Christmas cheer this year –or cheering, rather- finds its source in the enthusiastic audience for Miklos Laszlo’s Parfumerie, first produced by Soulpepper two years ago and now in a return run at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts. The cause? Because George Asztolis and Rosie Balaz, mutually nasty co-workers throughout the play and, unknown to themselves, the unidentified and passionate lovers by anonymous year-long correspondence to each other, have finally, finally kissed. They have resolved their ironic situation. The program notes explain that the play is “an insightful exploration of longing,” so it does indeed warm the heart that loneliness and emotional wounds, of other characters as well, are here given a healing touch. Thus, in a standing of this year’s potential feel good experiences, this production of Parfumerie ranks near the top.
A number of positive elements from the original production I reviewed remain happily in 2011. Characterization reveals a distinct sense of style, so much so that, in this production set in Budapest, the actors speak English and actually seem to be speaking Hungarian. The deliberately paced direction of Morris Panych feels leisurely, refreshing, and unobtrusively imaginative. One notices repeatedly a richness of precise human touches in the acting, with unforced depiction of human nature in a phrase here, a word there, as complete human beings emerge. The balance of formality and intimacy in the characterizations, with the ongoing subtle depth of feeling that slowly takes hold of one’s heart, remains constant. We have here performances of notable acting, including Joseph Ziegler who is electric with humanity in his understatement. The imaginative set of Ken MacDonald, with its casually wild art nouveau design that is also assertively symmetrical, is visually compelling.
And the 2011 remount is perhaps even better. For one, a heartwarming tone of human kindness prevails within the staff’s mechanical efficiency to serve the frenzy of customer needs. These characters let us know, ever so subtly, that they have lives, yes longing lives, elsewhere, even as they declare en masse to each customer departing through a revolving door, “Thank you for shopping at Hammerschmidt’s”. On the other hand, Kevin Bundy’s Stephan Kadash seems even more inherently smarmy this time around, a self-centred hustler. The humane pragmatism of Michael Simpson’s Louis Sipos and his fear of financial insecurity both seem rooted in almost haunting previous life experience. Jeff Lillico’s finesse-lacking, charmingly boyish and pleasantly blundering Arpad Krepus reveals, two days into his promotion, a disturbingly bullying edge –he even goosesteps- when he is promoted. Finally, few actors can carry the weight of the world more poignantly with complex subtleties than Joseph Ziegler, and his Hammerschmidt is played with a fine balance of overt detail and shadings of implication.
As George, Oliver Dennis aces the simplicity of an ordinary man who, though textured with limitation, is able to find dignity through dedication, sincerity, and a loving, if anonymously declared heart. Patricia Fagan’s Rosie is as subtle in her femininity yet sexy because she’s a woman of an inherent passion seeking a worthy place to go. Like George, Rosie seems diligently aware and one achievement of this pairing has each conveying how an intimate knowledge of the other is required in blind and ambiguous warfare. This warfare, of course, might be merely the need to direct one’s intense feelings somewhere: “She’s a girl who irritates me,” says George, to which Sipos knowingly responds, “Sounds like a marriage to me.”
Perhaps the tradition-imbedded stiffness of manner, decorum and propriety one might expect of these folks in a lingering Austro-Hungarian class system is not as severely rigid as required, although a Hungarian lady in the audience informed me that the depiction on stage was quite accurate as it was. Certainly, some of the broad physical comedy seems out of place and an arbitrary violation of these societal restraints implicit in the play. It is likewise alien to the sophisticated lightness of touch otherwise achieved by director and cast and to the delicately shaped tone of this insightful and carefully realized production. These matters aside, we have in this Parfumerie a genuinely human and delightful production that no one who even remotely celebrates the potential of the human heart should miss. Highly recommended.
