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by Dean Burry, directed by Derek Boyes

Toronto Masque Theatre, Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, Toronto

December 17-19, 2015

“Tidings of comfort and joy”

Toronto Masque Theatre has revived Dean Burry’s The Mummers’ Masque, given its world premiere by TMT in 2009.  With this work Burry has accomplished the difficult task of writing an opera that fully conveys the feel of the folk music and improvisational theatre that inspired it.  Burry was born in Newfoundland, the one province in Canada where the ancient tradition of mummering has survived to the present day.  By writing The Mummers’ Masque Burry has now given other Canadians a means to experience this otherwise unfamiliar Christmas tradition and the sheer boisterous fun that comes with it. 

Mummering came to Newfoundland with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who in 1583 claimed all of the island and all lands 200 leagues north and south of it for the English crown.  The English and Irish settlers brought their own traditions of mummering and Burry weaves together all three extant types of mummering together in his masque.        

The oldest is that of mummers’ plays with stock characters rather like an English folk version of commedia dell’arte.  The plays always feature a hero, often St. George, and a villain, usually called the Turkish Knight – a memory of when the Ottoman Empire had made great incursions into Europe.  Sometimes there would be a Princess, but the character who always appears is the quack Doctor.  In the plays either the Hero or the Knight is killed in battle and the Doctor, through various outrageous cures, brings the dead man back to life.  Though the plays are comic, the theme of death and resurrection is what ties them to the winter solstice and to celebrations of Christmas and New Year. 

A second type of mummering, the kind that presently survives in Newfoundland, is a kind of “adult Halloween”, as Burry has called it, where people go from door-to-door in homemade costumes, usually cross-dressed, while playing instruments, singing and dancing.  (“Mummering” is related to the German verb for “disguise”, vermummen.)  The people of the house give their strange visitors food and drink and try to guess their identities. 

The third tradition Burry uses is that found in the parts of Newfoundland settled by the Irish.  This involves the mummers carrying a dead wren – nowadays just a likeness of one – and asking for money to bury it.  Wren Day is December 26 and it is theorized that the wren represents the death of the old year, with December 25th as its last day.

For the present production the lovely Enoch Turner Schoolhouse serves are a large version of a family home that the mummers invade.  It is announced that members of the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus will sing two songs to start off the show.  But just as they are about to start their second song, there is a rumble in the back and the sound of strangers being asked to come in.  In come a ragtag group of people, cross-dressed, wearing all manner of mismatched clothing items in Erika Connors’ design – toques , Hudson’s Bay coats, red long johns, plaid flannel shirts – with bags over their heads

with cut-out eyes and mouths like children pretending to be ghosts.  The children seated just in front of the stage “guess” who each is by holding up a placard with the name of each soloist on it – soprano Carla Huhtanen, tenor Christopher Mayell, mezzo Marion Newman and bass-baritone Giles Tomkins. 

First the group gives us a carol in which the audience joins in.  Then with Father Christmas (Tomkins) as narrator, it presents a play.  In the first part of the play St. George (Huhtanen) has to slay a Dragon (Newman).  In the second part, he has to rescue the imprisoned Princess Zebra (rhymes with Debra) sung by Mayell, with whom he falls in love.  In the third part St. George has to battle the Turkish Knight (Newman again).  And in the fourth part, St. George calls in the Doctor (Mayell again) to help revive the slain Turkish Knight.  The final part features the “Wrenkids”, the CCOC members who wear garlands in their hair to look like wrens and move about the stage in a circle singing a wren song asking for money to help bury the symbolic wren that one singer holds up high on a pole. 

Preceding the first three parts of the story Burry has given various members of the musical ensemble a solo with, as it appeared, licence for improvisation.  First was Joseph Macerollo with a lively accordion solo.  Next, just preceding the scene with Princess Zebra, was an exotic-sounding solo for the uilleann pipes (the Irish version of bagpipes) beautifully played by flautist Ian Harper.  Unlike Scottish bagpipes, uilleann pipes are inflated with a bellows strapped to the player’s waist and right arm and worked by pressing the arm on the bellows (“uilleann” meaning “elbow” in Gaelic). 

The third solo is the most unusual.  A Burry says in his online notes, it is the only known solo in classical music for an Ugly Stick.  What is an Ugly Stick you may well ask?  It is a native Newfoundland instrument made from a broom or mop, in this case an inverted mop, fastened at the bottom to a rubber boot and at the top to cymbals and decorated with pierced bottle caps nailed at intervals up its length.  Percussionist Ed Reifel does an heroic job of wringing every

possible combination of sounds from the thing – stamping it on the floor while striking the stick and its various protuberances with a drumstick.  Its such hard work that at the end he falls over in mock exhaustion.

One of the cleverest aspects of the show, and why it makes it a masque, is that besides music and drama it also includes dancing.  Fittingly for an entertainment with origins in Newfoundland, the dancing is step-dancing.  First, dancers Pierre Chartrand (also the choreographer) and Hannah Shira Naiman give an example of step-dancing on its own following the first group sing-along.  Later, after the soloists sing their parts in the various dramatic encounters, the two stand back and allow Chartrand and Naiman, dressed in costumes corresponding to the soloists, to dance a version of the same encounter.  Thus, the two dance a battle between St. George and the Dragon, a romantic waltz between St. George and Princess Zebra and another battle between St. George and the Turkish Knight. 

Bury’s music for a six-member ensemble with Larry Beckwith conducting from the violin, easily encompasses both folk and classical styles.  The piece it most resembles in combining professional singers with children’s choir and audience sing-alongs is Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde (1958).  It also resembles Britten’s jauntiness in the musical lines of tetrameter dialogue and in the arrangements of Christmas carols that the quartet of soloists sing before the audience joins in .  When the ensemble plays on its own, the atmosphere is much more like the cabaret sound of Kurt Weill’s music.  The unusual instrumentation including bouzouki, penny whistles and double bass naturally gives both Britten and Weill a Newfoundland-style twist. 

Burry’s arrangements of familiar carols for the quartet are quite lovely and I’m sure audience members wouldn’t mind buying a recorded copy if they were available.  The duets between St. George and the other characters are primarily humorous, but his duet with Princess Zebra, meant as a parody of operetta, is actually quite beautiful and its soaring lines for soprano and tenor recall both Johann and Richard Strauss.  In fact, I couldn’t help thinking that Toronto Operetta Theatre should commission a new Canadian  operetta from Burry.

All four soloists are equally strong and equally effective as actors.  The dancers are a treat as are the instrumental soloists and the children’s choir.  Derek Boyes’ sympathetic direction helps create an atmosphere of improvisation and informality even though the work is written down and well rehearsed.  Even if you are not quite in the mood for Christmas cheer when you enter the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, all the joy and good humour radiated by The Mummers’ Masque will not fail to lift up your spirits.  Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long for another revival. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Illustration: Detail from Mummers Approach by Bobbi Pike.  Photos: Marion Newman; Larry Beckwith and Giles Tomkins holding and Ugly Stick. ©2015 Al Uehre.

For tickets, visit www.torontomasquetheatre.com.