THEATRE FEATURE: 2010 TORONTO STAGE ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
ROSS PETTY
26 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

When talk turns to art and artists, it is often too easy to get hung up on the high points — and ignore the people who slug it out in the trenches year after year, all but ignored by the cultural mavens who think that art has to have an almost medicinal taste before it is worthwhile. Which is why, perhaps, Ross Petty's contribution to Toronto's cultural life has gone unheralded for as long as it has.

Almost a quarter century ago, Petty took the age-old British stage tradition of the Christmas panto and started shaping it to appeal to a modern-day Toronto audience. All these years later, his annual Christmas rewrites of age-old children's stories — PETER PAN, CINDERELLA, ALADDIN, and SNOW WHITE, to name but a few — have become staples in Toronto's Christmas season.

Petty has brought everyone from figure skaters and pro wrestlers to TV personalities and ballet stars to his panto stage. Best of all, he has taught a few generations of Toronto kids that theatres are a place to go if you're looking for a good time, which is a good thing for them to know. And it is why, this year, as Petty is being booed yet again on the stage of the Elgin theatre as the villain all of Toronto loves to hate at Christmas, we are naming him the performing artist of the year — just in time for him to start work on his silver-anniversary season.

THEATRE FEATURE: BEST OF 2010
26 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

While the cinematic world struggles to come to grips with the new technology that can put a 3D turkey in every pot — well, in every movie theatre and television set, at least — the theatre world has had other fish to fry. After all, theatrically speaking, 3D was old hat back in the days when Aristophanes was a smart-mouthed brat.

But while theatre patrons didn't need special glasses to catch the latest in theatre technology on Toronto stages this past year, don't think for a minute that theatre is an art form that is standing still. In fact, while movies and television were striving to incorporate 3D into their big picture without swamping their storylines, theatrical impresarios have been doing their best to incorporate movie and video technology into their work without overwhelming the delicate theatrical craft.

As a lot of those 3D movies have proved in the past year, technology only works when it is harnessed to serve the greater good — and if all you can remember at the end of the movie, or when the curtain falls on the play, is the technological marvels you have seen, that's not entertainment. It's a demonstration.

That said, when it comes to blending theatre and technology, there have been some impressive leaps into the 21st century made this year.As usual, any list of such theatrical pioneers must include Robert Lepage, who has been riding theatre's cutting edge for so long he could give the folks at Henkel a few lessons. But these days, even if he is caught up in a brand new RING CYCLE for New York City's Metropolitan Opera (or perhaps because of it), Lepage is going to have to do better than THE ANDERSEN PROJECT and EONNAGATA if he wants to stay on top. With creative minds like those of Vancouver's Electric Company Theatre breathing down his neck with works such as STUDIES IN MOTION: THE HAUNTINGS OF EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, which was arguably the most impressive use of modern theatre technology Toronto saw this year, Lepage's supremacy is no longer assured.

Of course, it didn't stop with just those two companies. Luminato dabbled in the whole issue of theatre and technology with the Rimini Protocol's BEST BEFORE, and the Stratford Festival continued its adventures in envelope-pushing in works such as THE TEMPEST. Even commercial theatre seemed determined to ride into this brave new world, arriving in Toronto in style on a bus named PRISCILLA.

Which is not to suggest, even for a moment, that anybody who wasn't up to their elbows in new technology was simply contenting themselves with the same old same-old. Ronnie Burkett, for instance, continues to find new strings to pull and pulled them beautifully with BILLY TWINKLE: REQUIEM FOR A GOLDEN BOY. With COURAGEOUS, Michael Healey cemented his reputation as one of the finest, not to mention wittiest, voices in Canadian theatre today. The Mirvishes raised the bar (and no doubt a few eyebrows) with CLOUD 9, and Dancap found lovely new depth in SOUTH PACIFIC, thanks to Broadway's Bartlett Sher, who proved conclusively that this classic still has a lot of life.

But while they all impressed us on various levels, herewith the 10 main reasons we'll remember 2010 as a banner year for the performing arts here in Southern Ontario — as usual, in no particular order.

COULBOURN’S TOP 10 TORONTO STAGE PRODUCTIONS OF 2010:

The Canadian Opera Company's DEATH IN VENICE

Modern Times' AURASH

Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People's A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD

The Shaw Festival's SERIOUS MONEY

The National Ballet of Canada's ONEGIN

Luminato/Volcano Theatre's THE AFRICA TRILOGY

The Stratford Festival's PETER PAN

Pleiades Theatre's LA SAGOUINE

BirdLand Theatre/Talk Is Free Theatre's ASSASSINS

Canadian Stage/Necessary Angel's THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
20 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5

Some names carry a lot of baggage. If you’re planning on calling a rail terminus Grand Central Station, for instance, you're going to build a little more up-town than a whistle stop. And if you set out to build a new production of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, smart money would suggest you stock up on a whole lot of funny. Which is sort of what director Des McAnuff did when he tackled the classic Burt Shevelove/Larry Gelbart/Stephen Sondheim comedy for the Stratford Festival, reprising a production he’d originally done for La Jolla Playhouse.

And now that he’s taken one more kick at the can, remounting the Stratford production at the Canon Theatre where it opened under the Mirvish imprimatur Saturday, it seems he’s added even more funny to the pot. All of which might lead one to wonder why, after three tries, McAnuff’s production still seems so drearily laboured — as eager to please, admittedly, as a new puppy, but frankly, in the end, just about as clumsy.

One could blame it on the change in venue, and certainly there is merit to that, for even though McAnuff et al have polished the show and added a degree of sophistication to its production values, it still falls short of filling the sprawling confines of the Canon with laughter. But then, it wasn’t exactly a laugh riot when it played Stratford’s more intimate Avon Theatre in the summer of ’09.

Of course, there will be those who blame the work itself, suggesting it has become dated — as if a work inspired by the comedies of ancient Greece, which have endured for millennia, could suddenly grow tired in the 50 or so years since it made its Broadway debut. Still others might blame the casting, forgetting in the process that talents like Bruce Dow and Sean Cullen (who alternate in the principal role of the slave Pseudolus) have had audiences rolling in the aisles in other plays, as have veterans like Cliff Saunders, Dan Chameroy and Brian Tree.

But after watching Dow in his Stratford opening a couple of summers ago, then catching up with Cullen as he launched the Toronto run Saturday, the problem seems to be pretty clear — and it is definitely one of vision. While McAnuff clearly understands the need for ‘Funny’ in A FUNNY THING…, it seems he sees it as something he must bring to the production, not something he must find in it — and while there is still plenty of ‘funny’ in the script by Shevelove and Gelbart, he tramples all over it in order to hang his own laughs in its stead. What he fails to grasp, finally, is that most of the comedy in the vaudeville-laced FORUM is to be found in the unexpected — and in watching the characters react to the unexpected, as the hapless Pseudolus plots to gain the hand of the virginal courtesan Philia (a note-perfect Chilina Kennedy) for his master, Hero (Mike Nadajewski), and thereby win his freedom.

In a play all about reacting, McAnuff focusses on acting, throwing in all sorts of extraneous funny business, instead of mining reaction from his truly comic characters, including not just Cullen, but his fellow slave Hysterium (played by Steven Sutcliffe). A well-rehearsed comedy is a good thing, but if it appears well-rehearsed, not so much.

So, in the end, if you want to hear a few of the more memorable Sondheim tunes, catch up with a bit of Wayne Cilento’s snappy choreography or admire the creativity of John Arnone’s sets, this might be just the ticket. But if you’re looking for ‘Funny,’ you’ll catch a lot more watching people on their way to the mall on slippery sidewalks than you will on this trip to the FORUM.

MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW: DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL
20 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

If we were to be perfectly honest — and perfect honesty is a seasoning best used sparingly at this time of year, I caution — we’d have to admit that in some cases, it’s the wrapping and not the content that makes a Christmas present truly memorable. And while that applies mostly to things like warm, cozy socks and flannel jammies, it can also apply to the bigger ticket items that come together to make up the festive season as well.

Take, for instance, the touring production of DR. SEUSS' HOW THE CRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL — a Yuletide offering that’s taken up seasonal residence at the Sony Centre, where it opened Friday under the banner of Aubrey Dan’s Dancap Productions.

That would, of course, be the same beloved kids’ Christmas classic, penned and illustrated by the inimitable Theodor Seuss Geisel way back in 1957 — sadly better known today, one suspects, in either its subsequent animated or feature movie formats than through the delightful book that started it all. All of which means the wondrously addictive simplicity of the book — a blend of Geisel’s own unique illustrations combined with a straightforward story told in compelling rhyme — is all but lost under the weight of a staging that manages, in the full spirit of the season, to be both big-hearted and heavy-handed in its eagerness to please.

It is, as the title implies, the story of how the Grinch (a mean-spirited miscreant of a distinctly greenish hue played, con brio, by Stefan Karl) grows so weary of the Christmas excesses of the residents of Whoville that he attempts to steal every single holiday accoutrement the town has amassed, from presents and trees to stockings and puddings and the beasts of the feast. The story is told in flashback from the perspective of the Grinch’s long-suffering but loyal dog, a mutt named Max, played in his senior years by an avuncular and loveable Bob Lauder and in his frisky puppy phase by an enthusiastic and charming Seth Bazacas.

But in the end, the Grinch is no match for all the little Whos who call Whoville home, for even though every single Who in Whoville wakes up Christmas morning to find that his or her tiny town has been stripped of all vestiges of Christmas, the young Cindy-Lou Who (played by either Carly Tamer or Brooke Lynn Boyd, depending on the performance) makes her way to the very heart and soul of Christmas and thereby saves the day.

Clocking in at 75 minutes, without an intermission, this is a tale obviously stretched, under the direction of Matt August, to the full limits of its endurance. Polished to a high sheen and a little smug in its innocence, it all but buries its simple message — that Christmas is about what is in the heart, not what is under the tree or even the tree itself — under the weight of its staging.

Somewhere, under the the weight of Mel Marvin’s tunes, the designs of John Lee Beatty (sets) and Robert Morgan (costumes) and the choreography of John DeLuca and Bob Richard, playwright Timothy Mason has all but buried a sweet and simple story, as heart-warming as thick socks or flannel jammies. But chances are, when the smoke clears, a young mind is more likely to remember the lovely wrapping and not the warmth of the story.

THEATRE: FEATURE INTERVIEW
Christopher Plummer busier than ever
19 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Today no one can say what his fellow revellers -- those who partied with him back in when his wastrelling ways had earned him the "Liquid Plummer" soubriquet -- would say about the pot of tea Christopher Plummer is consuming with such apparent gusto. There was a day when there were other ways to take the chill off a cold winter's afternoon -- and he admits he weathered a lot of cold days.

Now, many of the boon companions of his youth have passed on, while Plummer is not only still living, but vibrantly alive -- just days shy of his 81st birthday Dec. 13, when we spoke. And he's carrying a workload that would exhaust a man 20 years his junior.

His summer run in THE TEMPEST at the Stratford Festival behind him, he's already begun shooting on David Fincher's Hollywood take on Steig Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, in which he plays Henrik Vanger. Currently on hiatus from that, Plummer is in Toronto rehearsing for the revival of BARRYMORE, the one-man show that earned him a Tony Award 14 years ago. He'll take a brief Christmas break, do a bit more shooting on GIRL then he'll be back for final rehearsals of BARRYMORE, which opens Jan. 30 at Toronto's Elgin Theatre (where it will be filmed for later theatrical release).

And no, there is no picture hidden away that is aging in his place, à la Dorian Gray, nor has he been any more successful than the ill-fated Juan Ponce De Leon in his search for the Fountain of Youth. "I blame my wife," he says simply. "She's a really good chef and that keeps me in shape." He used to rely on tennis as well, he admits, but now, "I'm trying to save knees for the work." As for that work, BARRYMORE marks the third of his acclaimed stage performances committed to film, joining CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and THE TEMPEST.

He's not doing them for any high-falutin' reasons like posterity, he establishes off the top. "I wasn't thinking in terms of a legacy," he says of BARRYMORE. "I thought it might be interesting to look at it right now." But not interesting enough to sign a long-term contract. "I told the powers that be I wouldn't do it for very long," he adds with a laugh. "I didn't want to die doing BARRYMORE."

Still revisiting it has proved a good time already. "BARRYMORE is such fun," he enthuses. "I love the sort of creature he is." And after "14 frigging years," Plummer's understanding of the character has deepened. "I'm finding things I didn't know were there -- things I missed. It's more emotional than when we played it before," he promises. "It's got an equal amount of pathos as humour now. I just hope it works for the audience."

And while he's in the business of prognosticating, he's also predicting that, under Fincher's direction, THE GIRL franchise is going to be even hotter than the books that spawned it, and yes, he's read all three -- in 10 days. "Once you're in, you're in," he insists. "You can't stop. I was held riveted by those books -- the second one being my favourite, which I'm not in," he adds wryly.

Once GIRL is complete, probably by the summer, he's hoping BEGINNERS, a movie in which he plays a gay man, will be released, but regardless, "It's back to films for a while," he says firmly. "I've sort of done theatre back to back for a while." And he's not looking to reprise any more of his great roles. "I want to go on doing new things," he insists. "I think it's time to do a really outrageous modern comedy."

His eyes fill with mischief. "I'm determined to play a woman before I die -- maybe THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT," he says. "I'm determined," he continues, alluding to the fact that both he and his LAST STATION co-star Helen Mirren have played THE TEMPEST's Prospero this year. "I'm determined to get back at all these people playing my parts in a dress."

Mostly, it seems, he's determined to keep on working -- it is, after all, what keeps him young. "I'm not overly impressed with the big roles," he says. "I've done them so much. But a new marvelous role is sort of a rebirth. And my ambition is still there," he continues. "I'm always ambitious to be a hell of a lot better. If you don't have that drive it forces you to have, there's no hope. "You can be senile -- but you've got to be ambitious."

And so far, Christopher Plummer doesn't appear to be running out of new worlds to conquer.

MUSICAL THEATRE: FEATURE INTERVIEW
Chameroy for Christmas
14 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

We’ve had the obligatory dusting of snow, boxes of clementines are stacked in every store, tree vendors are doing a brisk business, and Dan Chameroy is about to start cutting up on stage. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Toronto.

This year, Chameroy, who spends his summers quite happily these days on the stages of the Stratford Festival, isn’t doing the over-the-top Dame drag in Ross Petty’s Christmas panto as he has for the past two seasons — at least, not in any live sort of way. (He makes a brief but memorable video appearance as a “favour to my friend Ross,” he explains.) But on the live front, he’s shortened his skirts to tunic level to reprise his performance as the vainglorious and gloriously vain Captain Miles Gloriosus in the Mirvish presentation of the Stratford Festival’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, opening Saturday at the Canon Theatre.

It’s not that he sees ‘Christmas as a comedic romp, although “I’m making a habit of it,” he admits, looking back on what has become his annual comic Christmas turn on the Toronto stage, “And I’m happy people keep asking me to do it.” What Toronto audiences may not know, however — or may not remember, considering he got his start in Toronto performing quite seriously in Les Miz — is that Chameroy’s career is not all funny games. Indeed, in more than a decade on and off at the Stratford Festival, with an occasional side trip to the Shaw, he’s racked up a list of credits that includes dramatic stints in A WINTER'S TALE, AS YOU LIKE IT, THE MAGIC FIRE and TIMON OF ATHENS, among others.

Throw in Chameroy’s facility for musical theatre, amply demonstrated in everything from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST to OKLAHOMA! and you’ve got some sense of the breadth and depth of his talent. But Chameroy isn’t merely showing off. “The goal has been to have longevity in the business,” the Edmonton-born and raised actor explains. “I’m not a crazy guy 24/7, but I do enjoy that stuff, and the dramatic stuff sort of grounds me. I like to keep the audience guessing and I like the challenge of switching things up.”

And he’s got no intention of switching off. For Chameroy, variety is not merely the spice of life, it’s also a pretty good work-out, regardless of the demands made on him — musical, comedic or dramatic. “I think it’s all the same muscle,” he reflects. “Technically, there’s a difference between singing a song and standing giving a monologue, but that is the only difference. I think the goal is to be able to bring as much depth to a play as you do a musical.”

As for focusing on any one style — deciding what he wants to be when he grows up, if you will — he’s not interested. “I wouldn’t be able to ‘grow up,’” the 40-year-old actor insists. “I wouldn’t want to make a choice. They all have such great things to offer me as an actor. It would be a bummer not to be able to do them all.” It might make things a little more normal at home in Oakville, one suspects, where Chameroy lives with his wife of 14 years, actress Christine Donato, and their beloved daughter Olivia, now four. “(She) is the greatest gift in the world,” Chameroy says of Olivia. “She keeps me grounded.”

But he admits to a bit of confusion since she started seeing her father on stage. “My daughter is trying to figure out if I’m a woman or a Roman soldier,” he says, recalling a phone conversation after she’d seen him on stage in the panto. “She was asking if I was putting my lipstick on. But she understands that I’m an actor,” he concludes.

Which means she probably understands, as well, that life with dear old Dad is never going to be dull.

DANCE REVIEW: THE NUTCRACKER
13 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 5 out of 5

Let’s be perfectly clear: When we wish for an “old-fashioned Christmas,” no one advocates a return to a ‘holiday’ that involved packing water in from the well after you’d visited the outdoor privy, or chopping firewood, likely with the same axe with which you had just guillotined a turkey that still has to be eviscerated.

But in the face of all the modcons that add ease to the lustre of our Christmases, we long for the kind of Christmas that has always been the domain of the child — a Christmas filled not only with dreams but rich smells and sweet tastes, populated by fairies and jolly avuncular old men laden with magical gifts. That kind of Christmas fills our hearts with joy and yes, sets visions of sugar plums dancing in young heads.

And happily, that is precisely the kind of Christmas the National Ballet of Canada captures to perfection in its staging of THE NUTCRACKER — choreographer James Kudelka’s magical rethinking of E.T.A. Hoffman’s timeless fairytale and the festival ballet made of it by Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. THE NUTCRACKER opened its seasonal run at the Four Seasons Saturday to the delight of children of all ages.

Currently in its 16th edition, Kudelka’s production, of course, captures the old fashioned Christmas we yearn for, thanks in part to the design genius of Santo Loquasto, whose sumptuous sets and costumes evoke Czarist Russia and seem bathed as much in the glow of memory as in the golden light of Jennifer Tipton’s design.

But, once the corps de ballet takes over, their numbers delightfully swollen by students drawn from the National Ballet School, all of Loquasto’s and Tipton’s work becomes mere icing on a truly gorgeous cake. The timeless music of Tchaikovsky’s score fills the hall, served up by the NBOC Orchestra, bolstered on occasion by the youthful carolling of VIVA! Youth Singers of Toronto, all under the baton of David Briskin, and it becomes Kudelka’s show all the way. His storytelling capabilities and dance artistry combine to weave a tale that sweeps young Marie (Anastasia Komienkova) and her brother Misha (Joel Exposito) off to the magical kingdom of the frozen land of the Snow Queen and the stage is filled not just with movement, but with magic.

That’s thanks to superb performers like Rebekah Rimsay (stepping flawlessly into the role of Baba, long the domain of the recently-retired Victoria Bertram), Piotr Stanczyk (an ever more impressive Uncle Nikolai), Xiao Nan Yu (a dazzling Snow Queen) and Stephanie Hutchison and Etienne Lavigne (aloof but loving parents to Marie and Misha). Joined by an array of dancing horses, roller-skating bears, warring rodents, giant Christmas trees and, oh yes, a magical Nutcracker Prince (a technically flawless Zdenek Konvalina) who just happens to bear a striking resemblance to the stableboy Peter, it’s a breathtaking first act, filled with fun.

But it is in the second act, of course, that Kudelka truly soars, setting his and our imaginations free in the process. As Misha and Marie continue their voyage and end up in the land of a magical Sugar Plum Fairy — a flawless Bridgett Zehr seemingly dancing on the very notes of the score, trailing spun sugar in her wake — one is torn between watching the magic play out on the stage and watching it play out on the childish faces around them.

In a land where chocolates dance and flowers swirl, where darling lambs frolic and beautiful bees buzz, all things seem possible, especially that old fashioned Christmas of which we all dream. And, of course, we mean that in the very finest possible sense of the words.