Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
The deaths of several prominent members of the theatre world cast a pall over 2007. This year we lost passionate arts benefactor Bluma Appel, COC General Director Richard Bradshaw, Canada’s greatest classical actor William Hutt and iconic theatre entrepreneur Ed Mirvish. Three of these lived long enough to bask in the glow of their achievements, but Bradshaw’s death at 63, the year after he opened Canada’s first-ever opera house with the Wagner’s mammoth Ring Cycle, cut him off at the pinnacle of his career. In theatre this was the year of the remount. Audiences had a second chance to see such fine productions as Daniel MacIvor’s Monster and House, John Mighton’s Half Life, Company Theatre’s A Whistle in the Dark, Nightwood’s The Danish Play and Factory’s The Real McCoy. To be fair to new productions, I have had to exclude these from my alphabetic list of the year’s best shows.
Crave. Nightwood Theatre finally brought Sarah Kane’s compelling 1998 play to Toronto in an immaculate production. This abstract poetic work about death and desire was the most intellectually challenging and emotionally devastating play of the year.
Edward Scissorhands. Though Matthew Bourne is a choreographer he requires such detailed acting in his narrative ballets that they also count as theatre. Inspired by the Tim Burton film, this new work was so inventive it already felt like a classic.
How It Works. The Tarragon’s fine production of Daniel MacIvor’s first play since his farewell to his solo shows found him in a mellow mood, focussing not on familial horror but on the possibility of healing the rifts that tear families apart.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The COC’s new production of Shostakovich’s opera updated to the 1930s was the most powerful opera production of the year sung by a flawless cast with the orchestra white-hot under the baton of late Richard Bradshaw.
Leaving Home. Soulpepper’s first production of a Canadian play was a triumph. A top-notch cast including Kenneth Welsh, Diane D’Aquila and a hilarious Jane Spidell fully captured the nuances of pain and humour in David French’s realist family drama.
The Pillowman. Under David Ferry’s direction the BirdLand/Canadian Stage production of Martin McDonagh’s Kafkaesque drama swung with assurance between terror and comedy in a bone-chilling tale about the interaction of fiction and reality.
Scorched. The Tarragon gave a hugely impressive account of Lebanese-Canadian Wajdi Mouawad’s epic work about twins on a quest through horrors of a civil war in the Middle East, a play filled with unforgettable scenes of humanity at its best and worst.
Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. The NewWorldStage festival brought us yet another masterpiece of minimalist direction from Peter Brook. He stripped this great South African play about hierarchy and identity to its essence while its two French-African actors gave performances of the highest calibre.
Sweeney Todd. British director John Doyle’s re-imagining of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece was like a trip to an alternate universe where singers in the musical were also the orchestra. This brilliant concept not only highlighted the amazing talents of the cast but also confronted us more directly with the crazed world of the musical.
Top Girls. Soulpepper had another hit on its hands with its incisive production of Caryl Churchill’s landmark feminist play. Precise direction and impeccable acting made Churchill’s critique of
capitalism’s malignant effect on the woman’s movement as relevant now as it was in the 1980s.
And the worst...
Mabou Mines DollHouse based on Ibsen’s famous play featured dwarfs as the male actors, fake Norwegian accents, slapstick and a dollhouse set with miniature props. Director Lee Breuer’s supposed “deconstruction” of the classic was in reality a sophomoric prank with delusions of grandeur that would make any play, not just Ibsen’s, look ridiculous.
Note: A version of this list appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-12-14.
Photo: Janick Hebert and Valerie Buhagiar in Scorched. ©2007 Cylla von Tiedemann.
2007-12-14
Best Productions of 2007