A WORD OR TWO
Although Christopher Plummer ends his one man show, A Word or Two, with several touching references to death, the theme of this ninety minute performance is best summarized in the words of his New York drinking buddy, Dylan Thomas, who famously urged “Do not go gentle into that good night”. The Welsh poet briefly held court at the White Horse pub on Manhattan’s west side, with Richard Burton egging him on, and died soon after. But Plummer who played Hamlet at Stratford in 1957- that is fifty-five years ago folks- still seems made youthful fire and undeniable passion for both life and his theatrical art.
The production is an autobiographical account by a man who long ago discovered “the marvels of language” and in retrospect declares “words were to be my one master and I their humble slave”. His references to his life include “my passion for animals,” “teenaged awkwardness,” and drink as in “it was woman who drove me to drink and I never had the decency to thank her” or “booze used to be our national sport”. He grew up in Montreal, heard Oscar Peterson way back when, and easily segues into singing the traditional French song En Roulant Ma Boule with a number of asides in Quebecois sprinkled here and there.
His references to writers and their words are as many as the myriad artistic devises Plummer pulls out of his hat to make these same words live. The list includes Larkin (“ they fuck you up your mom and dad”) , Milne, Nash, Nabokov, Kipling, Auden with “ a southern accent,” Shaw on “the redemption of all things by beauty,” McLuhan, Service, Leacock whom he once recorded on a Caedmon label LP which still makes me laugh heartily. There’s a poignant reading of Frost’s Birches, Archibald McLeish who said “ A poem should be motionless in time,” Oscar Wilde, Oscar Levant, Shakespeare of course, Byron, Sam Goldwyn, and D.H Lawrence who said “ Let mating finish”.
Yes, death is an acknowledged presence to Plummer who, after doing Rostand’s fatally injured Cyrano as he awaits his end, declares of his own death, “ I’m scared shitless”. But it seems that Plummer intends to go laughing into that good night and his endless quips and asides are delightful, as in “Donald Trump is the kind of man who will end up dying in his own arms”. On ageing he remarks, “Middle age is when you stop combing your hair and start arranging it” and, before he impishly and elegantly departs, he informs us “I’m late for my Botox”.
A Word or Two is a celebration of reading the written word, inhabiting it, speaking it, acting it, being it. It is a riveting show of pinpoint timing, musical handling of language, and masterfully delivered speech in which even pauses carry their own gravity and humour. Each selection is given an engaging characterization and laughs arise by the minute. Plummer loves words and his script and performance invite us, compel us, to love words too. If you do not understand why, to writers and actors, life and words are one and the same, there is no better proof than this ninety minute show at the Avon.
HENRY V
In Des McAnuff’s Henry V, Aaron Krohn in the title role provides an intelligently thought out and meticulously spoken center to this big production, but he proves no match for either the director’s grand take on the play nor the historical significance of events depicted in Shakespeare’s tale. This Henry speaks to his immediate surroundings but not to history and often seems more a vehicle for the text than a characterization of it. In the Saint Crispin’s speech, he doesn’t seem driven to inspire and lacks a projected authority that would rally his troops. Thus, we do not hear him as “a king of so much worth” nor even “a lad of life” and inner passion. He speaks his lines with unfailing clarity, but enunciation alone just doesn’t make history. When more youth centered, say in his anger about the Dauphin’s balls, he is believably so. Elsewhere, he shows his knowledge of what must be done to play a king and, for one, he implies deviousness.
On the other hand, a number of the lesser roles are delivered with distinctly etched colourings that enrich the human textures within this Henry V. Randy Hughson’s Bardolf seems both spirited and heavy with his own life, while his voice perhaps suggests unwashed underarms. His few lines as the “good old Knight” suggest a lifetime within them. A sneery, somewhat reptilian and seedy Pistol of Tom Rooney is indeed a “knave” while Ben Carlson as the reasoning Scot Fluellen is appealingly wise with experience and not easily ruffled or unsettled. While the Dauphin of Gareth Potter is youthfully self-centered with an asinine laugh, subject to childish ways, and a bit of a snot. Lucy Peacock’s is a feisty Hostess, with a wild and ragged look in her eyes as she spits out her words with authority. Bethany Jillard offers a giggling and beguiling Catherine, while Deborah Hay’s Alice is warmly cute, a woman of active body parts.
Director McAnuff ensures that a clearly and precisely emphasized reading of the text will guide our understanding of the play’s unfolding events. Robert Brill’s massive wood beamed set stresses verticals that dominate the players metaphorically as history might, while Michael Walton’s lighting shapes them with old master contours. McAnuff likes bold theatrical effects and we have banner waving, a crown of archers terrifying stage hands back stage, prisoners burned alive with much screaming in a partially seen dungeon, and a procession and piling of corpses that is chilling. Paul Tazewell’s costumes offer a sometimes dazzling and always detailed and enticing blend of colours and textures, both of fabric and of metal.
McAnuff stresses solid placement of actors on the stage and dynamic movement of groupings, especially in exciting battle scenes. At times actors and drummers are placed throughout the theatre. Having the chorus spoken by individual actors doing single lines gives the sense of history experienced by individuals and, finally, an almond shaped guitar is used on a Stratford stage to approximate instruments used at the time. The Beatles Revolution blaring and the Canadian flag waving at the end suggest – oh no! – contemporary relevance. There is much ado in this production, but with a miscast center it doesn’t always hold together.
WANDERLUST
In Wanderlust, the poet Robert Service inhabits the “land of the imagination” and from his own imagination Morris Panych has produced a mostly fictional account of Service creating his famous and lesser known poems. Several ongoing tensions drive this delightfully easygoing musical forward. Will the poet keep his day job in the bank or will he chuck it all and go north? Will Louise, engaged to Dan McGrew and declaring her love for Service, chuck the engagement and join her Robert on his northward trek? Will Robert’s imagination generate new poems as he toils away at numbers in the bank, in a soul-killing existence of tedium? Or can Robert work in this bank and still keep on good terms with “a land of beyond” in his creative spirit?
Panych’s text is perky and propelled, witty and fresh, clever with engaging repartee and dramatic human interaction. Marek Norman’s musical score can be invigorating and fun as in the dynamically staged numbers based on The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew, or sometimes pleasantly functional, and sometimes generic bordering on the easily sentimental. Overall, the music does an effective job in carrying the tale and the poems along in this spirited, amusing, and sometimes touching production that offers much to entertain.
We begin with Service contemplating a blank page as he sings the tentative lines of his new poem. He’s unsure about “skirts of the sky” as Mr. McGee the bank manager enters, suggests some disapproval of Service “working on another poem” and sings of wanderlust. One quickly comes to feel the tedium of working in this uninspiring milieu through both Panych’s instinct for movement on a stage and his effectively used nod to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. There is much engaging activity here, say, the transformation of a bank to a saloon or a row of desks that becomes a sled and a team of huskies, plus some dreamlike sequences, all of which, with Diana Coatsworth’s robust and celebratory choreography, make for a very active production.
Wanderlust is full of juicy performances that give much texture to a rather simple narrative line. Tom Rooney’s Service is a flippant and engaging smartass of a young man who, understandably, doesn’t fit into this bureaucratic “wasteland”. No wonder he declares, “I am dying here” and we believe his realization that “a person of your own making is better than someone else’s”. His true love is victim to a fact of life that the only saving course to follow “if you’re a woman” is to marry well. As Louise, Robin Hutton offers a warm and slightly heated performance expressed in a dramatic voice of definite impact. Her fiancé, played by Dan Chameroy, presents an ever-threatening presence that lurks in his every move and he constantly seems on the verge of doing our good poet in.
As bank manager Mr. Mcgee, Randy Hughson is folksy and gruff but somehow sympathetic with Service’s dreamy obsessions. “The bank is all there is,” he declares, yet he is the one male character who conveys street smarts for a world beyond the bank’s vaults. He reminds one of a thin Burl Ives (was Burl Ives ever thin?). Lucy Peacock’s Mrs. Munsch is broadly played as, well, a broad, one who is deliciously lusty and naturally seductive. After all, Services’s landlady was once a “femme de la nuit” in Dawson City. Funniest line is McGee’s, “Can’t you make a point without composing it?” Best theme line? Service’s “Poetry is the only thing that is real.”
PIRATES OF PENZANCE
Stratford’s anything goes and untraditional production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance opens with a Victorian back stage setting. A caretaker sweeps the floor, dancers do their ballet exercises, an actress has her corset tightened while another scans her script, and then, neatly done in a minute, we are front of house with a multi level set to behold and robust manly singing to hear. Director Ethan McSweeny gives us a Pirates of Penzance that uses every opportunity for physical gags and routines, one that revels in silent film melodramatics with their exaggerated gestures and posturing, and a big screen feel that is constantly active from corner to corner.
We even have a deep sea diver, a touch of keystone cops aka Bobbies, and an atmosphere of easy going non-stop tongue in cheek. The female ensemble is cheery and perky, full of proper smiles, ready for fun, and each one is hungry for a hubby. The pirates are garbed in a chaos of colour, including one who seems a clone of Leon Russell, and often throughout, with all the characters, voice and persona are mirrors one to the other.
The leading characters are enjoyable and Kyle Blair’s Frederic is a special gem. This Frederic is a lad with school boyish looks and charm, assertive but delicate and flexible pipes, and one whose motto is “duty is before all”. The Pirate King of Sean Arbuckle presents a high buzz in facial expression and bodily stance, and an appealing confidence in manner. Amy Wallis’s Maybelle, poorly miked at upper levels, is an enjoyable self-spoofing coloratura with playful and sometimes devious eyes and a chirping ring in her voice.
Ruth, played by Gabrielle Jones, is endearingly forty-seven, charmingly determined, and a pleasing blend of the human and the comic. As the very model of a modern major General, C. David Johnson, when not driven beyond our comprehension by the orchestra’s brisk tempo, is a pleasing fatherly presence with a not too stiff an upper lip.
Final curtain inspires immediate cheers and a standing ovation. With all complications resolved in “Queen Victoria’s name” – the queen herself makes an appearance – and with the outlaw pirates discovered to be “noble men who have gone wrong” and a leggy wedding dance, at least from knee to ankle, this production has certainly been geared for entertainment. To what extent it violates one’s limits of flexibility in Gilbert and Sullivan interpretation, you must decide. This Pirates of Penzance is definitely not D’Oyly Carte, to be sure, and it often sacrifices the quaint charm and polite wit of the original conception. But it does achieve its intention to try anything and entertain in a big way.
42ND STREET
“You’re every girl who ever kicked up a heel in the chorus” and “Our lives are in your hands” and the well-known “You’re going out there a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star.” Of course these familiar lines from 42nd Street are classic showbiz stuff from the star-is-injured-and-understudy-gloriously-saves-the day genre. It’s a plot line that always inspires, always feels good, and that’s what director Gary Griffin’s production achieves. I tapped my toes and smiled throughout.
I remember the opening night of 42nd Street on Broadway in 1980, the curtain partially going up to reveal what seemed an infinite number of legs tapping madly, the audience going nuts in reaction, and producer David Merrick’s announcement at the end that the show’s director Gower Champion had died that afternoon. Stratford’s version is more intimate than this predecessor but feels big, partly because the inner energy of this production is hard to resist.
Who can deny a swinging band extended over the playing stage and thus integrated into the dances and punching out the tempo? Or the rows of brightly blazing marquee light bulbs that frame the show? Or the chirping and dreamy chorus girls in their surreal and cutely suggestive Busby Berkley formations. Yes, lots of lights, high kicks, smiles as bright as any marquee, zippy get-to-the-point dialogue, and an air of hopeful enthusiasm throughout all do the trick.
The cast here are appealing and several are distinct pleasures. As Billy, Kyle Blair owns a firm and creamy tenor, a light of foot agility that conjures up shades of the great Fred, an unwavering youthfulness, a natural demeanor, and a sense of unforced presence in his movements. Cynthia Dale’s Dorothy is a snippy, bitchy, abusive, self-indulgent, and demanding creature. She’s a woman of haughtiness who seems to look up at the stars while she looks down on everyone else. Of course, Dorothy comes to her senses, gives her anxious replacement an inspiring pep talk, and realizes that “the only thing that ever mattered’ is her guy Pat.
Pat, played by C. David Johnson, has a warm and past-his-prime quality and consistently proves a straight ahead nice guy. Sean Arbuckle plays Julian Marsh like an introverted low-key hood, probably since he uses hoods to do his dirty work, seems always peeved, and is less of a frantic mess than Warner Baxter in the 1933 film and more an introverted brooder. Gabrielle Jones is a solid, forward and pleasantly brassy Maggie who claims the stage whenever she appears.
Jennifer Rider-Shaw’s Peggy, of bright eyes and smile, is indeed “pretty hot stuff in the steps department” as she glides with a stylish airiness to her dancing steps. Although, unlike everyone else on the planet, it appears, I’m not a fan of the tonally tightened and throbbing upper range that seems the current idiom of female singers, Ms. Rider-Shaw takes this route only rarely and otherwise sings with pleasing timbre. In all, she is a dynamic and enjoyable performer, especially in pairing with Kyle Blair. At times she seems to dance like a soft breeze.