A
Christmas Carol
adapted and directed by Michael Shamata
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto
December 16, 2001-January 6, 2002
by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"Dickens Without Wonder"
In Soulpepper's production of "A Christmas Carol," director Michael Shamata tries to treat the story's sentimentality the same way that Thornton Wilder treats it in "Our Town"--by exposing the workings of the theatre to undercut it. Unfortunately, his approach is not consistent enough and contrasts too much with John Ferguson's detailed designs to succeed. What saves the show are a number of fine performances, but overall one has the feeling that it is just not as effective as it should be.
Shamata's adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 tale begins with John Jarvis as the Narrator explaining what a "ghost light" is in the theatre, removing it because this play intends to conjure up ghosts not keep them at bay. >From that point on Shamata attempts to emphasize the play as theatre. Two actors called "harlequins" (though never costumed as such) move props on and off. Flying is represented by their moving characters about on a ladder with wheels. The London skyline, built on a series of wagons, is pulled by like a toy train. Except for Scrooge, the main actors play from two to five roles. While this procedure does well in undercutting the sentimentality in the scenes with the Crachit family, it also undercuts the magic in the scenes with all four ghosts. Shamata needs to use more extensive repertoire of techniques à la Andrei Serban or to cut back to the bare essentials à la Peter Brook if he wants theatricality to evoke the wonder of Dickens's narrative.
John Ferguson's set is symptomatic of the problem. As a three-sided box with nine doors used for interiors and exteriors, it might seem minimalist but its detailed moldings and panelling work against that idea. Ferguson's costumes, too, are all too varied and realistic if theatre-as-theatre is really what Shamata is aiming at. Graeme S. Thomson's lighting achieves a number of good effects but is not as imaginative as it could be.
Shamata's adaptation consists almost entirely of Dickens's dialogue taken verbatim from the story. Divorced from Dickens's extensive narration, this dialogue gives us only the bare bones of the story. It's rather odd, then, that having begun the play with a Narrator, Shamata does not use him again until the conclusion. The play is only an hour 45 minutes long including intermission. More of Dickens voice via the Narrator would not only be useful for creating the right mood but would heighten the play's theatricality.
Luckily, Shamata has assembled a generally fine cast, most notably with Joseph Ziegler as Scrooge. Ziegler succeeds in the difficult task of making this over familiar character a person not a caricature. Private woes not greed have led this Scrooge to his present rigor, but when he kicks off his slippers in joy at the end we, too, feel his release. Oliver Dennis's main role among five is Bob Crachit and he is perfect for it, showing him as a good, decent man whose inherent optimism withstands many trials. Patrick Galligan makes a positive impression as Scrooge's well-meaning nephew, but is especially effective as the young Scrooge, whose loss of his only love has made him bitter old man we know best.
The main liability in the show is John Jarvis. Among his five roles, he is fine as the Narrator and imposing as the silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. But the accent he gives the Ghost of Jacob Marley would seem to locate him in Louisiana not London, and he employs varied gaits alone to differentiate the Ghosts of Christmas Present and Past while neglecting to give them any character, ghostly or otherwise. Young and slim, Kevin Bundy does his best at being old and jolly, but anyone familiar with John Leech's original engravings will find him miscast in his main role as Mr. Fezziwig.
In contrast, Tanja Jacobs, among five roles, is just right as the genial Mrs. Fezziwig. Susan Coyne gives us a Mrs. Crachit much more forceful than usual. Deborah Drakeford is especially good in the key role of Young Scrooge's fiancée Belle, a woman who knows Scrooge better than he does himself.
Among the four children, Henry Ziegler (a relation, I assume) is delightful as the Boy Ebenezer and as Tiny Tim. Ross Ward at only 13 already shows more authority in his two roles, Tim's older brother and a Boy, than many an adult actor.
One of the few scenes in the production where all the elements come together is in the extended wordless sequence of Mr. Fezziwig's ball, cleverly choreographed by Timothy French. Here the onlooking Scrooge is gradually drawn into the lively dances in spite of himself. We see both how isolated he has become and the potential for a renewed connection to society and its celebrations. If every scene were like this one, combining theatricality with real feeling and insight, then this "Christmas Carol" would be a triumph. As it is, you may very well feel like turning back to the source to recapture the mystery and wonder that too often are missing.
© 2001 Christopher Hoile
The Dragonfly of
Chicoutimi
by Larry Tremblay, directed by Kevin Orr
Odonata and Solar Stage, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto
January 9-27, 2002
by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"Maudit Anglais"
"The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi" is a play in English by a French-speaking Québecois playwright. If that were not odd enough, playwright Larry Tremblay has deliberately written the play so that it sounds like a literal translation from French, adhering closely to French grammar and sentence structure and often using English cognates for French words. The point of this exercise is to present us with a twofold mystery: What really happened when our narrator was a boy that still haunts him? And why is he speaking for the first time in his life in a foreign language? The questions are potentially intriguing but despite the best efforts of all concerned the play is never fully engaging and its subtext rather more simplistic than mysterious.
"Dragonfly" had its première at Montreal's Festival de Théâtre des Amériques in 1995 presented by the Théâtre d'Aujourdui. Despite the company's apprehension about presenting a play in English as a French play, it became the most successful production in that company's history and went on to tour parts of North America and Europe. Odonata and Solar Stage in association with Factory Theatre are now giving the work its belated Toronto première.
The sole person in the play is Gaston Talbot, a soft-spoken man in his late 50s and native of Chicoutimi, Quebec. Although the fact has been mentioned in preliminary news articles about "Dragonfly", we do not learn until the very end that until now Gaston has not spoken for 40 years. Speaking in a halting, childlike way, Gaston initially tries to pass himself off as a man of the world with a vision to communicate. "Keep in touch" is his motto. Soon enough he reveals this as a lie. He has never been outside of Chicoutimi--all the more wonder then that he should have had a series of nightmares in English, a language he does not know. In the course of relating these dreams, it becomes clear that Gaston is haunted by an incident in his past. While playing cowboys and Indians with his twelve-year-old friend Pierre Gagnon near his "rivière aux roches", Pierre died. Was he murdered or was it an accident?
There have been rather too many plays and films recently, like Michel Marc Bouchard's "Down Dangerous Passes Road" that played in this same venue just two months ago, for us to be very curious about the answer. After all, why should Gaston still be haunted by the death if he were not in some way involved? The more interesting question is why Gaston is speaking in such a bizarre fashion. A monolingual French-speaker suddenly speaking in English is one component, but we also wonder why this middle-aged man is speaking as if he were a child and why is it he is so given to lying to us about himself.
Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is that Tremblay,
like Bouchard in "Passes", is presenting us with an allegory
not a real character. Written as if to please academics riding the current
vogue of post-colonial studies, Tremblay presents English as the language
of the oppressor and French as the language of the oppressed. While French
is the language of nature ("rivière aux roches") and
song ("Tout va très
bien" and "J'attends le jour"), English is the language
of Gaston's nightmares and Pierre's sadistic commands. Tremblay has Gaston
label the English language as "shit" and to demonstrate how
unattractive it is he has Gaston utter a series of English words, like
"Popsicle sticks", emphasizing their consonant clusters. Needless
to say, this sort of dichotomy may go over with some French-speaking audiences,
but it will hardly wash with English-speakers or anyone who realizes that
a language's supposed beauty or harshness is subjective. More troubling
is the parallel Tremblay suggests between French-speakers and "Indians"
as if the two were somehow equally oppressed by English-speakers and as
if French-speakers did not also share in oppressing native peoples.
What emerges is a play overflowing with a self-hatred that is unpleasant and unenlightening. Gaston speaks in the nightmare language that guilt has imposed on him. He feels like a dragonfly pinned down in his uncle's insect collection.
Bilingual actor Dennis O'Connor is an ideal choice to play such a linguistically challenging part. He does as much as possible to humanize the allegory, to differentiate the Gaston of the present from his mother and past self and to bring out the wrenching emotions of the story. O'Connor's performance is in perfect accord with what we learn about Gaston at the very end of the play, but until that time it is hard to decide whether the child-like delivery and emphasis on plosives and sibilants is an affectation or part of the character. Gaston lies to make himself seem better than he is, but by presenting him thus, Tremblay makes it difficult for us get involved with a story so subject to contradiction.
Director Kevin Orr has emphasized the emotions in the play to the extent that Gaston never appears to be free of an agonizing inner turmoil. Yesim Tosuner's minimalist set consists of only a chair and table on a dais in front of three rust-coloured fabric panels. Orr has tried to bring out the aspect of the play-as-theatre by having O'Connor play the first third of the 80-minute show with lights up on the audience level, gradually moving onto the stage and finally seating himself in the chair as if Gaston gradually shifted from an ordinary person entering from the theatre's side door to a character in a play. Unfortunately, this has the undesired effect of paralleling our growing disinterest in our untrustworthy narrator. Steven Hawkins's lighting consists entirely of a beautifully managed gradual fade from the lights up at the beginning to light only on O'Connor's face at the end in the midst of darkness.
Students of Canadian drama will likely want to see this forceful if over-schematic expression of Québecois alienation. Factory Theatre Artistic Director Ken Gass has said he does not think of the play as "anti-English", but I think that is exactly how most theatregoers will take it. Even if this were not the case, most people will not look charitably on such an unmitigated dose of self-loathing that blends two languages for divisive ends.
© 2001 Christopher Hoile
Portia
Coughlan
by Marina Carr, directed by Natalie Harrower
University of Toronto Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, Glen Morris
Studio Theatre, Toronto
November 28-December 9, 2001
by Christopher Hoile,
Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
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comments and reviews are always welcome. Add them, now!
"A Haunting Irish Mystery"
"Portia Coughlan" is the first full production of a play by Irish playwright Marina Carr ever presented in Canada. Carr was the first woman to become writer-in-residence at Britain's National Theatre and her works have won acclaim in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the United States. Given this and that Modern Irish drama is so popular in this country, it is surprising that Canada has so far ignored her work. Hats off then to Natalie Harrower at the University of Toronto Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama for remedying this situation. On the evidence of her production of "Portia Coughlan," Carr is a fascinating playwright interested in the mingling of myth and history in contemporary life.
Superficially Portia would seem to be well-off housewife, all material needs met by her loving husband Raphael in a marriage that has produced three children. But as we meet her on her thirtieth birthday, she shows the hallmarks of clinical depression. She drinks too much, she feels no love for her husband, children or parents, and she flirts with both her former boyfriend and a local bartender but pushes them away when they want sex--she hates her life and what she has become. Gradually we come to know the cause. Portia is completely obsessed with the death of her twin brother Gabriel fifteen years ago and constantly visits the spot by the river Belmont where he drowned.
Except for the frequent appearances of Gabriel singing the same beautiful song about marriage, the play's procedure is primarily naturalistic in the manner of Tennessee Williams as successive conversations fill in more and more of Portia's background to explain her dangerously volatile state of mind. What is unusual is how extensive the background is that Carr gives us. Portia's longing for death is not merely due to her unnatural closeness with her twin, but to the rift between her parents, the tyranny of her father's mother, to her mother's Gypsy background and to a secret in her grandmother's parents' past. Portia justifiably asks the age-old question whether what we do is determined or just the product of "flitting from chance to chance." When Portia speaks of nature her language leaves behind its rough vulgarity and becomes poetic.
What initially seemed to be a psychological problem gradually takes on philosophical and mythic resonance. As twins Portia and Gabriel would often not know who was who. Escape together to a "place that is not here" was always their goal from childhood on. With Gabriel died everything that was good in Portia, or as she says, "Perhaps God gave us just one soul between us, and Gabriel has it." As it turns out, the apparition we have seen of Gabriel is not just a figment of Portia's imagination as we first think but has been seen and heard by others. Genders reversed, is his a siren song of death? Are they changelings as Portia supposes? Will he, like the river god Bel who gave Belmont its name, sweep her like the witch of myth along with him to the river Shannon and into the sea? Layer by layer Carr peels off any contemporary explanations of Portia's malaise to find an inescapable destiny greater than everyday realism can explain.
Harrower ably brings out all these nuances. It would be better if one scene could flow more seamlessly into the next to bring out the nightmarish aspects of the play. A greater sense of tension would have reinforced the increasingly eerie aspect the play assumes. Tanit Mendes's non-naturalistic set cleverly portrays both of Portia's worlds at once, shading from the beiges of the interior settings to the greens by the fatal spot on the Belmont. Natalie Alvarez's costumes are appropriate to each character, especially humorous for Portia's low-class, kind-hearted aunt and her milquetoast husband. Alexandra Prichard works wonders with the limited lighting board at the Glen Morris Theatre.
As might be expected from a director who so clearly understands the text, Harrower draws fine performances from a cast that includes both Equity member and students. Among the Equity members, Lesley Dowey is excellent at making Portia sullen and mercurial, but a greater intensity underlying her world-weariness would make clearer what danger Portia is in. Christopher Morris (Portia's husband Raphael) creates a very sympathetic portrait of a man trying to comprehend the mental state that has drawn Portia away from him. Ann Holloway (Portia's aunt Maggie) is hilarious, giving us a vivid picture of this reformed prostitute and Portia's most trusted confidant. Only Paula Sperdakos (Portia's mother) seems unable to muster sufficient intensity for the frequent rows with Portia and her mother-in-law.
Of the non-Equity members, Louis Adams (Damus Halion) gives a very fine performance as Portia's first boyfriend who's continued love for competes with his incomprehension at her odd behaviour. Razie Brownstone (Portia's grandmother) makes this 80-year-old wheelchair-bound woman a force to reckon with. We laugh at the outrageousness of her remarks but come to see the real malevolence they carry. Toby Steel (Portia's uncle Senchil) is very funny in his own quiet way as a husband who seems content to be henpecked. Rebecca Burton (Portia's friend Stacia) gives us a glimpse of the normal human life Portia could enjoy. Music student Wayne Gwillim lends his beautiful tenor voice to Portia's brother Gabriel bringing out just the right sense of otherworldliness and melancholy in his song. Peter Higginson (Portia's father Sly) and Andrew Gillis (the local bartender Fintan) are adequate but have not quite mastered the Irish dialect.
Irish playwrights from Synge and Yeats on have explored the myths that express themselves in everyday life. Marina Carr adds a new variation to that exploration by a kind of excavation of the everyday to discover the mystery beneath. "Portia Coughlan" is both funny and disturbing. Harrower has taken the first step in making this play and this playwright known to us. Let's hope others follow her lead.
© 2001 Christopher Hoile
The
Qualities of Zero
by Jacob Richmond, directed by Michael Kessler
Jack in the Black Theatre Inc., Tarragon Theatre, Toronto November 28-December
16, 2001
by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
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comments and reviews are always welcome. Add them, now!
"The Qualities of 'Qualities'"
"The Qualities of Zero" marks the debut in Ontario of an exciting new playwright. This, Jacob's Richmond's first play, had a trial run in Montreal in 2000 that earned it the Montreal English-Speaking Critics Award (MECA) for Best New English-Speaking Play. It is at once a hilarious satiric farce and an exploration of the conflict of intellect and emotion in the pursuit happiness. It shares some of the same themes as British playwright Terry Johnson's "Hysteria," but, though it could stand further revision, Richmond's play is ten times funnier, more engaging and much more inventive.
"The Qualities of Zero" traces the experiences of neurochemist Dr. Roland Welby as he attempts to come to terms with the death of his mother. He is a highly self-conscious genius whose hyperrational view of the world prevents him from telling or understanding jokes without explaining them. At career day at a kindergarten, Welby, still stricken with grief, strays from his topic to explain why happiness is impossible to beings who must die. His summary equation is T + EOE = PD, that is "Time plus expectation of euphoria equals perpetual disappointment." The fiasco at the school leads him to test a new drug he has developed on himself. The drug can completely block the emotional highs and lows produced by the limbic system, "happy-mad-sad land" as he calls it, thus allowing him to feel "zero" when confronting the world around him.
Madness and attempts to cope with it imbue every aspect of the play. When Welby's father died, his mother became an alcoholic and opened a Christmas store to live the happiest day of the year year-round. Welby's brother Rideau is a schizophrenic obsessed with Charlemagne's cheese-consumption who decides to go off his Thorazine after leaving a mental home. Welby's boss fantasizes that he is a Spanish pirate and when Welby's research proves that his life's work is worthless, he goes berserk and seeks revenge. The boss's wife and CEO of the company both work for is dangerously unhinged after divorcing her husband and throws herself at Welby. The lab partner Welby is attracted to despite the drug's control is a death-obsessed vegetarian who buries all the deceased lab animals in her back yard. Welby's dope-smoking neighbour has a theory about the unity of all religions and harbours a terrible secret. Although Welby's drug controls his emotions, it cannot protect him from those of others and by the end when his supply has been cut off he is entangled in the web his interactions with others has created.
Richmond's script could still use revision. It often seems more like a series of interrelated skits than a full-fledged play. It probably is not necessary to show us the before and after every time Welby injects himself since we do gather what the drug's effect is after its first few uses. The characters of Welby's boss and his wife the CEO could do with more depth without sacrificing the humour of their personalities. And the momentum of the first act seems to die out before the intermission. I am also unsure about the locus of the prologue and epilogue. Attention to these points along with a general tightening of the writing would make the play even more enjoyable than it already is.
As actor and commentator on his actions, Scott McCord as Welby is so perfect one would think the part had been written for him. It is a set of variations on emotionless-hyperintellectual-confronts-embarrassing-situation, where Welby is compelled to evaluate everything, even sex and death, in term of advantages versus disadvantages. McCord's makes Welby's non-comprehension of anything that is not strictly logical a rich fount of humour. It's easily the best comic performance I've seen so far this season. As Welby's brother Robert Tsonos avoids cliché and gives Rideau a real warmth and sense of underlying wisdom. Carly Street puts in a winning performance as Welby's potential girlfriend lending her a shyness and sensitivity that make sense of René's funerary proclivities.
The other five roles are really caricatures. Rodger Barton is very funny both Welby's boss Tom and his foul-mouthed landlord Smelsh. Barton probably could do more to make his continual outrage more varied. Barbara Gordon is excellent both as the too-prim Teacher whose class Welby disrupts and as her opposite, the sex-starved CEO. John Cleland makes Welby's zonked out neighbour Danny all too real.
A play like this could easily be ruined by a director who did not trust it and tried to make it funnier. Fortunately, Michael Kessler, in his professional debut, has realized the best way to make this play work is for the characters to take themselves and what they do as seriously as possible. Much of the humour lies in the odd rhythm of the script that continually requires Welby to catch onto things several beats after everyone else. Still, taking this into account, the overall pacing and scene changes could be snappier. The set is grey and very basic as befits the mostly institutional settings. Kessler makes good use of a digital projector to show titles for each of the scenes or "Observations" as Welby calls them. Joanne Dente's costumes are always appropriate and are especially witty for the more stereotyped characters. Given the plain set, Rick Banville's precise, inventive lighting and John Mounsteven's atmospheric sound are crucial in establishing mood and location.
Before the show begins, the projector displays significant quotations from Einstein, Santayana and Pascal all indicating the futility of Welby's experiment. The one by Einstein could be the motto for the whole play: "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." A farce that is both intelligent and funny is a rare thing and Richmond's play, with a few adjustments, has so many good qualities it deserves wide currency. I look forward to his next.
© 2001 Christopher Hoile
The
Attic, the Pearls and Three Fine Girls
by Jennifer Brewin, Leah Cherniak, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alisa Palmer and
Martha Ross,
directed by P.J. Hammond
Alumnae Theatre, Toronto November 23-December 15, 2001
by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
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comments and reviews are always welcome. Add them, now!
"An Empty Attic"
"The Attic, the Pearls and the Three Fine Girls," a collective creation by five women from Theatre Columbus, premiered at the Theatre Centre in Toronto in 1995 and was later remounted at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 1997. The five women--Jennifer Brewin, Leah Cherniak, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alisa Palmer and Martha Ross--have all gone on to greater things and their creation has received numerous productions across the country. Reviews of the original production and its remount always mention how slight the work is: it "doesn't plumb great depths nor scale great heights" as John Coulbourne wrote in 1997. But what made the play succeed was the chemistry among the three sisters. Now in 2001 the play feels slighter still, like little more than extended sitcom episode. And in the revival now playing at the Alumnae Theatre there is no sororal chemistry to redeem it.
The 80-minute play takes place almost entirely in the attic of the Fine family home. Here we see the three Fine sisters--Josephine (Jojo), Jayne and Angelica (Jelly)--in flashbacks playing games with each other as children and in the present playing games with each other as adults. The main theme of the play is how the girls' past perceptions of each other have continued to determine their present interactions. Jojo is constantly putting on airs and throwing fits, Jayne eggs her on and torments Jelly, both treat Jelly as baby and Jelly's job is to reconcile her two older sisters when their fights get out of hand. As they gather for their father's funeral and plan and carry out the party his last wishes dictate, they react to each other just as they did before, but now each has secret anxieties. Jojo, a divorced Brechtian scholar, fears she will remain childless. Jayne, a high-flying stockbroker, is carrying on a lesbian affair. Jelly, an artist, has had to spend six months and the sisters' inheritance in caring for their father at home, and she is pregnant.
The play consists of nothing but the girls' posing, fights, tears and overheard confessions, with no clue whether the three will ever resolve their differences. Then in the final five minutes the authors decide to have the three suddenly recognize the fruitlessness of their quarrels and accept each other for who they are. It feels like a tacked-on happy ending rather than anything rising organically from what has gone before, but that would be difficult since what has gone before has been so insubstantial.
One can believe that the original cast of Martha Ross (Jojo), Ann-Marie MacDonald (Jayne) and Leah Cherniak (Jelly) had the panache to make this bit of fluff a delightful amusement. Sadly the present cast of recent theatre school graduate does not have the technique much less anything nearing panache to make the play seem more than a pointless trifle. The main problem is that the acting styles of the three actors are so different that they seem hardly to be in the same play let alone seem like sisters. Jill Morrison (Jojo) is so mannered and so over-the-top that she seems to be playing a cartoon character and not any person you might know. Erin Shields (Jayne) is the most confident on stage and does project a real, more rounded character, but her interactions with the others too often fall back on techniques more appropriate to sitcoms. The symbolically named Jelly is the quiet one who ultimately holds the family together. This is the most difficult role in the play since the actor has to communicate presence and strength while constantly being ignored by the others. Rather than being the quiet centre of the play, Tina Yeung-Moore pretty much vanishes entirely. Except for two or three key scenes she seems to be sleepwalking through the part disengaged from what she is saying. Only in the various flashbacks to their girls' childhood do the three actors' styles seem to mesh and the play to work as it should.
After the finely detailed work she produced in "Talley's Folly" last year, I am surprised that P.J. Hammond could not coax subtler, more integrated performances from the cast in "The Attic." She rises to the occasion in the play's final minutes, but the previous 75 would have had to be toned down considerably for the ending not to feel as artificial as it is. She does make sure that the authors' (rather obvious) symbols carry their full weight, but given the performances they seem like islands of meaning in a sea of noise.
Hammond has assembled the same team that made "Talley's Folly" such a success and their work is equally successful in "The Attic." The play has an ideal venue in the Studio situated in the real attic of the Alumnae Theatre. Stewart Vanderlinden has struck just the right balance between enough clutter to suggest a storage space of forgotten relics and enough organized space to suggest the girls' oft-used retreat. Michael Spence's lighting is not really dim enough to suit an attic with a single window, but he does clearly signal which scenes take place outside the given time and place of the main action. Dorothy Wilson's costumes are excellent in defining the personalities of Jojo and Jayne, but she gives little visual expression to Jelly's artistic temperament.
Since "The Attic" was written there have been a number of far more substantial plays dealing with the relation of sisters. Most notable among these is British playwright Shelagh Stephenson's "The Memory of Water" (1996) seen in Toronto in 1998 and 2000. A comedy covering much the same ground as the authors of "The Attic" (albeit with six characters), Stephenson is able to extrapolate larger themes concerning the passage of time and the erosion and creation of memory. "The Attic," by contrast, seems to have been created primarily as a vehicle for the comedic talents of three of the co-authors. Without those three and without any larger resonance, "The Attic" seems very empty.