Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Shaw Festival Announces 2013 Season


For the first time, the Shaw Festival in Niagara-On-The-Lake will present a work by Tom Stoppard in the summer of 2013, the Festival's 52nd season. His Arcadia will be directed by Eda Holmes (pictured, courtesy of the Shaw Festival).

Only one play actually written by George Bernard Shaw is included in the season: the classic Major Barbara, whose central character works in the Salvation Army. That makes it a clever pairing with the wonderful Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, which is partly about a New York con man's bet that he can date a Salvation Army "doll". The Festival's two other musicals are Tony nominees Enchanted April and The Light in the Piazza.

A second Shaw script comes in disguise: titled Peace in Our Time: A Comedy, it's an adaptation of Shaw's play Geneva by Canadian playwright John Murrell. The 2013 season is rounded out by a selection of plays by playwrights who are, like Shaw, Irish (Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and Brian Friel's Faith Healer), or at least of Irish ancestry (W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters). There's also a Lunchtime program of two short plays: Trifles by Susan Glaspell and A Wife for a Life by Eugene O'Neill (yet another Irish descendant).

The Shaw Festival's 2012 season continues into October, with productions of Hedda Gabler, His Girl Friday, The Millionairess, Trouble in Tahiti, Ragtime, Misalliance, Present Laughter and Come Back, Little Sheba. To order tickets and for further information, visit the Shaw Festival.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Global Cabaret Festival at the Young Centre


From Friday to Sunday, October 12 to 14, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District opens its doors to the fifth annual Global Cabaret Festival, a smorgasbord of creative one-hour cabarets featuring outstanding Toronto singers, musicians, dancers and theatre artists.

It's a chance to see remarkable performers like Brent Carver, Jackie Richardson and Jean Stilwell up close. I'm especially excited that Judith Lander is performing an hour of songs by Kurt Weill, Jacques Brel and Stephen Sondheim, since I grew up listening to her on the original cast album of the 1972 Off-Broadway show Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill.

"Dennis Lee's Toronto" should also be fun: it's former Toronto Poet Laureate Dennis Lee's songbook of tunes that should have been written about this city throughout its history.

Patricia O'Callaghan (pictured) is especially busy. She performs a cabaret called "Heart of the Song", which traces the journey of traditional Irish folk songs through world culture (with Julia Aplin, John Gzowski, Miranda Mulholland, Andrea Nann and Joe Phillips). She also appears in a diverse range of other presentations, including one based on the songs from the musical Oliver! with musical direction by the always interesting John Millard, a Brazilian bossa nova show, an opera potpourri, and "Bohemians in Brooklyn", which visits the artists and thinkers at large in 1940s Brooklyn.

Admission to the Global Cabaret Festival ranges from $20 for single advance tickets to $108 for a pass that grants admission to six shows, plus reduced prices on others. To buy tickets and for further information, call the Young Centre box office at 416-866-8666 or visit the Global Cabaret Festival online.

Photo credit: Jason Hudson. Patricia O'Callaghan performs with Mike Ross at the 2011 Festival.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at Hart House Theatre - Review


"To be or not to be?" That's about the only important question the title characters don't ask each other in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard's clever 1966 play about what happens to two minor characters from Hamlet outside their scenes in the play. No coincidence that they come from a script best known for a soliloquy about the nature of existence and death; Stoppard's brilliant script is all about the same big questions.

Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are courtiers who have known Hamlet from their student days. They are recruited by the king, Hamlet's uncle, to deliver him to England along with a letter that will have him executed. However, the cunning prince exchanges the letter for one that calls for the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. In Stoppard's play, which is something like a more upbeat Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist between the scenes of Hamlet in a troubling universe where even the rising and setting of the sun can't be taken for granted, and action can only be precipitated by the arrival of other characters.

Their plight works as a metaphor for human existence. They seem to have no idea they're in a play, although they have occasional glimmers of recognition that there's an audience watching them. They don't know where they came from or where they're going, and although they ask a lot of questions, they find no answers. In fact, their efforts to understand their situation by means of logical deduction generally fail completely.

The play is also a loving extended joke about the nature of theatre itself (it manages to include a play-within-a-play-within-a-play, and it has a character who actually yells "Fire" in a crowded theatre.) It poses the puzzling question as to whether a performance exists if no one's there to watch, and it's bursting with quotable quips about the stage ("We're actors – we're the opposite of people!")

It's a pleasure to get a chance to see this modern classic performed, and the current Hart House Theatre production, with able direction by Matthew Gorman, is enjoyable. The cast consists largely of recent theatre school graduates, and although they lack the experience to go as far with timing and expression as the script would allow, they do occasionally soar, especially with the physical comedy.

Andrew Knowlton as Guildenstern (or Rosencrantz), who slightly resembles David Tennant, endows his character with an anxious (though futile) determination. Jim Armstrong as Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) comes across like a young Brendan Gleeson with a touch of Samwise Gamgee, and his discomfort, slower to build, eventually rises to ill-contained panic.

David Tripp, who has something of a Ralph Fiennes look about him, is perhaps the most successful in animating his character (the Player) with intensity and putting across all the sense of his lines with coherenence and comedy. Benjamin Muir, as a Hamlet who's part Edward Cullen (from Twilight), part Joaquin Phoenix and part Adam Ant (if you remember Adam Ant), is also hilarious.

The set and lighting by Stephan Droege, whom I have long thought of as Toronto's best lighting designer, are wonderful: a jagged bit of terrain illuminated by a sun (or moon) that changes constantly into semi-recognizable images (a human brain, a flower).

In the end, is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead hopeful or depressing? On the face of it, we may all be wandering cluelessly through a nonsensical and uncontrollable universe with death our only certainty. On the other hand, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren't dead, really; there must hardly be an hour on this earth when someone isn't reading, rehearsing, performing or watching one of the plays they appear in. Maybe things aren't so bad after all.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead runs to October 6. For tickets, call 416-978-8849 or visit the University of Toronto box office.

Photo: The tragedians perform the play-within-the-play in the Hart House theatre production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Theatre 20 Announces Creative Team for Debut Production


Theatre 20 has announced the creative team that will come together to produce the new company's first full production, Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare by Joseph Aragon. It's a dark musical comedy loosely based on the story of two murderous 19th-century entrepreneurs who earned extra cash by selling the bodies of 17 people they'd done away with to the Edinburgh Medical College as research cadavers.

The show will be directed by Theatre 20's founding artistic director Adam Brazier, with musical direction by Jason Jestadt and creative consulting from Colm Wilkinson. Design will be by Beth Kates (sets) and Melanie McNeill (costumes), with choreography by Linda Garneau. The cast will be announced in a few days.

Theatre 20 is a new artist-led company. Its founders are the performers who've been associated with most of Toronto's biggest musical productions of the past 40 years, like Wilkinson (Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera), Louise Pitre (Les Miz, Mamma Mia!), Brent Carver (Lord of the RingsKiss of the Spider Woman), Ma-Anne Dionisio (Miss Saigon) and Dan Chameroy (Beauty and the Beast).

Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare runs from October 9 to 28 at the Panasonic Theatre, and is among the Mirvish presentations this season. For tickets, visit TicketKing.

(Incidentally, Theatre 20 is holding a "Name That Cadaver" contest for a pair of tickets to the press opening. Something Scottish, perhaps?)

Photo credit: Image by Ashton Doudelet and Andy Thomas.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

This Year's Panto is Snow White, The Deliciously Dopey Family Musical


I know we've only just started the new school year, but is it too early to start thinking about Christmas? Because Ross Petty Productions has already announced the lineup for the annual holiday pantomime, this year titled Snow White, The Deliciously Dopey Family Musical.

The production stars Canadian Idol winner Melissa O’Neil (Belle in the 2010 Beauty and the Beast) as Snow White, with Graham Abbey (The Border) – not as Prince Charming, but "super spy 007" in what promises to be a Shrek-style fairytale mashup, without dwarves, but with other famous storybook characters like the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio. Ross Petty once again takes on the villain's role as Snow White’s evil stepmother, and Eddie Glen, a panto favourite, is his comic foil.

Snow White, The Deliciously Dopey Family Musical runs from November 23 to January 5 at the Elgin Theatre. For tickets, contact Ross Petty Productions.

Photo credit: Bruce Zinger. Left to right: Eddie Glen, Graham Abbey, Melissa O'Neil and Ross Petty.