Twelve Shows in London – February 2023

I had a playgoing blitz in London the end of February, and here I’m going to rank the 12 shows I saw from best to worst. The reviews were previously posted on Facebook, but the ranking is on reflection about everything I managed to see.

1.

The Lehman Trilogy: …best play so far, by far. An old-fashioned three-act play, running three and a half hours. Directed by Sam Mendes, acted to perfection by three actors, words, words, words. Set in a revolving glass office cube, with file boxes used as stairs, chairs, and towers. The scope is vast, covering 150 years as we follow the original three Lehman brothers arriving in America, moving to Alabama to run a fabric business that grows into a bank and finally a trading company. The family moves to New York, inevitably, weathers the stock market crash, World War II, and sees grandsons running the family business, until finally being taken over by outsiders before collapsing into bankruptcy. A chilling yet riveting expose of capitalism, a world we all live in, filled with wanting more, more, always more.

2.

Medea: A powerful version of Euripides’ Medea, adapted by Robinson Jeffers, with Sophie Okonedo giving a chilling portrayal of a woman bent on vengeance at any cost. Ben Daniels plays the abandoning husband Jason and all other male roles. A chorus of women start from the audience but take the stage to weep over Medea, her children and their fate. The play is staged in the round, in an intimate space, and director Dominic Cooke moves things along briskly in this 90 minute version, ending in a chilling climax soaked with rain. Perhaps not as potent as Helen McRory’s version at the National Theatre, where she dragged her sons’ bodies on stage in blood-soaked sleeping bags. But still a great start to this week of theatre!

3.

Sylvia, is a musical about the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. A hip hop musical (can anyone say Hamilton?) with a diverse cast, this one took me by surprise. In short, it was terrific, with an excellent cast and band, standout performances by Beverley Knight as Sylvia’s mother Emmeline Pankhurst and Sylvia herself, Sharon Rose. Great singing and dancing, this one earned its standing ovation.

4.

Orlando: Emma Corrin (The Crown) shines in this role, as does the ensemble of Virginia Woolfs who accompany Orlando on his/her journey through time. Fluidly directed by Michael Grandage, with a lovely turn as Orlando’s housekeeper by Deborah Findlay, this was a swift 90 minute adaptation of Woolf’s novel.

5.

Rusalka by Dvořák: Performed in the Royal Opera House, Rusalka is a water spirit who loves a mortal prince, but of course it all goes tragically wrong. She sacrifices her voice to win the love of her prince, which ends up costing her everything. Sublime singing and orchestration. I loved it!

6.

Romeo and Julie, a new play by Gary Owen, was performed at the National Theatre. About two working class kids in Cardiff who find each other, except that Romeo is already a single father with a baby. Then Julie gets pregnant too, threatening her future dreams of studying physics at Cambridge. This was a moving new play, with five wonderful actors in the ensemble.

7.

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons with Jenna Coleman (Dr. Who) and Aidan Turner (Poldark). We follow a couple who are living through repressive times as the government votes to limit speech to 140 words per person per day. This absurd premise plays out between the two lovers in bittersweet ways, as they try to ration their words, inventing shortcuts, even using Morse Code. I liked the simplicity of the play and its staging, but thought that overall, there was not much there, there.

8.

Cirque du Soleil’s Kurios at Royal Albert Hall. Kurios was inventive and so imaginative, with a cool steampunk vibe, lots of fun! I’m always impressed with the acrobatics and clowning, but the look of this show is what will stay with me.

9.

Phaedra: A new adaptation by Simon Stone, who also directs, doesn’t resemble the original much at all, to its detriment. In this version, Phaedra is Helen (Janet McTeer), a high-powered MP who reunites with her Moroccan former lover’s son Sofiane (Assaad Bouab from Call My Agent). They start an affair, until her daughter Isolde (Mackenzie Davis) also falls for the mysterious man who turns everyone’s lives upside down. McTeer is a powerhouse in the role, self-absorbed and self-critical in equal measure, her end is bloody, as in Euripides’ original but under very different circumstances. The set is yet another revolving glass cube, that magically transforms from a family home, to a field, a restaurant and finally, a hilltop in Morocco. I enjoyed this production, but was also frustrated by it…why not simply stage the original tragedy? I saw Helen Mirren in the title role on National Theatre Live, and she was amazing. It’s too bad the great Janet McTeer wasn’t given the same chance to shine.

10.

Wicked: I’ve been wanting to see this musical ever since I read the book by Gregory Maguire. It’s a great show, with a stunning set and fabulous costumes, and a great troupe of performers, in particular Glinda and Elphaba, of course. A couple of memorable songs makes it a keeper!

11.

Titus Andronicus at the Globe Theatre, in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, lit by candles. And candles became a metaphor to protect us, somewhat, from this violent and gory play, Shakespeare’s first tragedy, probably co-authored with George Peele. This all-women production makes a strong point about gender and violence, as the cast opens and closes the show singing (to live music) “Men killing men, killing women, killing children…”. And so it goes. When people are killed, their hand-held candles are snuffed out, and the wicks (souls) retrieved. It’s a nice conceit, but nothing can protect us from the horror of Titus’s daughter Lavinia’s rape and mutilation at the hands of his enemy Tamora’s sons. A previous Globe production had audiences fainting from the blood. We are spared that, but not the horror of the vicious and violent world Shakespeare presents.

12.

& Juliet has fun mashing up pop songs with giving R&J a happy ending. But I found it all a bit so what. Great singing and dancing though, I’ll give them credit for that.

So there you have it! My top twelve from a memorable week in London!

Three PuSH Festival Shows

From This & The Last Caribou (Credit: Daniel Paquet)

I was in Vancouver last weekend to see some shows at the PuSH Festival, always a worthwhile event. I’ve seen some tremendous work at PuSH before, including Robert Lepage and other national and international works. This time was a bit more hit and miss, beginning with a three part dance piece from Regina’s New Dance Horizons. This performance was a mashup of dance and movement, more movement than dance, which left me wishing for more of the latter. I found the experience to be disappointing one, with the caribou in the piece above wrapping herself up in the long strip of white paper…to what effect exactly? And although the middle piece had more merit, with a male Indigenous dancer in a long red dress, it also left me scratching my head. What was it all about? The last piece featured six dancers, prancing with caribou antlers about the stage, as a meditation on their fate. It was all a bit so what for me, I’m sorry to say.

Top, Laara Sadiq, Bottom, Ensemble (L to R: Laara Sadiq, Amy Rutherford, Andrew McNee and Ryan Beil) (Credit: David Cooper)

Electric Company is one of Vancouver’s most exciting and edgy theatre companies. Founded by Jonathan Young, his former partner Kim Collier and playwright Kevin Kerr, Electric has produced some fabulous theatre over many years. This new play, An Undeveloped Sound, takes place in a call centre where we meet four characters who we think are selling condo units on a sound near Vancouver. But there is something strange going on in this workplace, it has the feeling of a cult, with a mysterious baby sitting with its back to us who is know as “The Developer”. Who is this baby and what is its purpose? Who are these four people and why do we get the sense they are trapped here, like in Sartre’s No Exit? The play is written and directed by Jonathan Young, and is filled with witty dialogue that perplexes as much as it amuses us. The acting is excellent throughout, with all four actors having wonderful moments. The play resolves, somewhat, with a punchline that makes one think about what we mean by the word “development” especially in a city like Vancouver that is development-mad. The design, lighting and use of a giant screen reflected Electric’s aesthetic of pushing boundaries of what’s possible on stage. I really liked it, even though I’m still not sure what it was all about.

Itai Erdal in Soldiers of Tomorrow (Credit: Matt Reznek)

I saw lighting designer Itai Erdal’s previous one-person show, How to Disappear Completely, twice, both times it came to Victoria. It was a moving performance about the death of his mother mashed up with a lecture on basic lighting design. Filled with photos and videos of his family in Israel, Erdal traced his mother’s decline while sharing his knowledge of sidelight and the effect of various lighting angles on the human body.

Now he is premiering a new show titled Soldiers of Tomorrow, co-authored with playwright Colleen Murphy, about his mandatory time spent serving in the Israeli Defence Force. When Israelis turn 18, they must serve for three years, and Erdal served in Lebanon as well as at a border crossing between Israel and Palestine. This 70 minute show is presented in a similar way to his previous one, as Erdal speaks directly to the audience throughout, in a kind of lecture-performance. He is a natural storyteller, and shares that his goal was to prevent his nephew from doing his stint in the army. He brings out a photo of his newborn nephew and sticks it to the stylized backdrop portraying the Middle East. He then walks us through his initiation into the army, his close ties with his commanding officer and some of the hard lessons he learned. Erdal makes effective use of both smaller and larger plastic soldier figurines, animating them to show conversations between himself and his comrades, and focusses in on a tension-filled encounter at the border. A Palestinian grandmother wants to bring her sick grandchild back to Israel to care for him. Erdal and his fellow soldiers are suspicious, as he was serving in the early 90s when suicide bombings were all too common. He makes us feel the nervousness of the moment, when we realize in a moment that things could go horribly wrong.

The production looks wonderful, beautifully lit by Alan Brodie, and fluidly directed by Anita Rochon. It features a live musician, a Syrian refugee named Emed Armoush, whose soft music effectively underscores the play. It also features a moving cameo at the end, which caused some leakage from my eyes. I hope more audiences get to see this lovely show.

Four recent performance reviews in Victoria and Toronto

Daniel Okulitch as Don Giovanni, 2022. Mackenzie Lawrence Photography. From POV website.

I have seen a number of shows in the past week or so, starting in Victoria with a fine Pacific Opera Victoria production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. We all may know the story of the inveterate seducer of thousands of women, who eventually pays the price for his lechery, ending up literally in hell (where George Bernard Shaw will follow up the story with his own postscript play). Set in modern times, the show was well-directed by Maria Lamont, who effectively brings the story into the present day. The simple sets, designed by Christina Poddubiuk, worked well, with columns and Italianate archways taking us into the appropriate setting. The lead singers were all excellent, in particular Daniel Okulitch’s rakish Giovanni, who fights to the death for his libertarian lifestyle, and Aviva Fortunata’s Donna Anna, along with Tracy Cantin’s Donna Elvira and Cecile Muhire’s appealing Zerlina, all of his rejected lovers expressing both their regret for falling for him alongside the lingering longing they cannot help but feel. The POV orchestra, under Timothy Vernon, sounded terrific, and the chorus looked and sounded dramatically caught up in the action Mozart spins so well.

From https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/pipeline

My next show took me across the country to Toronto, and Soulpepper Theatre’s production of Dominique Morisseau’s play Pipeline. Originally produced by Lincoln Center Theater in 2017, New York City, Pipeline was commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago. With a pedigree like this, and with the subject matter of personal interest to me, I was really looking forward to seeing this production, directed by Weyni Mengesha and featuring a majority Black cast. The plot tells the story of divorced mother Nya (Akosua Amo-Adem)–whose son Omari (Tony Ofori) has gotten into trouble at school after losing his temper and pushing a teacher–and her very real fears for his future and safety in America. While Nya is a public school teacher, a tough job in America, she sends her son to a private school, and is pinning all her hopes for his future on his succeeding in that setting. The play follows this situation and introduces us to Omari’s girlfriend Jasmine (a delightfully ‘teenage girl’ Chelsea Russell), long-suffering fellow teacher Laurie (the always strong Kirsten Thomson), ex-husband and absent father Xavier (Kevin Stanchard) and school security guard, plus potential love interest for Nya, Dun (Mazin Elsadig). I found the play to be well-written and the acting competent, if not inspired, throughout this 90 minute performance. But I also found my attention drifting at times, less than captivated by what I was witnessing. I heard from a fellow theatregoing friend that the Lincoln Centre production, which was available for live streaming during the pandemic, was sensational. This production left me wanting more.

Matthew Polenzani (Alfredo) and Amina Edris (Violetta) from https://bachtrack.com/review-traviata-edris-polenzani-piazzola-canadian-opera-company-toronto-april-2022

Next, my quick trip to Toronto took me to a superb production of Verdi’s great opera La Traviata. Based on The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils, it tells the tale of the tragic Violetta, a Parisian courtesan who finds true love, and an escape from the emptiness of her high society life, in the arms of Alfredo Germont. Of course, this being opera, she loses her love (for a while), and eventually her life to the great killer of the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis. In this production, a remount of the same opera last seen in 2015 at the COC, director Arin Arbus captures the passion and beauty of Verdi’s music in the dramatization and especially the strong lead performances by Amina Edris as Violetta, who sang beautifully throughout, and Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo. Strong also was Simone Piazzola as Alfredo’s judgmental father Giorgio Germont. The costumes by Cait O’Connor were suitably ravishing, especially in the party scenes, with O’Connor adding some giant puppets into the mix as well, to great effect. The lighting was lovely, as designed by Marcus Doshi. The chorus looked and sounded splendid, and so did the orchestra, under the baton of conductor Johannes Debus. All in all, it was a three hour dip into an opera that is so much revived for good reason; its glorious romantic music will move you and its story of tragic love will touch your heart, as all good art must do.

From website https://showoneproductions.ca/event/library-at-night/

My fourth and final recent performance was a virtual one; Robert Lepage’s virtual reality experience The Library at Night, based on the book of the same title by Alberto Manguel. The experience is advertised as “an immersive and sensory virtual-reality journey that whisks you away to ten libraries, real or imagined, throughout time and across the globe – from Mexico to Japan, Copenhagen, Sarajevo and beyond.” Visitors are greeted by a guide who leads us into (what else?) a library, outside of which we see rain falling down the windows and hear Alberto Manguel introduce us to his lifelong love affair with libraries and everything they both hold and represent. We are then taken into another room, seated and given instructions on how to put on and operate our virtual reality headsets. The interface is quite intuitive, and I was able to navigate to the ten different library sites worldwide with ease. Each library offers a 3-D version of the library, in which the viewer can turn and look in all directions. Actors move soundlessly in and out of the space while music plays and Manguel’s voice orients us to what we are seeing. So we travel from the Ancient Library of Alexandria, to the destroyed Sarajevo Library, to the National Library of Canada (with an incredible animation emerging from the pages of Audabon’s The Birds of America (the highlight of the experience). I have librarians in my family; both my mother and my sister are retired librarians, and my sister now teaches at the UBC Library School. I have always believed in the value of libraries as bastions of knowledge-keeping and democracy–where else can you get anything in our world for free?–and this VR experience brought back to me both the beauty of libraries as architectural spaces and the profundity of what they represent for humanity and its better nature.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes Review

Vincent Gale (Jon) and Sara Canning (Annie) in Moscovitch play/Photo by Emily Cooper

Sometimes, writing a play can be therapeutic for the playwright. It appears this might be the case for Governor General’s Award winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch with her play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. In it, she repeats a plot line seen in her 2016 play Bunny (recently reviewed here) when a first year college student has an affair with her married professor. This 2020 play, recipient of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for English language drama, centres around college professor and successful novelist Jon (Vincent Gale) and the attraction he feels towards his student Annie (Sara Canning) that tips inevitably into an affair. The 80 minute two-hander makes the interesting choice to have the story told from Jon’s point of view; he is our narrator and quite honest in his relaying of his growing feelings for Annie, although also with a large dollop of self-justification alongside his self-loathing for bedding a teenager.

Ably directed by the Belfry’s AD Michael Shamata, the two actors here offer strong and effective performances. Belfry regular Vincent Gale in particular impresses with his honest narration of losing control of the situation, but also revelling in his conquest of a beautiful young woman. Canning also impresses in her Belfry debut. Her Annie shows her falling under the spell of an author and professor she admires, to the point of seduction. When Jon accuses her of coming on to him, Canning’s response is one of baffled vulnerability, moments before Jon moves in for a kiss and the affair begins. The production has a simple but effective set consisting of a painted backdrop featuring what we imagine is text from Jon’s writing, and a revolve that swiftly moves set pieces on and off stage. Both set and costumes, which also work well, are designed by Shawn Kerwin, with sound design/composition by Tobin Stokes and lighting by Leigh Ann Vardy.

There is a twist in this somewhat familiar tale, that made me think back to David Mamet’s controversial 1992 play Oleanna. Mamet’s play, also focused on an encounter between a student and her professor in which the student charges her professor with sexual harassment, leads to a dark finale when the professor, about to lose his house and job, physically assaults the student. Here, Moscovitch’s ‘revenge’ for Annie is a softer one, but perhaps no less effective; years later (spoiler alert) she has become a successful playwright and she visits Jon in order to give him a copy of her next play. You guessed it…it’s the play we’ve been watching, consciously telling the story from his point of view. And it is this twist in the tale that affected me most; Moscovitch could obviously have chosen to tell her story from Annie’s perspective but she instead chooses to focus on Jon. There is something moving in this choice for me, to enter into Jon’s experience of the affair and to try to understand what it was, how it happened and what it meant to him. This feels like a radical form of empathy to me, and ultimately quite a feminist act. The war between the sexes continues in the age of #MeToo, but Moscovitch, in her usual intelligent way, skews the perspective to allow us to better see and understand how sexual misconduct of the middle classes works on men as well as the women they choose to love, and then leave. On until April 24th with tickets available for pay-what-you-can prices at https://www.belfry.bc.ca. Recommended.

TWO VANCOUVER PLAYS – MARCH 2022

Photos of Alexandra Lainfiesta & Genevieve Fleming by Sewari Campillo

Last weekend took me to Vancouver to see two excellent productions, Clean/Espejos and Bunny, both on at The Cultch as part of the Femme Festival of women-focused plays. Clean/Espejos is a new play by Christine Quintana, a two-hander about an encounter between a housekeeper and a tourist in a Mexican resort. Produced by Neworld Theatre and co-directed effectively by Chelsea Haberlin and Daniela Atiencia, the play examines the heavy psychological toll of abuse. Housekeeper Adriana has fled her family home and her abusive alcoholic father for a job at a resort. She meets Canadian tourist Sarah, there for her younger sister’s destination wedding. Adriana and Sarah first meet after Sarah has drunkenly hurt her knee and bled profusely into her bed. Adriana politely cleans up the mess, even though it’s not her job, as she manages the housekeeping staff. Adriana has just heard that her father has died, precipitating a powerful emotional response. Sarah is portrayed as a bit of a mess, but over the course of the play, we realize that she is coping with long-buried sexual abuse that comes to the surface in a painful conversation with her mother and sister.

Act two of this over two hour play (which could use a bit of judicious trimming), takes us into some fantasy scenes that bring our two protagonists together in scenes that we realize only in hindsight are not actually occurring, for example when they take off together to attend Adriana’s father’s funeral. These scenes may cause some momentary confusion, but do allow us to see a relationship forming between these two damaged women. The play is staged very cleverly as entirely bilingual, with both character’s speech translated into Spanish and English via video projections on the large white bed that serves as a backdrop. The set is stylized with two moveable bed-like structures on an all-white set. Actors Alexandra Lainfiesta and Genevieve Fleming offer committed performances that challenge them with the emotions they are called on to perform; Adriana’s howling grief and rage at her father’s grave was a memorable moment of rawness that will stick with me for some time. While I attended the final live performance of this play, there will be streamed performances from April 5th to 10th for $15. Recommended.

Emma Slipp as Bunny – Photo by Emily Cooper

I am a very big fan of Canadian Playwright Hannah Moscovitch. Her plays are always women-centered, smart and filled with punchy dialogue and complex characters. So it is with her 2016 play Bunny, which premiered at the Stratford Festival. Tracing the sexual history of a woman, from adolescence through to marriage and children, the play offers a huge acting challenge in the main role and some juicy supporting roles as well. For much of the play, Bunny (a nickname from her college friend Maggie), named Sorrel by her academic hippie parents, addresses the audience directly. She tells us about her first encounters with 19 boys in high school (just making out, mostly) and her first boyfriend Justin, captain of the football team (Liam Stewart-Kanigan). We see that Sorrel is an outsider, wrapped up in her love of Victoria literature, viewed as a slut by the girls at school, awkward and struggling to connect with others. College offers new vistas and is where she meets her lifelong friend Maggie (Ghazal Azerbad) and enters into an affair with a married professor (Jay Hindle). She becomes a successful professor of Victoria literature and meets Maggie’s brother Carol (Kayvon Khoshkam) who ends up her husband and father to their two children. But Bunny’s journey leads her to the edge of another affair, with a friend of Maggie’s daughter, Angel (Nathan Kay).

As ever, Bunny faces us with both bravery and vulnerability, holding nothing back. In the final moments of this moving play, her friend Maggie, dying of cancer, presses her to open up, to share more of herself. Her exclamation of love for her friend is well-earned in Emma Slipp’s affecting and intense portrayal. She is supported by a strong cast, with excellent direction by Mindy Parfitt, terrific lighting (as ever) by Itai Erdal, a slightly cramped set design by Amir Ofek and effective sound design and composition by Alessandro Juliani. There are explicit sex scenes throughout this 90 minute one-act play; the use of an intimacy coach ensured the actors felt safe, and I was interested to see there was no nudity beyond Jay Hindle’s professor removing his shirt in one scene. I stayed for the post show talkback last Sunday afternoon, and was struck by the sensitivity in Parfitt’s decision to not push audiences too much around the sex scenes, while they are just returning to theatregoing after two years. The cast spoke wholeheartedly about their commitment to Moscovitch’s play, and the support they are feeling from audiences. Another excellent work from this talented playwright, it made me look forward to the next play at the Belfry, opening next week, Moscovitch’s Governor General’s Award-winning 2021 play The Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. Watch this space for my review.

Two New Indigenous Plays

Cliff Cardinal in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal
(Dahlia Katz/Crow’s Theatre)

Over the past week, I’ve had the chance to see two brand new Indigenous plays, one in Vancouver and one here, opening this past week at the Belfry Theatre. The first show was Cliff Cardinal’s William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal performed as part of the PuSH Festival. This play was originally titled The Land Acknowledgment which may tip you off to the fact (spoiler alert) that there was no Shakespeare seen or heard in this 90 minute monologue. The show premiered in September of last year at Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre. About 10 minutes in, standing in front of the curtain, dressed casually in a bomber jacket and khaki pants, Cardinal tells the audience this fact, letting them know they can leave and get a refund at the box office if they are unhappy with the revelation. A couple near us in the balcony at the York Theatre did in fact get up and go, but everyone else stayed put, wisely. For Cardinal, who is a most appealing performer (I saw his previous one-man show Huff twice in Victoria and was blown away both times), walks his mostly white audience through the litany of issues facing Indigenous communities today; land claims, missing and murdered Indigenous women, residential schools and allyship. Throughout, he walks a delicate tightrope between humour and anger, making the audience laugh even when telling tough truths. There are moments when his emotions seem to get the best of him (although this could simply be good acting), as when he talks about having to walk his sister to the store to keep her safe, or when he talks about the pedophilic priests and nuns who caused so much suffering and death in residential schools. He ends the show with an encompassing call of “All my relations” reminding us how inextricably interconnected we all are, like it or not. And he mouths to the audience, while taking his second standing ovation curtain call, “Are we friends? Are we friends?” Yes, Cliff, I’d be proud to call you a friend, and will deepen my commitment to being a better ally to Indigenous peoples as result of seeing this show. As you like it, indeed.

From Belfry Theatre website

This week saw the delayed opening of Kevin Loring’s Little Red Warrior and his Lawyer at the Belfry Theatre. Opening was delayed by a week due to the lead actor Sam Bob getting injured during a rehearsal. He is fine, and is now back on stage, but the company had to bring in an understudy, Gordon Patrick Price, who learned his role in less than a week and stepped on stage for the first time last Tuesday night, the night I managed to snag two of the very few remaining tickets left (the show is now sold out, but can be watched online). Price will perform the matinees for the remainder of the run.

Now to the play itself, directed by Loring in a co-production with Savage Society in Vancouver and the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre (where Loring is Artistic Director). The production will go on to performances in Vancouver in March then to the NAC in future. The show will not be everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure. The comedy is very broad, at times physical, and although the satire is pointed in places, there is a lot here that felt to me like actors working extremely hard to not huge effect. The plot tells us that a housing development is being built on the traditional territory of Little Red Warrior, the last of his people. He teams up with a lawyer (Shekhar Paleja) who then fights his land claim case right up to the Supreme Court. Little Red moves in to Larry’s home for the duration, and is set upon by Larry’s wife Desdemona (Luisa Jojic) who seduces him into an affair. Kevin McNulty plays the narrator as a homeless man (why?) and multiple other roles with a quiet humour, and there is a surprise additional character who makes a splashy entrance late in the play. The ensemble works well together, but are asked to stretch the believability of their characters to the point that for me they felt flat rather than three dimensional. But there is a nice twist in the final moments of Loring’s comedy (spoiler alert) that reflects the reality that economic interests sometimes trump land protection, even in Indigenous communities.

The set design by John Doucet provides a backdrop of various sizes of bamboo poles, indicating both a forested mountain valley and perhaps a symbol of urban sprawl. But I found that it hemmed the actors in too much, reducing their playing space on the already small Belfry stage. Overall, Loring’s play offers some chuckles along the way, but does not compare with his Governor General’s Award winning play Where the Blood Mixes, or to either of Cardinal’s more pointed and powerful pieces.

“Serving Elizabeth” and “Until the Flood”: Two Plays by African-Canadian/American Playwrights

The Belfry Theatre reopened in November with its production of Serving Elizabeth by African-Canadian playwright Marcia Johnson, premiered at the Stratford Festival. It was wonderful to be back in the Belfry’s beautiful theatre space again after such a long time. And the play, directed by Nigel Shawn Williams, offered some real charm in its story of a fictional encounter between Princess Elizabeth and a Kenyan chef hired to feed her and her entourage during a visit in 1954. As the play ends, we hear that her father, King George VI, has died and that she will soon be crowned Queen of England and the British Commonwealth. Local actor Amanda Lisman brings her usual warm presence to this role, along with a role set in the present as a film producer that contrasts nicely with her rendition of the young princess. The ensemble cast offers solid portrayals of the chef, Mercy (Lucinda Davis), her daughter Faith (Sia Foryoh), a chauffeur love interest for Faith, Montague (Nathan D. Simmons) and royal etiquette coach Talbot (Ryan Hollyman). The play offers some strong scenes, both past and present, as the characters wrestle with race issues in the historic past, in particular Kenya’s struggle for liberation from the British Empire, alongside a parallel storyline of a film about the events in Kenya and the production team working on the show. Both storylines culminate in what I would characterize as fantasy scenes in which Black characters read the riot act to White ones, schooling them on their ignorance and blindness around race issues. While these scenes are pleasant to watch, and offer audiences the thrill of alternate reality, they do not succeed as good drama. There is no way on earth that Princess Elizabeth would sit quietly to be berated by her Kenyan cook about her lack of knowledge of Kenya’s liberation struggle. And in the present timeline, why would a powerful and successful screenwriter listen to an unpaid African-British intern castigate him for his ignorance? These scenes are wish fulfilment exercises that fail to meet the bar as believable drama. I prefer my political drama to be more biting than this play offers. That said, the play does offer a majority Black cast, which is a rare thing, too rare, and a level of onstage diversity much needed in Victoria.

In contrast, I caught the final performance of Until the Flood in December. This was a co-production between Langham Court Theatre, Bema Productions and Attitude Theatre. The documentary theatre play by African-American playwright Dael Orlandersmith, directed by Tony Cain, examines the after effects of the Michael Brown police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Interestingly, this play was originally performed by the playwright as a one-woman show, while the Victoria co-production features a full cast of eight portraying the various characters interviewed by Orlandersmith. I would be drawn to see the one-person version of the play, for the acting challenge alone, even though the Victoria cast does a very good job in portraying Black and White characters with divergent opinions on the killing. Rosemary Jeffery has never been better than in her role here as an elderly retired school teacher. And the other younger African-Canadian actors do very effective work, in particular Dani Parkinson who brings a lot of charisma onstage and promises to be a young actor to watch. Ultimately, I was moved to tears by the blatant injustices shown in the play, as seen in the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in response. The play ended with a powerful video featuring hundreds of names of African-American young people killed by police, superimposed on Michael Brown’s face and accompanied by Nina Simone singing George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity”. I prefer my political theatre with a sharper edge, and this play certainly delivered this, along with another majority Black cast, something I can’t recall seeing before on stage here. Long overdue.

The Marriage of Figaro at Pacific Opera Victoria

From left to right; Cherubino (Cécile Muhire), Count Almaviva (Tyler Duncan), Figaro (Donovan Singletary) (Photo credit: David Cooper)

I saw the Sunday matinee of Mozart’s great opera The Marriage of Figaro, which did not disappoint, offering a lively and engaging production featuring some wonderful singing with Timothy Vernon leading members of the Victoria Symphony with great style. Directed by Morris Panych and designed by Ken MacDonald, inspired by the artwork of Joan Miró, this was an elegant afternoon at the Royal Theatre. We begin with Count Almaviva, well played by Tyler Duncan, trying to claim his feudal rights to bed his servants. He has his eye on Susanna (Suzanne Rigden), Figaro’s betrothed, and the plot spins around her attempts to dissuade the Count via trickery and disguise, typical of Commedia dell’arte operas. The Countess Almaviva, beautifully sung by Sydney Baedke, is well aware of her husband’s wandering eye, so she participates in the plans to set him straight. We have subplots involving revelations of Figaro’s true parentage, and page Cherubino, who longs for his mistress, but in the end will settle for Barbarina, the gardener’s daughter. 

Panych, a Governor General’s award winner for playwriting, mines all of the comic potential from the opera, to the sellout audience’s delight. For me, the women had the slight edge on the male voices, with a duet late in the opera between Susanna and her mistress squeezing some tears out of me. The set design was another standout, with MacDonald’s bold choice paying off in spades. Comic relief is seen in the characters of Marcellina (Megan Latham), who has struck a deal with Figaro that, if he doesn’t pay his debt to her, she will force him to marry her, and lawyer Dr. Bartolo (Peter McGillivray), that is until the identity of Figaro’s parents is revealed to him. The costumes, designed by Nancy Bryant, worked well, especially the Countess’s dress in the second act, a fiery red satin concoction that looked wonderful on her. The lighting by Eric Champoux was effective, although I found the final act in the garden at night to be a bit underlit. Overall, this was a wonderful production with plenty to enjoy, highly recommended! You can read more about the show here, with a final performance tomorrow night (Tuesday, April 9th): https://pacificopera.ca/event/the-marriage-of-figaro/

Twelve shows in London February 2024

Danny Sapani as King Lear

1. Here is my ranked list of the 12 shows I saw last month in London. First, by a long shot, was the Almeida Theatre production of King Lear with Danny Sapani offering a towering Lear, directed by Yaël Farber and well-supported by a majority Black cast (white actors played some roles, including Edmund and Edgar, as well as Kent). Clarke Peters, from The Wire, played the Fool and was also excellent, diverting from tradition to appear in the final scene of the play. I have been disappointed with a couple of recent Lears, including Paul Gross at Stratford last year, who I felt lacked the gravitas required of the role, and Anthony Sher’s Lear which I saw at BAM a few years ago. This one wiped the slate clean. I hear that Kenneth Branagh is playing Lear in New York this December, and you know I’ll be seeing that one! Read more about the show here: https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/king-lear/

Cast of Guys and Dolls

2. This was a glorious production of this great musical, directed by Nicholas Hytner at the Bridge Theatre. There was so much to love about this show, the acting, the dancing, the singing, it had it all! Still on, if you’re going to London, don’t miss seeing it! Read more here: https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/guys-and-dolls/

Ken Nwosu as Othello and Ira Mandela Siobhan as Subconscious Othello

3. Third on my list was an excellent production of Othello in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre. I love this space, lit by candles only, plus a skylight over the stage. An accurate recreation of a 17th Century indoor playhouse, with beautiful hand-painted ceilings, it’s a lovely space to see a show. This was quite an untraditional production of Othello, especially the unorthodox decision by director Ola Ince to have two Othellos, one of whom portrays Othello’s subconscious mind tormenting him throughout the play. This was an inspired choice which I thought worked extremely well. I didn’t even mind the fact that in this version, both Othello and Iago survive to face justice. Read more about the show here: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/othello-2023/

Cast of The Motive and the Cue

4. Next was this wonderful National Theatre production (I saw five in all!) written by Jack Thorne and directed by Sam Mendes. Based on a true story when Sir John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a play in London in 1964, the play featured terrific performances from Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Burton, with Tuppence Middleton as a suitably gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor. Smart, funny and an all around really good time! Read more here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/the-motive-and-the-cue/

Cast of Standing at the Sky’s Edge

5. Another National Theatre show! This was the musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which is now playing in the West End. It tells the story of three working class families in Sheffield across decades from the 1980s to the present. Featuring some outstanding performances, great music and overall very moving, this was another winner! Read more about the show here: https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/standing-at-the-skys-edge-2/

Left to Right; Lindsay Duncan as Dora, Billy Howle as Nicholas, Bessie Carter as Fenny and Malcolm Sinclair as Charles

6. Yes, it’s a National Theatre show! Dear Octopus is an intergenerational family drama set just before World War II about the Randolph family, headed by mother Dora and father Charles. Originally written in 1938 by Dodie Smith, this remount features an excellent performance by Lindsay Duncan as matriarch Dora, and centres around a golden wedding anniversary that gets complicated with dynamics within the family. We hear snippets of the looming war to come on the radio, which heightens what this family will soon be facing. I found this one very moving. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-octopus/

The Webb sisters in their younger performing days

7. The Hills of California is a new play by Jez Butterworth, also directed by Sam Mendes. I was pulled into this play right away, as it features a family of four daughters, like my own. The mother is upstairs dying, which brings her daughters home for a final visit. We see in flashbacks that she was a stage mother who pushed her girls to perform as an all-girl act decades earlier. The daughters carry heavy emotions related to this over time, and everything spills out over the course of a weekend reunion in Blackpool in 1976 during an unprecedented heatwave. Jez Butterworth is an excellent playwright (I wish I’d seen his lauded production Jerusalem which premiered at the Royal Court in 2009 with Mark Rylance in the leading role) and Sam Mendes directs this large cast with his usual confidence. Read more about the show here: http://hillsofcaliforniaplay.com

Cast of Nye with Michael Sheen, centre, playing Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan 

8. The National Theatre again, this new play by Tim Price, directed by Rufus Norris, was quite wonderful. As I said in my Facebook post after seeing the show, I never thought I’d be moved to tears by a play about the founding of the National Health Service. Nye Bevan was an MP under Winston Churchill, and other Prime Ministers, and his legacy was his struggle to establish the NHS. “Confronted with death, Nye’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill in an epic Welsh fantasia.” There were some surreal elements to this production, all of which worked well, and left me wanting to know more about this remarkable man. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/nye/

Cast of Till the Stars Come Down

9. Another National Theatre show! This one is a new play by Beth Steel and directed by Bijan Sheibani. It’s a 24 hour play about a family wedding where everything goes horribly wrong. Long-held grievances are aired, fights break out, the family patriarch declares his love for his sister-in-law, like that. I enjoyed this play, although I did feel that it veered a bit too much into written for TV land. However, the climax of the play did not disappoint, and left me feeling sorry for the poor bride and her Polish husband, as they will have to deal with the emotional fallout of the day for years to come. Read more about it here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/till-the-stars-come-down/

10. This was an odd one, and a bit of a hit and miss for me. “In a totalitarian state where the Ministry of Culture must approve all new works of art, a rebel group is staging an illegal play under the guise of a wedding. In this darkly funny political thriller, everything is not as it seems…A Mirror is an explosively entertaining story of the search for love and truth in a society that values neither.” This is an accurate description of the play, but the play also has some audience participation, and has some unexpected twists and turns. I liked it, but it sits where it does on my list. Read about it here: https://trafalgartheatre.com/shows/a-mirror/

Cast of The Time Traveler’s Wife

11. I enjoyed this musical more than I expected to, as I enjoyed the show on Crave based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger. Sadly the show did not do well in the West End, and closed on February 24th. I managed to catch one of the final performances. I thought it quite magical, with some terrific stage magic (How did they DO THAT?) and charming moments, featuring two strong leads who can really sing. The book by playwright Lauren Gunderson reflects the novel well, but the music by Joss Stone and Dave Stewart (of the Eurthymics) did not leave any memorable tunes in my mind. A pleasurable show, but perhaps not one for the ages. Read about it here: https://theapollotheatre.co.uk/tickets/the-time-travellers-wife/

12. Unfortunately, this production of Ibsen’s great play was my biggest disappointment of the trip. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier, and with Matt Smith as Dr. Stockmann, I found this production to be a bit of a mess. Ostermeier is a revered German director, but this one didn’t work for me at all, descending into literal paint being thrown onto actors. It could have worked, but for me, this was a miss. Read about it here: https://www.thedukeofyorks.com/an-enemy-of-the-people

That’s it from me! I hope you enjoyed this list. Let’s do it again next year!

Sisters at Theatre Inconnu

From left to Right: Jane Rees, Sophia Radford, Jeremy Sinclair, Zoe Salvin, Jennifer Bayne, Ryan Kniel

I saw Theatre Inconnu’s very good production of Wendy Lill’s 1991 play Sisters, which looks at the difficult topic of residential schools and the nuns who taught in them. We learn about the life of Sister Mary, who has become a nun after experiencing a calling, and leaves behind a boy who would have married her. She begins working at a residential school where we see and hear about the lives of the Indigenous children who attended these schools. Some try to run away, but are chased down by dogs. Some make a successful escape, never to return. We hear that the students are subjected to caning, common at the time, as the play is set in the late 60s/early 70s.

Sister Mary is played by two actors, Sophia Redford plays Young Mary and Jennifer Bayne the mature Mary. Both do lovely work in their respective roles, although Bayne has the heavier lifting, and effectively portrays Mary’s search for both God and meaning in the work she has undertaken for over 25 years. We see her meeting with a Jewish lawyer who has moved to Canada to avoid the draft into the Vietnam War. Why is she talking to a lawyer? Well, I won’t spoil the plot for those who may plan to see the show, but she has taken a drastic action that will have serious consequences.

As we travel through the play, we find out more about Mary’s backstory, her struggles with her faith and her guilty conscience about her work at the residential school. We also learn about the other nuns who work at the school. There is Sister Gabriel, who is a bundle of nerves, and Mother Agnes, who dominates the nuns under her control. Gabriel is well-played by Zoe Salvin and Mother Agnes by Jane Rees, who finds multiple levels in her characterization. Ryan Kniel plays the Jewish lawyer Stein with good authority, letting us see glimpses of his struggles with his parents and his girlfriend, and Jeremy Sinclair plays Louis, a farmer who loves Young Mary with simple clarity.

The play is directed well by Kevin McKendrick, who pulls strong performances out of his cast and keeps things moving at a good pace throughout this nearly 2 hour play. Artistic Director Clayton Jevne provided the lighting design, while actor Kniel does sound, offering familiar songs from the 60s to underscore the period. Madeleine Mills designed the costumes, which work well. Overall, this is a very good production of a play worth seeing. Lill went on to become an NDP MP and has written a number of other plays, including The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which I was fortunate enough to perform in at the Phoenix Theatre in 1999. She has always had a strong sense of social justice, so I can see how well this play sits in her work, focussed as it is on the injustice and cruelty of residential schools, even by the most well-meaning of those who worked in them. Recommended. Runs until March 9th with tickets available at https://www.theatreinconnu.com/sisters/

As Above at the Belfry Theatre

Left to Right; Gabrielle Rose as Jo, Christine Quintana as Everyone Else; Hrothgar Mathews as Rick (Photo credit: Peter Pokorny)

Last night I attended the delayed opening night of As Above, a new play by Christine Quintana. Quintana has ended up performing in her own play, as the actor cast as Everyone Else was called away with a family emergency. I enjoyed both the play and the performances very much. The play looks at the lives of two recovering alcoholics, Jo and Rick, who form a romance after meeting online. We learn that Jo is close with her sister Hazel (Quintana), but distant from her only daughter Ada (Quintana again). She is a widow whose husband died from cancer some years ago.

As her relationship with Rick develops over time, he invites her to come to his cabin at Lake Cowichan. Jo is staggered when she arrives, as it turns out that Rick has bought the family’s former cabin (although why she wouldn’t know this is a weak moment in the script). She has many happy memories of this place and the land, in particular a large cedar tree that she has an almost mystical connection with. While at the cabin, they receive a phone call from Bolivia, where Jo and her husband and daughter spent a year when Jo was an academic at UBC. We hear that she lost her job due to her alcoholism, and she is now working at the local botanical gardens in Victoria. It appears that daughter Ada has returned to Bolivia, and there is confusion around where she is at the moment, or if she is coming home.

Jo is experiencing some painful symptoms, and there are scenes where she visits a doctor who does not provide much in the way of support or caring. Later, we see these symptoms persist, leading to her having to have surgery. Her sister Hazel comes to see her, she has a falling out with Rick that really upsets her, and finally she is reunited with Ada, but is it too late?

Themes that this 90 minutes one-act play address include ecology, respect for nature and how we can live better, and more softly, on these lands. There is good dialogue amongst the various characters, particularly between Jo and Rick, who are at a stage in their lives when they need to be frank and honest with each other. Sister Hazel is a wonderful support for Jo, and she meets Rick and approves of him right away. When Ada returns there is a lovely moment of reconnection, that is thrown into relief by Jo’s illness. Does she survive? It’s up to each audience member to decide that for themselves, but by the end of the play we feel connected to the trees and how they communicate through fungal networks, to the land we are fortunate enough to live on, and to the mysteries of nature.

The effective set design is by Camellia Koo and features a greenhouse style structure centrestage, a revolve and simple costumes (Stephanie Kong) and props, with effective sound design by Alessandro Juliani, lovely lighting by John Webber, and projections by Emily Cooper. The director of the play is Meg Roe, and she does a wonderful job pulling strong performances from the three actors. Kudos to Quintana, who had to step in at the last minute, and learn her own lines! Overall, a pleasant evening at the theatre. Recommended. Runs until March 3rd with tickets at: https://www.belfry.bc.ca/as-above/#sp_copy

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe at Kaleidoscope Theatre

Left to Right; Dawson Rutledge as Edmund, Shea O’Connor as the White Witch (from Kaleidoscope’s website)

Friday night I attended the opening night of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, on now until December 26th at the Roxy Theatre. These much-loved books by C.S. Lewis were childhood favourites of mine. Who can forget the magical entrance into Narnia through the back of a wardrobe, and the adventures that awaited the Pevensie children, Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund. They have been sent away from London during the Blitz, and are staying with a kindly professor named Digory Kirke in the country. One day, as Lucy is exploring the old house, she finds herself walking through a wardrobe full of old fur coats that leads her into the magical kingdom of Narnia. She meets a faun, Mr. Tumnus, who invites her home for tea. There she learns that the kingdom is cursed by the White Witch, who keeps Narnia in perpetual winter. Lucy returns home, with only a minute having passed by.

She tells her siblings what has happened, and brother Edmund goes into Narnia himself. There, he encounters the White Witch, who lures him into treachery with Turkish Delight. He returns home, but brings his siblings back, to find that Mr. Tumnus has been taken by the White Witch. The children befriend Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who tell them that Narnia’s former leader, the great lion Aslan, is returning to defeat the witch. They go to meet Aslan, who sacrifices himself to the White Witch in order to save Edmund’s life. But he is resurrected due to the “Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of Time”, and he and his army, with the Pevensie children, defeat the White Witch. The Pevensie children sit on the four thrones of Narnia and rule for many happy years. One day, they see the lamppost in the forest and go back through the wardrobe, finding that no time has passed and they are children once again.

This 45 minute adapted version of the novel, was written for two actors by Le Clanché du Rand and premiered off-Broadway in 2011. Artistic Director of Kaleidoscope, Pat Rundell, directs a fine production here. The set is quite wonderful, featuring many doors that serve in multiple ways throughout the show. Both actors play multiple roles (of course), and were very effective in portraying these roles and shifting between them. Shea O’Connor makes Lucy very appealing, but it’s also fun to see her morph into the villainous witch. Dawson Rutledge plays Peter, Edmund, Mr. Tumnus and Aslan, and also operates the beaver puppet, so is kept very busy! He is an appealing performer, and I enjoyed his work. The show is lit well by Rebekah Johnson, with Emily Friesen doing a great job designing the set, props and costumes, Aidan Dunsmuir creating the sound design, and Alexander Brendan Ferguson giving us original compositions. Recommended. Tickets are available here: https://kaleidoscope.bc.ca/shows/lww/.

Stupid F*cking Bird at Theatre Inconnu

Cast of Stupid F*cking Bird: Left to Right; Eric Grace, Wendy Magahay, MJ Connelly, Melissa Blank, Nicholas Guerreiro, James Johnson, Andrea Eggenberger. Photo credit: Clayton Jevne

Last weekend, I saw Theatre Inconnu’s final show of their 2023 season, by American playwright Aaron Posner. Posner has made a career of sorts by adapting the great plays of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. This one is based on his play The Seagull, but he has also written adaptations of Uncle Vanya (titled His Life Sucks: Or the Present Ridiculous (2015)) and Three Sisters (titled No Sisters (2017)). The play premiered in Washington, DC in 2013, and is both a comedy and an homage to this great play. Program notes by director Morgan Gadd tell me that the play has had success internationally, with more than 200 productions in many countries.

The play begins with Emma’s (Wendy Magahay) son Con presenting his ‘performance event’ featuring his girlfriend Nina (Andrea Eggenberger) in a monologue of little literary value that ends up with Con in a temper tantrum stopping the performance. We meet his uncle Sorn (Eric Grace), his aunt Mash (Melissa Blank), her friend Dev (Nicholas Guerreiro), and Emma’s younger lover Trigorin (James Johnson). Nina is drawn to Trigorin, who is famous writer, and we see a relationship begin between the two of them, despite Emma’s attempts to prevent it. The two of them run off together, leaving Con bereft and attempting suicide, but failing. Four years pass by, and we hear that Trigorin and Nina are no longer together, after Nina lost their baby daughter. Indeed, he is back with Emma and we see them celebrating Sorn’s 70th birthday. Dev and Mash are now married, although Mash is still in love with Con, and they have three children. Nina returns to talk with Con, and we witness what may be the most faithful scene from the original play, the one in which Nina claims repeatedly that she is a seagull.

Throughout the play it is not uncommon for various characters to break out of role and directly address the audience. Con asks for relationship advice as he struggles to keep Nina, and there are wonderfully bleak songs sung by Mash on her ukulele. The production features strong performances by the majority of the cast, with strong performances from Wendy Magahay, Melissa Blank, James Johnson, Eric Grace, and Nicholas Guerreiro. Andrea Eggenberger was best in her ‘I am a seagull’ scene, but was less convincing in other parts of the play. As ever, director Gadd does well staging the play on the small stage in Paul Phillips Hall, and keeps the audience laughing throughout. I found the play witty and fun, but also true in essential ways to Chekhov’s great play. Recommended. The play runs until December 16th with tickets available at https://www.theatreinconnu.com/stupid-bird.

Nine shows in New York

I recently spent 10 days in New York, staying with my brother and sister-in-law in Brooklyn. I managed to get to 9 shows while there, and this post will rank these shows from best to worst.

From left to right: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez Photo: Monica Prendergast

This production, of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along took me off-guard, as it surprisingly makes it to the very top of my list. This was a masterful production featuring strong performances from the three leads and other smaller roles. This was one of Sondheim’s rare flops, although I learned from Sondheim himself, at a staged reading of the musical some years back, that he felt the show was cursed. In out of town tryouts, a dancer died when he fell into the pit. This tragedy marked the show, and it flopped in its first run on Broadway. There have been successful revivals over the years, but it’s hard to imagine one as good as this one. The backwards timeline of the story, telling the story of the friendship between Groff as composer Franklin Shepard, Radcliffe as lyricist and playwright Charley Kringas and Mary Flynn, a novelist and journalist, shows us how the friendship begins, and 20 years later, how it sadly ends.

From left to right, Michael Shannon, Jeff Biehl, Toussaint Francois Battiste, Ajay Naidu and Paul Sparks. Photo: Monica Prendergast

My second pick was a masterful production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, starring Michael Shannon as Estragon and Paul Sparks as Vladimir. The production, directed by Arin Arbus at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, was wonderful. Both leads gave blistering performances, and I was reminded yet again, how important this towering play of the 20th century is, and will always be. The supporting performances by Ajay Naidu as Pozzo, Jeff Biehl as Lucky and Toussaint Francois Battiste as Boy, were all excellent. There are so many lines that resonate in this play, perhaps the most memorable being, “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.” I also love it when the clowns ‘see’ the audience and judge it to be “a charnel house”.

Curtain call of Some Like it Hot. Photo: Monica Prendergast

Third pick, another pleasant surprise, was the musical version of the popular Jack Lemmon/Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe movie, Some Like it Hot. The show looked fabulous, with gorgeous costumes and sets, some fabulous tap dancing by the leads and the ensemble, and some songs that worked. Both of the lead performances, Christian Boyle as Joe/Josephine and J. Harrison Ghee as Jerry/Daphne were excellent, funny and even moving at times. Ghee won a Tony for their performance, one of the first non-binary performers to win. At the end of the show, we feel that Jerry will stay committed to being Daphne, shifting the story into the 21st century very well. The show also won a Tony for best choreography, and the dancing was thrilling, with tap dancing being the main form. Adrianna Hicks as Sugar was also very effective in her role. A winner!

Curtain call for The Frogs. Photo: Monica Prendergast

My fourth pick was a revival of Sondheim’s little-known musical The Frogs. The MasterVoices chorus, under the direction of artistic director Ted Sperling, presented a production of The Frogs at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Friday, November 3, and Saturday, November 4, 2023. The cast included Douglas Sills, Kevin Chamberlin, Marc Kudisch, Chuck Cooper, Peter Bartlett, Dylan Baker, Jordan Donica, Candice Corbin, and Nathan Lane. My sister-in-law and niece sing in MasterVoices, and it was such a pleasure to see and hear this musical, first performed, famously, at Yale University in 1974 in a swimming pool, featuring Meryl Streep. It was revived in 2004, with additional material by Nathan Lane, who played the Narrator in the performance. The show featured wonderful singing and dancing by a dance chorus, well-supported by the MasterVoices choir. I thoroughly enjoyed this show, which had some genuine laughs and looked like everyone involved was having a wonderful time.

Curtain call for Kimberly Akimbo. Photo: Monica Prendergast

Another wonderful show, coming in fifth! The show tells the story of a lonely teenage girl, Kimberly Levaco, who suffers from a condition similar to progeria that causes her to age rapidly, thereby giving her the appearance of an elderly woman, and how, according to Playbill, “[f]orced to maneuver family secrets, borderline personalities, and possible felony charges, Kim is determined to find happiness in a world where not even time is on her side.” Victoria Clark plays the lead role, masterfully, earning her a Tony award for best leading actress performance and Bonnie Milligan, as Kimberly’s aunt Debra, a Tony for best supporting actress. The musical features some lovely songs and strong performances from Steven Boyer as Kimberly’s father and Alli Mauzey as her mother. The teen performers also shine in their roles. Another winner!

Oratorio Society of New York concert at Carnegie Hall

My sister-in-law also sings for the Oratorio Society of New York, and I was very happy to see her sing Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall. Both pieces were sung beautifully, by both the choir and the supporting singers. A lovely concert!

Curtain call of Here We Are. Photo: Monica Prendergast

Seventh on my list was Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are. Here We Are premiered at The Shed‘s Griffin Theatre in previews on September 28, 2023 and officially opened on October 22, 2023 running until January 21, 2024 (after being extended from January 7). The production, directed by Joe Mantello, features a cast including Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, and Jeremy Shamos. While ‘musical’ is a bit of a misnomer in this case, act one does feature some songs, while act two becomes more of a play. The musical was inspired by two Buñuel films, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. The show follows a group of friends as they try to find a restaurant to eat brunch in on a Sunday morning. The play takes a dark turn as we realize this group has become trapped (by what? Their collective fears of the outside world perhaps?) in the embassy of the fictional country of Miranda. Unable to leave, they stew in their collective fears. Director Joe Mantello has a wonderful cast to work with here, including Bobby Cannavale and David Hyde Pierce. But overall, the so-called musical is a dark one, and not to everyone’s taste. I liked it, but its ranking tells the tale.

Curtain call for Shucked. Photo: Monica Prendergast

Eighth for me was the musical Shucked. While a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, the musical is very slight, centering on a small town in corn country where the corn is dying. Protagonists here are Maizy and Beau, who are engaged. But with the death of the corn, Maizy decides to leave Cob County to see if she can fix the corn. She travels to Tampa where she meets a podiatrist and con artist named Gordy. He agrees to go back with her to help her save the corn. When they arrive, Beau is very unhappy, especially as he sees Maizy getting closer to Gordy. Gordy tricks the town into believing he has cured the corn, but he hasn’t. Maizy and best friend Lulu have a falling out and further shenanigans ensue. At the end of the show, Maizy and Beau are back together and Gordy has taken up with Lulu. The show has some pleasant songs, and the cast give it their all (impressive for a Wednesday matinee!), but the overall impression is of a show that goes in one ear (sorry!) and out the other.

Curtain call for Daphne. Photo: Monica Prendergast

Last on my list was the play Daphne by Renae Simone Jarrett, performed at Lincoln Center. The synopsis of the play reads: “Daphne has left the city to live with her girlfriend Winona in the woods, and things in the house are beginning to sour. As the days slip through her fingers and a series of unsettling incidents make her question the boundaries of her reality, a strange transformation takes hold of Daphne’s body. Daphne is a surreal and moving new work about the stories we tell ourselves, and the moments we’re forced to choose between difficult truths and comfortable illusions.” That all sounds good, right? But the play itself I found confusing and frustrating. Described by critics as, “Endlessly engaging” and “An intriguing psychological puzzle”, I sometimes wondered if they saw the same play I did. While I thought the two leads were fine, Jasmine Batchelor as Daphne and Kelly McQuail as Winona, their relationship was never clear to me, as Winona seemed to dominate Daphne quite horribly. And while the show had the decency to be a one-act of 85 minutes, I never felt very engaged. Overall, a palpable miss! But a great set design.

So that’s it! My recent New York trip, ranked!

Misery at Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre

Left, Naomi Simpson as Annie; Right, Trevor Hinton as Paul (Photo credit: Times Colonist)

I saw the first performance of Misery on Tuesday night, based on the Stephen King novel and starring Naomi Simpson as Annie Wilkes and Trevor Hinton as Paul Sheldon, the famous novelist she rescues and imprisons after freeing him from a serious car accident. Some may be familiar with the 1990 film, directed by Rob Reiner, which earned Kathy Bates an Academy Award for her performance as Wilkes. The novel appeared in 1987, and this stage adaptation was written by William Goldman. Director Michael Armstrong has put together a gold standard cast, with strong performances from both Simpson and Hinton, with solid support from Sarah Murphy as the local Sheriff, who gets involved with the case and (spoiler alert!) meets with a predictable fate.

The play sets up the action right away, as we see Paul in his bed, being nursed by Annie. He is in tremendous pain, suffering from two broken legs. He begs for his pain medication, which Annie doles out, often not soon enough for Paul. We find out the she is Paul’s “number one fan”, having read all of his books in the Misery Chastain series, Victorian bodice rippers that have proved very popular, in particular with women. Paul manages to sneak out of his room on some occasions, to seek more pain medication and to find out more about Annie. They share a dinner together one night, and Paul tries to drug Annie’s wine, in an escape attempt. This fails when she knocks over her glass. When Annie reads Paul’s latest Misery book, she flies into a rage when she reads that Paul has killed off his main character. She buys a second-hand typewriter and insists that Paul write a Misery novel that revives her heroine.

Later, when Annie discovers that Paul has been getting out of his room, she punishes him by smashing his ankles (in the novel, she cuts off his foot with an ax, so I’m happy we were spared that!) When the local Sheriff comes around, Annie shoots her to death, leading Paul to become desperate about his chances to escape. To provoke Annie into a final confrontation, he burns his new book, enraging Annie, then attacks her, finally knocking her out with the typewriter and smothering her in his bed. He makes his escape, but we imagine that recovering from the trauma of this experience, over a number of months, will take a lot of time.

Both Simpson and Hinton are excellent in their respective roles. Simpson portrays Annie as warm and caring at times, cold and cruel at others. She navigates the role with ease, and it’s a pleasure to see her work here. Hinton is also very strong as Paul, showing us his terror and fear, and his resolve to survive, no matter the cost. It costs him an awful lot, as we see, but his determination to survive burns in him, and keeps him going. Director Armstrong moves the action along well, and is supported by an effective set design by Armstrong and Hans Saefkow, with lighting by Jason king and atmospheric music of the period designed by Jason King, costumes by Rachel McAdam and lighting by Rebekah Johnson. Julian Cervello was the fight director. Overall, this was an enjoyable production, well worth seeking out. Recommended. Tickets are available at https://bbrt.na.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/15441

Macbeth: The Scottish Slay

Left, Hannah Mitchell (Lady Macbeth); Right, Jessica O’Gorman (Macbeth). Photo: Lucy Layton

On Saturday night, I saw Macbeth: The Scottish Slay, playing until the 25th at Vancouver’s Oddfellows Hall. This review will be somewhat biased, as the director of the production is my niece, Bronwen Maeve. But I can say with all honesty that I was very impressed by the production; the acting, lighting and sound were all top-notch, with some standout performances. Maeve has cast the play intentionally all-female, inspired by her enjoyment of the TV series Pretty Little Liars, mashed up with Shakespeare’s ever-popular tragedy. It works, and works surprisingly well! We begin with the witches, played by Xiaoqing Ye, Julia Abreu and Sophie Offei, with appropriate witchy glee and taunting Macbeth from the play’s beginning with their truthful/untruthful prophecies. Macbeth is played with great confidence by Jessica O’Gorman, who portrays the ambition and the torment in good balance throughout. Lady Macbeth is another strong performance from Hannah Mitchell, whose sleepwalking scene was very well done. I also liked Holly Collis Handford’s Banquo, in particular her delight in haunting Macbeth in the famous banquet scene. When she gives him the finger, with both hands, before exiting, it was exactly the kind of edgy moment this production has in abundance.

Another strong performance can be seen in Macduff, played by Fiona Jenkins. The scene where the news reaches her that her wife and children have been killed was very effective, so much so that I shed a tear. And her final battle with Macbeth provided the satisfaction of knowing she is going to best him, as she reveals the witches’ final falsehood, that she was born via a Caesarean birth. Macbeth, meanwhile, delivered both of the monologues late in the play with confidence and commitment. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is one of the best-known soliloquies in Shakespeare’s canon, as the failing king realizes that his life is drawing to a bloody end, “signifying nothing.”

The staging of the play in Vancouver’s Oddfellows Hall is simple but effective. Three small stages are used throughout to create levels, and are particularly effective when used by the witches. The backdrop of shiny silver works well, and the costumes are all black, featuring short black dresses of various kinds, with the witches wearing glittery makeup that highlights their otherworldliness. Simple but effective lighting by Colleen Bayati works well, and sound design is also effective, by Max Livant. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this production, which was clear, committed and cohesive throughout. Tickets (which are going fast, so don’t delay!) are available here: https://plainstage.com/events/macbeth-the-scottish-slay. Go out and support this troupe of emerging theatre artists, you’ll have a wonderful time!

I Think I’m Fallin’ – Belfry Theatre

Last night I saw the first preview performance of I Think I’m Fallin’ a so-called ‘jukebox musical’ based on the songs of Joni Mitchell. This production features strong singing, singers who also play guitars, keyboards and a baby grand piano, and a through-line that allows all five singers and musicians to shine. The cast includes Jonathan Gould, Linda Kidder, Anton Lipovetsky, Hannah Mazurek, and Chelsea Rose. I was pleased to see the cast includes a mature artist, Linda Kidder, who plays a mean electric guitar! Jonathan Gould and Chelsea Rose (who I saw in Bard on the Beach’s wonderful Beatle version of As You Like It this summer) are both strong singers and actors, although I found the sexual tension established between the two to be a bit extraneous and a distraction that took me out of the show. Anton Lipovetsky was seen last season in Morris Panych’s Vigil, and is wonderful here as well (he is also the Musical Director) . Hannah Mazurek mostly provides piano and rhythm support, but was very talented in those roles. The programme lists Treena Stubel as choreographer, although I was stymied somewhat to see that on stage. Michael Shamata directs with his usual fluidity and co-created the show with local composer and musician Tobin Stokes. Jeremy MacLeod does the sound design, and Alan Brodie lights the show effectively with assistant lighting design support from Keith Houghton. Cory Sincennes designed the set and costumes, both of which worked well. Highlights for me included songs Circle Game, Both Sides Now, Chelsea Morning, Carrie, River, and (of course), the title song. Anyone who loves Joni Mitchell’s music will enjoy this show! Recommended. Runs until November 26th with tickets available at https://www.belfry.bc.ca/i-think-im-fallin/#sp_crew