Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
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music by Marek Norman, book and direction by Morris Panych
Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford
June 20-September 28, 2012
“Like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse”
In 2007 during the year of the triumvirate the three artistic directors of the Stratford Festival were intent on putting Shakespeare back into the Festival and therefore changed the name to the “Stratford Shakespeare Festival”. This year with the opening of Wanderlust the Festival is now presenting four musicals and three Shakespeares, making one wonder if a change of name in again in order. One wouldn’t mind so much if Wanderlust were a good show, but unfortunately it is thoroughly misconceived. Here we have a musical with Canadian poet Robert W. Service (1874-1958) as the main character that has nothing whatsoever to do with his biography. Here we have a musical that has said all it has to say by the end of the first act making the second act completely unnecessary.
In his Playwright’s Notes, Morris Panych admits, “The story I have written is nothing close to the truth, of course; I wanted the poems themselves to write the story.” If Panych’s statement is true, one wonders why he makes a historical character, Robert W. Service, the main character of his play. In Panych’s story, Service is not a man who immigrated to Canada from Scotland at age 21 and then travelled the length of western North American from Mexico to British Columbia. Instead, Panych expands Service’s one year of working for the Canadian Bank of Commerce from 1903 to 1904 to the whole of his adult life.
The real Service had already had adventures before working at the bank and would move to the Yukon in 1904, leaving it to become a war correspondent for the Toronto Star in 1912 only to settle in Europe for the next 15 years. Panych makes Service a milquetoast who has never travelled anywhere and dreams of great adventure but never has the courage to embark on it. He is filled with Wanderlust but never fulfills it. Panych justifies his approach by saying that, “Most of his [Service’s] Klondike poems were written long before he saw the Klondike.” Yet, this is rather disingenuous, since Service’s two most famous poems that completely inform Panych’s story – “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee” – to the point of providing character names and plot, were both written when Service was living in Whitehorse. What is more, Panych portrays Service as a failure of a man who needs his boring job as an accountant to live, whereas the real Robert Service earned more than $100,000 from his first book of poems, Songs of a Sourdough (1907), which would equal at least $1,850,000 today.
Wanderlust, thus, does, so to speak a real disservice to Service. Here we have a Canadian who lived a fascinating and successful life that Panych deliberately turns into a boring and unsuccessful one. Panych could have portrayed Service’s real life punctuated by musical versions of his poems, but chose instead to give us the cliché of a Canadian who dreams but achieves nothing. Canadians always complain that Canadians don’t know enough about their own history. Clearly, Panych could care less.
Within Panych’s warped concept, Tom Rooney gives a highly enjoyable performance as Service as a loveable schmuck whose yearning for excitement contrast with his sad-sack exterior. Rooney has had so many acting assignments at Stratford, the show reminds us what a fine singer he is. The owner of the bank is Mr. McGee, who, like his counterpart in Service’s poem, is always cold. Randy Hughson gives us a vivid portrait as the outwardly irascible but inwardly friendly old man who knows the perfect way to deliver Panych’s comic comebacks and one-liners. The assistant bank manager is none other than Dan McGrew, played as a taunting egoist by Dan Chameroy. The “lady that’s known as Lou” turns out to be a secretary Louise Montgomery, whom Robin Hutton plays as in love with Service but ready to marry McGrew because he is wealthier.
Secondary characters include Noah, played as an enthusiastic likeable young clerk by Ken James Stewart. Panych seems to use him solely as the butt of jokes and brunt of slapstick so we keep hoping that this sympathetic figure will get his own back at the end, but he never does. Xuan Fraser plays a characters, Blount, whose single function is to serve as a foil to Service, as some one who counts off his days till retirement but doesn’t dare to dream. One character, completely unnecessary to the story is Mrs. Munsch, Service’s landlady, probably suggested to Panych by the time when Service once lodged in a brothel in California. She has nothing to do with furthering or illuminating the action, and is played by Lucy Peacock as a hideous grotesque.
Except for the “Shooting of Dan McGrew” set piece that closes the first act, Marek Norman’s music is undistinguished. It’s MOR with no voice of its own. He seems to have only two rhythms at hand – rapid and slow – and only sparks interest when he uses a dance rhythm as in the tango for “The Harpy Song”.
In contrast to the music, the production is quite attractive. Ken MacDonald’s set recalls a Pacific Northwest version of the factory he designed for The Overcoat, and the back set depicting a bank office on one side and a Klondike saloon on the other is quite clever. Dana Osborne’s costumes are consistently appealing and she knows how to design for dance with the women’s skirts swirling up and settling beautifully in turns. Diana Coatsworth has created a set of very imaginative dances that make much use of MacDonald’s placing of the ledgerkeepers’ desks on wheels so that they can move about in innumerable formations.
In general, Wanderlust presents us with an excellent physical production of a work not worthy of such attention. The musical could easily have concluded with the end of Act 1 since Panych does nothing in Act 2 but repeat the same themes and jokes he used in Act 1. He entices us with the prospect that Service will finally get up the courage to leave his job and head north, but, contrary to our desires and to history, that doesn’t happen and he ends the show the same untravelled dreamer he was at the start. When you realize Panych has squandered the chance to let Canadians know more about a poet children still study in school, you can only feel anger that Panych deems his feeble fiction superior to the exciting truth.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Tom Rooney (centre) as Robert W. Service. ©2012 David Hou.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2012-08-19
Wanderlust