowing what it's doing. There were ideas and commentaries in the script that could have been punched further, and character arcs that needed to be cleaned up. The direction could have darkened the comedy by a couple shades to make the grim ending less of a hairpin turn. Still, it's an entertaining, emotional ride that makes good viewing for a dreary evening.
Friday 4 October 2013
Remembering Max
Tonight was going to be the launch of my new "season" of the Prairie Groundling, as it were, with my review of My Chernobyl. That will still be forthcoming shortly, but I ended up taking some time to go see the No Nos perform. It was a special occasion.
If any of you aren't aware, the No Nos are an improv troupe who have kicked around Saskatoon for several years now. I first discovered them in my second year of university, about five years ago, when they were still performing in the Off-Broadway. I was an instant fan. The whole thing was like Whose Line is it Anyway on cocaine. The cast was filled with so many talented and hilarious people, it was like learning to laugh again. Since those early nights the No Nos have bounced around quite a bit, from venue to venue like they're out of some folk tale. Every time I've come back to see a show, wherever they happen to be, I would always see Max Bembridge keeping the ship afloat.
Tonight was meant to be the opening of their new season. But to my shock, on Tuesday there came an announcement that Max had died, and that this show would be a special memorial to him.
I never knew Max, personally. But through what I saw of him through the No Nos, and the occasions I saw him outside, I came to an understanding of the sort of person he was. He was endlessly enthusiastic, charismatic, and funny. He always thanked me for coming out to the show, and he seemed to remember me, even though I could spend months between attending performances. I always saw him running like a workhorse behind the scenes to get everything ready, right up until the minute the show started, and then he would burst out onstage, brimming with energy. I know the word "vivacious" is mainly applied to aging female celebrities, but all it really means is full of life, and I think we can agree that Max was vivacious.
I wasn't sure what to expect from tonight's show; I don't think anyone was. In part, it was a regular show, with the familiar improv games, and despite the mood all the performers came out swinging. But in between sketches, members of the cast took the stage to share their own memories of Max. Heartwrenching, heartwarming, and also really funny. There were plenty of tears shed, both by the cast and by the audience members packed into the makeshift auditorium at Le Relais (a fire code or two may have been broken). The show was not an elegy. As emotional as it was, I wouldn't call it sad. Above all it was a celebration of Max's life and this group and would not and could not exist if it hadn't been for him. And I suppose there was no better send-off for Max than raucous laughter from all the people who loved and admired him.
This is not how I had imagined starting off a new season of this blog. But here we are. I've had to think about what we're really doing here, about Saskatoon theatre. The term "theatre community" gets tossed around a lot, by me and by others. Tonight really gave me a clearer understanding of what that idea actually means. We are a community, all of us connected. Seeing the crowd come out for Max it made me think about how each member of this community has such a profound effect on everyone else, even outside of what they do in the actual theatre. We're a family, and working in our own backyard like this brings us all close together: closer than we realise until we lose someone. Even those of us who didn't know Max feel like we know him, in a small way, at least.
Honestly, I didn't know why I started this blog. The past year I've been testing the enthusiasm of other people about it, and my own dedication in keeping it running. So far the former has outstripped the latter. But that's going to change. Because looking at recent events I finally understand what I'm doing here. I'm not a reviewer; I'm a historian. This whole theatre community is such a fantastic beast, filled with comedy and tragedy, and I'm watching over it. I don't know if that's necessary, but for the moment it's where I belong.
Now, before I say goodbye to you all for now, and before I say goodbye to Max forever, I'll share my favourite No Nos scene right here.
Max and Derek in "Hobo Feeder"
So long, Max. I'm happy for almost knowing you.
If any of you aren't aware, the No Nos are an improv troupe who have kicked around Saskatoon for several years now. I first discovered them in my second year of university, about five years ago, when they were still performing in the Off-Broadway. I was an instant fan. The whole thing was like Whose Line is it Anyway on cocaine. The cast was filled with so many talented and hilarious people, it was like learning to laugh again. Since those early nights the No Nos have bounced around quite a bit, from venue to venue like they're out of some folk tale. Every time I've come back to see a show, wherever they happen to be, I would always see Max Bembridge keeping the ship afloat.
Tonight was meant to be the opening of their new season. But to my shock, on Tuesday there came an announcement that Max had died, and that this show would be a special memorial to him.
I never knew Max, personally. But through what I saw of him through the No Nos, and the occasions I saw him outside, I came to an understanding of the sort of person he was. He was endlessly enthusiastic, charismatic, and funny. He always thanked me for coming out to the show, and he seemed to remember me, even though I could spend months between attending performances. I always saw him running like a workhorse behind the scenes to get everything ready, right up until the minute the show started, and then he would burst out onstage, brimming with energy. I know the word "vivacious" is mainly applied to aging female celebrities, but all it really means is full of life, and I think we can agree that Max was vivacious.
I wasn't sure what to expect from tonight's show; I don't think anyone was. In part, it was a regular show, with the familiar improv games, and despite the mood all the performers came out swinging. But in between sketches, members of the cast took the stage to share their own memories of Max. Heartwrenching, heartwarming, and also really funny. There were plenty of tears shed, both by the cast and by the audience members packed into the makeshift auditorium at Le Relais (a fire code or two may have been broken). The show was not an elegy. As emotional as it was, I wouldn't call it sad. Above all it was a celebration of Max's life and this group and would not and could not exist if it hadn't been for him. And I suppose there was no better send-off for Max than raucous laughter from all the people who loved and admired him.
This is not how I had imagined starting off a new season of this blog. But here we are. I've had to think about what we're really doing here, about Saskatoon theatre. The term "theatre community" gets tossed around a lot, by me and by others. Tonight really gave me a clearer understanding of what that idea actually means. We are a community, all of us connected. Seeing the crowd come out for Max it made me think about how each member of this community has such a profound effect on everyone else, even outside of what they do in the actual theatre. We're a family, and working in our own backyard like this brings us all close together: closer than we realise until we lose someone. Even those of us who didn't know Max feel like we know him, in a small way, at least.
Honestly, I didn't know why I started this blog. The past year I've been testing the enthusiasm of other people about it, and my own dedication in keeping it running. So far the former has outstripped the latter. But that's going to change. Because looking at recent events I finally understand what I'm doing here. I'm not a reviewer; I'm a historian. This whole theatre community is such a fantastic beast, filled with comedy and tragedy, and I'm watching over it. I don't know if that's necessary, but for the moment it's where I belong.
Now, before I say goodbye to you all for now, and before I say goodbye to Max forever, I'll share my favourite No Nos scene right here.
Max and Derek in "Hobo Feeder"
So long, Max. I'm happy for almost knowing you.
Thursday 8 August 2013
Fringe 2013 - Day 4
Bottome's Dream (Embrace Theatre, SK)
Bottome's Dream is more ambitious than any Fringe show has a right to be - which makes it all the more impressive how well the play succeeds. It is in the league of Two Corpses Go Dancing: a play which defies the conventions of its medium by aiming for the spectacular, and hits all the right notes along the way.
A Shakespearean production with a cast of seven: it's not hard to figure out that Charlie Peters is the only person in Saskatoon who could possibly have pulled this performance together. I can only marvel at the masochism which leads him to tackle these challenges, but I can't deny the results. Bottome's Dream is a fantastic piece of theatre which should appeal to both hard-core Bardists and playhouse newcomers.
This play delivers both a skilful reimagining of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and a fun slice of justice for all those of us who have sat through a bad romantic comedy, wishing the bland leads would disappear and the movie could be about the quirky supporting characters. Peters does just that; he takes Midsummer and removes what the pedantic and tedious among us might call "the main plot". Instead, it focuses entirely on the "rude mechanicals" mounting their own production of Pyramus and Thisbe for the court of Theseus, and the goings-on of the Faerie kingdom. Whether it is a virtue of Charlie or an aspersion on Will, the play doesn't feel like it is missing anything.
If you're in need of a refresher, the plot follows four members of the working class in Athens who get the idea to perform a romantic tragedy for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. But while they rehearse in the forest they end up treading into the crossfire of a feud between the faerie king Oberon and his queen Titania. Oberon hatches a scheme to teach his wife a lesson by slipping her a love potion and having her fall for a man with a donkey's head. But first he needs to find a man and transform his head into a donkey's, and that is where our dashing leading man Bottom finds himself unfortunately entangled.
Of all the vile slanders that have been hurled at Charlie Peters over the years, no one has ever accused him of not getting Shakespeare. He reaches deep into the intestines of the play and pulls out those little icons that most people don't think about. The question of why so much of Midsummer is dedicated to these day-labourers putting on a very bad production of a tragedy is a valid one which Professor Kumaran never gave much airtime in my Shakespeare class. It's a two-pronged satire. One, it seems the Bard was taking a potshot at slapdash country performances, but also poking fun at censorship, reflected in Bottom's concerns about offending the ladies in the audience. Peters builds up the satirical elements with the absolutely ludicrous performance depicted onstage, but he adds another level. The would-be players in this play are so earnest in their efforts, even as we watch them cobble together what barely amounts to a middle-school level production, we can't help but admire the tenacity of the rude mechanicals and their endearing dedication to performing theatre, even if they don't understand it. I think there may be a bit of self deprecation here.
Casting two of the players as females injects some welcome sexual tension into the mix. Emma Thorpe as the put-upon Snout, rejected as female lead, is adorable. She displays unfailing good intention but a general lack of grace and intellect; her sunny facial expression and sweet innocence evokes sympathy from the audience as she is frequently put down. Chris Donlevy as Flute (playing Thisbe) has a natural gift for Shakespearean dialogue, but in this particular instance his main strength is his capacity for slapstick, with potentially dangerous flailing and a lot of quick facial expressions; plus, his woman voice while playing Thisbe is really something else. Donovan Scheirer is larger than life as Bottom, the unfortunate man who finds himself with the head of an ass (though not displeased about having a faerie queen all into him). His cockiness and bravado owns the stage, and his wide-eyed bewilderment at why everyone runs from him post-transformation creates a brilliant comedic contrast. With his expression he always makes the dialogue land. Kate Herriot is Quince, the feisty director who nevertheless has a schoolgirl crush on Bottom. I can't overstate just how endearing she is, from her general tough girl persona to her tearful lament of Bottom's disappearance to her fiery commitment to putting on theatre whatever the cost.
Local theatre staples Matt Josdal and Cheryl Jack do double-duty as Oberon and Titania and Theseus and Hippolyta. They had trouble injecting vitality into the lengthy monologues the faerie couple exchanges toward the beginning of the play, but as it went on their emotions bloomed and they really dug into the petty bickering and eventual reconciliation between them. Plus, their experience in the field really helps lend them the booming dominance needed for playing the immortals. Then as Theseus and Hippolyta they got to kick back and have fun by spending the final scene cracking jokes about the play the artisans are putting on; the ease of their conversation helped to set the atmosphere.
And as much as it seems absurd to choose a stand-out element in this production, Elizabeth Nepjuk as Puck takes it. I have not really seen her act before (her previous major role was in the version of Into the Woods that I didn't see), but she was captivating the moment she came out onstage. I was immediately struck by someone who would be just as comfortable in Vaudeville as on HBO. Her embodiment of the character was amazing, with her light-footed physicality bouncing her around the stage like a sprite. If ever there is a dull moment onstage, one only needs to find her and her facial expression will be radiating 1500 Watts from wherever she is.
And now it occurs to me that I haven't done nearly enough to describe how eye-wateringly gut-tighteningly funny Bottome's Dream is. Every line from the Shakespearean text which could possibly be considered funny is cranked up to 11. It's a testament both to the understanding of the play and the phenomenal chemistry of the cast. Then the final scene, the climactic performance of the tragedy, is a melange of slapstick, dry wit, and half a dozen other types of comedy I don't even have a name for into one spectacular explosion of hilarity. There are not many things in this world that have made me laugh quite that much.
And because everything else in this play wasn't complicated enough, Peters also incorporated live sound effects (remember what I said about the masochism?). The actors make full use of their talents by operating a number of instruments to make the whole symphony of sound effects offstage, and sometimes onstage. I spent quite a while trying to figure out where this strange trumpeting sound was coming from, then I discovered it was coming from Kate Herriot's lips.
This is a play that gets everything right, and possibly even gets a few things it didn't even think of right by accident. On one hand, it won't knock Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan off its pedestal, but on the other hand, that's a really fucking stupid observation to make. This is one of those shows that transcends the Fringe; transcends Shakespeare, if I may be so bold, because after this I don't think I could sit through a proper performance of Midsummer again.
Best of the Fringe? Yes. Best of all Fringes? ... No, that's still Two Corpses Go Dancing, but that's another discussion. The point is, Bottome's Dream is one of those things you just have to see. Seriously. See it.
OK, that last review was a bit exhausting. This one will be short.
Unpossible! (Travis Bernhardt, BC)
One day in the not too distant future, the human race will discover that sorcerers have been living among us. And we will wonder how they could brazenly flaunt their abilities right in front of us for so long without us being any the wiser. Travis Bernhardt is one such wizard.
Unpossible! begins much in the way you would expect from a magic show. There are fancy tablecloths, a deck of cards, some audience volunteers. It starts off simple. Oh, yeah, that trick is pretty obvious. Oh, well he just did that while I wasn't looking. But I was looking. Wasn't I? Oh, there's clearly a trap door in the top of that table. Oh, that's easy. He just taps the deck of cards and then ... I don't know. He might have done something with magnets on that one. I think I saw it go up his sleeve, but I'm not sure what sort of gravity manipulation was required to get it up there. OK, how the fuck did that deck of cards get in his pocket? It was in his opposite hand literally one second ago. IT'S UNDER THE GLASS OF WATER??? HE DIDN'T EVEN GO NEAR THERE!
But Travis Bernhardt isn't just a magician; he's also a gifted comedian. He charms his audience, using self-depreciation to lull us into a false sense of security before blind-siding us with something crazy. He also strikes me as a man of science, caring not just about the ostentatious display of magic but also of the subtle math behind it. It makes me think that manipulating numbers is as much part of his act as manipulating objects. And manipulating people - that's a whole other story.
A word of warning: Unpossible! requires patience. It starts out as a typical magic show, but the middle section of it gets quite strange. It focuses on audience volunteers doing things that don't make a lot of sense and which seem to be going wrong a lot. But keep focused, because all will be revealed in the end. The final moments of the show will make you utter a "Whoa" worthy of Keanu Reeves.
Because the truth is, it's not a show of magic tricks. It's just one magic trick.
Bottome's Dream is more ambitious than any Fringe show has a right to be - which makes it all the more impressive how well the play succeeds. It is in the league of Two Corpses Go Dancing: a play which defies the conventions of its medium by aiming for the spectacular, and hits all the right notes along the way.
A Shakespearean production with a cast of seven: it's not hard to figure out that Charlie Peters is the only person in Saskatoon who could possibly have pulled this performance together. I can only marvel at the masochism which leads him to tackle these challenges, but I can't deny the results. Bottome's Dream is a fantastic piece of theatre which should appeal to both hard-core Bardists and playhouse newcomers.
This play delivers both a skilful reimagining of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and a fun slice of justice for all those of us who have sat through a bad romantic comedy, wishing the bland leads would disappear and the movie could be about the quirky supporting characters. Peters does just that; he takes Midsummer and removes what the pedantic and tedious among us might call "the main plot". Instead, it focuses entirely on the "rude mechanicals" mounting their own production of Pyramus and Thisbe for the court of Theseus, and the goings-on of the Faerie kingdom. Whether it is a virtue of Charlie or an aspersion on Will, the play doesn't feel like it is missing anything.
If you're in need of a refresher, the plot follows four members of the working class in Athens who get the idea to perform a romantic tragedy for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. But while they rehearse in the forest they end up treading into the crossfire of a feud between the faerie king Oberon and his queen Titania. Oberon hatches a scheme to teach his wife a lesson by slipping her a love potion and having her fall for a man with a donkey's head. But first he needs to find a man and transform his head into a donkey's, and that is where our dashing leading man Bottom finds himself unfortunately entangled.
Of all the vile slanders that have been hurled at Charlie Peters over the years, no one has ever accused him of not getting Shakespeare. He reaches deep into the intestines of the play and pulls out those little icons that most people don't think about. The question of why so much of Midsummer is dedicated to these day-labourers putting on a very bad production of a tragedy is a valid one which Professor Kumaran never gave much airtime in my Shakespeare class. It's a two-pronged satire. One, it seems the Bard was taking a potshot at slapdash country performances, but also poking fun at censorship, reflected in Bottom's concerns about offending the ladies in the audience. Peters builds up the satirical elements with the absolutely ludicrous performance depicted onstage, but he adds another level. The would-be players in this play are so earnest in their efforts, even as we watch them cobble together what barely amounts to a middle-school level production, we can't help but admire the tenacity of the rude mechanicals and their endearing dedication to performing theatre, even if they don't understand it. I think there may be a bit of self deprecation here.
Casting two of the players as females injects some welcome sexual tension into the mix. Emma Thorpe as the put-upon Snout, rejected as female lead, is adorable. She displays unfailing good intention but a general lack of grace and intellect; her sunny facial expression and sweet innocence evokes sympathy from the audience as she is frequently put down. Chris Donlevy as Flute (playing Thisbe) has a natural gift for Shakespearean dialogue, but in this particular instance his main strength is his capacity for slapstick, with potentially dangerous flailing and a lot of quick facial expressions; plus, his woman voice while playing Thisbe is really something else. Donovan Scheirer is larger than life as Bottom, the unfortunate man who finds himself with the head of an ass (though not displeased about having a faerie queen all into him). His cockiness and bravado owns the stage, and his wide-eyed bewilderment at why everyone runs from him post-transformation creates a brilliant comedic contrast. With his expression he always makes the dialogue land. Kate Herriot is Quince, the feisty director who nevertheless has a schoolgirl crush on Bottom. I can't overstate just how endearing she is, from her general tough girl persona to her tearful lament of Bottom's disappearance to her fiery commitment to putting on theatre whatever the cost.
Local theatre staples Matt Josdal and Cheryl Jack do double-duty as Oberon and Titania and Theseus and Hippolyta. They had trouble injecting vitality into the lengthy monologues the faerie couple exchanges toward the beginning of the play, but as it went on their emotions bloomed and they really dug into the petty bickering and eventual reconciliation between them. Plus, their experience in the field really helps lend them the booming dominance needed for playing the immortals. Then as Theseus and Hippolyta they got to kick back and have fun by spending the final scene cracking jokes about the play the artisans are putting on; the ease of their conversation helped to set the atmosphere.
And as much as it seems absurd to choose a stand-out element in this production, Elizabeth Nepjuk as Puck takes it. I have not really seen her act before (her previous major role was in the version of Into the Woods that I didn't see), but she was captivating the moment she came out onstage. I was immediately struck by someone who would be just as comfortable in Vaudeville as on HBO. Her embodiment of the character was amazing, with her light-footed physicality bouncing her around the stage like a sprite. If ever there is a dull moment onstage, one only needs to find her and her facial expression will be radiating 1500 Watts from wherever she is.
And now it occurs to me that I haven't done nearly enough to describe how eye-wateringly gut-tighteningly funny Bottome's Dream is. Every line from the Shakespearean text which could possibly be considered funny is cranked up to 11. It's a testament both to the understanding of the play and the phenomenal chemistry of the cast. Then the final scene, the climactic performance of the tragedy, is a melange of slapstick, dry wit, and half a dozen other types of comedy I don't even have a name for into one spectacular explosion of hilarity. There are not many things in this world that have made me laugh quite that much.
And because everything else in this play wasn't complicated enough, Peters also incorporated live sound effects (remember what I said about the masochism?). The actors make full use of their talents by operating a number of instruments to make the whole symphony of sound effects offstage, and sometimes onstage. I spent quite a while trying to figure out where this strange trumpeting sound was coming from, then I discovered it was coming from Kate Herriot's lips.
This is a play that gets everything right, and possibly even gets a few things it didn't even think of right by accident. On one hand, it won't knock Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan off its pedestal, but on the other hand, that's a really fucking stupid observation to make. This is one of those shows that transcends the Fringe; transcends Shakespeare, if I may be so bold, because after this I don't think I could sit through a proper performance of Midsummer again.
Best of the Fringe? Yes. Best of all Fringes? ... No, that's still Two Corpses Go Dancing, but that's another discussion. The point is, Bottome's Dream is one of those things you just have to see. Seriously. See it.
OK, that last review was a bit exhausting. This one will be short.
Unpossible! (Travis Bernhardt, BC)
One day in the not too distant future, the human race will discover that sorcerers have been living among us. And we will wonder how they could brazenly flaunt their abilities right in front of us for so long without us being any the wiser. Travis Bernhardt is one such wizard.
Unpossible! begins much in the way you would expect from a magic show. There are fancy tablecloths, a deck of cards, some audience volunteers. It starts off simple. Oh, yeah, that trick is pretty obvious. Oh, well he just did that while I wasn't looking. But I was looking. Wasn't I? Oh, there's clearly a trap door in the top of that table. Oh, that's easy. He just taps the deck of cards and then ... I don't know. He might have done something with magnets on that one. I think I saw it go up his sleeve, but I'm not sure what sort of gravity manipulation was required to get it up there. OK, how the fuck did that deck of cards get in his pocket? It was in his opposite hand literally one second ago. IT'S UNDER THE GLASS OF WATER??? HE DIDN'T EVEN GO NEAR THERE!
But Travis Bernhardt isn't just a magician; he's also a gifted comedian. He charms his audience, using self-depreciation to lull us into a false sense of security before blind-siding us with something crazy. He also strikes me as a man of science, caring not just about the ostentatious display of magic but also of the subtle math behind it. It makes me think that manipulating numbers is as much part of his act as manipulating objects. And manipulating people - that's a whole other story.
A word of warning: Unpossible! requires patience. It starts out as a typical magic show, but the middle section of it gets quite strange. It focuses on audience volunteers doing things that don't make a lot of sense and which seem to be going wrong a lot. But keep focused, because all will be revealed in the end. The final moments of the show will make you utter a "Whoa" worthy of Keanu Reeves.
Because the truth is, it's not a show of magic tricks. It's just one magic trick.
Wednesday 7 August 2013
Fringe 2013 - Day 3
Hot Thespian Action (Hot Thespian Action, MB)
I admit it, I was intrigued by the title, and their scandalously tasteful posters.
Hot Thespian Action is a sketch comedy troupe out of Winnipeg, where people desperately need something to laugh about (just kidding ;)). Sketch comedy is a delicate art, plagued by a culture of "hit or miss". But when preparing a Fringe show and not a weekly TV program, we can afford our auteurs the time to really focus their energy and craft the best show possible. As such, HTA delivers a raucous 55 minutes of non-stop comedy mayhem.
There is a touch of classic SNL in here, but it is definitely born of a modern age. One standout sketch, "W.H.A.A.T.T.H.E." tackles the problem of people over 50 who can't use any of their technology. Maybe it's a bit of a cheap shot, but it's hilarious, and more than slightly relateable. The sketches they have are diverse. Some are high concept, like a woman who gets transported into her own purse and faces the miscellaneae she left abandoned there. Others revolve around one gag which they absolutely nail, like three robot girls talking like Jersey Shore bitches in Stephen Hawking voices - a shallow concept, maybe, but also one of the funniest things I've ever experienced.
Sometimes, though, it's not clear what kind of show they want to do. With some sketches they push the envelope a little bit, but with others they shy away from being too edgy when they could have benefited from it. HTA is at its best when not falling back on stereotypes. A game show titled "Is He Gay?" is funny, but feels a bit 90s. Not that there is anything mean-spirited about it, it felt slightly off-putting.
The five cast members have great chemistry with one another (they have to, judging by their posters), and they nail their scenes with excellent timing and a combination of whacky personalities and charismatic straight characters. There is nothing particularly deep I can read into this one, but it delivers what it promises: a one hour comedy extravaganza. Definitely worth seeing unless you hate happiness.
Tales from the Twilight (Erik de Waal, South Africa)
In four years at the Saskatoon Fringe I had never seen an Erik de Waal show, even though he'd been a major icon of the festival throughout that time. When I saw that this year he was performing a collection of horror stories along with his usual folktales, I saw it as time to correct my mistake.
He begins the show by launching straight into a retelling of Poe's "The Telltale Heart". The first minute or so I was confused until I realised what the story was. When that concluded he properly introduced himself. He continued with a traditional South African (but really Irish) ghost story, then into a North American traditional by way of Mark Twain, and finally into a retelling of "The Monkey's Paw". Interspersed between these were snippets of his own childhood growing up in a haunted house. These small anecdotes capture the real essence of the horror story. I have no idea if they were completely made up, embellished, or stone cold truth. And it doesn't matter. It is what it is and it makes a good story.
What I had to remind myself is that de Waal is a storyteller and not a storymaker. He has a tremendous gift for storytelling, working the timbre of his voice like an orchestra to excite the audience and build suspense. He alters his physicality to embody the character; this is particularly noticeable during "The Telltale Heart" when his creeping, slippery movements build a nightmarish aura around him, in contrast with protestations about how sane he is. At times de Waal steps down from the stage and walks through the audience, drifting in and out, applying subtle pressure to those audience members he moves past while the drama builds. One complaint I had was his frequent repetition of certain phrases, with the same accompanying gestural movement. It's a technique that probably works better with the African Folktales audience than it does here. But that issue aside, the man has a great talent for building atmosphere using only his voice and movements.
It was disappointing for me that half the show was dedicated to telling stories I already knew, but de Waal is about the telling, not the making. And in that respect, he does exceedingly well.
I admit it, I was intrigued by the title, and their scandalously tasteful posters.
Hot Thespian Action is a sketch comedy troupe out of Winnipeg, where people desperately need something to laugh about (just kidding ;)). Sketch comedy is a delicate art, plagued by a culture of "hit or miss". But when preparing a Fringe show and not a weekly TV program, we can afford our auteurs the time to really focus their energy and craft the best show possible. As such, HTA delivers a raucous 55 minutes of non-stop comedy mayhem.
There is a touch of classic SNL in here, but it is definitely born of a modern age. One standout sketch, "W.H.A.A.T.T.H.E." tackles the problem of people over 50 who can't use any of their technology. Maybe it's a bit of a cheap shot, but it's hilarious, and more than slightly relateable. The sketches they have are diverse. Some are high concept, like a woman who gets transported into her own purse and faces the miscellaneae she left abandoned there. Others revolve around one gag which they absolutely nail, like three robot girls talking like Jersey Shore bitches in Stephen Hawking voices - a shallow concept, maybe, but also one of the funniest things I've ever experienced.
Sometimes, though, it's not clear what kind of show they want to do. With some sketches they push the envelope a little bit, but with others they shy away from being too edgy when they could have benefited from it. HTA is at its best when not falling back on stereotypes. A game show titled "Is He Gay?" is funny, but feels a bit 90s. Not that there is anything mean-spirited about it, it felt slightly off-putting.
The five cast members have great chemistry with one another (they have to, judging by their posters), and they nail their scenes with excellent timing and a combination of whacky personalities and charismatic straight characters. There is nothing particularly deep I can read into this one, but it delivers what it promises: a one hour comedy extravaganza. Definitely worth seeing unless you hate happiness.
Tales from the Twilight (Erik de Waal, South Africa)
In four years at the Saskatoon Fringe I had never seen an Erik de Waal show, even though he'd been a major icon of the festival throughout that time. When I saw that this year he was performing a collection of horror stories along with his usual folktales, I saw it as time to correct my mistake.
He begins the show by launching straight into a retelling of Poe's "The Telltale Heart". The first minute or so I was confused until I realised what the story was. When that concluded he properly introduced himself. He continued with a traditional South African (but really Irish) ghost story, then into a North American traditional by way of Mark Twain, and finally into a retelling of "The Monkey's Paw". Interspersed between these were snippets of his own childhood growing up in a haunted house. These small anecdotes capture the real essence of the horror story. I have no idea if they were completely made up, embellished, or stone cold truth. And it doesn't matter. It is what it is and it makes a good story.
What I had to remind myself is that de Waal is a storyteller and not a storymaker. He has a tremendous gift for storytelling, working the timbre of his voice like an orchestra to excite the audience and build suspense. He alters his physicality to embody the character; this is particularly noticeable during "The Telltale Heart" when his creeping, slippery movements build a nightmarish aura around him, in contrast with protestations about how sane he is. At times de Waal steps down from the stage and walks through the audience, drifting in and out, applying subtle pressure to those audience members he moves past while the drama builds. One complaint I had was his frequent repetition of certain phrases, with the same accompanying gestural movement. It's a technique that probably works better with the African Folktales audience than it does here. But that issue aside, the man has a great talent for building atmosphere using only his voice and movements.
It was disappointing for me that half the show was dedicated to telling stories I already knew, but de Waal is about the telling, not the making. And in that respect, he does exceedingly well.
Fringe 2013 - Day 2
The Shape of a Girl (Chrysalis Theatre, SK)
The title is evocative. Part cute, part suggestive, possibly
something you’d see in an advertising campaign. It takes a while to swing back
to the intended meaning of the phrase: that peculiar and endlessly troubling
circumstance when someone can lose her humanity at so young an age, to commit
such terrible acts, all while maintaining the shape of a girl.
The new Chrysalis
Theatre production for this summer’s Fringe tackles Joan MacLeod’s acclaimed
script about the grim realities of bullying. It is inspired by the 1997 case of
a 14-year-old Victoria girl who was beaten and killed by two classmates while
many others stood by and watched. Those present made a pact of silence, but
still rumours got out. The Shape of a
Girl was born out of that incident but has only gained relevance since
then, with the Amanda Todd and Rehtaeah Parsons cases keeping discussion in the
air about the cruelty of young people.
This play takes a
fictional story of a small Vancouver Island community where a seemingly
ordinary group of girls find themselves twisted by a long-running game of
malice, denigration, and passive witness. The one-woman show focuses on the
story of Braidie, handmaiden to the Devil, in a sense. She recounts how her
innocent childhood was transformed by social hierarchy and needless ostracism,
how her best friend Adrianne became queen and arbitrator of her circle of
classmates, pronouncing judgement as she saw fit and delighting in cruelty towards
those she decreed were deserving of it. She recounts how one girl named Sophie,
who never did anything wrong, became scorned and hated by everyone who knew
her, simply because it was decided that she should be. And finally she recounts
how she herself stood by and let it all happen, time and time again.
U of S alumna
Danielle Spilchen, in her first solo show, takes us on a profound and shocking
emotional journey. Her ageless eyes shift seamlessly between hyperactive
girlish enthusiasm and shell-shocked horror. She has a face which can shine
halogen-bright or darken to a sullen smouldering, and throughout the course of
the play she explores the whole range of expressions. The performance is a bit
frenetic, unstuck in time, bouncing from one point to another, swirling around
points of violence, then, as if approaching a black hole, it slows to a moment,
a pause between heartbeats. Like the arresting bell sound effect that rang
periodically, never failing to jolt me in my seat, Spilchen has the ability to
snatch the audience out of one state and put them in another. She moulds the
emotional experience, offering brief moments of levity then barrelling back
into anguish.
Onstage she is
accompanied only by two stepladders. They stand grey and monolithic, one of
them towering over her, the other much smaller. Before a single word is
uttered, there is a power imbalance onstage, one ladder looking down on the
other and Braidie wavering between them. At times she tries to climb, but there
is always a painful sight when she does. The play is framed as a letter to her
estranged brother, which lends a sense of longing and displacement to Braidie’s
words. The sense of loneliness in her social circle becomes more pronounced as
the play reaches to a close and Braidie becomes more vulnerable. Danielle
Spilchen maintains such a degree of emotional availability that in her final
tearful breakdown, it really is difficult to tell if she’s still acting.
The one complaint
I would lodge against the production is that it finishes with the director
Louise Seidel offering a ten minute “talk-back” with the audience. I could tell
that she planned this in anticipation of there being a lot of young people in
the audience, and I grant that it may be a good way to temper their reaction to
the dark resonance of the play. But in my predominantly adult audience, it came
across as shallow, and all too reminiscent of those tired, pointless seminars I
had to sit through in elementary school. The schoolyard saccharine approach
Seidel took in contrast with the blunt reality of the play made me imagine
ending Letter’s from the Apocalypse
by addressing the audience and telling them to by energy efficient lightbulbs.
The Shape of a Girl is an emotionally
trying but very rewarding play, with an electrifying performance by Danielle
Spilchen. It is not my custom to assign numerical ratings to plays, so I will
just use words. Must see.
Money Don’t Grow on Trees (Neverending Highway Productions,
SK)
Choose Your Own
Adventure. I remember those books. I usually ended up getting eaten by a
monster a couple times. I still used to marvel at their complexity, though. But
I, along with six billion other people in the world, never imagined that the
genre could be transplanted into live theatre. Fortunately, I am privileged
above most of those six billion in that I know Graham Kent and have access to
his machinations.
Our homegrown
Neverending Highway Productions, which last year tried out a radio drama, is
venturing further into the fringes (get it?) of theatrical culture to try out
something totally new. And so we have Money
Don’t Grow on Trees, a ludicrous crime and caper story about lost love,
lost money, and the bank robbery that brings it all together. The play is
framed by a teenage girl, Penny, working on a creative writing assignment, but
she sometimes needs help from the audience to decide which direction to take
the story. The story she crafts is about down-on-his-luck low-life Frankie who
conscripts his reformed friend Cid into pulling off one last heist, but it
doesn’t take long for things to go off the rails.
Even removed from
the CYOA aspect, the play works well as a raucous comedy. Penny continually
intrudes upon the narrative to puzzle over problems and assign characters
catchphrases. The dynamic between Penny and her creations is a lovely
tongue-and-cheek bit of meta-fiction. Grahame Kent is outstanding in his
frantic, off-the-wall Frankie, combining slapstick humour with some Guy
Ritchie-esque dark comedy; there is great chemistry between him and his
straight man in Morgan Murray. Danielle Roy is a scene-stealer, their industry
professional with a suitcase full of sexual tension. She is fun but steely. She
has a commanding presence which allows her to bat around her co-stars. Jalisa
Gonie as Penny is fun and always keeps the energy up. Then Lauren Younghusband
as the ambiguously gendered Terry brings a wicked deadpan delivery to the
latter half of the play.
It is to Money’s credit that the script seems to
have had a solid outline before the participatory elements were layered in,
rather than relying on the gimmick to prop up everything else. It has a lot of
strength as a comedy, and the CYOA element gives it a boost of uniqueness. But
since the play committed to that form and made it the focus of its campaign, I
have to admit it felt a little anemic. There is only one choice offered to the
audience in the entire first half, and that only ends up affecting a single
line of dialogue. While I can’t speak confidently based on my single viewing, I
am left with the impression that most choices presented to the audience have
very little bearing on the development of the plot; and on top of that, there
is a tendency to have one option be so outrageous it is impossible for the
audience not to pick it. But the play does have four guaranteed possible
endings, and I’m confident the three I didn’t see are just as manic and
action-packed as the one I did.
Money Don’t Grow on Trees is a wicked
and wacky crime comedy. While its choose-your-own-adventure format could have
definitely been more ambitious, the play still stands strong on its own.
Stalled (Watermelon Heart Theatre, SK)
Poetry and bathrooms. Two things that bring unlikely people
together. Stalled drops us into a
unisex bathroom (*gasp*) at an unnamed seedy bar. Regulars at a weekly poetry
night, dropping into the lavatory for a few moments, get tangled up in the
intimate bits of each other’s lives, pushing together and pulling apart.
To glance at this
play on paper, one curious thing that stands out is the scope of its cast. Due
to the brevity of commode interactions, Stalled
relies on a parade of characters moving in and out to keep the action going. With
a cast of four, each person onstage does duty as three or four characters.
Costumes are minimal, but each character has some sort of detail or accessory
to identify them; beyond that it’s down to good old fashioned acting and faith
in the audience to keep everything straight. (For the most part it’s easy,
though I admit I got turned around a couple times.) The rogues gallery includes
a cynical bartender and her easy-going manager, a fracturing husband and wife,
a grieving father and son, lesbian best friends, a few insecure romantics, a
wounded nymphomaniac, and a predatory academic. As they bump and grind against
each other’s lives they take the time to scrawl graffiti on the bathroom mirror,
which becomes a poem itself.
At its heart, Stalled appears to be a love letter to
poetry – not surprising given playwright Shanda Stefanson’s regular presence at
Lydia’s “Tonight It’s Poetry” (making the timing of this play all the more
poignant). But that is hardly sufficient as a summation of the nature of this
play. It traces the preposterous origins of poetry, weaving its way through our
lives and relationships, bursting out at moments of high emotional intensity. The
line scrawled at the end of each brief scene creates an icon, defining the
character who wrote it at that particular moment, but shrouded in mystery as
soon as the moment passes.
The production is
fairly complex for a fringe show. Two graffiti’d bathroom stalls stand prominently
centre stage. It’s an impressive feat both to create those and to move them on
and off stage with ease. The sleazy, dilapidated look about them, along with
their incongruous sense of sturdiness, set the atmosphere right away. The set
doesn’t lack for personality, but it is also strangely impassive, shielding the
audience from the sight of sex, death, and everything in between. The
interactive graffiti is captured by a projector off stage left, which starts
out blank and gradually fills up with poetic scribbles, changing the colour of
marker depending on the act of the play. It was a lovely technique (thankfully
free of technical glitches) that bounces back the whole theme: we start out
with a blank slate, seeing nothing but strangers; over time we get to see their
dirty secrets and vulnerable moments, inundated with information, but never
quite able to make complete sense of it.
The cast of four
has quite a lot to juggle, doing lightning fast character transitions. It’s
tough, but they do well, falling into the erratic pace of the production
gracefully. Some of the cast has less acting experience behind them, so there
were a few rocky moments where the actor had trouble getting grounded in their
character. But they still hit the notes they need to. Alyssa Bennett is
enigmatic as ever, playing a more subtle game than the other actors, but that
makes her outbursts all the more compelling, in her brief lesbian makeout scene
and her bizarre “Preserve your sexy” rant. Isaac Bond is at his best as the
suave and slightly cocky manager. He brings a lot of emotion to the part of a
depressed teenager, but in the spare few minutes he has to develop the
character, there is a lot of sound and fury that doesn’t quite land. Mike de
Jong (who, to the best of my knowledge, is not Jared Beattie) has a bit of
trouble getting his characters to resonate and ends up overshadowed by his
stage partners much of the time; but he does have a good standout performance
in his meatiest character, a cardigan-wearing lothario who, by the end, could
make the audience burst out laughing without saying a word. Kelly McTaggart was
a surprise for me. I have not seen her before but she does a knockout
performance as the play’s most mysterious character, an emotionally damaged
woman who tries and fails to seek solace in casual sexual encounters. Her final
scene is gut-wrenching.
Stalled manages to keep a lot of balls
in the air at once. Its biggest drawback is being constrained to Fringe length;
with another 15 or 20 minutes it could do a lot of wonderful things and avoid
spiralling its storylines toward their tragic endings too quickly. But as it
is, it packs a lot into its 55 minute runtime. The actors turn out at least one
great performance each, but more importantly they can all work well together.
The threads of people, poetry, and that likeliest of all unlikely meeting
places wind together to create a powerful thematic statement that you don’t
even realise is there, like graffiti on the wall.
Fringe 2013 - Day 1
And we're back, more or less. This blog hit a crisis a few months ago and never quite recovered. But if anything was going to kick me back into gear, it was going to be reviewing 11 plays in 9 days. Unfortunately, I've had a bit of a time getting my reviews to catch up to the Fringing I've been doing, so I'm coming in under the wire. "Day 1" in this case is actually last Thursday. Day 2 will be up within the hour. Day 3 this afternoon.
And now, without further ado,
Don't Panic (Dibley Theatre, SK)
Do you notice how whenever someone says not to panic, it's always a situation where you should totally be panicking? Do you notice how when you have to tell someone else not to panic it's almost embarrassing because there's no reason for them to be panicking. Someone panics over something small and we say, "It's not the end of the world." But what if it really is the end of the world? Don't Panic blows this whole idea wide open.
This inaugural Fringe show by Dibley Theatre Productions (a subsidiary of Amorous Waffles). Takes us to a dystopia. Everyone likes dystopias (except for the people living there, I guess). This particular dystopia happens some 20 years after a devastating war which left much of the world as a blasted wasteland. What remains is the shining Fatherland: an enclosed civilisation run by a seemingly omniscient figure called Father. Here, efficiency is valued above all else, and the society runs in such a way that clockwork would be fined for being too emotionally suggestive. One day, as a man and a woman await the beginning of their productive workdays, and unthinkable tragedy occurs: their bus is late. As they try to grapple with this horrific incident, they find that they must, fearfully and trepidatiously, talk to each other, and the results surprise them.
Don't Panic starts out as an absurd (perhaps even absurdist) comedy. The first scene depends heavily on getting the point across to the audience what sort of world they have dropped into; it succeeds by the subtleties of the script and the expressions of its stars, Danielle Roy and Rohan Keenan. Talk of "collateral zones" and "The Department of Data" help to establish the kind of ruthlessly bureaucratic society it is, while the uneasy first words between the man and the woman make it clear just how staid and isolated they've become. Roy's look of terror and confusion when Keenan offers a meek "hello" sets the stage for everything that follows. The set is fairly involved for a Fringe show: bench, bus stop, emergency phone, and garbage can, all rigid and uniform, stamped with department names. The setpieces represent the dull immovability of the society, which becomes more pronounced as the characters become more active. Much of the humour in the early parts come from the moments between lines, when the two stars fumble around human interaction like a five-year-old trying to tie shoelaces.
The script carries a tradition of sketch comedy, drawing from Monty Python, and a bit of classic SNL. The wacky comedy pulls some sharp satire of the insecurities of modern culture. We might laugh at the panic that sets in on our characters when the bus doesn't show up, but anyone who has had their internet go down can surely relate.
The play reaches the point where a comedy sketch would reasonably wind down, but then it keeps going. The comedy ramps up as the characters move from panic to desperation to hopelessness, but then it turns darker, the satire graver. We delve further into the truth of this society. As the man and woman shed their fastidious outer layers, they are revealed to be tragic and vulnerable. Instead of laughing at the absurdity of their situation we eventually turn inward and start considering their questions for ourselves, like whether freedom from worry is worth sacrificing freedom of choice. Seeing their cogs break down raises the question of what cogs we trust completely in our regular lives.
As with any two-hander, the success of the play is contingent on the chemistry of its two actors. Keenan is the slightly bumbling but good-hearted archivist who carries around a few subversive thoughts in his head that he has never had the chance to share before now. Roy is the shrewd and firm risk analyst with unyielding faith in the system until it breaks in front of her. The two grow, transform, entwine, and fracture repeatedly throughout the play. They connect impeccably, bouncing off each other with incredible energy. The script is almost as demanding as the Fatherland, requiring spot-on comedic timing and profound emotional availability. The actors make good with both. Keenan spends most of his stage time being vulnerable, always staying present with his stage partner. Roy steals the final scene with a performance that brings the audience to tears.
And I can't forget about the music. From the oppressive semi-futurist pseudo-Jazz that plays over the first couple scenes (because it's Father's favourite song) to the Cold War retro songs by the Inkspots (which will be familiar to any Fallout fans in the audience), it creates an off-balanced feeling of yearning for a bygone era that is only getting further away.
There are a lot of elements that make Don't Panic work. Just like in the Fatherland, if any of them had failed, it would have been a disaster, but none of them did. It was lively, hilarious, touching, and philosophical. If that's reason to panic, then go right ahead.
Six out of five stars. WHAT NOW, CHARLTON?
And now, without further ado,
Don't Panic (Dibley Theatre, SK)
Do you notice how whenever someone says not to panic, it's always a situation where you should totally be panicking? Do you notice how when you have to tell someone else not to panic it's almost embarrassing because there's no reason for them to be panicking. Someone panics over something small and we say, "It's not the end of the world." But what if it really is the end of the world? Don't Panic blows this whole idea wide open.
This inaugural Fringe show by Dibley Theatre Productions (a subsidiary of Amorous Waffles). Takes us to a dystopia. Everyone likes dystopias (except for the people living there, I guess). This particular dystopia happens some 20 years after a devastating war which left much of the world as a blasted wasteland. What remains is the shining Fatherland: an enclosed civilisation run by a seemingly omniscient figure called Father. Here, efficiency is valued above all else, and the society runs in such a way that clockwork would be fined for being too emotionally suggestive. One day, as a man and a woman await the beginning of their productive workdays, and unthinkable tragedy occurs: their bus is late. As they try to grapple with this horrific incident, they find that they must, fearfully and trepidatiously, talk to each other, and the results surprise them.
Don't Panic starts out as an absurd (perhaps even absurdist) comedy. The first scene depends heavily on getting the point across to the audience what sort of world they have dropped into; it succeeds by the subtleties of the script and the expressions of its stars, Danielle Roy and Rohan Keenan. Talk of "collateral zones" and "The Department of Data" help to establish the kind of ruthlessly bureaucratic society it is, while the uneasy first words between the man and the woman make it clear just how staid and isolated they've become. Roy's look of terror and confusion when Keenan offers a meek "hello" sets the stage for everything that follows. The set is fairly involved for a Fringe show: bench, bus stop, emergency phone, and garbage can, all rigid and uniform, stamped with department names. The setpieces represent the dull immovability of the society, which becomes more pronounced as the characters become more active. Much of the humour in the early parts come from the moments between lines, when the two stars fumble around human interaction like a five-year-old trying to tie shoelaces.
The script carries a tradition of sketch comedy, drawing from Monty Python, and a bit of classic SNL. The wacky comedy pulls some sharp satire of the insecurities of modern culture. We might laugh at the panic that sets in on our characters when the bus doesn't show up, but anyone who has had their internet go down can surely relate.
The play reaches the point where a comedy sketch would reasonably wind down, but then it keeps going. The comedy ramps up as the characters move from panic to desperation to hopelessness, but then it turns darker, the satire graver. We delve further into the truth of this society. As the man and woman shed their fastidious outer layers, they are revealed to be tragic and vulnerable. Instead of laughing at the absurdity of their situation we eventually turn inward and start considering their questions for ourselves, like whether freedom from worry is worth sacrificing freedom of choice. Seeing their cogs break down raises the question of what cogs we trust completely in our regular lives.
As with any two-hander, the success of the play is contingent on the chemistry of its two actors. Keenan is the slightly bumbling but good-hearted archivist who carries around a few subversive thoughts in his head that he has never had the chance to share before now. Roy is the shrewd and firm risk analyst with unyielding faith in the system until it breaks in front of her. The two grow, transform, entwine, and fracture repeatedly throughout the play. They connect impeccably, bouncing off each other with incredible energy. The script is almost as demanding as the Fatherland, requiring spot-on comedic timing and profound emotional availability. The actors make good with both. Keenan spends most of his stage time being vulnerable, always staying present with his stage partner. Roy steals the final scene with a performance that brings the audience to tears.
And I can't forget about the music. From the oppressive semi-futurist pseudo-Jazz that plays over the first couple scenes (because it's Father's favourite song) to the Cold War retro songs by the Inkspots (which will be familiar to any Fallout fans in the audience), it creates an off-balanced feeling of yearning for a bygone era that is only getting further away.
There are a lot of elements that make Don't Panic work. Just like in the Fatherland, if any of them had failed, it would have been a disaster, but none of them did. It was lively, hilarious, touching, and philosophical. If that's reason to panic, then go right ahead.
Six out of five stars. WHAT NOW, CHARLTON?
Friday 29 March 2013
Into the Woods
If you go into the woods today, you're in for a big surprise.
A few years after the success of Assassins, Greystone Theatre continues its love affair with Stephen Sondheim with this dazzling production of Into the Woods. But before I get into discussing the show, I have to mention how unprecedented its success has been. Selling out tickets a week before opening has never happened as long as I have been around this campus, and not, I'm told, since long before that. The flurry of ticket sales caught me so by surprise that I was not able to get tickets for both shows, so I will not get the chance to see the alternate cast. I regret this deeply, and I apologise to those actors I've missed.
Back to the show: Into the Woods is about a group of teenagers who embark on a fun-filled weekend in the wilderness, but little do they know their actions are being secretly manipulated by a clandestine agency whose mission is to.... Sorry. Got my note cards messed up.
Into the Woods is a piece of musical theatre based on a book by James Lapine and adapted by Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. The story is a mash-up of several fairy tales, predominantly "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", and "Jack & the Beanstalk". These tales all swirl around each other, with the focal point of the play being a separate story involving a baker and his wife trying to lift a curse that prevents them from having children. An eccentric witch sends them on a fetch quest to retrieve four items, and in doing so come in contact with each of the four fairy tales. The first act progresses in this vein until each story gets its customary happy ending. But after intermission things take a bit of a turn.
The play is shaped by its music, and vice versa. There is little in the way of show-stopping numbers, but rather the music wraps tightly around the narrative. The two flow into each other so that there is never a moment of noticeable transition. For the music itself, it is a bit like soaking in a warm bath with a rather friendly python. The songs are rich and deep; they wash over you with a sense of warmth and comfort, but it also breaks into long sections of staccato rhythms and quick rhymes, occasionally pulsating with sustained notes so it gives the impression that the music is alive, slithering around us, coiling tightly and then letting go. It can become frenetic, with interludes that see all the characters cross rapidly across the stage one or two at a time, each one shouting out a single line and disappearing; it produces a dizzying effect that continues to build upon itself, spiralling upward like a great whirlwind, then sending us crashing back down.
This production has been helmed by Julia Jamison, who also directed 2010's Assassins. The production she pulls together is both grandiose and intimate. Into the Woods captures the orality central to the fairy tale culture and blends it with the visual spectacle. As with any musical, the story is told on three levels: spoken word, physicality, and music, and these levels have to operate around the movements of a lot of people. Kudos to those performers who were already triple-threats when rehearsal began, there were many music students without acting experience, and many drama students without music experience. In Jamison's hands the students were moulded, as the squishy bits of clay they are, into a solid ensemble who could carry the different elements in stride.
Jenna Maren's set design creates a very dark and forbidding depiction of the forest, savage and dangerous, but also magical. The thick, gnarled trees growing on either side of the stage are at first terrifying, but also evince a trace of wisdom and ancient power. Other set pieces may be moved off and on, but are generally kept at the centre of the stage, to give a sense of the tremendous strength of the forest. Human society is kept small, surrounded on all sides by the savage wilderness, and the many entrances and exits on the stage compound the labyrinthian feel of the woods. But as time goes on, as characters move in and out, they begin to enmesh themselves with the forest and create a sense of unity.
Jamison pulls together these sundry elements to create a show remarkably sparse in stops and starts. This didn't really hit me until I was asked what my favourite song was, and I realised how difficult it was for me to pick one. Aside from the darkly comical centrepiece "Agony" Into the Woods did not feel much like a collection of songs. Rather it seemed to have a continuous progression that occasionally twisted and turned back on itself but never felt like it was dividing itself into segments. Music and drama intertwine very naturally so the whole experience builds the same story. The same rule applies to the actors. With the many — and, at times, frantic — entrances and exits, the show maintains a fluid narrative, while also extending to us the sensation of being, like the characters, lost in the woods, uncertain of what we would see next.
The cast of characters is vast, and works in a harmonious rhythm. The principal actors (in the show I witnessed) all bring different energies but collaborate into an effective ensemble. Rohan Keenan is a touching Baker, with a similar sort of roiling intensity that he had in All My Sons, where it seems he wants to lash out in anger but doesn't understand where or how. In contrast Miranda Hughes is his devoted wife, annoyed at her husband's inept bravado, but driven and compassionate. Greystone Theatre mainstay Anna Seibel tackles Cinderella, giving the character less of a sugar&spice fairy tale attitude and more of a deep sense of yearning, as a woman who is struggling to learn what it means to be her own person. Robert Grier is a simple and loveable Jack, with a doe-eyed sense of innocence but also unerring determination. He adds his own comic touch with the exuberant progress reports on his adventures offstage. Joanna Munholland, after two years of patiently saying very little in her Greystone stage credits, shines in her central role as Little Red Riding Hood. She is flighty and bouncy in her movements, and she radiates a child-like curiosity. In the plays darker moments, she accesses a soft, fearful side, but nevertheless charges ahead with the grim determination of Arya Stark.
Chris Donlevy and Connor Brousseau, as our two dashing princes, steal the spotlight with their show-stopping number "Agony" (so I lied when I said there were no show-stopping numbers), a song which plays to a macho competition and merciless fairy tale satire. Their stern poise somehow plays earnestly while simultaneously parodying themselves. Donlevy plays double duty between Prince Charming and the Wolf, occupying both roles with tremendous gravitas, while turning some excellent moments of humour along the way. Torien Cafferata is the dapper narrator, who floats on and off the stage to order characters about. He is rigid and professorial, which adds to the humour of his sudden vulnerability when he is confronted by his own characters. Vernon Boldick and Colin Gibbings both give hilarious and energetic performances as Red Riding Hood's grandmother and the Mystery Man, respectively. There was generally great cohesion by all the cast, too numerous to mention individually. Michelle Todd was a curious addition as a professional actress in the otherwise student cast. She has a thunderous presence as the Witch, both eye-catching and heart-breaking. And of course, I'm sure all the actors I didn't see were terrific as well.
Fuelling the actors onstage was the live band, led by musical director Debra Buck. They operated behind a translucent scrim toward the back of the stage, where their music could waft outwards as if generated by the wood sprites. The small orchestra (and this is where the music students chastise me for misusing the word orchestra) kept the show brimming with vitality.
All told, this is a show where everything works. While it doesn't have the same edgy panache as Assassins, Into the Woods tells a remarkably complex story in a remarkably simple way (or perhaps vice versa). It takes something very familiar, then spins it around a bunch of times and paints it a crazy colour with a name like "aqua sunset". It is charming, energetic, and heartfelt, combining a pre-9/11 sense of wonder with a post-9/11 sense of disillusionment. Somewhere in the spiralling miasma of music and rhythm, person and place, madness and fantasy, you will land on a safe and inviting path ... into the woods.
A few years after the success of Assassins, Greystone Theatre continues its love affair with Stephen Sondheim with this dazzling production of Into the Woods. But before I get into discussing the show, I have to mention how unprecedented its success has been. Selling out tickets a week before opening has never happened as long as I have been around this campus, and not, I'm told, since long before that. The flurry of ticket sales caught me so by surprise that I was not able to get tickets for both shows, so I will not get the chance to see the alternate cast. I regret this deeply, and I apologise to those actors I've missed.
Back to the show: Into the Woods is about a group of teenagers who embark on a fun-filled weekend in the wilderness, but little do they know their actions are being secretly manipulated by a clandestine agency whose mission is to.... Sorry. Got my note cards messed up.
Into the Woods is a piece of musical theatre based on a book by James Lapine and adapted by Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim. The story is a mash-up of several fairy tales, predominantly "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", and "Jack & the Beanstalk". These tales all swirl around each other, with the focal point of the play being a separate story involving a baker and his wife trying to lift a curse that prevents them from having children. An eccentric witch sends them on a fetch quest to retrieve four items, and in doing so come in contact with each of the four fairy tales. The first act progresses in this vein until each story gets its customary happy ending. But after intermission things take a bit of a turn.
The play is shaped by its music, and vice versa. There is little in the way of show-stopping numbers, but rather the music wraps tightly around the narrative. The two flow into each other so that there is never a moment of noticeable transition. For the music itself, it is a bit like soaking in a warm bath with a rather friendly python. The songs are rich and deep; they wash over you with a sense of warmth and comfort, but it also breaks into long sections of staccato rhythms and quick rhymes, occasionally pulsating with sustained notes so it gives the impression that the music is alive, slithering around us, coiling tightly and then letting go. It can become frenetic, with interludes that see all the characters cross rapidly across the stage one or two at a time, each one shouting out a single line and disappearing; it produces a dizzying effect that continues to build upon itself, spiralling upward like a great whirlwind, then sending us crashing back down.
This production has been helmed by Julia Jamison, who also directed 2010's Assassins. The production she pulls together is both grandiose and intimate. Into the Woods captures the orality central to the fairy tale culture and blends it with the visual spectacle. As with any musical, the story is told on three levels: spoken word, physicality, and music, and these levels have to operate around the movements of a lot of people. Kudos to those performers who were already triple-threats when rehearsal began, there were many music students without acting experience, and many drama students without music experience. In Jamison's hands the students were moulded, as the squishy bits of clay they are, into a solid ensemble who could carry the different elements in stride.
Jenna Maren's set design creates a very dark and forbidding depiction of the forest, savage and dangerous, but also magical. The thick, gnarled trees growing on either side of the stage are at first terrifying, but also evince a trace of wisdom and ancient power. Other set pieces may be moved off and on, but are generally kept at the centre of the stage, to give a sense of the tremendous strength of the forest. Human society is kept small, surrounded on all sides by the savage wilderness, and the many entrances and exits on the stage compound the labyrinthian feel of the woods. But as time goes on, as characters move in and out, they begin to enmesh themselves with the forest and create a sense of unity.
Jamison pulls together these sundry elements to create a show remarkably sparse in stops and starts. This didn't really hit me until I was asked what my favourite song was, and I realised how difficult it was for me to pick one. Aside from the darkly comical centrepiece "Agony" Into the Woods did not feel much like a collection of songs. Rather it seemed to have a continuous progression that occasionally twisted and turned back on itself but never felt like it was dividing itself into segments. Music and drama intertwine very naturally so the whole experience builds the same story. The same rule applies to the actors. With the many — and, at times, frantic — entrances and exits, the show maintains a fluid narrative, while also extending to us the sensation of being, like the characters, lost in the woods, uncertain of what we would see next.
The cast of characters is vast, and works in a harmonious rhythm. The principal actors (in the show I witnessed) all bring different energies but collaborate into an effective ensemble. Rohan Keenan is a touching Baker, with a similar sort of roiling intensity that he had in All My Sons, where it seems he wants to lash out in anger but doesn't understand where or how. In contrast Miranda Hughes is his devoted wife, annoyed at her husband's inept bravado, but driven and compassionate. Greystone Theatre mainstay Anna Seibel tackles Cinderella, giving the character less of a sugar&spice fairy tale attitude and more of a deep sense of yearning, as a woman who is struggling to learn what it means to be her own person. Robert Grier is a simple and loveable Jack, with a doe-eyed sense of innocence but also unerring determination. He adds his own comic touch with the exuberant progress reports on his adventures offstage. Joanna Munholland, after two years of patiently saying very little in her Greystone stage credits, shines in her central role as Little Red Riding Hood. She is flighty and bouncy in her movements, and she radiates a child-like curiosity. In the plays darker moments, she accesses a soft, fearful side, but nevertheless charges ahead with the grim determination of Arya Stark.
Chris Donlevy and Connor Brousseau, as our two dashing princes, steal the spotlight with their show-stopping number "Agony" (so I lied when I said there were no show-stopping numbers), a song which plays to a macho competition and merciless fairy tale satire. Their stern poise somehow plays earnestly while simultaneously parodying themselves. Donlevy plays double duty between Prince Charming and the Wolf, occupying both roles with tremendous gravitas, while turning some excellent moments of humour along the way. Torien Cafferata is the dapper narrator, who floats on and off the stage to order characters about. He is rigid and professorial, which adds to the humour of his sudden vulnerability when he is confronted by his own characters. Vernon Boldick and Colin Gibbings both give hilarious and energetic performances as Red Riding Hood's grandmother and the Mystery Man, respectively. There was generally great cohesion by all the cast, too numerous to mention individually. Michelle Todd was a curious addition as a professional actress in the otherwise student cast. She has a thunderous presence as the Witch, both eye-catching and heart-breaking. And of course, I'm sure all the actors I didn't see were terrific as well.
Fuelling the actors onstage was the live band, led by musical director Debra Buck. They operated behind a translucent scrim toward the back of the stage, where their music could waft outwards as if generated by the wood sprites. The small orchestra (and this is where the music students chastise me for misusing the word orchestra) kept the show brimming with vitality.
All told, this is a show where everything works. While it doesn't have the same edgy panache as Assassins, Into the Woods tells a remarkably complex story in a remarkably simple way (or perhaps vice versa). It takes something very familiar, then spins it around a bunch of times and paints it a crazy colour with a name like "aqua sunset". It is charming, energetic, and heartfelt, combining a pre-9/11 sense of wonder with a post-9/11 sense of disillusionment. Somewhere in the spiralling miasma of music and rhythm, person and place, madness and fantasy, you will land on a safe and inviting path ... into the woods.
Monday 18 March 2013
The Science of Disconnection
The evidence is clear. The proof is certain. The math is sound.
There were three words in particular that intrigued me about The Science of Disconnection months before I had the chance to see it: "very limited seating". What could be the reason for such a thing? What was happening to the Refinery's performing space that would restrict the audience size so much? I have to admit I was hoping to walk in there and find a working physics laboratory set up in the theatre (complete with Jacob's Ladder and Tesla Coil). But no, instead I was greeted by a quaint little tea room, blocked off by paper screens, and the intimate audience of 32 filed in and formed a circle around the edge. Almost like a story circle.
The play, penned by Canadian playwright David Belke, recounts the story of Austrian-born Jewish physicist Lise Meitner, celebrated as the "German Marie Curie" (according to Albert Einstein) and whose work was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. We see her early days in Berlin, struggling for acceptance among the exclusively male intelligencia, her long-standing partnership with chemist Otto Hahn, her exodus from Germany in the shadow of the impending Holocaust, her secret labour to discover one of the most significant scientific advances in human history, and the succeeding lack of acknowledgement for it. The photograph of Meitner on the playbill shows her in the laboratory, stern, humourless, and darkly beautiful. Her eyes are heavy, loaded with a spinning cosm of knowledge, and their gaze pierces out through the picture, as if a challenge to anyone who looks at it, to tell them that her place is there and she will not be moved.
Taking on the role of Meitner is the charming, talented, starred-in-Velocity-and-is-therefore-better-than-other-people Jamie Lee Shebelski. She marches timidly out on stage (if one can indeed march timidly) armed with a small leather suitcase and a memory of old Berlin. She carries the one-woman show with grace and reserve. Other solo shows might require the actor to act out with utmost passion, bouncing to and fro around the stage, but this one required a lot of quiet ponderance and subtle anguish, which I think is more difficult to convey. She holds the audience's attention through gesture and stillness, enthusiasm and despair. The only slight waver was that some of her crosses to signify time transitions could have used more fluidity. Her performance is brave in both its intimacy and its sense of defiance. She is alone on the stage, just as Lise Meitner was in life, so closely surrounded by peers but not really among them.
The evidence is clear. The proof is certain. The math is sound.
This is a memory play. Meitner does not simply give an account of her life, straightforward from one end to the other, but she rather flits around, unstuck in time and space, following the ebb and flow of a receding memory. In amongst the regular linear story, we return frequently to two focal points. The first is a café in Berlin, 1907, where her partnership with Otto Hahn began, although she has trouble capturing the exact details of the nebulous memory. The second is on a train fleeing Germany in 1938, where the stark details are all too clear and every time she revisits it she risks being trapped there, that time will rewrite itself and she will not escape. These two focal points capture both her romantic side and the grim nature of her reality.
The director's helm was manned by Will Brooks. I feel a bit of sympathy toward directors of solo shows, since their work is inevitably more invisible than with most other plays. I can't really speculate where his direction begins and ends with regards to Jamie Lee's performance, but from the blog I know that he pulled multiple duty as producer, publicist, and lighting and set designer. The stage aesthetic served the play very well with its unique sense of confinement making the audience part of Meitner's inner circle. A model of an atom sketched on the stage floor in what looks like charcoal stretches out to embrace the audience, while leaving Shebelski, for most of her stage time, fixed at the nucleus; the subtle trick reinforced Meitner's centrality, both to her own story and science in general, as well as makes a point the art of solo theatre, where one singular performer must have the gravitas to keep the audience from flitting away. The paper screens were used, with the help of some simple lighting effects, to display images throughout the play; they were basic and symbolic, like what you might find drawn on a blackboard. The audience plays three roles: Meitner's confidants, her students, and complicit with her judgemental peers. Establishing this balance requires the careful harmonisation of a lot of simple elements, and Brooks pulls it off.
Meitner was a strong woman who committed herself body and soul to her craft. Despite the great divide between the fine arts and nuclear physics, this is an actor's play in that it involves someone who struggled long and hard to do great work even among minimal recognition. At one point she remarks on her struggle, saying, "First it was [being a woman], then it was the ancestry of my grandparents: there will always be a reason to exclude me." While this may show a detachment from the realities of the Holocaust, it also develops a narrative of exclusion and mistreatment. Meitner had everything stacked against but somehow succeeded (she was the first woman ever admitted to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for science). Therefore, The Science of Disconnection is both a harsh examination of her marginalisation and a triumphant celebration of the fact that her story is being told. Shebelski captures this duality nowhere better than when she says, "The truth wants to be discovered." Shebelski grapples with Meitner's troubled mind, someone who can't help but see human interaction in atomic terms, as a series of connections and disconnections. Just as Meitner examined the interactions of the universe's smallest particles to unlock its largest secrets, Shebelski takes those small interactions and creates a profound image (and, thankfully, she does not end the play by staring dramatically at the audience and saying, "This is the science of disconnection.")
I mentioned a blog earlier. You can look back over the production of this play by visiting this blog at http://www.thescienceofdisconnection.com . The blog's content and existence are indicative of a greater trend with this play, that being that it's larger than itself. Putting on this production was an act of bravery by the RiverCity Ensemble Cooperative, and I say that mainly because the limited seating means a tremendous cut to potential revenues. So this was purely put on "for love of the game" as it were. Knowing all this I would hate to say anything bad about the play, so it's a good thing I don't have to. The Science of Disconnection is a remarkable piece of theatre showcasing human interaction's capacity for great creation and destruction, as well as the interplay between a single human narrative and the mysteries of the universe. I could go on for a lot longer, but I think I'll just trail off with Meitner's own words:
The evidence is clear. The proof is certain. The math is sound.
There were three words in particular that intrigued me about The Science of Disconnection months before I had the chance to see it: "very limited seating". What could be the reason for such a thing? What was happening to the Refinery's performing space that would restrict the audience size so much? I have to admit I was hoping to walk in there and find a working physics laboratory set up in the theatre (complete with Jacob's Ladder and Tesla Coil). But no, instead I was greeted by a quaint little tea room, blocked off by paper screens, and the intimate audience of 32 filed in and formed a circle around the edge. Almost like a story circle.
The play, penned by Canadian playwright David Belke, recounts the story of Austrian-born Jewish physicist Lise Meitner, celebrated as the "German Marie Curie" (according to Albert Einstein) and whose work was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. We see her early days in Berlin, struggling for acceptance among the exclusively male intelligencia, her long-standing partnership with chemist Otto Hahn, her exodus from Germany in the shadow of the impending Holocaust, her secret labour to discover one of the most significant scientific advances in human history, and the succeeding lack of acknowledgement for it. The photograph of Meitner on the playbill shows her in the laboratory, stern, humourless, and darkly beautiful. Her eyes are heavy, loaded with a spinning cosm of knowledge, and their gaze pierces out through the picture, as if a challenge to anyone who looks at it, to tell them that her place is there and she will not be moved.
Taking on the role of Meitner is the charming, talented, starred-in-Velocity-and-is-therefore-better-than-other-people Jamie Lee Shebelski. She marches timidly out on stage (if one can indeed march timidly) armed with a small leather suitcase and a memory of old Berlin. She carries the one-woman show with grace and reserve. Other solo shows might require the actor to act out with utmost passion, bouncing to and fro around the stage, but this one required a lot of quiet ponderance and subtle anguish, which I think is more difficult to convey. She holds the audience's attention through gesture and stillness, enthusiasm and despair. The only slight waver was that some of her crosses to signify time transitions could have used more fluidity. Her performance is brave in both its intimacy and its sense of defiance. She is alone on the stage, just as Lise Meitner was in life, so closely surrounded by peers but not really among them.
The evidence is clear. The proof is certain. The math is sound.
This is a memory play. Meitner does not simply give an account of her life, straightforward from one end to the other, but she rather flits around, unstuck in time and space, following the ebb and flow of a receding memory. In amongst the regular linear story, we return frequently to two focal points. The first is a café in Berlin, 1907, where her partnership with Otto Hahn began, although she has trouble capturing the exact details of the nebulous memory. The second is on a train fleeing Germany in 1938, where the stark details are all too clear and every time she revisits it she risks being trapped there, that time will rewrite itself and she will not escape. These two focal points capture both her romantic side and the grim nature of her reality.
The director's helm was manned by Will Brooks. I feel a bit of sympathy toward directors of solo shows, since their work is inevitably more invisible than with most other plays. I can't really speculate where his direction begins and ends with regards to Jamie Lee's performance, but from the blog I know that he pulled multiple duty as producer, publicist, and lighting and set designer. The stage aesthetic served the play very well with its unique sense of confinement making the audience part of Meitner's inner circle. A model of an atom sketched on the stage floor in what looks like charcoal stretches out to embrace the audience, while leaving Shebelski, for most of her stage time, fixed at the nucleus; the subtle trick reinforced Meitner's centrality, both to her own story and science in general, as well as makes a point the art of solo theatre, where one singular performer must have the gravitas to keep the audience from flitting away. The paper screens were used, with the help of some simple lighting effects, to display images throughout the play; they were basic and symbolic, like what you might find drawn on a blackboard. The audience plays three roles: Meitner's confidants, her students, and complicit with her judgemental peers. Establishing this balance requires the careful harmonisation of a lot of simple elements, and Brooks pulls it off.
Meitner was a strong woman who committed herself body and soul to her craft. Despite the great divide between the fine arts and nuclear physics, this is an actor's play in that it involves someone who struggled long and hard to do great work even among minimal recognition. At one point she remarks on her struggle, saying, "First it was [being a woman], then it was the ancestry of my grandparents: there will always be a reason to exclude me." While this may show a detachment from the realities of the Holocaust, it also develops a narrative of exclusion and mistreatment. Meitner had everything stacked against but somehow succeeded (she was the first woman ever admitted to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for science). Therefore, The Science of Disconnection is both a harsh examination of her marginalisation and a triumphant celebration of the fact that her story is being told. Shebelski captures this duality nowhere better than when she says, "The truth wants to be discovered." Shebelski grapples with Meitner's troubled mind, someone who can't help but see human interaction in atomic terms, as a series of connections and disconnections. Just as Meitner examined the interactions of the universe's smallest particles to unlock its largest secrets, Shebelski takes those small interactions and creates a profound image (and, thankfully, she does not end the play by staring dramatically at the audience and saying, "This is the science of disconnection.")
I mentioned a blog earlier. You can look back over the production of this play by visiting this blog at http://www.thescienceofdisconnection.com . The blog's content and existence are indicative of a greater trend with this play, that being that it's larger than itself. Putting on this production was an act of bravery by the RiverCity Ensemble Cooperative, and I say that mainly because the limited seating means a tremendous cut to potential revenues. So this was purely put on "for love of the game" as it were. Knowing all this I would hate to say anything bad about the play, so it's a good thing I don't have to. The Science of Disconnection is a remarkable piece of theatre showcasing human interaction's capacity for great creation and destruction, as well as the interplay between a single human narrative and the mysteries of the universe. I could go on for a lot longer, but I think I'll just trail off with Meitner's own words:
The evidence is clear. The proof is certain. The math is sound.
Friday 8 March 2013
Comfort
I love intimate theatre. It is something that the Saskatoon drama scene has gotten very good at, between the Refinery, the Backstage Stage, and the Emrys Jones; so when I heard about this play going on in the basement of the Two Twenty, I had to be there.
For those of you who have been to the Two Twenty den, you know that it is an unassuming room with walls of varnished plywood, blandly rectangular and not suitable for any event too large or raucous. Yet it is comforting, with a cozy, homey feeling, and thus well suited to a play called Comfort. The stage was set up almost in a round, but not quite: it was where it was, while the audience nestled in wherever they could, seating areas shooting off at odd angles wherever there was space, packed so closely inward that on more than one occasion I had to consciously pull my feet inward to avoid tripping Heather Morrison and making the experience a bit too real. While we sat there on our rickety folding chairs in this atypical space, I couldn't help but think of those bowler-hatted individuals in the early nickelodea, crowding around the moving picture, terrified by the realness of what they saw. Like them, I too had a staggeringly real experience watching Comfort.
This play, produced by Know Tomorrow Theatre, comes from the mind of Gordon Portman, recent SPC dramaturg. It is about the inception and dissolution of a marriage, played in reverse order. Our two characters, Mike (Matthew Burgess) and Sara (Heather Morrison), begin the play on the morning after a torrid farewell, in the moments before Sara walks out the door, presumably forever. The second act takes us back to the night of drunken revelry that brought the two together in the first place. Woven in among these scenes are the threads of their painful backstories, both tragic but wildly different, which bind them together but also send them hurtling toward the point at which they can no longer coexist.
As with any intimate, relationship-based play, its success falls upon its two actors. Matt Burgess checks his Velocity privilege* at the door and delivers a remarkable, grounded performance. He has the job of being the play's anchor, remaining on stage for the entire duration while Morrison's entrances announce a scene transition. The character of Mike is at the most understated I've ever seen Burgess, morose and quietly bitter. He brilliantly toes the line of obsession. The sense of loss and anger he evinces at Sara's departure in the first half of the play is heart-breaking, but also laced with something darker; there is an aggressive sense of ownership lurking deep beneath his heartache. This becomes clearer later on when we see the broken position he was in at their first meeting, and how he has only achieved a sense of self-worth through her. Mike is emotionally distorted and can only find stability through a grand web of seemingly arbitrary routines and external constructs, and when he is forced to choose between Sara and everything else, these constructs and doomed to failure. Burgess plays at a variety of levels, running both hot and cold. He commands the stage in his moments of passion, but is at his strongest in the periods of quiet, where his internal tumult seeps out in small expressions.
Heather Morrison is more enchanting than I've ever seen her. I think the beauty is how well she plays on opposite ends of the spectrum. She has demonstrated her ability to tackle grim and heavy subject matter in plays like Dying City and East of Berlin, but in my experience I haven't caught much of her playful side onstage. In the early part of the play, Sara is sombre and implacable, resigned to the end of their relationship while Mike is still reeling through emotions. But tenderness and affection still bleed through. Her stage presence becomes more commanding in the second scene, where she spends most of her time staggering around while quite drunk. In the face of Burgess's reserve and timidity, Morrison is bold, vibrant, and fun; not to mention sexy. She fearlessly embodies the physicality of the role, keeping loose and limber, opposed to the stolidity she shows in the first scene. She takes in everything around her and digests her thoughts, but still delivers the performance as uninhibited and impulsive. Even in her smaller moments, she has complete control of the atmosphere. And did I mention sexy?
Portman's script is quite clean, but a little bit messy. The dialogue is elevated, with a poetic cadence. The exchanges flow smoothly, without those unfortunate bumps that happen in regular conversation. The profundity of the everyday moment is magnified, and despite the physical immediacy of the set, the dialogue provides a layer of separation between the actors and the audience, which helps to keep the experience balanced. But even though the structure of the language is so precisely trimmed, the words still drip with raw emotion. If I were to pick a complaint, however, it is that the elevation of the dialogue can at times run away from the rest of the play. Certain lines are loaded with so much poetic finesse that they shake off the emotional reality, and there is an apparent shift from dialogue that comes from the characters to dialogue that comes from the author.
Comfort is a nebulous concept. And Comfort explores all the ways in which we deceive ourselves into feeling comfortable from one day to the next, as well as those rare moments of genuine comfort that happen upon us unexpectedly. It is a difficult play to watch at times; I'm sure anyone can relate in some capacity to the dissolution of the relationship or the emotional fragility of the characters. It is a visceral experience, and despite the artistry of the dialogue, there is nothing dulling the effect of Mike and Sara's anguish. It is a beautiful and enchanting experience, but be prepared to feel...
Discomfort.
Thank you and good night.
*By which I mean, people involved with Velocity have a free pass to do anything ever.
For those of you who have been to the Two Twenty den, you know that it is an unassuming room with walls of varnished plywood, blandly rectangular and not suitable for any event too large or raucous. Yet it is comforting, with a cozy, homey feeling, and thus well suited to a play called Comfort. The stage was set up almost in a round, but not quite: it was where it was, while the audience nestled in wherever they could, seating areas shooting off at odd angles wherever there was space, packed so closely inward that on more than one occasion I had to consciously pull my feet inward to avoid tripping Heather Morrison and making the experience a bit too real. While we sat there on our rickety folding chairs in this atypical space, I couldn't help but think of those bowler-hatted individuals in the early nickelodea, crowding around the moving picture, terrified by the realness of what they saw. Like them, I too had a staggeringly real experience watching Comfort.
This play, produced by Know Tomorrow Theatre, comes from the mind of Gordon Portman, recent SPC dramaturg. It is about the inception and dissolution of a marriage, played in reverse order. Our two characters, Mike (Matthew Burgess) and Sara (Heather Morrison), begin the play on the morning after a torrid farewell, in the moments before Sara walks out the door, presumably forever. The second act takes us back to the night of drunken revelry that brought the two together in the first place. Woven in among these scenes are the threads of their painful backstories, both tragic but wildly different, which bind them together but also send them hurtling toward the point at which they can no longer coexist.
As with any intimate, relationship-based play, its success falls upon its two actors. Matt Burgess checks his Velocity privilege* at the door and delivers a remarkable, grounded performance. He has the job of being the play's anchor, remaining on stage for the entire duration while Morrison's entrances announce a scene transition. The character of Mike is at the most understated I've ever seen Burgess, morose and quietly bitter. He brilliantly toes the line of obsession. The sense of loss and anger he evinces at Sara's departure in the first half of the play is heart-breaking, but also laced with something darker; there is an aggressive sense of ownership lurking deep beneath his heartache. This becomes clearer later on when we see the broken position he was in at their first meeting, and how he has only achieved a sense of self-worth through her. Mike is emotionally distorted and can only find stability through a grand web of seemingly arbitrary routines and external constructs, and when he is forced to choose between Sara and everything else, these constructs and doomed to failure. Burgess plays at a variety of levels, running both hot and cold. He commands the stage in his moments of passion, but is at his strongest in the periods of quiet, where his internal tumult seeps out in small expressions.
Heather Morrison is more enchanting than I've ever seen her. I think the beauty is how well she plays on opposite ends of the spectrum. She has demonstrated her ability to tackle grim and heavy subject matter in plays like Dying City and East of Berlin, but in my experience I haven't caught much of her playful side onstage. In the early part of the play, Sara is sombre and implacable, resigned to the end of their relationship while Mike is still reeling through emotions. But tenderness and affection still bleed through. Her stage presence becomes more commanding in the second scene, where she spends most of her time staggering around while quite drunk. In the face of Burgess's reserve and timidity, Morrison is bold, vibrant, and fun; not to mention sexy. She fearlessly embodies the physicality of the role, keeping loose and limber, opposed to the stolidity she shows in the first scene. She takes in everything around her and digests her thoughts, but still delivers the performance as uninhibited and impulsive. Even in her smaller moments, she has complete control of the atmosphere. And did I mention sexy?
Portman's script is quite clean, but a little bit messy. The dialogue is elevated, with a poetic cadence. The exchanges flow smoothly, without those unfortunate bumps that happen in regular conversation. The profundity of the everyday moment is magnified, and despite the physical immediacy of the set, the dialogue provides a layer of separation between the actors and the audience, which helps to keep the experience balanced. But even though the structure of the language is so precisely trimmed, the words still drip with raw emotion. If I were to pick a complaint, however, it is that the elevation of the dialogue can at times run away from the rest of the play. Certain lines are loaded with so much poetic finesse that they shake off the emotional reality, and there is an apparent shift from dialogue that comes from the characters to dialogue that comes from the author.
Comfort is a nebulous concept. And Comfort explores all the ways in which we deceive ourselves into feeling comfortable from one day to the next, as well as those rare moments of genuine comfort that happen upon us unexpectedly. It is a difficult play to watch at times; I'm sure anyone can relate in some capacity to the dissolution of the relationship or the emotional fragility of the characters. It is a visceral experience, and despite the artistry of the dialogue, there is nothing dulling the effect of Mike and Sara's anguish. It is a beautiful and enchanting experience, but be prepared to feel...
Discomfort.
Thank you and good night.
*By which I mean, people involved with Velocity have a free pass to do anything ever.
Saturday 2 March 2013
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
At some point as we venture down the long and winding road of theatre criticism, we inevitably approach the question of "What is a play?" Then, just as quickly, we grab another drink and forget about it. But then, maybe, we find ourselves in a situation where we can't run away from the question, and we have to consider what it actually means to be an audience member.
This is the question I grappled with when I attended White Rabbit, Red Rabbit on Saturday night. I am not certain that what I saw was a play; it felt more like an open dialogue across space and time (on the other hand, perhaps that's precisely what a play is). In any case, whatever it was, I am glad I saw it.
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, is the product of Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. I think it is important to note that the script has not been translated. It was written in English: a language with which Nassim admits to having some difficulty. It seems, therefore, that the play was always intended for an international audience, that it was a way of reaching out beyond the borders of the country that he, himself, could not leave.
At this point, I would typically write a summary of the play's plot. But in this case I can't. It's not that I don't want to, I just can't. This is not a play that tells a story from one point to another. As I said, it may not be a play at all. Most plays have directors, with casts, and effects, and rehearsal processes. White Rabbit, Red Rabbit has one actor on a stage, with one script, sealed inside a manila envelope. Our actor opens the envelope and begins reading from the script for the first time. This much I knew about the play going into it, and I wondered what it would be like to sit through a cold-reading of a script. But as it turned out, this was not at all like an actor doing a cold-reading of a script.
The actor was not so much performing the script as he was talking to it. The script was, itself, a character in the play. And I don't mean the writer, though he was a character as well, although in a different way. The writer and the script both engaged with the actor on different levels; the actor then engaged with the audience, as an intermediary between them and either the script or the author (and sometimes just as himself). The actor is a prisoner of sorts. He is bound to do whatever the script tells him. Although no one there is actually forcing him to continue on, the words on the page prove inviolable, and the actor is at their mercy. This sense of utter submission is important, because at the centre of the stage are two glasses of water; one of them is poisoned; at the end of the night, the actor must drink from one of them.
On each of the three nights, a different actor took the stage: Pamela Haig Bartley, Joshua Beaudry, and Raymon Montalbetti. A dedicated reviewer would have gone to see each performance to get a fair and balanced grasp on the play, but as it was, I was only able to attend the closing night. Montalbetti brought an erratic kind of energy to the experience, at once quick at vibrant, then instantaneously transforming to so slow and sombre that time pauses on a single breath. He began with a preface to his performance, which was not so much an introduction as it was an intimate peek into his own process, calming the swirling emotions in the moments before he embarked on a completely unknown adventure. He absorbed all of his spatial relationships until finally, with a heavy breath, he could begin reading.
It was a bizarre experience when the play began, because I didn't really understand what the words on the page were doing. But it became clear soon enough the nature of this conversation taking place. I was not being invited to watch a play; I was being forced to bear witness to an unprecedented sequence of actions, spiralling toward a terrible end.
For both actors and audience members, we are always aware, on one level or another, that we are watching a play. I knew, of course, that Mr. Montalbetti was not really going to be poisoned in the moments before curtain. But that did not stop a culture of fear spreading as the play went on. Soleimanpour uses our trust in the illusory nature of theatre against us. There is a crawling, lingering sense of dread that the faith we place in the divide between theatre and reality will betray us, that those unseen figures producing the play may not have everyone's best interests at heart, that all of those things we don't believe will hurt us may turn in an instant, and we will not know what's coming.
As it turns out, none of the actors participating in the play wound up dead. So that's good news. But Soleimanpour's point has been made: our security only persists insofar as select people continue to operate in a way that protects us, as long as our safety does not stand in the way of their own. Because the most unsettling aspect of the play was how all of us in the audience were trapped there as spectators, unable or unwilling to interfere in the events onstage, even knowing that Montalbetti was not fully in control of his own performance. No matter what happened, all we could do was watch.
And now, I suppose, before I conclude this review, I should address the play's title. It calls back an old social experiment with a group of hungry rabbits kept locked in a cage. There is one carrot; the rabbit that gets the carrot is painted red. The white rabbits, furious at this imbalance in power, will attack the red rabbit in retribution. When this experimented is repeated enough, the carrot becomes irrelevant; regardless of whether there are carrots for everyone or no carrots at all, the red rabbit will always find itself the victim of the warren's rage.
What does this mean for us, for us civilised humans? I guess that's what White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was all about.
This is the question I grappled with when I attended White Rabbit, Red Rabbit on Saturday night. I am not certain that what I saw was a play; it felt more like an open dialogue across space and time (on the other hand, perhaps that's precisely what a play is). In any case, whatever it was, I am glad I saw it.
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, is the product of Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. I think it is important to note that the script has not been translated. It was written in English: a language with which Nassim admits to having some difficulty. It seems, therefore, that the play was always intended for an international audience, that it was a way of reaching out beyond the borders of the country that he, himself, could not leave.
At this point, I would typically write a summary of the play's plot. But in this case I can't. It's not that I don't want to, I just can't. This is not a play that tells a story from one point to another. As I said, it may not be a play at all. Most plays have directors, with casts, and effects, and rehearsal processes. White Rabbit, Red Rabbit has one actor on a stage, with one script, sealed inside a manila envelope. Our actor opens the envelope and begins reading from the script for the first time. This much I knew about the play going into it, and I wondered what it would be like to sit through a cold-reading of a script. But as it turned out, this was not at all like an actor doing a cold-reading of a script.
The actor was not so much performing the script as he was talking to it. The script was, itself, a character in the play. And I don't mean the writer, though he was a character as well, although in a different way. The writer and the script both engaged with the actor on different levels; the actor then engaged with the audience, as an intermediary between them and either the script or the author (and sometimes just as himself). The actor is a prisoner of sorts. He is bound to do whatever the script tells him. Although no one there is actually forcing him to continue on, the words on the page prove inviolable, and the actor is at their mercy. This sense of utter submission is important, because at the centre of the stage are two glasses of water; one of them is poisoned; at the end of the night, the actor must drink from one of them.
On each of the three nights, a different actor took the stage: Pamela Haig Bartley, Joshua Beaudry, and Raymon Montalbetti. A dedicated reviewer would have gone to see each performance to get a fair and balanced grasp on the play, but as it was, I was only able to attend the closing night. Montalbetti brought an erratic kind of energy to the experience, at once quick at vibrant, then instantaneously transforming to so slow and sombre that time pauses on a single breath. He began with a preface to his performance, which was not so much an introduction as it was an intimate peek into his own process, calming the swirling emotions in the moments before he embarked on a completely unknown adventure. He absorbed all of his spatial relationships until finally, with a heavy breath, he could begin reading.
It was a bizarre experience when the play began, because I didn't really understand what the words on the page were doing. But it became clear soon enough the nature of this conversation taking place. I was not being invited to watch a play; I was being forced to bear witness to an unprecedented sequence of actions, spiralling toward a terrible end.
For both actors and audience members, we are always aware, on one level or another, that we are watching a play. I knew, of course, that Mr. Montalbetti was not really going to be poisoned in the moments before curtain. But that did not stop a culture of fear spreading as the play went on. Soleimanpour uses our trust in the illusory nature of theatre against us. There is a crawling, lingering sense of dread that the faith we place in the divide between theatre and reality will betray us, that those unseen figures producing the play may not have everyone's best interests at heart, that all of those things we don't believe will hurt us may turn in an instant, and we will not know what's coming.
As it turns out, none of the actors participating in the play wound up dead. So that's good news. But Soleimanpour's point has been made: our security only persists insofar as select people continue to operate in a way that protects us, as long as our safety does not stand in the way of their own. Because the most unsettling aspect of the play was how all of us in the audience were trapped there as spectators, unable or unwilling to interfere in the events onstage, even knowing that Montalbetti was not fully in control of his own performance. No matter what happened, all we could do was watch.
And now, I suppose, before I conclude this review, I should address the play's title. It calls back an old social experiment with a group of hungry rabbits kept locked in a cage. There is one carrot; the rabbit that gets the carrot is painted red. The white rabbits, furious at this imbalance in power, will attack the red rabbit in retribution. When this experimented is repeated enough, the carrot becomes irrelevant; regardless of whether there are carrots for everyone or no carrots at all, the red rabbit will always find itself the victim of the warren's rage.
What does this mean for us, for us civilised humans? I guess that's what White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was all about.
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