Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✩✩✩
music and lyrics by Allen Cole, book and lyrics by Melody A. Johnson and Rick Roberts, directed by Alisa Palmer
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
September 23-October 25, 2009
The Tarragon Theatre has opened its 39th season with the world premiere of Mimi, or A Poisoner’s Comedy, a musical so ineptly written and directed it is a waste of the considerable talents of all those involved. With its title character a serial killer and its frequent use of symbolic pies, the musical unavoidably invites comparison with Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (1979), always to its own detriment.
Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630-76), a.k.a. Mimi (Trish Lindström), so outrages her father (Victor A. Young) with her debauchery that he has her lover Godin de Sainte-Croix (Ron Pederson) imprisoned and threatens to cut off her funds unless she reforms. While inside, Sainte-Croix learns the secret of poisoning which he imparts to Mimi upon his release, not knowing that she will find murder an addictive thrill. The story’s intriguing possibilities are ruined by a superficial book by Melody A. Johnson and Rick Roberts far too convinced of its own cleverness. While Allen Cole provides zestful music and a haunting refrain in the “Pigeon Pie” song, the muddy diction of the four male singers makes the complicated lyrics incomprehensible even when they can actually hit the notes Cole has written. In contrast, Tamara Bernier Evans in a variety of roles and Lindström singly clearly and well and are the least inclined to chew the scenery.
The show’s worst flaw is its complete failure to explore its subject matter. There’s no reason “dark comedies” can’t have substance. If fact, one expects it. Johnson and Roberts make much of Mimi’s sympathy with her mother, but this gives us no clue to her utter heartlessness. The real Mimi poisoned her husband, their children, her father, her four siblings, her lover and unknown numbers of poor people. This Mimi kills only four, but any time the story comes near to peering into the darkness of its subject, it shifts into cheap comedy as when the limbless man Mimi poisons as an experiment falls face-first into his pie. Like Sweeney Todd, Mimi could have been presented as an expression of the hypocritically moralistic society around her. Instead, the creators give us a forgettable under-rehearsed slapstick cartoon.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-09-29.
Photo: Marin Julien and Trish Lindström. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2009-09-29
Mimi, or A Poisoner’s Comedy