THEATRE REVIEW: THE ANDERSEN PROJECT
22 Oct'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

It's tough to think of anyone in the modern theatre world who has done more to prove the veracity of Shakespeare's observation that "All the world's a stage" than Robert Lepage. In a career spent mining the world and all that's in it for theatrical subjects and effects, Lepage has done much to change not only the way we see theatre, but the way we see the world as well.

Now, in THE ANDERSEN PROJECT, Lepage gives us the opportunity to study, at our leisure, the way he can blend some of the most ancient theatrical effects with some of the most modern to expand the theatrical stage so that it seems indeed to embrace all the world. In Lepage's world, shadow puppetry, no doubt first experienced on the walls of a cave, blends almost seamlessly with the latest innovations from the world of video to create a magic carpet that is capable of carrying us anywhere the master storyteller wants to take us.

Commissioned by the Danish government in 2005 to mark the bicentennial of the birth of that country's most beloved writer, Hans Christian Andersen, it obviously has taken a while for THE ANDERSEN PROJECT to make it to Toronto -- but, happily, it's now ensconced for what is likely to be a too-brief run at the Bluma Appel Theatre, where it opened Thursday night. It's a Canadian Stage presentation of an Ex Machina production.

And while TAP is certain to teach anyone who is not an Andersen scholar a few choice things about the Danish master of fables -- his wretched track record with women, his attraction to men and an addiction to onanism that we'll simply have to take on faith -- this is not a biography of Andersen, who is, in reality, reduced to a supporting role. Instead, it tells the story of a young Quebecois songwriter who, in the wake of a romantic upheaval, finds himself in Paris writing the libretto for a children's opera adapted from one of Andersen's tales and baby-sitting a drug-addicted dog, at least temporarily in estrous.

His Parisian interlude also introduces our homegrown hero to a babbling French bureaucrat who is, apparently, like Andersen, devoted to self-pleasure, as well as to a sullen Algerian graffiti artist who earns his living cleaning up what customers at a Paris peep show leave behind. Their stories, interwoven with a few of Andersen's fables, become the stuffing of TAP, an occasionally rambling single act that spans more than two hours.

All of these characters, with the exception of the dog, are played by a single actor -- renowned Quebecois artist Yves Jacques, stepping into the roles created and originated by Lepage and tossing them off with the skill and grace of a dancer. Jacques also works seamlessly with all the theatrical elements Lepage and his team have incorporated into the tale. Many of them foreshadow later works in the master's canon -- a bit of shadow puppetry that resurfaces in a more refined way in THE NIGHTINGALE AND OTHER SHORT FABLES, a bit of stage alchemy that tries to turn two dimensions into three. Clearly, Lepage was exploring ideas he expanded in his RING CYCLE.

Like all of Lepage's work, it is marked by a standard of theatricality rarely equalled, but it stops short in this instance of being great theatre, marked though it is with plenty of Lepage's irreverent wit. Larded with wanker jokes and references to France's fractious unions, it still feels as if Lepage is struggling to stretch his subject matter. Sometimes, he abandons his audience to long Fren-glish monologues that are all but unintelligible in either official language. At others, he allows his story to wander while he experiments with another usually spectacular effect.

As a result, THE ANDERSEN PROJECT stops short of must-see theatre, but with the Lepage imprimatur, it is nonetheless must-see theatricality.