Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
Toronto:
This year saw the passing of three great figures of Canadian theatre – singer Michael Burgess, comedian Don Harron and director Robin Phillips. Phillips’ death truly marks the end of an era. Under Jackie Maxwell, the Shaw Festival continued to feature plays directed by Artistic Director Emeritus Christopher Newton. But no such invitation was ever extended to Phillips at Stratford. The last play Phillips directed for the Festival was King John in 1993. Even though the Festival now proclaims that Phillips’ tenure was Stratford’s “Golden Age”, its conscious neglect of such talent and genius in its midst for the last 22 years will forever be regarded as unfathomable folly.
In alphabetical order here is my list of the ten best productions in Toronto in 2015. As usual, I have excluded productions that have previously appeared on this list such as the Canadian Opera Company’s remount of Die Walküre, Opera Atelier’s remount of Armide and the Mirvish sit-down run of Once even though it was often better than the touring version that made my Top Ten list last year. Two productions – Blind Date and Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung – are not new but appear on the list because they never have done so before: the former because this year was the first time I had the chance to see the show, the latter because this was the first time I saw the show in a year when I was also making a Top Ten list.
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Abyss by Maria Milisavljevic, Tarragon Theatre. Tarragon Theatre gave the English-language premiere of this powerful and disturbing meditation on what binds people to each other and to their origins in a taut, imaginative production that provided a tour de force for its trio of actors.
Blind Date by Rebecca Northan, Tarragon Theatre. An amazing 90-minute-long completely improvised play in which Northan, as a young French woman Mimi, asks a male volunteer from the audience to be her date for the evening. Not only is the play hilarious in magnifying the awkwardness inherent in any blind date, it is also a brilliant look at the paradox of what is private and public on stage.
Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. David Mirvish brought Michael Blakemore’s production of the Coward classic to Toronto primarily because it was a showcase for the 89-year-old Angela Lansbury as Madame Arcati. While the show may have been conceived of as a star vehicle – and Lansbury certainly did not let us down – the production also happened to be the most insightful I have ever seen and overturned many commonly held assumptions about the play.
Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung by Bela Bartók/Arnold Schoenberg, Canadian Opera Company. In 1993 Robert Lepage’s production of this double bill helped put the Canadian Opera Company on the international map. Now in its third revival, the production is still as potent and inventive as it was 22 years ago. It made one long for the day when an all-Canadian opera production attracted enough attention to be invited all over the world.
High Tea by Aaron Malkin & Alastair Knowles at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The Anglo-Canadian duo of Malkin and Knowles as their alter egos James and Jamesy created one of the most joy-filled and unusual shows the Fringe has ever seen. They magically encouraged their playacting to encompass the entire audience suddenly making the audience aware that the childlike ability to play had not disappeared with adulthood but merely lay dormant.
Nirbhaya by Yaël Farber, Nightwood Theatre and Amnesty International. Yaël Farber’s play proved to be the most powerful work of political theatre of the year. Though focussed on the gang rape and death of a young woman in new Delhi in 2012 that shocked the world, the play explored through personal testimonies how silence about violence against women only helps perpetuate it.
El pasado es un animal grotesco by Mario Pensotti, Grupo Marea at Luminato. Last year Luminato introduced us to this Argentine playwright with his Cineastas. This year it brought us an earlier work by the playwright that only confirms his importance. Again, Pensotti showed that he is like Robert Lepage used to be before his interest in technology overtook his interest in storytelling. Here Pensotti followed ten years in the intertwined lives of four people as staged on a ever-turning revolve divided into four quadrants. The direction and ensemble acting were impeccable.
The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, Crow’s Theatre and Canadian Stage. Chris Abraham, who has been presenting Shakespeare in fresh ways at Stratford, created the best production of this Chekhov classic that Ontario has seen in the past 18 years. He, aided by Julie Fox’s intelligent set design and the work of a starry ensemble of actors, kept the tragedy and comedy inherent in the play perfectly in balance.
Talking Heads: Program B by Alan Bennett, Precisely Peter Productions. Last year, John Shooter’s production of three of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues made my Top Ten list. This year a sequel of three more monologues deserves equal place. The use of the Campbell House Museum as a perfect setting, the ideal casting of the three roles and Shooter’s own detailed direction encouraged the actors to bring out all the nuances of these delicious tragicomic speeches – a real treat for connoisseurs of fine acting.
Timber! by Cirque Alphonse, Théâtre français de Toronto and Panamania. The rise of Cirque du Soleil has encouraged circus performers to form groups to bring circus to audiences on a more intimate scale. One of the most delightful of these is Cirque Alphonse presented for the first time in Toronto by the TfT as part of Panamania. Cirque Alphonse has had the brilliant idea of blending circus arts with traditional lumberjack skills to make a small-scale circus with wholly Canadian content to thrill and entertain the rest of the world.
On the other hand ...
This year saw one of the worst productions of a play ever presented in one of Toronto’s larger theatres. That distinction goes to Sherlock Holmes presented by Starvox Productions. The Canadian adaptation by Greg Kramer was bad enough, but Andrew Shaver’s direction couldn’t decide whether the show was serious or camp. Add to that David Arquette as the title character who proved that if an actor cannot remember his lines in a play, no one will ever believe he is world’s greatest detective.
Stratford:
At the 2015 Stratford Festival quality continued to rise although only about five of the thirteen offerings could be called unqualified successes. One disturbing note is the near total disappearance of character actors in their sixties and seventies. Where have they all gone? The three best shows were:
The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Stratford’s second production of this favourite musical was infinitely preferable to its first in 2001. With an engaging Maria in the form of Stephanie Rothenberg, Ben Carlson as an intelligent Captain von Trapp who could also sing and an appropriate set by Michael Gianfrancesco it was already way ahead of the earlier production. Add in director’s Donna Feore’s lively choreography and seven cute kids and the show became a hit.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. Chris Abraham continued his process of reassessing Shakespeare, not by forcing concepts onto the text but by looking at the texts more closely. Finally, Stratford had a director who realized that cutting the Induction is a major mistake. Its presence helps to make Shakespeare’s portrayal of women far more complicated than other directors have realized. Deborah Hay gave the most sophisticated portrayal of Kate Stratford has ever seen.
The Physicists by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. One of Stratford’s rare excursions into European absurdism proved a major success. Actors like Seana McKenna, Geraint Wyn Davies and Graham Abbey were clearly delighted to play characters completely unlike their usual fare. Dürrenmatt’s play from 1962 about who is mad and who isn’t turned out with its theme of the corporate misuse of science to remain uncomfortably relevant.
Easily the worst show was:
Possible Worlds by John Mighton. It is always depressing when a Canadian play that was once highly acclaimed turns out in revival unable to live up to its reputation. Mighton’s sci-fi thriller won the Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1992 but in Mitchell Cushman’s production looked more like a pretentious, sodden mess. Not only is the play not a thriller but Mighton turns his back on the “many worlds” theory of the universe that was the play’s prime theoretical interest. According to whether you knew the play or not, Anahita Dehbonehie’s artificial pond design was either off-putting and baffling or off-putting and too obvious.
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Niagara-on-the-Lake:
The Shaw Festival had an uncharacteristically uneven 2015 season with about as many lows as highs. This year only half of the Festival’s shows were from its original mandate and the result, rather than invigorating, was of a Festival losing its grip on its identity. If the Festival gives up its special niche in a busy summer festival market, there will be little to distinguish it from any other festival of modern drama. Of the offerings the three best were:
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures by Tony Kushner. Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell has called a wide range of contemporary playwrights “neo-Shavians”, but Tony Kushner is one of the few who actually lives up to that designation and his play from 2009 even announces this affiliation by referring to one of Shaw’s writings. The production directed by Eda Holmes was simply the best production of a play seen in Ontario this year. This is a massive, intellectually and emotionally challenging play about a family in turmoil, but Holmes and her starry cast not only rose to its challenges but seemed positively energized by them. It was an outstanding achievement for everyone involved.
The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen. The Festival took the chance of presenting one of Ibsen’s lesser-known plays and in so doing showed us a romantic, myth-oriented, non-tragic side of the great playwright that helps us to see him in a new light. Director Meg Roe had the full measure of the text and never allowed its symbolism to overwhelm its naturalism. It became a evening full of mystery that people of different backgrounds can live harmoniously together.
The Twelve-Pound Look by J.M. Barrie. Barrie may be most famous for Peter Pan, but he was also a master of the one-act play, a form for which only the Shaw Festival provides an annual forum. In this brilliant gem of a play, a woman who lives only through her husband meets a woman fulfilled by work, and, to our delight, comes to reassess her life. Barrie manages his plot with complete mastery and director Lezlie Wade and the cast completely master Barrie’s text.
The worst show, however, was:
Light Up the Sky by Moss Hart. If the Shaw Festival’s literary archeology frequently turns up treasures like The Twelve-Pound Look, it sometimes, though only very rarely, turns up duds like Light Up the Sky. Hart wrote the piece in 1948 to prove he didn’t need his usual co-author George S. Kaufman to write a successful play. The play he wrote proves otherwise. Stereotypes instead of characters, no real plot and hit-and-miss jokes all conspire to make this a dull comedy into which even the Shaw acting ensemble could not breath life.
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Elsewhere in Ontario:
This year at least six productions seen outside Toronto, the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival deserve special mention:
Mary’s Wedding by Stephen Massicote, Blyth Festival. Gil Garratt’s production of the play from 2002 was one of the highlights of summer theatre in Ontario. Besides drawing glowing performances from Sophia Walker and Eli Ham as the two lovers who must cope with the onset of World War I, Garratt’s production masterfully combined all the elements of theatre to tell this delicate story with humour and compassion.
The Big Sleep by Alvin Rakoff & John D. Rakoff, Theatre Aquarius, Hamilton. It might seem foolish to adapt this famous Raymond Chandler novel for the stage when it has already been made into one of the most iconic films noirs. But the Rakoffs, père et fils, were able to make more sense of the novel than the film because they were not restrained by censorship. Dan Chameroy turned out to be the ideal Philip Marlowe and his wry, cynical narration was a joy in itself. Ron Ulrich directed the play with cinematic flair making this one of the most sophisticated shows Theatre Aquarius has presented.
The Prince of Homburg by Heinrich von Kleist, Talk is Free Theatre, Barrie. Talk is Free Theatre often goes where other theatre companies fear to tread and The Prince of Homburg was no exception. Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), one of Europe greatest playwrights, has been shamefully neglected in North America. Therefore, it was important that choreographer James Kudelka chose a play by Kleist for his debut as a theatre director. Kudelka’s production amply demonstrated Kleist’s brilliant use of theatrical imagery and his fearless probing of existential questions. At the same time, he had an actor ideal for the title role in Wade Bogert-O’Brien, best known for his work at the Shaw Festival.
November and December 2015 seemed to bring forth an unusually fine number of seasonal shows in Southern Ontario. Among these were:
White Christmas by Irving Berlin, Dunfield Theatre, Cambridge. Drayton Entertainment gave this successful stage adaptation of the 1954 movie a starry production with Jeff Irving and Kyle Blair taking on the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye roles and making them their own. Michael Lichtefeld’s energetic choreography, including three extended tap numbers, was exhilarating and he carefully ensured that humour and sincerity quashed any tendency toward sentimentality.
A Christmas Story by Philip Grecian, Grand Theatre, London. Philip Grecian’s adaptation of the beloved 1983 film for the stage was so well written one might think the story had been originally been intended for the theatre. Steve Ross was ideally cast as the adult Ralphie, who narrated the action with wry amusement. Director Susan Ferley gave the Parker family and Ralphie’s school a lived-in quality that made us feel as if we were peering in on the more congenial way people experienced the holidays in the pre-television era.
The Gift of the Magi by Leslie Arden, Theatre Orangeville. Theatre Orangeville presented the world premiere of a new musical by Leslie Arden, the first she has written with a season theme. Arden had the great idea of knitting together two stories by O. Henry, using the first to provide the background for the title story that forms the second act. With its inventive score that makes use of Christmas carols, its portrayal very human dilemmas and its inclusion of a children’s chorus, Arden’s musical is so appealing it is sure to taken up by theatres all across North America.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Gray Powell, Kelli Fox, Steven Sutcliffe, Jim Mezon and Fiona Reid in The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures at the Shaw Festival. ©2015 David Cooper.
2016-01-01
Best Productions of 2015