THEATRE REVIEW:
MARIA SEVERA
7 AUG/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 3/5

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE — The world is full of talented singers, of course, but every now and again, one senses that while good singers abound, the only way to be a truly great singer is to become a deceased singer, and the younger the better. And that’s not just a notion born of the tragic and too-premature-by-half death of Amy Winehouse — consider late greats like Janis Joplin, Judy Garland, Cass Elliot, Billie Holiday and even the little sparrow herself, Edith Piaf, all of whom left us wanting much, much more.

To this pantheon of the too-soon-departed, Portugal has contributed the legend of Maria Severa, a woman long considered the mother of Fado, a ripped-from-the-heart form of music popularized in the nation’s bars, brothels and universities during the 19th century. But even though Severa has been gone for a century and a half, her fame and her legend continue to grow — and the rise of a new musical bearing her name and telling her story isn’t likely to diminish her fame in the least.

Written by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli, Maria Severa had its world première Friday at the Shaw Festival, where the playwright/composers make their professional home, on the intimate stage of the Court House Theatre. Starting with the few facts that survived Severa’s apparently premature death, Turvey and Sportelli build their story around the troubled relationship between their spunky heroine, played by Julie Martell, and Armando di Vimioso, her nobly-born paramour, played by Mark Uhre.

A child of Lisbon’s impoverished Mouraria district, Maria makes her living selling fish and her body, occasionally entertaining the rough clientele in her mother’s seedy bar with songs composed with Carlos (Jeff Irving), a childhood friend who serves as her accompanist. Armando, meanwhile, is the toast of a nation, a renowned cavaleiro, famous for his daring in the bull ring. They meet when Armando and his wastrelling brother Fernando (Jonathan Gould) are walking on Mouraria’s wild side and although it is Maria’s physical attributes that first attract the bull fighter, once he hears her sing, Armando is utterly (and frankly quite inexplicably) in her power — bringing his society friends to hear her sing night after night.

It’s a development that delights Maria’s mother (played by an infinitely too young and bouncy Jenny L. Wright), even while it appalls Fernando’s (played by Sherry Flett), determined as she is that he will rescue the family fortunes by marrying the wealthy Clara (played with pluck by Jacqueline Thair). Neil Barclay and Saccha Dennis round out the cast, the former as a priest with a foot in each world, the latter as Maria’s Brazilian best friend.

It is, perhaps not surprisingly, a story fraught with melodrama and B-movie clichés, having inspired several retellings over the years, and while director Jackie Maxwell manages to sidestep the worst of them, she never really finds anything new or compelling in a story often (and frankly, far better) told in works like La Traviata and The Way We Were. While designers Judith Bowden (sets), Sue Le Page (costumes) and Kevin Lamotte (lights) create an evocative stage world, it too often simply feels cramped by a production that flirts constantly with uncomfortable cultural stereotypes.

In the end, despite a few memorably faux Fado tunes and a raft of committed performances, it simply fails to engage on a meaningful level, thanks as much to Martell’s hedgehog of a Maria as to a book that seems to be singing a musical theatre mash-up of If I Only Had A Heart and How Do You Solve A Problem like Maria?, with some Evita thrown in for good measure.