Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
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by Catherine Muschamp, directed by Jean LeClerc
Coeur de Lion Company & Lioness Productions Ltd., Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto
September 10, 2005
Most people probably think of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) as she was portrayed by Katherine Hepburn in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter. In her recent play, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Canadian-born playwright Catherine Muschamp, now 88, give the most powerful woman of the Middle Ages a play of her own that depicts her as the first feminist. Unfortunately, what could have been a fascinating story boils down to a one-sided 80-minute diatribe against Eleanor’s two husbands.
The play begins with an aged Eleanor imagining she has to make a deposition to a court of the dead to defend herself against the charge of heresy, specifically her belief in the equality of men and women. This contrived set-up allows Muschamp to have Eleanor tell us her life story. We hear how she married first Louis VII of France then Henry II of England, how she went on the Crusades, how she became mother to two English kings, Richard the Lionheart and John, and how Henry imprisoned her for treason. Chapelle Jaffe’s Eleanor can be imperious, forceful, bitterly funny and chillingly cruel, but uses the same tiresome tone of scorn throughout.
Muschamp’s pseudo-Shakespearean narrative mixes so much fiction (e.g., Henry’s murdering his sons) with fact in that director Jean LeClerc should make clear that what we see is not the truth but Eleanor’s highly self-serving account of it. This would bring out greater depth both in Eleanor and in the play.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-08-25.
Photo: Chapelle Jaffe as Eleanor of Aquitaine.
2005-08-25
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother of the Pride