DICK GAUGHAN: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE RENOWNED SCOTTISH SINGER, GUITARIST AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST WHO APPEARS AT HUGH’S ROOM IN TORONTO WITH JASON WILSON ON SEPTEMBER 26

Posted on September 6, 2015 by strecker

Jason Wilson & Dick Gaughan

James Strecker: I was astounded to read that, because of the political nature of
some of your material, folk festivals refuse to book a musician of your stature and quality. What brought this restrictive situation about?

Dick Gaughan: In order to be completely accurate, that should read “some” folk
festivals, usually the larger ones. There are still some festivals and venues which have remained closer to the founding principles of the folk song revival and which look for some depth of engagement beyond passive consumption.

JS: I’ve read how you advocate responsibility and active participation, not passivity, as the duty of citizens in a society. Well, you have Cameron in London and we have Harper in Ottawa, so what is our responsibility now as these Conservatives reshape our political systems in their retrograde image? What specifically can we do?

DG: Having spent much of my life refusing to do what anyone else wanted me to do, I don’t feel qualified to start lecturing anyone else on what they should or shouldn’t do. The only suggestion I can make is to develop a solid bullshit detector, particularly when considering the pronouncements of politicians.

JS: You’ve commented about “Now Westlin Winds,” words by Robbie Burns
and sung often by you, that “This is the perfect song. It says everything it is conceivably possible to say about anything.” On the internet, people call your take on the song “sublime,” “an unbelievably perfect performance,” and “food for the soul.” Are there any other songs that almost do it all for you?

DG: I’ve never been able to find one. Some come close, but none do for me what that one does.

JS: Several musicians have told me of their concerns about music nowadays, how it is musically simplistic, how it is clichéd in all ways, how its lyrics address nothing but oneself, and how its audience is so uncritical and accepting of it. What can we do about this musical dead end?

DG: In a world of meaningless music, the most constructive course is for musicians to write and play music which has some meaning.

JS: Once, at one of your gigs, I asked a musician known for his
expertise on several instruments, what he thought of your performance
and he said, with a hint of awe in his voice, “I don’t know how he gets
all those notes.” If you were another musician listening to Dick
Gaughan, what would you say about his playing of guitar?

DG: To me, technique or technical ability is simply a means to an end,
it is not an end in itself. It is certainly a part of the craft of being a musician to develop one’s skills to the best of one’s ability. However, without meaningful context it simply becomes an exercise in cleverness. Technique which has no purpose other than saying “Look at the clever things I’ve trained myself to do” is,
to me, a complete turn-off. As I get older, I get much more interested in what someone has to say and much less so in how cleverly they say it.

JS: Your recording of Dominic Behan’s “Crooked Jack” resonates deeply
with me, partly because working in a factory almost ruined my father’s
fingers for playing the button accordion. Could you name a few of the
working class songs that reached deep into you when you first heard them?

DG: Much of what I heard growing up could be called “working class songs” but no such distinction was made back then. They were simply “songs”.

JS: Several singers have told me how at some point they realized that they had become quite good at what they were doing and as a result felt an inner compulsion to move into a different form of creativity. Any comment?

DG: When I feel confident enough that I’ve “become quite good at what
I do” I’d be able to answer that properly.

JS: In writing a song, how does one achieve a balance between message
and artistry? How does one make points about a subject which perhaps
angers one or causes one to despair, without resorting to an angry rant,
say about suffering or social injustice or fascistic politicians?

DG: Back to Brecht again, who expressed the opinion that “good politics never excuse bad art”. I accept completely that there are places where a slogan or rant are entirely appropriate, such as rallies or marches, but I don’t think a concert stage is one of them.

JS: In terms of how you see yourself as a person, what does Scotland mean to you? What, for you, does the issue of “Scottish identity” mean?

DG: It simply means to me “Who I am”. It’s neither better nor worse than any other culture, simply the one I understand and grew up within and which is the foundation for everything I do.

JS: In one of the Brit papers a few years ago –I think it was The Observer- there was an article on the current trend to stigmatize the poor. What other groups are there these days who are stigmatized and unfairly stereotyped?

DG: Essentially, most vulnerable groups which do not have the power to fight back.

JS: I know that you have had your share of breakdowns and that you lost your voice once for a whole year, so what did you learn as a result?

DG: That there is more to my existence than simply a voice.

JS: What impact on your future life did your difficult childhood have and what did it teach you that was useful for you as an adult?

DG: It didn’t occur to me that it was any more difficult than any other working class kid where I grew up. It was only when I reached my teens that the wide gulf between haves and have-nots became clear to me, clear enough that I wanted to do what I can to challenge it.

JS: You have said: “We live in a time that the ruling class maintains its power by a complete stranglehold on all elements of culture. Music’s been diluted down, particularly popular music which is part of the fashion industry essentially. It all has to be about me me me and my broken heart …everything’s been narrowed down to a limited range of topics.” You have also said that in 1978 you “walked away from RCA records” after “I had one small taste of the music industry and got the fuck out as fast as I could.” How would you remedy this situation which limits and distorts culture?

DG: Provide musicians with a way of making a decent living which doesn’t involve hawking ourselves to record companies.

JS: I want you to know that your collection “A Handful of Earth” is very special in my life and an album I often recommend to others. So, for a final question, how does Dick Gaughan feel about having meaningful impact on the many who value him?

DG: I never pay a great deal of attention to whether or not what I do has any deep lasting effect upon others. It is gratifying when it seems to do so, but it is not the main purpose. Becoming too motivated by audience response tends to result in one taking oneself too seriously.

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THE DIVINE: A PLAY FOR SARAH BERNHARDT AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL: A PRODUCTION THAT IS CHALLENGING, REWARDING, AND MEMORABLE THROUGH AND THROUGH

Posted on September 2, 2015 by strecker

Theatrical, of course. After all, this is a play titled The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt. But in Michel Marc Bouchard’s new work, we have, as well, theatrical in religion, in industry, in society, in intimate relations, in one’s very being. Moreover, under Jackie Maxwell’s inspired and centered direction, this production of Bouchard’s play confronts as it engages in each of these dimensions. At the same time, it resonates as a whole like a potent cleansing ritual that, as it ironically celebrates human potential, also hits home repeatedly that human essence is made of dirt. One is thus only hypocritically clean, never done with the past that cannot be undone, never free of one’s place in a social and economic world that darkens one’s spirit. Can there be light?

At the outset, with “lily-white beds” before us, we witness a young man climbing a ladder in a room that is both monumental and austere in atmosphere. He climbs upward slowly toward a window, toward the light. Symbolic, certainly, but he holds binoculars in his hand and the Divine he seeks here as we watch is not the God of his religion, but a divinity of the stage, the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt. She has come to Quebec City in 1905 to do her art, an art that feeds him. The young man, Michaud, is both a budding priest and a budding playwright, and the ecstasies open to both these pursuits, we find, overlap. We will soon be asking what, if anything, is pure and holy in what people do and what is not.

Church attire is referred to as costume by Michaud, a self-indulgent lad with money and social status behind him, who can fantasize the world into drama. For Talbot, brought to the Seminary by his mom and brother, this “costume” means an escape from the poverty to which his family is brutally condemned, a poverty which gives their conversation a subdued and tentative feel. The brother, Leo, has a perpetual cough from working in a shoe factory, the same factory that has given his mother’s back a spinal bend. But Michaud, always making notes for his play, sees Talbot as an authentic character he can write about. While Talbot condemns the artificiality of theatre, Michaud says of Bernhardt that “when she speaks, words take wings.” Is Michaud being mocked, or is theatre itself?

The next scene “housed” in the dormitory takes place in the factory where “The Boss” can easily afford a new suit and he can just as easily step down hard with his heel on a female agitator’s fingers. He is casual and smug in his brutality. At the same time, we are left to wonder if we have here Bouchard’s play about a play written by one of his characters or Michaud’s unwritten play already before us. And how is the playwright Bouchard himself a character in a play and which play is it? The scene changes here are quick and efficient and, as we note already how words cannot embody poverty, we next meet Bernhardt who, when told “You are extraordinary” responds, as if stating a divinely determined fact, “I know.” She also mocks those who come to see social dramas, those who at interval drink champagne that the poor depicted in such plays will never be near able to afford. We sense that this woman is both a self-indulgent actress and also an inherently theatrical human being, an actor both with and without a mask. If so, why go on stage? But then, if already spiritual, why become a priest? Bouchard implies many questions and makes us ask many more.

Brother Casgrain, a man with the firm bearing of authority, represents a church that forbids “books that destroy the soul.” He bluntly enters the lives of others with intention to have them obey, and yet can declare to Michaud, with unexpected and vulnerable tenderness, “Your presence is the only joy in life.” However, Casgrain will have the church save face –save its mask and stay in character- and buy such stability at any price. He will conceal Talbot’s sexual abuse, buy his silence by saving the latter’s family from the dregs of poverty, conceal one reality by offering another that serves self-interest and not ideals. One can be hypocritical in doing good, we find. And still, others may benefit.

It is ironic, then, when Sarah accuses Michaud of avoiding “the wretched aspects of human existence” since she herself filters such knowledge through the medium of theatre. “Let anger be your guide,” she tells him. Does she know the inadequacy of theatre, one that playwright Bouchard hits home, or that such “outrage” can lead not to the theatrical stage but to social revolution? She condemns the “yoke of the clergy,” observes that Canada is a country with no real men,” but lest we, the self-satisfied audience nod our heads or even cheer her on, Bouchard has her also declare, “I have no idea what one wears to a factory.” If, as actress, she is theatre to the world, then in outrage she is, in part, theatre to herself. She will soon be dressed in magnified white while others, at the factory are not.

Meanwhile, The Boss rehearses his brutally oppressed workers into another brand of performance, one for the visitor Sarah Bernhardt come to their factory. Like a capitalist exploiter, like a priest, like a playwright –all omnipotent in their own way- he implies their lines when he asks if they are happy. Their affirmative is like a chant from a congregation –the uncritical audience in religion- and soon Bernhardt will note that they answer her question before she asks it of them. Later Casgrain will remark that “your theatre is as harmless as a sermon” and indeed, in this play, Bouchard addresses so many of the self-critical questions that a writer, while looking honestly and deep into a mirror, must ask.

The price for not doing so, we find in Casgrain, is to –irony again- lose one’s human spirit while submitting to whatever the church may actually be and giving one’s soul to God. Again, Bouchard implies an existential dimension to his characters who exist only if they lie and others lie to them and others lie for them. Bouchard’s characters wrestle with being and identity and as such we who observe must do likewise since, if we treat theatre as entertainment removed from ourselves and not as a deepening reflection of what we are, we do not exist and our identity is nothing. Bouchard provides us in fact with an “either-or” when at the end of the play we have actress Bernhardt in a melodramatic stage performance and the same lady, now idealistic, also explaining the human value of her art which has just been artificial.

Bouchard’s play is an unrelenting study of the double-entendre of one’s very being. We speak what we are and, it here turns out, there is ever-present ambiguity in what we say and what we do. Jackie Maxwell’s production is a gripping blend of theatre and ritual, constantly fluid in its change of sets and realities. Moreover, with design of Michael Gianfrancesco, lighting of Bonnie Beecher, and John Gzowski’s sound, we are presented with a world that is cool yet inviting, austere yet seductive, bare but richly resonant, stylized but humanly immediate. It’s a setting of shapes, lighting, and sound with immediacy in impact that one cannot escape. Plain and simple, this is the world and these are our lives.

The program makes this note: “A dormitory in the prestigious Grand Seminary of Quebec houses all the scenes of the play” and certainly all the world’s a stage and it is not location but our being as such, in each context, that defines and describes each role we play. In presenting this demanding fact of existence, we have an exceptional cast, with characters delivered in a manner that is measured yet potently rich with untold lives and meanings. The Bernhardt of Fiona Reid is a woman of casual egoism who combines passion, insight about her art, cluelessness about societal conditions, and remoteness within her air of accessibility. She is both divine in her art and, because it is privilege alone that can afford her art, incidental to most other people’s lives. Reid conveys dynamism and power through understatement and suggestive poses or gestures, all while remaining, intriguingly, just out of reach. As with Michaud, others, an audience included, come to her.

Wade Bogert-O’Brien’s Talbot is complex, ripe with inner tensions, inwardly wounded and genuinely capable of elation. His struggle is palpable for both himself and for us, as we feel that he must choose from a table of impossibilities. Bogert-O’Brien, in this penetrating performance, makes us feel both sad with hopelessness and real to the world. Equally brilliant in unflinching creation, Ben Sanders as Michaud comes on strong initially as a sheltered and unbendingly enthusiastic. But, with his honed speech and observant mind, he reveals an undercurrent of one who is unwaveringly present to what the world presents. It’s compelling on Sanders’ part that he doesn’t “change” as such but he “develops” profoundly and we are further curious about his unspoken depths.

These two performances by Bogert-O’Brien and by Sanders are gems. But there are outstanding others as well. Equally unlived and strongly present is Martin Happer’s Brother Casgrain whose personal tragedy seeps into our consciousness over the course of the play. Being a man of deliberate secrets, he implies a life unlived or a life lived with too hard an impact on him, and thus his painful irresolution becomes ours. He is determined, but we always sense there’s a devastating reason for his being so. Mary Haney’s Mrs. Talbot is equally touching, a woman worn down by life who plays the part she must act, must be, in order to continue and we sense survival, sometimes fragile, within her. As expected with Haney, her compelling presence is here anchored firm and deep within character.

Ric Reid as The Boss is disturbing in his ease and indifferent acceptance of cruelty, especially since we witness ruined, struggling lives about him in his factory. Kyle Orzech as younger brother Leo gives his blend of noble purpose and the discovery of life’s cruel truths a genuinely youthful feeling of pain. Once again, ideals do not come through without dents and bruises, if at all. But such, indeed, is one lesson of Bouchard’s remarkable play. We are entertained by this very theatrical creation, to be sure, but we are also then disturbed, as a result, when compelled to resolve somehow what we see and hear and then imagine in the theatre of our minds. It is here that anything goes and our roles are never resolved or defined. Thanks to top-notch directing and acting, we are certainly fueled with ideas and feelings which we cannot leave be. We may try to ignore such art, but we cannot escape its presence, its implied demands on us to be humanly better than we have been.

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THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL’S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL -PROFOUND, MOVING, POTENT AND UNCOMPROMISING- A PRODUCTION THAT ALL SHOULD SEE

Posted on August 20, 2015 by strecker

The Shaw Festival’s production of Tony Kushner’s “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” resonates with deep and elusive truth on a number of levels. We in the audience cannot avoid what we hear and see before us, often unrelenting and impossibly difficult to resolve as it is, but we can try to understand the complexities of each character and try, perhaps, to recognize what realities there are here about ourselves that we choose to avoid. There is human rawness before us, one which is certainly different from emotions played on television to tinkling pianos that telegraph them. Rather, the music here is in the writing, the acting, and the direction, and it sings in many shadings of the human heart. This production offers many truths and if we run from them we run from ourselves. Each character’s struggle is a mirror to part of our existence.

One strength of Eda Holmes’ take on Kushner is that, although we have only partial indication of who each character is, we do know, in the complexity of his or her life, how each feels intensely and how each fucks up. In every self- destructive relationship – like that of Steven Sutcliffe’s Phil and Ben Sanders’ hustler Eli, or Kelly Fox’s Empty and her ex, Adam, played by Thom Marriott – we cannot feel any certainty about whom to believe or which side to take. We watch people like ourselves in some way falling apart, turning bitter, becoming withdrawn, or escaping into an inner distance of some kind. We are taken into a family and its extensions, with all the yelling and pushing and all the shouting others down, even as each draws others closer to them. These people speak articulate and often intellectually literate words, even as they also speak truth-rooted, rip your guts out dialogue with its unending and unresolvable human issues. Each character seems the tip of a very deep psychological iceberg.

In this family centered play, the father Gus, his children, his sister Clio, Empty’s ex and some partners together display resentment in all directions and make admissions, like Gus to daughter Empty: “Maybe I kept too much of you to myself.” Their family gatherings are every one a family battleground in which one hurls a personal pain into the collective family pot and rarely gets heard in the many simultaneous conversations. These are worn down lives, each one bound to ties that destroy them, and it’s no wonder that Empty declares, “I just want to be anyplace else,” even as they protect the fuck ups of one another. Meanwhile, we have talk of the connection of Marxist theory and sex, the impact of one’s suicide on the others, organized labour in the Reagan era, gay children in gay relationships, impending economic collapse, parental damage to children, selling the family home, and whether one gives up on revolution and joins the status quo. In all of this, one never has a handle on life.

Eda Holmes directs this production with precise and subtle understanding of how people function together, how they handle inner and outer turmoil, and how they tentatively look inward. She also maintains emotional and intellectual momentum in a play that clocks in at almost four hours. In return, each in her cast responds with a performance of honesty, depth and emotional courage. For one, Jim Mezon’s Gus, who must face a painful truth for an activist that, “Nothing changes.” He must accept that there is no future and that he can do nothing about it in “this hollow world of shit.” He is a man who erupts and cracks open all at one time, a man of regret who declares, “I could have been a classics guy, I would have loved doing that.” He is a man who must deal with life’s paradox: “The best thing I ever did was the worst thing I ever did”. And a man who looks his existence in the eye: “You want to live and I don’t any more”. Mezon’s is a monumental and nuanced performance.

Gus’s daughter, Kelly Fox’s Empty, is worldly-wise and sensual, wired and worn, a woman of high powered rawness, a woman whose inner pain develops over slow seconds of time. She has to understand and accept the reasons of a man, her father, who finds no longer a reason to live, and the reasons he wants to die. This is the father who made her: “I didn’t have baby stories from you, you gave me domestic workers’ statistics.” In this complex and true to the gut performance, Fox is an actress who can make a whole room hold its breath. Fiona Reid’s Clio, Gus’s sister and a former nun and former Maoist, is a woman of life experience and intuitive understanding that help her with impossible decisions. In one moment, Clio seems as flat as an apple squashed on the sidewalk, and then she is a woman guilt free and of will and wise resolution. There is an undercurrent of unspoken character in Reid’s performance, one that is mastery itself in creating a lifetime implied.

As Gus’s older son Phil, Steven Sutcliffe is both introspective and an inwardly volatile man who signals and acts out inner turmoil. He is “afraid of being a fearing man” and is one who also declares, “I have never know how to live without breaking.” To his father, he says simply, “Please don’t die”. He is also a man who blows his sister’s substantial wad of money on “a guy I loved”, a deed which the others must inwardly resolve. The guy is Ben Sanders’ Eli, an intensely manipulative and vulnerable man of ambiguous intentions, seemingly overt with much yet unspoken. We look for his centre and it keeps shifting. Meanwhile, Gus’s son Vito, Gray Powell, is a no-nonsense, no complications working man who sees his father’s labour union as corrupt and sees himself as the only one who actually works. Ergo, he is always at it with his father, partly because, once deceived, he feels he will never believe his father again. Vito tries to avoid his family’s conflicts and declares to his father, a man who has already tried suicide, “I won’t sit and watch you die.”

As Adam, Empty’s ex-husband, Thom Marriott, with subtle and understated intensity, suggests the inner conflict and personal needs of a man whose wife is now having a child with another woman. He conveys feeling intense emotion and also that he refrains from doing so, all at one time, and gives the constant impression that something unplanned in him will soon burst. As Maeve, Empty’s partner, Diana Donnelly is wide-eyed, dynamic, edgy, and non-stop hyper. She is a woman who uses her feelings in battle with others, a woman who implies she has been wronged and makes those in her presence seem scattered. As Paul, Phil’s partner, Andre Sills presents a man of assertive articulation, even as he inhabits a triangle in which a man needs the others for his own reasons and, in such needs, emotional knives come out. He provides a contrast to Phil of waffling needs, who “abandons things.”

In a small but definitely present role of Vito’s wife Sooze, Jasmine Chen adds spice to the familial madness and with implied experience observes, “I don’t know her excuse but everybody has one.” Julie Martell’s Michelle is a sobering presence near the play’s end, with this remark, “Did I want him dead? I did sometimes.” And then, paradoxically, with warmth and yet distance, she explains “Here is how you kill yourself” and thus she provides the option to enduring life and impossible relationships with others and oneself. Fortunately, because this is a profound production, without a false note in it, we understand that choice as very real. What is a life worth? What’s the point of living, with all our pettiness and all our absurdities? One mark of this production is that, over and over, it asks these hard questions. In this case, art has more guts than everyday people often do. Our lies are found out. What is our truth?

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SHAW FESTIVAL: J. M. BARRIE’S THE TWELVE POUND LOOK & MOSS HART’S LIGHT UP THE SKY

Posted on August 14, 2015 by strecker

THE TWELVE POUND LOOK
The typist, Kate, played by Moya O’Connell, is unknowingly hired by Lady Sims, played by Kate Besworth, to do some work for Sir Harry Sims, played by Patrick Galligan, and Kate turns out to be his ex. Before her arrival, however, Sims and Sims rehearse his knighthood ceremony and before that Tombes, Neil Barclay in fine voice, sings a song about “Eve and the apple in the bush” followed by Harveen Sandhu, as the maid, who bemoans how “women pay for what was done by Eve”.

Lady Sims then enters in regal attire to Rule Britannia on the piano. The levity here, in all of this, is unforced, seductively amusing, and acted with natural polish. When Sir Harry and Kate meet, he speaks with a clipped authority, which Galligan always does so well, and gloats that she now comes to him “as my servant.” She, meanwhile knows the score as a working woman and comes clipped in her efficient manner.

There is much unresolved in the several relationships here between Sir and Lady and between Sir and Kate. As Kate, O’Connell, while indicating there is much unspoken in her, suggests an ability to draw the flow of their mutual drama into her being. Meanwhile Galligan’s Sir Harry seems on the verge of explosion, both inner and outer. They each imply the intimacies that existed between them and how the effect of their separation still lingers for both. She finds a playful side to their drama, while he remains locked within a wounded rage.

The inner workings of their relationship makes for a palpably believable connection and, as it stands, Sir Harry likes to boast that he understands women and that he is a good husband while, in truth, his religion was a “success”, a success that was “suffocating me” Kate says. And, of course, we soon realize that a man of so little self-awareness might soon lose his second wife much as he did the first. This is a warmly human production of a warmly insightful and honest play, acted by all with keen sensitivity. Highly recommended.

LIGHT UP THE SKY
The Shaw Festival production of Moss Hart’s Light up the Sky, from 1948, albeit with some obvious enjoyment among others in the audience, is a frustrating experience. For one thing, Hart’s creation about a Boston, pre-Broadway run of a new play seems a repetitive and belabored attempt to extend the comic potential of a plot that, at least as we observe here, hasn’t enough to offer to keep us alert. We do not have much of a workable situation here with the possibility of engaging turns or complexities in plot or insights into comic character, but rather a situation of predictability.

Thus, in a nutshell, they all feel excited about the new play, they curse the play’s apparent failure on opening, they praise the play now seen for its box office potential. In the first act, all the laudatory talk about “your play” comes to sound like a set up hammered home. The presence of caged parrot who keeps repeating “Thank you, darling, SRO” seems too obviously an overdone device. Most troubling, the self-referential manner of some of these folks remains unearned and unexplored, an imposed cliché about theatrical people that doesn’t ring true.

Are we troubled by the play or its production? Indeed, one’s perceived failings in the play and those in this production at times blur together. Yes, we have stereotypes, but director Blair Williams does little to probe the human reasons for one’s becoming a stereotype in the first place. We, in some cases, have characters meant to serve a function of some kind, it seems, but it is hard to connect with a function that apparently had no option to be otherwise.

As well, with Hart’s given format of talking about the play in each of three acts, Williams doesn’t snap up the pace to keep his audience engaged in such repetition, but allows the play to rely on clichéd types to carry the humour. When he sets a level of frenzy, it seems imposed and even formulaic, not an extension of comedy in the text. These characters are given many things to do, but these seem outward directed by them and not inwardly born.

All the effusiveness, all the fake humility, all the shallowness of these theatrical types cannot go on so long without some indication, in each case, of why it exists. Who are these people? What are the possible reasons that they behave as they do? Even shallow people have a life. Even shallow people have something that we can sense is really at stake, no matter how small, when they resort to pretension or nastiness.

Given the above, we do have several characters who are realized as genuine human beings of implied human depth. In their cases we believe they live actual lives elsewhere, even as they function in service here of stage comedy. As the budding playwright, Peter Sloan, Charlie Gallant is subdued, vulnerable and also initially naïve in his belief in show biz people. Graeme Somerville, as the world-experienced playwright Owen Turner, does a compelling blend of semi-suave and human heart, all the way down to a lower register that implies sophistication.

Turner’s voice-of-experience encouragement for Sloan – “I felt the way you do now, but I stayed”- is genuinely touching. Fiona Byrne’s Miss Lowell is a lesson in understatement and silence implying a great deal. The rejected Stella of Laurie Paton also rings humanly and – humorously – true at the table, and we sense some wound in her bluster. Kelly Fox’s Frances certainly implies a life lived, ergo an always available edge in her manner of speech and movement. Whether the play really needs the characters of Stella and Frances, however, is another question.

On the other hand, one suspects – what is it? –a wrong call of sorts or even miscasting in conceiving some parts or situations. Claire Jullien, being an actor of a usually generous presence, doesn’t find in herself a completely self-centered and selfish bitch of a diva who selfishly wants all. She doesn’t dominate with an indifference to others. We sense no ice in the presence of her ego. Steven Sutcliffe, always capable of subtly suggesting much, is here given one note to play. Both characters have more to offer.

Thom Marriott is an actor who can reveal several inner processes simultaneously at work, but here, flexible and versatile as he is, at times seems more inconvenienced than driven as a money-hungry s.o.b of a producer. It’s an enjoyable performance, but should it be so enjoyable? Meanwhile, the playwright seems to coast or take unnecessary side-excursions, at times, with characters who distract. It is indeed arguable how sharply comic a production this might have been but, as it is, we are left to wonder.

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BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, THE GREAT DEBATE, PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, TOP GIRLS, AND A VEGAN WEEKEND AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL –PART III

Posted on August 13, 2015 by strecker

Above: Guitarist Marko Topchii, conductor JoAnn Falletta and the BPO  Below: Violinist Atis Bankas

BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
The Sunday July 20 performance by the Buffalo Philharmonic turns out to be the first ever symphonic concert on the Shaw Festival Stage. I have long wanted to make the trek to Buffalo to hear the BPO and after this performance I will certainly still be inclined to do so. We begin with the Barber of Seville Overture, which in the early stages, with JoAnn Falletta conducting, reveals a surprising lightness of being that verges on ethereal, a clarity of purpose overall, and a distinct balance of all sections. As expected, this Rossini favorite offers a charming sense of fun that, done lightly, is even more fun in not being obviously intended as such. Still, conductor and orchestra produce an underpinning of almost frenzied delicacy.

Next, a front row seat allows a detailed observation of guitarist Marko Topchii’s fingers at work. Yet with all the scales, with which composer Rodrigo shapes the musical contours of this famous work, one soon, at a dozen steps away, sinks into delighted awe at the soloist’s unshowy mastery of his instrument. Once again, the clarity of articulation in all the sections makes the composer’s intent seem more subtly deliberate in effect than lush. Falletta’s conception seems intended to have the listener realize the concerto’s emotional underpinnings through its musical development, all without being told what to feel through blatantly used orchestral devices. We are made to be freshly involved in this concerto we’ve heard often.

Thus, we pay attention to what the music has to offer, both intellectually and emotionally. Thus, also, we as listeners are gradually worked over by the mutually supportive elements at play here before us. One feels an implicit sense of anticipation in the music and, at the same time, an emotional undercurrent, as if the past is now giving voice to its unfulfilled self in the present. That is indeed an engaging effect. Falletta guides Rodrigo’s delicate musical threads with insightful deliberation and guitarist Topchii, with unflinching technique, gives the solo part for guitar an assured and almost conversational quality.

Topchii returns for an encore and, born in Kiev, offers the Great Gate of Kiev from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in which the guitarist’s many variations comprehensively and brilliantly explore the guitar’s potential in tone and texture. At one point, he offers an impressive simulation of a balalaika orchestra, but seemingly played by feathers. When Topchii bows to the audience, I shout Хорошо, to which this much-awarded guitarist partially, and almost shyly, smiles.

After the intermission, with solo violinist Atis Bankas in two selections by Tchaikovsky, conductor Falletta establishes a discreet but firmly present delicacy in shaping orchestral colours. Meanwhile, violinist Bankas makes ripe and rich linear statements in waves of emotion and one realizes how assured he is in developing such meaty and assertive musical offerings. One of Falletta’s skills, again, is her precise placement of orchestral values, without imposing them upon us. The listener is keenly aware of each work’s inner workings, as a result, and thoroughly engaged.

In Mozart’s Prague Symphony, Falletta stresses both inner humour and inner lyricism without pointing directly at either. We realize gradually this effect. At times one senses an orchestral suspension above a vortex of some kind, all the while sensing too a poised restraint. If this be a classical statement, within prescribed musical boundaries, such restraint nonetheless exudes anticipation with a twinkle at its core. Falletta may at times seem to prefer a clarity of musical purpose at hand over horizontal musical thrust, but then she also finds what seems like an awakening chirping in the woodwinds, for example, or what seems a bombastic indignation in the tutti passages.

In sum, Falletta’s precisely conceived musical intentions, and the BPO’s meticulous responsiveness, along with two technically impressive and delightfully imaginative soloists, all make for a memorable beginning to orchestral concerts at the Shaw Festival. Need we say “Encore?”

THE GREAT DEBATE: FAMOUS OR FORGOTTEN
The Great Debate is hosted by former Shaw Festival Artistic Director Christopher Newton. Four musical experts constitute a panel with this question in mind: What of today’s classical music will people be listening to in a hundred years? William Littler selects Rachmaninoff because “a good tune is important” and the composer created his music “not with head but with heart”. Rick Phillips adds that “piano music will be the reason that Rachmaninoff will survive.” Littler for his second choice opts for Korngold who “had a ballet mounted at age eleven at the Vienna State Opera.” Korngold influentially created a symphonic style of film music that “speaks directly to the heart.” Tom Allen adds that Korngold went to Hollywood as a “score doctor” and it’s agreed by all that “we have to move past prejudice against Hollywood music.”

Peter Hall notes that “rap is popular because it is rhythmic” and, arguably, “we wouldn’t have rap if we didn’t have Igor Stravinsky.” Rick Phillips states that “polytonality and harmony are what make Stravinsky influential” and Littler adds that only a handful of Stravinsky’s works are heard anymore. Peter Hall then says that “those who write for the stage know how to reach an audience” and his next choice is Leonard Bernstein. Admittedly, some of Bernstein, like the Chichester Psalms, is “unlistenable,” but West Side Story will certainly endure because we all have an immigrant background. Littler adds that not much other than West Side Story by Bernstein is being played nowadays.

Rick Phillips next chooses Prokofiev for his innovation, energy and lyricism and then Dimitri Shostakovich because most of his music is “unbelievably good,” although he did write bad stuff like the Oratorio on Reforestation. Littler adds that Shostakovich is played more in the West than in Russia these days. Tom Allen’s selection is Benjamin Britten and he notes that the gay composer’s opera Peter Grimes is full of beauty and terror. To this Rick Philipps adds that “Britten wrote a wide range of music and he was one of the most clever of 20th century composers.”

Rick Phillips also notes that Britten intended Grimes to be a poet and hated the anger in Jon Vickers’ interpretation of Grimes. Publicly, however, Britten was more discrete when asked about Vickers and responded “I’m sure he followed the score, so he was fine.” Allen ends with Bela Bartok and notes the composer’s background in field recordings of folk music, ergo his use of folk music in classical works. He notes too that Bartok wrote music to teach children.

No one mentions that all these composers have been dead at least twenty-five years (Bernstein) up to seventy-two years (Rachmaninoff) nor that we have a decent number of composers alive and composing or recently departed who too might be given repeated listens in 100 years. Meanwhile, I find myself looking eagerly ahead to the Borromeo String Quartet doing Bartok: The Complete String Quartets on August 6 at Toronto Summer Music. You don’t get that opportunity very often, all in one night, and I’ll be there.

NOTES ON A VEGAN’S WEEKEND AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL
Stayed again at the King George III Inn. For tormented souls who rise very early, what better option than to begin writing for the day on the second floor balcony overlooking the marina with sun rising over the Niagara River and gradually intensifying in one’s eyes, at which point one moves? This is a different world than one often gets with all its fluffy pillows and floral patterns up toward and beyond Queen Street. Or in Stratford which can be even worse in its studied quaintness. I have sat on the balcony here and imagined Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson throwing a fastball across the Niagara to the American side, I don’t know why.

Breakfast again at the Tiara Room one block up the street at Queen’s Landing, a room which promises and delivers a large, sunlight-filled space and a great view. I like a quiet corner here where I can write before and after and sometimes during my oatmeal, juice and endless coffee. The music on the speaker is 50s and 60s Sinatra which I and the waiter appreciate. It turns out that he prefers lighter plays and not the more “morose” ones that are sometimes produced with all the yelling and fighting. He wants to be “entertained.” I overhear a couple from the USA who have just spent a week at Stratford and now one at Shaw, and they say “we are so lucky.”

The NOTL Tourism Office is located in the same building as the Court House Theatre. I ask for leads on a vegan meal and the lady says “Zees Grill.” “Any others?” I ask. “Zees Grill,” she says. This is not accurate, since on several occasions we have enjoyed Ginger Restaurant with its two exquisite vegan options, one including my beloved staple tofu, plus helpful service and warm ambiance. For lunch I’ve been having my eggplant, roasted pepper and avocado sandwich (sans cheese) and gazpacho at Epicurean for years, usually on the shaded and very pleasant back patio. You can order ahead a vegan supper here and once I had mine while chatting with actor Bernard Behrens at the next table.

Fan’s Court which used to provide a number of vegan dishes, some with tofu, is long departed from NOTL. A soup and sandwich eatery, one that served vegan chili and vegan salads, lasted maybe two or three years near the Courthouse. A restaurant near the Royal George where the past two years I ate stuffed peppers or pizza, both vegan, is now closed or demolished, although I did try Bistro 66 next door for a salad one night. My discovery, however, was Little Red Rooster Restaurant on Mary Street near Hwy 55 which serves a huge “Veggie Stir-Fry” with a mound of rice in the middle.

The owner of Little Red Rooster is delightfully engaging and soon, although she is Asian, she confessed to inability with chopsticks. Each day she also provides a list of vegan pie offerings, with a crisp tasty crust, and I enjoyed apple the first time and strawberry-rhubarb the second. “Do you go to plays at the festival?” I wondered, to which she responded that she didn’t have to since many of the Festival’s actors eat at her restaurant. Later I enjoyed my second discovery, Il Gelato di Carlotta, at 59 Queen, which offers about six vegan gelato options each day. I love to sit outside on a bench with my surprisingly filling gelato and enjoy the warm and slightly haunted atmosphere of Queen Street on a warm summer’s night. The tourists are elsewhere, you can hear single footsteps, and the air feels ghostly, misty.

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PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, TOP GIRLS, THE BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC AND A VEGAN WEEKEND AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL –PART II

Posted on August 8, 2015 by strecker

Photos by David Cooper

It’s like a playful dare when Jenny L. Wright as Teacher turns to her audience and says “You may think we have gone too far.” But that is the point of Jackie Maxwell’s production of Peter and the Starcatcher, with its guiding purpose of blatantly going farther than too far. Maxwell establishes a high level of energy in this tightly controlled silliness, one which remains delightfully overwhelming throughout and without a pause for anyone to catch a breath. Her cast is dynamic and fluid and each one delightful in all-directions-at-once movement. They are always high voltage, assertive, and politely in your face. A tone of eagerness prevails, of youthful openness to wonder. One easily submits to the overall seductive silliness (that word again) of the thing.

Well, actually, one doesn’t submit, one is sucked in by the continuity of energy (that word again) and surprise, as story line hangs on hard and is almost demolished by myriad asides from this always clever bunch of pirates and children. The cast members display an agile and self-mocking physicality, a remarkably unforced inhabitation of kooky gestures and postures, all the while maintaining a concisely etched take on adventure tale characterization. Valerie Moore’s movement direction ensures that this is a kinetically bubbly show in which each movement surprises us. Keven LaMotte’s lighting ensures that shadows have physical presence and that figures are sculpted, sometimes eerily, by light.

Peter and the Starcatcher is projected as a large theatre show, but one that is squeezed a tad into the smaller Royal George Theatre venue. The result is one of impending joyful explosion and tightly compacted insanity. We have fifty shades of neon costumes of sexual and species ambiguity, and a set of, for one, huge body sized leaves. Two ships colliding is depicted, on the other hand, by two small scale models poking at each other at arm’s length. Meanwhile, director Maxwell keeps characters interesting and engaging in their dual purposes as dramatic individuals and as vehicles for clever text and action. At the same time, Judith Bowden’s design dances fantastical and gives us not a few colours selected from a palette but, instead, the whole damn palette itself.

This happily overwhelming production aims to be all things for all people and here are some: Inspirational as in Molly assuring Boy “To have faith is to have wings.” Sentimental as when Dickensian orphans explain that they can’t be told bed time stories because they have never had beds. Romantic as when Molly says to Boy “Write when you feel like it”. Childlike as when Lord Aster and Molly speak in “Dodo” or we hear repeatedly “I hate grownups”—this in a play that is sprinkled with many grownup references, say to the likes of Ayn Rand. Crude as when a fart is introduced by the crew and it becomes an ambiguous sounding motif throughout. Indeed, we receive a good portion of groan material as in “You’ve made your bed, Pan” and, of course, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” comes, at least in this show, with a kick in the balls.

The humour in this prequel to Peter Pan is always unanticipated and often current. Given a can of worms to eat, one lad requests “a vegetarian option”. When one pirate is called of all things “a thug” he has a much out of character cry and tantrum in reaction. We have reference to Myley Cyrus and twerking and the complaint that “The English invade the island and now nature has been focaccia-ed.” We also hear the warning “Don’t you touch one hair on that woman’s legs.” Naturally there is reference to theatre as in “Iambic is box office poison” or in this exchange, “He is chewing all the scenery” “Not in my scene he ain’t.” All this and much more comes at a fast clip while much chaotic stage movement -kitchen sink included- is going on. We are zapped with cleverness and characters who thoroughly delight. Praises to each cast member for pulling off a big show in a big way. As a result, we are happy.

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TOP GIRLS, PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, THE BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC AND A VEGAN WEEKEND AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL PART I

Posted on July 28, 2015 by strecker

Photo by David Cooper

Top Girls

Not long ago, I met a university student who very confidently declared, “I like Stephen Harper.” “And why is that?” I asked, incredulous. “Because he gets things done,” was his answer. “And at what human cost?” was my next question, but he didn’t seem to understand my meaning and this time he had no answer. He was a business student, wired no doubt for the “excellence” promised by universities hustling potential graduates nowadays for the corporate world. He seemed intent on quickly climbing a ladder to a career and had no time for either introspection or for human lives discounted in a culture whose ethos is financial gain. I thought about this student while watching Caryl Churchill’s brilliant play Top Girls at the Shaw Festival recently and realized how very relevant a play it still is.

Top Girls, from 1982, is a product of the Thatcher era in Britain, a time when a Conservative government was geared to “get things done.” As such, we have Marlene, now newly appointed as a managerial director at an employment agency, who soon declares “I hate the working class,” the very class from which she came. Her cost, we later find, is the loss of her daughter. Indeed, the theme of maternal loss of one’s babes is established by a remarkably-conceived opening scene, one during which we meet five other women selected from history, art, or culture.

These women too were compelled to give up their young children, their own flesh and blood. They include the legendary “Pope Joan,” a thirteenth century Japanese concubine, Isabella Bird who was “the first woman to address the Royal Geographical Society,” Dull Gret from Bruegel’s painting “Dulle Griet Leading an Army of Women to Pillage Hell,” and Patient Griselda who, as verification of her obedience to her husband, gave up two of their children.

This opening scene is gut-wrenchingly potent with its emotional complexity deftly realized by an incisively able cast. We have Claire Jullien as Pope Joan, the one who gave birth during a papal procession, played with invigorating and unwavering bite into her character, plight and all. There’s Lady Nijo of Julia Course, serene and evocatively understated as some of the women in Kenji Mizoguchi’s films. Isabella Bird is played by Catherine McGregor as dynamically poised and fiercely proper, while Laurie Paton’s Dull Gret is defiantly crude and blunt and unbending as she stuffs food into both her mouth and her bag. Meanwhile, Tara Rosling’s Patient Griselda seems the womanly embodiment of sky-infused earth.

The accounts of children taken and murdered, from all five, are deeply touching and, as Lady Nijo declares, “Nobody ever gave me back my children.” She also describes how women were beaten so they would deliver sons. Meanwhile, Fiona Byrne’s Marlene, the one who imagines and hosts this gathering, reveals an underpinning of wistful psychological need, even as she enjoys her authority over the waitress played distinctly herself and quite present by Tess Benger.

There is much overlapping chatter here as these women bounce emotionally off one another and gradually touch our hearts and make us compassionate to the wounds of their painful lives. This chatter, sometimes impressionistically-delivered as vague sounds and sometimes stiletto-precise, gets cut off often by a listener being distracted by another speaker seeking a new set of ears. The implied indifference to a woman speaking from her guts is subtly obvious for us to hear.

We pay close attention to the experience of five figures from the past, accounts of women suffering brutality at the hands of a patriarchal culture that always called the shots. We see the bottom side of male domination with its humiliation and dehumanization of women. But take us up to today, still with its unfeeling attitudes to human dignity, and we find that sisterhood does not yet prevail, that compassion for one’s fellow woman is not the norm.

If we are told that “men are such bullshitters,” we are also shown often in this production that women can be mean shits. Take this encounter: a female employment counsellor interviews a 46 year old woman who has “spent 20 years in middle management.” The latter, played by Tara Rosling, now sees young men she has trained rising above her in position. She notes, however, “I don’t care for working with women” and then, as a sign of her worth, adds, “I don’t drink.” To this, the counsellor, played by Claire Jullien, declares with a dismissive iciness that is quite palpable, “Good for you” and we sense now a war of generations within the ranks of women.

When Howard’s wife, played with exquisite shadings of feeling by Laurie Paton, comes to see Marlene who has won a position coveted by Howard, she explains that her husband will have a hard time “working for a woman.” She implies a need of special consideration for “a man of Howard’s age,” and even that Marlene should step aside for the male to take her new position. Howard’s wife soon deems the uncompliant Marlene as a “ballbreaker” since her own survival requires that she stand by her man and the patriarchal system, woman-suppressive as it is, of which he is a part.

At one point, two women in conversation each declare, “I’m not very nice” and indeed we see women at war with one another throughout Churchill’s uncompromising play. Young teen Angie declares to younger friend Kit, played by Tess Benger with an easy precision that is most believable, that she wants to “kill” her mother. We see a love-hate connection between the two friends – and between mother and daughter, when the former declares, “You fucking little cunt, you can stay there and die.”

Later, when two colleagues of Marlene congratulate her on her new position, their “We are happy for you” reeks of insincerity. When Marlene observes Angie, she declares, “She’s not going to make it,” and does so not with maternal concern but with bureaucratic dismissiveness. Love-hate is also the norm when the two sisters, Marlene who is now getting things done in the Thatcher world and Joyce who remains defiantly working class, have it out. Here we have not only longstanding familial animosities, but political ones too, in this confrontation. It is a tense scene full of rich emotional human fibre. We discover that terms like feminism and class struggle indeed have a very human dimension, one that might get lost in university seminars that ponder the past.

This Shaw Festival production is often gripping theatre. We have a variety of intriguing characters, implicit dramatic issues that no matter the tension cannot be resolved, potent interactions of all kinds, a first act that is one of the most theatrical and heart-provoking in the dramatic canon, a cast of sometimes inspired performances, and relevance for today without question. We have a play, though in something of a distracting production of it, that shows how the best way to comprehend an era is by understanding the lives who live it, the lives who interact with others in a similarly trying or quite different situations.

Two issues, then. Director Vikki Anderson’s decision to have these women at dressing tables and getting into both makeup and character –yes, we ‘get it’ that women have been forced to play roles in male-dominated societies – feels unnecessarily gimmicky. It’s as if directorial concept wants to prevail over the playwright’s passionate, evocative, and humanly precise writing for these characters.

Equally distracting is the very loud blast from the past soundtrack of golden oldies which, with their blunt familiarity, are much an intrusion into Churchill’s engaging subtleties of characters whom we slowly come to understand. Why would one use such devices and force the play to be dramatically removed from our lives and even turn it into an artefact from the past? Plays from any past that have the guts to face their time will always be a relevant inspiration for us to face ours.

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CHRISTEL BARTELSE: AN INTERVIEW WITH WRITER, PRODUCER, CLOWN, TEACHER, COMEDIAN – AND CREATOR OF “ONEYMOON” NOW ON ITS WAY TO EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE

Posted on July 27, 2015 by strecker

Canadian Comedy Award Nominee Christel Bartelse, now appearing at the Hamilton Fringe Festival, will soon be taking her new show, “Oneymoon,” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This interview took place in July of 2015.

James Strecker: Actor Ed Asner once told me the famous story about a comedian who, as he was dying, was asked if it was hard to do, to which he responded, “Not as hard as comedy.” So tell me some of the reasons why comedy is difficult to create and perform and how you overcome these difficulties. Or is comedy easy for you?

Christel Bartelse: Comedy is brutally hard, but, when you love what you do, it makes it easier. I love to make people laugh. But really, I write what I know about and try to find the funny in the situation. Of course, what I find funny, may not be what someone else finds funny and therein lies the challenge. I’m constantly re-writing and tweaking to get the most out of the joke, or the moment. I also know and spend time with a lot of funny people who inspire me and keep me sharp.

JS: I was amazed last night at your performance of “Oneymoon” how physically demanding a show it is. How do you keep your body fit for a performance like this and also how do you keep your voice in good condition?

CB:I have to admit I am tired, but then I remind myself that in the UK I’ll have over 22 performances so, if I’m tired now after 9 shows, I’m in trouble. I do a lot of yoga and stretching, which I have to do, but luckily enjoy. I’ve always been an active person and a physical person, it is what I love doing, this pushing myself to new levels – although, with each passing year, I’m noticing my age. Ha! Last year I tore my ACL, which was both terrifying and painful. Since then, it’s just slightly affected what I can do on stage. But this show keeps me fit. The show is my exercise during my run. As for my voice, I do worry. What tires it out more than the show, however, is the constant flyering I do, which will of course be constant in Edinburgh. I’ll have to take good care of it. Resting when I can, lots of hot tea, and the occasional whiskey. I love talking and never stop, but I do have to force myself to. If I do over 10 shows or so, I usually get myself a Mic, which helps take some of the strain off the ole vocal chords. I actually have always wanted to create a silent show, but no one believes I could do this, ha!

JS: In this one hour performance, you have to maintain an arc for your character and a development of the story while, at the same time, realizing all the potential of each scene, so how do you satisfy all these demands and what pitfalls do you face as you do?

CB: That’s funny because the night you saw it, I actually think I blanked. It’s so frightening as a performer when this happens. Luckily, I love improvising and playing with the audience, so I just incorporated it into the show. Also, Caroline Bierman, my character, is strangely my alter ego, so she’s just a heightened version of me, so it’s not too much of a stretch. The hardest part is that I often go off script, and sometimes I get carried away and have to remember my place in the script and make sure to bring it back and not risk undermining the arc of the show.

JS: One thing I like about the show is your implicit but subtly understated understanding of how people struggle to live and what becomes of them as they do. Could you explain how you manage to pull this off in such a very funny show?

CB: Why thank you. I didn’t know I did that so well. Again, I just write what I know and then try to find the funny. I think this show has a universal message because we all struggle to find love, and we all struggle with loneliness. And often, even in a relationship, you can be lonely. I think the show has something for everyone and that’s why people can relate or enjoy it.

JS: Something else I appreciated was your sense of timing, the length of time you pause before speaking again. How does one know whether to wait three seconds instead of two, say, and how does one learn such an essential skill?

CB: Timing is so important. I actually am well aware when my timing is off. I was speaking after my show to Colette Kendall, who does The CockWhisperer, and we were discussing that it’s amazing how aware you are when this happens. You just have to get it back. But sometimes you just have an off night. It happens. This is something that does take time to figure out. You can do a joke one night, and then again the next night with a little more of a pause and it may have more impact. You play and find this as you go. But it’s quite obvious when one’s timing is off. Breathing is key. I do teach my students to B-R-E-A-T-H-E. And in every show I remind myself: “Take a breath. Pause & breathe.” You also are hoping for laughs, so once you get your show in front of an audience, the timing changes. You don’t want to barrel through the laughter either. Enjoy the moment and just as it’s dying off, give them the next one. It’s a continuous process, you are constantly learning as you perform, especially with a relatively new show. When I did the first show in the run, it was around 50 minutes, and now it’s closer to an hour, so right there you can see the impact of timing and how it is constantly evolving as the show evolves.

JS: You teach in several areas, so maybe you could tell us what is difficult for your students about learning the following: Improv? Movement? Physical Comedy? Clown?

CB: I love Clown and I love teaching Clown, but it’s definitely the hardest art form to teach. It’s all about listening, listening, listening. To yourself and most importantly to the audience. And when you get a laugh, repeat. They always want to move on to the next thing. I say “We liked that, do it again” What’s difficult for my students is that most of them wish to be standup comedians, so in the beginning they don’t have the awareness that a joke can be funny with a physical punch up, an action, a pause, a breath. It’s really being in your body and not just in your head. I talk a lot about impulse and listening. And most of the work in my class is done in silence. It’s more about the physicality and facial expressions. A lot of my students end up loving Clown, but in the beginning I think everyone has a fear of “What the heck is this?”

JS: A few years ago, a clown from Cirque du Soleil explained for me how a clown in performance must be acutely tuned in to an audience and able to intensify their state of involvement, so could you explain some ways that a performer manoeuvers an audience to where the performer wants them to be emotionally and mentally too.

CB: My “signature” in all my shows is audience participation. But I know this isn’t for everyone. Luckily I do think I have a gift for this. I love bringing people up, but making them shine. Never to embarrass them. Making them have a moment on stage, where they helped the show along and the audience thinks, “Wow, that person was great. “ But yes, I need to be so acutely attuned to my audience and listen to who I bring up. I scan the audience right off the top of the show, I look at who would be great and who’s into the show off the top. Really looks like they are open to the entire experience. Once I have them, I coach them in the best way possible to make them shine. This run in Hamilton, I’ve been blessed with some of the best audience participants ever. Each night is a gift. But don’t get me wrong, I have a couple of great stories where I wasn’t so lucky. Not sure it was bad luck or maybe I wasn’t in tune that night and really picked the wrong person. In this case, the show often takes a dive. Then you have to hope to win over the audience again. I think that by having a close relationship with my audience it can help develop their empathy for the character. This is a particularly crucial element for my show – it won’t work if they don’t care about Caroline or aren’t invested in her emotionally.

JS: It’s gutsy to incorporate an audience into one’s performance, as you do, so please tell us what other risks there are for you and what you do when an interaction with an audience member isn’t working.

CB: I once had an audience member who wouldn’t leave the stage. I brought him up, his bit was done, it got a laugh and he just refused to leave. I think he wanted to carry on the “relationship” or the show with him in it. It got really awkward, but eventually the audience started yelling at him to get off the stage. They were totally on my side. Once he eventually returned, I made a joke and moved on. And I love the risk each night of picking someone. I do teach my students, however, if they are going to do this, you must always praise the audience and thank them for coming. I’m so grateful for anyone who comes, because they are helping me advance the show.

JS: How does a performer learn to “read” an audience and also how does one bring a somewhat dead audience to life?

CB: Someone once said to me, “Don’t ever blame the audience” and I do try to stick to this motto. If the audience is “dead,” it’s my job to get them to wake up. But I have to say, sometimes you just get a weird vibe and sometimes, no matter what you do, they may just not be with you, although, sometimes, silence just means they are listening. However, on the Fringe, you’re doing your show at so many different times that if you do get a noon audience or a midnight audience it can be different than an 8:00 pm show.

JS: What are all the reasons that your gig at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is important to you?

CB: This is huge for me. I’ve always wanted to go. I was always curious to see what this Festival is like and I’m finally going. So in a sense, I’m making my dream come true. That’s important. My top reasons for going are to check out the festival and see what it’s really about. To be inspired by so many artists. I also want to experience the UK market and to understand what direction I need to move in to create even stronger work. And, of course, to see how my show goes over there and the reaction among that audience versus North American audiences. I’ve been playing Canadian audiences for so long, and I L-O-V-E them, but I wonder what it will be like with a group of Scottish people in my crowd.

JS: What do you enjoy most about your career as a multi-dimensioned artist? What do you enjoy least?

CB: I love what I do. I feel so fortunate that I get to be doing my work, to paying audiences, and that if I can impact or change someone’s life or have them entertained, this brings me great joy. What I do find challenging is, because I have many focuses and do so much, it’s hard to sometimes throw myself fully into what I do 100%. I’m trying to write, produce, and perform and it gets to be a lot for one person. Which is what I probably enjoy least. So many times I do wish I had a solid team to help me. I’m so grateful always for my director, my tech, but it’s all the publicity and getting bums in seats that I do on my own, and it would be nice to get some help.

JS: I have to tell you that, when I’m feeling blah, I play the two minutes of your show “Chaotica” on YouTube, because it is one of the funniest takes on our absurd empty-headed culture that I’ve seen. What are your feelings about the place of absurdity in theatre – and in life in the world for that matter?

CB: That’s so awesome. I love that bit in Chaotica. I actually love that show, but it’s just hard to tour. But that aside, I love absurdist humour. This is what makes me laugh. It is important, both in life and theatre, to step outside the convention and norm and this is where true creativity comes alive.

JS: I know you have worked on and reworked ‘Oneymoon’ over several years and that you’re even now doing some revisions to it, so please tell us why a work takes so long to create and if one can ever be finally satisfied with a work one has created.

CB: I don’t think I’m ever satisfied. That’s just me. I think it can always be better and it’s never finished. But what I’m also learning is sometimes, we have to let it go. There is probably some danger in constantly changing it nightly as well. But I love that a show continues to evolve. As I grow, my show needs to change and grow.

JS: We certainly get an impression of you as a person from your performance, whether this be accurate or not. So how does your comedy reflect who you are and what is there about you that one might not guess from seeing your shows?

CB: I’d love to hear what impression you have of me. The fact I’m a high-energy neurotic, crazed perfectionist? That is about right. As I said, Caroline is a bit of my alter ego. So many of my reviews always state I’m a strong, confident performer. What one may not know is that I’m actually incredibly insecure about my work, and that I suffer from extreme nerves. Once I’m up there, I’m in my happy place, but before any show, is not a pleasant state for me.

JS: What do you want to be doing in five years from now?

CB: Five years from now, I still want to be performing. I don’t think that will ever go away. But I hope I’m getting better and better and would love to play bigger stages and have a producer. Someone who really believes in me and wants to support and help me 100 %. And maybe I’ll be playing in the UK. That’s one of the other reasons I’m super excited about Edinburgh. Oh, and of course, I’m hoping for financial security. I keep promising my husband and my family that one day the payoff will be huge –say I with a wink- but at the end of the day, it already is, as from a personal perspective, that I get to do what I love and that is something not a lot of people get to do. The security will follow……I hope…

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SWEET CHARITY AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL: ENERGY WITH A HUMAN HEART

Posted on July 18, 2015 by strecker

In the Shaw Festival production of Sweet Charity, director Morris Panych and his impressive cast reach under the stylized and safely distant entities that musical characters can easily become and find there a vibrant and unforced humanity. I took almost instantly to this warmly energetic production and could well understand both the standing ovation at final curtain and the enthusiastic buzz in the lobby afterwards. The audience doesn’t applaud only because they have been thoroughly entertained but, as well, because they have connected with the humanness of these characters and been moved by people like themselves.

In Julie Martell we have an instance where actor, character, and performance blend together to define the very active heart of this production. Martell’s Charity is loveable and loved and not simply because she is supposed to be. She isn’t the embodiment of the glitz of New York, but rather an ordinary and flawed human being who is trying, with all her cards on the table, to survive in it. Her sometimes tentative dancing seems the attempt of an endearing young woman to go with the flow in a town that is indifferent to her.

Martell’s Charity doesn’t dance with the clipped elan of a Broadway hoofer, but more the fun seeking enthusiasm of an ordinary person who must earn a living and find happiness as it comes. Dance isn’t a natural physical language for her, but an extension of her natural spontaneity. She is physically fun in all places and in the scene with Vittorio we get the impression that she would be thus in bed too. However, when she has this Italian heart throb on very human, albeit start struck terms, he of course goes for his estranged babe instead.

Charity Valentine is somewhat unpolished, even though she is a dance hall hostess. Her New Yorker’s qualities are her keenly in-tune ability to banter and her hip physical gestures, no pun intended. She seems like a child let loose in a store of goodies, as when, in the Italian celebrity’s bedroom where she asks, with a mixture of push and doubt, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He doesn’t pick up on the sexual cue but suggests instead that they eat, which they do. When Vittorio’s current squeeze turn up, he and Charity are like brother and sister conspirators.

Julie Martell’s Charity is someone you like, but might not at first notice. She seems to be a wandering innocent who goes all places and, whatever state of denial she might be in about her world, she remains resilient and fresh. She is comparatively short limbed and pleasantly ample of thigh and calf, sexy as someone you notice, perhaps, because you chanced a glimpse of her leg emerging from a short trench coat that she invariably inhabits and rarely seems to leave. She is the one who is always used in relationships, a sucker for anyone who sends affection her way. We love her husky giggle, her irresistibly wide smile and we are charmed to be on her side.

As an audience, we easily, maybe eagerly, blend into this Sweet Charity’s dynamic yet humanly-flavoured world. It is a place ripe with eccentricities and the stereotypes that some people wear as their true identities, if anyone actually possesses such an entity, though most can’t help being near genuine. We have humanity’s variety before us and often they appeal. Take Mark Uhre’s Vittorio Vidal, a man who wears his worldly experience lightly with inherent understanding and charm, and with a pleasantly smooth daily grace in his manner. We enjoy the connection of Charity and Vittorio because it seems to unfold, slightly rough-edged, yet kindly.

Jay Turvey’s Herman is the closest to a big city persona among the males. This fits, after all, since he’s the one who keeps the taxi dancers focused and geared to sell their dancefloor company at the dance hall. He wears New York abrasiveness, but with heart as a natural quality, and his perpetual doer’s buzz is quite wired. Moreover, he has a stylized musical voice of tonal variety, secure and fluid with even a rich falsetto, so he’s nice to have on stage.

As Oscar, Kyle Blair does a skillfully measured and annoyingly believable take on a young man who is more ordinary that ordinary, an embodiment of paranoid futility. For Charity, Oscar is the latest to be claimed as “the one” and as he sees in her a “virgin” of “purity” their duet of neediness, as a result, is touching. Throughout, he winces at his life. We feel sorry for him, though we wouldn’t want him in the same elevator as we.

Charity’s two workplace best pals are Melanie Phillipson’s Helene and Kimberley Rampersad’s Nickie, two gals in the dressing room and beyond who, street-smart as they are, pick up on lies and fantasies with quick and compassionate insight. We see them as genuinely friendly, distinctly sexy, worldly-wise no–nonsense women, but dreamers too. Helene, the blonde with a wounded faraway look in her eyes, seems like a gorgeous hot number now beginning her slow decline into worn beauty. Her physical glamour seems like body warmth in a cold world.

Nickie, with good line and legs that go on forever, has probably the best dancing chops on this stage. She’s a dynamic blend of knowing sass and fun, a radiant dancing presence, a woman both hot and cool. Nevertheless, the lives of all three are summarized by another dancer with this quip -“Who dances, we defend ourselves to music”- because the extras, though not included in the price for dances, are sometimes available.

Morris Panych directs not for the effect of bright lights to which so many young and hopeful aspire but, rather, an atmosphere of real people who are hanging on to hope even as they lose it. We are entertained, to be sure, nonstop, by this production, but for Panych the unrelenting pace of life that people live doesn’t stop for dance numbers but instead fits dance into a daily grind for survival. Parker Esse’s choreography, therefore, is often geared more to a mass effect than individual quirkiness, massively busy for a city that is, well, massively busy. People here endure by doing some fun time.

Neil Simon’s book is zippy with much back and forth banter, the kind that fuels a number of short New York City vignettes and brings constant mild eruptions of chuckle in the audience. Try this exchange: “Can you tell me what room Norman Mailer is reading poetry?” “At home, (because) nobody showed up.” I still laugh at that one. We also hear reference to “that big coffee break in the sky.”

Ken MacDonald’s multipurpose set is a gem of concise but imposing encapsulation of the biggest of cities -now a subway, now a club, now a walkway, lots of doors- and because this main structure weighs 8 tons, we subtly feel imposed upon in our private worlds, even squashed. Bonnie Beecher’s lighting, with its looming shadows within both urban landscape and so within human inner lives, gives an air of subtle foreboding and the aftertaste of half-digested despair.

We find ourselves tuned into this engaging production and maybe sense Giulietta Masina from Nights of Cabiria, on which Sweet Charity is based, looking down benevolently. One bonus in this show -no maybe about it- is Paul Sportelli’s orchestra. Very soon we notice a full bodied band displaying their chops to seductively swinging effect, a punchy and brassy drive in irresistible groves that don’t let go. It so easy to move with this music and dance, ourselves, even sitting in our seats.

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IBSEN’S THE LADY FROM THE SEA AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL: ANOTHER MUST-SEE GEM IN THE COURTHOUSE THEATRE

Posted on July 3, 2015 by strecker

A naked woman lies atop a solitary, eroded, but commanding rock formation. A duet of female voices is gradually consumed by an electronic soundscape. The woman turns away from the spirit-dominating darkness around her and, looking toward us, seems consumed by her own heavy breathing from fatigue—or is it from the desperation of anxiety? – and silence comes. In the fade out of light, she is alone, with eyes hollowed out by some distance within her, a naked body among elements — maybe earthly, maybe cosmic — she cannot control. She is naked to them.

We come to realize, not too slowly, that we share her solitude. And whatever domesticity ensues in Ibsen’s play The Lady from the Sea, it now can never be taken for granted, it can never be the same. Most in our culture use habit and diversion to escape solitude. Some are forced into courage and become such solitude, as it ennobles them and those who must know the depths within them. Ibsen, in this unforgettable production of his play, shows how the weight of social convention is too heavy for human spirit to bear. She shows one life at a breaking point.

And what follows this symbolically weighty and unsettling introduction? We meet a painter with a canvas on a portable easel before him. The sea he paints is no longer an inner dimension of the woman, the Lady, but a pleasing vista seen safely from afar. There is easy banter between the artist, played welcomingly gregarious by Neil Barclay, and Kyle Blair’s Lyngstrand, played self-indulgent and confident as insecure men tend to be before the world awakens them to their own posturing.

The woman to whom they refer turns out to be Ellida Wangel who loves to swim because “she loves the sea” and it “always brightens her spirits”. Indeed, she is “faithful to the sea,” but an undercurrent of tension arises when, in reference to herself, she notes that we must be “civilized”. Meanwhile, also now before us we have the pleasingly animated and securely assertive daughters of widower Dr. Wangel, a man who is brilliantly underplayed in unspoken self-awareness by Ric Reid. In Wangel’s ongoing and dignified attempt to understand, keep, and ultimately liberate his wife, Reid shows the essence of poignant and surprisingly casual understatement.

Ellida’s voice almost breaks when telling friend Professor Arnholm, played quietly vulnerable and meta-mild by Andrew Bunker, that “I need to tell someone.” We already sense a woman confined in herself, but also note that a very easy flow of banter is achieved in director Meg Roe’s perceptive direction with nothing too heavy, though implied, at this early stage of the play. Indeed, we join in tolerating the young artist’s romanticized notions and keep attentive to the overlapping exchanges in dialogue that remind one of such method in the films of Orson Welles. But each of the play’s three females is here a unique force, and the seething resentment in daughter Hilde is potent and verging on mean as, say, when she goads the incapacitated Lyngstrand.

Ellida, of course, is the most unsettled. “Being a second wife doesn’t suit you,” she is told and we believe her words, “I can’t help it if I ache for the sea”. Ellida denies her husband a sexual bed and is bound to a sailor she symbolically married long ago before he fled the law. This sailor, inseparable in all ways from the sea, has a “terrifying power” over her -“I see him all the time” she declares- and she is drawn to him in their cosmic-existential-sexual bond. She must “come freely” to him even as she fears “the temptation to surrender myself to the sea.” Meanwhile, she “struggles to breathe inland.”

Thus, married to Wangel, Ellida must choose to remain with him, uncemented as their bond might be, or submit herself and her vague passions to the seduction of the unknown, to the sailor, to the sea. “It has to be my choice,” she declares. “But it isn’t your choice,” responds Wangel, for this is Ibsen turf with its unquestioned and woman-stultifying institution of marriage at stake. “I’m anchorless here in your house,” she tells Wangel and indeed she needs no traditional bond to anchor her but, as we later find, a marriage that allows each partner the freedom to be what they are.

There are compelling parallels with the somewhat bitchy Hilde’s “longing” for one word of love from her remote stepmom, because she too needs a supportive intimate relationship. Daughter Bolette, for her part, declares, “I just want my life to start” and, owing to the poignant poise and heartfelt sparkle of Jacqueline Thair’s endearing performance, we already wonder about her future life. She is insightful and naturally mature, and we like her.

But such is the subtle potency of this humane and profound production that we are affected by all these characters as they suggest what they want and what they need, even as, in truth, we don’t really know who they are. And isn’t that the essence of a fruitful marital bond, that, as in theatre, the mate or the characters must be who they are so we ourselves can resonate with them and become more human than we have been. One hopes that viewers allow themselves to grow, to mature, as they watch a rich production such as this.

As with many productions over Jackie Maxwell’s tenure as Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival, The Lady from the Sea is of an exceptional quality and one hopes that many people will see it. It serves as an insightful look at human need, at the risky possibilities in a marital bond, at the psychological reconfigurations that are crucial to human connections, and at the mythical dimension of human existence that is too often made trite and easily accessible in popular media.

There are numerous subtly focused aspects here in this fine production that, in Erin Shields’ easy-flowing but substantial take on Ibsen’s play, ring with a no-nonsense relevance to our many facades of happiness and success. The most memorable, to me at least, is how Moya O’Connell as Ellida, contained by convention as she is but bound to an unknown that only she can know, tightens ever so slightly, more and more, with each word she speaks. A silence surrounds us all as we watch these fleeting moments when a human spirit tries precariously to survive, and it is very scary.

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