"It's not a musical!" That was the disappointed comment of an audience member near me, at the intermission. Theatregoers in major cities have become so accustomed to musical shows as the main genre they encounter -- a sad comment on the state of the theatre. And while the "legitimate" theatre (I hate that term almost as much as I hate "straight" theatre) has much to learn from musicals, there are times when the lesson can be too well learned -- the fragmentary nature of scripts in musicals and the excessive reliance on flashy technical whiz-bangs can become ludicrous when actors are trying to create real and believable characters.
None of those things went wrong with the stage production of War Horse, which I saw last night. Yes, there is a fair bit of flashy technical work with lighting and sound but it is always kept at the service of the play. Yes, the script is bitty but when the scene changes move so quickly and smoothly that becomes an unimportant issue. The best learned lesson is that music does indeed heighten the emotions, and here the use of popular songs and music from the early years of the last century in England was carefully used to underscore the key moments. The singers who took us from scene to scene with their music-as-commentary were completely in key with the concept that their role was to discreetly support the dramatic action, not dominate and control it.
Central to this play is the unique collection of horse puppets whose operators create one of the main central characters of the story. No pretense that the puppeteers don't exist, they are plainly visible, right in the open, and garbed in period clothes. But it takes only a few minutes for you to forget them -- or at least lose sight of the connection -- and accept the horses as real, living, breathing creatures. Once that happens, the story takes wings and begins to soar.
Someone should make use of this concept in staging a realistic Wagner Ring!
The actors playing the human characters were all very good too. Special props to Alex Furber as the young Albert Narracott, who (like so many of his generation) has to grow up very quickly indeed when war swallows him. A very telling moment is his return at the end, when his mother at first doesn't recognize him and tells his father that she sees "a man on a horse".
Brad Rudy and Richard McMillan are both favourite Canadian actors of long standing, and the interplay between them as two brothers was strong, memorable, and totally believable. It's especially good to see McMillan in a serious role. He's a great comedian, with marvellous timing, but there's so much more to him than that and here we got to see it, in spades. Tamara Bernstein Evans was also very memorable as Albert's mother, Rose, a caring mother and wife with a backbone of steel. Patrick Galligan movingly created the other key character of Friedrich MΓΌller, who reminded us powerfully that human emotional responses to war spread across all borders.
I don't go in for big-ticket commercial productions in Toronto as a rule, but this show is a must-see!
Sunday 27 May 2012
Beethoven in Kitchener
I enjoy going to concerts by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. It's an excellent mid-size orchestra, and while the programs tend to run to "standard repertoire" there's always some unusual feature in every concert.
Friday night we got mainly Beethoven, but the rare feature was a piece of Beethoven which I really enjoy, and rarely get a chance to hear: the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra. Now, the Great Experts (as Anna Russell always called them) have already decreed that the Triple Concerto is second-rate Beethoven. I beg to differ. It is unusual Beethoven, but hardly to be judged of poorer quality simply because it doesn't fit neatly into a pigeonhole -- and that seems to be all that some writers have against it.
Think of it as a concerto for "piano trio and orchestra" and its reference points become clearer. The use of the term "piano trio" immediately invites a comparison to chamber music, and indeed the solo parts of the piece often function much like a chamber trio. By the same token, the orchestra necessarily must often accompany at a chamber scale to allow the subtleties of the interplay between the soloists to come through.
Of the small number of recordings of this concerto that exist, many use a roster of soloists. But on Friday night we got the concerto for piano trio and orchestra played by a real piano trio, and one of the best I know: the Gryphon Trio. With the solo parts in their hands, excellence of performance and interpretation could be safely taken for granted. And the playing was excellent, with all three players aptly in scale with each other -- although the violin could get lost in the shuffle as the other two soloists and the orchestra got a little too boisterous at times. All in all, though, a delightful performance of a concert rarity.
After the intermission, we got the Seventh Symphony. Like all Beethoven, this is in danger of becoming hackneyed from overuse. Edwin Outwater and the orchestra avoided that hazard, giving a crisp, clean performance that highlighted interesting features of the writing at many points. The slow movement began very quietly indeed, forcing the audience to listen closely to what was happening. The scherzo was nimble, quick but not overly quick, and the repeating trio was well contrasted.
I just wish I could say the same for the finale. Outwater succumbed, alas, to the temptation to join the "Beethoven sweepstakes" where the prize is the trophy for winning the "Anything you can play, I can play faster" race. This contest has been a blot on numerous pianists playing Beethoven, and the same fate, alas, befell this concert. There are a large number of very effective notes in the finale which deserve to be heard, and have a great deal to tell the listener, but we only could distinguish perhaps 60% of them. The rest just vanished into a rushing torrent of blurry sound, exacerbated by the rich resonance of the Centre in the Square. Sometimes it's better not to do your damnedest, if your next-to-damnedest would be more effective, certainly the case here.
Of course the audience leaped instantly to their feet at the end (another bugbear of mine) but then, if the finale of the 7th doesn't lift the audience out of their seats, something is seriously wrong! For myself, I enjoyed the performance overall but wished I had actually heard all the notes Beethoven had written.
Friday night we got mainly Beethoven, but the rare feature was a piece of Beethoven which I really enjoy, and rarely get a chance to hear: the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra. Now, the Great Experts (as Anna Russell always called them) have already decreed that the Triple Concerto is second-rate Beethoven. I beg to differ. It is unusual Beethoven, but hardly to be judged of poorer quality simply because it doesn't fit neatly into a pigeonhole -- and that seems to be all that some writers have against it.
Think of it as a concerto for "piano trio and orchestra" and its reference points become clearer. The use of the term "piano trio" immediately invites a comparison to chamber music, and indeed the solo parts of the piece often function much like a chamber trio. By the same token, the orchestra necessarily must often accompany at a chamber scale to allow the subtleties of the interplay between the soloists to come through.
Of the small number of recordings of this concerto that exist, many use a roster of soloists. But on Friday night we got the concerto for piano trio and orchestra played by a real piano trio, and one of the best I know: the Gryphon Trio. With the solo parts in their hands, excellence of performance and interpretation could be safely taken for granted. And the playing was excellent, with all three players aptly in scale with each other -- although the violin could get lost in the shuffle as the other two soloists and the orchestra got a little too boisterous at times. All in all, though, a delightful performance of a concert rarity.
After the intermission, we got the Seventh Symphony. Like all Beethoven, this is in danger of becoming hackneyed from overuse. Edwin Outwater and the orchestra avoided that hazard, giving a crisp, clean performance that highlighted interesting features of the writing at many points. The slow movement began very quietly indeed, forcing the audience to listen closely to what was happening. The scherzo was nimble, quick but not overly quick, and the repeating trio was well contrasted.
I just wish I could say the same for the finale. Outwater succumbed, alas, to the temptation to join the "Beethoven sweepstakes" where the prize is the trophy for winning the "Anything you can play, I can play faster" race. This contest has been a blot on numerous pianists playing Beethoven, and the same fate, alas, befell this concert. There are a large number of very effective notes in the finale which deserve to be heard, and have a great deal to tell the listener, but we only could distinguish perhaps 60% of them. The rest just vanished into a rushing torrent of blurry sound, exacerbated by the rich resonance of the Centre in the Square. Sometimes it's better not to do your damnedest, if your next-to-damnedest would be more effective, certainly the case here.
Of course the audience leaped instantly to their feet at the end (another bugbear of mine) but then, if the finale of the 7th doesn't lift the audience out of their seats, something is seriously wrong! For myself, I enjoyed the performance overall but wished I had actually heard all the notes Beethoven had written.
Monday 21 May 2012
The Winners!
Sorry I forgot to include this in post # 2. For those interested, here is a link to the complete list of award nominees and winners in Theatre Ontario Festival 2012. My bad.
http://www.theatreontario.org/programs-and-services/festival/theatre-ontario-festival-2012-awards.aspx
http://www.theatreontario.org/programs-and-services/festival/theatre-ontario-festival-2012-awards.aspx
Sunday 20 May 2012
No 3-D Glasses Needed
That was the marvellous advertising slogan of the 40th Theatre Ontario Festival, which wrapped up in Sault Ste. Marie this afternoon. But more than that -- it's the perfect motto for all forms of the performing arts that I will be blogging about! No 3-D glasses, perhaps, but definitely these kinds of art call for 3-D awareness and 3-D audience involvement in what is taking place on the stage!
And what a wonderfully diverse collection of theatre we were exposed to. On Wednesday night we saw The Attic, The Pearls, and Three Fine Girls from the Gore Bay Theatre. On a representational set in which boxes played a large role (as they did in the script) a beautifully balanced cast of three acted out a dizzying range of scenes from the lives of the three "girls" in the Fine family. Early childhood alternated with middle age, adolescence rubbed shoulders with aging, and the cast kept us clearly in the picture every step of the way. Kudos to all three!
Thursday night brought the premiere production of a new Canadian script, The Mouse House, written and directed by Robert Ainsworth and staged by Peterborough Theatre Guild. It's a neatly scripted, intense thriller that builds through many stages and involves a whole series of startling plot twists. The script struck me as the product of several production runs with much rewriting and fine tuning in between, and I was awe-struck when I found out it was in its first production! Again this was basically a 3-hander, with a fourth character appearing briefly in the first scene to help set up the situation, and again the three actors (male this time) balanced each other off beautifully while (paradoxically) keeping each other and us totally off-balance at all times.
Friday night gave us Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin (yes, that is the Steve Martin -- which made this the only non-Canadian script of the week). True to its author's character, it was zany and absurd but leavened with enough thought-provoking ideas to stop it from descending into mere idiocy. After all, it does depict a fictitious meeting between the young Einstein and the young Picasso in the Paris bar of the title! Guelph Theatre's production was visually striking, technically impressive (the moment when the world of the play opened up to show the stars was unforgettable), and brought a beautifully unified ensemble from all of the 11 characters in the cast. This was the only large-cast show of the week, and oddly enough the only one with an intermission.
The other two plays I've already described could have just as well been granted an intermission by their authors, as the flow in each case was already interrupted by numerous scene changes (all handled very crisply, I might add). But in The December Man the non-stop flow of the action was the very essence of the play's enormous emotional impact. So was the peculiar conceit of having the script work backwards from the end of the story to the beginning, a device also used by Harold Pinter in Betrayal. The Curtain Club's production captured the bland sameness of the lives of the 3 characters (again, three!) even as it depicted the tragic events which fatally disrupted that boring routine. The play shows the "collateral damage" (the modern catchphrase) caused as the bullets of a gun-firing maniac ricochet into the lives of the onlooking survivors of mass murder and their families. It began tragically and continued to grow in intensity and heartbreak scene by scene until I felt that I could not endure any more. This was a very difficult play to watch, and yet powerfully presented and acted with deeply moving truth and presence.
And then there were the other great performances -- adjudicator Annette Procunier's witty remarks and perfectly timed comic zingers which insulted no one and set everyone laughing as hard as any moment in any of the plays, and the icing on the cake, Jack Weatherall's moving recitation of "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces..." from The Tempest as he officially closed the Festival at the end of the Awards Brunch, as apt a Shakespearean comment on the moment as could well be found.
And some people wonder why I keep going back to Theatre Ontario Festivals year after year!
And what a wonderfully diverse collection of theatre we were exposed to. On Wednesday night we saw The Attic, The Pearls, and Three Fine Girls from the Gore Bay Theatre. On a representational set in which boxes played a large role (as they did in the script) a beautifully balanced cast of three acted out a dizzying range of scenes from the lives of the three "girls" in the Fine family. Early childhood alternated with middle age, adolescence rubbed shoulders with aging, and the cast kept us clearly in the picture every step of the way. Kudos to all three!
Thursday night brought the premiere production of a new Canadian script, The Mouse House, written and directed by Robert Ainsworth and staged by Peterborough Theatre Guild. It's a neatly scripted, intense thriller that builds through many stages and involves a whole series of startling plot twists. The script struck me as the product of several production runs with much rewriting and fine tuning in between, and I was awe-struck when I found out it was in its first production! Again this was basically a 3-hander, with a fourth character appearing briefly in the first scene to help set up the situation, and again the three actors (male this time) balanced each other off beautifully while (paradoxically) keeping each other and us totally off-balance at all times.
Friday night gave us Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin (yes, that is the Steve Martin -- which made this the only non-Canadian script of the week). True to its author's character, it was zany and absurd but leavened with enough thought-provoking ideas to stop it from descending into mere idiocy. After all, it does depict a fictitious meeting between the young Einstein and the young Picasso in the Paris bar of the title! Guelph Theatre's production was visually striking, technically impressive (the moment when the world of the play opened up to show the stars was unforgettable), and brought a beautifully unified ensemble from all of the 11 characters in the cast. This was the only large-cast show of the week, and oddly enough the only one with an intermission.
The other two plays I've already described could have just as well been granted an intermission by their authors, as the flow in each case was already interrupted by numerous scene changes (all handled very crisply, I might add). But in The December Man the non-stop flow of the action was the very essence of the play's enormous emotional impact. So was the peculiar conceit of having the script work backwards from the end of the story to the beginning, a device also used by Harold Pinter in Betrayal. The Curtain Club's production captured the bland sameness of the lives of the 3 characters (again, three!) even as it depicted the tragic events which fatally disrupted that boring routine. The play shows the "collateral damage" (the modern catchphrase) caused as the bullets of a gun-firing maniac ricochet into the lives of the onlooking survivors of mass murder and their families. It began tragically and continued to grow in intensity and heartbreak scene by scene until I felt that I could not endure any more. This was a very difficult play to watch, and yet powerfully presented and acted with deeply moving truth and presence.
And then there were the other great performances -- adjudicator Annette Procunier's witty remarks and perfectly timed comic zingers which insulted no one and set everyone laughing as hard as any moment in any of the plays, and the icing on the cake, Jack Weatherall's moving recitation of "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces..." from The Tempest as he officially closed the Festival at the end of the Awards Brunch, as apt a Shakespearean comment on the moment as could well be found.
And some people wonder why I keep going back to Theatre Ontario Festivals year after year!
Going Live!
For a while now I've been writing a personal diary about my adventures as an audience member of the performing arts. Time to blog about it instead! I range over a wide variety of classical music (loosely defined), dance, opera, and theatre performances every year. I'll be blogging here at irregular intervals, whenever I attend any sort of a live performance. I'll be writing partly information, partly critiques, of the events which I attend. Hope you'll enjoy it!
My title: for some years while I was teaching at Elliot Lake Secondary School in Ontario, Canada, the school sponsored a monthly event called "Small Stage Live". Students (and occasionally the odd staff member) performed sketch comedy, stand-up, scenes from plays, played acoustic guitar, sang, danced, you name it -- all in a casual coffee-house environment in the school's drama room.
Since most of the performances I go to take place in larger theatres or halls, the title shift to Large Stage Live came pretty naturally to me.
Please note: I will not be blogging live from any events. As a long-time audience member and a performer, I know very well that a large part of any successful performance is the energy which flows from the audience to the performer(s). This may sound weird to anyone who has never sung, danced, or acted on a public stage, but every performer will tell you that when you are on the stage you can feel the audience's attention and involvement -- and you need to feel it. Of course there is no energy flowing to the stage when the audience are bending over their smart phones!
So, my rant is this: in any live event, you need to get your head out of the twitterverse for an hour or so and focus on what's going on up there on the stage!
My first blog, either today or tomorrow, will be about the Theatre Ontario Festival which is wrapping up in Sault Ste. Marie this morning.
My title: for some years while I was teaching at Elliot Lake Secondary School in Ontario, Canada, the school sponsored a monthly event called "Small Stage Live". Students (and occasionally the odd staff member) performed sketch comedy, stand-up, scenes from plays, played acoustic guitar, sang, danced, you name it -- all in a casual coffee-house environment in the school's drama room.
Since most of the performances I go to take place in larger theatres or halls, the title shift to Large Stage Live came pretty naturally to me.
Please note: I will not be blogging live from any events. As a long-time audience member and a performer, I know very well that a large part of any successful performance is the energy which flows from the audience to the performer(s). This may sound weird to anyone who has never sung, danced, or acted on a public stage, but every performer will tell you that when you are on the stage you can feel the audience's attention and involvement -- and you need to feel it. Of course there is no energy flowing to the stage when the audience are bending over their smart phones!
So, my rant is this: in any live event, you need to get your head out of the twitterverse for an hour or so and focus on what's going on up there on the stage!
My first blog, either today or tomorrow, will be about the Theatre Ontario Festival which is wrapping up in Sault Ste. Marie this morning.
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