Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✭✭✩
by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson,
directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin
Toronto Operetta Theatre, Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto
February 20-22, 2009
“A ‘Holiday’ Full of Surprises”
Illegal arms trading condoned by the government, a government that plans to keep tabs on all its citizens, a government that encourages unlimited loans to provoke a financial meltdown, an unnecessary invasion of another country to cause the populace to rally behind the government and overlook its flaws--all this could belong to a contemporary satire of the former US administration. In fact, all this is part of the prescient 1938 musical “Knickerbocker Holiday” by Kurt Weill with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson now receiving is Canadian premiere by Toronto Operetta Theatre. The work is a real eye-opener and the TOT gives it fine, energetic production. This is a show no music theatre fan should miss.
Given the work’s hot political content it’s not surprising that it has lain unperformed for seventy years. Its strong anti-big government and anti-war stance has something to irk both American liberals and conservatives. Luckily, we in Canada are able to step back to appreciate the work on its own considerable merits. The work’s framing structure is unusual in itself. The first character we meet is the author Washington Irving (1783-1859) whose book “A History of New York” (1809) published under the pseudonym “Diedrich Knickerbocker” forms the basis for the story. Irving was the first American author to make a living as a writer and throughout the musical tells the audience which elements of the story he has to boost or tone down to make his book a popular success. Thus Anderson provides Weill with the alienation device of a narrator not unlike the Ballad-Singer in Weill and Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera”. Irving constantly shows us how he has to fictionalize history to make it palatable.
The story is set in New Amsterdam, the capital of the 17th-century Dutch colony on Manhattan that later in 1674 in British hands became New York City. The holiday of the title is “Hanging Day” in 1647, and as all the prisoners have escaped from the city gaol, the city councillors are looking for someone to execute to celebrate the arrival of the colony’s new governor Peter Stuyvesant (1612-72). They think they’ve found exactly the right candidate in Brom Broeck, a man who nature rebels against taking orders. Unfortunately, Brom and Tina, the daughter of the head councillor, are in love and Tina’s father has promised her in marriage to Stuyvesant. Even worse, while the old city council was inept and corrupt, Stuyvesant plans to replace it with a government not far removed from fascism. Weill and Anderson intended to rally Americans against growing fascist movements abroad, but their ploy of finding an analog for fascism in the early American colonies likely made the musical too politically hot for revival. Also, their characterization of democracy as a “government by amateurs”, no matter how true, cannot have helped.
The TOT production, directed, designed and lit by TOT General Director Guillermo Silva-Marin, makes an excellence case for the musical, so much so that if it had a longer run I would have dropped in to see it again. The work constantly shifts in mood from satire to seriousness and back, and in the TOT production these transitions could be much smoother than they are. Nevertheless, the show’s relevance to issues today is a constant surprise.
The fine cast is anchored by the engaging Irving of Curtis Sullivan, whose muscular baritone shines in the Brechtian “Ballad of the Robbers” and especially in the reprise of the lively “There’s Nowhere to Go but Up!” Dale Miller makes an excellent Brom with a solid tenor and fine acting that fully conveys his character’s pent-up rage at injustice. As his sweetheart Tina, Amy Wallis has a smallish but strong soprano whose high notes ride over even the largest choral passages. Miller and Wallis’s singing of the one of the show’s most famous songs, “It Never was You”, is truly lovely and their emotional rendition of “We are Cut in Twain” reveals the song as an overlooked gem. David Ludwig gives a masterful performance as Stuyvesant. He quite unexpectedly has the show’s most famous song, “September Song”, used in context as a plea to Tina not to reject him just because of his advanced age. Ludwig gives such a moving account of the song, he forces us to see that there is a human side to this Machiavellian dictator, a key point that is, in fact, necessary for the dénouement.
It’s luxury casting to have someone of the calibre of Réjean Cournoyer in the secondary role of the councillor Roosevelt and one can only wish the role were larger to give lush voice and fine acting skills greater play. Ford Roberts makes for a rather stiff Mynheer Tienhoven but provides a good bluff contrast to the the insidious Stuyvesant. Justin Ralph makes a good showing as Brom’s best friend Tenpin.
There is much more to “Knickerbocker Holiday” than its two best-known songs. The heavy use of the chorus, often repeating phrases of the leads moves this musical into the realm of operetta and Anderson’s fondness for polysyllabic rhymes shows the influence of W. S. Gilbert. “How Can You Tell an American?” is pretty much this show’s answer to “He Is an Englishman” from “H.M.S. Pinafore”. The chorus gives the beautiful “Dirge for a Soldier” full dramatic weight reminiscent of “The Prisoner Comes” in “The Yeomen of the Guard”. On the other hand, the heavy irony of the rousing chorus “To War!” with its lyrics “To war, to war, to war / We don't know what we're fighting for", reminds one of the savagely satiric “Kanonen-Song” from “The Threepenny Opera”. Throughout the choral singing is excellent and conductor David Speers, General Director of Opera Hamilton, leads the ten-member TOT Orchestra in a crisp, lively reading of the score.
Over time the February slot in the TOT’s season has become the home for its rarest treats. One thinks of the world premiere of Victor Davies’ “Earnest, The Importance of Being” last year, Kálmán’s “Gypsy Violins” in 2007, Weill’s “Lady in the Dark” in 2006, Barbieri’s “El Barberillo de Lavapiés” in 2005 and Calixa Lavallée’s “The Widow” in 2004. In bringing such rarities to the stage, the TOT adds immeasurably to the vibrancy of musical theatre life in Toronto. For that we should be very thankful.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: David Ludwig as Stuyvesant.
2009-02-22
Knickerbocker Holiday