Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✭✩✩
by R. Murray Schafer, directed by Tim Albery
Soundstreams Canada, 153 Dufferin St., Toronto
June 8-11, 2009
R. Murray Schafer’s latest opera The Children’s Crusade, now having its world premiere as part of Luminato, proves to be a disappointment. What seemed to be so fascinating in the abstract turns out to be less exciting in practice. Schafer’s insistence on presenting the work in promenade style in an unconventional venue is a major impediment to its enjoyment.
Modern historians now regard the so-called Children’s Crusade of the 13th century as fiction. In any case, Schafer is not interested history but in the elemental tensions in the story between the adult and child, experience and innocence, cynicism and idealism. In Schafer’s abstract retelling, a French shepherd boy called the Holy Child (boy soprano Jacob Abrahamse), urged on by visions of a Muslim woman in distress (singer Maryem Tollar) and by a mysterious personage called the Magus (actor Diego Matamoros), sets out to bring love, not war, to Jerusalem. His charisma galvanizes a hoard of orphans and homeless children follow him in a noble quest that ends in disaster.
Schafer has long held the notion that audiences should overcome their traditional passivity to become active participants in the journey of a story. It’s a fine idea but Soundstreams and Luminato allow about twice as many participants to make this journey than is ideal. Each of the performance stations in the disused warehouse is too crowded, and I felt sorry for anyone who is short or has mobility issues since even the tall and sturdy will find they cannot see everything they’d like. Rather than feeling like part of a spiritual quest, one is in a state of constant distraction trying to see or hear better or trying to ignore the yakking as people are politely herded from place to place.
Schafer’s music is consistently inventive combining modern, medieval and Middle Eastern instruments to create a wide range delectable sonorities. The most magical moments musically and dramatically are the work’s beginning with its strange heavenly music for a choir of angels and the conclusion when the children, drowned in the sea, reawaken to eternal life. In between, Schafer’s narrative is patchy or absurd. How do female prostitutes plan to seduce a boy whose voice has yet not broken? More importantly, Schafer’s presentation of the Holy Child’s quest is confusing. Not just wicked adults, but the angels and the Holy Child’s visions of Jerusalem all seem to lure the Child and his followers to their doom--a nihilistic world view surely contrary to Schafer’s intent. Despite this, director Tim Albery works wonders in drawing intense performances from the huge cast and designer Leslie Travers makes the most of a small budget and the apparent inventory of Mark’s Work Wearhouse. Though Schafer would doubtless forbid it, The Children’s Crusade really cries out for the wider possibilities of stagecraft and the greater atmosphere of concentration a proper theatre would provide.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-06-09.
Photo: Jacob Abrahamse. ©Steve Wilkie.
2009-06-09
The Children’s Crusade