✭✭✭✭✩
<b>music by Mike Ross, poetry by Edgar Lee Masters, directed by Albert Schultz
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
November 4-15, 2014;
March 7-April 2, 2015
</b>
Lucinda Matlock: “It takes life to love Life”
Mike Ross’s musical adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ <i>Spoon River Anthology</i> is likely to be one of Soulpepper’s biggest hits. Masters’ collection of epitaphs spoken by the deceased inhabitants of the fictional town of Spoon River, Illinois, was a huge success when it first appeared in 1915 painting as it did a portrait of small town midwestern life in all its variety and unravelling the interconnectedness of everyone who made one special place their home. In this it looks forward to Thornton Wilder’s portrait of the fictional Grover’s Corners in <i>Our Town</i> of 1938 and to Dylan Thomas’s portrait of the fictional Llareggub in <i>Under Milk Wood</i> of 1954. Through Ross’s careful selection and arrangement of 50 of Masters’ 246 poems, through his joyous musical setting of poems with key themes of the series and through Albert Schultz’s imaginative direction, Masters’ collection of epitaphs comes alive with a message to live life to the fullest, a message as pertinent to the present as it was in Masters’ day.
Schultz’s directorial conceit, perhaps rather overdone, is to make audience members feel they have entered another age when they set foot in the Young Centre, where much of the modern furniture has been replaced with Victorian settees, divans and armchairs, rugs and lamps. You do not enter the Baillie Theatre by the usual doors, but go down a corridor decked out like that of a funeral parlour, with a ledger to sign and even a body in a coffin to view, before you head over the stage to find seats in the auditorium.
The frame Ross and Schultz have given the show concerning the burial of a young woman and her welcoming to The Hill by its residents makes the action seem like an extended version of the funeral scene for Emily Gibbs in <i>Our Town</i>. It may useful to give the show a frame borrowed from another play, especially one Soulpepper has staged so often, but since Masters preceded Wilder it might have been more interesting to find a structure related to Masters’ own. Masters’ willingness to discuss such topics as adultery, murder, rape, abortion, prostitution and racial prejudice set his Spoon River far apart from the cozy but whitewashed world of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.
Diego Matamoros as the only elder available in the absence of the minister, presides and tells the story that many visitors to The Hill at night think they hear the sounds of a country band playing dance music, a band made up of the souls buried there. These words set up the premise of the whole evening and specifically the first song, a raucous music setting of “The Hill”, the introductory poem of Masters’ anthology. The poem follows the ancient <i>ubi sunt</i> theme of the transience of life with the question:”Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley” and the answer, “All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill”. The intentional humour of Ross’s bluegrass setting is that the stomping accompanying the music is enough to wake the dead.
And I suppose it does, because for the next 90 minutes we meet selected occupants of The Hill who speak or sing us their stories. Ross has collected the epitaphs in various groups – drunks, spouses, workmen, the town Don Juan (Stuart Hughes) and the women he seduced. Ross’s style varies from folk and bluegrass to hymns and even Kurt Weill. While his choral songs are rousing, his quieter songs are the most affecting. The song he has written for “William and Emily” (“There is something about / Death Like love itself!”) to lead off the collection of spouses is exquisite and is beautifully sung by Gregory Prest and Raquel Duffy. Unlike William and Emily most of the spouses are hilariously unhappy, like the prim Mrs. Benjamin Pantier (Nancy Palk) and her husband (Prest) who prefers his dog to her.
In his most imaginative grouping, Ross pairs two women, Emily Sparks (Nancy Palk) and Elsa Wertman (Duffy) with two sons Harry Wilmans (Colin Palangio) and Hamilton Greene (Gordon Hecht). Both women have lost their sons – Emily to an unknown cause, Elsa because he was adopted since he was illegitimate. Harry dies in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and Hamilton becomes a member of Congress never knowing who his real mother is. Ross’s song for Emily, “Where is my boy, my boy”, becomes a touching lament for both mothers and, indeed all mothers.
While the show as a whole is strong, the cast is uneven with a distinction noticeable between Soulpepper veterans and many of the newcomers. As one might expect, Diego Matamoros, Nancy Palk, Gregory Prest and Raquel Duffy are strong in their several roles and clearly distinguish one from the other. Stuart Hughes has fine moment as the drunk Oscar Hummel beaten to death by the intolerant A.D. Blood and as the proud conservative politician Thomas Rhodes. Oliver Dennis as the comic philosopher Roger Heston, who is done in by his own view of free will, and as the more serious philosopher Fiddler Jones, who voices a view that sums up the lives of those on The Hill: “The earth keeps some vibration going / There in your heart, and that is you”.
Newcomers who make a strong impression include Colin Palangio, both as the soldier Harry Wilmans, disgusted with the true nature of war, and as the arsonist Silas Dement, whose song “It was a moon-light, and the earth sparkled” leads to one of Ross’s wildest songs with the fire-bell’s refrain “Clang! Clang! Clang!” Miranda Mulholland who sings while she accompanies herself on the violin and Hailey Gillis who soulfully sings the final epitaph help give the show energy and depth. Neither Brendan Wall nor Frank Cox-O’Connell is new to Toronto theatre, but both are newish to Soulpepper and make noteworthy contributions.
As director, Schultz follows up on the practice of using props in inventive ways. Ladders become a bench, windows, a prison or, frighteningly, railroad tracks. Two door-sized planks under Ken MacKenzie’s lighting become coffin bottoms where we see, standing up, the various spouses buried side by side whether they wished it or not. All this takes place on MacKenzie’s moulded thrust stage to suggest The Hill, in back of which is a birch grove and a full moon.
Mike Ross has been an invaluable asset to Soulpepper, both as an actor and musician, since he first joined the company. <i>Spoon River</i> is an impressive achievement and will likely remain a Soulpepper favourite for years to come.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Colin Palangio, Mike Ross, Brendan Wall, Frank Cox-O'Connell, Gordon Hecht and Diego Matamoros; Mike Ross (on coffin) and the <i>Spoon River</i> ensemble.. ©2014 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://www.soulpepper.ca">www.soulpepper.ca</a>.
<b>2014-11-05</b>
<b>Spoon River</b>