✭✭✩✩✩

music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, directed by Eda Holmes

Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

November 22-December 18, 2004

“This isn’t Mamma Mia,” an actor says early on in CanStage’s latest show.  It sure isn’t.  Mamma Mia is an anthology of ABBA songs made into a fun musical held together by a clever plot.  Side by Side by Sondheim in an anthology of Sondheim’s songs made into a bare-bones revue held together with leaden narration without a build-up in momentum or emotion.  Sondheim was created in London 1976 to make Brits more familiar with the great songwriter/lyricist’s works.  It’s 2004 now.  Sondheim has written much more since 1976.  So why present this dated tribute?  The simple answer is that it’s cheap.  It needs only four actors and two pianos instead of an orchestra. 

The trouble is the CanStage production also looks and sounds cheap.  The set is an empty all-black platform.  The cast's unflattering formalwear looks found at Goodwill.  There are no footlights so the singers’ faces have nose-shadows hiding their mouths.  The primitive sound system gives the miked music a boxy quality with glare on anything loud or high.  Why go to the theatre when you’d get better sound at home?

Besides this, “script consultant” Morwyn Brebner and director Eda Holmes have misguidedly changed the show’s structure.  In the original a non-singing narrator provided comically pedantic introductions to the 30 plus songs sung by two women and a man.  Now two women (Mary Ann McDonald and Julain Molnar) and two men (Dan Chameroy and Jay Turvey) do the singing and share the narration.  The result is the sort of hokey teleprompter-style “banter” that one hears between presenters on TV awards shows.  Of the four only Molnar seems comfortable as both singer and co-host.

All four are excellent interpreters of Sondheim’s wittily complex style.  They and Sondheim deserve far better than this.  It’s like a hick town’s dinner theatre production without the dinner.          

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-12-02.

Photo: Julain Molnar, Dan Chameroy, Jay Turvey and Mary Ann MacDonald.

©2004 CanStage.