Does
the name Joan Littlewood (1914-2002) ring a bell?
If
not, go directly to your local library and see if you
can get a hold of her 1994 autobiography, Joan's Book.
It is a great testimony to a life spent
in the service of the theatre and ranks right up there on the required
reading
list with Stanislavski, Brecht, Grotowski, Brook and Boal. In Toronto
we know
her legacy through the late George Luscombe (1926-1999) who worked with
Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in the 1950s, touring the U.K. before
returning
to Toronto in 1959 and established Toronto Workshop Productions where,
for 30
years, he mounted highly acclaimed productions such as Ten Lost Years,
Les
Canadiens and Ain't Lookin' which
embraced the same populist, public theatre approach to
playmaking that
Littlewood leaned toward. Unapologetically political and leftwing, one
might
say that both Littlewood and Luscombe took what might have remained
simple
agit-prop ideas and turned them into dramatic art by endowing their
plays with
production values that emanated from an ensemble based presentational
style
that matured and coalesced into pertinent, compelling theatre. When
dealing
with the classical repertoire (as both often did) they ensured that the
actor
and the playwright took centre stage rather than the trickery of clever
stagecraft or the sheen of expensive costume appliqué.
So
good for Albert Schultz, artistic director of
Soulpepper Theatre, for sensing that the time was right for a major
revival of
Littlewood's Oh! What A Lovely War
just as the United States is putting pressure on Canada to extend its
troop
commitment in Afghanistan beyond the 2011 deadline currently set by
Parliament,
to remind us of the sheer folly of this war (as well as the Soviet
invasion of
the late 1970s that preceded it) and the spurious notion that the
conflict
could ever be settled by an increased military occupation in that part
of the
world.
The
program notes for Oh! What A Lovely War recall that
British theatrical treatments of warfare, up to the 1960s (the play
debuted in
1963) were generally constructed as well-made plays containing much
gravitas
and the usual soul searching by military officers who were sent off on
foreign
assignments to "get the job done." Oh! What A
Lovely War subverted all of these tropes by
injecting a free flowing, almost improvisational musical hall style
that
parodied well known songs of the day and invented new lyrics wherever
they saw
fit. Combing this frivolity with the brutal statistics of World War I,
along
with serious descriptive narrative from sources such as Charles
Chilton's The
Long, Long Trail produced a chilling disconnect within
audiences similar to the
work of Brecht and Piscator.
Schultz
effectively uses what is fast becoming de rigueur
for musical theatre these days by deploying actors onto the stage who
also act
as musicians. Michael Hanrahan is a personable emcee for the
evening (much in
the mold of Ricky Gervais) and Oliver Dennis is a wonderfully
pompous captain
(among other roles) marching his troops off in all of the wrong
directions. Strong work also
coming from Raquel Duffy, Ryan Field, Alison Jutzi,
Ins Choi, George Masswohl
and Karen Rae with the musical direction of Marek Norman
anchoring the overall
exceptionally talented cast.
Lorenzo
Savoini takes the whole commedia del arte motif
one step further with a thoughtfully designed generic harlequin style
costume/uniform worn by the entire company that only further visually
emphasizes the folly and futility of war.