OPERA REVIEW: LA BOHÈME

Pictured: Dimitri Pittas, Grazia Doronzio

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
07 OCT 2013
R: 4/5

TORONTO - There’s a reason LA BOHÈME is one of the most popular operas in the world — and in staging it in a new co-production for the Canadian Opera Company, the Houston Grand Opera and the San Francisco Opera, director John Caird seems to have plugged directly into it.

Caird’s new production of Giacomo Puccini’s most enduring work recognizes that, despite the fact that LA BOHÈME deals in no small part with the tragic romance between the poet Rodolfo and the frail seamstress Mimi, what Puccini and his collaborators, librettists Giuseppe Giacoso and Luigi Illica created in their adaptation of Henri Murger’s short stories is an operatic celebration of life and art, even in the face of poverty and death. As a result, Caird’s new production, currently playing at the Four Seasons Centre, fairly spills over with life. In fact, sometimes — specifically in Act II, set on Christmas Eve in the Café Momus in Paris’s bustling Latin Quarter — Caird seems overwhelmed by all that life, letting it crowd out the story he has heretofore done a pretty fine job of telling.

In this, Caird shares blame with designers David Farley, whose execution of the fine idea of a belle époque Paris which flows from the brush of Rodolfo’s painter friend, Marcello, claims far too much of the stage, and Michael James Clark, who relies too much on that life to light up the scene. Toronto audiences, after all, have grown accustomed to LA BOHÈME played out on a pretty spectacular set in an earlier, now retired production and this scene in particular is likely to make you regret its passing. Happily, however, Caird has been given a cast that more than makes up for the production’s shortcomings at almost every turn.

In the pivotal roles of Rodolfo and Mimi, tenor Dimitri Pittas and soprano Grazia Doronzio are vocally almost perfectly matched and do a fine job of capturing the romance, the passion and the pathos of their story. Meanwhile, life goes on in the (admittedly rather expansive) garret loft Rodolpho shares with his good friend, Marcello (baritone Joshua Hopkins), and two other artists — the philosopher Colline, sung by bass-baritone Christian Van Horne, and the musician Schaunard, sung by baritone Phillip Addis.

And despite their shared poverty and the double drama Rodolfo and Mimi’s romance and Marcello’s stormy affair with the coquette Musetta (soprano Joyce El-Khoury in fine voice despite the fact she seems to have parachuted in from another production), Caird manages to capitalize on his characters’ youth and their shared passion for art and life, using it as a powerful counter-balance to the tragedy at its heart, making death very much a part of the vibrant life they share.

As usual, it is a production well served by the COC Orchestra, this time under the baton of conductor Carlo Rizzi, who adroitly keeps a firm rein on Puccini’s gorgeous score without ever appearing to drive it. While it isn’t likely to make it even more popular, this is at least a production that should do nothing to diminish the place LA BOHÈME holds in the world of opera.

THEATRE REVIEW: VENUS IN FURS

Pictured: Rick Miller, Carly Street

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
08 OCT 2013
R: 4.5/5

TORONTO - Every now and again, a piece of theatre hits the stage that reminds us that the operative word in theatre is ‘play.’ At their best, playwrights ‘play’ with plot, words and their audience, after all, and certainly, all the best actors ‘play’ their parts, even when working their butts off. And when all this play comes together, an audience is able to climb aboard and join the game. Canadian Stage’s production of VENUS IN FURS, currently gracing the stage of the Bluma Appel Theatre, is one of those theatre pieces.

It features a clever, thought-provoking and thoroughly modern script, courtesy of playwright David Ives, one that, even though it is built around it, it proves to be far, far more than a mere adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 19th century Venus im Pelz — the novel which gave the world “masochism” as counterbalance to “sadism.” It also features two strong players, kept more or less in balance by the increasingly sure-handed skills of director Jennifer Tarver.

Rick Miller plays Thomas, a playwright who has adapted Sacher-Masoch’s famous novel, while Carly Street plays Vanda, a brash and brassy New York actress who arrives just as Thomas is finishing a long and disappointing day of casting. That he sees in this latest arrival everything he loathes about the actresses he has so far seen is of little consequence to the force of nature that is Vanda. She steamrolls him into an audition wherein Thomas’ adaptation opens windows into something far more personal — and definitely more real — than the 19th century novel they are bringing to life.

The story unfolds on an intimate little set created by Debra Hanson and lit by Michael Walton, and while it might be considered a little on the romantic side for a 21st century rehearsal studio, there is no doubt it lends a certain romance to the proceedings. Miller, for his part, turns in a strong performance, marred only slightly by the fact that he plays his emotional cards a little too close to his vest, never letting us feel the heat until it is in full flame. Which makes it that much easier for Street to steal the show, seamlessly inhabiting a part filled with so many quicksilver character changes with such ease that one suspects that Mercury is as important here as Venus.

Finally, although it is marked with an almost giddy sense of play throughout, this is very grown-up work, challenging at every turn, evolving gender roles along with conventional notions of what represents the sexual norm. Ultimately, these are things to ponder after you’ve left the theatre, however. In VENUS IN FURS, as in few other productions, from lights up to lights down, the play (and the playing) really is the thing.

THEATRE REVIEW: CRASH

Pictured: Pamela Mala Sinha

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
07 OCT 2013
R: 5/5

TORONTO - Amongst a veritable bouquet of awards, Pamela Mala Sinha’s CRASH earned the playwright/performer Doras for both Best New Play and Best Actress last season. So, small wonder then that Theatre Passe Muraille’s increasingly savvy artistic director Andy McKim chose CRASH to inaugurate a new season in the company’s ‘intimate’ Backspace, where CRASH opened to a capacity audience.

Which gives a Toronto audience a second chance to get a first impression of Sinha’s finely crafted one-woman show, adapted from her own short story, Hiding, and to appreciate it for the little jewel it is — even while they try to figure out just what kind of jewel that might be, its diamond-hard edges framing both the depth and the warmth of a sapphire.

Unfolding on Kimberly Purtell’s multi-level set, impressive in its complex use of simple elements, CRASH is exquisitely directed by Alan Dilworth and expertly performed by the playwright, who, working in the third person, shares a harrowing story of a young girl, shattered by an horrific crime — she’s the victim of a vicious home invasion and rape — and a family tragedy — the death of her beloved father. Over time, these two cataclysmic events become inexplicably joined and set her on the road to redemption, as she finds triumph, not in revenge or mourning, but simply in picking up the threads of her family and her life.

The play starts simply, even happily, as Sinha unleashes joyous memories, establishing her character as part of a happy loving family, before introducing darker threads and weaving them into her tale until CRASH fairly shimmers with pain and desperation. Not until then do the playwright and her collaborators begin once again to highlight the brighter shades in the tapestry they have woven, finally creating a voyage both tragic and oddly joyous in its catharsis.

Fittingly, in a play in which both the pain and the power of family is so richly explored, Sinha includes amongst her impressive list of collaborators — Cameron Davis’ brilliantly unobtrusive projections and Purtell’s lighting design, worthy of her fine set — two other family members. The playwright’s mother Rubena, trained as an Indian classical dancer, joins forces with Monica Dottor and, as movement directors, they weave their magic seamlessly into the tale. Meanwhile, Sinha’s brother, Debashis, provides a finely-tuned sound design which helps to bind the entire package together. Best of all, despite the multi-media nature of the work, Dilworth ensures that every element serves the story without ever overshadowing it.

Finally, CRASH may not be a long play, clocking in at less that 90 minutes without intermission, but it is unquestionably a complete play — a voyage that lifts you up, takes you deep into the human experience to show you the world through someone else’s life and eyes, then sets you down in a better place than it found you, richer for the voyage you have shared. Kudos to McKim and TPM for giving us another place to CRASH.

THEATRE REVIEW: THE FLOOD THEREAFTER

Pictured: Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster, Maggie Huculak

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
03 OCT 2013
R: 2.5/5

It's a little bit like picking out bits and pieces of your favourite clothing in your grandmother's latest quilting project, but there are, hidden here and there, recognizable elements of Homer's The Odyssey amongst the detritus of life in the modern-day Gaspé fishing village that is the setting for Quebecois playwright Sarah Berthiaume's THE FLOOD THEREAFTER.

Translated to English from its native French by Nadine Desrochers, THE FLOOD… opened last week in the Berkeley Street Theatre, a production of Canadian Stage. It's directed by Ker Wells, who also helmed CS's summer production of Macbeth in High Park and it boasts a pretty impressive cast including local stalwarts like Maggie Huculak, W. Joseph Matheson and Oliver Becker as residents of the bizarre little town in which the play is set.

Life there is pretty uneventful, it seems, save for that fact that every evening before the sun goes down, the lovely young June, (Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster), walks into the local bar and sheds every stitch she is wearing, while the assembled male audience watches and weeps. She is the daughter of a strange woman (Patricia Marceau) rescued from the deep years ago by Matheson's dispirited Homère, a fisherman being torn apart by his attraction to June and the suspicion that he, like most of the other men in town, just might be her father.

Meanwhile, Homère's wife, the hairdresser Penelope, (Huculak) waits every night for him to come home, weaving men's hair into wigs for young June to while away the time. These oddly tranquil lives are all thrown into flux with the arrival of trucker Denis (Kevin MacDonald) who want's nothing more than to get back to his sweetheart — but the fates (and his truck) conspire against him to tragic effect.

Now, lest this encapsulation makes you think this might be compelling or even riveting theatre, let's be clear. It is not. But it's certainly not for lack of trying. Working with a translation that careers madly between the poetic and the merely prosaic, director Wells tries mightily to create the atmosphere of magic realism in which the tale can breath and grow. But despite the best efforts of his hard-working cast, things seem to come up magical when they should be real and real when it should be magical, the confusion separated by long periods of the simply dull. Not even Huculak, whose voice could could turn the periodic table into a smorgasbord, can rise above this dross for long.

In fact, the most exciting things get — at least while everyone remains fully clothed — is when Yannik Larivee's helter-skelter set gets all shook up by all the running around and seems for just a few seconds like it might collapse. Once the clothing starts to fall, of course, there are one or two rather steamy, even poetic moments, but frankly, for anyone who has left puberty behind, those aren't likely to add up to a satisfying theatrical experience. Despite everyone's best efforts, in the end, one leaves the theatre wondering how an epic that has endured as long as The Odyssey could be cut up and incorporated into something as simply pedestrian as this.

THEATRE REVIEW: THE BEST BROTHERS

Pictured: Daniel MacIvor, John Beale

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
01 OCT 2013
R: 3.5/5

The dog days of summer — normally limited to July and August — get a holdover, thanks to the play which launched the Tarragon Theatre's season last week. Written by Daniel MacIvor, it's called THE BEST BROTHERS, and not only was it commissioned by one of our pre-eminent summer festivals — Stratford, to be specific  —  it also has a highly seasonal feel, built as it is around the sort of gay-pride celebrations that demand summer's wealth of sunshine and hot weather.

As the play begins, Bunnie Best, the free-spirited mother of Kyle and Hamilton Best, has met her end in a colourful, if gruesome, way, crushed under the combined weight of a sound speaker and a drag queen, both oversized and both of which toppled on to her as she watched the Gay Day parade. Which means that the better part of the play is devoted to ensuring that the Best brothers of title do a good job of dealing with the rituals of a parent's death. Obituary, visitation, funeral — all are dutifully arranged by the two brothers, who after years of practice, are adept at working around the filial antipathy that binds them together.

Hamilton, played by the playwright, is an uptight engineer, engaged in building design and enduring a failed marriage. Free-spirited Kyle (John Beale) , meanwhile, is a real estate agent, happily involved in a same-sex relationship with a sex worker — a relationship that both brothers know was the catalyst which led their mother to the fatal parade in search her search for  a more appropriate partner for her gay son. There remains one sticking point between the two brothers however: Who will take charge of their mother's beloved pet, a rather spoiled canine who exhibits great (and hugely expensive) taste in modern kitchens.

As the brothers Best try to sort out custody of the mutt, they take turns channeling their mother's now-departed spirit, providing background not just on their family life but on the story of the unwanted dog as well.

For those accustomed to the hard-edged style that marks most of the MacIvor canon, THE BEST BROTHERS will surely seem a little soft at its centre, its cleverness not nearly as well integrated into the mix of drama and black comedy that is the playwright's milieu.

But it is still an entertaining piece for all that, only seriously marred by director Dean Gabourie's staging of scenes in which the spirit of the late Bunnie returns to the stage. Ultimately, Gabourie's initial, heavy-handed way of marking each performer's transition from brother to mother is just lazy staging, telegraphing a lack of trust in both the material and his audience. And while the fact that it slows things down is of little consequence in a production  spanning slightly more than 80 minutes, the fact that it throws a wrench into a storyline that otherwise moves at a brisk MacIvor-eque clip proves more bothersome. Finally, as good as it is, THE BEST BROTHERS, at least in this production, does not emerge as one of MacIvor's better works.

MUSICAL BIO REVIEW: ON THE ROCKS

Pictured: Louise Pitre

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
27 SEPT 2013
R: 4/5

There are, as any performer will tell you, so very many ways to get naked on stage -- and in ON THE ROCKS, Louise Pitre flirts with many of them. But lest you think the great grande dame of Toronto musical theatre has chosen to take up burlesque in her 50s, a few explanations might be in order.

For openers, for much of her new show, la Pitre is dressed ever-so demurely -- strutting a stylish and stylishly tailored tuxedo that, nonetheless, does little to hide her celebrated curves, setting it all off with a pert and pretty pixie cut that suits her silver tresses to a tee. And while she opens the show (which premiered in very limited run Wednesday at Theatre Passe Muraille) with fond reminiscences of frequent topless appearances, those occasions were, it should be added, all pre-1964, when she was but a free-spirited pre-pubescent in Montreal.

From there, Pitre takes us first on a tour of childhood memories, often using them to illuminate the present -- ON THE ROCKS, is in fact, illustrated by her own childhood drawings, and even her Barbie doll makes a special guest appearance.
But, finally, it is the more recent past that is the focus of her show and that's a good thing. For, much as we love her, we only really know her as the hugely talented performer who stole our hearts and often broke them in everything from Les Misérables to her Tony-nominated turn in Mamma Mia!

ON THE ROCKS changes all that, for after she's dealt with her teen years in Welland, Pitre launches us on a voyage through not only her professional triumphs, and her failures too, both personal and professional. All of it is interspersed with a bouquet of highly personal songs, some written and composed by her alone, some in which she shares credits with husband W. Joseph Matheson, with whom she is clearly still most happily smitten.

But if you're looking for a show in which the names of friends and colleagues, both famous and infamous, drop like anvils, this isn't. In ON THE ROCKS, Pitre opts to focus on herself and not her famous friends, talking candidly and movingly about her chaotic love life, pre-Matheson -- a failed marriage and numerous failed relationships, taking credit where she feels it is due and shouldering her share of the blame where she feels its appropriate. She shares not only her dreams but her nightmares too -- the death of her father and her beloved mother's approaching end, both now lost to her in the cruelest of ways. And she talks about her own decision to sacrifice motherhood for her career.

In short, she talks about herself, stripping herself emotionally bare, as if to say not only: "This is me," but "These are songs from my heart," as well. And when she sings, she pours that heart into everything with often deeply moving effect, just like she always has, and though one might finally wish she and her director/ pianist, Diane Leah, had chosen to explore a musically more varied emotional palette, she ties it all together and makes it work. ON THE ROCKS is Pitre, straight up, and certainly, as usual, with a twist.

THEATRE REVIEW: PIG

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
22 SEPT 2013
R: 4/5

With the runaway success of E.L. James' 50 Shades of Grey, sexual adventurers may be tempted to check out British playwright Tim Luscombe's PIG, which premiered on the Buddies In Bad Times' mainstage Thursday, launching the company's 35th season. But despite the fact that both the novels and the play explore some of the same themes — the erotic world of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sado/masochism — the two have about as much in common as bike riding and bull riding. In PIG, the very heterosexual 50 Shades of Grey is transformed into a queer 500 shades of black and blue with, at least for the more imaginative in the audience, a bit of blood and other best un-named bodily fluids thrown in for good measure.

Under the tight and often fearless direction of Brendan Healy, who also serves as artistic director at Buddies, PIG tells parallel stories of two same-sex couples, both of whom have hooked up on line. There are certainly similarities between them, not the least of which is the fact that they both have a strong interest in the world of BDSM. In both cases there is also the same age difference, with the elders, Knife and Stevie (both played by Blair Williams) taking the dominant roles and Pig and Joe (both played by Paul Dunn) taking the submissive.

Interweaving their stories with such complete and expert intimacy that it is often (intentionally, one suspects) all but impossible to separate them, Luscombe creates a story that is both a twisted celebration of alternate sexuality and a warning, as his foursome spirals out of control in their descent into shared obsession.

And finally, control is what PIG is all about, for all that it aspires to be a story about love, obsession and "the quest for deeper levels of intimacy," as the press notes suggest. In the face of this, Healy's direction is immaculate, often beautifully constrained, in a production where both violence and nudity are refreshingly underplayed, considering the storyline. Still, despite all of the playwright's considerable skills, not to mention the utter fearlessness of the three-member cast (Bruce Dow joins a sometimes over-whelmed Dunn and Williams in a number of memorable, often incredibly creepy roles) PIG still feels too much like voyeurism — or worse.

For ultimately, one must recognize that, despite PIG's queer pretensions, with  a bit of gender-shifting, it would be just another horrific and banal tale of spousal abuse, a same-sex coda to Life With Billy or The Burning Bed. What's more, in a story marked with a longing for the good old days when gay men were sexual and social outlaws, we come face to face once again with a community of characters apparently not only filled with the same self-loathing that marked the era, but still paralyzed by it as well. It's brave stuff, to be sure, and skillfully done on every level, but in the end, apparently that's just not enough to turn this PIG's ear into a silk purse.