Hamlet

Shakespeare in the open air during the warm, balmy summer months can sometimes be more invigorating than Shakespeare in an enclosed theatre. The case in point is Lee Wilson's superb Hamlet for Resurgence Theatre Company's York Shakespeare Festival, held out of doors in an open tent in Newmarket's Fairy Lake Park. Make that half sheltered since the stage does back onto the picturesque parkland woods which can get slippery during a rainstorm but in dry weather proves a marvelous setting for this heady drama by Shakespeare which offers a touch of the supernatural. It plays until Aug. 28.

While Wilson uses no props onstage, the living 'set' design of the woods with a gentle rise of trees that look almost as if a giant backdrop had come to life, has been used to advantage both by the actors and lighting designer Justin Simmons whose red wash over the ground and branches of the trees during one scene when Hamlet chases the ghost of his father, the slain king, into the woods, looks as if blood has truly been spilled. Since I last saw a Resurgence production of Twelfth Night two years ago, the theatre site has been moved closer to the entrance of the park and the relocation has proved successful both for visibility to passers by and park visitors as well as providing a stunning setting.

While the woods provide their own effect, the actors in the Resurgence production are still the real stars of the show. Graham Abbey as Hamlet, has a command of the language as well as the character giving us a Hamlet that is driven by revenge but almost sickened by its extremities. Even his scenes with the ghost of his father are laced with violence and disgust rather than the usual shock and awe. When has qualms about what he has heard, the ghost drags him along the floor by the chain around his neck while he spits out the truth about his murder by King Claudius while Hamlet is prostrate with grief, crawling and speaking to a "mole" in the floor beneath him as his father 'disappears.'

Hamlet's later deliberation about what will happen to him (To Be or Not To Be) if his present course continues is filled with both trepidation and resolve, his cruel playfulness with the ignorant Polonius played by John Jarvis, his tongue in cheek instructions to the players who will depict the murder of a king, and his scenes with the rapidly deteriorating Ophelia (Jane Spence) whom he clearly loves but tries desperately to stop himself from hurting her is the work of someone who has his mental faculties intact but his emotions in turmoil. A cautious Rosencrantz (Alexandra Murray) correctly describes Hamlet's behavior as "a crafty madness."

For some reason the director with costume designer Ming Wong have gone to considerable lengths to put the play in the Napoleonic era with its empire gowns, black capes and hoods and Regency curls of Queen Gertrude. It makes the most sense with David Ferry's King Claudius, dressed in Napoleonic military costume. The ambitious, boorish, stuttering Claudius (Napoleon Bonaparte also had a stutter) who is so determined to rule a kingdom where he has no rightful place, that he has murdered a brother who stood in his way, married his wife and is equally determined to rid the kingdom of its rightful heir. With a stretch of the imagination it isn't hard to compare Claudius with Napoleon, though there is considerable discrepancy between Abbey and Ferry's use of Shakespeare's language.

Still, Ferry's Claudius is a fascinating departure from the norm and as his beautiful queen Gertrude, Brenda Bazinet makes its clear that Gertrude believes in Hamlet's entreaty regarding the murder of her husband. The disdain toward Claudius shows in her eyes and it's somewhat of a triumph since this was a period in which women and their feelings were largely unimportant. When Gertrude is poisoned her death is as much ignored as Ophelia's madness had been. Both women were simply left on the ground where they fell with no attention paid to their demise, Gertrude in her death throes, Ophelia earlier in her failure to hold on to some small measure of sanity before she finally took her own life.

There's intelligent work as well from Jeffrey Wetsch's prepossessing Laertes, Jane Spence's proud but fragile Ophelia and Michael De Rose's First Player. John Jarvis' likeable Polonius is just as garrulous as he is as the First Gravedigger, an unintended similarity perhaps, but an interesting one.

This is one of the best productions of the summer, indoors or out, and worth the visit to Newmarket which is an easy going 1 hour drive north on the 404 from Toronto.

Tickets for Hamlet can be purchased online at www.resurgence.ca and by phone or in person at the Newmarket Theatre Box Office (905) 953‐5122.
Photo: by Greg King. Graham Abbey as Hamlet: Background, John Jarvis as First Gravedigger.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

How Now Mrs. Brown Cow

Well, knees up Mother Brown, you certainly stand apart. Brendan O' Carroll's latest installment of the popular Mrs. Brown series, has its addicts, many of them who had been involved in the antics of Dubliner Mrs. Agnes Brown and her dysfunctional family long before the curtain on this 5th installment went up. Being a neophyte to the ongoing saga of this incorrigible mother of five - O'Carroll dressed as a colorful if frumpy Dublin housewife whose favorite word is "feck"- I confess it took me to the better part of the first act to understand what she was saying. After that, it didn't matter what she was saying since her/his body language told it all.

Brendan O' Carroll is a master of physical comedy. There is one scene in the play where Mrs. Brown accidentally turns a taser on herself and spends the next several minutes wheeling about the stage and up and down the stairs of her cheery semi-detached as if she were in a state of permanent electrical shock. It's almost too much of a good thing, but that O'Carroll can carry on with as long as he does without the audience getting tired of it is a real coup. In fact, the applause suggests he could have gone on another five minutes. As well, O' Carroll's dialogue for Agnes Brown (he's creator, director and star) is rife with, well, ribald one-liners and vulgar jokes. Somehow it all goes down like a pint of Guinness.

The plot, what there is of it, is thin but serviceable. It's holiday time and Agnes is feverishly awaiting the return of her son, a charitable Roman Catholic priest who lives in the U.S. and works with the homeless. He's not coming home this year but none of her kids can bring themselves to tell her. This in turn gives way to all their problems and idiosyncrasies and in no small dosage, those of Grandad (Dermot O'Neill) who lives with her, is hard of hearing and has to put up with her ordering him around like a disobedient terrier.

Her out of work son has taken a "social relations" job which has him dressed like a penguin, her daughter Cathy (Jennifer Gibney) seems to be the one left to deal with mum and put up with her sarcasm and jibes, her homosexual son Rory (Ray Cowan) is so stereotypical gay with his sequined clothes and mincing walk that being offended seems a matter of course if it weren't for the hilarity of the repartees and outdated dialogue. And somewhere along the line the kids take it in their heads that one of them is adopted, each in turn questioning Agnes with enough funny double entendres to sink a ship.

While the show doesn't quite fit the bill for farce, there is enough peppered throughout the show to flavor it and it all fits in snugly with O'Carroll's catch-all comedy style. There's lots of room for O'Carroll to demonstrate his gift for instant improvisation though one wishes that the other performers might at least keep a straight face when he's off on one of his tangents, letting the audience be the ones to laugh the longest.

But there's no question who is the prima donna in this corner of Dublin, reigning over her brood like an Irish Banshee who believes in tough love. With all its expletives and vulgarities, there is a marshmallow heart to be found in Agnes, but thankfully, it takes a while to get to it. We rather like the acidic Agnes best and Mr. O'Carroll knows it bloody well. How Now Mrs. Brown Cow plays at the Canon Theatre until Sept. 4. 244 Victoria St., Toronto. Tickets: 416-872-1212 by Phone. And Online at www.mirvish.com
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Jersey Boys

Like  the legendary Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Jersey Boys, the musical based upon the quartets' climb to fame, has  staying power. Since its August 2008 opening Jersey Boys has grown roots at North York's Centre for the Arts, knocking out audiences with some volatile performances and great singing. Recent cast changes has seen three of the original Jersey Boys in the touring production go on to other things, but the song is a long way from ending. Jersey Boy seems better than ever.

Though the group's name was changed to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons long after it began life in New Jersey, Valli was just a kid when the group first got started. Jeff Madden,  the cast's new Frankie Valli, hits all the high notes that made Valli a teeny bopper's dream. Madden, whose stage credits include several seasons at the Shaw Festival, is as good an actor as he is a singer, underplaying Valli's innocence and making him just as much a punk from the hood as the others though he hadn't developed the street smarts or rap sheet of the group's founder, Tommy De DeVito  

As Nick Massi,  Michael  Lomenda  lends some humor  - and pathos - to the one person in the group who never quite fit into the tight circle the others had, but was smart enough to walk away at the right time, while Quinn Vanantwerp's  Bob Gaudio and his gentrified exterior (Gaudio wasn't from the rough side of town) couldn't hide a sharp mind and keen business sense the others lacked.

Jeremy Kushnier  is still a standout as tough Tommy DeVito, whose mob connections and gambling habits almost led to the downfall of the group until Valli undertook his debts and turned  the luck of Four Seasons around with new singers and a hit song that remains one of their best, "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

It was a rough beginning for the group, blue collar boys with little education who kicked around lounges and bars with a repertoire that was less than exciting until Bob Gaudio came along. Gaudio was a good musician who wanted to do more than be a one shot teen aged wonder with songs like "Who Wears Short Shorts?" As soon as he heard Valli sing he knew he wanted to write for him. The power play between Gaudio and DeVito began as soon as he joined the group against DeVito's wishes. It ended when DeVito, in debt to the mob, was ostracized to Las Vegas. 

Up until then it had been a roller coaster ride for the Four Seasons, a name that they borrowed from a bowling alley.  Gaudio wrote three hits in a row: Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry and Walk Like a Man which put The Four Seasons on the charts. Every thing else was icing on the cake.

The show has several narrators, De DeVito, Gaudio, Valli and the group's record producer, singer/songwriter Bob Crewe, to take us through the life span of the Four Seasons which began in 1961, peaked in the mid-sixties ("Oh, What a Night" describes their wild nights offstage in ritzy hotels with available women and other stimulants) and ended with the coming of Motown at the end of the decade.  Though I failed to mention the good work of Shawn Wright as Bob Crewe in my previous review, Wright excels as a hard-nosed business man with the flair of Liberace who knew the music business inside out and when to put the boys in their place. He produced ten top singles for them.

With all the perks that came with the group's stardom, relationships were hard to sustain.  "None of us were saints," says DeVito  and it was an understatement.  Valli's marriage fell apart after long bouts of being away on the road and extra-marital affairs. His painful estrangement from his much loved youngest daughter was healing when he got the call that she had died from a drug overdose. We don't see his face as he goes through her box of things in the hospital, but the anguish shows in his body language as he hunches over.  

Under Des McAnuff's seamless direction, Jersey Boys is filled with all the hoopla, bright lights and crescendos of a mega pop group of the 1960's, complemented by 33 musical numbers and Sergio Trunillo's snappy choreography reminiscent of the era.  The Jersey Boys themselves were highly stylized in their performances, and it's replicated with great showmanship  by Madden, Kushnier, Lomenda and Vanantwerp.

There are no grandiose sets though there are plenty of technical effects and microphones that appear as if by magic then disappear into the floor. Howard Binkley's lighting design provides its own theatrical atmosphere while comic cartoon strips above the bridge are colorful and a clue to the primary emotions of the teenaged girls who read romance comics and fed on their ardor for groups like The Four Seasons.

The Four Season's ups and downs weren't so very different from other groups of the period who worked tirelessly to get somewhere then took a high flying ride to fame and fortune, until the ride ended. What's different is that Jersey Boys concentrates on the individuals themselves, not just their personalities but what made them tick as human beings. Together with the music, it's a show you don't want to miss.

Jersey Boys plays at the Toronto Centre for the Arts until Aug. 22. 2010. 5040 Yonge Street (Easy access for bus/car parking. Near the North York Centre TTC stop) To purchase tickets and/or to find out more, call 416-644-3665. or visit JerseyBoysToronto.com.
Photo: by Joan Marcus. L to R: Quinn Vanantwerp, Jeff Madden, Jeremy Kushnier, Michael Lomenda.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Jitters

A learned friend once bemoaned the lack of farce in Canadian plays. Neither Canada, nor the United States have ever achieved the high level of farce that British or French have, considering they’ve had several hundred years to work on it.  In Canada, plays like Alan Stratton’s Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii or David French’s Jitters, have been small comedic gems that aren’t revived often enough. So rejoice that Jitters, David French’s delicious backstage comedy, has been given a first rate production by the Soulpepper Theatre sharply directed by Ted Dykstra.

Jitters was first introduced to Canadian audiences in 1979 and was considered a departure for French who was known mainly for his Newfoundland domestic dramas like Leaving Home and Of the Fields Lately. Inspired by the nerves and mishaps of his own opening night experiences in Toronto theatre, audiences who knew French’s more serious dramas were doubly entertained at seeing something that was both funny and personal.

Jitters was both a valentine to the Canadian theatre community and a satire of all the things that could happen, and did, during rehearsals of a new Canadian play called The Care and Treatment of Roses where the performers brought their own substantial hang-ups to the theatre.

The star of the show, the commanding Jessica Logan played by Diane D’Aquila, a gentle cross between Bette Davis and Norman Desmond, is a Canadian born actress (Those were the days when female performers were unabashedly called actresses) who has just returned from New York where she has lived for several years, performing in a couple of Broadway hits but lately racking up more misses on the Great White Way. Anxious to do her best, especially since she’s inveigled Hollywood film producer Bernie Feldman to come up and see the show on opening night, she feels constantly under attack by co-star Patrick Flanagan (David C. Johnson) a crusty but seasoned Irish Canadian actor who resents her intrusion and her attitude.

This was the 1970’s and Canadian ex-pat actors who went to live and work in London, New York or Hollywood, were regarded as traitors, especially if they were successful. If they weren’t, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m totally against the American star system, “ says Patrick….That’s why I prefer Canada. Where else can you be a top-notch actor all your life and still die broke and anonymous?”

The dress rehearsal of The Care and Treatment of Roses which takes place on designer Patrick Clark’s inviting suburban living room, is like Murphy’s Law with the actors either arguing or changing the dialogue. Mike Ross’s tentative, beleaguered playwright Robert, who still isn’t used to the accolades given to his first play, can’t get a word in edgewise about the dialogue in his second play, Oliver Dennis’s uneasy Phil, who is battling a tendency to forget his lines, has a mother complex, a bad toupee, and shoes from the costume department that hurt his different sized feet, Patrick, who considers himself the most professional of the bunch, is rabid because Jessica has thrown her apron at him, and soft spoken director George, played by Kevin Bundy, dressed in Patrick Clark’s fashionable 1970's bell bottom jeans, which are infinitely better looking than the awful palazzo pants worn by Jessica, tries to be understanding about everyone’s point of view, even tempered with their outbursts, and sympathetic with their personal problems. No one listens to him.

It’s all hilarious, but best of all are the underlying jabs at the state of government funded small theatres that had only enough money to put on the shows but not much left over for the comforts of backstage existence. The second act finds Jessica sharing a dressing room and exchanging  barbs with her sarcastic colleague Patrick who plays her husband in the play, a broken washroom door which constantly gets stuck, an over zealous, obnoxious stage manager who is in love with his call board (a cameo appearance by Jordan Pettle) and a pretty but dim prop girl  (Sarah Wilson), a gofer who does everything including cleaning  the washrooms.

Jitters is a great deal of fun even though it’s farce was not particularly original. When the young actor playing Tom (Noah Reid) Jessica’s son in the play, arrives at the theatre on opening night, drunk from his father's wedding and unable to go on, Robert is pressured into going on for him. The scene where he takes off Tom’s pants and tries to get into them himself continually missing one of the legs, is pure burlesque, straight from the farcical farms of Buster Keaton and Lou Costello, along with that broken washroom door. No matter where it is, onstage or in the films, it always takes a prisoner who can't get out.

What made Jitters different is that it was Canadian at heart, at a time when Canadianism in the arts was on the upswing, reflected in shows like the comedy stage troupe from Newfoundland, the great Codco, the founding of Ontario's Blyth Theatre Festival which only presented new Canadian plays, the emergence of Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and The Factory Theatre, both of which were founded in 1970 and ushered in a new era for Canadian playwrights, and CBC’s Radio’s Royal Canadian Air Farce. French’s comedy came along at the right time. It remains as fresh and funny as the day it premiered  31 years ago. Jitters plays until July 31, 2010, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts located at 55 Mill Street, Building 49, in the Distillery Historic District. Box Office 416.866.8666. www. soulpepper.ca
Photo: by Cylla von Tiedemann. L to R: Diane D'Aquila and Kevin Bundy in Jitters.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Love, Loss and What I Wore

Once upon a time author Ilene Beckerman wrote a book about the highlights of her life as defined by the clothes she had worn. It was a marvelous feat. Not only is it a living scrapbook, but as one of my friends said with some astonishment when I told her what the story was about, "I can't even remember what I wore last week."

Love, Loss and What I Wore is Nora and Delia Ephron's stage adaptation of Beckerman's book and it is as near a perfect evening as you would want on a warm summer's night when fond memories seem a natural accompaniment to the balmy weather. Nora Ephron, whose many screen writing accomplishments and multi Oscar nominations include the classic chick flick When Harry Met Sally, is a very funny lady, and her sister, Delia, a well known writer of young women's books (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), were the perfect team to adapt Beckerman's book to the stage.

Directed by Karen Carpenter, the format of the show is similar to The Vagina Monologues with five women (here) sitting on stools across the stage relating their stories, but the show travels a very different path from the first "uniform", the beloved Brownie dress to the wedding dress to the all purpose not- to- live without "little Black dress," - and by the way, all of the performers are dressed in black - from the training bra to the one containing the overly blossomed boobs, to the must have fashion accessories such as high heels versus ugly Birkenstocks, and small purse or the inevitable large hand bag that bursts at the seams with a scrap yard of odds and ends.

At the helm as emcee of sorts is Louise Pitre as Gingy Beckerman who introduces the various segments of the show with her own illustrations of dresses that were her inspiration for the book. Gingy of course has her own tales to tell which Pitre does with a good deal of humor and warmth from Gingy's three marriages, to her seven children, to the death of one of them.

Packed into the show's quickly moving 95-minutes are a variety of experiences, fragments of stories, stories with depth, stories with humor, just so stories. There are the too skinny too fat barbs nicely handled by Andrea Martin and Sharron Matthews, the touching recount about a mastectomy in which our heroine, Mary Walsh, rises like a triumphant phoenix to be master of her own destiny - with a tattoo where the nipple should be, the ups and downs of the daughter/mother relationships ("You're not wearing that! uttered with complete astonishment by mom), Paula Brancati as a rape victim who could no longer wear her favorite clothing, Matthews recalling an embarrassing incident when an unexpected menstrual period during a dinner party ruined a hostesses newly upholstered chair, and Andrea Martin, the queen of comedy in this talented line-up, with a hilarious rundown of why she hates her handbag.

Loss, Loss and What I Wore is New York centric which gives the show a distinctive Manhattan flavor, but it doesn't take away from the universality of the big and small things that filled one woman's lifetime through very personal items. It's every one of us who might tell similar stories - if only we could remember what we wore last week.  Love, Loss and What I Wore plays to September 4, 2010 Opening July 21. Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge Street. Phone 416-872-1212 or 1-800-461-3333 or online at www.ticketking.com. Please note that the cast rotates every 5 weeks. Taking over on August 10 are Cynthia Dale, Margot, Kidder, Wendy Crewson, Linda Kash and Lauren Collins.
Photo: by Cylla von Tiedemann. L to R: Louise Pitre, Mary Walsh, Andrea Martin, Sharron Matthews, Paula Brabanti.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

A Month in the Country

Russian playwright and novelist Ivan Turgenev was the forerunner of Chekhov's great comedies, though his play A Month in the Country which premiered in 1872, didn't gain real acceptance as a classic until after the 1909 production by the great Moscow Art Theatre, which had already staged four of Chekhov's masterpieces. By that time Turgenev had been dead for over 30 years.

A Month in the Country was Turgenev's first play and while most people acquainted with the works of the Russian writer would argue that he was a better novelist than a playwright - Fathers and Sons is certainly his most famous work - A Month in the Country's many productions onstage, in films, and on television is an indication of its ongoing appeal. A new adaptation by Soulpepper Theatre Company's Susan Coyne, and László Marton who has directed several noteworthy Chekhov productions for the company, has brought a contemporary atmosphere to the play though the unspecified country setting seems light years away from the 19th century Russian countryside Turgenev envisioned.

It is the back garden of the well-to-do, beautiful Natalya Petrovna and her landowner husband Arkady's summer place. It's a languid day, hot, probably humid, considering everyone is suffering with the heat. Natalya is being pushed on the outdoor swing by her longtime admirer Rakitin who has hope burning eternal for some emotional - and physical - satisfaction. This has been a platonic relationship that has obviously gone on for years, with the fluttery Natalya (Fiona Byrne) behaving like a professional tease who promises far more than she will ever give, and the almost stoic Rakitin (Diego Matamoros) who has played the game for so long that he has his lines memorized.

For a minute you think you might be in Tennessee Williams territory with Rakitin dressed in white and sexy Natalya in a flowing summer dress. It might just as well be set in Louisiana as its present location. But where is that? Andrei Both's set with its nondescript back garden and series of doors upstage gives it the appearance of a Mediterranean bathhouse, while Victoria Wallace's costumes are the same kind of warm weather apparel you'd find in cottage country here. As well, a car being repaired by Natalya's husband, and a radio suggest a more modern time frame.

While the dialogue hasn't been remarkably updated except for some very modern anachronisms which are almost laughable in this context, the characters run the gamut. Natalya who has been toying with Rakitin's affections for so long, has been obsessed by her son Kolya's summer tutor and companion, Belyaev, a good looking, effervescent and somewhat immature university student who gets from place to place on his skateboard. Natalya will wind up making a fool of herself with the young man, but you wonder how any woman could fall in love with a hyper kinetic man/child on a skateboard?

Natalya isn't the only woman around who has Balyaev on her mind. Her comely if tomboyish ward Vera (Tal Gottfried) is also more than fond of Belyaev and you even get the impression that her affection is returned. When the devious Natalya pries the truth from Vera that she's in love with Belyaev, she tries to to marry her off to a well off, much older man, whose innate kindness overrides his lack of gentility.

As passions begin to build up to the breaking point, Natalya who is unable to contain herself any longer, forces her hand with Belyaev. Despite his genuine surprise at her amorous admission, he would be only too happy to oblige her, but their imminent coupling is cut off when they're discovered. It's a catastrophic event which results in her humiliation and emotional tailspin and Belyaev's sudden departure from the Petrovna summer home. The last scene finds Natalya who has drenched herself with water sitting in front of a wind machine that he husband has built, in a kind of catatonic trance.

It is love, unrequited, unforgiven and forbidden that informs A Month in the Country. What is interesting is the relationship between Natalya and her longtime suitor Rakitin mirrors the unconventional and somewhat one-sided love affair that Turgenev himself had with a French opera star to whom he devoted most of his adult life. As well, Turgenev's best friend was Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary, a character whose adulterous love affair destroyed her home and family, her well being and finally her own sanity. Turgenev was certainly surrounded by the influences of badly timed romances.

There is one wonderfully humorous scene in A Month in the Country, though it has nothing to do with the main story. Joseph Ziegler plays a rough hewn and not very good country doctor named Shipigelsky who by his own admission understands the psychology of his patients in the wealthy households much better than their physical illnesses. But his own loneliness finds him awkwardly proposing to a gangly spinster played by Nancy Palk with the finesse of a landlord outlining the requirements of looking after a building to his superintendent. Palk as Bogdanovna, reacts in shocked silence though her facial expressions are priceless.

The bored Natalya who has amused herself through the years by toying with Rakitin's infatuation, has now destroyed the happiness of several people with her self-centred behavior. Fiona Byrne's captivating Natalya is in spirit the essence of the mid-19th century Russian housewife with the moral imperatives of an upper class married woman in imperialist Russia. But since the family seems rootless and period an unimportant detail, it's hard to sympathize with a woman whose motives are selfish and whose emotional breakdown seems out of proportion with the circumstances.

There's good work as well from David Storch's blissfully ignorant Arkady, Natalya's husband, who pays more attention to the repair of his machinery than he does to his wife, and Michael Simpson's timid Bolshintsov who is urged by Natalya to propose to Vera, her rival for Belyaev's affection. Still, there isn't much tension to shore up the thin story, sexual or otherwise. One suspects that after Natalya finishes hurting everyone who loves her, she'll turn out to be the one who is most injured. And she is. A Month in the Country plays at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts until Aug. 7. 55 Mill Street, Building 49, in the Distillery Historic District. Box Office 416.866.8666.
Photo: by Cylla von Tiedemann. L to R: Fiona Byrne, Diego Matamoros.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger.)

Rain
Legally Blonde

An earlier Toronto engagement for Rain lasted a mere three days and 5 performances back in February. This time around, the rock group Rain with their tribute to the Beatles is in for a longer stay, and judging from the opening night audience reception, a much welcomed one. One of three Mirvish musicals this summertime, which includes Rock of Ages, entrenched at the Royal Alexandra Theatre until Oct. 22, and Legally Blonde at the Princess of Wales Theatre until Aug. 8 (see review below) Rain plays at the Canon Theatre until Aug. 1. It's a great show for the whole family and a real nostalgia trip for the baby boomers.

The story of Rain and the Beatles began back in 1979 when the band was hired by TV's Dick Clark to perform the the Beatles songs for a telefilm called Birth of the Beatles. They also performed in the 1977-79 Broadway musical Beatlemania, and then through the years polished their act "perfecting" the image of the Beatles in various entertainment venues.

Calling the concert Rain after the name of the rock group itself instead of having the title Beatles' oriented was a clever move. We're told at the start of the show that the evening is strictly a tribute to the music of the Beatles, which eliminates the inevitable visual and auditory comparisons. That's not to say that the atmosphere is bland. Anything but. The group dresses in the same styles that the Beatles wore according to the period, plays and sings the Beatles' songs with similar arrangements, and looks, with a little imagination on our part, like the Fab Four, particularly as they got older and individual personalities emerged more strongly.

As well, the multi-media sound and video presentations of the Beatles years together from their earliest days until which illustrate the period are in themselves an entertainment. Early 1960's commercials of everyday products and lifestyle fads were like something Mom pulled out of the attic trunk. While the Beatles were getting their act together in the U.S., everyone from Pop and sis down to the kiddies were trying out the hula hoop, rock and roll was hitting its stride, Duz laundry soap came with a free pair of nylons, Winston cigarettes was touted to" taste good like a cigarette should", the TV's Flinstones were on every kid's lunch box, and the snazzy Carmenghia car were wll given prime space on television thanks to the mad men of the day.

Then, the huge side screens on the side of the stage with the actual footage of the real Beatles singing gives way to Rain onstage. And the audience cheers. What an opening.

Their early successes are legend and Rain gives them the full rock n' roll big dance band treatments with classics like Hard Day's Night where Steve Landes (rhythm guitar) makes the young John Lennon almost playful (How times changed there), Joey Curatolo on bass resembles Paul McCartney with a sunny smile and baby face framed by dark bangs, Joe Bithorn, lead guitarist, is a more conservative George Harrison though he'll come back in Act II with a beautiful rendition of a song from The White Album, Still My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Ralph Castelli's Ringo Starr is a fury on drums.

The songs keep coming and thousands of teenaged girls cry and faint: Day Tripper, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There. They wrote the melancholy Yesterday for the Ed Sullivan show and looked like nicely dressed lads from Liverpool. By 1965 they were in military style jackets at Shea Stadium. And by the time we reach the psychedelic nights and love-ins of the late-sixties, they had changed into the rainbow colored outfits of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Band, immersed in Strawberry Fields.

The era of love and peace and summer of love was made for the Beatles and Rain's Fab Four has two great numbers in Steve Landes' Girl and all three on electric guitar with We Can Work it Out. The two hour show finishes with two of the best: Let it Be and Hey Jude.

Rain doesn't deal with the downside of the Beatles' personal life - the drugs, the girls, the marriages and ultimately the breakdown of friendship and bitter recriminations. It's wise. Rain is there to celebrate the music of the Beatles and the incredible breadth of genius that changed the face of music in the 20th century. If only for that, it's a night to remember. Rain plays at the Canon Theatre until Aug. 1. 244 Victoria. St. Tickets: www.mirvish.com or call 416-872-1212.
Photo: Joan Marcus.

While the Beatles' appeal lies in the realm of Yesterday and with all the boys and girls who came of age in the Fab Four's relatively brief time together as a 20th century sensation, Legally Blonde, The Musical, hits the more sophisticated (by today's standards) young set and women of all ages who like a little fantasy mixed in with romance and feminine chutzpah. To my 13-year-old companion at the theatre, Legally Blonde was better than a very long overnight with the girls. Think of all the pluses it has: a rich, beautiful and popular California girl gets into the elite Ivy League Harvard law school to pursue the boyfriend who threw her over and actually wins a tough law case because of her fashion sense. Can it get more fantastical than that?

Based on the MGM film Legally Blonde and Amanda Brown's novel, the heroine Elle Wood, played by the very talented Becky Gulsvig, is top girl in her graduating year at college, not because of her academic superiority (she's majored in fashion) but because she's rich, popular and as dizzy as her sorority sisters. Besides she's a natural born leader with a warm heart who treats her yappy Chihuahua like a member of the family. Gulsvig covers all the territory and is also a good singer and dancer. It's hard not to like Becky's Elle even though she has the same problem that Reese Witherspoon had in the film, a reedy speaking voice that is often shrill, and in this case, renders songs whose lyrics are almost impossible to understand.

But she also has a strong sense of self, at least after she's learned that her poster like boy friend, the rich Warner Huntington, isn't worth her sleepless nights. As Warner, Jeff McLean strikes all the right poses as a guy who is always having a love affair with himself. Warner has set up some guidelines as to his future wife (sleek and glamorous and smart like Jackie Kennedy). Elle simply doesn't measure up and when he makes the grades for Harvard Law School, he drops her like a hot potato.

Crushed, Elle goes into an emotional spin, but determined to win Warner back, knuckles down to study for admittance to Harvard. The musical's book by Heather Hach, veers away from the movie version of Elle sending in a silly video to Harvard's admissions, and instead makes Elle into a kind of blonde ambition wonder woman who somehow manages to make Harvard's grades by cramming for the exams in a short space of time.

Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin who wrote the music and lyrics, have accommodated another addition to the stage version, a shrill Greek Chorus who look and sound surprisingly like Elle's sorority sisters and manage to pop up at the most tenuous moments to rally behind Elle.

Though the music is mainly serviceable, the lyrics are sharp and well crafted. Elle's tough no-nonsense Professor Callahan (Michael Rupert) gives her a taste of hard core legal tactics with the song Blood in the Water, her new found friend Paulette (Natalie Joy Johnson) the owner of the Elle's indispensable hairdressing salon, gives a nice rendition of the sentimental Ireland, and Elle's best friend at Harvard, Emmett (D.B. Bonds) takes centre stage with the clever Take It Like a Man in an an upscale department store where Elle, now in a smart business suit, makes him change from a grungy academic to the very model of a modern legal shark.

When time comes for Elle to make her mark defending a fitness guru accused of murdering her husband, she's back into her think pink mode after having a change of heart about trying to be someone else. This really doesn't give the story more depth since Elle's charm is really her loveable, shopaholic self, but at least she's got more smarts, she's got her Harvard degree, she's got her yappy Chihuahua and she's got her man. Who could ask for anything more? Legally Blonde The Musical plays at the Princess of Wales Theatre until Aug. 8. 300 King St. West. For tickets: Call Ticketking at 416-872-1212 or 1-800-461-3333; Online sales at www.mirvish.com.
Photo: by Joan Marcus. Becky Gulsvig in Legally Blonde.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Romeo and Juliet

When it's a balmy night and the stars are out and the grass is green and the mosquitoes are rare, there's little that can compare to theatre al fresco. The Canadian Stage TD Dream in High Park is an institution in outdoor theatre in the city, being the oldest and offering the longest running productions. This year's Romeo and Juliet plays until Sept. 5. It's well worth the suggested modest entrance fee of $20 - and kids under 14 get in free. You can't beat that for a great night out - and you don't have to dress up.

I was prepared for a play within a play present day adaptation as outlined in the press release. It went something like this: The story of Romeo and Juliet destroyed by their feuding families is re-told by a group of traveling performers delayed at the Verona train station. Weary and irritable, tempers flare and tension ignites a spirited confrontation. In an effort to restore calm, the Station Master demands they perform their show for the other stranded passengers. They're reluctant at first but soon acting the play in a new and simpler way, the actors interchange roles, comment on each other's performances and get caught up in the story as if they are telling it for the first time. What a unique approach I thought. Great for families with the tragedy filtered through a play within a play.

Well, forget the premise. It didn't happen. Oh, the setting was a train station in Verona, and it was modern day, more or less, though Jackie Chau's resourceful costumes had no distinctive period, but the actors simply launched into the play without any irritable train passengers having to be entertained, and the station master had no demands to make at all. So, for all of who might have scratched our heads wondering why the setting was a modern Verona train station and why the angry houses of Capulets and Montagues were so unreasonable about whom their kids were dating, we just had to make do with Shakespeare himself and no play within a play. It wasn't a bad alternative.

The best was yet to come, and those were the actors themselves. Under Vikki Anderson's tight direction, this was the freshest, most spirited Romeo and Juliet seen in a while. They certainly didn't need the play within a play to perform the star crossed lovers. While it might have worked better simply as the story of Romeo and Juliet in fair Verona circa 1599, in time you forgot the train station and just concentrated on the performances.

Christine Horne who plays Juliet, has come a long way since her tenuous Viola in Twelfth Night for Resurgence Theatre a few years back, and simply shines as this Juliet who has life bursting out of her. Her anger at constantly being restrained from doing what she wants, is so tangible, you can feel her breathlessness. She stamps her foot at her stubborn Nurse, and proposes love to Romeo with the eagerness of a young puppy. Their balcony scene is the least of what's memorable about these two, though Jeff Irving's athletic Romeo precipitates their impatient coupling.

The most memorable scenes are those apart from each other, Juliet as a spoiled young woman who has always gotten her way and who has never quite caught on to how to behave like a good daughter except when she's play acting one; Romeo, whose violent temper and crying spells as he lies on the floor, makes him much less a man than he should be, which is exactly what Romeo is. Both Romeo and Juliet are in fact little more than children, restless and self-centered. You understand why banishment is far worse to Romeo than death.

Lisa Barry does fine work as the no-nonsense Prince Escalus of Verona and mediator between the warring Capulets and Montagues, Caroline Gillis brings a new, gentler persona to the role of Friar Laurence, Ron Kennell is a quirky but likeable Nurse to Juliet, Clinton Walker as Mercutio and Jamie Robinson as Tybalt both bring more maturity and then pathos to the two young men from warring families caught up in a senseless quarrel that will end both their lives.

The production has been considerably shortened to an hour and 45 minutes without intermission and with very little lost in the almost adaptation. It might have been an interesting experiment, but Shakespeare's plays always stand above whatever new interpretation is brought to them. The first rate cast here proves that even in a dusty train station in Verona, Romeo and Juliet is right on track. Romeo and Juliet plays from Tuesday through Sunday at 8pm, until September 5, 2010 at the Amphitheatre in High Park at Bloor St. W. & High Park Ave. Directions from High Park subway station: Enter park from Bloor St. Follow the road to Grenadier Café. Continue east on the foot path opposite the parking lot marked by a sign. PWYC at the gate. 416-367-1652 or canadianstage.com/dream. FAMILY DAYS: Free, all-ages, pre-show activities at the Dream site Sundays, July 4 to Sept. 5, from 5 - 6:30 p.m. Registration required. Registration accepted June through September. Contact 416-367-1652 or family@canadianstage.com.
Photo: by Chris Gallow. L to R: Ron Kennell as Nurse and Christine Horne as Juliet.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

South Pacific

It was a "strange and beautiful world" that author James Michener wrote about in his Pulitzer Prize winning book of short stories entitled Tales of the South Pacific. It's no wonder that The Rodgers and Hammerstein 1949 musical based upon several of the stories in the novel, emphasized that wide, seemingly endless blue sea and one of its magical distant islands called Bali Ha'i.

Michael Yeargan's gorgeous set in the 2008 Tony Award winning Lincoln Center Theater production of South Pacific, currently playing in Toronto until September 5, also accents that wondrous scope of the Pacific Ocean. It seldom leaves our sights in director Bartlett Sher's splendid production which has found a near perfect stage to house it at the smashing Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. It's DanCap's second and final production for his inaugural summer Broadway series at the Centre.

The blend of the static life of the stationed Seabees during World War II somewhere in the Solomons, and the storybook lure of Bali Ha'i which every red blooded Seabee yearned for in hopes of finding the young pretty daughters of the French plantations owners sent there for safekeeping during the war, is a constant theme in the musical.

When the time comes for the island's tough skinned Bloody Mary, played by wonderful Jodi Kimura, to sing about Bali Ha'i to the young Lieutenant Joseph Cable who is already bored with the island he's just landed on, he's fascinated. Bloody Mary is gregarious and greedy for the American dollar which she earns by hawking shrunken heads and grass skirts.
But her sights are set on Ltd. Cable for a different reason: a mate for her daughter Liat who languishes on Bali Ha'i

Anderson Davis' Ltd. Cable says little, but his body language and facial expressions paint a picture of a restless, apprehensive and somewhat jaded survivor of wartime battles. He is ripe for Bloody Mary's entreaties. As an officer he can take the launch over to Bali Ha'i with no questions asked and it's there that he eagerly mates and falls in love with Liat. The freedom he has on Bali Ha'i with a Tonkinese woman who wouldn't be welcomed in his tony Philadelphia circle where marriages with blonde princesses are encouraged, is intoxicating, and soon Lieutenant Cable is spending all his time going between the two islands.

South Pacific is first and foremost a love story though themes of racism and bigotry and the the effects of war, violence, and exploitation are fundamental. The first scene of South Pacific sets it all in motion. Book writers Richard Rodgers and Joshua Logan easily bypass any lengthy build up to a love affair that is still in its infancy at the start of the musical between nurse Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque, a wealthy plantation owner who is some 20 years her senior. Both Carmen Cusack as an unprepossessing, naive southern girl from Little Rock Arkansas and Jason Howard's gallant, virile Emile de Becque make it look so natural that never for a moment do we doubt how quickly Nellie and Emile have developed a deep affection for each other.

It's a glorious scene, thanks to some marvelous songs that range from the charming Dites-Moi sung by de Becque's part Tonkinese children (Cristina Carrera and CJ Palma), the lilting A Cockeyed Optimist which Carmen Cusack delivers with a sunny wholesomeness, the anxiety of two people facing questions about their sudden feelings in Twin Soliloquies, and Jason Howard's soaring Some Enchanted Evening.

South Pacific may seem like a valentine to romance but both love affairs are bittersweet for very similar reasons. Nellie is so shocked to learn that De Becque had fathered two children with a Tonkinese woman who has since died, she can't bring herself to accept his relationship with a woman with dark skin. Ltd. Cable has no qualms about loving Liat on Bali Ha'i, but his background allows him no illusions about how limited their relationship would be in Philadelphia with the powerful You've Got to Be Carefully Taught ("You've got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made"). In the end only Nellie and De Becque will find fulfillment in their love for each other.

Still, the story of South Pacific makes room for some welcome exuberance despite the looming presence of Japanese war planes and submarines off the coast of Marie Louise Island

that will eventually finds Ltd. Cable and De Becque undertaking a dangerous spy mission. There is the refreshing lustiness of the Seabees in numbers like There is Nothing Like a Dame, well served by some athletic choreography, and Luther Salvidar's earthy Luther Billis who corners most of the humor in between his womanizing and his business enterprises which include running both the island laundry and the bath house, the same one where Nellie tries to wash that man right out of her hair - and doesn't really succeed.

Salvidar and Cusack both steal the Thanksgiving variety show that the Seabees and nurses produce with the lively Honey Bun, and Cusack with the other nurses would live anyone's spirits with I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy.

South Pacific premiered four years after World War II ended and even now there are times when you think you feel that you're watching an old wartime movie where stock characters like Luther Billis and the rowdy Seabees and the curvaceous nurses and the stern but understanding captains and commanders seem to go from one film to another. But South Pacific had something else besides a beautiful love story and wonderful music that earned its status as a classic. It had depth - and hope for a better more tolerant universe. When a first rate production brings it all together like this one, you really do have an enchanted evening. South Pacific plays at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto until September 5, 2010 as part of Dancap Productions’ inaugural Summer Broadway Series. 145 Queen Street West (at University Avenue –Osgoode subway).Order online at www.DancapTickets.com or call 416.644.3665 or toll‐free 1.866.950.7469.
Photo Above: by Peter Coombs. Anderson Davis as Ltd Cable and Sumie Maeda as Liat.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

A Taste of Empire

Be prepared for more than a gourmet dish being made before your eyes. You can always get that at one of the various food shows in the city, but it won’t be nearly as colorful as A Taste of Empire being presented by the Cahoots Theatre Company.  A Taste of Empire is performance art infused with sight and smell to titillate the senses, and the colonial history of the Philippines to stir your imagination. It’s an exotic mix that playwright/performer Jovanni Sly has created not only to demonstrate how the Filipino fish dish, Rellenong Bangus, is prepared, but how irresponsible self-indulgent eating and globalization has taken the place of food-to-the-table responsible eating.

Sly, who is not a chef but has steeped himself in how to act like one in front of an audience, performs at The Market Kitchen in the St. Lawrence Market. It’s a very attractive high tech environment that’s normally used for cooking demonstrations and lessons. In this case the audience feels that they’re actually watching a real chef work and Sly certainly looks and acts like one. The glass of wine and hors d'oeuvres beforehand don't hurt either.

Through the use of video we’re given an ‘introduction’ to master chef or master gangster as he's sometimes called, the great Maximo Cortés, who runs an organization called Imperial Cuisine which does everything from selling Cortés designed cooking utensils to publishing Cortés’ cook books. As it turns out, the master can’t be here this evening but his sous chef is, not only ready to take over but ecstatic that he’s finally got a chance to do something worthwhile other than be a lowly assistant to the great one.  Sly is a apt substitute, being well indoctrinated with the master's imperialistic philosophy which he injects into the conversation when it's politically correct to do so, though he does manage to get in a dig about Cortés’ background harvesting kidneys in the streets of Helsinki before he became a chef.  

We watch fascinated as Sly goes through all the steps of cooking his beloved stuffed Rellenong Bangus fish from the careful mise en place to the finished product. He compares it to stuffing a turkey with all the trimmings at holiday time. This is a process that requires an inside out kind of evisceration which he demonstrates in detail.  It isn’t pretty, but bear with it, the result is spectacular. Don’t expect a recipe, however. You'll have to enroll at master Cortés' cooking class to get it.

And so he preps and stuffs and cooks and talks and tells us about the colonization of the Philippines first by Spain who used its land to create wealth ("No farmers were hugged during this") but did introduce sofrito into the Philippine diet, that lovely mix of tomatoes, herbs and garlic, the latter of  which was not invented by the Spanish but the Chinese, he says with a smile. Imperial Cuisine is about "powerful flavors" he informs us. Maximarts grocery chain with its Garlic Visibility Enhancement program sells garlic for as little as 10 cents ....saving the cost of your food and building artificial links to impress the dignitaries.  "

Then the Americans came at the turn of the century to create their own empire. Because of their food chain, Imperial Cuisine introduced Glucomax, "which is there for you when your pancreas isn't". With the globalization of food such as frozen peas which Canada imports from "somewhere," Sly explains, "You get to eat the world. Anything you want is yours. We pick up the bill."

Sly's clever presentation is always entertaining but watching him prepare his fish and following his line of thought through to a rationale doesn't always work. Stopping short of Spain who fleeced the natives and didn't really didn't invent garlic, and the Americans who like anything with ketchup, doesn't add up to a full meal. It does however whet our appetite for more of the same fleshed out better  - if you'll excuse the comparison.

At the end of the show, Sly gets a phone call from Chef Cortés who fires him. Too bad. We loved his fish, but that's imperialism for you. A Taste of Empire runs until July 24 (no performance July 17) The Market Kitchen, South St. Lawrence Market West Mezzanine 93 Front Street East @ Jarvis. Advance tickets available through T.O. TIX in person or online at www.totix.ca. www.cahoots.ca
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Where the Blood Mixes

First, there is James Burnstick's latin-jazz beat that heralds us into the circle.  His assortment of string instruments; guitars and double neck lapslides, create haunting  sounds and rhythms, drawing us physically into this world enclosed in Robert Lewis’ flowing set, a world  whose  inhabitants are slowly losing their bearings. There are  the  effects of alcohol,  the anguish produced by  the sudden appearance of a lost loved one, forgotten memories whose surviving fragments still devour the soul and paralyse the body.  And yet this is, in one sense, a comedy.

Playwright Kevin Loring (member of the N’lakap mux First Nation, and winner of the Governor General’s award for drama in 2009) is brutally revealing but also at times intensely poetic and strangely discrete.  Presently on a cross country tour, this intimate but explosive drama,  playing now in Ottawa at the  National Arts Centre, is well served by the small studio space.

 The subject matter is certainly not new. Much has been written about the colonial practices of “civilizing” native populations, an unequivocally racist vision of society projected on to  non European peoples, the results of  colonial propaganda used to justify the domination of countries  in their power.  In Canada, and in other places like Australia, residential  schools were set up to cleanse the native population of its own non European based culture and language by assimilating those  peoples into the dominant colonial culture.

Although historians have dealt with this question for a certain time, more recently the victims of such practices are now telling their own stories, and this has become a world wide movement especially since the release of Nelson Mandela and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Tribunals in South Africa. The aim of these tribunals was to reconcile the victims with those who were responsible for the inhuman acts. South African artists have been working on this for a long time. Tshepang by South African playwright Lara Foot Newton which played in Ottawa and Toronto last year, dealt with the rape of a nine month old baby and three years after the rape,  the Narrator (played by an extraordinary actor called Mncedise Shabangu ) retells the story  while  the actress playing the mother remains  in a silent traumatic state during the whole performance. 

The Canadian play is set  in Kumsheen, where the Thompson and the Fraser Rivers meet,  the place where the blood mixes, as tradition designates this space. Events take place essentially in a bar. However, set designer Robert Lewis has created connecting round forms that flow from the floor level, up to the  bar counter, then further up to a flat screen like surface where graphic reproductions of First nations symbols glide across the sky, calling up the absent spirits as they prepare for the meeting between the long forgotten daughter Christine and her father Floyd.

 Floyd (Billy Merasty) and Mooch (Ben Cardinal) are two close friends, whose relationship is a form of tragi-comic confrontation that never ceases.  Mooch spends his money on  beer and a flashy miniature casino machine  but his  compulsive gambling, drinking and spending, are signs of a deeper malaise that Floyd shares . The two are constantly at each other’s throats and this toxic atmosphere devours them both until one day, Floyd’s long forgotten daughter, Christine (Kim Harvey), suddenly announces that she is coming to find her  biological  father for the first time since she was sent away to the residential school  30 years ago.

Anger, denial, shame, guilt, terror, the most violent of human emotions overflow in this tough performance as Floyd is forced to face this shameful past by a despairing daughter who wants to know the truth before moving on with her life. At that point, the residential school past emerges through the dialogue. We learn that his daughter was taken away by the authorities, that Floyd could do absolutely nothing to stop it, and this separation had disastrous effects  his own couple.  At  the same time, Mooch  goes back to the lives of past generations, when he discretely mentions the horrors that he and Floyd endured in the  residential schools when they were young boys. A picture of abuse, and daily terror  slowly emerges.  

The  first 30 minutes of the play appear  to be fairly frothy and entertaining as the two friends bait each other and even tease June (Margo Kane), Mooche’s angry girlfriend who comes to give her wayward lover a piece of her mind after he has spent all her savings. But if you listen carefully, something more sinister lurks under the apparent  banter and it all comes to a head . We understand that the breakup of the families has torn these men apart and destroyed their souls.

Performances delve deep into the possibilities of naturalistic acting where each actor has no doubt drawn on personal experience  to play out the characters on stage.  Floyd collapses in shame and guilt and anger. Mooch has a punch drunk attitude that reveals his way of repressing what he has been through, and June is both angry, and tenderly maternal when she tries to explain to Christine why her father has reacted in such a violent  way to her presence.

In this confrontation of generations and memories,  Jason Burnstick’s music worked  not as background  but by actually participating in a punchy dialogue with the actors as the bursts of guitar sound underscored certain lines. None of this is resolved but there is a moment of staging at the end, where director Glynis Leyshon forces the audience to take a good look at what it has just seen,  in the hope that these events can be seen as part of  the official historyof Canada. We  can no longer say we didn’t know this happened.  And Kevin Loring’s play is very much part of that process.  

Where the Blood Mixes, a coproduction of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre, the Belfry Theatre (Victoria), and the Savage Society plays at the Factory Theatre in Toronto from April 7 to 18.Tickets are available for purchase:In person at the NAC Box Office;At all Ticketmaster outlets; By telephone from Ticketmaster, (613) 755-1111; Online through the Ticketmaster link on the NAC’s website (www.nac-cna.ca)
Photo: by David Cooper. Billy Merasty and Ben Cardinal in Where the Blood Mixes
(Reviewed by Alvina Ruprecht, who reviews regularly for the CBC Ottawa Morning show and reviewed Where the Blood Mixes for the presentation at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

OTTAWA
Arts Court Theatre

Inseparable and Swimming in the Shallows

The Ottawa Arts Court has become a municipal Cultural Centre with a 200 seat theatre installed in the former courtroom of the old Courthouse, near the Centretown jailhouse where the assassin of D’Arcy McGee was imprisoned and hanged at the beginning of Confederation.  In this very historical setting, the Arts Court Festival,  “Summer fling”  continues with  two  of its  latest theatrical offerings : Inseparable....an imaginary chance meeting between Montcalm and Wolfe at the eve of the  battle on the Plains of Abraham, written by Louis Lemire,  and Swimming in the shallows, a beach fantasy by Canadian playwright Adam  Bock. Both playwrights are Canadian but Bock is becoming a big star on the off Broadway circuit.

Inseparable

On a fateful day in 1759, General Wolfe slipped past the French soldiers, (highly unlikely of course), climbed up the cliffs to the Plains of Abraham and found himself out of breath and face to face with an older, sneering French Aristocrat, the Marquis de Montcalm. The game begins. Each man becomes a symbol of the clash between the two cultures which forged a new country in the Americas. But despite the serious consequences of the event and the historical setting that gives the play its meaning, Inseparable is mostly a comedy.

The older, more experienced and sophisticated Marquis, quickly gets the advantage over the younger, weaker, slightly foppish Wolfe as the Frenchman plays with the Englishman like a cat with a mouse. Back and forth, thrust and parry....the movement is verbal as well as physical; insults compete with sword fights, dagger fights and fist fights. Wolfe is a terribly serious young man, completely dedicated to his mission in Canada, while the Marquis doesn’t want to be in a savage, cold country where everything is boring and ugly, especially the British uniforms, the local food and the woman.  

In one sense the author has created two stereotypes which come to life to stir up the current debates about the outdated reality of the contemporary notion of Canada as a bicultural country. But writer Louis Lemire also reveals snippets of the personal background of each character, using flashbacks to tell their stories and brighten up the theatricality of the show. Both actors take on different roles as they play out these historical sketches. We learn that Wolfe had a dominatrix for a mother (Apparently he really did). Jerome Bourgault, the oh so French and cynical Montcalm becomes the aristocratic pushy mama with the British accent, demonstrating the strength of the performances.

Matthew Romantini, who also directed the play, was an excellent, elegant Wolfe while Bourgault's Montcalm sustained his French panache till the end. Both looked dashing in their uniforms with Romantini capturing the young idealistic, but arrogant and inexperienced British general who goes fearlessly into battle with his tubercular cough - a true romantic hero seeking to die gloriously among his soldiers.  He even tries to convince Montcalm not to slit his throat in a vulgar street fight because it is their destiny to die as heroes. The Marquis de Montcalm dreams about going home to France, even though we know that the French monarchy will soon crumble anyway in the revolution, 30 years later.

I found that the production slumped a bit after the first hour, becoming lost in discussion. It was obvious that director, Romantini didn't allow himself the  necessary distance from his own production in order to get a feel for the rhythm and the tension. But then all rebounded near the end when the dream of a glorious death takes hold of both of them. The result was a great moment, worthy of the most  exquisite operatic death.

This is billed as a bilingual production and while Jérome Bourgault speaks English with a French accent, I can't say that the show is truly bilingual. There are snippets of French, especially when Montcalm expresses his emotions, and there is a brief and highly dramatic  monologue as the French general meets his destiny. Still, it is an amusing two hander with actors who play off each other with great brio. Inseparable plays at the Arts Court until Aug. 29, 2010. 2 Daly Avenue. For more information visit www.artscourt.ca or call the Arts Court Box Office: 613-564-7240.
Photo: by Fred Cottroll. L to R: Matthew Romantini, Jerome Bourgault

Swimming in the  Shallows is the work of a playwright who enjoys delving into obsessions and desires that swirl about  in the minds of his characters.  Adam Bock creates playfully disturbing situations where logic is often disconnected…and disconnected logic is the crux of his humour. Because of its flip flop logic, its cruel irony, its masochistic satire and its total absence of stage directions, the  play needs a most perceptive and talented  director.

Luckily, Arts Court productions has found just such a director who knew how to make sense out of such a script. Perfectly bilingual Joël Beddows who was artistic director of the Franco-Ontarian Compagnie La Catapulte, has taken it all in hand, added poetic twists as well as visual and auditory fantasies that  had us enjoying life and even laughing  loudly at his stage games. The staging made the evening.

The story line, told out of context, resembles a mediocre soap opera – which of course it is not. For example, Barb is having trouble with her husband Bob who doesn’t understand her obsession about emptying out the house down to eight objects. (We are actually  into a deep Buddhist experience here!! But Bob doesn’t realize that). There is Donna who wants to marry Carla Carla but Donna smokes and Carla Carla hates cigarettes. However, when  Donna says she has quit , she in fact lies and Carla is terribly upset.(Does Donna understand Carla's need to be protected?? I doubt it.) Then there is poor Nick who wants a real relationship but his partners dump him systematically. Until one day he falls in love with a shark! And that’s it.

Of course it is a theatrical shark, and the characters are comic strip type creatures who illustrate the way human beings seek happiness, how life with a partner is frustrating, difficult and even cruel. Bock shows how friendships develop, or unravel, or trigger various kinds of reactions with the shark being the metaphoric bottom line. He is the primal animal, who devours all. He doesn’t argue, he just seeks his own pleasure, satisfies his own needs whether he is caressing his prey or eating it. In other words, suggests the author, he is the incarnation of any relationship, human or otherwise.

This quirky cynicism blossoms into a most marvelous soundscape, with dance music and flashing lights, a disco atmosphere in a huge aquarium that overflows on to a beach in Rhode Island where they all devour each other in this idyllic setting.  Joy and happiness , irony and poetry laced with masochism are at the basis of this exquisite staging by Joël Beddows who has clarified the anguish of these couples by orchestrating his actors like perfect machines. Lynn Cox’s set and lighting design worked very well as did Angela Hachés costumes. A magnificent dream but without Beddows, I am not sure the play would have survived. Swimming in the Shallows plays at Arts Court until August 29 as part of the “Summer Fling” Festival in Ottawa. 2 Daly Ave. For more information visit www.artscourt.ca or call the Arts Court Box Office: 613-564-7240.
Photo: by Fred Cottroll. L to R: Richard Gelinas, Maureen Smith
(Reviewed by Alvina Ruprecht who reviews regularly for CBC Ottawa Morning)

OTTAWA
National Arts Centre

Ciels

After his twelve hour long trilogie presented at the Avignon Festival in 2009, (Littoral, Incendie and Forêts), this production of Ciels, which also premiered at Avignon last summer, is the fourth play evolving from Wajdi Mouawad's perception of his own experience, expressed through theatrical forms of epic proportions that have taken the playwright/director several years to complete. The two week run of Ciels in Ottawa which opened Tuesday night at the National Arts Centre,  is the North American premiere of that fourth episode

The evening begins the moment  the audience is ushered on to the stage of the theatre which is enclosed within four walls.  As we  take our seats on one of the small white stools lined up in rows inside a cube-like space like a garden of statues, we  irealize that we are actually inside the play, watching events unfold around us on the walls, and inside seven small stage areas set within the four walls that surround us.
 
 The   anguished voice of a young man recites an apocalyptic scenario of death and ruin in operatic tones...the human voice itself takes on epic proportions as it competes with the  cacophonic soundscape of machines, human sounds,  thunderous airplane engines and bursts of unidentifiable noise. When the lights eventually come up,  a tense narrative quickly builds  and soon we are caught in a web of international intrigue that carries us along on a frantic  journey.

Five specialists are enclosed in a secret place where they spend their time deciphering codes in 34 languages, trying to uncover the identity of an organization that is preparing a terrorist plot. Valéry,  head “cryptanalyst” of this elite group,  has just committed suicide. His successor, a certain Szymanowski, has been brought in to decipher  the password so the group  can open Valéry’s hidden  files, discover the terrible secret that lead to his death,  and thus continue his work. They realize a catastrophy is imminent,  but without Valéry’s files, they are helpless to do anything about it.

The play then moves in the direction of several sub-plots and  the discovery of modern decrypting technology, as beautiful as it is complex. The  intertwining of  mathematics and poetry, computer art, cinema, modern computer techniques and Mouawad’s interest in the great works of  Western painting, add layer upon layer of hidden information to the enigma of the unreadable coded message (and it is quite fitting that he integrates the scratchy sounds of Jean Cocteau’s poetry taken from his film Orpheus, where coded verse sent through radio broadcasts during the war, turn Surrealist poetry into secret messages from the French resistance.)

Set out on a huge computer screen,  the hidden message is slowly decrypted before our eyes. Stunning mathematical calculations merge with poetic metaphors, letters drift up and down through space like snowflakes on three dimensional surfaces, reminding us strangely of the secret messages written on the windows by Russell Crowe as the psychotic mathematician in Beautiful Mind. In fact references to film and painting abound  in Wajdi Mouawad’s  highly visual stage aesthetic as he continues his investigation into the terrorist organisation’s existence. The high point becomes the moment when Szymanowski,  giving  the heightened performance of an opera singer, deconstructs Tintoretto’s painting the Annunciation. Like Dan Brown’s reading of DaVinci’s last supper, the famous “cryptanalyst”  reads coded messages into the angel Gabriel’s positioning on the canvas, to reveal the exact plans of the terrorists, which will  change the world forever.

At the same time, personal conflicts carry the tension to another level. One of the members of the group, the woman Dolorosa is pregnant and because the identity of the father is extremely important, she becomes a key figure in the outcome of the enigma. At the same time, another member of the team is having a  difficult long distant relationship with his son whose face, in a beautiful close up reveals all the disappointment and frustration of this young man. Thus internal conflicts, looming external  threats as well as  the despair expressed by the young people in their relations with parents, all converge in the final moments to produce a visual and auditive experience that is almost unbearable in its physical discomfort (bombs falling, the world exploding)  and its emotional horror (the sight of concentration camps, torture, hunger, massacres and 911 scenarios ) . 

And yet, Mouawad suggests that art is the ultimate language that will save humanity.  One of the highlights is a video conference projected around the four walls, revealing a multi-lingual conversation with participants from all corners of the world  in a tense discussion about possible sources of the terrorist plot. This mixture of real talking heads projected through computer screens also suggests Titians painting of the Elders (without Susanna) before it suddenly morphs into an impressionist wash of colour. The importance of painting is all the more obvious at the end where another canvass serves as the  background of an epic encounter of  birth and death. The emotional violence of a father roaring with grief and  a mother screaming as she gives birth, are the sounds of the old  world crashing down around us as a new  civilisation is born.

This play is an anguished opera, a hymn to the young of all origins. The sometimes too recognizable collage of  pop culture references, computer based communication,  technologically generated sounds,  recreate  the world out of which today’s young people have emerged and we sit there  prisoners of it all. There is much anger and despair directed at the older generations who have exploited the young to wage their wars and do their dirty work for them. Is Mouwad suggesting that the only solution is to destroy it all and start again from scratch. Ciels would seem to say just that.

 He once said to me in an interview in Ottawa, that unlike Robert Lepage,  he never films his theatre because his work is supposed to be ephemeral, he doesn’t want it to last.  And here, the reason becomes clear, especially after we hear that the terrorist’s first targets will be the Museums. Art is at the heart of all civilisations and in order to transform the essence of a civilisation,  the old “heart” must be destroyed. Ciels plays at the National Arts Centre, French Theatre, from May 11 to 22. 53 Elgin St. Ottawa. Tickets: 613-755-1111.
Photo: Jean- Louis Fernandez
(Reviewed by Alvina Ruprecht who reviews regularly for CBC Ottawa Morning)