"Messiah" and Me: A Personal Reflection

Following on last night's splendid performance of Handel's immortal oratorio (see previous post), it seemed like a good time for me to reflect on my own long-running history with this work.

Messiah forms one of the earliest cornerstones of my lifelong love affair with the whole world of classical music. I grew up hearing Handel's work in all its majestic, playful, solemn diversity of style. Excerpts were sung at our annual pre-Christmas extended family party. Some of the adults sang selected solos, and the group joined in choruses. 

It was talked about at home too, due to my father's decades-long membership of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (over 45 years). In time, my older sister, my brother, and I all took singing lessons and all took a turn singing in the Choir as well.

By now, we of the younger generation were singing some of those wonderful solo arias at the annual family Messiah fest. In one year, we actually worked our way through pretty much the whole of the first part, before wrapping up as always with the Hallelujah chorus. I've continued singing them all my life, sometimes with organ accompaniment, sometimes accompanying myself on the piano (we'll pass lightly over the hit-and-miss quality of my piano playing). Trying to sing Handel's most florid coloratura while sitting down and playing is an interesting challenge!

Mind you, I did achieve an odd distinction when I joined the Mendelssohn Choir myself for one season in 1977-78. We'd been intensively rehearsing and taping a lengthy work by Murray Schafer for the CBC, and the taping sessions ran right into mid-December. Thus, there was time for only one orchestral rehearsal before the annual Messiah performances, and no time at all to crack our scores before that one rehearsal. And right there was when the Toronto winter weather did me in, and I came down with a cold, losing my voice. I must be one of the very few members of the Choir, perhaps the only one in the last 90 years, who never actually sang Messiah with the Choir!

An odd side note: the idea that the Choir can do Messiah on next to no rehearsal got so ingrained in my thinking from this episode that I actually did a double-take when I saw in social media how many rehearsals were held with choir and orchestra for this week's concerts. Their rehearsing definitely paid off!

Looking back, I realize now that my family were participating in an old tradition of performing classical music at home. For many people, perhaps most people, this has died out as the arrival of recordings has made it unnecessary, since you no longer need to play or sing to hear the music. A pity. But no matter what, for me (as for so many other music lovers), Christmas has always meant Messiah.

 

And this is odd, because Handel really composed the work to be performed in the Lenten and Easter seasons, and always and only performed it then. Messiah is odd in another way, too, among Handel's output of English oratorios, a form he basically invented. All of his other oratorios are dramatic narratives, concert operas in all but name. Even Israel in Egypt, although it lacks dramatic characters, is a thoroughly dramatic and narrative work.

Messiah is another matter altogether: a purely Biblical text, meditating on the whole arc of the Biblical story of Christ from the annunciation of his birth to his final revelation as the enthroned Son of God at the last day of the world. The only narrative in the entire work comes in the four brief recitatives of the Nativity scene, leading up to the angelic chorus, Glory to God.

I'm certainly not alone in the English-speaking world in finding that Handel's immortal inspiration has a powerful grip. Last night, I was brought to tears by the understated but deeply-felt Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow as sung by Michael Colvin. I've never heard it given with a greater sense of the meaning of the words, or with greater emotional intensity.

For many people, the climax of Messiah comes at the end of the second part with the majestic Hallelujah chorus. Handel wrote in a letter that, when he was working on the score of Messiah, "I did think I did see all of heaven open before me, and the great God himself." It's common to assume that these words applied to the Hallelujah and perhaps they did.

For me, though, the unfailing sense of the heavens opening comes in the majestic leading chords of the final choral fresco, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and then again a few minutes later in the first fortissimo outburst and the final massive cadences of the concluding Amen -- and the power of this music brings me to tears once more, every time I hear it.

 

There have been times in my life when I have grown tired of Messiah, when I've felt as if it's finally losing its grip on me. Bach's beautiful but very different Christmas Oratorio claims an equal share of my time when Christmas rolls around. But then, I sit down to listen at home, or (as last night) attend a top-notch live performance, and all that familiar music unfolds its beauty for me once more. And then the final chorus opens the gates of heaven, and I find that I've fallen in love with Messiah all over again.

The Eternal, Immortal "Messiah"

 For the first time in too many years to count, I sat down in Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday night to enjoy the annual Toronto Mendelssohn Choir/Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance of Handel's grand, immortal Messiah.

 

Two factors drew me to this concert, after missing it so many times. One was the indefinable, but still quite strong, feeling that I desperately needed to hear Messiah after the ordeal of the last two winters.

The other was the discovery that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's Music Director, Gustavo Gimeno, was going to lead these performances himself.

This is a real rarity. No TSO Music Director since Sir Ernest Macmillan, with the periodic exception of Sir Andrew Davis, has made a habit of leading these performances. It's become traditional to rotate one of the TSO's most popular annual events among the hands of assorted guest conductors. The orchestra says this is to allow for variations of interpretation, a very valid aim. But that's just what we are going to get here.

 

These concerts mark Gimeno's first-ever occasion to lead live performances of Handel's eternally popular oratorio. This is actually not surprising. Messiah has a far less powerful grip on the popular imagination in continental Europe than in the English-speaking world. I was, then, even more eager to hear how this first-time interpreter would fare with a work which is far more challenging than many of us Messiah veterans like to admit, and a work which would not necessarily be a key element of the musical world in which he had grown up and studied.

Then there's the whole question of whether there would be any innovations in the sequence of numbers, the choice of numbers to be omitted, or the versions of various numbers to be performed. It's entirely possible to write a whole book about the history of Messiah, and the huge multiplicity of alternative numbers which Handel composed. Trust me, it's been done. I took my own briefer crack at "the Messiah problem" in my rare music blog, Off the Beaten Staff, five years ago. Here's a link to that post:

 

Will the Real "Messiah" Please Stand Up?

 

 

Enough preamble. Let's get right to the performance. As usual, these TSO performances fly somewhat in the face of the authentic performance movement by using a large choir, but keeping the orchestra down to a smaller, more Baroque-sized body. No qualms about authenticity from this listener. Handel was well-known in his day for always wanting more singers and more players than he had. More to the point, the musicians of the TSO by now have all had experience in the requirements and skills of authentic Baroque performance and demonstrate it with a will. The old days of thick, plush, Wagnerian orchestral sound in Handel are, thankfully, long gone.

Gimeno staked his turf right from the opening overture, adopting a whole sequence of what most would consider central tempi at the present day, generally free from excessive speeds or distortions of the basic pulse. What he did bring to the performance, generating added interest, was a whole range of subtle little variations in the dynamic levels, avoiding the general sameness within each number that most conductors prefer. Gimeno also stressed clear articulation of notes in some passages, while generally shunning some of the comical excesses of other interpreters.

The only arguably excessive tempo was in His yoke is easy which lost its playful character and became hectic and effortful as the choir -- in just this one place -- struggled to keep up.

As for changes in the assignment of numbers, there were few, and they were confined to the second and third parts. The middle section and da capo of He was despised and of The trumpet shall sound vanished altogether. The recitative He was cut off and the following arioso But Thou didst not leave were transferred from tenor to soprano. On the plus side, But who may abide was correctly assigned to the mezzo-soprano. Otherwise, the traditional sequence of numbers with the traditional cuts was observed.

The orchestra of mainly strings, with a few winds, plus the necessary trumpets and drums, was for the most part effective, except that the orchestral tone tended to vanish altogether in the few passages where the choir sang full out. Continuo was provided throughout by a chamber organ, with nary a harpsichord in sight. Given the scale of the performance, it was just as well that Roy Thomson Hall's big concert organ was not used.

Although all four soloists had fine qualities and fine moments, I felt that the honours of the evening among them rested with tenor Michael Colvin. His characterization and feeling for the text made the recitative Thy rebuke hath broken his heart and the succeeding arioso Behold and see if there be any sorrow into a high point of emotional intensity. He then capped his performance with another dramatically conceived and fiery interpretation in Thou shalt break them.

 

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards would certainly have challenged Colvin for the honours if she had been allowed to use her rich, contralto-like tone in the entirety of He was despised -- and I wish she had done so. In the first part, she brought dancing joy to O Thou that tellest and simple lyrical beauty to He shall feed his flock. The dramatic intensity of her For He is like a refiner's fire made a stunning contrast.

 

Soprano Lauren Fagan sang throughout with simple lyrical beauty and soaring accuracy of high notes, all with no hint of overplaying her hand. A level of emotional commitment to match Colvin's would have been welcome in He was cut off and But Thou didst not leave, as also in I know that my Redeemer liveth. Lovely as it was, this aria somewhat skated over the meaning of the words.

Baritone Elliot Madore struggled with the coloratura of Thus saith the Lord, blurring the long chains of high-speed notes. He proved in much better form as the evening went on, bringing drama and accuracy to Why do the nations and The trumpet shall sound.

 

The most exciting contributions of the performance came from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. The choral parts in Messiah equal in length and intensity the work of all four soloists together, and the reduced body of 100 singers rose to the challenge admirably. Diction was variable from section to section, obviously due to the varying numbers of singers in each section who chose to wear masks. 

Aside from that one issue, the choir brought pinpoint accuracy to Gimeno's requests for articulation, and responded willingly to his unconventional but intriguing dynamic requirements. Equally clear were the long coloratura lines in such choruses as And He shall purify and For unto us a child is born. At one time, you might have heard the choir making a mighty shout in all the choral movements, but throughout the evening they held back the big guns, saving their full power for the Hallelujah chorus and the concluding Worthy is the Lamb... Amen. Most impressive of all were the times when the choir responded to the call for truly quiet singing, the voices reducing to a mere murmur while the text remained clear. 

All in all, an auspicious Messiah debut for Maestro Gimeno, predictably nimble and stylish playing from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, an enjoyable evening of singing from the four soloists, and a splendid performance from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Performances of Messiah continue for the next four nights (December 18/19/20/21) at Roy Thomson Hall. Tickets can be purchased from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's website.

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2022-2023 # 2: Festive Christmas Music From the TMC

December 6 marked the return of a welcome Toronto Christmas tradition: the annual Festival of Carols from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, including the well-loved carol singalong.

Although the Choir did present a virtual Christmas program in 2020, and last year went with a shortened live or virtual concert which (to meet Covid rules) ended with a "hum-along", it was the full-throttle audience participation in classic Christmas music which so many had missed.

Indeed, the demand for tickets was so great that the Choir added a second performance on December 7 and a webcast of the concert on December 9!

 

With this event, the Choir launched the Christmas season with the kind of festive energy that, even at Christmas, isn't easily or often found. The Choir's performance in this concert was memorable, exciting, and bursting with joie de vivre.

Under Music Director Jean-Sébastien Vallée, the Choir and the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers performed a kaleidoscopic array of Christmas music, including arrangements of traditional carols and profound music of the Christmas season, representing a time span from the 1600s to the present day and a world view encompassing multiple cultures and regions.

Two of the most beautiful and touching works were premieres, with the composers present: O Nata Lux by Christopher Ducasse and Heartbeat by Shireen Abu-Khader, the latter a TMC commission. Ducasse's music gave more than a nod to the serene polyphony of the European Renaissance, while Abu-Khader's work incorporated Byzantine chant, fusing it with her own distinctive and heartfelt melodic language.

There were many highlights in this diverse anthology of seasonal music. Right at the outset, the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers brought beautiful and coolly serene tone to John Sheppard's motet Verbum Caro Factum Est ("The Word Was Made Flesh"), their voices soaring over the audience from the side gallery of the church.

The dialogue of Gabriel and Mary in Gabriel's Message was given by soloists Jacob Abrahamse and Emily Parker, and both they and the full choir relished the light-hearted dotted rhythms of this traditional English carol in Olivia Sparkhall's arrangement.

Two other bouncy arrangements by Mack Wilberg, Noe! Noe! and Ding! Dong! Merrily on High, were given by the choir with ample energy and the signature precision we've come to expect.

Speaking of energy, organist Isabelle Demers at one point launched an improvisatory interlude with a few high-powered bars of Messiaen, and it's a pity that space couldn't have been made for her to perform the entire number, Dieu parmi nous ("God Among Us") -- that being an obvious choice for the occasion.

 

Soprano Rebecca McKay brought ethereal tone to her part in Donald Fraser's This Christmastide.

 

Another delight was Donald Patriquin's arrangement of a lively traditional French noël, Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres. 

 

Among the most heart-touching moments of the entire evening was Paul Mealor's In the Bleak Midwinter, with Dan Bevan-Baker's luminous baritone solo over the quiet choral backdrop a true delight.

Coreen Duffy's setting of Adon Olam, a traditional Jewish hymn of praise to God, created a harmonic atmosphere which was unique in this concert.

 

Fortunately, the currently-fashionable styles of minimalist repetition of words or syllables (which only muddy the text), and wrong-note modernism in arrangements of traditional carols, were confined to only a couple of numbers.

 

The entire concert was arranged in six sets, lasting ninety minutes without an intermission. The eagerly-awaited singalongs were placed at the end of sections 2, 5, and 6 with the audience invited to rise and join in singing O Come All Ye Faithful first. Sir David Willcocks' splendid arrangement, a staple of church music since my childhood, brought tears to my eyes. Silent Night concluded the fifth set, and the high energy of Joy to the World brought the entire concert to a rousing conclusion.

Well, almost. Of course there had to be an encore, and of course that encore had to be that other grand old Christmas tradition, Handel's Hallelujah chorus. While the choir and organist tore into Handel's immortal inspiration with their customary flair, there may have been a few extra voices involved. I hope the choir, the conductor, and the audience located near me will forgive me for treating this as another singalong number but I simply couldn't resist -- I haven't had a chance to sing it for nearly a decade! And I don't think I was the only audience member singing along at this point either.

The concert repeats tonight (December 7) at 7:30 pm at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, and the webcast is available starting on December 9. Tickets for either the live or the webcast version of this splendid concert can be purchased at this link:

 

Festival of Carols 2022

 

National Ballet of Canada 2022-2023 # 1: Sad About MADDADDAM

Although it was only a day after I'd returned home from a lengthy overseas trip, I simply couldn't miss the performance of the National Ballet's newest full-length work: Wayne McGregor's MADDADDAM, inspired by and based on the trilogy of novels by renowned novelist Margaret Atwood.

This performance was all the more important to me, in that I had already missed the season-opening mixed programme which officially launched Hope Muir's tenure as Artistic Director of the company. In it, Muir had introduced new choreographers whose work had not previously been staged by the National, and that was a particular reason I was sorry to miss it.

MADDADDAM, on the other hand, comes from the hand of Wayne McGregor, a choreographer whose work I already know and admire (think Chroma and Genus), and is actually a long-delayed holdover from what should have been the last season of Karen Kain's tenure at the head of the company.

 

It is also the third major full-length work staged jointly by the National Ballet of Canada and Britain's Royal Ballet, and the first of the three to receive its world premiere in Toronto (the first two were Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter's Tale, both choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon).

For all of these reasons, I approached the performance with considerable anticipation and excitement, and came away rather saddened that the work seemed to me to be a misfire in some (not all) ways.

I hasten to point out right away that the dancers of the company were absolutely on top form throughout the performance. Wayne McGregor's signature choreographic style has the dancers bending, turning, twisting, and flexing in ways which appear to be impossible -- and yet they aren't because you just saw some of them do it. The National's remarkable company rose to the occasion, bringing all their passion, energy, and skill to bear on McGregor's choreographic challenges. I have only the strongest of compliments for their performances across the board.

 

That also applies to the National Ballet's house orchestra, which appeared as a pared-down live pit ensemble working successfully in conjunction with extensive pre-taped music, always a situation fraught with possibilities for things to go wrong.

Despite the best efforts of these dedicated performing artists, MADDADDAM comes across as a rather confusing, obscure, elliptical piece of work. 

The problems begin, I think, with the source material. Right at the outset, I have to wonder if there is really any feasible way to present, in a single 95-minute performance, the contents of a richly layered and detailed trilogy of novels. My sense, for what it's worth, is that this was an impossible assignment at the outset. The finished work, as far as I could tell, got around the difficulty by presenting a series of choreographic impressions rooted in the books, rather than attempting a narrative.

 

The way in which the work was presented to the audience caused problems for most of the people I have discussed this work with, and with many other members of the audience -- to judge by the comments I heard around me at the theatre.

 

Atwood's novels have certainly not been read by everyone, and a short synopsis of the contents of the books would have been enormously helpful. What we got, instead, were a few isolated comments scattered through the three preview videos, and a few more elliptical statements in the extensive, scholarly, but curiously uninformative programme notes. All of this material was presented to the audience from a perspective that we were expected to be familiar with the novels already -- and this was a huge mistake.

 

Among other things, we had no guidance at all as to the meaning or significance of a number of named characters, who or what they might be, or what their function or purpose might be.

 

It didn't help matters at all that the programme notes' references to the second act seemed to bear no relation at all to what we saw on stage. Certainly, I couldn't make the connection.

 

Problems within the actual performance come down mainly to two key areas.

The first is the extensive use of video and moving objects in the set designs. Difficulties began right at the outset with the moving projections of huge, ominous figures on a scrim as the dancers were beginning their choreography. Sadly, the dancers came off second-best as the enormous projections kept yanking our attention away from the on-stage movement -- a classic example of what's known in theatrical parlance as "pulling focus." Those projections forcefully commanded our focus and I truly sympathized with the dancers in their losing battle against their own stage set. 

Matters were compounded when the huge "orb" on the stage began rotating slowly during a later part of the first act. Again, attention was diverted to the orb as we waited to see what it would do or what it would show as it turned. These mobile set effects did the the dancers an enormous disservice.

The other key problem, for me, was the original score by Max Richter. I had fondly hoped that the tedious "minimalist" movement in music was at an end, but here it came again, full force. When a short, simple rhythmic or melodic fragment is repeated several times, it can (and certainly does) help to establish a mood or emotion, and that is a useful function. When it keeps repeating for another five or even ten minutes (as it seemed at times), mood or emotion is succeeded by boredom and then by aggravation which makes me want to scream, "Just play something different already!"

The only key to the music which we were given in an advance video was a quick fragment of a descending melody which would appear in the final minutes of each act. My relief was immense when I at last heard that melody beginning to emerge for the third time, and knew that the relentless musical tedium was finally coming to an end.

To sum up: MADDADDAM is certainly a brave attempt at making dance out of some very challenging source material, and on a choreographic level it is strikingly powerful. Sadly, the power is often dissipated by the tedious music, the hyper-competitive videos and moving set elements, and above all by the lack of any programme notes which can give the audience an actual context to the impressions which are being danced on the stage.

Dynamic, Enticing Evening of Dance

Ballet Kelowna has again come up with a real winner of a show to launch this, their 20th Anniversary Season.

This small but enterprising company tackles pieces which rank with the most complex in (mostly) modern dance, and the artists continually draw the audiences into their world by the skill and energy of their dancing.

Energy, as it turned out, was an essential component of this programme. All three choreographers made large demands on the physical stamina and breath control of the dancers, requiring long stretches of high-stakes, high-speed dancing -- nowhere more so than in the final work```.

The evening opened with a fascinating dance creation from Artist-in-Residence, Cameron Fraser-Monroe. In a completely common situation in the contemporary world, Fraser-Monroe's name suggests a strongly Scottish heritage -- and while that is a part of his family's history, it's as a member of the Tla'amin Nation that he most strongly identifies.

This 2021 work, taqǝš (pronounced "TawKESH"), draws from the traditional story in which Raven returns the world's water that has been stolen by Frog and his friends. The dance made allusive reference to the story by using simple vignettes of key events in the story, but more so worked from a premise of incorporating the traditional dance of the Pacific Coast nations in partnership with the classical ballet tradition -- a challenging goal if ever there was one. 

Fraser-Monroe's work had two memorable, not to say eye-catching moments. One came when Raven (McKeely Borger) took to wing to search for the missing water. His choreographic conception here evoked some gasps and expressions of awe from members of the audience. The other, soon after, was the moment when Frog (Seiji Suzuki) and his friends  appeared, dancing and partying up a storm in celebration of their success in stealing all the water. Here, the brilliant green lighting and the angular, almost rock-music inspired movements of the company served to underline the fun-loving, jazzy quality in that section of Jeremy Dutcher's purpose-composed score.

Definitely, Cameron Fraser-Monroe pointed the way for more diverse and exciting fusions of classical European dance and the indigenous dance traditions of this land.

The second work was Guillaume Coté's 2012 work, Boléro, set (no surprise) to Ravel's endlessly fascinating showpiece for orchestra. Set for a quartet of dancers (three men, one woman), the dance in Boléro exactly parallels the structure of the music by growing progressively more daring and more breathtaking as the piece progresses. Coté uses lifts as the central feature of the work, and the lifts get more and more complex and risky as the music evolves. In the final moment, the woman is launched forwards towards the extended arms of two of the men, the lights vanishing in a snap blackout before she actually lands -- a theatrical extension of a classic competition cheer team move.

Kelsey Hanna has used Boléro as her swan song, retiring from active dance after this memorable last performance. I know her colleagues and audiences alike will miss her artistry -- but what a fabulous moment to end a career, as all will remember her forever airborne and soaring in space.

 

After the intermission, the programme wrapped up with a significant world premiere, In the Light of the Waking Sun by Robert Stephen.

 

Conflict of Interest Alert:  Robert Stephen is my nephew.

 

This half-hour work uses three of the four movements of Schubert's Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D.485 (omitting the third-movement Minuet and Trio which is really a scherzo in all but name). What remains is a three-movement triptych, noted among musicians for its sunny good nature. Now, notice the title again.

 

Stephen's subtext was the gradual emergence of the world from the bleak two years of the pandemic, and the slow return of normal life in many ways. 

 

The first movement sees the dancers moving in lively fashion about the stage, but avoiding direct interaction -- indeed, acting awkward and hesitant when such interaction almost occurs. At the end of the movement, the dancers suddenly surrender to the urge to hug each other. The slow second movement then becomes a series of pas de deux, with the slow reawakening of love and intimacy the subject matter. The vigorous finale brings us into a joyful, exuberant festival, hurtling bodies and flying feet going in all directions as once (and abetted by the uncommonly fast recorded performance of Schubert's music). 

 

Four-fifths of the lightness and joy of the piece lies in the choregraphy. The remaining and significant one-fifth comes from the costumes created by Krista Dowson. Light, sheer, easily airborne fabrics are wedded to a gentle palette of pastel colours which seems the very essence of spring and summer.

While Stephen's dance language here is predominantly classical, with modern highlights, the great success of this piece is the way in which he uses old traditional dance steps and processes to create a thing of beauty which is at the same time not new, yet entirely new. Point of reference or comparison quickly fall aside as you realize that In the Light of the Waking Sun bears only superficial resemblance to such distinguished forerunners as Balanchine's Symphony in C or Kudelka's the Four Seasons. The energy may resemble those works, but the net results are unique, and uniquely exhilarating for the audience.

Really, the same could and should be said of all three works on this fascinating programme. In each case, the audience was swept up in the strength of the choreographer's vision and the company's dancing, and the prolonged and energetic applause clearly testified to what a winning programme Ballet Kelowna has mounted to open this anniversary year.

Intensely Moving Dance Drama

With this week's powerful and moving premiere performance of A World Transformed, Echo Chamber Toronto has created an entirely new genre of dance drama. 

A World Transformed, at one level, is a combination of two separate but intertwined vocal recitals. The first part uses a tenor voice with piano, the second part a mezzo-soprano. At that level, it would be nothing more than the many other vocal recitals which use a theme to tie the disparate songs together.

It's the inspired incorporation of evocative modern dance, from four dancers and two different choreographers, sparing narration, and a sophisticated lighting plot, which takes these two song recitals and melds them together into a dramatic experience of deep and subtle power.

The theme and story alike is the terrible, senseless homophobic murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in 1998. The first part of the performance focuses on Shepard himself, ending with his death. The second part, in an extreme contrast, focuses on his mother, Judy Shepard, who became and remains a prominent advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.

The musical programme was curated by tenor Marcel d'Entremont and pianist Dakota Scott-Digout (who accompanied d'Entremont in the first part). They strung together a fascinating array of selections from such diverse composers as Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Britten, McCartney, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beach, Coulthard, and Purcell -- to name only a few.

An intriguing result of this use of song was the way that the lyrics of the songs mattered far less than the evocative, atmospheric quality of the music, in shaping the drama as it unfolded. 

That was thanks to the choreography of William Yong and Laurence Lemieux and the dancing of Brayden Cairns, Zachary Cardwell, Evan Webb, and Johanna Bergfelt.

In the first part, the story of the murder, Yong's choreography masterfully evoked the personality of Matthew Shepard and then the chilling events of the night he died. His dance language ranged across a wide gamut from easy lyrical movement to jagged, abrupt motion, with extended moments of stillness a critical element.

Without becoming in the least a literal depiction, the dance showed Cairns, Cardwell, and Webb beconing in effect a trio of Matthews, the three of them all moving in response to the events of the story as it unfolded.

Interaction between dancers and musicians is an essential part of Echo Chamber's mandate, and their interactions with tenor soloist Marcel d'Entremont, although sparingly used, were carefully judged for maximum impact. This was most true at the horrific climax of the story when d'Entremont released the three, one by one, from the "fence" which held Matthew Shepard prisoner -- actually, in an inspired moment of staging, the steel railing of the upper level gantry across the back of the stage.

 

The emotional anguish of this scene was amplified by the serene violin playing of Echo Chamber Toronto's Artistic Director, Aaron Schwebel, in Purcell's When I Am Laid in Earth.

Even more intense was the slow tableau that ended the first part, as the three dancers joined hands with d'Entremont in a line, moving slowly in and out and around each other, even forming a circle. Then the three Matthews laid slowly down in an interlocked formation on the floor while d'Entremont scattered flower petals over the dead bodies.

These two scenes reduced me to tears in their dramatic truthfulness and depth of grief.

The second act saw Jeanie Chung take on piano duty while Andrea Ludwig appeared as the mezzo-soprano soloist. Dancer Johanna Bergfelt sat on a bench, plainly struggling with emotions. Ludwig, on her first appearance, simply walked forward and delivered the first narration of the second part -- a quote from Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy. She then turned and faced Bergfelt and it became clear that the two women were both Judy Shepard.

Laurence Lemieux's choreography for this second part relied more upon subtlety than overt drama. The interactions of the two women were simpler, too -- face-to-face and eye-to-eye moments of stillness, or the moment when Ludwig slid smoothly down into a seat on the bench as Bergfelt stood up.

One telling moment came when Ludwig was singing from a music stand by the piano. Bergfelt moved behind both her and Chung to the left side of the hall, and a strong horizontal light created a shadow play from Bergfelt's dancing on the brick wall of the space. This was only one of designer Chris Malkowski's many intriguing lighting effects.

The final section of the second half opened with a remarkable moment of catharsis. After a brief piano introduction, Ludwig launched into the Beatles' song, Blackbird, and I was moved to tears again at the unmistakable sense of relief I felt as her voice carolled freely in this well-loved tune.

 

The final number, For Good from "Wicked," brought the entire company together on the stage, formed in a line as the singers shared the phrases of the song back and forth.

Echo Chamber Toronto has staged a number of remarkable shows through the last half-dozen years, but with this event Schwebel has moved his project forward onto an entirely different level -- more thoughtful, more sophisticated, more dramatic than any of his previous efforts. 

It was very clear from the opening moments of the performance that A World Transformed was indeed, as Schwebel said in his opening remarks, a collaborative effort, a communal project into which all of the artists poured their thoughts, their feelings, their ideas, their hearts. No wonder it became so impressive, so powerful.

Cellists Galore!

Last Saturday night saw me at St. Andrew's Church in Halifax for a chamber music concert sponsored by the Cecilia Concerts organization. This year, the Cecilia Concerts' Musician-in-Residence is pianist Silvie Cheng, and this was the second of four concerts curated by her. The programme, entitled Cellobration, left her somewhat outnumbered, since the other musicians were a trio of cellists: Paul Wiancko, Andrew Yee, and Silvie's brother, Bryan Cheng.

 

Of course, Silvie Cheng wasn't really outnumbered because a musical collaboration of this sort is neither a race nor a contest.

 

It's often said that the cello is the instrument which most sounds like the human voice, so any concert involving a group of cello players is bound to create some beautiful sounds and textures. I've never been quite sure of the "human voice" comparison, but I do know from previous experiences that the multiplication of cellos definitely increases the warmth of the sound at the same time as it diminishes any edge on the tone. 

 

It's all the sadder, then, that not many composers have written works for multiple cellos. Naturally, then, this concert had to turn to arrangements as part of the programme, a couple of them heard in this concert for the first time. But there were also some splendid works for solo cello and piano, including a couple of gripping contemporary works.

The programme opened with the rhythmically fascinating The Wheel by Caroline Shaw. Andrew Yee gave a wide-ranging reading of this technically complex and musically substantial piece.

The other major contemporary work was 1 for cello and piano "Shifting Baselines" by Paul Wiancko. The work was written by Wiancko on a commission for the Cheng²Duo, but here was played by the composer himself, with both power and subtlety to spare. This is a particularly memorable composition, and I was gratified to hear it again.

The first half of the concert ended with David Popper's serene and richly harmonized Requiem, Op. 66, for 3 cellos and piano. 

Also memorable was the dramatic, even turbulent, Le Grand Tango by Astor Piazzolla. This, too, would benefit from repeated hearings. I can't resist the urge to say how thankful I was that this particular composer wasn't represented by either Libertango or Bordel: 1900, both of which are so overworked that no great harm would be done if the world's musicians set them aside for 20 years or so in favour of other and no less desirable Piazzolla compositions.

Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder, cited as "Arr. Cheng" (I assume that means Bryan, but perhaps a joint effort) received a jazzy, upbeat performance that brought out the strong rhythmic patterns of the music.

I've left my two favourite moments of the concert to the end. The traditional Catalonian song El Cant dels Ocells ("Song of the Birds"), originally arranged by Pablo Casals for cello and piano, and here rearranged for the cello trio and piano by Paul Wiancko, brought serene melodic lines framed by the heartachingly tender birdsong trills at start and finish. 

 

The grand finale, the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 by Grieg, arranged by Cheng, created all sorts of fascinating effects by tossing parts of the music around among the four musicians. The two slower movements, Morning Mood and Death of Åse both took full advantage of the lyrical qualities of the three cellists. The finale, In the Hall of the Mountain King, then let loose a rip-roaring race to the finish line which seemed about as energetic as one could possibly get -- until the succeeding encore, whose name I didn't catch, shot past at an even more frenetic pace.

Throughout the concert, all four artists gave well-thought and deeply-felt interpretations coupled with impressive and subtle musicianship. A gala Cellobration indeed!

Stratford Festival 2022 # 6: 2B

My final Stratford outing for this year is Hamlet, directed by Peter Pasyk, and I'm tempted to refer to this as the "Concorde Hamlet" since a number of scenes flew by at what seemed like the speed of the legendary supersonic airliner from the last century.

But then I immediately rein myself in and remember the many other moments in the performance which were allowed ample, and more than ample time to breathe -- and for us, the audience, to hold our breaths.

In addition to this sonic-boom-or-bust pacing, the show was also distinguished by a universally strong cast and imaginative lighting, sound, and music effects.

 

As the Director's Notes in the programme explained, the text of Hamlet exists in three source versions, all quite different from each other -- the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio. The First Quarto is often referred to as the "bad Quarto" since it contains far less text that the others, and has lines and an entire scene which do not appear in the other versions. It's believed that the First Quarto may be a pirated edition or a shortened version for a touring company, drawn from an actor's copy. Thus, there's always the problem of which version(s) to use as source material for a production or a modern print edition. This production draws on all three extant texts. As well, there's the challenging length of the original texts -- well over 5 hours performing time in the Second Quarto and the First Folio, making it Shakespeare's longest play. Surgery, therefore, becomes so desirable for a modern audience as to be essential.

 

In this performance, the most notable surgery was the complete deletion from the play of the character of Fortinbras, Prince of Norway. This in turn means that the play ends with the death of Hamlet, with Horatio having the last word: "Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

 

For the rest, I am not familiar enough with Hamlet to be able to identify any of the other excisions. I must confess that this has never been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays (gasp! shock! horror!).

 

With all that scholarly foofaraw out of the way, how did the production unfold?

On entering the theatre, the audience saw a large multi-panelled wall of mirrors spread across the balcony level of the Festival Theatre's famous thrust stage, with smaller mirrored panels lining the edge of the balcony itself. As the play unfolded, it became clear that the mirrored walls were actually one-way mirrors, and became see-through windows when lights came on behind them, illuminating offstage scenes that were in Hamlet's thoughts at the moment. 

The production was set in today's world, and such techno gadgets as Bluetooth earpieces and cellphones appeared and were used frequently, just as one would expect of young people today. That gave the world of the play a strong sense of familiarity which, oddly enough, made the violent action all the more dislocating to the viewers.

 

Amaka Umeh gave a fire-eating performance as Hamlet, pushing the envelope in every direction as if playing to a camera for a TikTok -- as, indeed, Hamlet did on several occasions. Unlike some other performances where Hamlet was content to act verbally mad, Umeh drove the role hard into the physical dimensions of madness, letting an expressive face and uncommonly flexible body underline the disjointed personality of the Prince until his discomfiture screamed to heaven. This performance was nothing if not memorable, although the sheer overplus of the portrayal might make some viewers uncomfortable.

The next powerful centre of the performance came from Graham Abbey as Claudius and Maev Beaty as Gertrude. This pair of Stratford stalwarts presented a united front against Hamlet's extravagances in the early running, only to come apart even more believably at the seams as the truth came out. Beaty in particular made a stunning impact in her final moments in the last scene.

Matthew Kabwe created a Ghost of power and strength, a voice from the grave impossible to ignore. His key scene with Hamlet was one of the dramatic highlights of the show. All the more appropriate, then, that Kabwe should have been double-cast (not unusual, actually) as the Gravedigger. 

 

Norman Yeung and Ijeoma Emesowum brought colourful presence and string vocal work to the duo of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

 

Andrea Rankin's mad scene as Ophelia ranged all over the stage and all over the actor's vocal compass too, in a disintegration that might well have wrung tears from a stone.

 

As her father, Polonius, Michael Spencer-Davis played up the absurdity of the man who has nothing to say and contrives to say it over and over again. Fine work for those who feel that, with Polonius, the comedy is the key point.

The principal cast were surrounded by a strong team of players in minor parts, including the attendant lords who came across more like a security patrol, and the travelling players.

There is, of course, no such thing as a definitive Hamlet -- and there had much better not be. Within its own chosen limits, Peter Pasyk's production brings many strengths and an immense, almost unmanageable energy to the play. Is this a good thing? In the end, it still comes down to whether the individual audience member feels that the more frantic scenes are a good fit with the material.

 

A final note: there's been a lot of discussion about the casting of Amaka Umeh, a female person of colour, in the male role of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In fact, the show included many notable roles played by persons of colour. Umeh played the title role as a man, and showed more than ample ability to rule the notoriously challenging Festival stage in such a major and challenging role. So what's the problem?

 

Stratford Festival 2022 # 5: A Very Eventful Year

The year 1939 is best remembered in history for the outbreak of World War II in September. In Canada, the spring brought a "first": the first-ever tour of the country by a reigning monarch, King George VI. In a practical sense, it was the royal tour that triggered the events which form the story line of the play 1939, now appearing in its world premiere engagement in the Studio Theatre at the Stratford Festival.

The real story of the play, though, begins far earlier with the establishment of the first "residential schools" for native children by Canada in the 1800s.

 

The script, commissioned by Stratford, was co-written by Jani Lauzon (who also directed the performance) and Kaitlyn Riordan. Lauzon's "Director's Notes" in the programme said it best, and I quote her here: "1939... focuses on the incredible resilience, courage, wit, and ingenuity of five incredible students."

If this sounds too heavy for a night out at the theatre, don't be deceived. 1939 is both witty and completely involving: hysterically funny one minute, heart-touching another, intensely painful yet another, and -- in the end and after the end -- deeply thought-provoking.

The story takes place in a Catholic residential school in Northern Ontario. Five students are chosen as being among the best in English language studies to present a performance of Shakespeare's play All's Well That Ends Well when the King and Queen come to visit the school during the tour. Their Welsh teacher, the ageing and unmarried Miss Sian Ap Dafydd, dreams of a gloriously classic production with her students all sounding like Dame Ellen Terry. The students, though, soon develop other ideas of what to do and how to do it -- ideas which have little to do with the King and Queen, or Dame Ellen Terry, but a great deal to do with holding onto, preserving, and nurturing their own identities and cultures.

This play-within-a-play takes on added resonance in this setting since Stratford is also producing All's Well That Ends Well this season. It's not essential to be familiar with the Shakespearean play in order to appreciate 1939, but knowing it does give extra dimension to the experience of watching this one.

 

Joanna Yu's set design, on the intimate stage of the Studio Theatre, features multiple blackboards with chalk and erasers. As the play unfolds, the five students take turns writing or drawing on the boards during each scene transition, while all members of the company take it in turns to erase the boards as soon as they are marked up. The metaphor of erasing traditional words and designs is clear when it's done by the three settler characters, but less clear and much more thought-provoking when the students erase each other's writings and drawings.

 

Other than the chalkboards, there are several chairs which are normally laid on their sides in piles on either side of the stage, when not being used. Other props, such as desks and tables, are wheeled on or off as needed.

In what is very much an ensemble piece, the actors portraying the five students all have key moments and significant scenes in the show. Richard Comeau,  Wahsonti:io Kirby, Kathleen MacLean, Tara Sky, and John Wamsley each achieved a depth and strength in portrayal that allowed all of the moments, from comical to dramatically tense, to emerge in the most natural way. Quite a challenge in a script that often allows only a few words to create a moment or establish a mood.

All five also excelled in creating the Shakespearean atmosphere with the short excerpts from All's Well that emerged at the end of the play. One of the most powerful scenes for me came when Jean Delorme (played by Wamsley), as a Métis the perennial outsider of the group, used Parolles' wonderful speech of renunciation from Shakespeare's play to tell his fellows how he felt about the treatment he received from them. 

Also powerful was the moment when the five students, one by one, discarded the fake Hollywoodish "Indian" costumes and props which had been wished on them by the church community. From that point on, the power and truth of the entire performance really took wing, culminating in the circle where the five broke out into a traditional song -- apparently spontaneously.

 

Sarah Dodd as Miss Ap Dafydd created a fascinating character, strongly and smugly colonial, yet often seeming just on the verge of breaking out of that shell to a true appreciation of the lives of her students.

 

Mike Shara drew plenty of laughs as Father Callum Wilson, creating a believable figure as the priest who can appreciate the importance or value of nothing but the church -- and the hockey team. Shara and Dodd made an excellent comic team in the multiple scenes where they struck sparks off each other.

 

Jacklyn Francis was similarly impenetrable as the news reporter, Madge Macbeth, determined to find only what she wanted to find and see only what she wanted to see.

 

These three settler characters all veered close to the edge of caricature, but each also had moments of human vulnerability that saved them from tipping over that edge.

The greatest impact of 1939, for me, was the way that the five student characters put human faces on a narrative of inhumanity and indignity which is alls too easily turned into a faceless parade of numbers. This play explored the hundreds of subtle little ways in which the residential "school" experience undermined and devalued the humanity of the inmates -- and then went on, in a powerful affirmation of the human spirit, to show us how each of the five found their own ways to turn the whole terrible experience to their own use and advantage.

Out of all the plays I have seen at Stratford this year, this is the one I would call a must-see. 1939 continues on stage until October 29 in the Studio Theatre at Stratford.

Stratford Festival 2022 # 4: The Richest Miser I've Ever Met

The Stratford Festival has a long history of producing the works of Molière in English translation, This French author, who lived from 1622 to 1673, holds a place in French literature as central as the place of Shakespeare in English language and literature. Given that stature, the seventieth season at the Stratford Festival (which coincides with the 400th anniversary of Molière's birth) is a good time to bring on a new production of one of the master's best-known satirical farces, The Miser.

 

The Festival has chosen to go with Ranjit Bolt's newly adapted version of his 1995 translation. Unlike the older verse translations used in some Molière productions, this is a prose translation and a very up-to-date one indeed. Free use is made of topical and local references, one assumes with the consent of the adaptor.

 

It's really to the point to refer to an "adaptation" rather than a translation, since Molière's humour is essentially verbal, and -- like jokes and puns in all languages -- stubbornly resists literal translation. The only hope is to replace such jokes with English-language jokes and puns which, if you're lucky, live in the same street as the French-language originals. Maybe.

 

 More confusing for anyone familiar with older translated texts is the renaming of the characters with contemporary English-language names. Thus, Harpagon (the miser of the title) becomes Harper, his son Cléante becomes Charlie, Frosine becomes Fay, and so on. 

 

Designer Julie Fox has created an incredibly detailed and finicky Victorian-Gothic Revival-Horror Film fantasy of a stage set, every inch of which would look perfectly in place as the Carfax mansion in Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula. This impression is heightened by the dim, gloomy lighting of the stage that greets the audience as they enter the Festival Theatre, and the periodic rumbles of thunder which punctuate the pre-show.

 

Fortunately for the audience, that gloominess doesn't overlap into the performance itself, which is thoroughly contemporary in tone. In fact, it's a pleasure to report that, for a wonder, the company has not gone overboard and tried to drive the comedy into excess, preferring to let it unfold more naturally and humanely. This is not to say that satire is shirked by any means -- only that excess and overplus have been kept at bay for most of the show.

 

Most importantly, this applies to Colm Feore in the central role of the miserly Harper. His first flat-out moment of comic insanity comes in a perfect place, the final two minutes before the intermission. Fox's costume which clothed Feore in wrinkled trousers and baggy sweater with worn-through elbows tells half the story -- the weird collection of odds and ends of stuff around the stage tells us even more. He made very effective use of his turn-on-a-dime changes of mood and voice every time he suspects that someone is after his money.

 

Of course, he has to go much farther in the courtship scene of Act II, appearing now in an elegantly-tailored lilac-coloured suit and matching top hat which certainly made my eyes pop. Even here, though, Feore achieved a remarkable balance of pushing the limits while still showing restraint. This was a true textbook example of how farcical comedy should be approached.

So, for a different reason, was the performance of Jamie Mac as the butler, Victor. In this role, Mac drew plenty of mileage out of his expressive face, without ever taking it too far, and also made notable use of varying vocal tones whenever agreeing with everything Harper said. 

Harper's son, Charlie, was given a more over-the-edge comedic portrayal by Qasim Khan. Charlie's special approach to life is underlined by a particularly flashy costume, and his quick physicality abetted the portrait of a man who lives by flash and dash.

Charlie's sister, Eleanor (usually referred to as Ellie), was given a rather more conventional, practical air by Alexandra Lainfiesta. This contrasted well with her brother's more vivid portraiture, and made her seem an ideal partner for Victor. 

Beck Lloyd brought a more stereotypical look to Marianne, a character who veers perilously close to the edge of stereotype in any case. Vocally, I found her a bit wearing as her voice often sounded on the verge of bursting into tears in the old convention of the girl who cries to get her way or because she can't get her way. Frankly, I couldn't imagine what attracted Charlie to her -- but then, his speeches make it plain that he's completely enchanted anyway, and will undoubtedly learn much more about his dream woman once the enchantment wears off. Jung would have a good deal to say about this couple.

The comedic prize of the show, in many ways, was the marriage broker, Fay. Dressed in slinky black leather with gold chains and a colourful coat over it, she looked like a refugee from Vegas -- or was it Palm Beach? Lucy Peacock made herself completely at home in this flashy costume, strutting and preening and sashaying about the stage. Her distinctive voice perfectly completed the portrait, drawling out the lines in a way that made the very sound of her voice amusing -- and the words she was speaking even more so. Inspired casting and outstanding performance, which nearly stole the show.

David Collins proved an equally ideal choice for the role of Harper's wealthy friend, Arthur Edgerton. Collins is a Stratford regular, and always appears and sounds right at home in this wise elder type of role.

 

Steve Ross gave a fine comic turn as the detective summoned to investigate the theft of Harper's money.

Harper is also the deus ex machina who untangles the whole tangled mess of the plot, and here the extreme topicality of the adaptation of the script began to grate on me. There were just too many convenient coincidences, or synchronicities if you prefer, and I slipped out of the play and into the role of the cynical onlooker saying, "Yeah, right...." Trying to make this ending "go" will, I think, always pose problems for any company performing this version of The Miser.

 

Director Antoni Cimolino has achieved one of his finest outings in the comedy/farce world here, pacing and building the show along nearly ideal lines so that there's always somewhere left to go until the last possible moment. While the stage pictures were rather conventional at times, they always worked well and the characters remained audible at all times.

Kudos to Stratford on a well-planned, well-played, truly funny production of this Molière classic.

Stratford Festival 2022 # 3: But Is All Really Well?

It wouldn't be a tenth-year anniversary at Stratford without restagings of the two plays which opened the very first Stratford Festival way back in 1953. While I have seen several of the anniversary stagings of Richard III (including this year's outing), 2022 marks the first occasion I've seen its running mate, All's Well That Ends Well, in half a century -- since the 1972 Twentieth Anniversary Season in fact.

 

All's Well is an odd duck, theatrically speaking. The play has only half a romantic couple, and actually anticipates Bernard Shaw's favourite formula by having the drama revolve around the means by which Helen pursues and ties down Bertram, despite his best efforts to escape from her. 

 

It's also odd, and more than odd, to try to figure out what she sees in him. He bluntly tells the King that he doesn't want her and won't marry her. He leaves France to avoid his fate when the King orders him to accept the marriage. He schemes and swears love to seduce a young Florentine girl, Diana, handing over his heirloom family ring to her with scarcely a murmur of protest. Brought back to France to face the music from his sleazy behaviour, he lies up and down to try to evade the consequences of his actions. Most modern women would tell Helen to run the other way, as fast as possible. 

 

And yet, her behaviour is scarcely above reproach either, her clever stratagem exposing her (in modern terms) to a charge of sexual assault since she contrives to have sex with Bertram without his knowledge or consent. Also, as the programme note points out, there's more than a hint in her behaviour -- an uncomfortable hint -- of the contemporary obsessive stalker. The ending tries to follow the convention of "and they all lived happily ever after" but I'm sure I'm not the only person ready to put money on how soon this marriage will break down. Even by Shakespeare's standards, this is a play brimming over with awkward moral contradictions and conflicts that resist easy solutions. 

 

In any case, let's look at how this year's production, in the new Tom Patterson Theatre, unfolded. Director Scott Wentworth has helmed a classic Stratford production, handsomely costumed in Victorian dress (not unlike Tyrone Guthrie's original 1953 production), and with minimal props and set pieces whisked on and off. There were few fancy staging effects. Designer Michelle Bohn's set consisted simply of a dozen elegant Victorian "lady's chairs," arranged in two facing rows along either side of the stage, creating an instant and effective keynote to the period.

 

The first character to speak is the widowed Countess of Rossillion, here portrayed by Seana McKenna. In this play, McKenna's ability to dominate the stage is abetted by the frequent reappearances of the Countess throughout the play. We're never long allowed to forget that the supposed romantic couple consist of her son, Bertram, now the Count of Rossillion, and her waiting gentlewoman Helen. These relationships, together with her recent widowed status (the play opens with a pantomime of her husband's funeral) give her an uncommonly strong position of influence over subsequent events. 

Jessica B. Hill gave a strong, multi-faceted account of the role of Helen, lacking only the last degree of vocal clarity -- at times, her voice became simply too inward and intimate, especially in soliloquy. Her frequent and vivid changes of facial expression were a delight, especially in the intimate environment of the Tom Patterson where her face could be "read" easily from all over the house.

Jordin Hall presented a forthright, occasionally brutal, Bertram. His sudden falling into hesitant, devious verbal mannerisms in the final scene was thus made all the more notable. Hall especially excelled in conveying just a slight degree of verbal underlining in key moments, all that was needed to point up the man's hypocrisy and devious nature.

 

Wayne Best was at his best in the insightful Lord Lafew, making for a most believable account of the man who hears more and sees farther than others around him.

Ben Carlson gave a performance of nuance and power as the King of France. His sickbed scenes were notably edgy and unnerving, and his final judgement scene lacked for nothing in tempered but none the less intense and believable emotions.

Kim Horsman captured both similarity and difference to McKenna's Countess in her role as the Widow in Florence.

Allison Edwards-Crewe gave a finely-shaped, unexpectedly tart and sharp-tongued view of Diana, the Widow's daughter, whom Bertram attempts to seduce.

The production featured a delightful set of comic performances, in the clown roles which are such a joy of the Shakespearean repertoire. Lavatch may be the sexton in Rossillion, but Andre Sills all but brought the house down in this role with his overt sexual innuendos, both verbal and physical.

Irene Poole gave a scene-stealing portrayal of verbal and physical comedy in her role as the Florentine soldier who doubles as an interpreter.

And that brings us to Rylan Wilkie, in the showstopper role of Parolles, Bertram's companion, who is the biggest liar and braggart in sight (and in this play, that's saying something). Wilkie achieved splendid comic effect, both physical and vocal, in the scene where he's being "interrogated" by "enemy" soldiers. His subsequent deflation and fall from grace was then played with equal sincerity and insight, making for a treasurable account of a particularly wide-ranging character.

One of the reasons I like to sit along the sides of the Tom Patterson Theatre is the way that the stage pictures take on much more visual meaning when seen thus, on the long side of the narrow thrust stage. Director Wentworth achieved great variety in his staging, finding continually new ways to frame scenes and visually highlight the evolving relationships among his characters. His pacing of the production was equally strong and noteworthy.

All's Well That Ends Well may never be an easy play to like, but the company has produced a thoughtful production with many entertaining moments for this seventieth anniversary season, and made the play much more workable than theatrical experts of an earlier day would have thought possible. A rewarding afternoon of theatre.

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Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2022/23 # 1: The Pilgrim's Way

The versatility of the renowned Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was on display in a new format at the season-opening concert on Saturday night.

 

This first performance featured 23 voices of the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, the professional core group of the larger symphonic choir. 

 

For this concert, the Singers moved to Jeanne Lamon Hall in the Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, a much friendlier acoustic environment for this smaller group of artists.

 

The major work on this concert was Path of Miracles, by Joby Talbot. This hour-long work absolutely defies classification. It's neither oratorio nor cantata, neither narrative nor meditative. Perhaps it could best be called a "musical experience." which invites the hearer into a level of participation in the actual pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Catalonia and Galicia. 

 

Talbot's music is already familiar to followers of the National Ballet of Canada from his full-length scores for the story ballets Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter's Tale. Here, Talbot's wide-ranging and eclectic musical language takes us into a different realm altogether, with the pared-down sounds of unaccompanied voices (and sparing use of chimes and bells) creating fascinating and complex textures in place of the sparkling orchestration of the ballet scores. Certain features, like melodic and rhythmic ostinati, missing or added beats, upbeat jazzy rhythms, and diverse tempi are used here as well, but to startlingly different effect.

 

Talbot's score casually tosses all kinds of technical challenges at the singers and the conductor. The Toronto Mendelssohn Singers under music director Jean-Sébastien Vallée triumphantly welded this sprawling array of elements into a gripping, unifying whole. And make no mistake, this remarkable work did indeed bring the entire audience along on the journey, right from the staged opening in which the basses and tenors grouped in a circle around the director, until they were joined by the sopranos and altos singing at the rear of the hall. That was only one of a number of simple but evocative staging effects integrated into the performance of Path of Miracles. 

 

The sheer drawing power of the piece became abundantly clear at the conclusion when the final bars repeated ad infinitum while the singers and conductor slowly recessed down the central aisle and out the back of the hall, their voices fading slowly away into the distance while the audience sat in rapt silence, straining to hear the voices as they reached the vanishing point.

The three works which opened the programme were by no means also-rans. Diedre Robinson's arrangement of the spiritual Steal Away, which could better be called a recomposition, presented aptly beautiful tone and phrasing, marred only by one or two individual voices which came searing through on high notes.

The Choir's Composer-in-Residence, Shireen Abu-Khader, provided the heart-achingly sorrowful and gripping I Forgive. It's a setting of a last letter written by Egyptian activist Sarah Hejazi before PTSD arising from torture drove her to take her own life in 2020. Mezzo-soprano soloist Raneem Barakat memorably captured the anguish of Hejazi in phrases which often seemed to float in the near neighbourhood of the choral harmonies, rather than landing distinctly within any one chord.

Then came Elgar's Lux aeterna, although that title is misleading. John Cameron set the words of the Latin antiphon from the requiem mass to the music of the Nimrod variation from Elgar's famous Enigma Variations. Elgar himself did set the music with a poetic text in his late work, The Music Makers, although he did not use this Latin text. 

As for the piece itself, it seemed rather out of place among its companions. Although the thematic relationship was unmistakable, the music itself struck me as rather too conventional and backward-looking in such adventurous company.

The near-capacity audience responded with rapturous applause and cheers at the end of the programme with that gently fading conclusion of Talbot's Path of Miracles. This remarkable musical and personal journey of this entire concert will, I think, resonate long in the minds of artists and audience alike.

Shaw Festival 2022 # 3: The Dissection of Morality

George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma brings to its audience a comedic, powerful, and unquestionably timely examination of the ethics and morality of medicine and the value of life as a highlight of the Festival's sixtieth season.

Anyone who thinks Shaw is hopelessly wordy and incredibly dated or irrelevant had far better come and see this production before closing the book on that subject. 

One of the intriguing aspects of this script is that the play spares nobody in laying all of its varied characters open to the judgement of the audience. Unlike some of his works, our sympathy is not totally and irrevocably tilted towards any one person or point of view. At the end of the performance, we are left with more questions than answers, with conflicting visions of morality that are difficult or impossible to sustain, and with even more questions about what will happen next to several of the characters.

 

Plainly, the only way to approach such a richly layered theatre piece is to simply perform it, allow the various characters fair play to be themselves to the full, and let the chips fall where they may as far as the audience's reaction may go.

This five-act play was designed by the author for the commercial theatres of London in his day, where the concept of a full evening with two intermissions was quite normal. The Shaw has decided to perform it with only a single intermission, and has also opted to place the intermission after Act II, leaving three full scenes to be gotten through in the second "half." As a result, the performance takes just about an hour before the single break, but something closer to ninety minutes after. Audiences be warned. But it does make sense; the dramatic continuity would be fatally compromised by a break any later in the show.

At the outset of the play, we are given first the chance to meet the quartet of specialist doctors who represent one side of the dilemma. Diana Donnelly's production respects the need for each of these four to be entirely sincere about presenting their points of view, even though those views sound richly idiotic to audiences familiar with today's state of medical knowledge. The doctors' obsessions would have seemed somewhat less idiotic in 1906, and were in fact all rooted in theories actively promoted by doctors of that day. However, Shaw had his own views about health and none of the doctors are spared the satirical lash.

The first is Dr. Colenso Ridgeon, who has just received a Nobel Prize and thus is at the very peak of medical fame. He is successively visited and congratulated by three colleagues, Dr. Patricia Cullen, Dr. Cutler Walpole, and Dr. Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington.

Sanjay Talwar brings a dimension of humanity to Ridgeon, a man who could easily come across as a stuck-up, arrogant snob. That sense of humanity becomes critically important as the play unfolds. Allan Louis as Walpole and David Adams as Bonnington give much more highly coloured performances, particularly when each has a pet theory of illness to apply to every case that crosses their path. Sharry Flett, as Cullen, is the only one who seems to have a grasp of the human dimension to medicine, a realization that a doctor must treat not merely the patient but the people around the patient. Flett uses a relatively moderate tone of voice to great effect, becoming by default the one real voice of compassion in the story as it unfolds.

On the other side are two younger men: Dr. Blenkinsop (played for this performance by Kevin McLachlan) and Louis Dubedat, an artist (Johnathan Sousa). There is also Dubedat's wife, Jennifer (Alexis Gordon) -- and, in fact, we meet her first, pleading ardently for her husband's life. Ardour is Jennifer's chief audible characteristic and Gordon plays the ardour and the passion, driving it for almost all she's worth -- but doesn't overplay it. 

Sousa, later on, shares the ardour and passion as Louis but -- and it is a noteworthy "but" -- where her passion is all for him, his is mostly for himself. Blenkinsop's passion is for his patients, driving him to neglect his own health so he can offer maximum service to the residents of the poorer neighbourhood where he lives and works.

All three of these characters were given notable life and vibrancy, in their different ways, by Gordon, Sousa, and McLachlan.

 

Incidental to the main drama, but each illuminating in their different ways, were four smaller but significant roles: Ridgeon's assistant Redpenny (Michael Man), his receptionist/housekeeper (to judge by her costume) Emmy (Claire Jullien), the unfortunate Minnie Tinwell (Katherine Gauthier), and the Newspaperman (Nathanael Judah).

The dilemma which arises for Ridgeon, and his colleagues, is the fact that both young men are infected with tuberculosis, and both are in an advancing state of the disease. Ridgeon's promising new lifesaving treatment for TB, which earned him the Nobel, can be given to only a limited number of patients at a time and his roster is full. He can squeeze in one more, but not two.

Who lives and who dies? It was a familiar refrain in the early days of the pandemic when hospitals in the hotspot areas were overwhelmed with patients, and doctors had to make such choices over and over. It's when this dilemma emerges that the audience realizes just how timely and contemporary this play actually is. Until this point, the satirical treatment of the specialists has made the carefully modern sets and costumes appear to be so much window dressing on a funny old play -- but now it becomes deadly serious, in the most literal sense of the word.

That's just the first act. The remainder of the play is devoted to the working out of the consequences of this entire situation. In this working out, none of the characters are permitted to be the least bit perfect. One and all suffer from major flaws which knock the pedestals out from other their feet. What all the actors and the director have captured in an ideal way is the fact that each one continues to feel him/herself perfect, while mentally and verbally scourging some or all of the others. Shaw's observation of human nature is uncomfortably on point here -- especially since we, the onlookers, have undoubtedly done just that at some points during the first two acts.

As in so many Shaw plays, the final resolution presents no resolution at all. The fourth act ends with the lengthy but curiously analytical death scene of Louis Dubedat. In this scene, the four doctors become a kind of Greek chorus, observing and occasionally commenting on the main action of Jennifer holding and comforting Louis. At this point, the production resorted to having Sousa speak into a flashy gold microphone and from that point on he became frequently hard to hear as the movements of his hands kept taking the mike away from the key point near his mouth. It was frustrating because this lengthy, quasi-operatic death scene is at least a fine piece of writing, even if it is rather too long to be entirely effective. 

 

This is followed by the fifth act, a final confrontation between Jennifer and Ridgeon, in which far more questions are posed than are answered. To appearances, and especially from Gordon's strong presentation of her speeches here, Jennifer Dubedat has achieved for herself a resolution which Colenso Ridgeon has not -- but is that really true, behind her finely assured words?

I could go on at much greater length, but the special genius of The Doctor's Dilemma is precisely the way in which the characters appear so certain in themselves but the audience is left so deeply uncertain, acutely and uncomfortably aware that many issues defy all attempts to find pat answers and neat solutions.

Gillian Gallow created extremely effective sets for each of the four locations. The condo set for Act I and the dinner table for Act II spread widely across the Festival Theatre's stage, emphasizing the spacious environments in which the rich and well-to-do get to live and work. The art gallery set for Act V adopted a stark and four-square look, reminding me of the cubist condo set in Act I. 

In between, we got the dark and paint-spattered home of the Dubedats. Said to be a loft, it actually looked and felt, and was lit, like a claustrophobic cellar with an uncomfortably steep staircase the only entry point. This constricted set was squeezed into the centre of the stage, surrounded by uncertain areas of shadow. Here, Gallow built a kind of miniature proscenium "stage" accessed by steps up a stack of milk crates, to act as a centrepiece, with the walls around it covered with Louis' paintings -- including a striking but surreal portrait of Jennifer.

Rachel Forbes designed costumes which gave identity and individuality to the doctors, the artist, the artist's wife, the young doctor, and the side characters. Her costumes for the party scene were noteworthy in presenting all the people in a different and brighter way, just as happens when real-world people dress up for a real party.

Michelle Ramsay's notable lighting designs presented a key link in creating the different worlds of the play: the modern sterile condo, the flashy party table, the dingy cellar, and the crisp gallery.

Above all, director Diana Donnelly has captured the key condition of giving full time and strength to all the viewpoints, bringing out in full the strengths and weaknesses of all the key characters, and letting all the ideas take their turn at centre stage -- all while keeping the play as a whole moving forward with effective momentum and clarity.

I've enjoyed all three plays that I've seen at the Shaw this season, but The Doctor's Dilemma is the one that's made the strongest impact and given me the most thought -- and the most unease. I like to think that GBS would approve.

Shaw Festival 2022 # 2: The Importance of Rethinking Things

 For this sixtieth anniversary season, the Shaw Festival has undertaken what is only its second staging ever of Oscar Wilde's classic comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. At first glance, this might seem utterly improbable since the play lies squarely in the time period which this Festival takes as the starting point of its mandate. But then, we remember that Bernard Shaw himself heartily disliked the play, and that Wilde's script satirically skewers the social conventions of the world in which it lives without suggesting anything better in the way of societal or human behaviour and thinking (central to Shaw's vision of the theatre) -- and suddenly the Shaw Festival's studied avoidance of Earnest makes much more sense.

 

On a purely practical level, how on earth is anyone supposed to come up with a fresh take on what is often cited as the second-most-quoted play in the English language? With two wonderful film versions to its credit, and any number of memorable stagings, it seems that everyone has ideas of how Earnest should be approached. Unlike the first-place most quoted play (Hamlet), Earnest simply doesn't allow nearly the same latitude in shaping characters and their motivations.

 

It's very much to the credit of this company, and of director Tim Carroll, that this staging of The Importance of Being Earnest does indeed blow the cobwebs off a venerable masterpiece, finding new, different and intriguing keys to pitch some of the most memorable lines and moments in theatre.

 

The key to this new look and sound, for me, lies in Kate Hennig's remarkably understated and underplayed Lady Bracknell. Actors everywhere have struggled for years to find ways of presenting Lady B that calls to mind neither the peculiar vocal tones of Dame Edith Evans nor the ice-cold facial expressions of Dame Judi Dench. Some, alas, go all the way into comic overkill in trying to avoid any resemblance. Hennig, you might say, scorns to try. She simply delivers Wilde's lines -- clearly, precisely,  and with a minimum of undue emphasis -- and leaves it to the director and the other characters to craft reactions which clarify her terrifying impact. She also makes sparing but masterly use of a "speaking silence," a pause while she awaits a response from one of the others which would normally be considered professional suicide in comedic acting. Hennig's voice becomes the yardstick by which the clarity of all other actors on the stage is measured. 

The two young gentlemen in the play, John Worthing (played by Martin Happer) and Algernon Moncrieff (Peter Fernandes) are differentiated far more than most productions will allow -- Happer remaining relatively conventional at all times, while Fernandes goes much farther in shaping and stressing certain key words and expressions to give, overall, a much more effete impression. Fernandes is greatly assisted in this by the choice of designer Christina Poddubiuk to dress him in far more flamboyant clothes, a rare approach but one which the script certainly supports. Happer makes maximum use of the few but well-judged moments of physical comedy -- walking about the room on his knees in the proposal scene, for instance, or his sudden explosion of energy when the time comes to search for the notorious handbag.

In line with this, the two young ladies are also differentiated more clearly than is often the case. In the hands of Julia Course, the Honourable Gwendolyn Fairfax is more clearly her mother's daughter than in many presentations, giving effective voice and face to her moments of anger or outrage. Only in Act III did I find her resort to an indignant squeak to be out of keeping. The diminutive Gabriella Sundar Singh's Cecily Cardew creates a complete contrast, using a delightful variety of vocal tones to show her relative inexperience in the thickly-layered manners of "good society." While her high-speed trotting about the stage becomes a little tedious on repetition, her sudden and well-judged spurts of anger on key pay-off words are masterly.

 

Together with Carroll, these two make extremely effective use of the height difference between them as the source of some fine comedic moments and memorable stage pictures.

 

Jacqueline Thair as Miss Prism and Ric Reid as the Reverend Canon Chasuble found some lovely physical moments in their courtship scenes, and Thair's reactions to Hennig's voice ("Prism! Where is that baby?") were far stronger than one often sees, effectively so. In contrast to the clarity of others, I found both of their voices a bit soft-grained and less easy to hear clearly.

Neil Barclay as Lane and Graeme Somerville as Merriman both made the most of their opportunities, with stolid faces and rigidly respectful voices clearly conveying contempt for their supposed social superiors. The opening vignette of Barclay giving a virtuoso performance on the spoons is unforgettable.

Gillian Gallow's settings are both beautiful and distracting. The setting for Algernon's flat in Act I is contained (imprisoned?) within a picture frame which also has the unfortunate effect of swallowing some of the sound. The voice of Peter Fernandes was notably hard to follow in some parts of this first scene, although he became much more audible when Act II allowed him to escape the stricture of that frame.

The parallel hedges of the Act II garden scene give scope for some amusing comic business as people move back and forth behind them. Then, in Act III, the huge wall of fake bookcases again distracts -- the colour choice making it appear as if the books are all turned with their open or page ends towards the outside world, rather than the bindings being shown as would normally be done. Nor are matters helped when Cecily stands, clearly looking at a solid wall of books, yet commenting on what she sees the men doing out in the garden.

Christina Poddubiuk's costumes effectively remain in period, time, and place, while still making use of colour choices to highlight the differences among the characters. 

Overall, then, a highly successful and entertaining take on Oscar Wilde's eternally fascinating comedy of manners.