AISLE SAY, ONTARIO: THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL
MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN
by Bertolt Brecht
Directed by Martha Henry
Starring Seana McKenna
Tom Patterson Theatre through September 21
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
by Lewis Carroll
Adapted for the stage by James Reaney
Directed by Jillian Keiley
Avon Theatre through October 12
www.stratfordfestival.ca
CRAZY FOR YOU
Music by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin
Book by Ken Ludwig
Directed and choreographed by Donna Feore
Starring Josh Franklin and Natalie Daradich
Festival Theatre through October 12
www.stratfordfestival.ca
ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA
by William Shakespeare
Starring Yanna McIntosh and Geraint Wyn Davies
Directed by Gary Griffin
At the Festival Theatre August 3 through September 28
www.stratfordfestival.ca
A MIDSUMMER NIGHTÕS DREAM a chamber play
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Peter Sellars
Featuring Sarah Afful, Trush Lindstrom, Mike Nadajewski and Dion Johnstone
Playing until September 20 at the Masonic Lodge in Stratford
CHRISTINA, THE GIRL KING
by Michel Marc Bouchard
Directed by Vanessa Porteous
Set design by Michael Gianfrancesco
Starring Jenny Young
Studio Theatre
THE BEAUXÕ STRATAGEM
by George Farquhar
Directed by Antoni Cimolino
Featuring Mike Shara, Colm Feore, Bethany Jillard, Lucy Peacock, Scott Wentworth and Martha Henry
Reviewed by Robin Breon
Three late season openings at the Stratford Festival - Anthony and Cleopatra, Chistina the Girl King and The BeauxÕ Stratagem) prompt this additional retrospective of the 2014 SF season.
The two classic plays in the 20th century that most profoundly correlate the relationship between war and capitalism that come into my mind immediately are George Bernard ShawÕs Major Barbara and Bertolt BrechtÕs Mother Courage and Her Children. ShawÕs play features the unscrupulous, Andrew Undershaft, a powerful munitions manufacturer who quips: ÒIf God gave man the hand, let not man withhold the sword.Ó War is his business. The scavenger Mother Courage, (a.k.a. Anna Firling) could have been in dialog with Undershaft when she proclaims: ÒI wonÕt let you spoil my war for me. Destroys the weak, does it? Well, what does peace do for Ôem, huh? War feeds its people better.Ó
Undershaft made millions from war profiteering, while placating his moral conscience with a large donation to his daughterÕs work with the Salvation Army. Mother Courage made a pittance off of scavenging battlefields during EuropeÕs Thirty Year War while losing two sons and a daughter. But at the end of the day, both still place their bets on the masters of war, odds on favorites every time.
Martha HenryÕs direction of BrechtÕs classic anti-way play is flawless. And in Seana McKenna she has a powerful Mother who can finagle anyone and everyone except fate. The production is all the stronger, to my mind, because Henry retains the epic construction in the play (which Brecht felt was central to his thesis) but eschews the Òalienation effectÓ in favor of a more audience friendly approach. In the end, I think it brings home BrechtÕs message even more powerfully, especially for a North American audience.
Canadian
playwright James ReaneyÕs (1926 - 2008) adaptation of Lewis CarrollÕs Alice Through the Looking Glass is a delightful journey into the surreal that
is so artfully directed by Jillian Keiley that we forget it is a familiar classic. WhatÕs old seems reformatted and absolutely new. All
the old acquaintances are here (ÒJabberwockyÓ, ÒThe
Walrus and the CarpenterÓ Tweedledum
and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, etc) but the lines and the characters seem like
theyÕve been given a new lease on life - which they
have.
Of
course the credit for this visual and performance delight (which maintains
Lewis CarrollÕs overall concept of a
chess match) must also be extended to Bretta Gerecke (set design), Kimberly Purtell (lighting) and Dayna Tekatch (choreography) along with a marvelous ensemble
that includes Trish Lindstrom
(Alice), Sanjay Talwar and Mike
Nadajewski (Tweedledee and
Tweedledum), Cynthia Dale
(Red Queen), and Brian Tree
as Humpty Dumpty who could be reading the phonebook with that hugely
entertaining droll deadpan of his - and this is just to name a few within the
cast of twenty-one actors. The Stratford Festival has brought their A Team to
the annual Òfamily entertainmentÓ show and clears the board. Check and checkmate.
When
Crazy for You premiered on
Broadway in 1992 it became the new gold standard for anyone contemplating a so
called Òjukebox musicalÓ that transformed a previously published
songbook into a full fledged piece of musical theatre. As such, it set the stage
for Mama Mia (1999), Jersey
Boys (2005) and numerous
others that would follow.
Donna
FeoreÕs current production
appearing on the Festival stage at Stratford until mid October delivers all of
the old razzamatazz and then some. Josh Franklin (as Bobby Child) and Natalie Daradich (Polly Baker) are the dynamic young leads that
keep the sleepy desert town of Deadrock, Nevada, humming and I do mean humming.
Because in the end, it is the music and the dance that carries this show.
Tap
is of course the medium and, unlike Susan Stroman (Crazy for YouÕs original Broadway choreographer) who, at
times veered into the territory of environmental performance groups like Stomp
who were just coming on the scene in the early 90s, Feore sticks to the stuff
she knows best: tap, tap, tap..... and more tap until you just donÕt see how these folks could have another
kick-ball-change in them. Surely one of the most high energy performances I
have ever witnessed with the sweat just pouring off of everyone by the end of
the second act.
The
beautifully choreographed drunken hangover ÒmirrorÓ scene with Franklin and Tom
Rooney (playing the
Ziegfeld-like character, Bela Zangler) is just ballet-like in its precision and
alone is worth the price of admission. There are many other delights that could
be called out but this will have to do. Suffice it to say, that between this
show and King Lear, the
FeoreÕs are keeping the Festival Theatre filled to
capacity this season.
There
is a photograph of Yanna McIntosh as Cleopatra in the Stratford production program that shows the
Egyptian queen in a posture of luxurious repose with the facial expression of a
mature seductress. There is much
to be read into her gaze but unfortunately not so much in her performance.
Whether the cause is a lack of attraction to her Anthony, here played in
statesman-like fashion by Geraint Wyn Davies, or just the difficulties inherent in this
problematic and not all that often produced play is difficult to discern.
Probably a combination of both.
G.B.
Shaw was apparently so disturbed by the quality of the script that he swore he
could write a better one and he did with Caesar and Cleopatra which was first
staged in 1901. Compounding matters with A&C, is the direction of Gary
Griffin, which adds nothing to
the play and sometimes gets in its way.
As
I say, the play has disturbed and defeated many over the years, and here in the
Tom Patterson Theatre in 2014 is no exception. But kudos to the S.F. for taking
on the tougher, less produced plays. IÕve been
waiting years for them to make a run at Troilus and Cressida which I think is one of the bardÕs great plays with huge contemporary relevancy
around the question of war. But these plays are certainly not without their
challenges as the Festival will soon find out next season when it takes on some
of the apocryphal (or Òspurious
and doubtful worksÓ as some
variorum editions call them) from the Shakespeare canon.
Peter
SellarsÕ take on A Midsummer
NightÕs Dream (a
chamber play) might be likened
to a master class in theatre improvisation. Four top rated professionals are
given an opportunity to work with a world renowned director on a new version of
ShakespeareÕs most perfect comedy. The
actors assemble for their first rehearsal and the process begins. The director
tells the actor, ÒI know this speech reads
very funny as text and is normally played for laughs, but I want you to try it
as if you were a very frustrated and alienated lover who has just been unfairly
treated and is planning a violent revenge.Ó
And
so it goes, as the four actors create a play out of text that is familiar yet
foreign. It is something that we have never seen or heard before and to
understand what the play is about, we must listen to speeches that we thought
we knew but never have heard quite like this.
Sarah
Afful, Dion Johnstone, Trish Lindstrom and Mike Nadajewski are the gifted actors working with the master
director and they excel in the exercise in a multiplicity or roles. The play
will certainly not be everybodyÕs cup of
tea and so I will leave it to the ticket buying public and the unseen hand of
the market place to determine whether or not the eighty bucks a a pop proves to
be a worthwhile investment.
Playwright
Michel Marc Bouchard has
given theatre goers great pleasure over the years with works like The
Madonna Painter and The
Coronation Voyage as
standouts. His works are nicely framed and often intellectually engaging.
Christina, the Girl King is right up there with his best work to date.
Already
the subject of numerous books, films, operas and plays, Queen Christina of
Sweden was queen regnant in the 17th century. This bio-play portrays the final
period of her reign before abdicating the throne at the age of 22. From an
early age, she dressed like a man, engaged in a long-time same sex relationship
with her lover, Ebba Sparre, (who was a member of her court) and took on the
most passionate debates of her time whether intellectual or artistic. She was a
lover of the theatre and a patron of the arts and, as the setting of BouchardÕs play portrays, a student of the philosopher
and mathematician Rene Descartes who moved to Stockholm at the end of his life
to tutor Christina.
Having
written and directed a bio-play once myself (based on the life of 19th century
African American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge) I can readily attest they
are fraught with problems. When the playwright admires the subject, there is
the possibility of erring on the side of hagiography. When the playwright
detests the subject (e.g. horrible dictators of history), their is potential
for superficial characterization with no redeeming qualities or moral insights.
ItÕs a puzzlement and my sympathies are with the
playwright.
We
are fortunate here that Jenny Young is such a compelling Christina who engages in her passion for a woman with the same zeal that she takes on
the raging debate of Catholics versus Protestants and the emerging ideas of the
Enlightenment. In fact, these dueling dialectics only come into visual conflict
once when director Vanessa Porteous mistages a parallel action scene that has Christina and la belle Ebba
in silent flagrante delicto
while Descartes (John Kirkpatrick) provides philosophical exegesis on the advancement of science. Now I
ask you - who do you think commands the audience attention in this scene?
My only other quibble with this production is the set. Michael Gianfrancesco is one of my favorite designers and IÕve seen his work in a number of very different, and often challenging venues. Although the Studio Theatre is StratfordÕs smallest stage, that doesnÕt mean design needs to be sacrificed and here it looks like Gianfrancesco just wasnÕt given much to do. When Christina departed her castle for life in exile in 1654 (in male disguise traveling as ÒCount DohnaÓ for security reasons), she took down off her castle walls dozens of paintings, tapestries, statuary, books and other decorative arts that left the place sorely depleted. It would have been fun to see a replication of this environment rather than the bare walls of drab black and gray shadows that no Christina we know would have tolerated for a minute.
With
a record breaking season at the box office, artistic director Antoni Cimolino can now sit back and relax a bit with his late
season capper of The BeauxÕ Stratagem now up and running in the Festival Theatre.
Beyond CimolinoÕs note
perfect pacing and overall direction of the production there are a number of
additional reasons to see this show and IÕd like to name them here: Mike Shara, Colm Feore, Bethany Jillard,
Lucy Peacock, Scott Wentworth, Martha Henry, Michael Blake, Evan Buliung, David Collins, Victor Ertmanis, Sara Farb, Xuan Fraser, Brad Hodder, Robert King, Josue Laboucane, Gordon S.
Miller, Chick Reid, Tara Rosling, Michael Spencer-Davis, Karl Ang, Thomas Olajide, Laura Schutt, Natalie Daradich, Alexandra Herzog, Bethany Kovarik, Derek Moran and Mike Tracz.