Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
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by Leonard Bernstein, directed by Guillermo Silva Marin
Toronto Operetta Theatre, Jane Mallet Theatre, Toronto
December 28, 30 & 31 2017, January 5, 6 & 7, 2018
Candide: “Life here is happiness indeed!”
Toronto Operetta Theatre’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is the perfect way to see out 2017 and see in 2018. Many people will identify with the characters of the operetta who experience a series of disasters – natural, political, economic, and religious – and yet survive though with their belief systems seriously shaken. Yet, in spite of this, Candide is a gorgeous, uplifting work and concludes with a message about how to live a fulfilling life that many will take to heart. Musically and dramatically, the cast and the TOT Orchestra give the work a top-notch performance that ranks with the best the TOT has ever done. You will be overwhelmed by the sheer joy of the singers and musicians in performing this masterpiece.
At the present production we know we are in good hands right from the famous overture. Derek Bate conducts the the 13-member TOT Orchestra bringing out all the hilarity in the piece’s sudden changes in time signature, rhythm and volume. The playing is lively yet precise and opens the show with real panache. The clever orchestration and the musicians vibrant playing makes the ensemble sound as lush as an orchestra three times its size.
The action of the operetta, like Voltaire’s 1759 novel on which it is based, is episodic with numerous changes of scene within Europe and to the New World and back. To help us follow the central character’s epic journey, Hugh Wheeler, author of the operetta’s book, uses Voltaire himself (Nicholas Borg) as a narrator. The positive result is that the operetta has very little dialogue and after Voltaire’s short introductions move us from one musical set piece to the next. Those familiar with Candide (1956) will know that this is definitely not a one-song musical. Bernstein was working at the height of his invention and the piece shifts from one memorable tune to the the next, making you marvel almost more than West Side Story (1957) at the composer’s genius.
The operetta begins on a small scale with Candide (Tonatiuh Abrego), the illegitimate nephew of a Westphalian baron (Edward Larocque), happily studying arts under Dr. Pangloss (Borg) with his beloved Cunegonde (Vania Lisbeth Chan) and Maximilian (Patrick Bowman), who is also in love with Cunegonde. They along with the servant Paquette (Kimberley-Rose Pefhany) are taught the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) that the world was created with a “pre-established harmony” among all its elements and that it is thus “the best of all possible worlds”. If things seem wrong it is because our limited mortal minds can’t perceive how they fit into the divine plan where all that happens happens for good. On its small scale, the rivalry of Candide and Maximilian for Cunegonde is already a demonstration of disharmony. When the Baron catches Candide kissing Cunegonde, he exiles him from court.
In his exile he accidentally is seconded into the Bulgar army which is fighting to “liberate” Westphalia. In the fierce battle, the Baron, the Baroness, Maximilian, Paquette, Pangloss and Cunegonde are all killed. Wandering as a beggar, Candide happens to come across a revived Pangloss and the two sail off to Lisbon. Unfortunately, they arrive during the infamous Lisbon earthquake of 1755 that may have killed as many as 100,000 people. Already in a fervour, the Spanish Inquisition hears Pangloss’s philosophy that all things happen for an ultimate good and proclaim him and Candide as heretics to be burnt during an auto-da-fé. Believing in their innocence, the Grand Inquisitor commutes Candide’s sentence to flogging and Pangloss’s to hanging.
Meanwhile in Paris, we discover that Cunegonde did not die as we previously supposed but has now fallen from virtue as a demimondaine. Her procuress is an Old Lady (Elizabeth Beeler) who has filled the young girl’s schedule with assignations with the Jew Don Issachar (Sean Catheroy) and with the Archbishop of Paris (Austin Larusson). Through one of the many deliberately outrageous coincidences in the plot, Candide finds Cundegonde in Paris but is so enraged by the arrival of her two clients that he kills them.
Candide, Cundegonde and the Old Lady flee to Cadiz, Spain, and thence to Montevideo, Uruguay. We soon discover that things are no better in the New World than the Old. Cundegonde, the Old Lady and Maximilian, who apparently also did not die, are all to be sold as slaves to the Governor of Buenos Aires. Maximilian doesn’t live long, however, because in a fight with Candide over Cundegonde, Candide kills him. Then Candide and Cacambo (Mikhail Shemet), his trusty friend, flee and arrive in Eldorado, seemingly the only truly good place on earth. It is a city made of gold and overflowing with riches, which all the inhabitants disdain as worthless. They concentrate only on love and science.
After many more adventures in Suriname and Venice, Candide, Cunegonde, Maximilian (alive again), Pangloss (also alive again) and the Old Lady return to Westphalia and Candide pronounces the philosophy he has learned on his own from having experienced all the evils of the world. His solution is simple and profound at once. In the original novel it is “Il faut cultiver notre jardin”. In the operetta it is expressed in the soaring chorale, “Make Our Garden Grow” that includes the wonderful lines:
We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We’ll do the best we know.
We’ll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
The operetta, like Voltaire’s novel, has portrayed all the worst aspects of the world which rather obviously does not exhibit a “pre-established harmony”. Voltaire makes the gruesome subject matter humorous by making it absurd through all of the deaths and resurrections of main characters and through all of their impossibly coincidental meetings. Yet, the ending is serious and I can never hear it without tears in my eyes as Candide and his chorus of followers express Candide’s exceedingly hard-won knowledge.
The orchestra under Bate beautifully conveys the score’s wide range of musical styles from dissonant battle music to hectic waltzes, tender love duets and swooning South American melodies. The well-cast singers do not disappoint. Tonatiuh Abrego has a strong Italianate tenor and good looks that will soon lead him into the more heroic operatic repertory. Here his main duty as Candide is to be an innocent, and that Abrego does with great sensitivity. His sings Candide’s two solo “Meditations” (“It Must Be So”) mingling Candide’s native gentleness with his confusion over finding the world to be so cruel. Abrego leads the final chorus of “Make Our Garden Grow” with the fiery conviction of someone who has freed himself from his master’s teaching and finally trusts an insight of his own.
Vania Lisbeth Chan sparkles as Cunegonde both in her fine acting and singing. “Glitter and Be Gay” has become a coloratura showpiece but Chan does not sing it that way. Instead she acts all through the song and makes Cunegonde’s runs and staccato high notes into signs of Cunegonde’s pleasure with material riches even though she thinks she should worry about her loss of virtue. Not only does Chan toss off Cunegonde’s stratospheric notes with ease, but she reveals the aria as a masterpiece of high operatic comedy.
Elizabeth Beeler, who in many previous performances at TOT has shown her native instinct for comedy, is absolutely hilarious as the Old Lady. She is funny even in her spoken narrative of her fairly incredible life story, and her rendition of her signature song “I Am Easily Assimilated” is one of the many high points of the evening.
Key to any presentation of Candide is a singer who can also serve as an actor to play Voltaire. This Nicholas Borg does to perfection. He knows that the more matter-of-fact he makes Voltaire’s narration, the funnier it will be. As a singer he possesses a warm, sonorous baritone that make Dr. Pangloss’s lecture (“The Best of All Possible Worlds”) a musical and dramatic pleasure. Borg’s third role is the bitterly cynical philosopher Martin, whom Candide meets in Suriname. In the novel Pangloss and Martin are two different people. In the operetta Martin is Pangloss, saved again from death, only now professing a philosophy totally opposite to his former point of view. This Borg communicates well in the rhythmically difficult laughing song “Words! Words! Words!”
Cian Horrobin has the unenviable task of playing three different villains one right after the other in Montevideo, Suriname and Venice. For the Governor of Buenos Aires, Bernstein has written “My Love”, the most operetta-like aria in the entire show – comic because it is first addressed to a man in drag and then immediately to an actual woman. Horrobin has the full measure of the ironic love song and delivers it in a full heroic tone as purely serious and deeply romantic. He won two ovations for the steady long-held high note that concludes the aria’s first appearance and its reprise.
These singers receive fine support from members of the 16-strong chorus who play many minor roles. These include Patrick Bowman with his smooth baritone as Maximilian, Kimberley-Rose Pefhany as a bright-voiced Paquette and Mikhail Shemet with his full, deep tone as Cacamabo.
The chorus sings with commitment and precision. They fully convey the mood of mingled comedy and fear in “Auto-Da-Fé” as well as the cynicism of the Venetians’ song “Money, Money Money”. When they come to the finally triumphant chorus, they shine gloriously in the a cappella section Bernstein gives them that makes the piece so moving.
The TOT last presented Candide in 2007 in a version based on the 1999 National Theatre’s production. The current production is based on the 2013 version created for the Menier Chocolate Factory in London and Bernstein aficionados will notice that there are several differences between the two versions. Thus, even if you saw TOT’s Candide in 2007, you won’t have seen the TOT’s present version. Experts can debate the merits of both, but what is certain is that this is a show not to be missed. Whether you love musicals, operettas or operas, Candide, especially when so well sung and played as this, holds out vast appeal. Ring out the old year or ring in the new with the uplifting message of the final chorus. Or celebrate 2018 as the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. But do attend this Candide and celebrate one of the great masterpieces of 20th-century music theatre.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Yervant Khatchadouria, Daniela Agostino and Tonatiuh Abrego with ensemble of Candide; Tonatiuh Abrego as Candide (kneeling) surrounded by Nicholas Borg, Mikhail Shemet, Austin Larusson, and Patrick Bowman as inhabitants of El Dorado; Vania Chan as Cunegonde, Elizabeth Beeler as the Old Lady and Tonatiuh Abrego as Candide. ©2017 Gary Beechey.
For tickets, visit www.torontooperetta.com.
2017-12-29
Candide