Category Archives: Theatre

“Becky Shaw” lights up the SF Playhouse

Posted on February 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Photo by Jessica Palopoli

The following article was originally published in the “Stanford Daily” here.
Gina Gionfriddo’s recent work displayed at the SF Playhouse, Pulitzer Prize finalist “Becky Shaw,” is the best piece of theatre in San Francisco at the moment, and indeed, in the last few months. Gionfriddo’s script is trenchant and clever, with enough laugh-out-loud epigrams to fill an Oscar Wilde play. But the play has more in common with early Woody Allen movies like “Annie Hall” that mix pathos with comedy than with “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

The death of Suzanna’s father has left the family penniless – not broke, but without savings. Her mother, Susan (Lorri Holt), who has multiple sclerosis, has taken a younger lover, her house painter, which disgusts Suzanna (Liz Sklar). Her cynical, adopted brother Max (Brian Robert Burns), on the other hand, sees this as a reasonable business deal; she simply can’t afford to hire help to deal with her illness. It has also left Suzanna severely depressed, unable to get off the couch and glued to trashy television stories about prostitutes. As Max puts it, “She has too much free time” to be depressed; Suzanna replies, “I’m a graduate student!”

Becky Shaw is the MacGuffin of the play, which is really a study of relationships and their forms – platonic, romantic and familial – that can sometimes bleed together. Becky (Lauren English), a temp at Andrew’s (Lee Dolson) office, is the seemingly unfortunate recipient of a blind date with Max, a cold-blooded New York finance guy. Max is judgmental, and when Becky shows up by taxi without a cell phone, he asks if she’s Amish or just one of those crazy environmental freaks. Unsurprisingly, their date goes badly: they get mugged, have bad sex and he kicks her out prematurely.

What transpires is the unraveling of every relationship in the play. Suzanna’s husband, Andrew, who saved her from depression after her father’s death, feels responsible for Becky’s post-date trauma and is drawn to nurse yet another sick puppy to health. Is he legitimately and harmlessly kind? Or is this kind of damage something he gets off on? As Max notes to Suzanna, Andrew married the last helpless woman he met. Meanwhile, Suzanna and Max’s semi-incestuous tryst and her dependency on him – which her mother claims he cultivated starting at a young age – start to interfere with her marriage. Do they have a relationship? Is it altogether okay that Susan uses her boyfriend with the understanding that he’s using her, too?

The play is rife with moral ambiguity and asks many questions without really passing judgment on any of its flawed, richly drawn characters. The SF Playhouse proves a wonderful space for this intimate family comedy of “middle-class manners,” as it has been called. Wherever you’re sitting, you get a clear view of all of the actors’ faces and movements. The stage is small, too, which adds a level of claustrophobia to their interactions: the discomfiture within the family is exacerbated by the lack of space to flee from one another. There is a lot of talent onstage: great comedic timing, motivated blocking with seamless movement on the stage and the ability of all the actors to play the gamut of emotions, from fear to joy to dismissive insecurity. But too often did the actors stumble over their lines, jumbling them up; the play needs to run for a couple more weeks to become fully polished. Soon, it will be not just a wonderful piece of theatre, but a masterful one.

Read the article here at the Stanford Daily, where it was originally published.

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Posted in City, Contemporary, San Francisco, Theatre, Top picks

‘Humor Abuse’ fails to deliver laughs

Posted on January 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

Photo by Chris Bennion

W. C. Fields once said, “Comedy is a serious business.” Perhaps that’s why comedies like “The Trip” or the play “Humor Abuse” have such dark underbellies despite the seemingly light subject matter. While “The Trip” was a film rife with laugh-out-loud impressions, it was also a meditation on loneliness and middle age. “Humor Abuse” is more about both the excitement and loneliness of having a clown for a father; it’s humorous but not all that funny.

“Humor Abuse” is a one-man show starring Lorenzo Pisoni as himself, a professional clown since the tender age of two. Lorenzo informs us that during childhood, he suffered from “humor abuse.” In his family, making people laugh was valued above all else, and Lorenzo suffered for these laughs. To get a second scoop of ice cream, he had to do a double take routine with his father. Also, Lorenzo learned to juggle fiberglass batons without lessons, and because his hands were too small to grip them, they’d often fall, break and cut up his hands. Years later, he discovered that kid-sized batons existed, but his parents never bothered to mention these to him.

By age five, Lorenzo had signed a contract to tour with the circus and was officially his father’s partner. At 12, he toured without his parents. In “Humor Abuse,” you really get the sense of just how much Lorenzo loved being in the circus. He loved that his father treated him as an equal because they were partners. He loved that he got to see his father in action at work, enjoying himself and being amazing. But it also meant he grew up fast; Lorenzo discovered his father wasn’t really infallible early on, a fact that was difficult to reconcile with his idolized image of his father. It was fun being in the circus, but it was hard work, too.

The production does a marvelous job of balancing the story, showing us the good and the bad in the circus life and why Lorenzo is so conflicted about being a clown. The result is a very honest and poignant story of the difficulties of grappling with childhood, made all the more exciting by the fact that Lorenzo’s experience involved professional clowning.

Director Erica Schmidt succeeds at keeping the action going in the play; it never feels like a series of static monologues. And we never tire of Lorenzo, despite the fact that he is the only person ever on stage. Lorenzo gives a nuanced performance not only as himself but also as his father, re-enacting scenes and routines from his childhood with clowning skill and genuine emotion. He may not be able to make us laugh much while he falls down the stairs, but he can fall down them expertly. His performance is enriched by period photographs of him and his father projected onto a red, circus-like curtain at the back of the stage. The set design and props evoke the circus perfectly, creating an inviting atmosphere that works both for circus re-enactments and as a story-telling environment.

The problem with “Humor Abuse” is that so much time in the play is dedicated to gags that just aren’t funny, although the rest of the audience was laughing heartily. Lorenzo always plays the straight man to his father’s clown, and as he warns us at the beginning, he really isn’t very funny. Whether he’s doing a routine of falling down stairs or failing to climb a ladder while wearing diving fins, it only made me smile and think, as his father would have commented, “That’s funny,” but no laughter would occur. It’s a story about comedy, but it isn’t comedy: it’s dark and rarely hilarious.

This story was originally published in the Stanford Daily here.

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Posted in City, Contemporary, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Theatre

Solid ‘Story’ in San Jose: Review of West Side Story

Posted on January 22, 2012 | 1 Comment

When “West Side Story” opens, we are introduced to two New York street gangs: the Sharks and the Jets. And they’re dancing with fisticuffs. It takes a few minutes to get used to the fact that the stage-fights will be dance-fights, but once you do, you know you’re in for a ride. The cast of this Broadway revival tour in San Jose can definitely dance. This is a show with a story told largely through song and dance; it’s physical and visceral and, for the most part, it’s done pretty darn well.

“West Side Story” is the epitome of what a good musical should be. It’s full of memorable songs, impressive dance numbers, and a poignant story to tie it all together. Leonard Bernstein composed the complex and enduring music with lyrics by Steven Sondheim, choreography reproduced from Jerome Robbins’s original work for the play and a story based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

It’s the Upper West Side in the 1950s, and our Romeo is Tony, an American and the former leader of the Jets. His Juliet is Maria, a Puerto Rican immigrant whose family belongs to the opposing street gang, the Sharks. The gangs hate each other based on principle and unshakeable racism. But when Tony (Ross Lekites) and Maria (Evy Ortiz) meet at the local dance, it’s inauspicious, colour-blind love at first sight.

The story is told largely through song and dance. Bernstein’s music is a great challenge to sing: it requires a huge vocal range and the ability to master difficult syncopated rhythms and melodies with challenging intervals. Ross Lekites, as Tony, owns his musical part. He has a powerhouse voice with large and beautiful range that never becomes operatic. Every note is clear, with perfect pitch, allowing the music to shine to its fullest. Ortiz’s voice is meeker, by comparison, but full enough to get the message across. The rest of the cast does a fine job tackling this complex but rewarding material. Unlike many modern musicals, you will leave “West Side Story” humming the songs.

This production is wonderfully choreographed and staged, making excellent use of space and of James Youmans’ wonderful set design, which places you right in the streets of New York. The love scenes between Tony and Maria always take place on an island set-piece–her balcony, her bed or an empty stage without a background–because, as they lament in the song “Somewhere,” their relationship doesn’t belong in the world they live in. When the Jets do the famous number “Cool” right before meeting with the Sharks for a rumble, they start off in Doc’s drug store. Then the store set-pieces disappear, allowing the Jets to take over the stage, which is now that piece of territory in the city that they are so intent on defending. We also witness this territory-marking through dance in “Dance at the Gym.”

The biggest flaw in the production is that it far too often stoops to gain the easy, low-comedy laugh. The result is that the action feels less weighty, the tragedy less serious–it leaves the audience not invested enough in the plight of the two lovers. When done right, “West Side Story” should have no trouble getting an audience to tear up. This is further aggravated by the clumsy scenes with dialogue that often feels awkward and inadequately rehearsed. These scenes disrupt the flow of the story. This alienates the audience from what is otherwise an emotionally involving journey. Thankfully the show always recovers its steam as soon as we hit the next dance number: the tempo, volume, and melody of the music work together to elicit a strong emotional response. It is by no means a perfect production, but what it does well makes up for its shortcomings.

A revised version of this article was published in the Stanford Daily here .

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Posted in Bay Area, City, Dance, Music, Musicals, Stanford Daily, Theatre, Top picks

‘Fela’ fails to delve deep

Posted on December 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

The new Broadway musical, “Fela!,” has some fun dance numbers but is largely a disastrous, disconnected and misogynistic production about the life of Nigerian Afrobeat superstar and political activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti. It takes place in the African Shrine, a nightclub in Nigeria where Fela (Sahr Ngaujah) is giving his final concert and telling his life story through the songs that he wrote.

“Fela!” delivers a glorious spectacle with impressive percussive afrobeats and delicious dancing, but the play is so desultory that if there is a message, it gets lost in the jumble. Without a coherent storyline, the production is disorienting. It doesn’t establish tone appropriately. The dance numbers are so vivacious, fun and sexual, that it’s unnerving when we hear excruciating details about how Fela’s wives were tortured in the second act: all signs in the first act pointed towards this being a generally light production.

Even when the production gets serious, it gets serious about characters who have never been developed and that we have never learned to care for: Fela’s wives are indistinguishable, scantily clad background dancers without personality, and his mother (Melanie Marshall) is treated as an idolized savior. While the atrocities committed against them are atrocious by any standards, the play lacks the poignancy that it could have had if any of them had been developed into more than clichés of the messianic mother and the whorish wives. The only character in the play with any development–and even that is shallow–is Fela, our obnoxious host.

“Fela!” is never fully able to create an emotional connection because the entirety of the story occurs in an isolated place–the African Shrine–and is guided by Fela, a largely isolated figure: we rarely see signs of the poor state of the world seeping into the Shrine. Most of the audience is not already well-versed in Nigerian history, making it difficult to guess at the important historical events that are occurring when the play is set. The play doesn’t even provide subtle hints of these. Without the outside world seeping into Fela’s world in the African Shrine, there is no context. And without context, it’s impossible to understand how the world is affecting Fela and how he is effecting change in it.

It’s not an impossible task to achieve this harmony between the story of Fela and his connection to that of Nigeria. Consider “Cabaret,” a play about people and politics, in many ways the predecessor to “Fela!”, where the emcee is our guide–here Fela is our emcee. In “Cabaret,” we get to know the characters well as three-dimensional, realistic people. The reason “Cabaret” is so heartbreaking and moving is that we get to see how the influence of the Nazis is slowly seeping into their world and impacting their lives: the merry singing and dancing is about active denial of the real world. In “Fela,” we can’t quite tell what the point of the singing and dancing is. Mostly, it comes off as shallow entertainment.

“Fela!” provides us with some jaw-dropping dance numbers, with impressively athletic vibrating and gyrating, set to some foot-tappingly good rhythms. But while it had the potential to deal with real issues, such as how and why Fela helped or tried to help his country, it settled instead for crowd-pleasing numbers that focus on sex and feces rather than on the problems Fela was famous for rebelling against.

Published in the Stanford Daily. Online version available here.

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Posted in City, Musicals, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Theatre

‘Race’ provokes but falls at the finish line

Posted on November 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Review of David Mamet’s play, Race, for the Stanford Daily

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Posted in Contemporary, San Francisco, Stanford Daily, Theatre

Exit the King at Soulpepper

Posted on September 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

What: Ionesco’s Exit the King
When: runs until September 9th. Performance dates listed here
Where: Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District
Discounted student tickets info: See BlogUT’s guide to summer theatre

Soulpepper Theatre’s production of Exit the King is perfectly satisfactory if you want to see a production in which all the parts are assigned, all the lines read, and all the stage directions followed. But it completely lacks vision, creativity, and for the most part, the ability to bring the comedy out. Exit the King is one of Ionesco’s absurdist plays, centering around a hoary king whose kingdom has been reduced to the size of his estate, and whose remaining life expectancy has been reduced to the length of the play: two hours. It’s a one-act play, which primarily consists of the king whining and screaming about how he cannot and does not want to die. Meanwhile his various wives and servants attempt to comfort him and help him come to terms with his mortality.

The Soulpepper cast is incredibly stilted and they often assume a v-shaped arrangement on stage so that they can say their lines and be assured the audience can see them all at once: highly unimaginative. As many of the lines were said, I had the sneaking suspicion that if I had read them in the text, I would have found them funny, but in this production, the most you can hope for is that they elicit a smile. Part of the problem is that the text itself doesn’t do much to help suggest movement and action, so bringing the dialogue to life is no small feat. The one worthwhile scene is the King’s first magnanimous entrance, which is downright well-earned comedy. Otherwise, if you’re only going to see one play at Soulpepper, check out Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, which is a very good production of a very good play.

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Posted in BlogUT, City, Theatre, Toronto

Come Fly Away enchants with phenomenal dancing

Posted on August 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Where: Four Seasons Centre
When:  Tuesday-Saturday @ 7:30PM; Wednesday, Saturday, & Sunday @ 2PM; Until August 28th
Tickets:  DanCap Tickets  & see blogUT’s summer theatre guide for tips on cheap tickets

Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away is an eighty-minute Broadway show of phenomenal dancing and choreography, set to standards sung by Frank Sinatra, with a live big band on stage. It’s the kind of show that can have the nerve to do “Pick Yourself Up” — a famous song-and-dance number from Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers — and actually manage to compete with Astaire and Rogers. The choreography is more modern than the 1930s film, but it’s right up there, as are the dancers.

The show plays like a series of music videos for a long list of songs Sinatra popularized, from “Luck Be a Lady” to “Fly Me to the Moon” to “Learnin’ the Blues”, where Tharp’s choreography tells a short story within the song and brings the music to life. It’s great music from another time, and the choreography makes a nod to the past while giving the music a present relevance. The musical takes place during one long night at a night club where couples meet, court, and much more. But the story isn’t the point and barely exists. We get to dispense with what is usually the worst part of a musical: lame dialogue. This means the casting is based solely on dancing ability; Sinatra sings and there isn’t much acting to do. So the dancers aren’t just good Broadway dancers. They’re fantastic dancers even for Broadway.

And Tharp pulls it off like a dream. Every dance number is strong and every dancer is very strong. It’s not just that they are all impressively athletic — which they are — but they are able to do incredibly complicated dance moves, precisely in time, even when moving from one fast-paced complicated maneuver to another. The dancing is a celebration of the music and the dancers move to accentuate the rhythms in the pieces. The biggest rhythmic challenge is probably when the cast takes on dancing to Brubeck’s “Take Five”, famous for its 5/4 time signature. Almost all dances are based on 3/4 or 4/4 time, and 5/4 time is awkward for musicians; now imagine trying to keep time and dance to that with complex choreography that requires being constantly in time. It works.

My only real complaint is that the lack of the story means that the dancing is less meaningful. If you think back to great musicals like Swing Time, the singing and dancing are a culmination of all the emotions and action: they’re a triumphant climax. Without a story to propel it, the dancing is still highly entertaining to watch, but it doesn’t have the same emotional staying power. By the end of the show, I had trouble remembering what choreography went with what song; they all blurred together. The one exception was the couple, Marty and Betsy, whose courtship had a bit of an arc throughout: from the gracefully clumsy new lovers in “Let’s Fall in Love” to the self-assured powerhouse dancers in “The Way You Look Tonight/My Funny Valentine”. Of course, since the stories in musicals are usually just the MacGuffin, I’m glad that Come Fly Away was a show of non-stop entertainment, that didn’t get dragged down by a flimsy storyline.

Come Fly Away does have some provocative choreography, which is but one of several reasons for its seeming modernity. This sexy choreography is great and well-executed. But I can’t help complaining that sexy choreography has become a trend in the modern musical not just to prove its modernity but to provide gratuitous sexiness. It’s not exactly a new trend; it goes back as far as Cabaret, if not earlier. But in Cabaret, the provocative choreography, as in Sam Mendes’s 1990s West End production, was all about the characters’ attempts to hide from the dark themes happening around them. In shows like Chicago and even Come Fly Away, it just seems like an excuse to get men and women down to their knickers. Of course, even the provocative choreography in Come Fly Away is expert, fresh, and downright fabulously executed. So how can I complain really? I can’t.

Come Fly Away is a brilliantly choreographed and brilliantly executed show. So whatever it lacks in story or substance, it makes up for tenfold with style, grace, and a talented cast.

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Originally published on BlogUT

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Posted in BlogUT, Contemporary, Musicals, Theatre, Top picks, Toronto

The Shaw plays at the Shaw Festival are a real disappointment: Candida and Heartbreak House

Posted on August 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

A British accent does not a funny play make. I wish this concept were better understood, especially by the Shaw Festival, which insists on making its actors attempt authentic accents in all of its plays. For My Fair Lady, a musical that’s actually about accents, there’s no escaping this. But for Shaw’s comedy plays, Heartbreak House and Candida, there’s no reason to bother with them unless you can be certain that the accents will be perfect and even then…

Unfortunately, the British accents in these productions at this year’s Shaw Festival are painfully and distractingly bad: like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’m hardly an expert on British accents, but I have seen enough British film to be able to tell a good accent from a terrible one, and these accents are right up there with Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep in Mary Poppins.

For years, the Stratford Festival hasn’t bothered with English accents in its productions of Shakespeare’s plays. I crowned this year’s Richard III a triumph even though none of the actors spoke with British accents that the real characters no doubt would have had. But perhaps that’s partly why the production triumphed: more focus on acting, less energy wasted on attempting failed accents. Unfortunately, the Shaw Festival hasn’t quite gained the confidence to dispel with the useless accents.

Heartbreak House is one long dinner party with a cast of despicable characters, all in love with somebody else’s husband or fiancée. It should be funny but dark, but most laughs were forced out of a recognition of the witty dialogue in spite of the delivery. The set provides a horrible distraction: the action looks like it’s taking place on a boat, but it seems to have walls and staircases like a house. Is it a house or a boat? A house or a boat? By the third act, the walls are gone and the house/boat is rocking back and forth and back and forth. Why? Who knows? To make the actors as sea sick as the audience is sick of the show.

Candida is a slight improvement over Heartbreak House and benefits from the very charismatic Claire Jullien in the title role. Her delivery of almost all of Shaw’s dialogue does it justice and lends it the wit it deserves; her accent is also much better than that of her peers, which certainly helps. Unfortunately, the production is dragged down by the amusing, but ultimately over-the-top acting by Wade Bogart O’Brien as the clumsy lovesick Marchbanks. In fact, Marchbanks is so goofy that his crush on Candida poses no real threat to the domestic bliss between Candida and her husband Morrell (Nigel Shawn Williams). But Williams plays Morrell so straight that he somehow feels threatened, making the action seem unrealistically serious, and taking all the bite out of the comedy.

Ironically, when the Shaw Festival does Shaw, it fails spectacularly. It seems to take a Tennessee Williams play — Cat on a Hot Tin Roof this season — to show us that the Shaw Festival can compete with the best of them. Perhaps it’s a good thing that they’re toning down the dose of Shaw in next year’s festival.

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For information on cheap tickets to the Shaw Festival and transportation, see the post, BlogUT’s Top 5 Summer Theatre Festivals on a Student Budget.
…and if you want a show worth seeing at Shaw, check out the review of My Fair Lady

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Posted in BlogUT, Classis, Festival coverage, Theatre

Review of My Fair Lady at the Shaw Festival

Posted on August 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Deborah Hay and Benedict Campbell in The Shaw Festival’s production of My Fair Lady

One of the biggest crowd-pleasers at this year’s Shaw Festival is surely My Fair Lady, a good but still disappointing production of the brilliant musical about a cockney flower girl who goes from rags to riches simply by learning to speak proper English. The flower girl is Eliza Doolittle (Deborah Hay) and she has a chance encounter with a coarse phonetics expert, Henry Higgins (Benedict Campbell). Higgins claims that in six months, he can teach her to speak like a lady, and in so doing, completely change her prospects in life. The play unfolds in two parts: the time and lessons leading up to Eliza’s perfection of the English language and the aftermath of how changing how she talks has profound effects on her situation in life.

My Fair Lady is one of the best, and also one of my favourite, musicals of the twentieth century. It combines an excellent story and a witty script – an abridged but verbatim adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion – with catchy, enduring tunes and great lyrics. In short, it has it all. That’s why it’s so incredibly difficult to get right. West Side Story is similar, requiring its cast to not only act but sing very difficult songs and dance, to boot, with most productions failing at one of these.

My Fair Lady has the added complication that it’s a story about transformations in character and life brought about by transformations in speech, which requires that all of its characters speak with very specific English accents. Eliza Doolittle is especially challenging to play: she starts the play with a rough cockney accent and finishes it a new woman with a refined upper-class accent,. There are many things to get right, and when a production does, it soars. But it’s also very easy to get them wrong.

This production of My Fair Lady gets things about half right, which is enough to keep the show fairly entertaining. This is the most ambitious choreography in a production of My Fair Lady that I’ve ever seen: the choreography for “I’m Getting Married in the Morning”, in particular, was inspired. It’s also the only time I’ve ever heard the vocals for Henry Higgins songs done completely in tune and in song – the film version with Rex Harrison involved mostly speak-singing and almost no actual singing – and Benedict Campbell as Henry can really sing.

There are two major problems with the production. The first is that the accents are generally uneven. Hay’s early accent is certainly vulgar but not quite cockney and her later accent isn’t quite right either. Campbell’s accent is certainly refined but it slips now and then. I’m not convinced it’s the actors’ fault because the accents seem to be wrong, across the board, in the exact same ways. When they all go to the Ascot, the brilliant and hilarious “Ascot Gavotte” number is mispronounced by the whole cast, with a very grating “ehscot”, which suggests they were all very badly coached on how precisely to speak.

The stars, Deborah Hay and Benedict Campbell, give solid performances with uneven accents. Hay’s physicalization is commendable: in the beginning her loose manner is boorish and crass and by the second half, become noticeably refined and delicate. Campbell mostly keeps up. I should warn that I recently saw a production of Pygmalion in the London West End starring Rupert Everett as Higgins. Everett’s portrayal was so rich, so complex, offbeat yet charismatic, that Campbell can’t possibly compete. The accents in the London production were also pitch perfect and incredibly detailed: as Eliza developed the ability to speak more properly, you could still hear minor slips into a cockney accent, every tenth word or so, which became increasingly less prevalent as the play went on. The trouble with Hay and Campbell – and the rest of the cast’s mediocre accents – is that they were distracting. I ended up focusing on how they sounded off instead of on the story. In the case of Pickering (Patrick Galligan), it was horribly grating.

The real star of the show proved to be Mark Uhre as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Eliza’s silly upper-class lover, who sings the silly but romantic love song, “On the Street Where You Live”. Freddy can so easily be an overlooked character: he is supposed to be daft yet sympathetic but can easily be banal. But Uhre has great stage presence. His Freddy is appealing and charming and completely steals the scene whenever he appears, even when the centre of attention is meant to be Eliza, like in the number “Show Me”. He’s also got a fantastic voice and a real affinity for the physicalizing Freddy’s proper manners and reckless romanticism. Mark Uhre is the real thing and he’s sure to be a star. Special mention should also be made of Sharry Flett as Henry’s mother, Mrs Higgins, who nailed her part, balancing her maternal instincts, her disapproval of her son, and her pride in Eliza for Eliza’s transformation.

The second main problem was the set design, which though elaborate, was mostly ill conceived, leading to awkward movement on the stage. The set for Henry’s house provided two main spaces on the set: his desk and office on one side of the stage and a sitting room completely on the other end. These spaces were so disparate that when characters interacted between them – and they often did – the action was always stilted. It often seemed as though the characters were yelling at each other from opposite ends of the stage. Even worse, the characters would often move between the two sets, pacing back and forth, with absolutely no motivation, just looking for an excuse to use the stage. This, too, was distracting.

The set for covent garden at the beginning of the play was not quite as problematic. It impressively created distorted pillars to use perspective to make the stage look bigger. The problem was that most of the elements that broke up the stage – the pillars, the elevated platform – were so far upstage that it was awkward to have actors realistically move from downstage to upstage often, just to make use of the set pieces. The pillars need to serve as a hiding place for Higgins to observe Eliza and as barriers between the two when they spar. Instead, they serve as decoration which the director desperately attempts to use without elegance.

There was one clear exception to the poor set design: the set at the ascot was brilliant. I particularly liked how when the group of spectators prepares to watch the race, a fence rolls out in front of them, far downstage, and shadows of the horses racing flicker across the stage. It looks just right and feels just right and you get the real sense that they really are at the ascot. The ‘Ascot Gavotte’, which is perhaps the funniest of all the songs, because of its irony, is also done just right. Few things are funnier than watching the very composed, expressionless faces of the men and women at the ascot as they sing about how they “have never been so keyed up”.

Even with bad accents and bad staging, My Fair Lady is so well crafted that the production is still entertaining. It might lose a few genuine laughs and some of the complexity and believability of character development, but it can still fall back on a long list of fabulous songs. And so if all My Fair Lady can boast is some great song and dance numbers that will keep you tapping your feet, smiling, and humming the songs as you leave, it’s still well worth the ticket price. I was disappointed that the production wasn’t better and didn’t fully do justice to the musical, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.

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My Fair Lady runs until October 31.

For information on getting cheap tickets and trave,l see the post on BlogUT’s top 5 summer theatre festivals on a student budget.

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Posted in BlogUT, Festival coverage, Musicals, Toronto

Richard III at the Stratford Festival is a triumph

Posted on August 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Seanna McKenna as Richard III in the Stratford Festival production

Seanna McKenna does a fabulous turn as Shakespeare’s most interesting and deliciously charismatic villain, in the title role of Stratford’s must-see of the summer, Richard III. It seems to be a popular play this year, with Sam Mendes’s rendition currently playing at the Old Vic in the London West End, starring Kevin Spacey. But Torontonians need not feel too envious, as Stratford’s Richard III is a triumph, and proof positive that the history plays can be incredibly entertaining.

Richard III is a conniving and scheming little devil, who systematically kills – or has killed – everyone in his way to the throne of England while maintaining the appearance of humility amongst his peers and congratulating himself in intimate exchanges with the audience. It is a play that is as much about performance as it is about politics, which prove less important than building a fascinating character. Shakespeare’s rendering of Richard III is better remembered in history than the real Richard III, who was likely not quite so evil nor quite so charming.

Seanna McKenna plays Richard III straight, and aside from her small frame, is indistinguishable from a man. Richard III is a cripple, an outward manifestation of his inner evil, and McKenna has perfected the hunchback, the limp, and the deformed arm: it all seems so incredibly natural, that it’s a surprise to see McKenna spryly skip offstage in the curtain call. She also does a wonderful job of layering the many different facets of Richard’s character: he’s playful, witty, cunning, remorseless, pernicious, malicious, corrupt, and unbelievably likeable. It’s an incredibly rich character in text, and McKenna does it full justice.

The production plays it straight, too, which Stratford almost never does, and yet the best productions there are almost always the straight ones. This is not modernized. This is not updated. Its lack of pretension puts the text at centre stage, and here that’s a triumph.

The production is in the Tom Patterson Theatre, where the oddly shaped stage – long and narrow – is put to wonderfully good use while maintaining economy. This stage has many stages within it.

There’s a small elevated platform, downstage, that serves as a stage for Richard to speak his soliloquies to us, marveling at and congratulating himself on his deviousness: this is Richard’s spectacle to the audience. It is also used to great effect when he successfully woos Lady Anne at her husband’s deathbed where Richard killed him, perhaps Richard’s greatest triumph of performance as Director Miles Potter cleverly and subtly draws attention to with this staging.

In the middle of the stage, there is red tile on the floor, which is where most of the scenes at court are held, subtly drawing attention to how manners at court are just another form of performance. And finally, the whole stage is elevated from the ground by one step which surrounds the entire stage. Watch where Richard lingers and when. When there is action occurring, but Richard has minimal dialogue, he stalks the outer step around the stage – he is, in a way, backstage, observing, not yet performing, but calculating and scheming and always having a hand at driving the action, however surreptitiously. Watch how when he puts on airs of humility, Potter has him step onto one of the many stages within the stage. Watch also how in the first half, he only steps onto the edges of the stage within the stage, and he steps there with some trepidation. Compare this to how, once crowned, Richard finally walks confidently to the middle of the red tile: finally feeling he belongs in a different kind of spotlight.

This very, very clever blocking is executed perfectly: it is subtle, motivated, and incredibly effective. It makes you constantly question who is performing, who is the audience, and how is the audience complicit in the performance. As Richard draws us into his plan, intimately speaking directly to the audience with his clever wordplay, we can’t help but root for him. We become complicit in supporting his wicked plan. We also can understand how all the members at court would be so taken in by Richard. McKenna shows us Richard’s pretensions but so subtly that we can believe they could go unnoticed by those at court.

Much like in Hamlet, where we can’t help but like Hamlet for his clever wordplay, and despise Claudius for his inadequacies in this department, Shakespeare equips Richard with incredible wit. He can artfully twist other people’s words, with a talent for verbal sparring unmatched by any of the other characters. This gives us both a feeling of how alone Richard is and a surprising amount of sympathy for him. And it also brings up the question of how someone so cogent in thought can be so deformed in motives.

The main failure of this production is a common one for this play, which is that the supporting characters get muddled and the many characters Richard deceives are hard to track. This may be, in part, due to a directorial indifference to these banal characters, compared to the seductive Richard, and in part due to solid but uninspiring acting. Bethany Jillard as Lady Anne is one striking exception, with real stage presence, and a complex performance, making this easily overlooked character actually equally rich as her partner on stage, Richard. Luckily, most of the specifics don’t matter too much, and the programme provides a nice family tree to help you keep track of the many people Richard needs to knock off.

Nevertheless, it is still a solid production, with an inspired use of stages within stages, and Seanna McKenna in a stunning performance, which, I am convinced, could not have been equalled by anyone else in the company at the moment. This is also the best Shakespeare production and the strongest lead performance I’ve seen at the Stratford Festival since Ben Carlson played Hamlet and Colm Feore did Macbeth. And along with the Shaw Festival’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Stratford’s Richard III is the must-see play of the year and it’s within driving distance of the GTA.

For information on cheap student tickets and travel, see the post on the Top 5 Summer Theatre Festivals on a Student Budget.

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