Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✩✩
by Maurice Maeterlinck, directed by Tatiana Chouljenko
Atrium Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
December 5-13, 2008
The chance to see any play by Maurice Maeterlinck on stage is so rare, it is reason enough for theatre-lovers not to miss A Miracle of Saint Antony in its Canadian premiere. The Belgian symbolist Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 was once very popular. For a time his children’s play The Blue Bird (1908) rivalled Peter Pan in success. Nowadays, his most staged work is the play Pelléas et Mélisande (1893) in its form as the libretto for Debussy's opera of the same name.
A Miracle of Saint Antony (1919) shares the preoccupation with death and the otherworldly with Maeterlinck’s main works, but this small gem is decidedly different in being a comedy. As nephews Gustavus (Gordon Bolan) and Achilles (Scott Maudsley) hold a funeral dinner for their dead Aunt Hortensia, a ragged stranger (Edward Zinoviev) convinces the maid Virginia (Emily Lineham) that he is Saint Antony of Padua (1195-1213) sent by God to resurrect the dead woman. For the nephews who had counted on their wealthy aunt’s inheritance, this is not such welcome news. On a smaller scale rich with irony and humour, Maeterlinck portrays the old question whether humanity would not recrucify Christ should he return.
Director Tatiana Chouljenko has wisely cut Maeterlinck’s 15-member cast down to only five, partly by keeping Hortensia and the dinner guests off stage, partly by having the marvellously versatile David Fraser play four hilarious parts. Zinoviev gives a cherishable performance as Saint Antony, combining both a sense of divine innocence with infinite tolerance as he regards the farcical mortals around him. Though Maeterlinck envisaged Virginia as an elderly woman, the young, svelte Lineham glows with the wonder of being in the presence of divinity.
There are also problems with the direction. Too often Chouljenko allows the histrionics of the nephews to overwhelm the quiet dignity of Saint Antony. Despite the saint's miracle-working she never allows the two a glimmer of doubt or wonder that would make them both funnier and more human. Her use of musical interludes, including expertly danced tango sequences, do not move the action forward and frequently disrupt the pace of the comedy. Finally, she has interpolated an invented scene between Antony and Virginia just before the text’s ending, making what is an already ironic conclusion quite confusing. Nevertheless, Atrium Theatre deserves praise for breathing so much life into Maeterlinck’s play and raises hopes it may do so again with other unjustly neglected works.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-12-09.
Photo: Gordon Bolan, Emily Lineham and Edward Zinoviev. ©David Hawe.
2008-12-09
A Miracle of Saint Antony