THEATRE REVIEW: SANKOFA TRILOGY
7 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 4/5
Pictured: d'bi.young anitafrika


“Tell me a story.”


They are four tiny words that, once spoken, throw wide the doors of the imagination and uncover portals that stretch into the worlds of literature, music, the visual arts and, of course, theatre. But while every piece of theatre tells us a story, not every theatre artist is a storyteller — nor is every storyteller a theatre artist. But in d’bi.young anitafrika, it seems, those elements meet and mesh.


On the theatre front, Toronto has been fortunate to see her skills in works like Da Kink in My Hair and Three Penny Opera. And while there has also been plenty of local opportunity to tune in to her abilities as a storyteller, it’s hard to imagine things getting any better in that department than the current run of her Sankofa Trilogy in the Tarragon Extra Space.


The  three works that it comprises — blood.claat, benu and word!sound!powah! — tell the tale of three generations of Jamaican women and they are playing in rep through Dec. 4. The run was launched Friday with a performance of word!sound!powah! — the final and most recent chapter in the saga of the Sankofa women.


Through the eyes of Benu Sankofa, — granddaughter of Mugdu and daughter of Sekesu, the driving characters in blood.claat and benu respectively — this chapter tells the story of an aspiring young poet who gets caught up in the politics and polemic of Jamaica’s 1980 election and consequently finds herself accused of involvement in a political assassination. Those are merely the bare bones of the story — and what makes this story so compelling is the flesh that anitafrika puts on those bones, along with the spirituality she weaves into them, deftly creating characters and casting them aside as she builds a community.


For brief intervals she brings life to an almost dizzying array of characters, including a rather blissed-out disciple of Rastafari movement, a corrupt cop and a whole slew of early dub poets, made memorable by their delightful idiosyncrasies. Their leader and the most politically active styles himself the Robin Hood of Poets, while the emotionally bruised Peaches channels the rage and the love of a single mother and the aptly named Stammer gets around his impediment by making what he calls physical poetry.


As good storytellers do, anitafrika relies largely on voice and gesture to define character, only occasionally incorporating more physical elements — props, costumes and the like — into her tale. Set under a stylized tree created by designer Camellia Koo and lit by Michelle Ramsay, it is a story completely capable of standing on its own, even while it references the earlier works in the trilogy. And while a knowledge of Jamaica’s history and politics will enhance her stories, it is far from mandatory. anitafrika incorporates much of Jamaica’s colonial history as well as the history of the renegade Maroons into her tale, adding a heavy dose of a spirituality rooted in the African continent while still balancing linguistic authenticity with the knowledge that the Jamaican patois can sit heavy on unfamiliar ears.


It’s a complex balancing act, underscored not only by her in-your-face physicality but by the power of her voice and by her compelling rhythms (backed here by a three-piece musical ensemble under the direction of Waleed Abdulhamid). All of which means that if you’re in the mood to open a few doors in your imagination and let in some fresh air and sunshine, the best thing you could probably do is ask anitafrika to tell you a story.

THEATRE NEWS: MacLeod wins Simonovitch Prize; Cat cast back at ShawFest
7 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Canadian playwright Joan MacLeod has been named the winner of the 11th annual Elinore and Lou Siminovitch Prize, the nation’s most lucrative award in theatre.


Chosen from a field of finalists that also included Robert Chafe, Jasmine Dubé, Greg MacArthur, Mansel Robinson and Larry Tremblay, MacLeod was honoured at a gala Toronto presentation Monday, where she received a cheque in the amount of $75,000. Thanks to the unique structure of the Siminovitch Prize, sponsored by the BMO Financial Group, playwright Anusree Roy also shared the largesse, chosen by MacLeod to receive the $25,000 purse awarded to a protege chosen by the winner.


MacLeod, who has already earned a Governor General’s Award and two Chalmers Canadian Play Awards in a career that spans more than a quarter century is known for a host of plays, including Jewel; Toronto, Mississippi; Amigo’s Blue Guitar; The Hope Slide; Little Sister; 2000; The Shape of a Girl; and Another Home Invasion and is hard at work on a new play titled What to Expect, slated to debut next year.


A clearly thrilled MacLeod said that choosing her protege from a field of talented young Canadian playwrights wasn’t as hard as one might expect. “It was easy and very flukey,” she says, recalling a playwright’s residency at the Stratford Festival last fall. “I met Anusree there and I really liked her but I didn’t know her work. Then I happened on a copy of Brothel #9 and I thought it was terrific,” she says.


The Siminovitch Prize is awarded annually on a three-year rotation, recognizing excellence in direction, playwriting and design.

****

After steaming up the stage of the Royal George Theatre at last summer’s Shaw Festival in a production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Moya O’Connell and Gray Powell are slated to reunite next summer on the Festival’s Court House stage, cast opposite Patrick McManus, Jim Mezon, Mary Haney and Jennifer Phipps in a production of Hedda Gabler, directed by Martha Henry.


In other Court House casting announced Monday by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, Marla McLean and Graeme Somerville will team up with Sharry Flett, Kate Hennig and Jenny L. Wright in A Man And Some Women, directed by Alisa Palmer. Meanwhile, Mark Uhre and Elodie Gillett are paired up in Trouble In Tahiti, under the direction of Jay Turvey, while Nicole Underhay and Kevin Bundy headline a cast that also includes Kevin Hanchard, Martin Happer, Steven Sutcliffe and Robin Evan Willis, in Blair Williams’ production of The Millionairess.

THEATRE REVIEW: THE TEST
4 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 4/5


Pictured: Phillip Riccio, Eric Peterson

TORONTO - Over the past six years, Toronto audiences have learned a simple lesson: When it comes to theatre, to be in the company of the Company Theatre is to be in good company indeed. In acclaimed productions of works such as Through The Leaves, Festen and A Whistle In The Dark, this small independent company has challenged an ever-growing audience by simply challenging its artists in works that are often disturbing and darkly complex.

Which is a pretty good précis, come to think of it, for THE TEST — Company Theatre’s latest work. Presented in a co-production with Canadian Stage, THE TEST is playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre, where it opened Thursday.

Written by Swiss-Germany playwright Lukas Barfuss and translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, it’s a family drama played out in the living room of the Korach home. As the play opens, patriarch Simon (Eric Peterson) is listening to his only son Peter (Gord Rand) dispassionately catalogue the horrors and indignities he plans to heap on the soon-to-be remains of his faithless wife Agnes (Liisa Repo-Martell) and the son she has led him to believe he fathered. Peter has learned of Agnes’ deceit, it develops, after his father’s odd lieutenant Franzeck (Philip Riccio) purposely planted seeds of doubt, spurring Peter to undertake a mail-order paternity test — just one of many tests the family will face in the course of the play.

Simon, for instance, is in the process of running for political office in the unnamed city in which THE TEST is set — something he has done on a regular basis over the years without even achieving his goal. Nonetheless, he and the devoted but disturbed Franzeck both hope that this time will be different. With Peter’s marital meltdown threatening their plans, they summon Simon’s wife Helle (Sonja Smits) from the Indian ashram where she has been cocooned. Rather than smooth things over, her return creates more issues, and soon everyone on-stage and off is finding notions and concepts of family tested in ways that are difficult to imagine.

Director Jason Byrne goes for an often compelling European verité style of staging that covers much of the underlying horror in Barfuss’ script, with a brittle patina of civility — shattered periodically and at pivotal moments by the incisive brilliance of Richard Feren’s sound design.

Byrne also draws fine performances from this cast of thoroughbreds, moving them around John Thompson’s simple, hi-tech set (marred only slightly by a cheesy plastic sheeting window at the back), with an almost ghost-like effectiveness that often has characters not present in a scene haunting the edges of the set in the same way they haunt the edges of consciousness in their absence.

Peterson is once again fearless and superb — at least until he starts having a bit too much fun with his role — while Smits gives a heart-breakingly understated performance that defines the space between surrender and simply giving up. Repo-Martell, for her part, proves to have a delightful touch with drunken black comedy, while Rand manages to be both sympathetic and chilling. For many, however, the real break-out performance here might just be Riccio’s, proving as it does that he is indeed more than capable, in a turn as the ultimate outsider looking in, of holding his own with the best of them.

This production, while strong, still has room for improvement. Too many lines that need to be mumbled audibly are simply mumbled instead, and there’s a certain staginess throughout that transcends Byrne’s stylish Euro staging. But in the final analysis, The Test still manages to pass with flying colours. 

DAILY DISH: 2P4H extends run at the Panasonic
3 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency


TORONTO - Boiled down to its essence, what they were saying was: 2 Pianos 4 Hands 16 more shows.
 
On Thursday, Mirvish productions announced a two-week extension to their critically acclaimed revival of 2 Pianos 4 Hands, which opened a limited run at the Panasonic Theatre on Oct. 30.

Starring co-creators Richard Greenblatt and Ted Dykstra, the show will now run through Dec. 4 — with tickets for the extension available Monday, Nov. 7 at mirvish.com — before embarking on a Japanese tour next spring.

DANCE THEATRE REVIEW: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
2 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
R: 4/5
Pictured: Dorotea Saykaly

TORONTO - For most of us, the story of ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE is a familiar one, thanks in no small part to the resonance the Grecian myth has consistently found in the artistic world. Based on the number of operas, ballets and plays it has spawned, the story of Orpheus’ love for the beautiful but ill-fated wood nymph Eurydice has never had a chance to grow old. There’s just something it seems about a love so strong it could compel Orpheus to follow the love of his life to hell after she has been bitten by a poisonous snake, and allow him to charm death itself with his music to reclaim her, only to lose her to his own impatience.

But chances are, no matter how many times you’ve seen or heard the story told, you’ve never seen it — or heard it — in quite the same way as it is presented in the latest version to grace a Toronto stage. It’s the handiwork of Quebec dancer/choreographer Marie Chouinard, who created it on her own company back in 2008 for Italy’s Festival Equilibrio — and it opened a very limited run (through Saturday) at the Bluma Appel Theatre, a presentation of Canadian Stage.

For openers, Chouinard doesn’t concentrate solely on the tragedy of the story as we know it, using it instead to explore deeper themes of love and communication by focusing on Orpheus’ posthumous role as inspiration to the poets of Lesbos. In fact, the tragedy which sits at the heart of the story is presented finally as a bit of high-camp send up, with the entire corps of 10 dancers — five male and five female — playing the story’s protagonists in an ever-shifting panorama.

Costumed in the most basic way by VANDAL — both men and women dance naked from the waist up, save for gold pasties that cover their nipples — they seem to suggest that, under all that skin, there is a little bit of ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE in all of us. It’s a feeling reinforced by a choreographic style that manages to feel totally contemporary even while it echoes of ancient Grecian and Etruscan friezes.

While Chouinard and her company make mythological magic by evoking the satyr that drove Eurydice to her death by strapping rampant prosthetic phalluses to the males in the corps and dancing largely in silhouette, the ancient charm is quite literally underscored by the kinky modernity of the platform stilettos that complete the dancers’ wardrobe.

Then there’s the score, created in large part from found and ambient sound, blended with the dancer’s own, often primal voices. It works in tandem with Chouinard’s often sexually charged choreography to examine mankind’s urgent struggle to communicate in every way — from the sexual to the poetic. And while it may be a struggle as old as time itself, it’s a struggle exacerbated in a modern world where even the texts of Giorgio Agamben’s Profanations are all but drowned out by the chatter around it.

It’s strange, heady stuff, often outrageous and witty and always unabashedly sexual — a work that plays with its audience even while it works hard to push the boundaries of human communication and understanding without stooping to do much that remotely resembles linear storytelling. And while it’s easy to embrace it in its entirety, pared as it is to a single act of just over an hour’s duration, for this viewer, at least, the one thing missing in what purports to be a work about the world’s first poet is a sense of that poetry in the motion.

THEATRE NEWS: ShawFest attendance rises; casting underway for 2012
2 NOV/11
Pictured: GBS

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

For the Shaw Festival, the 50th season proved to be a winning one, with attendance for the 2011 campaign, which ended Oct. 30, up 5% over its 2010 season. Works by Bernard Shaw, for whom the Festival is named, proved particularly successful, drawing a total of 12,500 more patrons than in the previous season. Meanwhile, My Fair Lady, the musical based on Shaw's Pygmalion, became the best-selling show in the history of the Festival, playing to a total of 95,000 patrons throughout the summer.

With their golden anniversary season now behind them, casting is already underway for the Festival's 2012 season. Casting announced earlier this week will see Thom Allison and Kate Hennig return to the Shaw in the upcoming production of Ragtime, joining Patty Jamieson, Jay Turvey, Benedict Campbell, Alana Hibbert, Julie Martell and Evan Alexander Smith under the direction of artistic director Jackie Maxwell.

Meanwhile, Steven Sutcliffe, who essayed the role of Mother's Younger Brother in the original production of Ragtime, returns to the Shaw company again, playing opposite Moya O'Connell, in the Festival's production of Noel Coward's Present Laughter, under the direction of David Schurmann. Claire Jullien, Mary Haney, Patrick McManus, Gray Powell, Julia Course Jonathan Tan and Jennifer Phipps have also been cast in the Coward classic.

Finally, Nicole Underhay will tackle the title role in the Fest's production of His Girl Friday, playing opposite Campbell, Neil Barclay, Kevin Bundy, Kevin Hanchard, Peter Krantz, Ric Reid and Jeff Meadows, all under the direction of Jim Mezon.

DAILY DISH:
Kushnier Broadway bound
1 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency


TORONTO - Holy smoke! Ex-pat Winnipeg boy and perennial Toronto fave Jeremy Kushnier has joined the cast of the Stratford Festival’s Broadway-bound production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, understudying both Christ and Judas and playing a priest/apostle.

Although the New York-based Kushnier is best known for his run as Tommy DeVito in the Toronto production of Jersey Boys, other Toronto appearances include runs in Tommy, Rent, Aida and, most recently, Next To Normal.

After it closes its extended run in Stratford’s Avon Theatre Sunday, the Festival’s acclaimed production of JCSS is slated to open a limited run at in La Jolla Playhouse in California Nov. 18 before decamping to the Great White Way for a Broadway run at the Neil Simon Theatre, slated to begin Mar. 22.