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Theatre Reviews
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The Stepmother by Githa Sowerby, directed by Jackie Maxwell Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake May 23-October 4, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"Hidden Truths"
In 2004 the Shaw Festival’s Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell introduced us to forgotten British playwright Githa Sowerby (1876-1970) and what was once her best-known play, “Rutherford and Son” (1912). This year she brings us an even rarer play by Sowerby, “The Stepmother”, which had had only one performance in 1924 before falling into undeserved oblivion. The Shaw production is, in fact, the work’s North American premiere and the first anywhere since 1924. The formerly “lost” manuscript was only recently discovered in Sowerby’s publisher’s basement and sent directly to Maxwell. “The Stepmother” may not be as intense a work as “Rutherford and Son” but it is equally as subversive. In the earlier play glass-making provided the central imagery, this the later play it is dress-making. Rather than showing how truth is forged in fire, “The Stepmother” examines ways in which the naked truth is covered up.
The play begins with a prologue, judiciously abridged by Maxwell, set in 1911 where Eustace Gaydon discovers that his late sister Fanny’s will has left her entire fortune of £30,000 (more than $3,000,000 today) to an orphaned girl Lois Relph, who became her travelling companion and now lives in her house. In the first act of the play set ten years later we find that Eustace, a widower with two daughters, has married Lois, who now runs a successful business as a dressmaker. Upon marriage Lois had willingly granted Eustace power of attorney over her inheritance even though by then the law no longer required her to do so. Her trust in the untrustworthy Eustace leads events to near-tragedy. The crisis comes when Lois decides that her elder stepdaughter Monica should marry the man she loves. The lad’s father, Eustace’s former solicitor, will only assent to the marriage if Lois agrees to settle a large amount on Monica. This she agrees to do unaware that her wastrel husband has already depleted her fortune.
J. Ellen Gainor in her fine programme note points to the two most obvious subversions of common expectation that Sowerby undertakes. Beginning with the title, Sowerby does not give us the wicked stepmother of fairy-tale and legend but a woman who deeply cares for the happiness of her children even if they are not biologically “her own”. Next is the inversion of the Gothic romance of the “Jane Eyre” type. Lois, like Jane, is an orphan who becomes a governess and finally is wed above her station to the master of the house. The key difference is Eustace has no money of his own. He gives Lois an allowance but he takes it out of her own money. He insists he is “master” because his world-view allows him no other position. Lois, who is no feminist, complies with this pretense to give his daughters the sense they live in a “normal” family. Sowerby further subverts expectations when Lois no longer can resist the advances of her neighbour Peter Holland, who, unlike Eustace, truly loves her. Rather than punishing Lois for this transgression, Sowerby shows that it saves her and at the play’s conclusion an entirely new kind of family is created, built not on legal sanctions or biological relations.
As was the case in “Rutherford and Son”, what characters don’t say is just as important as what they do say. This is completely unlike Shaw’s characters who are so adept at finding precisely the right words to argue their points. By using this very modern technique Sowerby keeps is in the dark about exactly how badly Eustace has mismanaged Lois’s money, thus causing tension to build until a climactic confrontation between the couple in Act 2. Again what makes Sowerby’s world-view so fascinating is how she focusses not on tragedy but on how the characters cope with and find means to overcome potential tragedy. Maxwell draws powerful performances from the entire cast. Claire Jullien, in her first appearance at the Shaw, gives one of her best-ever performances as Lois. Though Lois is the one with the fortune and though she is the one who has risen from nothing to successful businesswoman, Jullien accomplished the difficult task of portraying Lois as conventional and politically unenlightened but not foolish. Sowerby’s point is to show Lois’s growing awareness of the power she has and of her final willingness to use it. Blair Williams has an equally difficult role as Eustace. Eustace, too, thoroughly believes the received wisdom that men, not women, know how to manage money despite his continual failures. It would have been easy for Maxwell and Williams to portray Eustace as simply a villain who appropriates first his aunt’s legacy then his wife’s. But that would have missed his complexity. Eustace is very much like Torvald in Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”, completely unaware because of his upbringing that there is anything wrong with viewing women as inherently inferior to men. Williams makes Eustace superficially charming but so used to deceiving himself about his waste of money that he has begun to believe his own lies. Sowerby sees his sexism as part of his self-deception. If we do initially see him as a villain we end by viewing him as pitiful human being who has ruined his own life and knows he has done so without fully understanding why.
Sowerby does not portray all men as Eustaces. Both Peter Holland played by Patrick Galligan and Eustace’s former solicitor Mr. Bennett played by Guy Bannerman see through him and rush to Lois’s aid. Galligan’s Peter’s is a very attractive, sympathetic figure and it is a wonder Lois holds out as long as she does against his charms. Bannerman’s Bennett is far more gruff and his attempts to block his son’s marriage because of hatred of Eustace almost seem unreasonable. Jesse Martyn makes the son Cyril a pleasant chap if a touch too much in the Bertie Wooster line.
Among the women it’s wonderful to see Jennifer Phipps on stage again as Eustace’s aunt Charlotte Gaydon. She depicts the ten-year aging of her character between the prologue and first act very effectively and fully represents one woman’s view of her own inferiority that Sowerby demonstrates is a delusion we have outgrown. Marla McLean is spritely as Lois’s eldest stepdaughter Monica, who is obviously quicker to catch on to the true nature of things than her younger sister Betty played by Robin Evan Willis.
William Schmuck’s costumes are gorgeous, as befits a play with a dressmaker as the titles character, and clearly based on a close study of the period. Camellia Koo’s set is not quite so allegorical as was Schmuck’s set for “Rutherford”. The most unusual feature is that the floor cover continues past the glass windows of the set to become a springlike backdrop. Perhaps she means to suggest that the hope the characters look for is not elsewhere but, literally, right under their feet. As always Louise Guinand’s lighting creates the illusion of natural light while enhancing mood.
Lois’s awakening to her own power is only one step towards unveiling the truth. Sowerby leaves us with a highly ironic ending. Lois thinks she has kept the truth about Eustace a secret from his daughters to protect them. They, however, know the truth and play along with it so make Lois feel better about her actions. Meanwhile, Monica has a secret that neither Betty nor Lois know about. It may not be possible to live life without some recourse to deception. The subtleties of this play will lead to many discussions afterward and much thanks that we have a festival like the Shaw and a director like Maxwell willing to bring such exciting finds to light.
©Christopher Hoile
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The Long Weekend
By Norm Foster
Performed by Norm Foster, Heather Hodgson, David Nairn, and Leisa Way
Directed by Robert More
Victoria Playhouse, Petrolia
June 10 to June 28, 2008
Reviewed by Mary Alderson
Playwright Plays The Part
Norm Foster is Canada’s most popular and probably most prolific playwright. He has written more than 30 plays, and is well known for his comedic ability to poke fun at every day life. He is also an actor, and who better than the playwright to take on the lead role?
The Long Weekend is a Norm Foster classic, first performed in 1994. In this latest production at Victoria Playhouse Petrolia, Foster plays Max, the pretentious lawyer, with a love of antiques and jazz music. Along with Foster is an excellent cast of experienced professionals who know how to do comedy.
Max and Wynn (Leisa Way) are about to show off their beautiful new country home to their best friends Roger (David Nairn) and Abby (Heather Hodgson). Except, Norm hates Roger, and although Wynn claims that Abby is her best friend, she is also concerned about the comments Abby will make about her taste in décor.
Soon we learn that Abby and Max are having an affair, and they decide that it’s time to tell the other two. But Abby says she can’t tell Wynn; they are best friends. Both Max and Abby agree that Wynn is a wonderful person and they don’t want to hurt her. Max suggests that they “tell Roger and he can pass it on.”
There are many laughs as this tangled affair gets even more twisted, plus a surprise chortle in the ending.
Norm Foster’s work is well known to theatre goers – audiences have enjoyed The Love List, Looking, Ethan Claymore, The Foursome, Here on the Flight Path, The Affections of May, Dear Santa, Jasper Station, The Last Resort, Wrong for Each Other, Maggie’s Getting Married, and The Melville Boys – to name a few that have been produced in this area in recent years. His characters are just slight exaggerations of people we know, and they give the witty responses that we all wish would roll off our tongues at just the right moment. The play is scattered with double- entrendres, especially in the risqué humour. Foster creates comedy in the dialogue, and a good actor can give the right intonation or the perfectly raised eye-brow to get the laughs.
Naturally, Foster is able to do that himself. His character Max has the deadpan lines, and he tosses off the sarcasm skilfully.
Leisa Way plays his wife, the relationship therapist, perfectly. She can smile at her best friend, while delicately twisting the knife in her back. At the same time, Way makes Wynn vulnerable to Abby’s back-handed attacks. You may remember Way from her portrayal of the various women in Test Drive, the excellent laugh and cry life-cycle story presented at VPP two years ago. Way has had a stellar career in musical theatre, but also proves she is an expert in comedy.
David Nairn, on loan from his position as artistic director of Theatre Orangeville, has flawless comedic timing. As the screenwriter wanna-be with writer’s block, he delivers a line that will garner a laugh, and then gives a look that makes the audience roar. It’s fun to watch Nairn and Way on stage together, knowing that they are a real-life couple.
Heather Hodgson’s take on Abby is reminiscent of Kim Cattrall playing Samantha, which works very well in The Long Weekend, given that it has nearly as much sex as Sex and the City. Hodgson was in Foster’s The Love List at VPP in 2004, and again handles Foster’s smart and sassy dialogue very well.
Enjoy The Long Weekend. It’s a well-written Canadian comedy, with an all-star cast. It would be difficult to find any actors who could perform Norm Foster any better.
The Long Weekend continues with eight shows a week at Victoria Playhouse Petrolia until June 28. Call the box office at 1-800-717-7694 or (519) 882-1221 for tickets.
Mary Alderson offers her view of area theatre in this column on a regular basis. As well as being a fan of live theatre, she is a former journalist who is currently employed with the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations.
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Cabaret by John Kander & Fred Ebb, directed by Amanda Dehnert Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford May 29-October 25, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"We have no troubles here”... Well, Maybe a Few
 Bruce Dow (centre) & the Cabaret ensemble. ©David Hou Like “The Music Man” the Stratford Festival’s second musical of 2008 is also revisits a work previously mounted at the Festival Theatre. The 1987 season at Stratford saw Brian Macdonald’s production of “Cabaret”. Now we have new production by Amanda Dehnert, a resident director at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. The original production alternated scenes situated in the outside world with those inside the cabaret that provided sly comment on action outside. Yet, anyone staging “Cabaret” has two powerful visions of the work to contend with. The first, of course, is the famous 1972 film by Bob Fosse that did away entirely with the Fräulein Schneider/Herr Schultz subplot and kept only the songs from the musical actually sung in the cabaret. He tended to glamourise the cabaret itself and presented the Emcee as an asexual, almost mechanical figure. The second vision is Sam Mendes’ radical reconception of the musical in 1993 that intentionally deglamourised the cabaret setting and presented the Emcee as a raunchy participant in the skits. In his now well-known finale we see the Emcee and all the cabaret performers and habitués in concentration camp uniforms.
Dehnert tries to put her own stamp on the production and is only partially successful. Her idea is to set all of the action, including the “real world” scenes, inside the cabaret. These appear as skits that the cabaret is staging with cabaret characters viewing and often intruding into them. This reconception confounds the question of reality and illusion in the musical even more. Confounding the situation further is that the “cabaret” of Douglas Paraschuk’s highly effective set looks more like a bombed out subway station stained with grime and ventilated with broken windows. Tracks making a semicircular curve in front of the set are used to roll on platforms representing dressing rooms and other locations. The show is a memory play, the recollections of the American writer Clifford Bradshaw of his time in Berlin, but in this production with the Emcee as the prime observer on scenes he is not acting, Dehnert seems refocus the show as the Emcee’s memories of the past.
This vision of the musical would be enough to set Dehnert’s apart from the others, but she doesn’t stop there. The show begins with the Emcee and some other cabaret actors playing the opening overture on their own instruments. “Is she going to use John Doyle’s groundbreaking idea for his ‘Sweeney Todd’ for the whole show?” we wonder. Fortunately, she doesn’t. Then at the end of the first number of the second act she has the cast clad in pyjamas, only to turn around at the end to show they have been marked with an “X” and to be sent to concentration camps, an obvious reference to Mendes’ version. If that weren’t enough she decides to use film and video projections on a beaded curtain. Sometimes there is merely a projection on the curtain of a landing Fräulein Schneider’s rooming house. Sometimes there are films alluding to silent movies, making the Emcee into a kind of Fatty Arbuckle of Germany, but the video projections are often of the musical and dance numbers in progress, like “Mein Herr”. These are so intrusive you can’t wait until the beaded curtain rises and Dehnert allows you to see what’s happening on stage yourself.
What makes this production work is not Dehnert’s vision but the powerful performances she draws from the entire cast. Trish Lindström plays Sally Bowles as if she were hopped up on drugs. This Sally displays an almost scary diffuse manic nature that only seems to find focus when she is performing. It is a daring and original performance that removes all sentiment from the character. Lindström gives riveting renditions of the songs. She makes “Don’t Tell Mama” very funny and “Cabaret” electrifying since Sally, who has just dumped Clifford, seems to realize the magnitude of her mistake and tries to overcome the feeling while she is singing. As Clifford Bradshaw, Sean Arbuckle gives one of his best performances ever. It is not an easy to appear to both ordinary and engaging with a quiet nature that conceals bisexual passion. Arbuckle accomplishes this with ease. In fact, he is the best Cliff I have ever seen because he is at once so natural and yet suggests the hidden depths that make him attractive. He also has a lovely voice.
Because Dehnert desentimentalizes the Sally-Clifford relationship, it is really the subplot involving Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz that grabs us. Nora McLellan is absolutely superb as Fräulein Schneider. Her delivery of such songs as “So What?” and “What Would You Do?” are so impassioned they sweep you up into the character’s dilemma of choosing between love and survival. For his part Frank Moore is a very sympathetic Herr Schultz, an optimistic and caring man in a time that contradicts those values. His duets with McLellan like “It Couldn’t Please Me More” and “Married” become the real heart of the show.
Bruce Dow’s Emcee may look like and overgrown cherub with a mini-mohawk, but he is definitely in the line of Mendes’ pansexual Emcee. Outrageous, vulgar, unrestrained, he makes Joel Grey’s interpretation in the film look straight-laced by comparison. His two best moments are in the songs “Two Ladies” which he hilariously acts out by himself, for too short a time, with two small rag dolls and the song “I Don’t Care Much”, where we finally get to hear the real strength of his voice and feel the character’s underlying bitterness. Cory O’Brien, who happened to play the Nazi convert Rolf in “The Sound of Music” in 2001, is excellent as the Nazi part member Ernst Ludwig. The key in both musicals is to make the character dashing and attractive, so that the revelation later will be all the more painful, but while Rolf still has some kindness in him, Ernst does not and it is chilling to see someone who seemed so convivial given to sudden brutality. The same is true of Diana Coatsworth, as Fräulein Kost, who entertains lots of visiting sailors in her room. Coatsworth makes her an amusing, unashamedly brazen character, but when Fräulein Kost sides with the Nazis against her landlady Fräulein Schneider our smile vanishes. Dehnert adds a further twist to the plot by casting Monique Lund as the cabaret owner Max. Those familiar with the story will remember that Sally’s break-up with Max leads to her being fired from the club. Dehnert has obviously decided Sally will be as bisexual as Clifford. Lund does carry the role off though she looks more dapper than menacing in a tux. Andrew Moyes leads off the seemingly innocent song about the Nazi’s destiny, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”, in a lovely, clear tenor, all the more effective for sounding so beautiful and pure. David Boechler fittingly clothes the non-cabaret characters are unglamorous period costumes, with Ernst obviously wealthier than the rest and Sally more eccentric. The cabaret characters, however, are a mishmash of all kinds of styles from circus to modern urban musicals and clash rather than work together to create an atmosphere. Lighting designer Kevin Fraser is given ample opportunity to use expressionist effects that fit in well with the period and Dehnert’s silent movie references. Rick Fox’s taut conducting brings out the score Weill-like acerbity.
If you have to decide between the two musicals on offer at Stratford this year, “The Music Man” is fine if all you want is pleasant musical fluff. For more riveting performances, you should choose “Cabaret”, even if these are embedded in an over-conceptualized production and even if the production doesn’t flow seamlessly from scene to scene. Dow, Lindström, Arbuckle, Moore and especially McLellen invest so much emotion and skill in their work they really should not be missed. ©Christopher Hoile |
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Love’s Labours Lost by William Shakespeare, directed by Michael Langham Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford May 31-October 4, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words" (V, i)
 Abigail Winter-Culliford & Peter Donaldson. ©David Hou The Stratford Festival’s current production of Shakespeare’s early comedy Love’s Labours Lost is meant to showcase the talents of the Festival’s Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre. That is a worthy endeavour in itself and recalls the time when Stratford’s Young Company was given its own show. But, in this case, it is also the production’s greatest weakness. The wordy, nearly actionless play is difficult to bring off at the best of times and here it so happens that none of the best performances come from the Conservatory students.
The play is difficult because it is a satire of intellectualism. That man can use reason to keep his desires in check is part of what makes man human. Yet to deny desire entirely is also to deny part of our humanness. This extreme is found in both the main plot and subplot. In the main plot the King of Navarre and three friends vow to devote themselves to three years of study and to shun the society of women. It so happens that King had previously given permission for the Princess of France to visit. When she arrives with three of her friends, the King agrees to deal with the state matters they have in common but refuses to allow the ladies to lodge in the palace. In the geometrical way the plot works out there’s no surprise that the four men soon one by one break their oath and fall in love with the visiting ladies. In the subplot we find a comic rivalry between the fanciful, Don Quixote-like Don Adriano de Armado and the earthy peasant Costard for the love of the country wench Jaquenetta. Related to the theme of mind versus heart is that of words versus meaning in which vows and euphemisms through which Shakespeare satirizes the difficulties mankind creates for itself in trying to control and embellish ordinary reality. At the very end of the play unembellished reality suddenly impinges on the world of the play to reveal the word-play of all the characters for the vanity it is.
In this handsome but fairly dozy production it is really only the subplot that holds our attention. Peter Donaldson gives a wonderful performance as Don Armado. Some actors make the eccentric Spanish gentleman so fantastical that he seems barely human. Not so with Donaldson who makes sure we see that this observer of peculiar protocols and lover of odd words and circumlocutions is still a flesh-and-blood character. As his page Moth, Abigail Winter-Culliford is a constant delight and the best Moth I have ever seen. Though only twelve, she speaks her lines more clearly and with greater understanding than do the Conservatory students. At last, the duel of wits between Moth and Don Armado is an equal one and becomes the highlight of the show. The ever-dependable Brian Tree is an excellent Costard, slowly moving toward the breaking point in constantly having to humour the word-mad intellectuals around him. John Vickery uses the same sort of pompous line delivery he did as Capulet in “Romeo and Juliet” except that here as the supercilious Schoolmaster Holofernes it is more appropriate. Gareth Potter as his foil the curate Nathaniel is vitually unrecognizable beneath his whiskers and plays the ancient man convincingly. David Collins, also hidden beneath a pile of facial hair, is a reliable Constable Dull. Stephen Sutcliffe is a superficial but charming Boyet.
Seven Conservatory students (plus Michelle Monteith) play the four pairs of lovers: Dalal Badr (Rosaline), Jon de Leon (Dumaine), Jesse Aaron Dwyre (Longaville), Alana Hawley (Princess of France), Melanie Keller (Maria), Ian Lake (Berowne), Michelle Monteith (Katharine) and Trent Pardy (King of Navarre). They are all word-perfect, speak clearly and move gracefully about the stage. The problem is that they don’t create distinctive personalities and don’t seem to have moved beyond conning their lines to interpreting them. In a play where the matched sets of four already seem interchangeable and where action is replaced by verbal sparring, this a crucial flaw and dulls the evening. The best is Dalal Badr who has real stage presence a sense of spritely wit that show us she is the perfect companion for the rebellious Berowne. It is rather too bad, then, that Ian Lake’s Berowne does not match her Rosaline since his role, the longest male role in a Shakespearean comedy, is the juiciest. Lake’s diction is the least clear of the four men and he he doesn’t point his speeches precisely enough to make their wit manifest. The eighth current Conservatory student in the show is Stacie Steadman as the milkmaid Jaquenetta, but she has little to do but look perplexed at Don Armado’s convuluted attentions.
Designer Charlotte Dean has created in the Tom Patterson Theatre a miniature version of Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s stage for the Festival Theatre. It is so simply, practical and aesthetically plaesing it makes one wonder again why none of the three productions now open at the Festival Theatre has seen fit to use it. Moiseiwitsch’s stage is meant to obviate the need for “scenery” and thus to place emphasis on the actors, precisely what the massive sets used by Des McAnuff in “Romeoand Juliet” and Peter Hinton in “The Taming of the Shrew” do not do. Dean’s has shifted the setting forward from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century giving the men the pantaloons, doublets and lace collars and cuffs that rather make them look like the Four Musketeers. The women are in lovely pastels while the black male courtiers attending her are clad in black, perhaps a visual anticipation of the surprising turn of the ending. Lighting designer Michael J. Whitfield has given the stage a dappled glow on an Indian summer. This is quite appropriate for a play that concludes with the competing voices of Spring versus Winter and one that suddenly leaves spring behind to face a winter of mourning.
Michael Langham, now 88, returns to Stratford, where from 1956 to 1967 he was its second Artistic Director, to direct there what is known to be his favourite play by Shakesprae for the third time. The first time was in 1961, the second in 1983, remounted the following year. Although the perfromances of most of the cast are merely adequate, his love for the play still shines through in the sense of gentleness and respect that seems to pervade attitude the entire cast. If only the Conservatory students could interpret their line with the pointedness of Donaldson, Winter-Culliford and Tree, perheps we’d get more of a glimpse why so many Shakespeare scholars view this as the Bard’s first masterpiece.
©Christopher Hoile |
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The Trojan Women by Euripides, directed by Marti Maraden Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford May 30-October 5, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"Starry Cast Shines in Powerful Drama"
 Martha Henry & the cast. ©David Hou Euripides’ play “The Trojan Women” was first produced in 415BC. The strength of it, and the pity, is that it could have been written about today’s events. Director Marti Maraden demonstrates this in a production of great simplicity and beauty with a cast that simply couldn't be bettered.
The play, the third and only remaining part of a trilogy about the Trojan War, is an unconventional work even in the context of ancient Greek drama. It does not present the struggle between man and god or man and man but rather constitutes one long lament by those defeated in war for the injustice of fate and the inhumanity of war. Troy has fallen to the Greeks and its king, Priam, and all its heroes are dead. As the women of Troy, including Hecuba their queen, wait to learn their fate at the hands of the victors, they mourn what has happened and steel themselves for what is to come. Euripides structures the play by confronting the women with reports from the Greek herald Talthybius, each more terrifying than the last, concerning what will befall them. What is so chilling about the play is that the tactics used to humiliate those who already defeated are the same as those in use today--rape, slavery, killing of children, destruction of homes. An intermissionless hour and forty minutes of woe may seem depressing but in fact Euripides protest against the treatment of the people of Melos in his own day resonates so strongly now it helps to place our current events in context. Each atrocity the Trojan women must suffer also becomes a challenge to survive and to preserve the memory of what happened. The poetic prose of Welsh-born Nicholas Rudall’s 1999 translation makes the text even more immediate.
The Stratford Festival has assembled a one of the starriest casts ever seen in a single production--Stratford veterans Martha Henry, Seana McKenna and Joyce Campion; Shaw Festival veterans Nora McLellan, Kelli Fox, Trish Lindström, and Severn Thompson; and acclaimed Toronto actors Jane Spidell and Yanna McIntosh. It is worth attending the production just to see all these great Canadian actors together in the same play.
The play begins with the god Poseidon and the goddess Athena, former supporters of the Greeks, discussing how to punish them for their violation of of temples to the Greek gods in Troy. As we know from “The Odyssey”, Poseidon creates such a storm that it will take the Greeks ten years to return home. Designer John Pennoyer has dressed David W. Keeley as a modern admiral, is chest hung with innumerable medals, and fitted Nora McLellan in a tight white skirt suit with gold trim, making her look rather like Margaret Thatcher, both in blinding white, the only white to be seen in the play save for Cassandra, the priestess of Apollo. The voices of both deities drip with authority and anger and thus place the victory of the Greeks in an ironic context.
While the gods speak we notice downstage what seems to be a pile of rags. After the gods depart it slowly raises itself and we discover it is Hecuba. Martha Henry magisterially portrays her as a woman who has withstood trial after trial and who leads the lamentations as a kind of commemoration of what she and her compatriots have suffered. Sean Arbuckle plays Talthybius, the Greek herald in the unlucky position of having to relay the Greeks’ increasingly disconcerting messages to the women. He gives a very fine performance showing the strain of having to perform his unpleasant duty while inwardly empathising with the women whom he wounds with his words. Given the context of the play, it is a key role since it shows that some Greeks do have a sense of humanity left if they could only listen to it rather than their lust for revenge.
The rest of the play focusses on the arrival of three important women who represent widely differing perspectives on the the women’s plight. The first is Cassandra in a truly chilling performance by Kelli Fox. Cassandra suffers from a blessing and a curse. Apollo gave her the gift of divine foreknowledge but when she did not return his love he cursed her so that she would never be believed. The women who regard Cassandra as mad are aghast to see her rejoicing in their downfall. She is to be Agamemnon’s mistress. What others see as a desecration of her virginity, she sees as the means through which Agamemnon and the entire house of Atreus will fall, as had been previously portrayed in Aeschylus “Oresteia” (458BC). What Fox gives is no conventional portrayal of madness since indeed Cassandra is not mad. Rather what Fox depicts in frightening detail is how the pressure of divine knowledge is too great for the human mind to bear. She knows the fates of everyone around her including herself and to calm herself has to try to force this knowledge into the background simply in order to live.
The next visitor is Andromache, wife of Troy’s great hero Hector, with their only son Astyanax. Andromache’s views are fully in tune with Hecuba’s and the other women. Her only consolation is that she will spend the rest of her life in slavery with her son, but the Greeks have determined that this is not to be. Seana McKenna gives a heartrending performance, one of her finest ever, as sorrow, anger and fear gradually turn toward bitter acceptance of the inevitable.
The final two visitors are a couple hated by the women above all others, Menelaus and his wife Helen. It is because of Helen that the Trojan War was fought. Priam’s son Paris was given her as a prize by the goddess of love Aphrodite, even though she was married to Menelaus. Menelaus used the Trojan’s theft of his wife as a pretext to unite the Greeks in military campaign to get her back, a campaign that lasted an unforeseen ten years. As Menelaus Brad Rudy is gruff and completely heedless of the waste of time and lives that his campaign has caused. As Helen, Yanna McIntosh gives a masterful performance that captures the fundamental ambiguity of this infamous woman. Contrary to what one might expect McIntosh plays Helen as both intellectually and physically seductive. She offers proofs that it is all the gods’ fault to exculpate herself and even as Menelaus vows to kill her upon their arrival back in Sparta, his rage seems more a struggle against her continuing attraction. McIntosh shows that Helen is born to be alluring even in spite of herself. She is such a mystery that even after this scene when Hecuba argues against all Helen has said, we still are not certain whether Helen did or did not go willingly with Paris.
Jane Spidell and Trish Lindström are the two leaders of the eight-woman chorus, absolutely precise in their choral speaking. One sequence that stands out is veteran actor Joyce Campion’s description of the fall of Troy, conjuring up in words more than any spectacle could show.
Except for two small benches the set is bare. Pennoyer has clad the chorus in kind of pants and head-wrappings that nomadic people wear even today all in earthen shades. The four principal women stand out in colour, Hecuba in blue, Cassandra in white, Andromache in black and Helen in red. Pennoyer gives the Greek guards the silhouette of ancient armour created however by modern close-cropped hair and crossed cartridge belts. Given the empty stage, lighting designer Michael J. Whitfield uses a wide array of techniques to create mood tempered with the decline of the day toward nightfall. In a wonderful effect when the chorus describes the arrival of the Greeks’ Trojan horse, the chorus mimes the hauling of the massive ropes while Whitfield creates a rectangle of light that glides from the upstage door onto the main stage. With such a superb cast and direction of such exquisite simplicity and depth, “The Trojan Women” is the undisputed “must-see” show of all the seven offerings of Stratford’s opening week. ©Christopher Hoile
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