Tuesday 29 May 2018

Hail and Farewell Tour

On Saturday night I attended an uncommon Toronto performance given by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  This special concert event was sponsored and promoted as part of the Toronto Symphony's programming for the season.  

The VSO is touring across Canada to commemorate the retirement of their Music Director, British conductor Bramwell Tovey, after a tenure of the position for 18 years.  The tour also serves to draw attention to the orchestra's impending 100th anniversary season.

I've only seen Bramwell Tovey at work once before, but it was a memorable occasion indeed: a rare (for Canada) live performance of Britten's War Requiem about (I think) 15 years ago.  That is a particularly challenging and complex work, and his performance not only got the technical aspects of a modern masterpiece right but also captured in full the remarkable spirit of the words and music.

Tovey is a composer of distinction as well as a noted conductor, so it was entirely appropriate that this special commemorative tour programme then moved on to one of his own compositions, a song cycle entitled Ancestral Voices.  Tovey wished to write a work about the impact of the European occupation of Canada on the First Nations peoples, as his own contribution to the process of reconciliation.  He was also determined to avoid any possibility of cultural appropriation or mockery.  In composing Ancestral Voices he relied on advice and input from the singer for whom he was writing the work, Marion Newman.  He also chose to use his normal Euro-classical musical language and set texts by authors of European ancestry, ranging from the early 1800s to the present day.

Newman's role in the creation and performance of the work is critical, due to her fine mezzo-soprano voice, but even more to her Kwagiutl/Stó:lō/English/Irish/Scottish ancestry.  She does much work as an advisor to arts organizations wishing to take an active and ongoing role in reconciliation.

The cycle opens with a Keats poem, In Arcady, expressing an idyllic vision of the land.  The second is an excerpt from a longer poem by naturalist Charles Mair, The Last Bison.  In both of these songs, the orchestra plays short introductions and interludes, then discreetly accompanies the lyrical melodic lines of the singer.

The third song, Dear Sir, brings a dramatic shift.  A savage orchestral scherzo gives way to the declamatory utterance of key words and phrases taken from an anonymous bureaucrat's letter about the role to be played by the residential schools.  The words hammer home remorselessly -- "separate, isolate, educate, assimilate, dominate, assimilate, assimilate" -- before the scherzo resumes.

Bring Light to the Truth combines words from statements by two contemporary Canadian Prime Ministers, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, with text from a United Nations statement, in a heartfelt plea to recognize the great harm done, ending with an ironic reprise of the final line from the Keats poem: "In Arcady, what men or gods are these?"

The final element of this intensely moving performance was Newman's addition of a healing lullaby composed by her, in the traditions of the Kwagiutl/Stó:lō nations, and ending with the slow beat of the traditional drum dwindling away to silence.

The remainder of the concert comprised two repertoire staples.  The orchestra was joined by renowned Canadian violinist James Ehnes for the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 by Brahms, a work which certainly requires no introduction from me.

Tovey led the orchestra in a truly central interpretation, choosing sensible tempi and maintaining the musical flow at all times.  Balance between orchestra and soloist was exemplary.  Throughout there was a clear feeling of a living, breathing performance, firmly anchored but not in the least mechanical or metronomic.

Ehnes gave a five-star account of the solo part, maintaining clarity and sweetness of tone throughout all of the writing on the lower strings and -- particularly notable -- across all the numerous double stops.  His account of the original Joachim cadenza (the one most often heard) brought very quiet, inward reflective playing of the sort that turns the entire gathering into a single, intently listening unity of people.

After the intermission, we heard the famous Variations on an Original Theme "Enigma", Op. 36  by Elgar, the work which first brought Elgar's name before the musical world beyond Britain's shores -- and which probably remains the Elgar work most often performed outside of the British Isles.  The title refers to a double conundrum.  The variations on an original theme (itself called "Enigma") are titled with initials or nicknames, and are musical portraits of various people known to the composer.  This half of the enigma has long since been unravelled and the portraits identified.  One of the women portrayed, Dora Penny ("Dorabella"), actually wrote a memoir of her friendship with Elgar which she called Memories of a Variation!

The second enigma has been much trickier.  Elgar dropped many hints at the nature of this puzzle, indicating that there is a larger theme which goes along with or is somehow related to the original melody on which he based his variations.  Particularly puzzling was his comment that Dora Penny, of all people, should have guessed the answer.  Many candidates have been proposed as solutions.  None has found general acceptance and, since Elgar took the secret with him to his grave, that is as it should be.  So we'll just leave it at that, and go on to consider  the actual performance.

While these Variations demand a wide range of tempo and dynamics, I felt that Tovey's performance occasionally slowed too much in some movements.  As a result, the music at times began to drag and droop in a few spots.  No problem at the other end of the scale -- none of the faster sections were taken at such a swift pace as to hinder musical clarity.

No such criticism can be attached to the splendid playing of the orchestra.  Enigma is a masterpiece by one of the great masters of Romantic orchestration, and is peppered with all kinds of intriguing orchestral effects.  Such moments as the woodwind embroideries in C.A.E, the emphatic door slam of W.M.B., the genteel conversation of Ysobel with its delicate final comment on solo viola, the boisterous energy of Troyte, the slight hesitation or stutter in Dorabella, or the barking bulldog of G.R.S. -- all sprang to vivid life in the hands of these skilled players.

Centring the work, of course, is the splendid nobility of Nimrod.  This movement portrays a late-night conversation about music, although it has come to be much associated with times of pageantry and mourning.  Elgar never achieved greater heights in this central aspect of his musical language, and both Tovey and his players took us all the way to the summit with an ideal combination of passion, power, and restraint.

In the concluding variation E.D.U. (a self-portrait), Tovey included the ad lib organ part to splendid effect, the great concert organ of Roy Thomson Hall underpinning and reinforcing the already grand sound of the orchestra at full throttle, and building up to a thrilling conclusion to the work and the evening.

Or was it?  This concert included a positive embarrassment of riches in the way of encores.  James Ehnes played, after the Brahms concerto, a meltingly beautiful Andante from the A Minor Sonata for solo violin by Bach.  Then the orchestra, far less commonly for Toronto, encored after the Elgar with two of Brahms' Hungarian Dances in orchestral arrangements.

From the sombre, haunting songs of Ancestral Voices to the ebullience of Brahms dances, definitely a concert to remember -- and the capacity audience certainly seemed to agree.

Sunday 20 May 2018

Theatre Ontario Festival # 5: Awards and Thanks

The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals.  Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday.  Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning.  As is my custom, I have reviewed all four performances.  This post contains my final thoughts and thanks on another exciting Festival, as well as a complete list of all the award winners as selected by Festival Adjudicator Maja Ardal.

*****      *****     *****

Another Theatre Ontario Festival is now in the history books, and it impressed me as one of the more uneven ones I have attended -- for reasons which I have detailed in some of my reviews.  However, dear readers, please remember that I am only one person and my opinion is just that -- an opinion.

That reality was amply proven when the audience loudly acclaimed Maja Ardal's selection of the play I enjoyed the least as the outstanding production of the Festival!  

There's a fundamental difference between these reviews which I write and the work which Maja has been doing all week with the four companies.  An adjudicator does considerable preparatory work, reading the scripts multiple times, and making notes about things to watch for and important considerations for meeting the playwright's intentions -- the yardstick on which all adjudicated productions are judged.

On the other hand, I prefer to arrive at the theatre completely cold, knowing nothing at all about the play being presented, and refusing even to read programme notes before the performance.  In this, I try to place myself in the position of becoming pure audience.  This week, it worked for all of the plays except Tempting Providence -- and even that one was a brand-new experience for me when I first saw it performed back in March.

Also, it's good for all of us to remember that everything we saw this week was the result of thousands of choices made by directors, actors, designers, technicians, stage managers, producers, all willing workers who have tirelessly given of their time and talents, because community theatre is most certainly a volunteer art form.

This applies equally to all the people who worked so hard behind the scenes to make this Festival a reality.  It's been a delightful week and, for many of us, our annual theatrical family reunion.

I also want to extend heartiest congratulations to my good friend, Sue Perkins of London ON, whose half-century of working, learning, watching, and sharing her passion for top-notch community theatre was worthily recognized with Theatre Ontario's prestigious Michael Spence Award.

In closing, I want to thank all the people who have kindly expressed to me their appreciation for these blog reviews.

With that, here is the list of award winners.

[1]  Adjudicator's Award for carrying the theme of the play
       Presented to Venetia Lawless of Ottawa Little Theatre
       ("Lorna" in Dead Accounts)

[2]  Adjudicator's Award for sharing the love of telling the story with a twinkle in his eye
       Presented to Jim Graham of Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble
       ("Angus" in Tempting Providence)

[3]  Adjudicator's Award for clear vision of the play and huge love for the actors
       Presented to Murray Finn of Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble
       (Director of Tempting Providence)

[4]  Adjudicator's Award for bringing humour to the task of managing a cantankerous man
       Presented to Deb Deckert of Elmira Theatre Company
       ("Lucy Hopperstaad" in On a First-Name Basis)

[5]  Adjudicator's Award for imaginative and detailed set design
       Presented to Bernadette Hunt and Sean Treacy of Toronto Irish Players
       (Set Designers of Little Gem)

[6]  Outstanding Coordinated Production Award
       Chosen by the Festival Stage Managers
       Presented to Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble

[7]  Outstanding Visual Presentation
       Presented to Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble for Tempting Providence

[8]  Outstanding Technical Achievement
       Presented to Elmira Theatre Company for On a First-Name Basis

[9]  Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role
       Presented to Jane Morris of Ottawa Little Theatre
       ("Barbara" in Dead Accounts)

[10]  Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role
         Presented to Josh Sparks of Ottawa Little Theatre
         ("Phil" in Dead Accounts)

[11]  Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role
         Presented to Rebecca de la Cour of Toronto Irish Players
         ("Lorraine" in Little Gem)

[12]  Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role
         Presented to Phillip Merriman of Ottawa Little Theatre
         ("Jack" in Dead Accounts)

[13]  Outstanding Director, Presented in Memory of Richard Howard
         Presented to Geoff Gruson of Ottawa Little Theatre
         (Director of Dead Accounts)

[14]  The Elsie Award for Outstanding Festival Production
         Presented to Ottawa Little Theatre for Dead Accounts

Theatre Ontario Festival 2018 # 4: When Theatre Becomes Exhausting

The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals.  Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday.  Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning.  I'll be reviewing all the performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.

*****      *****     *****

Dead Accounts
by Theresa Rebeck
Representing EODL (Eastern Ontario)
Presented by Ottawa Little Theatre
Directed by 

This final play of the week is a comedy written by a noted American playwright, Theresa Rebeck, in 2012. It had a brief 6-week run on Broadway, closing early due to poor ticket sales. This in itself doesn't necessarily mean that Dead Accounts was a bad play! However, I'm inclined to agree with the New York critic who said that the play couldn't settle on its own tone or direction.

The Ottawa Little Theatre's production left me with one overwhelming question: was the character of Jack addicted to "uppers"? I may have missed it in the performance (see below) but after consulting several sources, including the author's own website, I can't find any reference to that. Why does it matter?

It matters simply because Phillip Merriman, the actor playing the central role of Jack, hit the stage already spinning madly at about 150 rpms, and just kept getting wilder and more frantic throughout the first act. This performance was, in a word, exhausting -- and so un-funny that it gave me a headache. Reference point: partly due to his hairstyle, Merriman called up memories of John Ritter in Three's Company, except that he was outdoing Ritter's signature physical comedy and zany facial expressions by about 300 percent. Total overkill, and for me it nearly killed the entire play.

My problem here is that, since I arrive at the theatre cold (without having read the script), I don't know if this style of performance is what the author demands or something which the actor and director have chosen to do.  Whichever it was, it drove me to get a rare drink-at-intermission just so I could bear to sit through the second act.

It's unfortunate, because Merriman obviously expended a terrific amount of energy getting to all the right places at all the right times, consuming quantities of varied ice cream on stage, racing back and forth and all around. If he was indeed presenting a character all hopped up on stimulant drugs, then kudos to him for staying firmly inside that character at all times.

And after his big secret was let out of the bag, he became much more likable and human, slowing down considerably, allowing more diverse sides of an intriguing character to emerge -- but that didn't happen until after the intermission.

The other three characters provided relief, especially in the scenes where Jack left the stage. Venetia Lawless presented a fine multi-sided portrait of Lorna, Jack's sister -- a woman not quite young who has returned home, and is now forced to contend with a religious-mania mother, a terribly ill father, and the unexpected return of her whirlwind-of-energy brother. She brought a nice repertoire of expressions on an expressive face to highlight all of her varying needs and moods. The scene where she described the Arbor Day tree planting was a truly touching moment of emotional truth. Also commendable for the strongest vocal work of the evening, with the clearest diction.

Jane Morris, as Barbara (the mother) had her own great repertoire of sorrows and worries to work with. Having sought comfort in the Catholic religion, she made a specialty of advising everyone to go to church because that would solve all their problems. For much of the play, she was playing the pitiful mother card so strongly that it's a wonder the script didn't have her say, "oh, I'm just a burden to all of you" or some such gem of self-pity. The comic scenes where she kept talking nonstop right across Lorna's phone calls were hilarious highlights of the show.  Morris also gave a superb shift into snapping anger after overhearing Jenny's phone conversation, complete with criticism of the dishes, flatware, décor, and all.

As the nice-guy straight man in a nest of comic lunatics, Josh Sparks hit many good notes of bewilderment and bafflement in the role of Jack's friend, Phil. He then found an equally believable series of subtle character shifts in the scenes where he gradually falls in love again with the idea of falling in love. This set up the happy ending of the play for two of the characters.

There was a fifth character who was (probably accidentally) not credited in the printed programme: Jack's estranged wife, Jenny. The actor playing this role had the physicality of the New York high society woman down pat. Every motion or stance radiated the air of a woman who had, no doubt, been to more than a few classes in finishing schools. Vocally, she was a bit more problematic -- her diction was less clear than the others and, every time she crossed the stage away from my seat on the right side of the theatre, I had trouble hearing the words as she spoke them.

This unnamed performer also managed to ring all the changes -- facially, physically, and vocally -- in the scene where Jack tries to strike a deal with her, then begins romancing her, and very nearly convinces her to come back to him.

The set, designed by Tom Pidgeon and dressed in incredible detail and profusion by Joan Sullivan-Eady, accurately captured the atmosphere of a 1960s vintage kitchen in a house that's never been renovated (I know -- I grew up in one and lived in another for years!).

John Solman's lighting design met the needs of the play well, especially the nice variation of the outdoor lighting seen through the window and the sliding glass door. The highlight of the lighting work came during the montage sequence which saw lights come on, focused on different areas of the stage in turn, as Jenny went through a whole series of poses to highlight the passage of time while all the others were away at the hospital with the unseen father.

In total, I found this to be a solid, well-knit production of the play, with much to commend it. But I'm still no closer to solving the basic conundrum, which comes down to this dichotomy.

EITHER... the playwright wrote the role of Jack with a demand for this frantic hyperactivity right at the beginning of the play, in which case I have to call it a serious weakness in the script, in tandem with that New York critic.

OR... the frantic behaviour of Jack in Act 1 was a director/actor choice, in which case I would have to call it a major error in judgement on the part of the company.

Either way, less would definitely have been much, much more.

Saturday 19 May 2018

Theatre Ontario Festival 2018 # 3: Days in a Life

The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals.  Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday.  Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning.  I'll be reviewing all four performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.

*****      *****     *****

Tempting Providence
by Robert Chafe
Representing QUONTA (Northeastern Ontario)
Presented by ELATE -- Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble
Directed by Murray Finn

This third evening of the festival brought a beautiful, tender, funny, touching Canadian script about the real life story of a remarkable woman who remains very little known outside the province of Newfoundland.  I truly hope that this play will serve to make her better known across the country, as she most certainly should be.

I've seen this play staged previously in March, at the QUONTA Drama Region Festival in Elliot Lake.  Here's the link to the review I posted of that performance:  A Tempting Evening of Theatre

This review, then, will focus on changes in the show and changes or additions in my reactions to it at second viewing.

A key change and improvement came right at the outset where the musician, Ponto Paparo, entered the stage carrying a lantern, discovered the space for a few moments, and then moved around to the location of his keyboard and took his place there (previously he was simply sitting there as the show opened).

The arrival of the new nurse was more effective too, with Myra (played by Kim Arnold) entering down the long, sloping aisle of the auditorium rather as if she were coming down the gangplank of the mailboat.  The much shorter aisles of the Elliot Lake auditorium had made that entrance far less effective in establishing her arrival into the community of the play.  Of course, this detail is necessarily lost on the audience in the front rows!

David Black and Fran Perkins really upped the stakes as the Man and Woman respectively, so-called because each of them must portray multiple different people through the course of the play.  Black's portrayal of the young boy who wasn't supposed to offer help to the nurse was a real comic delight.  Perkins unfailingly drew big laughs from the audience with her singularly graceless nose-wiping shtick.  Perkins also struck an even deeper note of truth and pain in her portrayal of the woman who has just lost a sister to TB, and plainly is herself suffering from the disease.

One of the greatest challenges of the play is found in the role of Myra, much of which is given in the form of excerpts from her diaries and letters.  These have, at times, a very pompous, officious tone, but Arnold exceeded even her own previous fine performance in maintaining the humanity of a character who could too easily seem completely stuck up if those excerpts weren't handled with great care and thought.

Jim Graham again brought much warmth and humour to his portrayal of Angus, the local man Myra marries.  His performance of the kitchen party scene gained more depth and truth, as did the final road-building scene.

The company as a whole remained on-point with the numerous smoothly-executed quick scene changes, all of which highlighted the value of keeping everyone on the stage in neutral space when they are not actually participating in a scene.

I was much more struck this time by the utter absence of props.  Everything from a medical bag to a garden hoe, from a boat's rudder to a horse's reins, all were so effectively mimed that no physical props were needed at all.

Kudos again to pianist/composer Ponto Paparo, whose original score was so responsively integrated into the play that he became, in effect, a fifth character on stage.

The lighting problems of the previous performance were totally solved, and the various lighting shifts and changes handled with care, allowing us to see all that we needed to see at any moment.

The problem of the "false ending" was solved too, since Myra was plainly moving into the playing space for her next scene as the Man and Woman finished reciting the list of her distinctions, awards, and honorary degrees.

Murray Finn's sensitive direction and the dedication of the company have together resulted in a well-crafted evening of theatre, no less than a well-deserved tribute to a remarkable human being.

And speaking of well-deserved tribute, last night's standing ovation wasn't the typical "I guess we're expected to stand and applaud."  It was definitely and clearly a tribute to the work of Kim Arnold in the role of Myra.  To borrow a phrase used by one British journalist, "The audience rose to her."

Friday 18 May 2018

Theatre Ontario Festival 2018 # 2: A Diamond in the Rough

The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals.  Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday.  Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning.  I'll be reviewing all the performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.

*****      *****     *****

Little Gem
by Elaine Murphy
Representing ACT-CO (GTA and Central Ontario)
Presented by Toronto Irish Players
Directed by Cliona Kenny

This second performance of the Festival presented the audience with a tough challenge: a play in which we see and hear almost nothing actually happen, since three women talk in a series of monologues about the joys, sorrows, challenges, and hopes of their interconnected lives -- with only a bare few seconds of on-stage interaction with each other.  It was not the least surprising for me to read, after the performance, that the playwright based her work on real-life stories which she heard in her work at a women's health organization.  It certainly had the flavour of reality-based writing, right from the outset.

As audience, I always find it difficult to feel any sort of interaction with monologues.  That's particularly true of monologues that narrate always in the past tense, as opposed to monologues that reveal events and states of mind in real time.  Then, too, there's a world of difference between a monologue that lasts 5 minutes and a serial monologue that lasts for 2 hours.

The setting designed by Bernadette Hunt and Sean Treacy consisted of a series of three platform risers in a row, with a stylized frame silhouette suggesting part of a house on each one.  A few simple chairs on and in front of the risers completed the set.

The cyclorama backdrop was sensitively lighted, and the lighting as sensitively varied, with lighting design by Mary Jane Boon.

Each of the three actors had her own platform, and worked mostly within that space and the area immediately in front of it.  The central and highest platform was a reasonable height above the floor, and the front edge of that platform was used as a seating spot by all three at one time or another.

The three characters belong to three generations of the same Dublin family.  We first meet Amber (Billie Jean Shannon), aged 19, then her mother, Lorraine (Rebecca De La Cour), and finally Lorraine's mother, Kay (Barbara Taylor).

All three presented the physical sides of their characters very well.  Shannon's fidgets as Amber certainly came across as genuinely teenaged.  Lorraine's edginess and tension were obvious from the outset in De La Cour's performance.  Taylor completely captured the mixture of weariness and iron-willed determination in Kay's character.

I found the vocal side of the performances a bit less rewarding.  Too many sentences of too many monologues were spoken all at the same speed, without enough give and take in the rhythms and pacing.  Although there was good variation in inflections and pitches from all three actors, the lack of variety in pacing helped to make the show duller and slower than it needed to be.  In fairness, I think this problem is partly built in, due to the nature of Elaine Murphy's rather anti-dramatic script.  But there would still be more room to explore those pacing possibilities.

On the other hand, the company's clear diction made it easy to follow the storylines in spite of the appropriately broad Irish accents and the use in the script of slang words less familiar on this side of the ocean.  All three actors also timed their comic payoff lines very neatly.

There were three portions of the show where the dramatic tension genuinely ratcheted up.  One was Lorraine's as-it-happens monologue about going to the salsa class and meeting Niall for the first time.  Another was Amber's monologue about discovering her pregnancy.  The third, and most moving, was Kay's description of discovering her husband fallen on the floor of the sitting room, ending with him dying in her arms.  Taylor's combination of determination and sheer heartbreak in this moment totally transcended the limitations of the script as she conjured up the ultimate accolade of great theatre -- the audience sitting rapt, transfixed, silent, holding their breaths for fear of breaking the spell she cast.

Given the effect of those moments, it's unfortunate that this script didn't allow more opportunity for these three gifted actors to flex their dramatic wings.

Thursday 17 May 2018

Theatre Ontario Festival 2018 # 1: The Dynamic Duo

The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals.  Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday.  Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning.  I'll be reviewing all the performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.

*****      *****     *****

On a First Name Basis
by Norm Foster
Representing WODL (Southwestern Ontario)
Presented by Elmira Theatre Company
Directed by Rita Huschka

This first play of the Festival got the week off to a rousing start with a powerhouse performance of Norm Foster's 2013 script -- one of his very best.

This script represents one of the bigger challenges in theatre: two characters who have to hold the stage, and the interest of the audience, in what is essentially an evening of storytelling. There's a decided lack of overt dramatic action in this script, yet the stories of the two characters were told, uncovered, delayed, and dragged out in a totally beguiling fashion that captivated the audience right from the get-go.

Gord Grose's set consisted of a full-walled room, decorated in a pleasant neutral earth-toned colour scheme. The most unusual and intriguing aspect was a large, five-segment bay window upstage centre, which created a useful additional acting area that -- in actual fact -- was very underused.

The two large armchairs placed at stage left centre took up nearly half the width of the room, and the straight line from those chairs across the stage to the kitchen door ended up defining the most-used playing areas. Stage pictures as a result had a certain sameness through much of the piece. This troubled me far less than it would have done in many other plays. Both characters made excellent use of the swinging kitchen door in staging some of their comebacks. The running gag of moving the glass on and off the coaster on the table was well-staged throughout the show too.

Lighting was effective throughout.  The music cues preshow and in the intermission were much more problematic.  Yes, one of the characters mentions several times his love for classical music and the music chosen would ideally be of that type.  But with classics, levels are a real problem since alternating loud and soft passages are often the rule.  Swan Lake came booming at us out of the speakers and had to be hurriedly adjusted downwards in volume.  The next cue brought quieter music that then had to be pumped back up.  A better solution would be to go clear back to the Baroque era (Bach is mentioned by name in the play) and use something written for a solo instrument or keyboard which will maintain a consistent volume level throughout the musical selection.

Foster's script hits the ground running, with Lucy Hopperstaad (the maid) getting in her first sassy wisecrack at her employer in or about the third line. As written, this character shares a good deal of common ground with the pert, sassy maids of Molière's farces. David Kilbride, the novelist who employs her, is a sixtysomething man whose life has ground to a halt. Foster has written several characters along similar lines in various plays, and this one could become one of the less appealing due to his frequently sexist and ageist comments.

In practice, though, watching and listening as these two traded witty barbs while dragging each other's dark night of the soul out into the open became both engrossing and as funny as it could well be. That was because this performance, like the script itself, hit the ground running -- with both characters full-on from the moment the lights went up.

Gord Cameron played the role of David with "just enough" of the stodge, of the self-absorption, of the nose-in-the-air. Too much of any of those aspects would cause David to forfeit all audience sympathy, but Cameron balanced the ingredients in perfect proportion. His retelling of his worst moment of his life was beautifully underplayed -- I don't think I could perform that scene without bursting into tears every time -- with no hint of angling for the audience's sympathy.

Deb Deckert absolutely nailed the role of Lucy, getting in all the smarts, intuition, sass, and pain in the character. Again, restraint worked beautifully for her as she finally was able to snap -- convincingly -- at David because she had been so tactful for so long. Definitely a case where too much, too soon, would have undermined the piece.

There was one place where the pace of the performance slackened too much, and it came in the most challenging part of the script: the final "coda" of the goodnight when all the revelations were said and done. Foster goes out of his way to avoid writing conventional happy endings, but in the process sometimes writes final scenes that are incredibly difficult to play convincingly. This is one of them. I could have wished for fewer and more selectively chosen pauses and beats in the performance of this scene, just to keep the show moving along to its appointed end.

Director Rita Huschka helped her accomplished company of two actors find all kinds of nuances, along with many finely-tuned moments of light and shade. Apart from that final scene, and the stage movement problem mentioned earlier, she crafted an excellent staging of a play that is much more challenging than many might think at first reading.

Tuesday 15 May 2018

Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony 2017-2018 # 4: Interpretation or Eccentricity?

This weekend, the KWSO wrapped up its Signature Series with a rousing season finale concert featuring the famous Symphony No. 9 in D Minor Op. 125 by Beethoven -- the renowned "Choral Symphony."  The concert was conducted by Music Director Designate Andrei Feher, who officially begins his four-year contract with the orchestra in the fall.

On Friday night, I was invited to a patrons' open rehearsal and heard the orchestra and massed choirs working through the choral finale which makes this symphony one of the great landmarks in the history of music.  That rehearsal, and the performance on Sunday afternoon, set me thinking about one of the perennial grey areas in the performing arts.  That's the whole question of when an interpretation deviates so far from the creator's intentions that it becomes invalid due to eccentricity or even to ignoring the directions found in the creative source material (the score, in this case).

While it's true that performing artists must interpret the material, it's equally true that not every possible interpretation is equally valid.  As in any musical work, there are varying possibilities in terms of tempo, dynamics, orchestral balance, and so on, which could be considered as within reasonable limits.  But equally, there are many possibilities which are well beyond the scope of the reasonable, and therefore effectively wrong.

In this Ninth, the interpretation versus eccentricity question definitely appeared during the first and third movements.  Andrei Feher left me with an impression of a conductor who likes to play a tempo at all times and keep it lively.  He charged through the first movement in 13 minutes flat (two recordings in my collection take respectively 17 and 18 minutes), and his slow movement flew by in 14 minutes (versus 18 and 20 in the two recordings).

The basic speed of the first movement, although fast, was not so problematic as the conductor's refusal to let the music breathe and relax a bit from time to time.  Even the quieter pages, normally a respite from the fury, felt tense and edgy at the unvarying speed.  The great buildup to the final coda lost all sense of mystery due to the metronomic precision of the beat.

But the slow movement -- one of the great miracles of all music -- was turned from adagio molto e cantabile into a fast-flowing andante moderato that did a great disservice to the lyricism and sense of peace which normally imbues this music.  Again, as in the first movement, there was no allowance of flexibility in tempo, no feeling that the music could be allowed to breathe for itself, in its own good time.  When Feher finally eased his relentless forward push to allow the solo horn cadenza to flower gently, the difference was almost shocking as we were -- for that one moment -- taken back into the magical world of the adagio as it ought to sound.

The difference was obvious when we reached the second-movement scherzo, which the conductor took at a much more central tempo.  Not only was the speed suddenly in the ballpark, but the crisp execution of all the dotted figures in all departments of the orchestra was especially noteworthy (one moment of over-zealous attack from the timpanist excepted).  The tricky speed and rhythm transition from scherzo to trio was managed beautifully by Feher in both spots where it occurs.

Throughout the work, the orchestra played with great polish and as much finesse as the speeds allowed them to deploy.

And so (after the overspeeded slow movement) to the great choral finale, where the performance was in large measure redeemed by the powerful and closely unified singing of the assembled choirs and a dream team of soloists.

Bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch commanded instant attention with his powerful voice, clear diction, and emphatic delivery of the opening recitative.  The choir matched him with their two forceful cries of "Freude!" ("Joy"), in which the exclamation mark was plainly audible, and the choral finale was off and running.

In the second verse, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Enns Modolo made a striking contribution in one of her two brief moments of glory, and soprano Erin Wall shaped her lines with sensitivity to the text and with power to spare.

Notably, the solo quartet fused together as a quartet, voices well balanced and with no virtuoso showing-off such as I have heard in some other performances.

Adam Luther sang powerfully and cleanly in the Turkish march variation, heroically coping with all the leaps and runs at the brisk speed -- although a few notes and words got lost in the rush.

I was forcefully reminded of an important acoustic aspect of the Centre in the Square -- choral sound tends to rocket clearly and crisply out into the auditorium even as the orchestral sound reaches the ear with a plusher, softer-grained tone at higher volume levels.  The unanimity and tonal blend of the combined choirs (totalling about 150 voices) were noteworthy and gripping.

Equally notable was the security of the soprano and tenor sections in the cruelly high and exposed lines which are the bane of high-voice choral singers world-wide.  It's not so much that the singers can't reach the notes, but getting there and staying there while sustaining the tonal blend of the choir is another and much tougher challenge.

The rest of the multi-section finale was truly impressive, right up until the choir's closing phrases before the orchestral coda.  Here, instead of a powerful final utterance from the voices, we got a fizzle as Feher again chose to charge right ahead, a tempo, through a passage which is clearly marked in the score as maestoso.  There was no majesty at all, simply an undignified rush to spit out the words as quickly as possible before the orchestra shot onwards into the powerful coda.

Sadly, then, I must conclude that this was a wilful, wayward performance of the Ninth, and one which did not serve the music or the composer well throughout.  Where it was good, it was impressive, but the numerous eccentric choices made by the conductor were very off-putting to say the least.

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The first part of the concert presented a considerable bonus, Mijidwewinan ("Messages") by Barbara Croall, for symphony orchestra and Anishinaabekwe performer, composed in 2009.  This 15-minute work presented a fascinating blend of traditional recitation, chanting, drumming, and flute playing with the sounds of the orchestra.  Composer Croall herself appeared as the traditional performer on this occasion.

Printed programme notes and a verbal introduction from the stage were helpful in following the complex and multi-layered structure.  In ten linked sections, the work traverses a day from full night through sunrise to noon, then to twilight, sunset, and full night again.  A few backdrop projections helped to highlight this sense of time passing.  But the music intentionally also traces an arc from a past where peoples lived in harmony with nature to a present where that harmony is gravely imperilled and into a future where great catastrophes will ensue until we find our way back to that primal harmonious existence.

Croall's performance, in voice, gesture, and face, communicated this broad outline, along with the unique and haunting sounds of the traditional chants and the cedar flute.  The orchestral sound palette, now resembling updated Debussy, now in a more modern and acerbic language, supported the arc of the vision and music.

This piece left with a deep longing to enter back into that sound world and gain a clearer feeling for what was being said to me.

Part of the problem was the lack, in the programme, of any printed text for this work (or for the Beethoven, for that matter).  A printed text, or even a synopsis, section by section, might perhaps have clarified the music better -- it's hard to say.  But the depth and power of Croall's musical vision was unmistakable and totally gripping.

In Sight and Sound

Ten days ago, I attended a unique concert given in Hamilton by the chamber choir Musicata, formerly known as the John Laing Singers.  This concert triggered my last post, the essay about the "hybrid arts" label on this blog.  The programme, entitled "In Sight and Sound," featured a close integration of music with painting and a digital video presentation which could as well have been called a film.

The music performed by the choir, mostly unaccompanied, ranged from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century in a diverse panorama of different kinds of choral art.  

The visual component was engaged twice during the programme, once with a potpourri of medieval and renaissance religious art, and once with a collection of original paintings inspired by the music and the texts being performed.

I'm going to comment on a few highlights of the programme, and save my most detailed thoughts for the hybrid arts portions.

The programme opened with the motet Levavi oculos meos, composed in Germany in 1585 by Hans Leo Hassler.  It's risky to open a concert with such a challenging piece, where individual parts flow by each other in pure polyphony, and indeed the tuning was a bit shaky here although the choir produced lovely tone.

Next, we heard an unusual full anthem -- I am come into my garden -- by William Billings, the earliest known American composer.  Like much of what I have heard of the music of Billings in the past, this upbeat -- almost jolly -- work relied far more on chordal harmony, with only a few moments of simple polyphony.  In that respect, it reflected the tradition of limited and simple singing followed by the churches of New England in the 1600s and 1700s.  A fun piece, and given a definitely hearty performance.

The Long Road, by Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, produced lovely tonal contrast between the full body and a semi-chorus, and some fascinating shimmering vocal effects alongside rich yet more traditional harmonies.  

The choir then returned to a more classic style with Os justi by Anton Bruckner.  Inspired by the music of earlier masters and by the ideals of the 19th-century Cecilian movement, Bruckner returned to the pure vocal polyphony of an earlier age, but imbued with the more diverse harmonies of his own time.  By now, the choir's singing was fully in tune and fully in accord with the spirit of the music, not least in the serene plainchant Alleluia which ends the motet.

The first half ended with the hypnotically serene sounds of the Magnificat by Arvo Pärt.  To meet the essential quality of this music, the choir must give a seamless performance in which time feels suspended, and space feels illimitable.  This they certainly accomplished, to stunning effect.  The latent power of this music was amplified by the accompanying digital projections.  A series of pictures of various paintings of the Virgin Mary flowed and dissolved on the screen, creating an endless stream of imagery matching the flow of sound.  The pictures came from different artists, and depicted different scenes of the Annunciation, the Birth, the Naming of Jesus, and the classic image of the Madonna and Child in varying guises.  

The images were carefully assembled so that a full picture would dissolve into a close-up of one part of another, and that in turn back to a full image of a third, and so on.  The timeless quality of these classic paintings matched Pärt's music beautifully, heightening the sensory impact of the choral sound.

In the second half, the final six works were assembled into a "hexaptych" (sorry, I had to show off the new word which I learned today!) of greatly varying character, all accompanied by projections of painted images inspired by the music and texts, created by artist Phil Irish.  

The choir moved with easy assurance among the varying styles of these six works.  Of the six works, one that made a great impression was a world premiere, Sanctum, by Jordan Sabola.  It was a first-ever work for choir by Sabola, a composition student who is not yet 20 years old.  I was impressed by the assurance of his handling of the choral medium.  His will definitely be a name to watch if he continues to pursue composition -- and I hope he will.

Polar opposite to the serenity of Sabola's sound world was the energetic, restless, unceasing rhythmic patter of Eric Whitacre's little man in a hurry, to a poem by e.e.cummings.  Whitacre's music in this number demands immense precision and crisp sound, and this we definitely got.  

Last number on the programme was a composition by Canadian composer Leonard Enns,  I saw eternity, set to a poetic fragment by the Welsh mystical poet Henry Vaughan.  Vaughan, like his mentor, George Herbert, has long been a favourite author of mine, and I was truly moved by this deeply felt music, in which both composer and choir entered fully into the spirit of the text.

The artworks projected during this 6-part choral mosaic included images of mountains, trees, birds, and other subjects.  The paintings were sometimes presented in fragmentary form, so that certain key images appeared again and again -- but apparently in different contexts.  The projections also made use of the ability of the digital format to spin the images slowly towards or away from the viewer, so that a bird for instance might recede into the distance against another image while slowly rotating in a clockwise direction.  

Again, as with the religious paintings shown earlier, this imaginative melding of painting and digital presentation practically amounted to a fully-realized film counterpart of the sung music, with each working to highlight audience perception of the other.  

I'd certainly be intrigued to see Musicata and Artistic Director Roger Bergs pursue this concept further in a future programme, perhaps with different artists and a different theme uniting the music chosen for performance.  It's absolutely an idea worth developing further.

Tuesday 8 May 2018

The Hybrid Arts

Time for another one of my essays of commentary, as opposed to reviews.

In the space of just a few months, I've attended several events which have crossed traditional boundaries between different artistic genres in some rather surprising ways.  I'm certain that this is an artistic trend which is gathering speed -- and I definitely expect to encounter more such events in the future.

For this reason, I've created a new reference label to use in this blog which I am calling "hybrid arts."  Before publishing this essay, I've gone back through the 300 previous posts in the blog and applied the label retroactively to any posts which fit into this category.

There have always been some art forms which quite naturally fit together.  The intersection of dance and music, for example, can be considered (with a few exceptions) pretty much a given.  Similarly, theatre and music have a long and honourably conjoined history.  Indeed, all three of these forms were linked together in the ancient Greek theatre.  

Others, however, have not traditionally been so related.  And even within the boundaries of the genres mentioned above, some unusual possibilities for new and different kinds of conjunction between genres are being developed.

Some of the hybrid possibilities I've encountered over the last few years have included creative uses of the visual arts to comment on or magnify the impact of music, the use of film and of visual arts as inspiring sources for the creation of modern dance, the integration of chamber music performance into dance performance, the creation of visual arts inspired by the texts of choral music, the use of spoken verse and prose rather than music as an accompaniment to dance, and more.

It's easy to see that all of these types of performance resist classification into traditional genres, which tend to operate more like exclusive boxes rather than inclusive spaces.  In each case, I have been both intrigued and fascinated by the possibilities opened up through these broader-based, integrated, hybrid arts performances.  

With the use of this new label, my loyal readers can now backtrack and find my reviews of the events in which these free-thinking new kinds of creativity have been developed.  Next up in a day or so: another hybrid arts event from a most unusual choral concert.

Friday 4 May 2018

Toronto Symphony 2017-2018 # 6: At Long, Long, Last

This is my 300th post on this blog.  Interesting, and appropriate, that it should coincide with my review of a landmark concert in my music-loving career.  Definitely not just any Toronto Symphony concert -- this one included a musical work and an artist that have both been on my must-hear bucket list for just shy of half a century.   

The resulting performance was longer than many -- almost two and a half hours -- but it was absolutely worth every minute.

The first work was Mozart's irrepressibly cheerful Piano Concerto # 12 in A Major, K.414.  Again, not just another Mozart performance.  The soloist was Leon Fleisher.  This man is a living legend, nothing less.  He made his Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut in March of 1955.  I was less than a year old at the time; in a month I will hit my 64th birthday.  Fleisher is 90 years old this year, still teaching, still touring, still performing.  Nor is this remarkable feat simply one of longevity.  If you are not familiar with his story, google it and prepare to be truly astounded at what he has accomplished and overcome through his lifetime.

My first acquaintance with Fleisher's artistry goes back to my high school days, when I listened to library recordings of his performances in the Beethoven and Brahms piano concerti, recorded under George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra -- and I still have the CD transfer of the Brahms works in my collection.  I wore out my copies of the LPs.

In an easy and comfortable partnership, Fleisher and music director Peter Oundjian gave the concerto a sparkling, jovial performance which would have put a smile on almost anyone's face.  The pared-down orchestra avoided the kind of heavily upholstered "Mozart sound" which I might have heard as a youngster, and Fleisher's playing similarly remained light, with no super-Beethoven heroics.  The melodies of the slow movement sang with genuine flow, and the rondo finale danced us lightly away.

With a performance like this, the applause and cheers (considerable) inevitably stand as a merited tribute to the soloist's entire remarkable career as much as to the performance just given.  

The much larger second work became something of a contradiction.  Although I have known and loved the monumental Eighth Symphony of Anton Bruckner right back to my teenage years, and was tremendously excited to hear it -- at long last -- performed live, I had never heard the work sounding like this before.  No one has ever heard the symphony like this in Canada.

At this point, I beg leave to diverge into a brief music history lesson.  All my life, I have read about musicians and conductors lining up in favour of either the Robert Haas edition or the Leopold Nowak edition of the Eighth Symphony.  (I lined up too -- Nowak for me).  Before 1972, all live performances and all recordings of the work were in one of these two editions or in the first published version of 1892).  But both are performing editions of the second version of the symphony, the version completed in 1890.  Only in 1972 did Nowak also publish a performing edition of the notably different original or first version of 1887.  Bruckner was stimulated into making extensive revisions of the symphony after it was rejected by the conductor Hermann Levi (a man whom Bruckner had called his "father in art" after Levi's triumphant performance of Bruckner's Seventh).

This week's concerts marked the first-ever performance in Canada of a new performing edition, prepared for the Austrian National Library by Professor Paul Hawkshaw, of the original 1887 version.  Unlike Nowak's 1887 score, this one is based as much as possible on Bruckner's original autograph scores of the work (Nowak used a copyist's work as the basis for his 1887 edition).  Hawkshaw's edition clears up dozens, perhaps hundreds, of small errors found in Nowak's 1887 score, and in the process brings us closer than we have ever been before to hearing the symphony as Bruckner originally created it.  Hawkshaw's edition was premiered by the Yale Symphony Orchestra, under Oundjian's direction, in October of 2017.

Enough of that musicological detail.  Suffice it to say that hearing this original version of the work becomes, in many spots, like hearing a completely different symphony altogether.  Perhaps the two should be re-numbered as "8a" and "8b," or something of that kind, so great are the differences.

I'm still of two minds as to whether the original is in fact a "better" work than the later revision, as Oundjian plainly averred in his programme note.  I'd have to hear it more often to make up my mind on that point.  What does not differ between the two versions is the clear feeling that Bruckner was engaged in erecting a soaring, gigantic cathedral in sound to the greater glory of God.  What was absolutely unmistakable in this concert was conductor Oundjian's thorough familiarity with and absorption into Bruckner's unique and challenging sound world.

Not the least issue for a conductor is balancing the sound of an orchestra which is so often called upon to respond like Bruckner's beloved pipe organ -- the woodwinds, or brasses, or strings entering en masse in the same way that an organist will engage different stops on the instrument.  Of course, it is the brass who are most likely to overwhelm their colleagues with the full power of three trumpets, four horns, four Wagner tubas (which double as horns 5-8 in the finale), three trombones, and bass tuba.  For the most part this remained a non-issue as Oundjian spurred his large string sections to greater and greater efforts with their endless fury of tremolando passages remaining quite adequately audible in even the mightiest climaxes.

The biggest single requirement for a good Bruckner performance is to give the music all the time it needs to unfold properly.  Nowhere is this more critical than in the slow movement of this work, and Oundjian did not fail his audience there.  In a genuine adagio tempo the music was free to breathe and grow, naturally, organically (no pun intended), from the quiet, almost hesitant beginnings to the multiple flowerings of the chorale-like strings underpinned by the arpeggios of 3 harps.  This original version of the movement, by the way, includes five or six of those moments of heavenly peace where the 1890 version retains only three.  In as fine a performance as this, it's easy to feel that time has somehow become suspended as the music slowly flows by you.

What, then, could form a greater contrast than the near-savage militaristic uproar in the opening pages of the finale, galloping strings and blazing brass fanfares united in a celebration of majestic triumph.  Equally powerful, and equally clear-cut, was the resplendent conclusion where the themes and characteristic rhythms of all four movements are piled up together in the closing pages.

It was a long wait from the early 1970s to 2018 to at last hear this symphony performed live, but when the opportunity came it was definitely a feast for the ears that was worth waiting for.