Festival of the Sound 2018 # 1: Old Friends, New Venture

It may come as something of a shock to my regular readers to see the first season review of the Festival of the Sound popping up in March this year -- since the Festival normally runs for 3 1/2 weeks from mid-July!

But no one could fairly claim that this Festival ever stands still or gets into a rut.  This year they've proven it by: [a] taking up a challenge from duo pianists Anagnoson and Kinton to run an off-season concert series, and [b] raising the money to buy a beautiful Yamaha grand piano for the small concert hall in the Festival Station Gallery and then [c] inviting A&K to give the first public performance on this new instrument as a special fund-raising event to officially launch the Festival's 39th season.

How could I resist?

James Anagnoson and Leslie Kinton form the pre-eminent Canadian ensemble regularly performing piano music for duo (4 hands at 1 piano) and for 2 pianos.  They're very long-time friends of the Festival, so inviting them for this occasion would have been a natural idea even if they hadn't given the whole plan the initial kick-start.

For this launch concert, they gave an hour-long performance consisting of four works and an encore.  They led off with the first of Schubert's three Marches militaires, quite likely (as Leslie Kinton said) the best-known work ever composed for piano duo.  Where many players will hammer this piece into the ground, Anagnoson and Kinton treated it to a buoyant, lightweight, yet still energetic performance.

Following this came the emotional centrepiece of the program, Schubert's Fantasy in F Minor, a work which is better-known among musicians and audiences in such places as Parry Sound than to the wider musical public.  It's in four linked sections, lasting some twenty minutes or so, but I have always felt (especially in the final pages) that it could quite easily have become a symphony instead.  I believe that it could fitly be orchestrated in Schubertian style to emphasize the full power of that conclusion.

In this performance, A&K highlighted the contrasts in the first movement, without overplaying them.  Drama set in with the emphatic dotted rhythms and triplet cascades of the slower second section.  The third part, the scherzo, flew by at high speed in a raucous celebration mingled with quieter reminiscences.  It was the finale that set the seal on this performance, a granitic account of that extraordinary fugue building to a climax of utmost power.  The fugue culminated in that breathtaking incomplete cadence succeeded by a gigantic pause before the opening theme stole in quietly to set up the coda.  Never have I heard the four astounding final modulations played with so much power and purpose.  And never have I been so aware of the influence of the late Schubert on the art of Anton Bruckner, whose symphonies make frequent use of similarly powerful speaking silences.

For light relief, the duo next played the first of three marches for piano duo by Beethoven.  These pieces were published by Beethoven, under the opus number 45, and date from 1803, the same year that the second symphony was published.  Despite their published status, the march we heard struck me as being more in the nature of a chip from the master's workbench -- charming, melodic, bouncy, undoubtedly skillful, but not overly memorable.

The programme concluded with the seventh Slavonic Dance by Antonin Dvorak.  This opens as one of the more placid dances in the two sets, before erupting into a brilliant faster section.  Anagnoson and Kinton have many years of experience with these pieces, and it shows.  Especially effective was the gradual slowing down and quieter playing in the coda, where the dance appears to be well on its way to dying, before a last brilliant eruption wraps it up in two quick bars.

As an encore, they then performed the succeeding Slavonic Dance # 8, rightly characterized by Leslie Kinton as being in "G Minor-Major" since the key shifts at practically every second bar.  This is a fiery burst of energy from start to finish, with its frequent 3x2 and 2x3 cross-rhythms alternating as often as the keys.  A&K played it with flair and power to burn, missing only perhaps the last degree of oomph at the point where the score is clearly marked grandioso as the main theme returns fortissimo.  Minor detail like that aside, it was an exhilarating conclusion to a most rewarding recital.

Following the planned programme, Festival Artistic Director gave a speech highlighting some of the key events and performers of what is shaping up as an unusually rewarding summer season, and the audience then adjourned to the rotunda at the other end of the building for fruit, veggies, cheese and crackers, wine, and coffee -- all included in the ticket price for this special event.

There are two more special pre-season concerts planned, and then the annual Canada Day musical fireworks cruise on the Island Queen V, before the main Festival officially opens on July 20th.  The box office for the season will open on April 2.  Full details are available online at the website, festivalofthesound.ca.

QUONTA Festival 2018 # 5: Afterthoughts and Award Winners

Another QUONTA Festival has now entered the history books, and I want to share some last thoughts and thank yous before listing the winners of the various awards.

Although diverse selections of plays have become somewhat more common in recent years, this was a Festival which pushed the limits in all directions in terms of diversity.  One romantic comedy-drama, one savagely funny black comedy, one entertaining domestic comedy of manners, and one very moving and thought-provoking absurdist play made up a stimulating and enriching mix.

Once again, the majority of the chosen scripts (3 out of 4) were written by Canadian authors.  The days when "Canadian" was synonymous with "second-rate" are now far behind us indeed.

I was also pleased to see extensive coverage of the Festival, evening by evening, from both the Elliot Lake Standard newspaper and the Elliot Lake Today website.  

So let's start the "thank yous" right there, with the great coverage from the local media.

Thanks next to Adjudicator Laurel Smith for the intriguing public adjudications and the stimulating conversations. 

A huge thank you to the local organizing committee for a smooth, well-run Festival.  Especial thanks to Festival Chair Luc Morrissette and Co-Chair Kate Matuszewski for all their hours of extra work, over and above their demanding daytime lives, to make sure that everyone felt welcomed and had a great time.

I'm not quite so sure that they are still happy at having invited me to be Festival Honorary Chair and to emcee the awards brunch.  I appreciated the invitation very much, and accepted the challenge of hosting with alacrity, but from then on Luc and Kate just had to suffer the consequences of bringing this loose cannon on board with them.  I did have a fun time acting as emcee, and putting together my little collection of true horror stories about the perils of public performance.

As I said today at the podium, I would be a little less than honest if I disguised my great excitement at seeing my own old hometown theatre group go forward to Theatre Ontario Festival, a "first" in the history of the theatre community of Elliot Lake.

My final thanks goes to the generous audiences who turned out each night in strong force to enjoy the plays and extend their energy to the presenting companies.  That energy, which can be felt at all times by any public performer, is an integral element of good theatre.

In the immortal words of dear friend Richard Howard, so deeply missed by so many people in the theatre community of QUONTA (and all of Ontario):

We love it when you come to the theatre.

Come back and see us again -- soon.

****************

And with that, here is the list of the award winners, as chosen by Festival Adjudicator Laurel Smith.

Adjudicator's Award for Outstanding Novice Director -- Chris Cayen, Espanola.

Adjudicator's Award for Outstanding Historical Representation -- Sault Theatre Workshop.

Adjudicator's Award for Composed Onstage Music -- Ponto Paparo, Elliot Lake.

Adjudicator's Award for Outstanding Soundscape -- Vern Dorge and Jean Lavalle, Gore Bay.

Adjudicator's Award for Outstanding Interpretation of an Absurdist Play -- Gore Bay Theatre.

Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role -- Mike Boivin, Espanola.

Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role -- Wendylynn Levoskin, Sault Ste. Marie.

Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role -- John Hawke, Gore Bay.

Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role -- Kim Arnold, Elliot Lake.

Outstanding Visual Achievement -- Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel, Gore Bay.

Outstanding Technical Achievement for Lighting Design -- Doug Robinson, Elliot Lake.

Outstanding Director -- Murray Finn, Elliot Lake.

Outstanding Production -- Tempting Providence, Elliot Lake.

The Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble production of Tempting Providence continues on to the Theatre Ontario Festival which is being hosted by the London Community Players, May 16-19, 2018.

QUONTA Festival 2018 # 4: The Abdication Crisis

The  QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together

community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario

in a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living

the art of theatre.  This year there are four productions entered.

I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so 
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.

Exit the King 

by Eugene Ionesco
translated by Donald Wilson

Presented by Gore Bay Theatre
Directed by Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel

This is the only play of the Festival which was not originally written in English.  This raises the possibility (albeit a small one) that the translator's own personal lens of experience has significantly altered the author's original intent.  In practice, this is usually a much bigger concern when a play is identified as "adapted," a term with considerably broader implications than "translated."

Exit the King is loosely described as an absurdist play.  So it is in part.  But it gradually proceeds to a sparer, more stripped-down worldview in which the nature of life and death, or at least the process of dying, becomes the central, the only concern.  The six characters who together examine this worldview began as symbols, almost as caricatures.  What was so fascinating to me was the way that each one in turn helped the King to dig deeper under the layers of artifice that made up his "role", and so to find his true humanity as he faced the only truly universal human experience -- death.

This production presented a fully unified interpretation of Ionesco's strange world, where a king lives for 450 years and his pre-determined time of passing is signalled and accompanied by earthquakes, rising sea levels, cracks in the walls, and other signs and portents.

The palace throne room was delineated by various tapestries and hangings, all dingy, many threadbare, and several partially ripped apart.  The thrones, once their gorgeous coloured draperies were removed, proved to be an ordinary stool and a 50s-vintage kitchen chair.

Costumes were an intriguing mix of style and schtick.  The guard, the nurse/domestic, and the doctor/executioner/bacteriologist/astrologist appeared in costumes that were jokey or cartoonish in nature, from the guard's cardboard-seeming armour to the doctor's tall pointed wizard's hat.  At the opposite extreme came the regal fuchsia-coloured gown and turban-like hat of Queen Marguerite and the golden robes and elaborately frilly crown of Queen Marie.  The King joined the two extremes with his classic purple velvet cloak draped around blue striped pyjamas.

Lighting and sound were very much at the service of the production, not mere ends in themselves as can sometimes seem to be the case.  The combination of the anarchic purpose-composed music with the flickering lights neatly highlighted the frequent earthquakes.

The cartoonish nature of the costumes was reflected in the performances of the three most absurd characters.  As The Guard, Jack Clark scored repeatedly with his stentorian announcements of everything from the latest medical bulletin to the last emotional state of the crying Marie.  Lori Evans gave a delightfully stodgy performance as the domestic help and registered nurse, with the stodge fitting the character to perfection.  I especially loved her insistence on using the term "sitting room."  John Robertson brought a pompous, self-aware delight to his every action, and especially to his repeated "business" with the stethoscope when the King repeatedly collapsed and then revived several times in succession.

The real power of this 105-minute single act came from the performances of the remaining three actors.  John Hawke gave a multi-faceted portrayal of King Berenger the First, ranging from his petulant refusal to acknowledge the reality at the beginning to his final acceptance of the reality of death towards the end.  Physicality and voice alike charted the long decline from health through illness to decrepitude.  His was a deeply moving journey towards enlightenment by acceptance.

As the second wife, Queen Marie, Tara Bernatchez began with cartoonish crying on the turn of a dime, and grew slowly into a deeply human and increasingly desperate attempt to save the King from his demise.  As she in turn realized that her power over the King was ebbing away, I truly pitied her in her loss.

Shannon McMullan centred and anchored the play with her granite portrayal of the first wife, Queen Marguerite -- the orchestrator of this entire extended death scene.  It is she who recognizes the signs and tells the King that he will die at the end of the play, in an hour and forty-five minutes.  It is she who scorns the warmly emotional appeals of Marie.  It is she who continually checks the remaining time with the doctor, determining that there is still enough time to complete the ritual.

After all the others, one by one, disappear, it is Marguerite -- now arriving at a softer, more maternal, almost consoling persona -- who helps the King to lay aside, one by one, all the burdens that have beset him through his life, and it is she who helps and supports him as he takes the final steps.  Throughout the entire play, McMullan remained a formidable presence on stage, even when sitting still and silent.

That final scene, movingly accompanied by gentle music, brought the fulfilment towards which the entire play had travelled, and it brought tears to my eyes with it.

It also brought the one technical issue which I noted, as the music came up a little too strongly and made it hard to hear Marguerite's words.  From what I did hear, her final speeches are a beautiful and poetic utterance that deserves to be fully audible.

But that's a minor quibble.  Overall, this remains one of the most moving and powerful plays that I have seen in a Festival production for many a year.

Some of this year's awards are, I think, already bespoken.

QUONTA Festival 2018 # 3: Going Over the Fence

The  QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together

community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario

in a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living

the art of theatre.  This year there are four productions entered.

I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.

Hilda's Yard 

by Norm Foster

Presented by Sault Theatre Workshop (STW)

Directed by George Houston

On Friday night, the tone of the Festival changed yet again with the coming of a script by Norm Foster, who now reigns unchallenged as the most often produced Canadian playwright ever.

Some theatre people are inclined to sneer that Foster simply panders to popular taste, but nothing is ever quite that simple.  The real secret of his success is that he has an uncanny knack for creating the most real and human people in the most interesting situations, and then setting the audience laughing while he quietly slips some significant social lessons in under our guard, as it were.  I'll get back later to what I felt was the significant lesson in this script.

As can only be expected of a man who has had over 50 plays staged professionally, the quality of his output can be uneven.  But at his best, he's a force to be reckoned with.  And Hilda's Yard certainly ranks as one of the best Foster scripts which I have seen staged.

The Fluck family's conventional 1956 backyard, complete with wheelie clothesline (out over the heads of the audience), neat shrubs, and springy steel lawn chairs was lovingly re-created on the set.  The house, and the small wooden deck to access the clothesline, closed in the downstage and upstage right and centre, and a vertical board fence flanked by shrubs closed the upstage left.  Sides were widely angled to create perfect sightlines from all parts of the auditorium.

The house itself looked like a very typical 1940s-vintage home with wooden siding and wooden window frames.  The siding was a bit dingy and dirty.

Catharina Warren opened the show as Hilda Fluck, hanging out her laundry and talking over the invisible back fence at the front of the stage to her neighbour.  In all of her back-fence monologues, Warren conveyed by slight nudges of this or that word the underlying meaning of many of her seemingly innocuous statements.

Ron Bird swaggered on as her husband, Sam Fluck, puffed up with his own self-importance and excitement about buying a beautiful new console TV set.  After all these years, it's easy to miss the significance of the three-hundred-and-some dollars price tag which is so repeatedly mentioned, so it's worthwhile to remember that this play is set firmly in the time of the candy bar, bag of chips, or bottle of a soft drink each selling for a nickel.

Bird did a fine job of showing us, one degree at a time -- through voice and face -- how Sam's assurance is all a big put on and in fact he is rather uncertain of getting away with skipping work to go and buy a TV.

The fat is well and truly in the fire when son Gary (Jarrett Mills) climbs over the fence, throwing his kitbag into the yard ahead of him, and dragging a tale of woe behind him.  Mills used his expressive face to good effect, both in telling his mother all about his troubles, and equally in describing his various get-rich-quick schemes.  Foster's gift for throwaway comic laughs is on fine display here, and Mills rode it for all it was worth.

Next over the fence was daughter Janey (Wendylynn Levoskin), with further tales of woe.  Levoskin gave a most believable portrayal of a young woman with a head full of fantasies and dreams, a head easily turned by any compliment.  Her funniest moments came at the two points when she found out that her parents told each other about what she had told them.  Picture-perfect vignettes of 14-year-old disgust from a character who is actually in her twenties.

Gary's two-week girlfriend, Bobbi Jakes (Leah Frost), was the next one over the fence, bringing her devil-may-care attitude to life and love to vivid reality -- certainly vivid enough to scare the daylights out of both anxious parents.  Her flirtatious moments with Gary were both believable and entertaining.

And finally -- Ryan Geick in the role of Beverly Woytowich, the bookie to whom Gary is in debt for nearly $400, climbing the fence to collect.

It's at this point that the whole story begins to veer sideways into sheer improbability.  It's very much to the credit of this company that the ridiculous nature of the events didn't really become apparent until the utterly absurd denouement at the end.

Along the way, though, the following highlights occurred.  Geick managed a fascinating transition from oily bookie to gentleman caller (for Janey) and then, on a turn of a dime, to murderous thug out for Gary's blood.

Mills became almost a windmill, like a caricature of Cary Grant, during his ridiculous yet touching proposal to Bobbi.

Levoskin developed some amusing nuances as the story of her troubles oozed out of her, bit by bit, making her much less a caricature and more of a full person.

And we had plenty of good laughs as first one person, then another, picked up the "with it" slang which Bobbi brought into the yard.

One observation I made in this production was that several of the characters seemed to have trouble knowing what to do with their hands.  In real life, many (most?) people have characteristic hand gestures, motions, and habits.  (I, for instance, prop my chin on my left hand when sitting and shove both hands into my pockets when standing.)  Among all the other details, it's a useful trick to invent some kind of hand habit for a character.

Now, what about that social lesson?  It came at the moment when Janey let slip that her husband slapped her across the face, hard enough to leave a mark, and that was why she left him.  When she tells her father, his response is authentic 1950s daddy -- trying to justify the unseen hubby's behaviour, and even trying to order Janey to go back to him, all because her husband has a good job and prospect for a good future.

I heard several people around me making sounds of disgust at this moment, as one would expect.  But here's the lesson I took away.  Don't judge too harshly people from other time periods who acted according to the accepted morality of their time, and above all don't mock them because.... most of us will never know what parts of our accepted morality today will become the laughing stock or the touchstone of disgust in sixty or a hundred or two hundred years from now.  The one thing we can know for sure is that our ideas and attitudes will be mocked or despised in the future -- in some way, shape or form.  Call it a lesson in humility.

QUONTA Festival 2018 # 2: Life at the Bottom of the Heap

The  QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together

community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario

in a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living

the art of theatre.  This year there are four productions entered.

I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so  I am
coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.

Problem Child 

by George F. Walker

Presented by Espanola Little Theatre (ELT)

Directed by Chris Cayen

Thursday night's second production of the Festival brought the greatest possible contrast to the gentle reminiscent tone of the first show: a savagely funny, edgy black comedy.

This type of play is Canadian playwright George Walker's kingdom.  I've now seen productions of three of his plays, and each one has dug deeply into the fate of the dispossessed underclass of modern North American society, pulling up f-bombs, crimes, broken lives, treasons, stratagems, and spoils in great profusion.

The script is structured in an unusual arrangement of seven scenes, uninterrupted by any act division.  Although it likely has been performed elsewhere with an intermission, this performance gained momentum by skipping the mid-play break -- and the show was, in point of fact, not overly long.

The setting is a cheap and sleazy motel.  The stage set faithfully recreated the ambience, from the walls painted in a shade resembling vomit and covered with huge damp stains, to the echt-hotel bed and night tables, and the half-collapsed curtain rod over the window.  Ingeniously, the design team (uncredited) even left the seams between the flats visible, just as a skinflint motel owner might have skipped the step of finishing off the drywall.  Despair was palpable in this miserable room.

Furniture was arranged to create plenty of useful acting space.  Since the side walls were set at right angles to the back, I couldn't see from my seat the TV set which was the focus of much attention, set right against or on the stage left wall.  Lighting was simple and at all times effective.  City street sounds were used to strong effect to bridge the brief blackouts indicating time lapse between scenes.

This is very much an actor's play, the drama driven solely at almost all times by the intentions and motivations of the four characters (precious little room for fancy technical effects or foobaz here).

One choice that intrigued me was the TV set with the sound turned off as a character watched an unending string of talk shows with their ridiculous set-ups of the guests.  Truly, given the nature of the script, we didn't need to hear a word of what was said on the tube to be able to imagine it all.

Walker's portrayals of the lost and losers of society tend to bring forth a clutch of unpleasant people one would never willingly meet.  In this case, that was only partly true, and the unpleasantness wasn't all confined to one side of the conflict.

Warren Tilston played the TV-addicted R. J. with great energy, leaning in towards the set as one might lean into the face of an opponent during a bar argument.  His voice soared to almost squeaky heights as he remonstrated with the TV hosts.

Later in the show, he developed a whole range of facial expressions in response to the increasingly fraught situation which Denise created and aggravated.  Watching all those shades of emotion play across his face like a movie film was enough to set anyone laughing.  Yet there was no suggestion of merely signalling the audience for cheap laughs.

The aggressive, deceitful, and indeed unstable Denise was given an appropriately edgy performance by Angie Scheel.  Her habit of dropping her chin and raising her shoulders when angry gave me the feeling that she might launch into a football tackle against her opposition at any moment.  A little more variety in the use of the voice, with more raising and lowering of the vocal energy, would give this character even more believable (and therefore threatening) presence on stage.

Scheel then found some fine shades of emotion during the monologue at the end of the play, giving us an even clearer insight into her tortuous and tormented reactions to the hand she had to play.

Jen Tilston presented the prim and proper social worker, Helen, as a walking, talking social-work textbook -- which is the way the part is written.  Even her loss of temper with Denise seemed almost cold and calculated.  The transformation after her accident was startling, but appropriate too, as the almost robotic exterior cracked to reveal the human being hiding inside.  While she played the wooziness of this scene very well, there was one moment when she briefly recovered her full vocal and physical energy for a few seconds before lapsing back into a stupor -- a minor oops.

Mike Boivin took an interesting tack in performing the role of Phillie -- switching back and forth between an almost mechanistic approach and an enthusiastic one, according to his moods.  His vacuum cleaner scene was one of the comic highlights of the show.

Director and actors created some memorable and entertaining stage pictures at different points in the play, and the story came across as clearly as all the f-bombs.

Overall, I give this company full credit for presenting this show with warmth and humanity enough to make me (almost) care about the characters at the end of the evening.  That's much more than either of the previous Walker plays I have seen have been able to achieve.

QUONTA Festival 2018 # 1: A Tempting Evening of Theatre

The QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together

community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario

for a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living

the art of theatre.  This year there are four productions entered.

I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so 
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.

Tempting Providence

by Robert Chafe

Presented by Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble (ELATE)

Directed by Murray Finn

Wednesday night's opening production of the Festival brought a uniquely funny and powerful Canadian play based on a real life story.

It's the story of Myra Grimsley Bennett, who came from England in 1921 to the remote outport community of Daniel's Harbour, Newfoundland, on a 2-year contract as district nurse, and remained in that role for 50 more years, most of that time as an unpaid volunteer.

This performance more than met the author's demand for a "theatrical" style of staging.  That's one of those Humpty Dumpty words that means whatever one wants it to mean.  In this situation, I would take it to mean that the style of staging should not attempt to be realistic, nor to conceal the fact that we are witnessing a performance.

The set, in a plain box of blacks, consisted of a playing area defined by a carpet on the floor.  On this stood a large, old-fashioned table with two pairs of matching chairs, one pair facing it from either side of the carpet.  A row of plain black chairs stood across the back.  The keyboard player was seated in the far upstage-left corner.

Theatricality continued with the plain, neutral costumes, strongly suggestive of hospital pyjamas and gowns.

Lighting was effective for the most part, although one serious dark patch continued to catch the actors unawares.  The stage in the Civic Centre of Elliot Lake is notoriously difficult to light well.

The script consists of a whole series of short little scenes and vignettes interspersed with monologues.  The four actors took turns moving to the front of the carpet to face the audience, or to the sides of the table.  The table itself was frequently moved from position to position, and sometimes turned into different angles, or upside down, to become -- in turn -- a sailboat and a sleigh.  All of these complex resettings were accomplished by the actors smoothly and easily, an essential need of this kind of staging.

Two of the performers are simply referred to as "Woman" (Fran Perkins) and "Man" (David Black), since each one has to play many different roles during the play -- eight to ten parts each!  Both made very effective use of voice and physicality to delineate the different characters and their lives in just a few lines each time.

Their back-fence gossips were a particular delight, bringing appreciative laughter from the audience at each of their several appearances.

Perkins then made a different, and very moving, impression as a woman who has just lost a family member to tuberculosis but refuses to let herself be examined by the nurse, even though she also has a hollow cough.

In the central role of the Myra, Kim Arnold did fine work in holding herself in stern check from ever showing her emotions, allowing only hints of her own feelings to come to the surface.  As the years rolled by she slowly let more and more of her emotions come out as she grew more and more into the life of the community, and into the life of her own family.

Especially powerful was her desperate monologue during the midnight sleigh ride to save the life of her husband's younger brother -- and the reference to the injured man as "my brother" spoke volumes about how much she had changed since the opening of the story.

Jim Graham, as Angus (her husband), did equally fine work in growing from the young man who took one look at the new nurse and said, jokingly, "I'm going to marry her" up to the final scene decades later where they stood together on the front porch and watched as the long-awaited road into Daniel's Harbour was finally being built.  In the monologues where the young Angus was telling his side of the story, Graham made effective use of a sly, roguish grin to augment his spoken thoughts.

All four performers had very good control of their respective accents.

According to adjudicator Laurel Smith, there is no mention in the script of music.  I had to slip that in, because the live music on stage, written and performed by Ponto Paparo, interacted so closely with the speaking actors that he became, in effect, a fifth character in the story.  This integrated live performance is one of the most memorable uses of music I have ever seen on any theatre stage.

With a script and performance of this nature, the pacing is of critical importance to the success of the show.  All the scene changes, as mentioned above, flowed smoothly and easily with a minimum of wasted time and excellent coordination of the cast.  I did sense one or two moments in a couple of the scenes in which the speed slackened and the emotional temperature sagged for a few moments, such that I momentarily disconnected from the play.  One the whole, though, a very well-paced and consistently "up" performance from all concerned.

A few comments on the script to close.  The "bitty" nature of the writing made it a little difficult to figure out who was who as the play began.  It took me about 10 minutes to fully enter into the world of the play.  (I followed my usual habit of not reading the programme notes before the show).  The other place where I sensed a lack of direction from the author came at the end.  The scene where the Man and Woman announced all the honours received by Myra Grimsley Bennett had a definite air of finality about it -- the sort of thing that usually appears at the end of a film and is immediately followed by the credit roll.  Naturally, the audience launched into their end-of-show applause.  But there were still two more scenes to come.

ELATE has launched this festival in fine style with a tight, clean, moving, and enjoyable production of a slightly rocky script that yet tells a fascinating story from Canada's past.

The Moscow Sound

Friday night I was at the new concert hall at the L. R. Wilson building in Hamilton's McMaster University, to hear a concert given by the Canadian cello-piano siblings, the Cheng²Duo.

I had not heard of this hall previously, and more's the pity because Hamilton has -- in this venue -- a tiny perfect gem of a chamber music hall. Although apparently angular in appearance, the interior is a beautifully judged arrangement of wooden planes and surfaces allowing for a warm, rich, yet realistic sound. The stage is actually big enough to hold an ensemble of, at a guess, 40 players or so, making it far more useful to McMaster's School of the Arts than a smaller platform would be. Yet the audience capacity (without added seats on the stage) is barely 200, keeping the space intimate and friendly.

All of which makes it an ideal venue for the Cheng²Duo, which consists of pianist Silvie Cheng and cellist Bryan Cheng. The warm, rich tone they command is as much a signature mark of their style as their friendly, informal chats with audience from the stage -- and after the concert as well.

The programme was entirely made up of Russian works of the Romantic era and after. Before the intermission we heard Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, while the second half was devoted to the music of Rachmaninoff.

The recital opened with Tchaikovsky's Pezzo capriccioso, Op. 62. The "capriccioso" does not refer to a playful mood at all, relating instead to Tchaikovsky's fanciful treatment of what is in fact a rather sombre theme. The piece moves in contrasting slow and fast sections, and the Duo allowed the sound and the rhythm plenty of space to expand and breathe in the slower passages. They then caught the fire and energy of the faster sections with great vigour.

The Duo then moved on to the well loved Andante cantabile from the first String Quartet, here in an arrangement which allotted the cello the singing melody that was originally carried on a violin. In a situation like this, balance can become tricky with the melody lying lower in pitch than the supporting harmonies on the piano. But the Cheng²Duo didn't put a foot wrong in that sense, and gave this repertoire warhorse a performance that was both beautiful and lovable.

Prokofiev's Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, Op. 119 came next. This work was composed in 1949, the year after Prokofiev was accused by the Zhdanov Decree of "formalism," the great sin of composers under the oppressive regime of Josef Stalin. The work had to be heard and cleared by both the Union of Composers and the Radio Committee before it could be performed.

Hearing this piece now, I suspect that the commissars didn't realize their legs were being pulled. The title page says the work is in C Major, but in reality many of the diatonic melodies are accompanied by harmonies that are certainly in some key, just not the same one!

The Cheng²Duo played the first movement, Andante grave, with a good deal of passion that was yet kept on a tight rein. After all, one mustn't confuse Prokofiev with Rachmaninoff. Here, there was a volume problem, which may have bothered some listeners more than others. At two points in this movement, Bryan Cheng dropped his cello sound to a mere thread of volume while playing an extended melodic line which (I think) was a significant line we had not heard before. For me, it was a case of a little too much of a good thing.

The more playful second movement, simply marked Moderato, brings the lion's share of the jokes with bass-heavy chords, emphatic pizzicati, and cadences that sounded -- in this performance -- not just jokey but distinctly sarcastic. In the final movement, the Duo created a satisfying synthesis, tying the whole work together and leading up to the strong conclusion.

After the intermission, we heard first Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, Op. 34, No.14. This justly-famous wordless song for soprano was here effectively transcribed for cello and piano, and both Bryan and Silvie Cheng gave it a caressing, affectionate performance.

The recital concluded with Rachmaninoff's grandly-scaled Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. This four-movement work resembles early Brahms chamber works in that the piano part can easily outrun and overwhelm the solo string instrument due to the heavy writing. Some passages certainly bring to mind the notorious wisecrack that Rachmaninoff wrote for piano calling for 12 fingers at a time -- on each hand! But the balance issues entirely vanished in the Cheng²Duo's performance of this masterpiece.

The first movement began with a beautiful singing legato from the piano in the slow lento introduction. Then, in the main allegro moderato, Silvie opened with sharply-edged chords while Bryan's cello took up the long singing melodic lines with real fervour. This was one of the few times I've ever been able to make the connection with the dictum that a cello sounds more like a human voice than any other instrument. That feeling came to me most of all with the lovely descending theme of the second subject.

The Cheng²Duo treated the succeeding Allegro scherzando to a fire-eating performance full of sharply accented notes and chords, and with a languorous air to the contrasting slower middle theme. The final notes of the movement, although quiet, shot off the stage and around the hall with volume to spare.

The Andante then brought rich, warm tone that struck me as sounding quintessentially Russian, before the final Allegro mosso brought the recital to a resounding conclusion with a snapping account of the grand but abrupt final notes.

Best news of the evening: Bryan Cheng announced from the stage that the music in this recital would be included in their third recording, which is to be laid down in Berlin later this year and then (one hopes) issued sometime in 2019. On the strength of the performances we heard, this recording will be a must-have for lovers of the cello/piano combination or lovers of Russian music -- or both.

National Ballet of Canada 2017-2018 # 4: The Magnetic Magic of Sleeping Beauty

It's not really surprising that the National Ballet of Canada comes back to restage its great signature production of The Sleeping Beauty every three years or so.

Some would say that this is simply because it's a great get-penny for the company.  While that is certainly true, there is -- for my money -- a lot more to it than that.

This ballet is a truly classic staging.  While it owes much to the famous original choreography of Marius Petipa, it doesn't adhere slavishly to that source.  This version was set on the National in 1972 by Rudolf Nureyev, and he substantially enlarged the role of the Prince.  While Nureyev's innovations, there and elsewhere, were created in a true classical style, he did not hesitate to up the ante in terms of physical demands on the dancers of the company as a whole.

This sheer display of dance technique certainly makes the work more flashy, and more breathtaking, at more moments.  But you don't have to be a dance expert to appreciate the achievement it represents.

And then there's Tchaikovsky's unforgettably opulent symphonic score, which displays to full effect the great skill and polish of the National Ballet's house orchestra.  The music unfailingly heightens the moments of drama throughout the story, making the old tale come to vivid life even before the choreography is added to raise the impact by several hundred percent.  

Finally, and not least, this is a story for all ages -- a simple fairy tale of a beautiful princess and handsome prince, brought together by the Lilac Fairy in spite of the furious curses of Carabosse.  At that level, it's easily followed by children, but it remains full of deeper resonances of all kinds for adults of all ages.  I've seen the show staged at least a dozen times during my ballet-going career, probably more, and it always tweaks my attention with new and different details and viewpoints.

You put all these ingredients together, and the net result is powerfully magical.

So, to Thursday night's opening performance of the current run.

The fascination began even before the performance, with an innovative approach to the pre-show Ballet Talk.  This was moved from the atrium lobby into the auditorium and was led by conductor David Briskin, with strong musical support from the full orchestra.  He performed some carefully-chosen excerpts from the score to explain how Tchaikovsky broke new ground with his ballet music, and to demonstrate how skilfully Tchaikovsky wove his leitmotifs together, and how perfectly the results supported the themes of the story.  Briskin dropped a hint that this talk, entitled "Hear the Dance, See the Music" (a famous dictum of George Balanchine), might be the first of a series of similar talks to come.  I for one definitely vote "Yes"!

The actual performance was most of all remarkable for the purity and technical precision of the dancing throughout the evening.  It would be easy to say that this is standard practice from the National Ballet, but in this show the company definitely went into "above-and-beyond" territory in that respect.

The height of precision was in the dancing of Heather Ogden as Aurora.  In the fiendish Rose Adagio, she held herself absolutely rock-steady without even a hint of a quiver either from her hand or her foot as she balanced on one pointe shoe with no other support.  That level of superb technique carried right through her entire performance from start to finish.  My only quibble is that I would like to see more of a girlish air about her first appearance -- a clearer indication of the playful side of the young Aurora's character.

Matching her in precision and partnering her with total aplomb was Guillaume Coté as Prince Florimund. Nureyev designed this role to show off his own extraordinary skills, and packed it brim-full of leaps, turns, twists, and high-speed acrobatics. Coté mastered all of the flashy movements with apparent ease, and still found the emotional space to give an expressive reading of the Prince's introspective solo in Act 2.

Among the other dancing roles were also many excellent performances.  Especially fine work came from Alexandra MacDonald as the Principal Fairy in the Prologue and in the Diamond Variation in Act 3.  In that variation, she was strongly partnered and equalled in finesse by Jack Bertinshaw.  Jenna Savella sparkled in the Emerald Variation.  Francesco Gabriele Frola soared in a strong role debut as the Bluebird, while Emma Hawes gave a light and airy account of Princess Florine.

Conflict of Interest Alert:  Robert Stephen is my nephew.

Tiffany Mosher and Robert Stephen drew plenty of chuckles and applause with their sharp-clawed yet still graceful impersonation of the two Pussycats.

Among the character roles, Alejandra Perez-Gomez provided shivers aplenty with her hard-edged portrayal of the evil fairy, Carabosse, particularly in the scene of the casting of the spell.  As her opposing force of good, Tanya Howard glided smoothly and easily about the stage as the Lilac Fairy, bringing especial grace to the role with her elegant, ethereal arms.

Catalabutte, the Master of Ceremonies and general all-around kicking boy for the King, was performed with great comic élan by Hazaros Surmeyan, an old hand at this particular role.

Also enjoyable was Stephanie Hutchison's Countess in Act 2, part dignified, part graceful, part playful, and flirtatious with it.  The interplay with her husband, the Count (Nan Wang) came across much more clearly than usual.

Throughout the work, the corps de ballet -- the women in particular -- were on top form, dancing with a degree of precision and unanimity ideally matched to the lead roles.  While the final grand waltz is an appropriately lively, swirling, celebratory corps number, I remain most of all impressed by the fine work done by the company in the slower sarabande and polacca which open the third act.

The Sleeping Beauty remains on stage at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto until March 18.

National Ballet of Canada 2017-2018 # 3: The "Made in Canada" Seal of Approval

"Made in Canada."  In the world of the arts, we've long since gotten past believing that anything made in Canada has to be second-rate.  Popular culture, sadly, still suffers from this delusion.

At the risk of possibly giving offence, I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that there are two particular areas of the arts in which Canada has a deserved reputation for developing international stars in great numbers.  One is in the realm of classical singing, especially in opera.  The other is in the world of dance, and especially with choreographers.

As one of the leading ballet companies in Canada, the National Ballet has a lengthy track record of commissioning and performing new work by leading Canadian choreographers -- not surprising.  This week's mixed programme in the March ballet season was entitled Made in Canada.  The programme consisted of revivals of three very different works, from three different Canadian choreographers, all originally created for and set on the National Ballet of Canada.

The first work on the programme was also the newest one: Robert Binet's The Dreamers Ever Leave You.  This work had an unusual genesis, being originally developed as part of a project in tribute to the famed Canadian painter Lawren Harris, and thus being first staged (in 2016) at the Art Gallery of Ontario.  In the transition from a gallery to a theatre, inevitably there would have been significant alterations in the overall feeling of the work.  I didn't see the original staging so I'm not in a position to comment on just what changes in the actual performance might have taken place.

But I have taken due note of Binet's comment that he wished to recapture something of the mystical spirit that informed the painting style of Lawren Harris.  In my opinion, he succeeded magnificently in that objective.  This success is due most of all to the aspiring feeling of the movement throughout the work, a clear parallel to the similar heaven-storming quality of the artist's mountain scenes.

Binet's vision sets up a fascinating and dynamic tension by contrasting stillness and motion, and by contrasting slow and fast speeds.  Although thirteen dancers take part, only a few of them are on stage at any one time during the performance.  Yet -- among those few -- there is almost always one who has to give random bursts of high energy dancing (perhaps only for a few seconds at a time) and one or more others who move very slowly and deliberately, or even remain still.

The point here is that the extreme tension of the very slow motions is not so much the antithesis as it is the non-identical twin of the sudden explosions of energy in the fast moments.  Also true is the way in which even a dancer lying still on the floor can draw your focus of attention as you wonder when he/she will begin to move again.  

The underpinning of all this truly thoughtful movement is the purpose-composed score, created and played on the piano by Lubomyr Melnyk.  The music is composed in his own style called Continuous Music, and consists of slowly shifting harmonies expressed through unending, high-speed chains of rolling arpeggios.  This unique soundworld brings together an almost Chopinesque harmonic palette with an occasionally thunderous "orchestration" -- if that's the right word.  The ceaseless ebb and flow of Melnyk's musical waves complemented Binet's unusual choreography to near perfection -- for here we find, in the arpeggios and slowly shifting chordal patterns, a perfect musical equivalent of the choreographer's tension between fast motion and near or total stillness.

This is definitely an ensemble work, and the performance captured the ensemble nature of the dance to a very high degree.

The second work was also the oldest: James Kudelka's The Four Seasons, originally performed by the National Ballet in 1997.  Kudelka has a well-deserved reputation as a very musical choreographer, a dance maker who respects the music as a source of the dance.  His interpretation of the famous Four Seasons violin concerti by Vivaldi completely accords with every note of the music from first to last.

In doing so, though, Kudelka applies his own layer of interpretation by transforming the seasons of the calendar into the seasons of a man's life, in the manner of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" from As You Like It.  The central dancer of the ballet thus becomes Everyman and the work as a whole evolves into an allegory of the human condition.

I've seen The Four Seasons staged several times before, but never has the full impact of the work's psychological and emotional import struck me as forcefully.  More than any other factor, I put that down to the performance of the central role of the Man by Brendan Saye (a role debut).  I'm not in a position to comment of how technically accurate his assumption of this challenging part might be, but I do know that his dancing socked me in the gut, and tugged my heartstrings, over and over again.

In the opening Spring, I've never been so aware of the possibility of self-admiring swagger built into Kudelka's intriguing arm movements.  Nor have I previously caught such a strong whiff of the mastery of experience from the Man in the Summer concerto.  And in the concluding Winter portion, I suffered real heartbreak when Saye tried to reproduce the swaggering arm movements of his youth and managed only a pale, broken echo.  The depth and truth of this performance were both equally undeniable.

In each portion, he's partnered by a different woman.  Jordana Daumec in Spring, Emma Hawes in Summer, and Hannah Fischer in Autumn were all making role debuts as well, and all achieved great effects within their varied roles.  Alejandra Perez-Gomez was also effective in the smaller role allotted to her for Winter.

Aside from these key figures, Kudelka's choreography assigns great importance to the varying cast of supporting dancers in each segment.  It's with these corps de ballet numbers that the true musicality of his work really shines through -- with the light-weight and light-hearted prancing of the men in Spring, or the stooping, scything motions in Autumn, to give only two examples.  Movements at all times are exactly in sync with the music.  Throughout the entire work, the constantly-shifting ensemble of dancers constructed a superb frame in which the Man's story could unfold.

The music in this work is of utmost importance, since the dance depends so heavily upon it.  The critical solo role was taken with great aplomb and musicality by violinist Aaron Schwebel, the National Ballet Orchestra's concertmaster.  David Briskin's conducting kept the music appropriately light and sprightly while still creating a firm foundation for the dancers.

Was there ever a mixed programme of dance in which everyone went away equally satisfied by everything they saw?  Do I need to answer that?

The last work was Crystal Pite's Emergence, originally staged on the company in 2009.  I saw that original production, and a subsequent re-staging, so this marks my third encounter with the piece.  I know I'm in a minority here, among the ballet's fans, but this piece has never worked for me. 

Emergence is accompanied by a fascinating original score by Owen Belton, a score which is more soundscape than anything else.   The basic concept is a group of dancers portraying insects in a nest as a metaphor of human life.

All of this I get intellectually.  I absolutely admire the skill and persistence with which the dancers go about presenting Pite's extraordinary -- even exorbitant -- demands on their bodies. 

(Exorbitant is the perfect word for the opening sequence of a woman enacting the emergence of the adult insect from its cocoon.  I was picturing the entire therapy team waiting to unkink her offstage.)

But when push comes to shove, I want to be engaged on more than just an intellectual level.  As the work continues for thirty nonstop minutes, it needs a little more meat on the bones for my liking.  It takes me about five minutes to clue into the concept that we are creatures of a hive mentality as much as insects are, albeit in different ways.  After that, what is there left to hold me?  Just more of the same.  By the end, the unanimous movements, the monotonous score, the quiet chanting of numbers by the dancers, all become tedious.  I've seen it all before; is this all there is?

As wildly different as it looks, Pite's work reminds me of nothing so much as some of the dance works of the nineteenth century.  Virtuosity, gigantic; content, minimal.