DAILY DISH: Jeremy Kushnier to play Pontius Pilate
14 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency

TORONTO - Less than a week before Friday’s opening at the La Jolla Playhouse, the Stratford Festival has announced that Jeremy Kushnier will replace Tony-winner Brent Carver in the role of Pontius Pilate in the Festival’s Broadway-bound production of Jesus Christ Superstar, directed by Des McAnuff.

“Brent requires a vocal rest at the moment,” a Stratford spokesman said Monday, adding casting for the Broadway run slated to kick off at the Neil Simon Theatre in March has yet to be determined.

For the La Jolla run, which ends Dec. 31, Paul Nolan, Josh Young, Chilina Kennedy and Mike Nadajewski will all reprise the featured roles they played in the Stratford production this past summer.

MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW: MARY POPPINS
14 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
R: 4/5

Pictured: Rachel Wallace, Nicolas Dromard

TORONTO - Some met her first as the unbending heroine in the series of children’s stories by P.L. Travers, but the world didn’t really fall in love with her until she loosened her corsets — figuratively speaking, of course — to lend her name to an Oscar-winning Disney movie musical that convinced us all that MARY POPPINS (as played by Julie Andrews, at least) was simply supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.

Now, almost 80 years after Travers’ stories and half a century after the the movie, books and film come together in an eye-catching stage mashup, written by Julian Fellowes, fusing story elements from both sources and blending many of the musical elements composed for the movie by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman with new compositions from George Stiles and Anthony Drew. And finally, after playing London’s West End, Broadway and diverse locales, MARY POPPINS has landed in Toronto where a touring production opened at the Princess of Wales Saturday, just in time to give a few local Christmas classics a run in the Yuletide family experience department before the wind changes and it decamps for other stages Jan. 8.

And, as produced by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Richard Eyre, it is, it must be said, a pretty lavish affair, using an extensive cast and a high-energy staging to tell the story of rambunctious siblings Jane and Michael Banks (played on opening night by Camden Angelis and Dakota Ruiz) and their adventures with the mysterious and magical nanny of title, played by Rachel Wallace.

Initially perilously out of control, the two siblings are slowly tamed as the brisk and no-nonsense Poppins works her stuff and teaches them life lessons through magical adventures that always seem to involve Poppins’ adoring and adorable side-kick, Bert (Nicolas Dromard), a sometimes-chimney sweep whose ability to conjure wonders is surpassed only by Poppins’ own. Under their auspices, toys become animated, kitchens are demolished and rebuilt, statues come to life and Bert goes on a complete tour of a proscenium arch, while, in a darker sub-plot, the children’s parents (played by Laird Mackintosh and Blythe Wilson) struggle to create a safe-haven and keep everything afloat in a world of uncaring Victorian banks and bankers that seems oddly and disturbingly contemporary.

But while Eyre and choreographer Matthew Bourne, in concert with designer Bob Crowley, conspire to keep the stage alive in a constant swirl of colour and movement, layering light, colour and stagecraft to maximum, even dizzying, effect, one might find oneself longing finally for a bit of depth and emotional texture in a story that seems too often to have been written entirely in upper case, using only the exclamation point for punctuation.

In an attempt to evoke the prickly character created by Travers without setting aside the incredible appeal of Andrews’ portrayal, they’ve created a Mary Poppins who moves through the story with all the detachment of an animated robot, smiling, singing and making all the right moves but ultimately as unplugged from the story as a bored supermodel. There’s little chemistry here with Dromard’s chummy Bert and even less with the children she is charged with redeeming and while it’s lovely to see so many Canadian actors — Mackintosh, Dromard and Wilson are joined by Valerie Boyle, Janet MacEwen and a host of others — strut their stuff, it fails to engage on the deepest level.

Because, in the end, it is not any umbrella — or even the enduring magic of tunes like Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar, Step In Time and Feed the Birds, (wherein MacEwen almost steals the show) — that makes MARY POPPINS soar. It’s chemistry, pure and simple — and this high-test production could use a touch of that kind of purity and simplicity.

THEATRE REVIEW:
THE REZ SISTERS
12 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 3.5/5

Pictured: Djennie Laguerre, Michaela Washburn, Jean Yoon

TORONTO - In a world where entire decorating shows can be devoted to finding just the right shade of white, mankind’s notion of defining others by skin colour is revealed as several different kinds of ridiculous. As the races meet and mingle with increasing abandon, one can no more assume that skin tone defines race any more than a big belly defines pregnancy.

So, full credit to Factory Theatre’s Ken Gass for his refusal to define race by mere pigment in casting Factory Theatre’s revival of Tomson Highway’s THE REZ SISTERS, populating the Manitoulin Island reserve on which the play is set with a group of women whose skin tones are far more varied than the imaginations of most casting directors. His production opened Thursday on the Factory mainstage where it is slated to run through Dec. 11.

But while Gass’s production appears to fully appreciate that colour is only skin-deep and that Highway — like most great playwrights — is far more concerned with the shadings of his characters’ hearts than the shading of their skins, it still manages to fall more than a trifle short. There’s a wonderful sense of rambunctiousness, to be sure, as Gass follows the lives of the seven women at the heart of Highway’s play — tracing their big-hearted dreams and their nightmares with often raucous abandon.

For some, like Jani Lauzon’s Pelajia Patchnose, those dreams simply frame something more exciting than patching the roof of her two-room shack. For others, like Jean Yoon’s Veronique St. Pierre and Djennie Laguerre’s Annie Cook, dreams are more materialistic — a new stove or more records.

And while some, like Kyra Harper’s Philomena Moosetail and Michaela Washburn’s Emily Dictionary, who have come home to the reserve to heal, their dreams are of what they left behind. Still, for others like Cara Gee’s Zhaboonigan Peterson and Pamela Sinha’s Marie-Adele Starblanket, escaping the nightmares of past and future proves dream enough.

So it’s hardly surprising that when word comes of the world’s biggest bingo being planned in Toronto, they’re all aboard as each dreams of the magic the $500,000 grand prize might work in her life. Unfortunately, they dream without remembering the ever-present hand of the mythical Nanabush, the trickster of First Nations’ myth, played by Billy Merasty.

As usual, Highway writes characters not only large, but broad, infusing his sisterhood with a bawdy earthiness that is delightful. And, in the main, Gass captures that innocent bawdiness to perfection in a sprawling production that, thanks to Gillian Gallow’s set — and Highway’s far-flung story — has no real anchor.

But in bringing life to a story meant to underline the simple quiet courage and natural dignity of women living life in the face of sexual and spousal abuse, surrounded by poverty, substance abuse, sub-standard medical care and uncaring bureaucracy, Gass and his otherwise talented cast fail to find the emotional heart in their individual struggles. In a series of confessional soliloquies, they fail to find the stoicism imbued in these characters since birth. Meanwhile, Merasty renders his role in an almost stolid way, his gravity weighing down the shape-shifting and irreverent trickster making a spirit too much to the earth.

In the end, it’s all a bit of a toss-up, despite quality work from Harper, Lauzon, Sinha and Yoon, as well as some good collective scenes. While it offers a chance (and one that shouldn’t be missed) to revisit what has become a Canadian classic, it’s likely to leave you hoping that should you get a chance to see it again, they’ll somehow do it all just a little better.

THEATRE NEWS: Stratford commissions new Canadian works
12 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

TORONTO - In the waning days of his artistic regime, the Stratford Festival's Des McAnuff continues a commitment to new Canadian works begun at the end of his first season in 2008.

In fact, McAnuff, who leaves the Festival at the end of the 2013 season, announced Thursday that the Festival has commissioned new works from Canadian playwrights Jason Sherman and Hannah Moscovitch, as well as an English translation from Linda Gaboriau of a new play by Michel Tremblay.

Under McAnuff's auspices, new or revised works from George F. Walker and John Mighton have already been produced on Festival stages, while another new work from Marek Norman and Morris Panych is slated for production in 2012.

In addition, there are also Stratford commissions in the works from playwright Judith Thompson; and from Lisa Lambert, Bob Martin, Don McKellar and Greg Morrison, the team behind The Drowsy Chaperone.

MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW: SEUSSICAL
11/11/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 4.5/5
Pictured: Damien Atkins

It wasn’t even a year ago that Allen MacInnis, artistic director of the newly re-re-christened Young People’s Theatre worked a bit of stage magic, stripping the wraps off a delightful mainstage production of A Year with Frog and Toad that quickly became a must-see on the kiddy’s Christmas circuit. And for those of you wondering if he can pull another rabbit out of his hat for this year’s holiday season, the answer might be a highly equivocal “No.” That’s because when you can stick a hand into a hat and pull out a kangaroo, a trio of monkeys, a brace of exotic birds, a stout-hearted elephant and a delightfully peripatetic cat who normally wears that hat, who really needs a rabbit anyway?

Particularly when you’ve got a rhyming magician like Theodor Geisel, otherwise known as Dr. Seuss, on side, as re-interpreted for the stage by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. Several years ago they put their heads together over a library of the good Doctor’s collected works and came up with SEUSSICAL — a show that, while it failed to take Broadway by storm, proved nonetheless, in a somewhat expurgated version, to be an enduring delight to children of all ages.

In fact, a lot of people learned that when MacInnis first staged the work in his theatre in 2006. Now MacInnis is doing it again, marshaling a delightful and largely brand-new cast on Judith Bowden’s lollipop world of a set and serving up a treasure chest full of life lessons all but guaranteed to underscore the less materialistic side of the forthcoming holiday season.

It all begins with an encounter between young Jojo (Jennifer Villaverde, just a tad overwound on the charm front) and the Cat in the Hat (a spot-on Damien Atkins) The soigné sort of feline quickly teaches the young girl about the glories of imagination — all of which leads, with inexorable delight, to a retelling of the tales of Horton, a steadfast elephant played with simple stalwart charm by George Masswohl.

One day, while languishing in his bath, Horton starts hearing things and discovers the things he is hearing all emanate from a tiny speck of dust, which is really home planet to an all but invisible population of microscopic beings called Whos. Suddenly aware of the dangers his new friends face, Horton sets about protecting them, earning the scorn of his neighbours, who think he’s got bats in his trunk. But undeterred, Horton soldiers on in the firm conviction that a person’s a person, no matter how small.

In the midst of general derision, Horton catches the eye and the heart of a sad little bird named Gertrude (Jane Johanson), who lives next door. She’s fallen in a big way for the protective pachyderm, despite the certain knowledge he is unlikely to notice a girl like her in a world filled with pumped-up pouty birds of paradise like Mayzie (for a good time, MacInnis called the incomparable Sharron Matthews and got just the right numbers). But the showboating Mayzie thinks a bird in the bush is a bit of a drag and sticks Horton with a mother of a babysitting gig, just at a time when he’s desperately wondering where the Who went and why.

It all resolves nicely in the end, but not before the cast — bolstered by Bethany Kovarik, Nichola Lawrence, David Lopez, Dale Miller, Natasha O’Brien and Desmond Osborne — have a chance to strut their stuff in song and dance, showcasing the work of musical director Diane Leah and the choreography of Nicola Pantin.

All in all, another fine package from the folks at YPT, just in time for the holidays.

THEATRE/OPERA NEWS: ShawFest completes lineup; COC turns profit
9 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

With the release of casting for the Royal George and the Studio Theatre Wednesday, the Shaw Festival seems to have completed its casting for the 2012 season in Niagara-on-the-Lake. 
On the Royal George stage, look for Drama at Inish’s Thom Marriott and Krista Colosimo to reunite in Misalliance, under the direction of Eda Holmes, supported by Wade Bogart-O’Brien, Catherine McGregor, Jeff Meadows, Peter Krantz, Craig Pike, Tara Rosling and Ben Sanders.


Meanwhile, Shaw veteran Michael Ball heads up an ensemble that includes Robin Evan Willis, Billy Lake, Julie Martell, Bogart-O’Brien, Pike and Saunders in French Without Tears, directed by Kate Lynch. 
As well, look for Corrine Koslo and Ric Reid to return to the festival in Come Back Little Sheba, joining Julia Course and Sharry Flett in a production directed by Jackie Maxwell. 
And finally, Rosling will team up with Sanjay Talwar in Helen’s Necklace, the first Canadian play to be presented on the stage of the Studio Theatre, to be directed by Michelene Chevrier.

****

Hitting the high notes in a questionable economy is arguably a high-wire act — but the Canadian Opera Company continues to maintain its balance despite it all.
 In financial statements released at the COC annual general meeting Wednesday, the company reported a “modest” surplus of $10,000 on revenues totalling $12.3 million at the end of its 2010-11 season.
In total, the COC drew 129,450 patrons to 66 performances of the seven operas that comprised the company’s fifth season in the Four  Seasons Centre. 
In addition to box office revenues, which represent 33% of their total budget and grants from various level of government (19%), the COC also raised an additional $8.6 million from other sources — an increase of 5% in fundraising over last year.

DANCE REVIEW: LOVE LIES BLEEDING
9 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
R: 4/5

It’s taken a year and a half, but Toronto fans of one Reginald Kenneth Dwight — perhaps better known these days as Sir Elton John — are finally getting a chance to get up close and very personal with a dance biography inspired by the composer/singer/showman’s life and music. And in those 18 months, choreographer Jean Grand-Maître, who created the work for the Alberta Ballet (where he serves as artistic director), has taken the opportunity to tweak, tighten and otherwise polish a work that seemed destined to become an international calling card from its first performance at Calgary’s Jubilee Auditorium. It’s called LOVE LIES BLEEDING and it opened Tuesday at the Sony Centre, where it is slated to play through Saturday.


There is nothing new in the confluence of celebrity and dance; Grand-Maître preceded LOVE LIES BLEEDING, with Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum set to Mitchell’s music and followed it up with Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, set to the music of Sarah McLachlan, while the National Ballet of Canada scored box office gold in ’08 with Christopher Bruce’s Rooster, set to the music of the Rolling Stones.


But what sets LLB apart from the pack is the biographical element, which opens highly stylized windows into John’s life at the same time it revisits a bouquet of hits and some lesser known tunes drawn from the songbook John created with lyricist Bernie Taupin, over his years at the top of the rock ’n’ roll heap.


It starts and ends simply, with a kid on a tricycle, an evocation and an homage to a core of childish innocence that has allowed John in his later years to carve a niche for himself composing music for family musicals like The Lion King. As for the time in between, that is revisited through the eyes of an Elton Fan (danced by the hyper-athletic Yukichi Hattori) who inadvertently wanders into an alternate universe where he finds himself reliving his favourite rock star’s life.


From the innocent exuberance of Bennie, played out in full baseball rig-out, he goes on to explore the highs and lows of a life of excess — a life that masked but only barely, both overindulgence and sexual crisis as John struggled to come to terms with fame and his personal demons.
 Over a song list that includes such classics as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road­, as well as lesser known works like Madman Across the Water and The Bridge, Grande Maître imposes a contemporary dance vision that, while informed on occasion by classical ballet, owes much to the jazz, tap and hip-hop schools as well.


Similarly he raids the cupboards and closets of contemporary culture, both gay and straight, to create visuals that are delightfully in-your-face and decidedly homosexy, referencing everything from stripper bars to Andy Warhol, A Clockwork Orange and Cirque du Soleil. There’s an eye-catching and ever-evolving set from Guillaume Lord, videos by Adam Larsen, dramatic lighting by Pierre Lavoie and barely there costumes by Martine Bertrand.


And while it all comes together in an impressively rollicking, crowd-pleasing two-hour package that will delight John’s fans, one can’t help but wish that after 18 months of practice, the corps had achieved a bit more in the way of precision to showcase some of Grand-Maître’s work. Or miss the fact that LOVE LIES BLEEDING offers scant opportunity for the troupe’s ballerinas, who are to be forgiven if they are jones-ing for a similar dance-ography inspired by the work of k.d. lang.