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music and libretto by Leonard Bernstein, directed by Jay Turvey

Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

July 7-October 7, 2012

Chorus: “Our little spot, out of the hubbub Less than an hour by train.”

The Shaw Festival has presented musicals and operettas before but this year’s Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein marks the first time it has presented a fully fledged opera.  Non-fans of opera need not worry, however, since the musical idiom of Tahiti (1952) is so jazzy and popular that the 45-minute piece will strike most people as a musical that clearly looks forward to his Wonderful Town (1953) and West Side Story (1957). The opera is given a highly imaginative production by director Jay Turvey, designer Michael Gianfrancesco and choreographer Linda Garneau – one far more lavish than the piece is usually accorded.  Yet, there are still flaws in casting and the slick production cannot mask the gaps in the libretto.

The show is basically a satire on life in the American suburbs, revealing them not to be the paradisal lands beyond the city they were claimed to be.  Yes, families have their own houses on their own plot of land, but they are isolated from each other and from the vibrancy of the city where they have to commute to and from work.  The only two characters are Sam (Mark Uhre) and his wife Dinah (Elodie Gillett), who begin the morning, as now has become usual, with a quarrel.  Dinah accuses Sam of being more interested in his work than his family, a point only confirmed when Sam says he can’t attend the performance of a school play featuring their son Junior.  She also suspects he’s having an affair with his secretary. 

Both go to the city separately – he to his work, she to see her psychiatrist.  Sam’s secretary confirms that he did make a pass at her which he advises her to forget.  They happen to meet and each fabricates a reason not to have lunch with the other.  Sam goes to his handball tournament where the men trumpet their natural superiority over women while Dinah goes to the movies and sees a terrible film called Trouble in Tahiti, then rushes home to make dinner for Sam. 

The main difficulty with this short opera is that it has one large hole in its plot.  Bernstein himself wrote the libretto and his satire of suburban life and supposed male superiority is quite funny.  The question that is never answered is why Dinah does not go to see Junior in his school play.  She had chided Sam that morning about his not going even though it would mean so much to Junior.  Yet, she doesn’t go either and sees a stupid movie instead.  Bernstein obviously wants to highlight the escapism provided by Hollywood movies as an opiate to numb the isolation felt by modern me and women, yet he gives us no explanation why Dinah would leave her child with no family member at all in the audience for his show.  What is even stranger, in the final scene Sam only begins to warm to Dinah when she reveals to him that she did not attend Junior’s show either.  This leads to Sam suggesting they both go to see Trouble in Tahiti, Dinah, of course, hiding the fact she’s just seen it. 

Do both parents secretly resent their child’s presence?  Is that what has led to their drifting apart?  It’s a peculiar gap in the plot that leads to a peculiar ending.  This may be why in the opera A Quiet Place (1983), Bernstein’s sequel to Trouble in Tahiti, the libretto (not by Bernstein) focusses on Junior who has mental problems and the inability of Sam and Junior to communicate without flying into a rage.                     

The original cast of Tahiti numbered only five – Sam, Dinah and a three-person jazz chorus.  Turvey trebles the size of the chorus.  This not only helps populate and give more substance to the world of the play, but it gives Linda Garneau a larger troupe to work with.  She effectively choreographs the entire action creating memorable patterning as in the handball and locker room scenes with Sam and the movie theatre scene with Dinah.  Michael Gianfrancesco makes the irony of suburban life visual by representing it with three identical doll-house-sized houses on rolling platforms.  The city becomes three identical miniature skyscrapers on rolling platforms.  Under the illusion of freedom, the commuters simply move from one world of conformity to another and back.        

The Chorus (Alana Hibbert, Patty Jamieson, Nichola Lawrence, Anthony Malarky, Stewart Adam McKensy, Brandyn McKinson, Louie Rossetti, Jacqueline Thair and Jay Turvey) gives an impeccable performance, their close harmonies and jazzy rhythms precise and vibrant throughout.  The main problem with the production is that the leads are mismatched.  Mark Uhre has a strong operatic baritone, while Elodie Gillett) has a sweet but fragile soprano that simply can’t match Uhre in strength.  She is easily drowned out in duets with Uhre or when backed by the Chorus.  Since the Festival, thankfully, does not use amplification for musicals in its smaller venues, a closer vocal match for Uhre should have been chosen.

As actors, both are excellent.  Uhre exudes a sense of self-confidence that is not far removed from overweening pride.  Gillett gives Dinah a wistfulness that makes us see both how Dinah could have been drawn to this strong handsome man and how she could have been blinded to his less noble qualities.  Musically, the two highlights of the show belong to Gillett, luckily scored in such a way that she can be heard.  One is the lovely “There Is a Garden” when she recounts to her psychiatrist a dream of being lost in a garden that has gone to seed and “What a Movie” when she relates the ludicrous plot of the movie she’s just seen.  Dramatically, the best moment is in Scene 4, when Sam and Dinah both examine their consciences in order to find why they lied to avoid having a lunch together that might have helped heal the rift between them.

I hope that Trouble in Tahiti represents an opening up in the choices for music theatre at the Shaw Festival.  Not only are there lots of comic and serious short chamber operas from the 20th century that the Festival could explore, say by Gian Carlo Menotti or Samuel Barber, but Shaw’s lifetime from 1856 to 1950 covers both the Golden Age and the Silver Age of operetta.  The Festival presented Arthur Sullivan’s The Zoo (1875) in 1995, but there is also Cox and Box (1866) and on a much larger scale Trial by Jury (1875).  Jacques Offenbach wrote a huge number of one-act comic works like Les Deux aveugles (1855), Ba-ta-clan (1855), M. Choufleuri restera chez lui (1861) and L’Île de Tulipatan (1868) that have still retained their humour and popularity.  Works like these could help represent the first half of Shaw’s life that the Festival largely tends to neglect.  As for Trouble in Tahiti, you likely never see so cleverly staged a performance of this tuneful piece as the one now playing at the Shaw.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Mark Uhre as Sam with members of the Chorus. ©2012 David Cooper.

For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.