Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
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by Martin Crimp, directed by Atom Egoyan
Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
January 26-February 18, 2012
“I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” Hamlet
This is an unusual coincidence--two adaptations of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis (c. 425 bc) in Toronto in as many weeks. Last week Tafelmusik presented a staged version of Handel’s oratorio Hercules (1745) with a libretto by Reverend Thomas Broughton. This week Canadian Stage has presented the Canadian premiere of Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender (2004) based on the same source. A comparison reveals that each writer has suited the story to fit the preoccupations of his time. For his 18th-century audience Broughton omits all references in Sophocles that would reflect badly on Hercules’ heroism or the virtue of him and his captive Iole, while for the 21st century Crimp is keen to undermine both.
For someone who knows their classics, the prime interest in seeing Cruel and Tender will be to note how Crimp has updated the ancient play to the present day. For someone unfamiliar with the original, the play will likely appear willfully peculiar and not particularly compelling. To make the situation worse, the central roles are poorly played.
As in the original, Hercules’ wife, Deianira, here called Amelia (Arsinée Khanjian) is waiting for the return from war of her husband, here called the General. Impatient with the reports she receives, she sends her son Hyllus, here called James (Jeff Lillico), to find his father. Soon afterwards, Amelia/Deianira learns her husband has returned and has brought two captives with him, the sole survivors of his siege against their city. In Sophocles this is Iole, who is alone. In Crimp it is Laela (Abena Malika) and a Boy (Murtada Abdelkarim), who is her brother. As in Sophocles, Amelia/Deianira learns that Laela/Iole is not merely a captive of war, but her husband’s mistress. Worse than that, the General/Hercules has deliberately destroyed the city because of his desire to possess Laela/Iole. Amelia/Deianira is used to her husband having mistresses, but she finds it intolerable that she should have to share her home with one. To win back his love, Amelia/Deianira has a substance given her by one of her husband’s enemies that she is told will work as a love potion. In Sophocles she sends her husband a cloak impregnated with it; in Crimp a pillow with a breakable vial of it inside. In both Sophocles and Crimp the substance poisons the General/Hercules, rendering him insane with agony, while Amelia/Deianira, distraught at what she has done, commits suicide.
As with Crimp’s adaptation of Molière’s The Misanthrope, presented by the Tarragon Theatre last year, Crimp uses the earlier text to satirize the present. His hubris in substituting his own rhyming couplets and present day preoccupations for Molière’s was intolerable. Here satirizing some aspects of present-day war--media spin and military euphemisms for horrible deeds--doesn’t sit well beside his mention of genocide and child soldiers. The satire also has the effect of neutralizing any sense of tragedy. In both Crimp’s Misanthrope and now Cruel and Tender, one cannot help thinking that it could be better to present a good translation of the original and bring out its contemporary resonance through a modern dress staging, not through rewriting the text with so little effect.
Atom Egoyan has proved he is an imaginative stage director. Both his Salome and Die Walküre for the Canadian Opera Company were huge successes. He had the built-in advantage that those two operas are masterpieces. Cruel and Tender, though interesting, is not. The greatest problem, however, is that Egoyan has cast his wife in the central role of Amelia. There is no point in mincing words. Khanjian may be a fine actor on film, but she is not effective on stage. English is not her first or second language and she speaks it with a heavy accent. The rhythm is not natural and her pronunciation is often bizarre. Crimp’s prose is spare like Pinter’s and much meaning derives as in Pinter from the judicious placing of emphasis and pauses. Since Khanjian has not mastered the correct placing of emphasis in pauses in ordinary English, she can hardly move on to the techniques that Crimp demands. The result is that it is very hard to understand what her character is saying much less to derive any nuance from her speech.
Khanjian is effective at generating emotion, but that effect extends to only about a foot or two from where she is. That is why her way of acting works on film. Having seen virtually all of her appearances in plays in Toronto, I can aver that her effectiveness on stage is in inverse proportion to the size of the venue. When playing the foreign princess Andromache in Racine’s play for Necessary Angel last year, she was fine due to the nature of the role and the tiny size of the theatre. In a theatre as large as the Bluma Appel, she is totally ineffective. We know she is emoting but about what is unclear. It shows the blindness of love but a lack of self-knowledge in both husband and wife that Egoyan should ask Khanjian to play the role and that she should accept.
Khanjian is not the only liability. Unlike Sophocles, Crimp delays the General’s/Hercules’ appearance until two-thirds through the action. The General is supposed to be dying and insane. What actor Daniel Kash thinks he is portraying is anyone’s guess. All we get is that he is angry, obnoxious and given to blustering about the Hydra, the Nemean Lion and Apples of the Hesperides. Egoyan has him presented with a urine collection bag, but why he should be catheterized after a poisoning makes no medical sense.
In these extremely adverse conditions, the rest of the cast do a fine job. Brenda Robins brings a wry humour and precision to the Housekeeper, who stands in for the Nurse in Sophocles. Jeff Lillico is excellent in conveying James/Hyllus’ bewilderment at being sent away and in expressing the horror of the truth he discovers about his father. Nigel Shawn Williams is suitably slimy and self-important as the press agent Jonathan, Crimp’s version of the messenger Lichas. Thomas Hauff is sympathetic as Richard, who has to balance his loyalties to the General and to Amelia. Abena Malika appears first abused, then seductive--is mute, then speaks fluent English, then speaks in heavy dialect. The inconstancies lie not in her acting but in Crimp’s text and Egoyan’s direction.
Designer Debra Hanson has created an all-white set that suggests an ultramodern dwelling though having a roll-up garage door in the living room does take away from its grandeur. The main advantage of its whiteness is that it allows Egoyan to use the stage right wall as a screen--first for a montage of war after the captives arrive and then for live video projection of the General’s agony. These are the most effective sequences in the production, and Michael Walton deserves credit for his masterful lighting that segues into and out of the projections.
Having seen two adaptations of Sophocles’ tragedy one week after the other, there is no question which is more successful. Broughton’s libretto for Handel may whitewash the Hercules-Iole relationship and never mentions why Hercules destroyed Iole’s country, but as a narrative it draws one in and makes us care about all of the principal characters. Broughton does not have Deianira die, but leaves her in a state of madness that becomes a strange foil to the happiness of Hyllus and Iole about to marry. Crimp’s Hercules does not throw himself on a pyre to end his suffering but becomes a victim of a change in political strategy where his rogue battles undermine policy. Crimp does not engage us because he does not make us care about any of the characters or what happens to them and he tells us nothing about war that is not a cliché. The result is 90 minutes of boredom with the play and irritation at the performances of Khanjian and Kash.
Let’s hope this experience does not discourage Egoyan from further stage direction but let’s also hope that he makes sure his decisions about all the elements of the production, including the casting, proceed not from personal tenderness but from what will be most effective on stage.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Arsinée Khanjian and Abena Malika. ©2012 Bruce Zinger.
For tickets, visit www.canadianstage.com.
2012-01-28
Cruel and Tender