Rabbittown Theatre Company began performances of its New World Theatre Project on Saturday (June 19) in Cupids NL with two shows, The Tiring House by Chris Driedzic and  Caesar, adapted from William Shakespeare by Brad Hodder.

The New World’s inaugural season is part of the “Cupids 400” celebrations, which recognize the founding of Cupids in 1610 as the first English settlement in Canada.

In addition to The Tiring House and Caesar, the company will stage three other plays: Kerri MacDonald’s Feast of the Sword, “an historical re-imaging of” Cupids founder John Guy’s “journey to the New World”; Benn Pittman’s Colony of the Heart, which links the lives of early settlers in Cupids and present day Newfoundlanders who move to Alberta for work; and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Andy Jones as Bottom.

 The plays are performed on the Indeavour Stage, an interpretation of an Elizabethan- Jacobean playhouse.  The building suggests a cross between new world and old, as its materials are intended to look like they came from the dismantled ship that brought settlers to this shore, and its form is that of the place they left behind (sort of, as the settlers were from Bristol). The theatre itself can be disassembled and the company plans to tour shows along with the structure in the future.

The theatre was not quite finished for the June 19 opening—it did not yet have the sail canvas covering its roof, and the upper area playing space needed some finishing touches—but the timber skeleton was itself very handsome, evoking the inviting warmth of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon more than, say, the current Globe in London.

The building is nestled and the back of a treed grove, at Cupid’s Haven, once a church and now a B&B. The approach to the site offered classic glimpses of the Avalon peninsula’s tremendous beauty: rock outcroppings covered in evergreen forests are bracketed by a metallic sea and powder blue sky, and all is lit up in sharp contrast by a northern sun.

Hodder has done good work with Caesar. His script, which uses Shakespeare’s language and incident throughout, is highly economical, running to 80 minutes and employing just three actors. The result is a serious and thoughtful production that relies on some smart doubling of roles and work with props, including a red cloak that represents Julius Caesar in a puppet-like manner. The action concentrates on Dave Sullivan’s Brutus and Neil Butler’s Cassius, with Laura Huckle taking on roles from Portia to Mark Anthony to Brutus’ young servant. All three actors handle the verse well and deliver their lines with a naturalism rather than a “rhetorical” declamation (except in Brutus’ and Antony’s speeches at the forum). The actors do occasionally directly address the audience but much of the action remains behind the fourth wall.

Caesar is well worth the 75-minute drive from St. John’s, and if this show is any indication of the rest of the New World Theatre’s season, Rabbittown’s work will add considerable distinction to the Cupids 400 celebrations. This should be especially true once the other productions enter the repertoire, allowing audiences more specifically and consciously to reflect upon the act of commemoration that the town is now undertaking. The group of productions will play in rep throughout the summer.

For more details and ticket info call: 709-528-1610

The COC are in transition since Richard Bradshaw, their former Artistic Director, conductor and inspiration, suddenly died of a heart attack in August 2007, eleven months after leading Wagner’s Ring Cycle to open the new house.  2007-2008, the first season without Bradshaw, was already completely planned and booked.  Alexander Neef took over as Artistic Director in the fall of 2008, when the 2008-2009 season was already underway; therefore it would be fair to say that this past season (2009-2010) was the first real season for Neef.  One can’t help but wonder whether the quirkiness in the spring has anything to do with the leadership transition.

Christopher Alden’s production of The Flying Dutchman was the most disorienting of the three.  I thought I knew this production, one I’d long ago decided I loved. At least I felt that way about the version I’d seen with Allen Moyer’s design and costumes on the Hummingbird Centre stage a few years ago.  Why did it bother me transplanted to the intimate Four Seasons venue where previously I’d found it uplifting in the cavernous theatre on Front St?

I can think of at least two possible answers.  The theoretical explanation –which is much kinder to the COC—is to compare this experience to another comparable discrepancy.  I had the pleasure of seeing the great Canadian tenor Jon Vickers, one of the most important interpreters of the Wagnerian tenor roles onstage a few times in my life, and I always marvelled at his acting.  However what I’ve seen of him on video mostly leaves me cold. 

Why? Perhaps because Vickers produces Wagner resembling ancient Greek tragedy, making a mask of his face, and moving in a very still and sylized manner.  From a distance he’s stunningly heroic, unbearably powerful to watch.  On video he’s just a man, and no longer magical because the mask is broken by the indecent intimacy of the camera.  I believe something comparable occurs for me at the Four Seasons theatre, where the acoustic coddles the voices, and undercuts the universality I experienced across the vastness of the cavernous Hummingbird Centre.

Another possible explanation would be in my expectations going to see the COC nowadays, and the excellence to which I am accustomed in their new home.  In the Hummingbird I didn’t expect quite as much, and therefore was easily satisfied even when they were merely okay.  Alden & Moyer give us a concept that plays with Wagner’s original, yet does not seem to violate it totally.  Or at least I didn’t mind because in the other theatre I arrived with low expectations.  Nowadays, however, I expect better of the COC. 

The danger in the new theatre is that one can actually see what they’re doing. Oh my.  The set?  I was reminded of the house of the Wicked Witch of the East, after it had fallen from the sky, landing at a funny angle on the yellow brick road.  For much of Act I we watch Daland and his crew struggle in this bizarrely angled bungalow that pretends to be Daland’s ship, somehow marooned on the Four Seasons stage.  What looked electrifying and spacious in the old theatre now felt crowded, awkward and poorly conceived.  For example, the Dutchman sang his entire opening aria “Die frist ist um” from a spot upstage that was concealed from view for a significant portion of the audience.  In the old hall everything is so distant and impersonal, that one doesn’t quibble with such details.  While that gulf is not usually a good thing it could serve those operas that strive to be mythic rather than individualized, Wagner being one of the chief exponents of a more symbolist style.

And there’s a curious process of deconstruction at work somewhere in the collaboration of Alden and Moyer, in their response to the chorus.  The Dutchman is a spectre of sorts, commanding a ship full of ghosts.  For much of the opera, we’re led to be fearful of the ghost ship; one of the musical highpoints of the opera occurs when the ghosts finally emerge in the penultimate scene to taunt and terrify Daland’s crew.  Yet for some reason the strange costuming of the women and their odd choreography –both in the second and third acts—made them far scarier than you would expect.  Wagner’s opera is written as a tale of redemption, an allegory with at least some religious overtones.  But none of that survives in this production.  Instead of a comparatively innocent town full of males and females, among whom Senta sticks out for her ambition to redeem the Dutchman, we get a smalltown freak-show.  I was reminded of the Addams Family or the graphics of Edmund Gorey.  Why is the Act II Spinning Chorus conceived as a kind of Zombie parade?  As a result, the real ghosts are anticlimactic, and their ghastly thunder has been stolen by the scowling chorus.  I would have to ask what the designer and director were aiming for; why would they deconstruct the fearfulness of the ghosts, by putting other scary creatures onstage?    While I never objected to this (or noticed it!) in the big theatre, in a space that for me has been as suggestive of truth and sincerity as the new Four Seasons space, I was completely puzzled.  I suppose it’s a good news / bad news story.  The good news? What a great theatre space.  The bad? Whenever the chorus sang I cringed, which is particularly odd given that the COC chorus is almost always my favourite part of their productions.  But not this time.

Cringing, I awaited the mostly excellent soloists.  At its core this production of Flying Dutchman was rock solid.  Julie Makerov’s Senta easily rode the waves of the orchestra particularly in her 2^nd act ballad.  Her portrayal was often wide-eyed, seeming more inspired than deranged (as some Sentas appear), and genuinely conveying something between sympathy and love for the Dutchman.  Mats Almgren had previously won over the Toronto audience with his portrayal of Hagen, one of the cornerstones of the recent Ring Cycle.  As before, Almgren sang with a steel-edged precision as the Dutchman, unambiguously hitting his notes and enunciating clearly. 

The show was stolen from under them by Robert Kunzli’s Erik, in a role whose potential isn’t always exploited.  Erik gets some marvellous moments in this production, not just because he kills Senta in the last few minutes of the opera.  Whereas I found this absurd and disruptive in the Hummingbird, there was an organic logic to that outcome in the new house, where the madness of the principals comes into a very clear focus.  There’s probably a lesson in all this concerning the strengths and weakness of this wonderful theatre, and the kinds of shows that work best on that stage.

The COC production of The Flying Dutchman was not the only quirky production, however; there were also several troubling images in their new Idomeneo.  In the first half hour I struggled mightily against the approach used by director François de Carpentries , the set design of Siegfried Mayer, and the costumes of Karine Van Hercke.  In the opening aria of the opera, Ilia mourns the deaths of her family, lost in the recent Trojan War.  As she sings of the death of her father Priam, this Ilia –Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian –is apparently handling an actual body, one of several onstage that appear to be nude.  They’re not real dead people, nor are they actually naked but simply in some sort of body stocking; but that’s beside the point in this uncomfortably literal-minded exercise.  Bayrakdarian does her heroic best with this brutal pantomime.  While I was sympathetic to her stoic efforts, I felt that she was in the middle of a travesty.

Idomeneo is a challenging opera by any stretch of the imagination.  Mozart’s music cannot always overcome the static limits of the opera seria style.  The story includes elements that seem far-fetched even for an operatic plot.  Idomeneo escapes from a storm by means of an oath he swears to Neptune, as he promises to sacrifice the next person he meets onshore to honour the god, not expecting that he would run into his own son Idamante. 

Unexpectedly my resistance melted within two minutes of the arrival onstage by the Idomeneo of Paul Groves.  His first entrance was a wonderful coup de theatre.  Amid the noise and lightning of a thunderstorm we suddenly see a group of bodies thrown ashore as if tossed by waves.  The bodies seem to be dead, and the sophisticated theatre-goer (me) thinks, “Hmm, they must be mannequins or dummies in their completely macabre stillness.”  And then one of them moves.  And this seaweed covered mess of a man begins to sing, full of distress at his moment of survival.  Wow.  Whereas the quasi-naked Trojans got my back up moments earlier, now I had shivers running down my spine, as I was engulfed in this magical illusion.  I was persuaded also by Groves’ singing, first sounding so quiet in despair at the loss of his ship and comrades, then building bravely, including elaborated cadenzas in the da capo repeats in his arias.

The third important principal was the trouser role of Idamante, sung by Krisztina Szabo, in a convincing portrayal that, along with Groves & Bayrakdarian, played the opera completely straight.    Tamara Wilson, on the other hand, injected a campy levity into every moment she was on stage as Elettra.  Wilson easily stole the show, whether chewing the scenery in over-the-top displays of jealousy suitable for an old-fashioned diva, or channelling the 18^th century version of the Material Girl in her fantasies of a happy future complete with matching luggage.  But perhaps that’s inevitable when everyone else is serious, and poor rejected Elettra is so much fun, especially in her raging coloratura.

I had been hesitant at the beginning to accept the central story-book conceit of the production.  The stage picture suggested that we were reading an ancient tale, framing the action behind a scrim, and matching the artificiality of Mozart’s setting of the story.  But I was especially impressed by moments near the end in Idomeneo’s closing recitative & aria, when he seems to step outside the story (in front of the scrim).  The structural conceit is brought full circle, when the close of the opera echoes the utopian implications of the plot, as the people of Crete (a.k.a. the chorus) step through the scrim, out of the book, and make a kind of contact with the audience. 

The third opera—a rental of Stephen Lawless’ Dallas production of Maria Stuarda—is the most innocuous of the spring season, a whimsical reading showing a far lighter touch than the other two.   That should scarcely surprise anyone, considering that a bel canto opera naturally supports theatricality, being at its core highly artificial, and without the heaviness found in either the Mozart or the Wagner.  We’ve seen comparable flamboyance in such celebrated productions as the recent Metropolitan Opera Fille du Regiment, or the Italiana in Algieri at the COC of a few years back. 

Lawless’s choice to attempt that lightness in a serious opera seemed risky.  From the first scene we’re confronted with a daring re-imagining of the story of the love triangle among Elizabeth the 1^st, Mary Queen of Scots and the Earl of Leicester.    Lawless, Benoit Dugardyn (set designer), and Ingeborg Bernerth (costume designer) choose to invest Donizetti’s opera with the charged atmosphere of a play within a play (or opera within an opera), as if the principals strut an Elizabethan stage.  The stage picture resembles the view from inside such a stage staring downstage at the audience; for royalty, as we’ve seen in our own century through the lenses of the paparazzi, such is life. 

Donizetti’s opera is comparatively unknown, having been withdrawn from production in the composer’s lifetime and only revived in the last half-century. As with so many operas, Donizetti’s creation requires two rival divas, but in the process we get a version of Elizabeth I almost unrecognizable to modern Canadians.  This is not the heroic Elizabeth English speaking audiences know from films or the sympathetic figure we associate with Shakespeare, but a jealous and insecure woman scheming to kill the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots. 

Some of the design-direction choices seem rather odd, and have little if anything to do with the Elizabethan stage conceit mentioned above.  For example, in the second act, when Mary has a secret meeting with Elizabeth on the pretext of a hunt, we see several stags on the stage portrayed by dancers.  While the intention may be to suggest that Mary herself is in a comparable danger, the imagery jars the eye because of a sudden momentary shift in sensibility, an air of inexplicable mystery and symbol to which the design team never choose to return for the remainder of the opera. 

Later in the same act we go in an entirely different and unexpected direction, namely comedy.  The jealous queens confront one another in a scene playing up their vanity, earning several well-deserved laughs from the audience.  We’d already seen a bit of slapstick in the first act, when Elizabeth and her retinue stumble in a broad ensemble display.  It is only in the third act that Lawless fully surrenders to the tragic tone of the work.

Donizetti’s priority was to furnish virtuosi with great vehicles to sing rather than to tell an accurate version of the history of England, and it is on that basis that Maria Stuarda is persuasive.  The casting was especially supportive.  Alexandrina Pendatchanska brought an edgy sound to her reading of Elizabeth, in contrast to the sweeter sound of soprano Serena Farnocchia as Maria.  Pendatchanska’s choice to sing so much of the role in her chest may have been motivated simply by the low writing in the role, but nicely matches Donizetti’s creation of Elizabeth as a volatile diva in her own right, underlining the angrier moments.  Farnocchia’s softer sound seems to surrender to the harsh fate in store for Maria.  The triangle is completed in Eric Cutler’s reading of Roberto Earl of Leicester.  While he did manage to sing completely in tune, many of his high notes were in a head-voice bordering on falsetto, an approach that I do not find satisfying in this type of opera. 

The COC transition continues in the autumn with productions of Verdi’s Aida and Britten’s Death in Venice.

After a fastidious quarter-century of Opera Atelier their biggest triumph may now be in abandoning some of their trademark purism.  Elgin Theatre was the site of OA’s new production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. The intimate venue has never seemed a better fit for this company of youthful singers & dancers, supported by the gentle strains of Tafelmusik Orchestra. Every aspect shows a new maturity, a greater degree of ease, whether in the musical preparation & performance, the design or the dramaturgy.

While OA are an ensemble known for historicity, an in-your-face emphasis on youthful bodies in motion, and dance, in this production –a great success—they appear to have relaxed somewhat, moving away from their usual style. This Figaro could be from almost any opera company: and it’s wonderful. Opera Atelier appear to have grown up, less concerned with scholarship than wonderful music theatre.

There seems to be an unspoken agreement dividing operatic repertoire along historical lines between the two big companies in Toronto. While the Canadian Opera Company, operating in their new home at the Four Seasons Centre with their modern orchestra appears to focus on works since Mozart’s time (including an upcoming production of Idomeneo to appear in the next few weeks), Opera Atelier claims the almost two centuries of opera from the beginning of the form up to the death of Mozart. As one of the most popular composers Mozart makes a natural dividing line, a composer that both companies claim as their own, albeit in wildly divergent approaches. Where the COC utilizes a modern approach, OA productions all bear the interpretive mark of their co-Artistic Director, Marshall Pynkoski.

OA productions are typically unmistakeable, particularly in the emphasis on dance and a highly stylized movement vocabulary for the singers. Singers would sometimes seem to be posing as if in a picture; but that is scarcely surprising when paintings were used as source material to show OA how opera singers should look on a baroque stage. When we speak of a newfound maturity for OA that really means subtlety from Pynkoski and his team.

Music Director David Fallis now appears fully in control of every sound made by OA, and the result is unquestionably a great step forward. There was a greater sense of ease to the musical performance than in previous OA shows. Fallis’ dynamics are uniformly gentle, a firm but quiet presence unlike any I have ever heard in an opera. It was as if the orchestra were forever mindful of the singers: the way they should be. The rapport among the musicians was such that singers appeared fully immersed in their portrayals. One never saw those furtive glances towards a conductor that are telltale signs of a battle; their eyes were instead on one another, fully in character.

Fallis’ reading felt like a revelation. Why is it that just because a group of winds are asked to play that they must then bleat so loudly as to overwhelm the singers, as always seems to happen either in the final number of Act One or the opening of Act III?   But the Tafelmusik winds were always gentle and playful rather than overwhelming. The pace of Fallis’ reading was a big part of the evening’s success.  The entire opera comes in at three hours including the intermission, whereas conventional readings tend to be much slower, and as a result, an endurance test for the audience. The fleet-footed reading matches the opera perfectly, with no loss in the singers’ intelligibility, singing the English translation. Although we had surtitles to fall back on, the singers made sure that the text came through clearly, a remarkable achievement given that break-neck pace.

Figaro also looks much subtler, re-designed for this brand-new production by Martha Mann (costumes) and Gerard Gauci (set). Mann brings a particular self-assurance to the cast, no longer dressed as if stepping out of the pages of a Commedia dell’Arte history textbook, and as a result appearing far more comfortable. Previous colour schemes have been almost painful to the eye, admittedly correct from the history books, even though those classic designs were meant for stages lit by candles, not powerful modern lighting. Mann has mercifully fixed that in a luscious and sensuous colour palette that matches the sensuality of the story.

Pynkoski takes us back to the text. Unlike productions such as Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production at the Metropolitan Opera (where the class warfare between Figaro and the Count is so overt as to take the comedy in a very dark direction) Pynkoski does not get in the way of the comedy. Act I has a decidedly light touch throughout.

But that changes with the arrival of Peggy Kriha Dye’s Countess. Singing of her loneliness to open Act II, the opera discovers a genuine gravitas. This is not the usual static aria showing off the voice, but instead a physically eloquent display of tears and torment, a wonderfully moving display of heartbreak. Dye’s other big aria in the last act similarly raises the tone of the work, silencing an audience who have been laughing throughout. Whenever her servant Susanna, sung by Carla Huihtanen, joined her onstage, the comic tone returned. Huihtanen brought a subtle comic energy to the stage with every appearance. Her partner in crime, the Figaro of Olivier Laquerre, brought a very likeable presence to the stage, a tall agile body with a voice of comparable agility & enunciation.

The other principal was a bit of a surprise, given the way he represented a bit of a departure from normal Opera Atelier practice. Phillip Addis was the vocal star of the production –at least if the applause is any indication—in his portrayal of Count Almaviva.. Given OA’s apparent tendency to prefer youthful singers over genuine stars, Addis is a definite win, as a youthful performer with lots of voice. But the big difference from usual OA practice was on his head. His hairstyle resembles one of the spiky wigs we see in the film Amadeus. The use of such an anachronism represents a transgressive departure from the usually fastidious attention to period details. And wow, didn’t Addis’s Count look like a complete rake as a result, bringing a commanding presence to go with his lovely timbre.

There isn’t a weak link anywhere in this production. See if it you can, until May 1^st at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto.

Until Dec. 13 at The Factory Theatre, Toronto

The English language premiere of The Madonna Painter opened recently at Toronto’s Factory Theatre. It is the second play in the theatre’s 40th Anniversary Season of new Canadian work.

The Madonna Painter is not, in fact, entirely a new work: originally written in French by Québécois playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, it was translated into Italian for its first production in Florence in 2003, and Linda Gaboriau’s recent English language translation, was commissioned in 2008.  

Bouchard’s play is set in 1918 in the Lac St-Jean region of rural Québec; the story revolves around the village priest, doctor and a group of young women all conveniently named Mary. The priest (played by Marc Bendavid), a newcomer to the village, decides that the best way to ward off a creeping Spanish Flu epidemic is through the commissioning of a painting for the church, a fresco dedicated to the Virgin Mary that can function as a sort of aesthetic firewall from the virus while simultaneously providing comfort to the community in its time of need.

With the local doctor (Brian Dooley) acting as benefactor, the priest is able to secure the services of a wandering Italian artist (Juan Chioran) who insists that he select his model from the young women of the village. This premise of the foreign artist selecting his “virgin” from the community was a key source of inspiration for Bouchard in writing the play; a similar event occurred in his own Lac St-Jean parish in the 1950s and his recollections of what happens when high-minded art comes to a small God-fearing town became his starting point.

The endeavour to have the Madonna fresco come into being acts as the catalyst for a narrative which unfolds as the canvas Bouchard uses for his fable-like exploration of fear and desire, and an almost hermeneutic pursuit of truth as it may or may not appear in the work of art.

In its structure, the story has all the key elements of standard Canadian fare: the handsome, young, devout priest new to town, played against the local, irreverent (and creepy) doctor who holds the financial power to make the painting happen. Enter the suave Italian painter to throw the town into disarray and a Cinderella-esque selection of the least likely candidate to be his model, and The Madonna Painter might appear as a contemporary Canadian historical drama worthy of a CBC Sunday night movie.

But Michel Marc Bouchard has more in mind than that with his piece, calling the play “A bouquet of lies disguised as a fable.” He uses the setting of spirituality and fear as they existed in rural Québec near the end of the First World War, and in the face of a large pandemic, merely as the backdrop for his parable, a meta-narrative where the characters become the echoes of those people who inhabited the rural village that inspired his story.  

The elements of a classic fable are most evident in the characterization of the women in the play, the four Marys, who are each depicted with a special burden/talent: Mary Frances (Miranda Edwards) is a sensual, uninhibited storyteller, while Mary Anne (Shannon Taylor) is innocent and gullible, believing everything she hears; Mary Louise (Nicola Correia-Damude) has the ability to understand people by reading of the lines left in their bedding and Mary of the Secrets (Jenny Young) carries the darkest final words from the dying to a burial ground hidden deep in the forest. The symbolic presence of these women, which vacillates throughout from Greek chorus to coven, provides an almost magical quality to the narrative.

The set (designed by Sue LePage) serves this mystical quality of the play; the stage is encircled in a permanent state of nighttime forest darkness that becomes the site for the undoing of the Marys; their passion plays are carried out along the edges of the story. The central focus is on the interaction between the priest, doctor, and painter, most often in the indoors, within the wooden, rustic austerity of the church or doctor’s office as the characters undertake a battle of good versus evil. 

The characters each character has within them a certain wildness that is juxtaposed with their own particular brand of faith, the dance of the two creating the threads that weave together to tell the story, and the actors in the production certainly do an outstanding job in carrying out that task.

There are many threads to this fable, each unwinding and intertwining with others, offering the potential for a gorgeous piece of terrible beauty. But as a parable, the language of the play, meant to have a lyrical quality, often goes astray and it is quite possible that something of the desire for a poetic take on human nature has gotten lost in translation, a loss not only of the words but of the cultural context within which they are delivered.

Thematic tropes that lead us to the larger or more significant story being told might not translate so well from a rural Québec milieu to the urban Toronto one. The implicit understanding of the intersection between faith and superstition, as it existed at the time and place of the play, is built into the original language – a language with a lexicon of expletives based entirely on intricacies of Catholic dogma, and one that only serves to deepen the social significance of the faith in that region.

Or is it that the threads of the story get lost in the attempt to weaving them together? The details of the story itself interrupts the telling of it as a fable and the lesson gets lost in the narrative’s gaps. The lack of common sense in the behaviour of the citizens isn’t provided with enough cushioning to allow for a suspension of disbelief. Where is a practical, caustic grand-mère to shake a fist at the doctor for his gross violations? The practicalities lacking in the plot of the story disrupt the ability for the meta-narrative, the story as fable, to have the sublime quality, or “the clash of ecstasies” as Bouchard describes it, in its final outcome. The ugliness we are meant to experience in the pursuit of beauty isn’t quite a clash. The strength of the production might very well be in director Holmes’ choreographic sensibilities and in the subtleties of movement and placement in the revelation of the story’s major themes; the women creep through dark trees on the edge looking towards the light of the centre, while the men maintain the centre, steadily becoming darker, and thus rendering a bitter outcome for everyone.

In the end, the truth in this work of art is that people fall victim to the most mundane perils of the world – to their vanities, their lust, their ego, their faith or loss of it. The men judge each other in the battles of good against evil, and the women are left, as usual, to leap into space.

The Madonna Painter continues at Factory Theatre until December 13. An English Language production is slated for March 2010 at the Centaur Theatre  in Montreal.

 And that is probably where the similarities end.

Whereas the delicate set and costumes of Butterfly make it possibly the fastest production to set up or take down, of all possible operas that the COC has in its repertoire, Nightingale entails a setup so complex that its mise-en-scène upstages the work. But how can one argue with the results? For the second time, the COC handed Robert Lepage a daunting modernist project that he converted not just into an exciting evening of theatre, but a money-maker and guaranteed sell-out requiring additional performances to meet demand. The first time was in the early 1990s when Lepage staged the double bill of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schönberg’s Erwartung.

The current project appears to be every bit as forbidding, in the choice of unfamiliar repertoire from a composer known to be dissonant to the ear and difficult to execute. But Lepage and his company Ex Machina hand us a coup de theatre before the show begins. Opera is usually a daunting form to theatre practitioners, placing an enormous yawning orchestra pit full of musicians between the stage and the audience. Under normal circumstances, singers offer variously dramatic interpretations, but only after they have devoted themselves to the imposing task of learning their music and then singing their parts.

Not this time. Lepage evicts the orchestra, filling the pit with water. Did he need to do this? Possibly; but the strongest message it sends is that the normal business of the opera house has been overturned, and that the conductor has been removed from his usual place of oversight.

And the singers who usually give indifferent performances were in for a shock when they came to this production, which changes –if not completely subverts—their usual role. A singing-actor is in fact a curious hybrid, as some have previously observed. Julie Taymor for example, has used dancers with offstage singers in place of the usual hybrid. Lepage turns to the precedent of bun raku, the oriental style of puppets that are a compound figure comprised of a voice and manipulated puppet. The arbitrary separation of voice and animated body makes sense when we remember what opera has been for most of its history: a singer giving almost their entire attention to vocal production, while sparing a comparatively smaller part of their attention for their dramatic portrayal. In the past few decades this balance has shifted somewhat, but even the finest singing actors are required first to bring their vocal technique to a level where they can offer a good dramatic portrayal.

Lepage’s presentation of The Nightingale does not settle for singers who do a little acting. Instead we get puppets, some actually manipulated by the singers, and the singers coped remarkably well with the challenge. The gentlemen in question could hardly be accused of being prima donnas, to be singing, manipulating puppets, and all while slogging through water up to their waist. So in addition to the demotion of the orchestra and conductor, Lepage knocks at least some of his singers off their pedestal as well.

Does it work? I think it depends on where you sit. For the performance when I sat near the front, I was enchanted. But when I was up in the purgatory of the fifth circle–a location that acquired a genuinely Dantesque association—I could not see the show properly. Admittedly, the COC advertised the deficiencies of those seats in advance. Curiously, the appetite for tickets was so strong that nobody seemed to mind until they actually saw the show. The friends with whom I attended that second performance were decidedly unimpressed.

Why did Lepage do it this way, making so many of the puppets too small to be seen from anywhere but the best seats? After all there are some huge puppets in the show, and surely the expense was not the reason. I think there is a clear rationale when one looks at the climactic image of The Nightingale. For most of the opera humans manipulate small puppets, creating a scale that is appropriate for a chamber work. Then the Emperor goes to sleep. He is confronted by Death, a puppet that reverses the usual template with electrifying effect. Suddenly the human is tiny, surrounded by the huge expressive skeleton shape of Death. This reversal struck me as highly symbolic, making the fragile Emperor seem like the puppet, controlled by the powerful figure of Death. Without the tiny scale of the puppets in the rest of the opera, the effect would not have been as electrifying.

In fact, Nightingale comes across primarily as theatrical spectacle, and is only operatic en passant. The figure of the Nightingale is an irrepressible coloratura, capably sung by Olga Peretyatko. The remainder is picturesque, without testing the skills of the COC singers. The most successful singer of the evening—setting the gentle mood of the opening and close of the work, in addition to manipulating puppets—was Lothar Odinius as the Fisherman.

Stravinsky provided the remainder of the program’s Other Short Fables. Although there is one medium-sized work –The Fox, a vehicle for puppets of a completely different style from those in Nightingale—most of the first portion of the evening is a series of miniatures, more of a chamber concert than opera, helping to whet the audience’s appetite for the subsequent spectacle, in a series of works that require patient listening. Conductor Jonathan Darlington and the COC orchestra were more visible playing from the stage rather than the pit, bringing out the delicate colours as much as the occasional dissonance.

Lepage would never direct an opera like Butterfly, an opera that is usually done faithfully or without much directorial imprint because its stage directions are so explicit as to leave little room for a director to play. Whereas the Stravinsky works do not allow too much interpretation from the performers (notwithstanding Peretyatko’s vocalism) because the flamboyant mise en scène is the real star, Puccini’s opera lives or dies according to the skills of its stars, particularly the soprano entrusted with the role of Butterfly.  

The production from Brian MacDonald continues to shine in its new incarnation on the Four Seasons stage (previously staged many times in the former O’Keefe Centre). I found the chemistry between Adina Nitescu’s Butterfly and David Pomeroy’s Pinkerton strained in the first act, unable to believe her as a teenager given her strength and poise. But from the beginning of the Second Act on that ceased to matter, as Nitsecu took control of the proceedings, in a conventional but pleasing reading.

The next offerings from the COC are early in 2010, with productions of Carmen and Otello.

The Kingdom of Monsters and The Woman in Black are two seasonal shows that work to please their respective audiences by drawing heavily on established genres.

The Kingdom of Monsters and The Woman in Black are two seasonal shows that work to please their respective audiences by drawing heavily on established genres.

The Kingdom of Monsters is billed as “A Halloween Magic Show Spectacular Featuring Puppets, Live Music, And More!”—and it delivers on this promise, exclamation mark and all. The play/performance is framed by a narrative about an overly curious young boy who is given magic powers by the King of The Monsters. The first catch is that this boy—who becomes Abraxis the Magician (Peter Duchemin)—must appear at the King’s court every Halloween for 99 years to perform for the king and his monsters. The other catch is that Abraxis must also try to make the King’s daughter, named Whisper (Evelyn Osborne), speak, and thereby win her hand in marriage. What Abraxis does not know is that the King has cast a spell to silence Whisper. The “boy” Magician has performed for 98 Halloweens and tonight is his last chance to make the princess speak; if he fails, he perishes (the third catch).

This narrative is largely a pretext for Duchemin’s magic show, his banter with the puppets (the nicely grotesque creations of Jamie Skidmore), and the music provided by both Osborne (who does fine work on the violin) and an organ-playing Dr. Eyeball, performed by Chris Driedzic, who labours under a giant papier maché (?) eyeball.

Duchemin has honed his magical skills performing regularly at children’s events in St. John’s, and he runs through a series of illusions with confidence and skill. These include tricks with rope, spongy balls, cards (and a rat trap), metal rings, and Abraxis’ impressive stove-pipe hat. He does his best work with Osborne, who acts as his assistant for a pair of cabinet tricks—passing through spikes, suffering fragmentation, and blade thrusts. His banter with the heckling monster audience could be tightened, but Driedzic’s mood music (comic and creepy) picks up much of this slack.

Most importantly, Duchemin knows how to work the family audience and the children clearly loved the show. The night I saw it, the kids laughed at the crude jokes (Abraxis is dealing with surly and somewhat unhygienic monsters, after all), were amazed by the illusions (many wondered loudly “How did he do THAT?” when Abraxis levitated a skull), and clutched parents and grandparents when Duchemin terrified them (the killer bunny with shark teeth clearly sent a chills up their spines). They also seemed to appreciate Abraxis’ battle with the King (or at least one of his tentacles that emerged from the wings to assail him), as well as the poetic justice of the magician’s victory, the power of the love that breaks the spell cast over Whisper, and the princess’ assumption of her father’s crown.

The Woman In Black, adapted from Susan Hill’s novel by Stephen Mallatratt, confines itself to working on its audience’s fear, but like Kingdom of Monsters, it carefully follows the contours of an established genre, in this case, the ghost story. A solicitor, Arthur Kipps, wishes to purge himself of a tragic memory by having an Actor help him perform the events surrounding his tragedy. As a young lawyer, Kipps was charged with closing the estate of the Alice Drablow, who lived and died at Eel Marsh House, isolated at high tide from the mainland. While sorting out Drablow’s papers, Kipps is haunted by the Woman in Black. Pressing a local for information about the Woman, he learns the truth about this spectre’s terrible past, and subsequently loses his wife and child to her curse.

The play includes a familiar examination of the power of theatre to cure and to generate unexpected, fearsome—even supernatural—consequences for those who take on “dangerous” roles. Although Kipps eventually seems to come to terms with his past by working with the Actor to perform his own story, the Woman in Black herself appears in the “rehearsals,” passing her fatal curse on to the Actor and, we are led to believe, his young family.

Aiden Flynn plays the Actor (and, in the course of rehearsing, Kipps) with his usual intelligence and charisma. He is in total control as he re-enacts Kipps’ dreadful experiences at Eel Marsh House and this apparent control over the performance only sets us up for a harder fall when we realize that he will succumb to the illusion he has created. Steve O’Connell, too, is excellent as he switches between various roles, and as he demonstrates just how much Kipps has changed from the start of the play/rehearsal.

Directors Petrina Bromley and Brad Hodder are to be commended for making all the production’s elements blend together to such an eerie effect. The atmosphere, provided by Brian Bishop’s lighting and Geoff Adam’s set, an un-credited sound design, and the un-credited performance of the Woman in Black, who appears at terrifyingly opportune moments, is certainly chilling.

However, while there is plenty of talent on display in this production, there must be more meaningful projects to engage such talent. The Woman In Black may offer its audiences thrills but it is not exactly “The Turn of The Screw,” no matter what the official website implies. The work has been adapted to the screen and the play has enjoyed a long run in London (and this Rabbittown staging is a re-mount for the company). Indeed, The Woman in Black has the institutional whiff of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap and is closer in spirit to Conan Doyle than Poe; the production’s shock is sharp but short and easily forgotten.

Duchemin has indicated that he hopes to remount (like Abraxis) The Kingdom of Monsters on Halloweens to come. I am sure that, with minor refinements, Kingdom will continue to find enthusiastic audiences. Rabbittown, fortunately, is embarked on a much more ambitious project than the franchised Woman in Black, namely the New World Theatre Project, which is to be held in Cupids NL this summer. For that project, they will turn to that other venerable theatrical institution, William Shakespeare. Keep watching the company’s website for information.

Rock and Roll at Canadian Stage. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

“Rock ‘n’ Roll”
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Donna Feore

At Canadian Stage until October 24
At The Citadel Theatre November 7-29

Reviewed by Rob Ormsby

Shaun Smyth as Jan and Kenneth Welsh as Max. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

While the current staging of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Bluma Appel might excite some comment about rock’s continuing revolutionary potential, the production is actually better at suggesting the music form’s complicity with establishment culture at the end of the twentieth century. 

Rock ‘n’ Roll covers the period from 1968 to 1990, cutting between the house of Cambridge don Max Morrow (Kenneth Welsh) and Communist Czechoslovakia, where Max’s Czech student Jan (Shaun Smyth) returns in 1968 after it seems possible that the country will be freed from its Soviet occupation. As is typical of Stoppard’s drama, Rock ‘n’ Roll delivers an invigorating clash of political, aesthetic, and philosophical ideologies, none of which prevail in any simple way.

Max is an unrepentant communist who dislikes the cruelty of Soviet totalitarianism but “recognizes” it as the only way to implement a Marxist Revolution and to work towards a just form of social organization. He berates Jan for returning to Prague and for preferring England (with its capitalist injustices) to a Warsaw Pact distopia/utopia. Jan does not put up much of a fight against the bullying professor but Max’s argument with wife Eleanor (Fiona Reid), a Cambridge classicist, is harder won. After Max pedantically boasts to Eleanor’s student Lenka (another Czech, played by Belinda Cornish) that the individual mind is nothing but a biological machine, Eleanor turns on him and forces him to admit that, although her cancer-ridden body has been cut apart, she remains the person she is; that her ‘true’ self is more than the sum of her bio-mechanical functions.

Fioa Reid as Eleanor and Kenneth Welsh as Max. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

The debate between the two does not come into focus because both Welsh and Reid struggle unsuccessfully to project their characters’ intellectual depth and toughness. Welsh’s Max is often merely petulant, expending his mental energy hissily and without a sense of hard-won philosophical convictions. Reid’s Eleanor is disconcertingly like her Mrs. Lovett in CanStage’s recent(ish) Sweeney Todd, taking a (perhaps unintentional) cockney jokiness and scatterbrained approach to Eleanor’s ostensibly profound specialist knowledge.  To be fair, I saw the show during its last preview, but neither Reid nor Welsh gave the impression that they could survive, much less trade, many barbs at an Oxbridge high table.

However, the strain of thought behind Eleanor’s interpretation of Sappho’s poetry, which represents the real threat to Max’s materialist rationalism, does gain traction in this production for reasons I will relate in a moment. Eleanor translates Sappho’s description of Eros—“amachanon”—as “unmachine,” which she understands as “Uncontrollable” or “Uncagaeable” (11). Jan takes up this argument back in Czechoslovakia, quarrelling with his dissident friend Ferdinand (Cyrus Lane) about the effectiveness of the unofficial “opposition” of individuals taking principled stands against the government. Jan tells Ferdinand that the secret police do not fear dissidents: “Policemen love dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics. Heretics give meaning to the defenders of the faith” (37). Czech dictator Gustáv Husák knows that he and the dissidents are “playing on the same board” and “can relax, he’s made the rules, it’s his game” (37). But Jan insists that rock groups like the Czech Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) scare the police with their political indifference: “They’re coming from somewhere else, from where the Muses come from. They’re not heretics. They’re pagans” (37).

Shaun Smyth as Jan and Cyrus Lane as Ferdinand. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Christopher Innes suggests that Rock ‘n’ Roll is part of a resurgence of “documentary” drama in the British theatre that is being undertaken by establishment practitioners like David Hare, Max Stafford-Clark, and Stoppard himself. Innes is correct that the play’s significance lies in its proximity to real historical events and figures; Czech resistance to Soviet occupation is not just a back-drop for Stoppard’s action. Indeed, as the playwright relates, he shaped the arguments between Jan and Ferdinand after an actual series of real debates between Vaclav Havel and his fellow Czech intellectuals (Introduction ix-xii).

But more important than his identification of historical sources, is Stoppard’s even-handedness in his introduction to the play when assessing the part that rock ‘n’ roll played in effecting the Velvet Revolution: “The Plastic People of The Universe did not bring down Communism, of course…[But w]hat could not be separated were disengagement and dissidence…The rock ‘n’ roll underground, as [impresario Ivan] Jirous said, was an attack on the official culture of Communist Czechoslovakia, and in case he didn’t get the point, the regime sent him to gaol four times during these twenty years: culture is politics” (xiv).

The interplay of reasoned political engagement and uncageable erotic energy that is indifferent to politics is captured in the counterpoint of rock music and projections of historical events and phenomena on a circular screen placed above the action upstage. There have been complaints about Michael Gianfresco’s two principal sets, one of which represents Max’s Cambridge house/garden, and the other Jan’s apartment in Czechoslovakia. Rolling these sets in from and out to the wings does, I suppose, slow the action, but the main problem is not the set, nor is it Kimberly Purtell’s lighting. The main problem is simply that the music (Todd Charlton designed the sound) is not loud enough. For rock’s uncageability to stand a chance against the reasoned debate in Max’s and Jan’s homes, the audience needs to feel the music like a punch in the face. As Eleanor says, Eros is not merely “naughty.”

Fioiona Reid as Eleanor, Belinda Cornish as Lenka, and Kenneth Welsh as Max. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

If Smyth’s silly, and rather embarrassing, writhing to this music in act one does little to suggest rock’s pagan energy, Eleanor’s point of view gains some credibility thanks to Cornish’s Lenka in act two. Lenka, who stays in Cambridge to become a classics professor and Max’s on-again-off-again lover after Eleanor dies, channels Eleanor through her belief in the mystical, in that which escapes rational thought. Cornish imbues Lenka with a plausible Central European attitude of cultural-historical-philosophical superiority (‘What do these shallow Westerners know about life?’), that covers over her assertion that “‘Make love not war’ was more important than ‘Workers of the world unite’” (97). So, too, does Cornish’s portrayal of Lenka’s calm intellectual certainty give power to her accusation against Max, “Reason is your superstition. Nature is deeper than reason, and stranger” (101).

However, Stoppard does not offer any easy triumph of rock-paganism-as-revolution, and this history play says more about the contemporary “West” than it does about the drawn-out death of Soviet socialism. Rock ‘n’ Roll has this effect because Max ‘wins’ his argument with Eleanor; like Stoppard, who was embarrassed by the English 1960s Max dismisses the era as a “highly specialized brothel” where people went about “dressed like gigantic five-year-olds at a society wedding…exchanging bogus wisdom derived from misunderstood Eastern religions” (95). More damningly, he points out to his daughter Esme’s journalist ex-husband Nigel (Donald Carrier) and Nigel’s new partner, journalist Candida (Jacklyn Francis), that their revolution was bogus because “It left the system in place…altering the psyche has no effect on the social structure. You drop out or fit in. In the end, you fitted in” (96-97). 

Max’s accusation cuts deeper than he knows because Rock ‘n’ Roll cages the supposedly uncageable spirit of its music. The play opens with Esme (Alex Paxton-Beesley in act 1, Reid plays the older Esme in act 2) encountering what she thinks is Pan, the mythic satyr associated with orgiastic sex, intense mental distraction, and music—the embodiment of rock’s uncageable spirit. The figure is most likely Syd Barret, who dropped out of Pink Floyd in 1968 and lived as a recluse in Cambridge until his death in 2006. His dissociation from the mainstream makes him the Western counterpart to the PPU, whose iconoclasm Stoppard describes by approvingly quoting Jirous: “the first [official] culture doesn’t want us, and we don’t want anything to do with the first culture. This eliminates the temptation that for everyone, even the strongest artist, is the seed of destruction: the desire for recognition, success, winning prizes and titles, and last but not least, the material security which follows” (Introduction xx).

Fiona Reid as Esme (older) and Alex Paxton-Beesley as Alice. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Barrett the eccentric recluse, whom Esme’s daughter Alice (Paxton-Beesley) “protects,” avoids this temptation, and although he does not explicitly appear onstage, he is re-incorporated into the establishment culture by Candida. She has her paper print a current picture of Barrett and runs an unflattering assessment of him beneath (“a vegetable with the wild staring eyes of a frightened animal,” 82) all part of her sanctimonious mission to skewer the “high and mighty” (97). In the words of Alice’s boyfriend Stephen (a very good Patrick Kwok-Choon), it is only “overheated nonsense, apparently written for people with arrested development, and mindlessly cruel” (100). It is a form of cruelty, furthermore, that serves the venal interests of former ‘flower children’ who pursue material security by re-framing or caging their former iconoclast heroes.

Stoppard treats the incorporation and re-framing of Czech rock music with less ado but roughly the same effect. Back in Czechoslovakia with Esme, Jan tells her that one former PPU member is going to America: “These are new times. Who will be rich? Who will be famous?” (107). Given the chance, or simply enough time, Stoppard suggests, the desire for recognition and the material security which follows will lead the establishment to adapt itself and subsume indifference, no matter how vital or revolutionary that indifference might appear. As Lenka has her student translate from Plutarch, “Great Pan is dead” (107).

The production finally comes into its own in the play’s last few scenes. On that preview night, the actors settled into their characters for these scenes and provided much more subtle performances than they had earlier. Smyth, especially, toned down his Jan and leant the character a quiet, melancholic dignity that was far more compelling than it had been in act 1. Reid’s scatterbrained Esme was not much different from her scatterbrained Eleanor, except that she is far more appealing as the former, largely because she did not have to try to convince us of her Esme’s mental prowess (she lacks it). However, the final half hour benefitted most from the presence of Cornish’s Lenka and Paxton-Beesley, who wears the intellect inherited from her grandparents far better than Reid and Welsh could. Best of all, the actors gave the sense of having had to live through compromise, which helped them to carry off the closing scenes’ contradictory tones relatively well.

The tone of the final scene is meant to be celebratory; Esme and Jan turn upstage to cheer the Rolling Stones at the Strahov stadium in Prague as “Start Me Up” begins to play. But just what is being celebrated? Two decades have now passed since the fall of communism in Europe and there is certainly little chance that any revolution will be started under the auspices of CanStage. Is this production merely nostalgia for its audiences? The show is not perfect but I do not think its principal note is nostalgia.

Instead, it captures Jan’s admiration of England’s political, judicial, and cultural institutions. The show is an implicit recognition that while one of those institutions—the theatre—can re-frame whatever it is that Barrett’s or Pan’s or the PPU’s energies point to, it is used here and now (at most) to reflect and edify, not to rebel. Stoppard—Sir Tom—is right to assert that culture is politics and this production, quite clearly represents the politics of establishment culture. To paraphrase Max, Rock ‘n’ Roll may affect our psyches but in its run at CanStage we are still being invited to fit in.

Works Cited

Innes, Christopher. “Towards a Post-millennial Mainstream? Documents of the Times.” Modern Drama 50.3 (Fall 2007): 435-452.

Stoppard, Tom. “Introduction.” Rock ‘n’ Roll. London: Faber and Faber, 2006. ix-xx.

Stoppard, Tom. Rock ‘n’ Roll. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.

Rocking The Cradle. Photo by Justin Hall.

Rocking The Cradle
By Des Walsh, Directed by Richard Rose
At The Reid Theatre in St. John’s until October 18
At the Tarragon Main Space from November 4 to December 13

The play, “freely adapted from” Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 Spanish drama Yerma, has a relatively simple narrative: Joan’s (Ruth Lawrence) unfulfilled desire for a child leads to her mental instability and the destruction of her marriage to Vince (Darryl Avalon Hopkins). Walsh transfers the action of Yerma from rural Spain to a Newfoundland outport in the 1960s. The characters speak with recognizably Newfoundland accents (though they are close to what you can hear in contemporary St. John’s) and employ recognizably Newfoundland turns of phrase (conjugating “I know” as “I knows,” punctuating sentences with “biy,” “girl”). They speak of moving to Toronto for work and allude to the historical closing of isolated fishing communities and resettlement in larger towns during the 1950s and 1960s.

The play, “freely adapted from” Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 Spanish drama Yerma, has a relatively simple narrative: Joan’s (Ruth Lawrence) unfulfilled desire for a child leads to her mental instability and the destruction of her marriage to Vince (Darryl Avalon Hopkins). Walsh transfers the action of Yerma from rural Spain to a Newfoundland outport in the 1960s. The characters speak with recognizably Newfoundland accents (though they are close to what you can hear in contemporary St. John’s) and employ recognizably Newfoundland turns of phrase (conjugating “I know” as “I knows,” punctuating sentences with “biy,” “girl”). They speak of moving to Toronto for work and allude to the historical closing of isolated fishing communities and resettlement in larger towns during the 1950s and 1960s.

While this setting is not unimportant, Rocking The Cradle is not really documentary theatre. Like Yerma’s olive growers and shepherds, Walsh’s characters are less obviously interested in government policy than they are preoccupied with the constants of their own natural history: the sea that sustains the fishery, the ever-present wind, and the endless alternation of birth and death. The play, too, is cyclical: beginning and ending on successive Christmases, Walsh returns to the celebration of the birth of Christian salvation and hope. By contrast, Joan’s almost feral need for a baby, her desire to experience motherhood, ironically cuts short this cycle; her thwarted “natural” urge to create life descends in a straight line towards death.

As Walsh writes in his program note, “The geomorphology of anywhere is carved out by the people who live there, not by nature alone,” and Joan’s despair at failing to perform her natural function, is shaped in relation to the powerful force of her repressive, restricting community. Lawrence conveys Joan’s deep contempt for the gossip of neighbours Monica (Monica Walsh) and Shirley (Kate Corbett), who taunt Joan for her barrenness and repeat (false) rumours of her infidelity.

If Lawrence partly succeeds in making Joan a moral centre in this world she also complicates the character. She shocks and disgusts her sympathetic and upstanding, though conservative, mother Helen (Jane Dingle) with blunt anticlericalism and graphic expressions of her sexuality. Elsewhere, raging with jealousy, she attacks her pregnant friend Mary (Didi Gillard-Rowlings) before dropping to her knees to beg forgiveness, horrified at her own savage instincts. Lawrence generates an even greater sense of emotional imprisonment with the two men in the play. She is unwilling at first to accept neighbour Tom’s advances, because she believes in her duty to Vince, despite his indifference to producing a child. As friction between husband and wife increases, so does the sexual tension between Joan and Tom, but by the time she is ready to act on their attraction, it is too late: Tom leaves for Toronto, and Joan is locked into her own tragic struggle with Vince.

Director Richard Rose (who has staged Yerma previously) matches the emotional realism that the actors aim at to a thoroughly artificial and theatrical visual presentation. Graeme Thomson’s set depicts a kitchen, the proverbial locale of Newfoundland parties (it opens and closes with parties of sorts), but the home surrounding this room is merely hinted at through minimal details. The house seems turned in on itself, with an upstage wall of clapboard facing inwards. Two planks atop this exterior-interior represent a gently-pitched roof and a window frame defines the stage-left exterior wall.

Rose uses a scrim to project not just snowstorms but images that reflect Joan’s mental state as well: singing to cope with her circumstances, she “drifts away” and begins rowing an imaginary boat atop the kitchen table as a calm sea appears on the scrim; later, this imagined sea proves fatally rough. Characteristically, Rose also has his actors use the set elements in a highly symbolic and transformative fashion. For instance, when Helen searches for Joan, who has wandered distracted into a storm, four actors stand entirely visible to the audience on either side of the stage, holding two lengths of bright white fabric to represent the storm or the fog. When Helen fails to calm Joan, who is standing on the table that has become an outcrop of rock, the performers raise the fabric as they shake it, engulfing the women in a silken “mist.”

Rose applies similar staging techniques to his representation of Joan’s fascination with the birds, in particular the crows. At one point, as she watches the birds, the downstage lights dim (Thomson also designed the production’s fine lighting) and Joan is left in a partially lit kitchen. Two actors appear as silhouettes on the darkened forestage; they hold fishing rods with stuffed crows hanging from the lines and caw while making the birds “fly” rather unrealistically. The overt lack of realism in this shadow-play actually increases its visual appeal, and the same is true of Thomson’s and Rose’s extension of this crow motif. In several scenes, what looks like the shadow of a dark wing appears to sweep over the scrim as the lights go out, lending the production some of its ominous, mysterious aura. Although such moments do not always work perfectly in the large Reid Theatre, they will show well in the Tarragon’s Main Space when the show transfers there.

Such mysterious or mystifying elements suggest the anti-Naturalist theatrical movements that influenced Lorca. Drawing on tenets of Symbolism, plays like Yerma can be seen as aspiring to the universal or the transcendental at the expense of the historical and the particular. Lorca refers to this apprehension of the ethereal or the numinous as the “duende,” an animating spirit that resides within “real” art, a mysterious “force, not a labour.” Yet, in elucidating his understanding of the “duende,” Lorca described the profound connection between Spanish art and Spain as a nation. Indeed, Lorca was himself enmeshed in an intensely political situation and had to cope with a conservative society’s hatred of his homosexuality and beliefs: he was killed in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, possibly because of his political affiliations and/or because of his sexuality.

The historical or political implications of Rocking The Cradle are not so serious but if they are subtle, they are nevertheless real. Consider Walsh’s use of traditional songs from Newfoundland, England, and Ireland. Joan’s singing, like the scrim projections, provide an index to her emotional and mental deterioration. Walsh also uses song for counterpoint, as when Tom continues to sing “Shepherd O Shepherd” offstage, apparently goading Vince, who is confronting Joan in the kitchen.

Tom’s songs are also beautiful; King has a fine voice and he can evoke a range of emotion.  The songs, furthermore, seem to be archetypal: the lyrics of “Shepherd” are very basic, with a mesmerizing repetitive rhythm. Besides, are they not part of a larger Anglo-Celtic culture? Yes, but the music will resonate differently in Newfoundland than in Toronto. Although it is likely that the songs will resonate quite differently for different generations of Newfoundlanders, too, Toronto theatre audiences don’t have the same perspective on the historical period that Walsh dramatizes.

Lorca declared that duende is peculiar to Spain and that of all other nations, only Mexico could understand it. But Toronto is not Mexico and Spain is not Newfoundland: modern Mexico’s cultural heritage has strong Spanish roots; Tom leaves home to labour in the metropolis of a country he has only recently joined. This is not to say that the play, with its singing and  ultimately tragic rural fishers, is like the newly Confederated Newfoundlanders who sought (and seek) their fortune in central Canada; again, it is an imperfect analogy. Instead, it is a reminder that, despite the theatre’s mystifying power, historical perspective remains a barrier in such intercultural projects. Like geomorphology, people carve out their cultures; interest resides not just in the apprehension of mysteriously archetypal similarities but in recognizing and negotiating cultural difference.

Rocking The Cradle
By Des Walsh, Directed by Richard Rose
Co-Produced by the RCA Theatre Company and the Tarragon Theatre
For tickets in St. John’s, call 709-579-4424
For tickets in Toronto, call 416-531-1827

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Opera Atelier’s latest offering at the Elgin Theatre is Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’incoronazione di Poppea (or The Coronation of Poppea), one of the first operas to take its subject from actual historical personages, albeit with a few twists. This is the same Poppea who was Nero’s mistress, before being crowned Empress of Rome, and later murdered by Nero in a fit of rage. The opera’s libretto by Giovanni Busenello happily mixes truth and fiction.

The tale contains some ironic twists. The title character is the most important operatic courtesan before Violetta in La Traviata. But where femme fatales in 19th century opera –Violetta, Carmen, Salome or Mélisande for example—usually end up dead as a kind of retribution for their behaviour—Busenello’s account of Poppea’s tale ends happily.

Played to a sophisticated and knowledgeable audience—that is, people who know the historical outcome—this would make the ending poignant, a meditation on the fragility of happiness. Nero’s wife Octavia (Ottavia in the opera) conspires against the couple with the future emperor Otho (Ottone in the opera), a failed plot for which both are exiled. The story seems to settle the witty debate from the Prologue between the goddesses Fortune, Virtue and Love, with Love triumphant.

I’ve often wondered at the culture that spawned this work, a wealthy community that might have said “if you’ve got it, flaunt it”. The last three scenes of the opera should give us exactly that. First, Poppea’s servant Arnalta exults in her upward mobility, imagining her new life. Then in a triumphant scene Poppea is crowned beside Nero. Finally we see the couple alone in intimate confessions of ardor and love.

Did Monteverdi write such a beautiful love duet only to have it thwarted, and could he imagine a culture that would want to deconstruct that beauty? I think not. There is a poignancy in watching the couple celebrate their victory, knowing that their happiness will not last; must even that small pleasure be snatched away by the clever director? While the music says love and tenderness, and while the libretto in this duet says such things as “o mia vita” (oh my life)_”o mi tesoro” (oh my treasure), director Marshall Pynkoski takes the action in a strangely moralistic direction. Peggy Kriha Dye as Poppea hugs a crown, never within arms-length of Michael Maniaci’s Nero. It is a decidely unromantic and sexless ending to a story informed by eroticism. What city is being imagined here: Toronto the Good or perhaps a Venice (where the opera was premiered) that never existed? Given that the opera was premiered during a Carnival in Venice, I wonder if Pynkoski’s treatment at this moment is a sudden attack of pretentiousness, given the abundance of humour found in the Prologue, and so many other scenes of the production.

Considering how Pynkoski transforms a scene in the second act –emphasizing sensuality rather than repressing it—one has to wonder what the director was trying to do. The scene in question is between Nero and Lucano; according to the libretto “Nerone, elated by news of Seneca’s death, invites his friend Lucano to join him in praising Poppea’s intoxicating beauty.” But instead of praising her, the two enter into a homo-erotic ballet quite unlike the usual choreography found in Opera Atelier’s movement vocabulary, unsupported by anything in the libretto or history. Somehow I don’t think Monteverdi would have been pleased by the nervous giggles the scene elicited. And it is bizarre that the most blatantly erotic moment of the opera would be a scene between two men discussing a woman rather than any of the amorous scenes between lovers. I find it difficult to reconcile this liberal –and self-indulgent—scene with the repressed final duet. This is a particularly notable disconnect considering how well the remainder of the opera has reflected the issues raised in the Prologue.

Musically there are no weaknesses in the production. Conductor David Fallis’s mastery of the score freed the singers to fully commit themselves to their portrayals. Maniaci & Dye were solid from beginning to end. The star of the production was Olivier Laquerre from his first appearance as Ottone. Pynkoski appeared to counterpoint the immoral couple –Nero & Poppea—with the wholesomeness of Ottone and the self-sacrificing Drusilla, played by Carla Huhtanan. Laquerre injects much needed levity into every scene. There’s a lovely balance to Pynkoski’s concept, of the moral couple going into exile, contrasting the greedy couple clinging to the throne; but the balance is accomplished by blatantly ignoring the meaning of the text, while superimposing a new interpretation over top of the sensuous beauty of the closing duet. It is a distortion more apt for Regietheater than (supposedly) historically informed performance. While I felt cheated of the expected eroticism of the final duet, Maniaci & Dye do give a stirring vocal account of the duet.

The performance glitters with quality in all the parts, particularly Tafelmusik’s orchestra and chorus, and the dancers of the Opera Atelier ballet. The servant Arnalta is often a scene-stealer, particularly in her last-act aria imagining her social ascent; Laura Pudwell did not disappoint, with her usual ironic delivery. Kimberly Barber injected some unexpected comedy into her edgy reading of Ottavia; she (with Pudwell & Laquerre) helps redress the balance towards light-heartedness. Yes, Nero can be portrayed as a narcissist, and Poppea is as vain as they come. But the entire production struts a little too much. Joao Fernandes brought the necessary gravitas to the part of Seneca, particularly in his lovely final scene. He is the one personage who really must be serious. The rest of them need to lighten up.

With text by the poet and playwright John Dryden and music by composer Henry Purcell “King Arthur” is a semi-opera, a hybrid that in many ways is a classic masque. The main characters are portrayed by actors rather than singers. The supernatural personages are danced or sung, in numbers that resemble divertissements: one among several indications of the French influence upon Purcell.

“King Arthur” is allegorical, employing a stylized dramatic vocabulary. It includes a diverse assortment of elements, including poetry, dance, solo and ensemble singing, and orchestral interludes. It addresses royal patrons, and even includes that audience in the performance for a few brief moments.

The story does not involve the characters we usually see in tales concerning Arthur – for example, Lancelot, the knights of the Round Table, Uther Pendragon, Mordred or Queen Guinevere. Merlin is the sole familiar name in this tale of war between Saxons and Britons. Supernatural forces (including gods associated more with the operas of Wagner than Purcell) on both sides are invoked in aid of the combatants. The outcome of the battling and romantic rivalry is peaceful and chivalrous, an implicit call for unity and loyalty to Britain with a particular resonance for the Restoration era court audience to whom Dryden and Purcell addressed their work.

TMT brought “King Arthur” to life in a curious combination of old and new. The musical presentation is steeped in the old, whether in the delicate sonorities of the period instruments, period dance or historically informed performance. Yet the staging features modernity, from projections to amplified voices, in a large proscenium arch theatre inhospitable to such a work. Still, TMT adapted heroically to the alien space.

The actors were largely upstaged by the magical delights danced and sung throughout the work, with one noteworthy exception. Emmeline is a young girl pursued by both Arthur and the Saxon noble Oswald. We first encounter Emmeline as a blind girl, whose sight is restored by magical intervention aided by Merlin. Caitlin Stewart managed to play up the comedy in Emmeline’s innocent exclamations, yet was compelling at the moment her sight returned. The two rivals for her affection – Jason Gray as the passionate Oswald, and Darren Keay as a stolid Arthur—were less successful in distracting us from the ear and eye candy in Purcell’s musical diversions. Keay’s best moments were in his forest wanderings, tempted by two seductive forest nymphs. The loudest applause and laughter were reserved for tenor Keith Klassen in “your hay it is mow’d”; he led the company and audience in a delirious final chorus, as we all sang “Heigh for the honour of Old England”.

Perhaps the most lasting impression is of ensemble, a unified effort rather than individual virtuosity. Derek Boyes, TMT’s founder, led from the pit where he played violin as well as co-directed with choreographer Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière. Singers, dancers, actors and instrumentalists momentarily took our attention without ever seizing it. The pace throughout was light and effortless. Part of this can be attributed to a wonderful hybrid text from Dryden and Purcell, a marriage of words and music reminiscent of the fast paced operas of Charpentier and Lully, always privileging text over pure display. Credit surely belongs to Boyes and his collection of talented singers, instrumentalists, dancers and technicians. While we were presented with a wide variety of delights they never impeded the forward movement of the story. The result was fresh, beautiful and brand-new.