Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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by Michael O’Brien & John Millard, directed by Leah Cherniak
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
May 15-June 8, 2013
“Slit This Barber’s Throat”
Fresh on the heels of its dire adaptation of La Ronde, Soulpepper brings us an even more dismal adaptation of The Barber of Seville. You might wonder, “What’s there to get wrong in one of the comedic masterpieces of the 18th century that inspired one of the world’s most popular operas?” Well, the answer is nearly everything. Just as Jason Sherman used only the skeleton of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 play to support his own much lesser work, so writer Michael O’Brien and director Leah Cherniak have used the only the vaguest plot outline of the 1775 comedy by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-99), as a basis for a completely self-indulgent mishmash of clichés. The production is a depressing waste of time, money and talent. After this, what lustre the name “Soulpepper” once had is rapidly starting to fade.
At least the Soulpepper programme credits the play to O’Brien, not Beaumarchais. That is good because O’Brien does not even follow Beaumarchais’s plot or characterization. In Beaumarchais, the Count Almaviva has fallen in love with Rosine, the ward of Don Bartholo, who has kept the girl entirely innocent of the outside world. Almaviva has tired of women who are attracted to him only because of his wealth and title and has disguised himself as a poor student named “Lindor” to woo Rosine, but Bartholo guards Rosine so well that Almaviva despairs of ever making contact with her. As it happens he runs into a former servant of his, Figaro, now a barber-surgeon, who has access to the house because of his trade. Figaro vows to help his former master win Rosine, and after sneaking Almaviva into the house twice – once as a drunken soldier, once as a substitute for Don Bazile, Rosine’s music teacher – the two arrange a meeting and are wed.
In O’Brien’s version, which uses the Italian names from Rossini’s opera, Count Almaviva is simply another Don Juan. He disguises himself, not because he wants to test the love of Rosina, but because he is such an infamous womanizer he would be instantly recognized. Although O’Brien’s Doctor Bartolo says repeatedly that he has kept Rosina innocent of the outside world, her behaviour and expletive-strewn language contradict this. Not only does she know about men and sex but she is filled with revolutionary fever and even sings the La Marseillaise at one point (even though it was not written until 1792). O’Brien uses the drunken soldier disguise for Almaviva, but for the second disguise he has decided it would be funnier if Bartolo’s substitute were a woman so that Almaviva has to woo Rosina in drag. The entire point of the music lesson scene is that the two lovers convey secret messages to each other claiming they are just singing the lyrics of a song. O’Brien’s idea of the Count in drag makes any such subtlety impossible. As in the original, Bartolo tells Rosina that her Lindoro is really a famous philanderer. As in the original Rosina is scandalized, but because O’Brien has made her so worldly her shock hardly rings true.
At the end O’Brien makes the bizarre move of trying to force us to switch our sympathies at the last minute. He makes a particular point of Almaviva’s dumping Figaro as a servant to make both Almaviva and Rosina look callous. This is foolish because in the sequel to Barber, The Marriage of Figaro (1784), Figaro has been the Count’s personal valet ever since he helped him win Rosina. Besides this, he has Bartolo attempt suicide as if in despair over his lost of Rosina. One suspects O’Brien has the characters makes these 180º turns just for the sake of being novel since they accord neither with his source nor with his earlier presentation of the characters.
Millard has arranged Rossini’s score for bass, violin, guitar, banjo, accordion and flute. It has its moments but it is certainly does not have the wit or bite of Larry Beckwith’s arrangement for TOT of Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne for six-member ensemble seen just two weeks ago. The main source of humour in Millard’s arrangements is the constant use of anachronism. Almaviva serenades Rosina with O’Brien’s translation of “Ecco, ridente in cielo”, but when that doesn’t work the band suggests playing “La Bamba” and when Almaviva objects, they break into Ricky Martin’s “La Vida Loca”. This might be funny once, but it seems to be Millard’s only joke. Therefore, opera arias slide into doo-wop, country, Viennese waltzes, disco or basically any pop medium until it starts to include songs (like those mentioned above) from other sources. The ploy of including parts of Rossini’s score thus devolves simply into a means to gets a laugh by departing from it.
For director Cherniak there is no such thing as subtlety. The good sight gag is one that she can use at least a dozen times. Sexual innuendo is something you use to bash people over the head with until they get it. When in doubt have people speak their stage directions, such as “wink wink” (as if Monty Python hadn’t done it first). To show confusion have people walk around in circles. As if she were testing spaghetti, she throws any old joke at the show and hopes something will stick. The worst example is having Don Bartolo run amok chasing people with a chainsaw. Cherniak’s last project for Soulpepper was her dreadful take on Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman in 2007 where she had the cast hold dolls in front of them who interacted while the actors spoke their lines. Her attempt at directing tragedy was a disaster and so, now, is her attempt at comedy. Having displayed her ineptitude in both genres, Soulpepper would be masochistic to seek her services again unless the company is deliberate trying to devalue its brand.
The programme claims that “The inspiration for the creators is pure classic comedy: vaudeville, Bugs Bunny and especially the Marx Brothers ...,” that is, the inspiration for the creators is anything except the classic comedy they are nominally staging. The only thing that’s wrong with this view is the enormous hubris of Cherniak and company who clearly believe that their collection of comic clichés is somehow funnier and more worth staging than Beaumarchais’s or Rossini’s. And, guess what, they’re wrong.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Gregory Prest and Dan Chameroy; (middle) Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster and John Millard. ©2013 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.
2013-05-17
The Barber of Seville