A man is sitting on a couch with a teenager on one side and a woman in her forties on the other. It is a completely ordinary scene until you consider that the two women are the same person; they are his daughter at different stages of her life.

Showing the past and the present simultaneously is the brilliant theatrical stroke that Sharon Pollock achieves in her play Doc that has been revived by Soulpepper theatre company. And it is not the only scene in which the main character is seen in two time zones. The entire play takes place in a fluid but clear setting across several decades, some of the time as in the scene on the couch, simultaneously.

In this autobiographical play Doc is a successful doctor in New Brunswick and a hospital is about to be built and named in his honour. The doctor, Ev, is a deeply humane man who is generous to a fault and would sacrifice almost anything for his patients. He is a local hero.

His domestic life is not quite as successful. He married a bright and successful nurse but he may have done so because she was pregnant. After giving birth to two children she is left at home where she descends into misery and alcoholism.

Ev has a close friend named Oscar who is also a doctor but is his antithesis. He works very little and spends much of his time with Ev’s wife and daughter. There are hints of possible improper relations with Ev’s wife but nothing is confirmed.

If this were yet another tale of yet another dysfunctional family, the play would be just another play about a dysfunctional family. It is not. The structure of the play is so brilliant that you feel that you are seeing a dysfunctional family from a completely different angle.

Diana Leblanc directs an all-star cast that delivers simply brilliant performances. RH Thompson is the ambitious doctor of the tale. He can relate to his patients and perform his professional duties but he is an utter failure at home. He pays scant attention to his children, even less to his wife and he philanders as she deteriorates in front of his eyes. A superb performance.

Jane Spidell gives an emotionally charged performance as Ev’s wife Bob. In her youth, she was first in everything. But her husband left her behind and she descended to the point where even the liquor store, on instructions from her husband, would not sell her alcohol. Spidell’s is simply an award-winning performance.

Ev and Bob’s daughter is called Katie (Hannah Gross) as a teenager and Catherine (Carmen Grant) as an adult. The troubled teenager becomes a self-assured writer but she is practically estranged from her father and her brother. Exceptional work by Gross and Grant. This is Hannah Gross’s first professional theatre performance and she deserves an additional round of applause.

Pollock has added an interesting outsider to the troubled family in Oscar (Derek Boyes). Aside from showing a different way of practicing medicine (all he really wants to do is go to a warm climate or go fishing) Oscar becomes a surrogate husband and father to Ev’s family. He also helps define Ev’s character by commenting on the latter’s actions and criticizing him. He is the Chorus of the play.

The set deserves comment and very high commendation. It consists of panes of reflecting glass at the back and two panes on each side of the stage. There are cutouts on the sides in the shape of a human torso through which the characters make their entrances to centre stage. When not centre stage, they remain on the side of the stage separated by the glass but always visible. That means that whatever the time frame of the action on the stage the past and the future are combined to make everything happen “now.”

A first-rate night at the theatre.

________

Doc by Sharon Pollock opened on August 26, 2010 and will run until September 18, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca  416 866-8666.

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OUTLANDISH COMEDY GOES OVER OVER-THE-TOP – HOW NOW MRS. BROWN COW

By James Karas, Theatre Editor

This year’s Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake offers ten productions including a lunchtime performance of a play by J.M. Barrie whose title, Half an Hour, discloses its length.

The Festival’s patron playwright, Bernard Shaw, is again a minority shareholder with only two plays but he does get 50% more than anyone else. The Irish do get three plays, same as the Americans, while the English get two and the Russians and Canadians merit one each.

I saw three productions last week and will review them in order of preference.

HARVEY

Mary Chase’s Harvey is one of those plays that if you see it once you never forget it. In fact even people who have never seen it may know about that play with the six-foot invisible rabbit. Yes, that’s the one and the Shaw Festival has given it a first rate production full of charm and laughter in an almost fairy tale atmosphere.

Elwood P. Dowd (Peter Krantz) is a bachelor who lives somewhere in America and represents utter decency and love of humanity. He tried being smart, he tells us, for about forty years and did not like it. He switched to being nice and has found happiness. Happiness comes with visits to almost every bar in town accompanied by his friend Harvey who happens to be a six-foot plus rabbit. Like all rabbits of that description, Harvey is invisible to the normal eye but his presence is quite palpable to Elwood and, as the evening progresses, perhaps, to some other people.

Elwood’s socially ambitious sister Veta (Mary Haney) finds Elwood and Harvey a bit of an embarrassment and would like to commit the former to a psychiatric facility. She takes him to young Dr. Sanderson (Gray Powell) and old Dr. Chumley (Norman Browning) but Elwood so charms Nurse Kelly (Diana Donnelly) that Veta is committed instead of Elwood.

This calls for a lawsuit and Judge Omar Gaffney (Guy Bannerman) is summoned. The result, aside from hilarity, is a touching parable about human decency, good manners, indeed chivalry, and virtues that are almost never honoured.

Director Joseph Ziegler succeeds in bringing out the humour and humanity of the play in full measure. For Peter Krantz the role of Elwood P. Dowd must be a godsend and a career-defining performance for he excels in it. He brings out both the naiveté and intelligence of Elwood who knows a few things about life despite the apparent impression of almost no-screws left emanating from his relationship with Harvey.

Mary Haney is excellent as his uptight sister assisted in equal measure by Zarrin Darnell-Martin as her daughter Myrtle Mae. Veteran Norman Brown produces much laughter as the arrogant psychiatrist Chumley who is brought down a few pegs by drink and Elwood’s ‘reality’.

Diana Donnelly’s Nurse Kelly is attractive and humane when Dr. Sanderson is dumb and professional and both do excellent work.

The play has two sets, the paneled library of the Dowd mansion and the cold reception room of the psychiatric facility. Aside from well-designed sets by Sue LePage, the crew does heroic and extremely efficient work in changing scenes without intermission.

The Shaw scores a home run and Harvey is, as they say, a must-see.

ONE TOUCH OF VENUS

The production of a musical is de rigueur at the Shaw but great credit is due to Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell for choosing works of substantial quality that have been almost forgotten. This year’s selection is One Touch of Venus by Kurt Weill, Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman. It was a big hit when it opened on Broadway in 1943 but it has been revived only sporadically ever since.

Weill (music), Nash (lyrics) and Nash and Perelman (book) make an all-star team for writing a musical. The result may not have been stellar but it is a work with wit, humour and some superb music. If some of the wit is out of the reach of today’s audience it is not the fault of the writers. Times and context change.

One Touch of Venus is a fairy tale about a statue of the goddess of love coming to life in New York and falling in love with a hapless barber named Rodney Hatch (Kyle Blair).

Venus (Robin Evan Willis) disposes of Rodney’s screeching fiancée Gloria (Julie Martell) – sic transit Gloria – and the two lovers survive some scrapes including a stint in jail. But the two finally come through and are finally free to live happily ever after in a suburb of New York!

The production, in the small but elegant Royal George Theatre, (capacity 328), has the equivalent feel of watching the race scene from Ben-Hur on a 19” TV after seeing it on the big screen. You get the benefit of being close to the stage but that does not make up for the lack of a large stage for a large Broadway musical.

You get a lot of music from a 10-piece orchestra but it is a compromise. How much better would it sound with 28 instruments in a large theatre!

As for the performers, Robin Evan Willis has a gorgeous body that even Venus would have approved of – the Venus de Milo and the slim-hipped, all-too-angelic rendition of Botticelli. If Willis’s face does not quite satisfy one’s image of Venus, it is probably because no woman can. Unfortunately, her vocal ability does not match the curves of her body. She needs to soar at times but, alas, she cannot and all you get is volume instead of high notes.

Kyle Blair does a good comic job as the henpecked barber who has landed a goddess but his voice falls short of expectations. When he attempts to ascend the musical scale, he comes perilously close to releasing a flat screech.

The idea of an incarnated Venus is so delicious it energizes the imagination like a fairy tale remembered from childhood. If the production does not satisfy all our theatrical appetites the way nectar and ambrosia sated the gods, we do not leave the theatre hungry.

No doubt one can visualize a better production of One Touch of Venus just as one can imagine a better Venus but the one is more difficult to achieve than the other. In the meantime, imagination in full throttle, you can start your search in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Give it a triple.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

The Festival opened with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy An Ideal Husband. If you remove the wit, the epigrams and the balanced sentences from the play, you will end up with a melodrama that no Artistic Director would touch with a ten-foot instrument. In the hands of Wilde, however, melodrama became scintillating comedy.

I wish I could say that director Jackie Maxwell and Designer Judith Bowden have put together a production that does justice to the play and to the audience.

Sir Robert Chiltern (Patrick Galligan) is happily married, has a big house, is wealthy and is Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He is a man of rectitude, ability, honour and … well, he is too good to be true. His wife, Lady Chiltern (Catherine McGregor), another upstanding person, simply adores him.

His nemesis quickly appears in the person Mrs. Chevely (Moya O’Connell) who wants to blackmail him. She knows that Sir Robert made his fortune by using insider information and therefore is a fraud. She has a letter to prove it.

How does one stop Mrs. Chevely from wreaking havoc in this man’s life and what will his wife say if she finds out. That is a toughie but the Chiltern’s good friend and man-about-town Lord Goring (Steven Sutcliffe) may find a solution. Where did Mrs. Chevely get that nice brooch that she was wearing last night?

For much of the first two acts, the audience sat in almost funeral silence. They emitted a bit of laughter here and there but not much. During the last two acts there was some more laughter but Wilde’s play was getting a very poor return on its excellent lines.

What went right? Catherine McGregor, dressed beautifully (as were most of the women) managed to exude the upper-crust English hauteur. Moya O’Connell’s Mrs. Chevely was from the same class but a nasty blackmailer and abuser. Well done. Anthony Bekenn managed to get most of the laughs as the imperturbable servant Phipps.

What went wrong? Just about everything else. The play opens in a gorgeous two-story room full of people, in the Chiltern residence. Here we have a dimly lit room, almost all black and seriously in need of a decorator with a modicum of good taste. It is a depressing and simply awful set. Lord Goring’s apartment looks like a warehouse that is about to be converted into lofts and his smoking room looks like a storage area. Again, simply awful.

The play requires the crisp, upper-crust English accent that makes the wit and epigrams sound as if they were cut from glass. Can Canadian actors do such an accent? If they can they are few and far between and there was little evidence of that in this production. Patrick Galligan can play many roles but he does not convince us that he is made of fine-grained prime ministerial timber. Steven Sutcliffe comes closer as Lord Goring but he is a long way from the accent of the nobility. And what was that ridiculous vest with an apron doing on him? He is supposed to be stylish not a dork.

This Ideal Husband needs to lighten up. First, literally by turning up the lights and giving the set a good paint job with light-coloured tints. Then get the actors to pick up the pace, brush up on those accents and generate some energy and some laughter before the season is quite over.

Give it a base hit.

______

An Ideal Husband will run until October 31, 2010 at the Festival Theatre. One Touch of Venus and Harvey will run until October 10 and 31, 2010 respectively at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario. www.shawfest.com 1 800-5

Book Review by James Karas, special to the Greek Press

THE LUCKY CHILD by Marianne Apostolides 204 pp. Mansfield Press, 2010.

Marianne Apostolides is the daughter and granddaughter of veterinarians. She is the author of The Lucky Child, a marvelous novel that pays tribute to both men through the prism of fiction and borrowed memories.

The novel is set in Greece between 1939 and 1943 although it opens in 1932, the year in which Taki is born, two months after his mother miscarries the first twin. Taki is, of course, the lucky child of the title.

Agamemnon, Taki’s father, is the chief veterinarian of a cavalry unit in Thessaloniki, an upright officer who uses his skills to help poor farmers.

Apostolides gives us vignettes of life in Thessaloniki before and during the war as well as descriptions of life in Zagora where Mary, Agamemnon’s wife, comes from. She uses light, sparing brush strokes. She does not go for lengthy Dickensian descriptions but is happy with economical delineations.

The story seems to be written largely from the viewpoint of Taki. He is almost seven years old when the novel begins and only eleven in the summer of 1943 when the story ends. There are certain events from childhood that stick in our minds vividly and the rest become images that we recall without too much context. This seems to hold true for our protagonist. For example, Taki recalls a number of people going by his house without too much detail but he recalls watching his father neutering of a horse quite vividly.

Apostolides tells the story through an omniscient narrator but when Taki is in the picture the view seems to be largely through his eyes or as it affects him. A good example of Apostolides prose style is her description of the tumultuous events of October 28, 1940 when Italy gave Greece an ultimatum and started invading the country in the wee hours of the morning.

The obvious choice would have been for Apostolides to come up with an outpouring of prose describing the Greek multitudes shouting “No. No, No” to Mussolini in an expression of rapturous patriotism. Instead she combines some banal acts like a boy pedaling past Taki on his bicycle, Taki being jostled by his mother’s arm and being nudged aside by neighbours. This is a level-headed and realistic description and thus more effective than prose in overdrive.

Another example of her spare, subtle narrative style is the announcement of the beginning of World War II when Germany invaded Poland. Taki is in the kitchen with his maternal grandmother. He hears the words Germany, Poland ,,, army … Hitler. The only word he understands is army because of his father and the image in his head of officers dancing in their uniforms at Easter.

Meanwhile the grandmother goes to the sink to clean some carrots. “Her shoulder blade pushed back and forth, repeatedly, back and forth” writes Apostolides. The grandmother knows exactly what is happening and what is coming and Apostolides expresses everything in a few words of simple description.

The everyday life of the Apostolides family and everyone in Greece is lived against the background of some of the most dramatic events in Greek history. First there was the declaration of war against Italy and the spectacular success of the Greek forces followed by the quick capitulation to the Nazis in April 1941. This led to the rise of the Greek resistance and the communist-dominated EAM/ELAS.

Privation and hunger followed and Apostolides provides a beautiful juxtaposition between a child’s view of reality and the mother’s knowledge. Mary does not give Taki another slice of bread because she does not want to spoil his appetite for the evening, she tells him. In the meantime she feels a sudden dizziness as she looks at the loaf of bread that would have to last another day for the entire family. No more is said. No more needs to be said.

Apostolides provides a few images to describe the life under the Nazi occupation: soldiers on the roof, the breadline, a man begging for cigarettes and food and Taki bumping into a body. It turns outs to be that of a woman, his former neighbour who is wearing a yellow star on her chest. Again no more needs to be said.

Sometimes I imagined the novel as a series of black and white photographs from the era. It is a series of images that pass across your eyes and stay there.

Apostolides’ chosen narrative method perhaps did not allow for detailed descriptions of Thessaloniki or Zagora during the war. In fact there is not a single street name mentioned and the setting could be any city in Greece.

I will not reveal what happened to Agamemnon but Taki, we are told in the Epilogue, went to America in 1949 and became a highly successful veterinarian. He was the impetus for the book and in trying to capture her father’s childhood, the author has created a work of fiction that tells the truth without being historically accurate. Her ability to create and recreate, to delineate and pay tribute and to evoke poetically the past and to fuse it with the present, makes one attribute the title of the novel to the author as well as her father.

Marianne Apostolides was born in Long Island, New York and graduated from Princeton University with a major in politics. She has lived in Toronto since 1997.

She has written a novel and not a history or a memoir but since she includes many dates it may be appropriate to correct some of her errors.

The Americans were not landing anywhere in the spring of 1941. They did not get into the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Greek trains ran on coal and not on oil in the 1930’s.

Agamemnon and his officer friends claimed in the spring of 1942 (1941 according to the novel) that they had heard nothing from the Greek government-in-exile in Egypt for sixteen months. Since Greece was invaded in 1941, Apostolides clearly meant 1942. But even if we allow for the typo there are not 16 months between the spring of 1941 and the spring of 1942.

The novel ends in the summer of 1943. Apostolides enters the narrative directly in an Epilogue where she ties up some loose ends and explains her motivation for writing the story. It is just as much a story about life in Greece about seven decades ago as it is about the fate of Greek immigrants today. Taki Apostolides immigrated to the United States in 1949 and did not want to have anything to do with Greece until he was forced to return to his youth by a daughter whose connection to that country was very tenuous.

A few words about Taki’s older sister Loukia. At age 11, Loukia visits an army hospital and is sent to feed men who had limbs amputated. She gives them soup and water until she reaches a soldier, a boy of seventeen, who is too weak to take a drink. She dips her fingers in the water and places her fingertip in the man’s mouth. She tells him to drink and he does. It is a moment of marvelous magnanimity and beauty.

In another scene, Loukia appears as the writer and director of a play about Greek Independence in the platia of Zagora. She combines childish innocence and patriotic fervour as she leads the girls in an imitation of the Dance of Zalogos where the Suliote women with their children in their arms threw themselves off a cliff rather than endure slavery!

Loukia Apostolides is better known in Toronto as Lucy Grigoriades. The child is no doubt mother to the woman and many decades later Lucy remains an exemplar of volunteerism and service to the community with few equals.

The Lucky Child is a significant addition to the growing stock of literature by Greeks of the Diaspora and their descendants.

By James Karas (jameskaras@rogers.com)

“It’s a mystery” says this Hamlet as he launches into his “To be or not to be” aria. This is not Shakespeare’s Hamlet but Ambroise Thomas’ opera. Chances are you have not seen it or even heard of it. You may say that it is not in the top 100 most-produced-operas list. In fact that last time it was produced by the Metropolitan Opera in New York was in 1897. The mystery in this case is not the heart of Hamlet but why has Thomas’s work been ignored for so long.

It is on now and if you can’t dash out to Lincoln Center you can see it in a theatre near you on April 24, 2010 when the live telecast is reprised.

The opera has some great music and two great roles, one for a baritone (Hamlet) and one for a soprano (Ophelia). The role of Gertrude provides some excellent opportunities for a mezzo soprano but it is not as big a part as the other two.

The Metropolitan Opera has struck gold in all three roles. The kingpin is baritone Simon Keenlyside in the title role. He has a fine voice and looks the way you imagine Hamlet. He is a bit disheveled, distraught, confused, slim, agile and, yes, mysterious. In the hands of a less talented singing actor, Hamlet would look wooden and unsatisfactory. This is not a role for a baritone who strikes poses. It is a wholly acted and sung performance of the first order.

Soprano Marlis Petersen was a last minute replacement for the more famous Natalie Dessay and was greeted with the usual fears and expectations. Will she bomb or will she provide a memorable performance. Happily for her and the audience, Petersen does a marvelous job. She has a pure, clear, lustrous voice and made a superb Ophelia. Thomas gives Ophelia an extended Mad Scene that provides all kinds of opportunities for vocal and acting showmanship. Peterson does a masterly job as she struts around the stage stabbing her chest and slashing her wrists. There is blood all over her white dress as she finally collapses. Lucia di Lammermoor eat your heart out.

Mezzo soprano Jennifer Larmore was very impressive as Queen Gertrude, the woman who poisoned her husband, married his brother and was crowned queen of Denmark. Larmore gave a dramatic and terrific performance. The only small issue with her is that she has a bad habit when not singing of pursing her lips and sucking her cheeks in. Somebody should tell her to stop it. The hideous crown that they plopped on her head does not help her looks even though she is a very attractive woman.

Veteran bass James Morris sang the role of Claudius. It is not a particularly important role and I found his voice mostly colourless at the beginning. I liked him better near the end when his voice resonated much better.

Tenor Toby Spence presented an athletic and well-sung Laertes.

The quality of the production in general is questionable. Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser have produced the opera in Barcelona with Keenlyside and Dessay and it is available on DVD. The current production was initially done for the Grand Theatre of Geneva. They seem to have cornered the market on Hamlet.

They have opted for a production with a minimal set and Lighting Designer Christopher Foray has chosen darkness over light any time of the day or night.

Except for the Mad Scene where a couch, a chandelier and some flowers are in evidence, for the rest of the performance there is almost no set to be seen. A couple of backdrops are put across the stage but what you see all too often is singing heads with nothing but darkness in the background. They could be in outer space or a bunch of ghosts for all one knows.

In other words there is very little context to what you are watching. The great confrontation between Hamlet and his mother in her bedroom could have taken place anywhere. She has no furniture at all except for a portrait of Claudius. Yet, when we get to the grave diggers’ scene, the directors feel it is necessary for a wheel barrow full of dirt to be shovelled on the stage.

As if that were not bad enough, Brian Large who directed the performance for the screen decided to avoid any long shots as if they are the bubonic plague. In the opening scene we see the huge chorus, mostly in the dark, but in an impressive array. After that it is largely headshots with nothing but darkness in the background. It is unnecessary and downright silly. We are watching the performance on the huge screen and we do not want a single head filling up most of it.

I should mention that they do avoid the “happy ending” of the original libretto.

Louis Langree conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Let’s hope we will not have to wait for another century for the next production.

Young Frankenstein is a fast-paced, raucous musical that is a satire on, indeed, a travesty of the Frankenstein story. It has some good lines, some funny gags and some vey good musical numbers. If shown to good effect, these qualities could provide an excellent evening of light entertainment. Whatever entertainment they do provide is seriously marred in the current production at The Princes of Wales Theatre by volume levels and directorial choices that could easily send you searching for your Advil.

The musical is largely the work of Mel Brooks. That prodigious genius wrote the screenplay with Gene Wilder for the 1974 movie of the same name that starred Wilder, Teri Garr and the inimitable Marty Feldman. Brooks adapted his movie for the stage with Thomas Meehah and wrote the music and lyrics.

Young Frederick Frankenstein (Roger Bart) is a doctor in New York in the 1930’s. He is engaged to Elizabeth (Beth Curry) and all is well until he learns that his grandfather died back home in Transylvania. Frederick goes there to claim his inheritance. There he meets the family servant Igor (Cory English) and the lovely lab assistant Inga (Anne Horak). Frederick decides to change career paths by staying in Transylvania and going back into the family business – reviving the dead.

Without any further ado, as they say, Frederick gets hold of a dead person and installs the brain of Abby Normal in him – please note the intellectual level suggested by the name! The result is The Monster (Shuler Hensley). In order to keep the plot moving the following things happen: The Monster escapes and he has to be chased all over Transylvania; Frederick takes up with Inga; Elizabeth, his New York fiancée, arrives; she finds Frederick in bed with Inga. There is not a dull moment in Transylvania. And there is still the loony housekeeper Fray Blucher at the sound of whose name even the horses neigh.

In other words, there are lots of opportunities for dancing, singing and comic high jinks. The problem is that as directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman many of these things do not work. Everyone in the cast is miked and there is not much one can do about that. Sticking microphones on singers and actors seems to have become de rigueur. But maintaining ear-shattering levels of loudness is neither necessary nor desirable. Turn the volume down, for heaven’s sake; we are not deaf.

At the volume levels chosen there does not seem to be a single quiet or quieter moment in the musical. All dialogue and singing come out from the overhead speakers and it is pretty difficult to deliver some comic lines through a public address system. The strobe lights at times were so incessant that the only thing to do was close one’s eyes until they finished with them. Are they supposed to generate excitement?

Young Frankenstein may be a parody or a travesty but there is no need to overdo and overact to levels that are no longer enjoyable. Joanna Glushak’s Frau Blucher was so over the top that one more screech from her and the audience was going to join the horses and start neighing.

The scene where Elizabeth finds Frederick and Inga in bed could be very funny but the humour is lost in the loud screeching. Cory English could be funny but again he was given so many ridiculous mannerisms that his entertainment value was curtailed rather than increased.

Bart was allowed to do some singing and dancing and he proved his mettle as did Anne Horak and Beth Curry. The dancers were very good and there was a gorgeous display of legs.

The volume levels and overacting probably hid the quality of some of the songs. You have the impression that you are watching the Energizer Bunny gone berserk with several extra batteries up its whatshomacallit. This became even more obvious during the performance of Irving Berlin’s “Putting on the Ritz.” It is a familiar, elegant and wonderful tune that was given satirical treatment and sounded awful. Somebody should catch that Bunny and pull out some of those batteries. The result will probably be a funny musical and a much better night at the theatre.

________

Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan continues until April 18, 2010 at The Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. West, Toronto, Ontario. 416 872 1212 www.mirvish.com.

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THE OVERWHELMING ATTEMPTS TO TELL THE STORY OF THE UNSPEAKABLE MASSACRE IN RWANDA

By James Karas

In 1994 between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans were massacred. The rest of the world stood by and did nothing to stop the genocide even though they knew it was happening. In fact, the United Nations withdrew 90% of its peacekeeping troops and refused to call the killings a genocide.

It is this subject that J.T. Rogers tackles in his play The Overwhelming which is now playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre. It was an event of such horrific dimensions that it could not be described in almost any work of art. That Rogers fails to capture all the horror is inevitable; the extent to which he succeeds is admirable.

Rogers attempts to blend the personal story of an American family as they interact with foreign officials and Rwandans in the days leading up to the genocide. The play is part personal drama and part documentary and the two plot strands are interwoven.

Jack Exley (David Storch), a teacher of International Relations goes to Rwanda to write a book about Dr. Joseph Gasana (Nigel Shawn Williams). Exley and Gasana were roommates in college and Gasana is now running a paediatric hospital for AIDS sufferers. Exley needs to write a book in order to save his academic career.

Exley’s wife Linda (Mariah Inger) is a creative non-fiction writer and she wants to capture the sprit of Rwanda in a magazine article. Both Exleys are naïve to the point of stupidity and arrogance. They are so devoid of common sense that they are downright annoying. She is black and he has a son, Geoffrey (Brendan McMurtry-Howlett), from a previous marriage who is equally annoying.

The personal and family issues of the Exleys are the background to the swelling political problems as Tutsis threaten to return to Rwanda from Burundi where they were forced into exile by the Hutus. The extremist Hutus believe that the only means to ensure their own survival is by massacring all the Tutsis.

Rogers wants to bring a number of issues to the foreground and he uses twenty-two characters played by eleven actors in order to achieve that. There are French and American diplomats, a British and a Rwandan doctor, a UN Officer, and Rwandan government officials.

Samuel Mizinga (Sterling Jarvis) is a charming Rwandan official who befriends Linda and attempts to convince her that Tutsis are not real Rawands but mere invaders who must be resisted with every force. The French and American diplomats are not prepared to do anything and the UN forces are so few that they could not do anything even if they wanted to.

With twenty-two characters played by eleven actors in numerous locations, there are some scene changes that are not easy to follow and you have to pay very close attention to keep up with who is doing what.

This is a huge subject, as I said, and it cannot possibly be covered in a couple of hours but one does get the sense of the paranoia, the hatred and the fear between the two tribes. How two tribes that have a great deal in common can foment hatred leading to genocide is one of the astounding and unanswerable questions of history and the play.

The choice of the Exleys is not a sound one, I suggest. They should be less naïve, less annoying for the story to flow.

David Storch does a superb job as Jack Exley, the naïve and ridiculous academic. Storch was so effective in the role that I almost wished that Rogers had created a less disgusting character. Mariah Inger is a perfect foil for the foolish academic. Hardee T. Linehan is the hearty American diplomat Charles Woolsey whom we meet on the golf course as the massacre is proceeding.

Nigel Shawn Williams does well as Dr. Gasana and in several minor roles. Paul Essiembre successfully tackles three roles while Andre Sills takes on five rolls including that of UN Major.

Director Joel Greenberg prefers speed to ponderousness in scene changes. There are lot of scene changes done quickly and actors frequently speak simultaneously. There are at least four languages and the plot is not always easy to follow. Less speed may serve the play better.

The Overwhelming is a production of Studio 180 Theatre Company. This, they tell us, is their eighth major production following such successes as Stuff Happens and The Arab-Israeli Cookbook. Pretty good record that.

______

The Overwhelming by J.T.  Rogers continues until April 3, 2010 at the Berkeley Downstairs Theatre, 26 Berkeley St. Toronto, Ontario. 416 368-3110. www.canstage.com

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By James Karas

In the spirit of the Vancouver Olympics, we are awarding medals for knowledge of cultural history.

For gold: Who was Oscar Telgmann?

For Silver: who or what is Leo, The Royal Cadet?

For Bronze: Name a Canadian operetta that opened in Kingston and ran for 1700 performances?

People who follow productions by the Toronto Operetta Theatre (TOT) have an unfair advantage over others but that is as it should be. People who practice the downhill slalom for years have an advantage over those who have never put on skis.

It is an unfortunate fact that the medals will not be claimed by most Canadians. But that is not for any lack of effort by Guillermo Silva-Marin, the Founder and General Manager of TOT who for 25 years has been producing standard and some rare operettas in Toronto under budgets and conditions that would give pause to most people.

Telgmann (1855-1946) played a significant role in the musical life of Kingston, Ontario including establishing the Kingston Symphony Orchestra. The lyrics for Leo were provided by George F. Cameron, a lawyer, poet and editor of the Kingston News. The operetta, subtitled “An Entirely New and Original Canadian Military Opera in Four Acts” premiered in Kingston 1889. It toured to a number of cities and is estimated to have racked up 1700 performances by 1925.

Let’s get to Leo. We are on the picnic grounds of the Royal Military College, Kingston, in 1878. It is Queen Victoria’s birthday, the British Empire is in its glory the cadets are toasting Her Majesty’s health and the Commander is trying to recruit some civilians into the army. You see, there are some Zulus in Africa who need to be put in their proper place and Canada will do its bit for the empire.

The young ladies show up as do Herr Shulius and Monsieur Francois, the buffoonish professors of German and French. After some boisterous singing, the boys do join the army and are sent to Africa where they do their job (a war “dance” with the Zulus but we know what that means) and return triumphant. They are reconciled with their sweethearts and after a lot more singing, the operetta ends and we all live happily ever after.

Leo does not have much of a plot even by operettic standards. But it has spirit, military spirit, that is. These people have a song for every occasion. The men will sing about “Glory and Victory”, “The Life of a Rover”, “Soldiers and Our Country’s Pride” and the ladies will tell us that “We are Maidens” and “True Love Can Never Alter”.

Leo our hero is played by a tall and heroic-looking Cory O’Brien who can belt out the military and softer lyrics to his sweetheart Nellie (well done by Kristin Galer). Robert Longo is the upstanding Colonel Hewett and Patrick Whalen is the swaggering Captain Bloodswigger, “a true British soldier.”

Joseph Angelo and Gregory Finney are the foolish professors and they are good except that Angelo does not quite look Germanic. Stefan Fehr plays Cadet Wind who is composing a piece called the Faerie Opera and when there is no more plot left, a scene from his work is used to finish off the evening.

What TOT lacks is not talent, imagination or willpower. It has no money. As a result there was no set to speak of. What was lacking in funds was made up is spirit.

Lehar, Offenbach and Strauss are in no danger of being knocked off their pedestals by Telgmann but it was a delight to see a period piece from Canada’s past.

The original production of Leo at Martin’s Opera House in Kingston was under the Patronage of the Royal Military College. The current production is stated to be “Under Honorary Patron Commodore Commandant W. S. Truelove and the Royal Military College of Canada.” That may well be the real name of the current Commandant but appearing on the programme for an operetta I could not help but think that he sounds like one of its characters.

The current production is a revised and adapted version of the original. Mr. Silva-Marin and Virginia Reh revised the operetta in two acts with additional music by S. Codman. John Greer adapted and arranged the score.

The TOT Orchestra, a baker’s dozen of players conducted by Jeffrey Huard, did yeoman’s work as did the Vocal Ensemble.

There will be no medals awarded for recognizing the next production by TOT. It will be Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance starting on April 27, 2010.

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Leo, The Royal Cadet by Oscar Telgmann was performed on April  19, 20 & 21, 2010 at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  (416) 922-2912. www.torontooperetta.com

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By James Karas

The Greek Community of Toronto celebrated its 100^th anniversary last year and its most important cultural organization, Nefeli Theatre, is in its 19^th year of continuous productions. During that time it has involved thousands of young Greeks in its productions and has taken some of them to many parts of the world. It is a signal success story and its success and very existence are owed to one person: Nancy Athan-Mylonas.

This year’s production is Liar Wanted by Dimitris Psathas. “By” when describing any production by Ms Athan-Mylonas is a bit of a misnomer and in the case of Psathas’s comedy “loosely” based may be closer to the mark than any other description. More about that below.

Liar Wanted was first produced in Athens in 1953 and ran for more than 200 performances, a huge hit by Greek standards. It has become a theatrical staple ever since.

It is a riotous satire on Greek politicians. Theofilos (Antonis Sarrigiannis) is a member of Parliament who makes pre-election promises that he cannot possibly keep. He hires Theodoros (Vangelis Papadopoulos), a professional liar, to protect him from his constituents with what the liar does best: lies. Theodoros’s lies will lead to all kinds of complications, of course, until Theofilos’s wife gets in the act in order to extricate her husband and bring the curtain down.

Papadopoulos gives a highly commendable performance as the lying Theodoros. He acts with his lanky body, his eyes, his hands and produces wonderfully comic scenes. He talks into phones that are not connected, is caught making passes at Theofilos’s wife and even has a swig of urine that he mistakes for juice. He has the longest role in the play and comes though with flying colours.

Sarrigiannis is very good as the corrupt politician. With his ill-fitting three-piece suits, he is hounded by constituents and his wife into frantically funny scenes. He is always running away or hiding from someone and produces some frantic laughter.

His wife Jenny (Vicky Xenikakis) is pretty, classy and intelligent and done well by a veteran of Nefeli. Ms Xenikakis is also a dance instructor, assistant director and the creator of the Salsa Dance featured in the production.

Irene Bithas-Georgalidis has the relatively minor role of Koula, the maid. Actors in the old days simply hated to appear on stage with babies or animals for the simple reason that they were guaranteed to steal the scene. If Bithas-Georgalidis were around they would have added a third scene-stealing Nemesis: Bithas-Georgalidis. She is a natural comic talent. She can make the audience howl with laughter by simply walking across the stage. She did it in this performance and all I can say is that her actions amount to larceny.

Maria Mattheou is another scene stealer. She is a big girl in the role of the butcher Patatias, a male role in the original. She is able to terrorize people by just looking at them. A very funny lady.

Other notable actors were Maria Agrapidis as the floozy Pitsa Kitsa; the Community’s elder actor Loukas Economou as the lawyer Maratos; Nikos Takas as Vrasidas; Maria Menegakis as Pipitsa and Peter Mastorakos as Agis. Some of them were acting parts that were twice their age or more and full marks should be given for jobs well done.

Psathas did not intend Liar Wanted to be a musical but that was not about to stop Ms Athan-Mylonas from using the Nefeli Group dancers. As usual, the opening scene involved singing and dancing and there were about half a dozen other similar sequences.

This production bears little resemblance to the 1953 play. In 1961 Giannis Dalianidis adapted the play for the screen and directed the film of Liar Wanted. He added characters, changed scenes and made the script suitable for a movie. Ms Athan Mylonas has largely relied on the movie script rather than the play. The music, singing and dancing are all her additions.

Ms Athan-Mylonas is credited with Stage Adaptation, Direction and Choreography. There is some assistance given for the Greek-challenged members of the audience with narrative summaries written by Lydia Soldevila-Tombros and delivered by Stephanie Amygdalidis and Deanna Christopoulos.

There is an original song “Liar wanted” with lyrics by Avra Michailidis and music by Konstantina Michailidis. The other music is by Pantelis Thalassinos and Vassilis Tsitsanis.

Community theatre is a huge undertaking under very difficult conditions. The working conditions at the Polymenakion Cultural Centre can at best be described as challenging. Despite these limitations Nefeli has managed to provide a hugely entertaining production of a classic comedy.

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Liar Wanted by Dimitris Psathas  opened on January 22 and will run until February 14, 2010 at the Polymenakion Cultural Centre, The Greek Community of Toronto, 30 Thorncliffe Park Drive, Toronto, Ontario. www.theatre-nefeli.com Telephone (416) 425-2485

By James Karas

ALMOST PITCH-PERFECT HAY FEVER FROM ALUMNAE THEATRE

Noel Coward’s Hay Fever is an unlikely comedy. The Bliss family and their servant are spending a weekend at their country house in Berkshire. They are visited by four guests and nothing much happens. No one is murdered, there is no mystery to unravel or any plot to develop. Yet, Hay Fever, if done well, can be a very funny play. Ineptly done it is a monumental bore.

Alumnae The

atre Company gives the play a superb production, eliciting howls of laughter and providing a highly entertaining night at the theatre.

Coward provid

ed lots the opportunities for a good director and cast to work with, however difficult it may seem. Judith Bliss (played to perfection by Dinah Watts) is a retired actress who is planning a comeback. Retired is a misnomer because she never stopped acting or taking theatrical poses on or off the stage. At one point Judith’s daughter Sorel (Tamara Lubek) tells her to “be natural” for a change. For the Bliss family being theatrical, self-absorbed and eccentric is being completely natural.

David (Hereward Pooley), the father who is a novelist and son Simon (Ken MacAlpine) complete the wacky Bliss family which gets some assistance in its bizarre conduct from their potty maid Clara (Anne Harper).

Each family member, unbeknownst to the others, invites a guest for the weekend. The guests become more like victims who need to plan and execute an escape after a night with the off-the-wall Blisses.

All the guests “fall in love” or are told they are in love or have a flirtation with one of the Blisses. Sandy (Leete Stetson) is cornered by Sorel and is caught kissing her in the library. Judith tells Richard (Jonathan Thomas) that she is in love with him and her husband must be informed immediately. The crafty Myra (Tina Sterling) tries to butter up David and they are caught kissing by Judith. The brainless Jackie (Kaitlyn Riordan) is supposed to be in love with Simon. That is a lot of activity for a play that has no plot and incidentally a lot of laughs.

The guests have become victims and the final act is a hilarious scene of them trying to escape from the Bliss house unseen. The self-absorbed Blisses get into an argument about the streets of Paris and the guests manage to escape behind their backs.

The play needs some astute a

nd delicate handling. The lines are only funny if delivered properly. Each laugh depends on timing, delivery and the reaction of the recipients. Kudos to McDonald for orchestrating all and providing a fine production.

Dinah Watts leads the cast with a superb performance. She is allowed to overact, strike poses, gesture and modulate her voice. She does it impeccably. Pooley is hilarious as the somewhat disheveled novelist who finds himself accosted by an at

tractive woman. He and Sterling produce fine comedy.

The Bliss children are nothing if not theatrical and Lubek is especially good. Anne Harper’s maid was just what you would expect from a servant working for nutsos.

The English accents, so difficult to achieve at times, ranged from the acceptable to the excellent and the result was a very good night at the theatre.

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Hay Fever by Noel Coward opened on January 15 and will run until January 30, 2010 at the Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley Street, Toronto, Ontario. www.alumnaetheatre.com. Telephone (416) 364-4170

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By James Karas

The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is as good a time as any to look back at the good, bad and indifferent theatrical productions that I saw in 2009.

As always, I look for things Greek. Not quite in the spirit of the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding for whom everything is Greek but in the sense of searching for Ancient Greek drama and links to Greek culture. My luck in finding Aeschylus and Company on the stage during 2009 was simply dreadful. No doubt there were many productions but I was not in the right place at the right time to see much of anything.

The year did start auspiciously with a production of Euripides’s Medea at the Canon Theatre in Toronto. Miles Potter directed his wife Seana McKenna using Robinson Jeffers’s 1946 adaptation. A year later I still recall McKenna’s performance in the role of the vengeful queen. The superb production boded well for Greek drama to be made intelligible to modern audiences and be produced more frequently.

It did not happen. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival did not offer anything closer to Greek drama than Racine’s Phèdre. Seana McKenna was outstanding in the lead role and Tom McCamus gave a polished performance as Theseus but the production fell flat partly because of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s prosaic translation and partly because of director Carey Perloff’s attempt to make Racine more approachable. It may have been approachable but was decidedly not Racine.

Phèdre was also produced by the National Theatre in England with Helen Mirren in the title role. Nickolas Hytner directed the production using Ted Hughes’s translation of the play. The production had many virtues but Hytner kept Mirren’s emotional range in tight rein. I expected Mirren to deliver the equivalent of a Mad Scene in an opera but Hytner would not permit her.

Soulpepper Theatre Company promised a production of Antigone by Sophocles but backed off and produced Jean Anouilh’s version of the play. Even R.H. Thomson (Creon) and Liisa Repo-Martell (Antigone) could not bring the production to life. Not having Sophocles’ play was a disappointment made worse by having a so-so production of Anouilh’s version.

Aside from those slim pickings the only things Greek that I chanced on were The Suitcase by Nancy Athan-Mylonas and Lydia Soldevila Tombros and the opera Alexander the Great by Panayotis Karoussos.

The Suitcase presents a sentimental journey back to Greece and a celebration of the Greek immigrant and the Greek Community of Toronto. It was part of the celebration of The Greek Community of Toronto’s 100^th anniversary and contained the Athan-Mylonas mixture of song, dance and story. Not least important was the fact that Ms Athan-Mylonas involved over 100 people, mostly young, in the production. The pleasant and painful memories that they evoked struck a deep emotional connection with the audience and it responded with a standing ovation.

Karoussos’s opera Alexander the Great was staged by The Pan-Macedonian Association of Ontario in a concert version at the P.C. Ho Theatre in Scarborough. As the President of the Association, I could hardly review the production but suffice it to say that it was the first time that an opera had been staged by a Greek association in Ontario.

After that the search for things Greek descends to My Big Fat Greek Wedding type of scramble for “everything is Greek.” Orfeo ed Euridice, Orphee aux enfers, Idomeneo and Demofoonte are all based on Greek mythology but Gluck, Offenbach, Mozart and Niccolo Jommelli made the egregious errors of not choosing Greek parents or being born in Greece. They are all ours anyway, aren’t they?

I saw Idomeneo and Orphée aux enfers along with Wagner’s Die Gotterdammerung during my annual visit to Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Olivier Py’s production of Idomeneo was unorthodox, eccentric, wild and bizarre. Py moved the setting from the seashore and palace of Crete to an unrealistic cityscape with chrome structures with men wielding machine guns. A long way from Mozart but an outstanding re-imaging of the opera.

Offenbach took the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into rollicking fun in Orphée aux enfers. The unholy burlesque of gods and mortals was done to perfection at Aix.

From the light we turn to the serious, really serious, because the other production at Aix that I saw was Wagner’s Die Gotterdammerung. With the peerless Ben Heppner as Siegfried and Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde, Stéphane Braunschweig directed a sparse, almost minimalist and extraordinary production. The real star in many ways was the mighty Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle.

The highlight of the year was spending a week in New York and seeing the entire Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera. The Met revived Otto Schenk’s twenty year old production of Der Ring des Nibelungen for the last time and it proved to be an “event”.

This is Wagner on a grand scale, scenically, vocally and orchestrally. Katarina Dalayman took on the role of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Gotterdammerung with Adrianna Pieczonka as Sieglinde. James Levine conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in four nights of opera that may be unlikely to be repeated for a long time.

One of the great delights of the summer is going to the Glimmerglass Opera Festival near Cooperstown in upstate New York. You can see four operas in three days and have beautiful Lake Otsego, verdant countryside and Cooperstown and its countless baseball memorabilia stores thrown in as a bonus.

In 2009 Glimmerglass offered Verdi’s La Traviata, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (both directed by Jonathan Miller), Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Menotti’s The Consul. That is quite an eclectic selection as it represents the baroque era, the modern and the 19^th century with two familiar chestnuts.

Director Kevin Newbury provided a naturalistic and briskly paced production of Cenerentola that brought out most of the delights of the opera. The antidote to this was the dark, political opera The Consul which is set during the Cold War. With its gritty and sinewy music it brings to the stage the world of political repression described by Arthur Koestler and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Jonathan Miller gave a back-to-basics production of La Traviata that was both sensitive and sensible and in the end highly enjoyable. He also directed Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. He set the opera in modern times with cell phones and text-messaging being quite prevalent. Purcell proved in 1689 that opera could be written in English but unfortunately no one paid much attention to the genre. Name a few operas in English that were composed before the twentieth century!

I went to London twice and managed to squeeze in twenty-four performances. A production of Waiting for Godot provided a number of pleasures. It was at the beautiful Theatre Royal Haymarket and it had the rumbling voice of Ian McKellen and the talent of Patrick Stewart. A production to remember.

Juliet Stevenson gave a searing performance in Duet for One, a play about a virtuoso violinist struck with multiple sclerosis. A number of visits to the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and other theatres provided a feast of theatrical fare.

On a swing through France I went to three theatres that I had not seen before. I saw a beautiful production of Demofoonte at the Palais Garnier, the fabled Paris Opera, the Odeon Theatre de l’Europe in Paris for a not very funny production of Feydeau’s La Dame de chez Maxim and a respectable production of Gounod’s Faust at the Theatre du Capitole in Toulouse.

Opera in Toronto has become far more plentiful than ever. The Canadian Opera Company spreads its productions over fall, winter and spring seasons and provides significant variety and mostly high quality. Dvorak’s Rusalka and Stravinsky’s The Nightingale are two rarities that were combined with more familiar works like Fidelio and Madama Butterfly.

Opera Atelier is good for a couple of productions of baroque opera each year. It is a gem of a company that unfortunately lacks the funds to produce more works. Opera Hamilton is just an hour’s drive away and last year they provided a fine Madama Butterfly.

For the financially challenged, productions from the Metropolitan Opera are available in HD at movie theatres. There are many disadvantages to seeing opera like that but it sure beats not seeing productions from New York at all. Thus you could see Madama Butterfly on the big screen from New York as well as in Hamilton and Toronto, all in one year.

The Canadian Stage Company should be the premier producer of classics and exceptional new works but it rarely rises to the occasion. With its mixture of musicals, comedies and serious drama it seems to be trying desperately to find the proper repertoire to fill the theatre.  Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille are more adventurous and experimental. They promote and produce
new works and have the right to fail on occasion and to be always applauded for their efforts.

Soulpepper Theatre Company dominates the production of classics and off the beaten track works. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the Shaw Festival dominate the summer season and I reviewed their 2009 seasons several months ago.

There are numerous smaller companies that chase scarce funds and put on a few productions each year.

There is not world enough and time to see everything. I managed to see 130 productions during 2009. As usual there are some that were forgettable and forgotten almost as soon as I submitted my review to the paper. There are others that remain embedded in the mind. What is remembered is not necessarily “the good” but the exceptional be it exceptionally good or derisively awful. The most easily forgotten I suppose are those that required an extra large cup of coffee to keep me from falling off my seat. The others are productions that whet the appetite for more and more theatre and opera.

A New Year. A new beginning. Let’s start again.

THEATRE REVIEW

By James Karas

jameskaras@rogers.com

The season for most theatre companies starts sometime in September and ends in May. Then the summer festivals take over until the fall. The same arrangement applies to schools and the end of vacations, of course, and some day the calendar year may begin on September 1.

Theatre companies in Toronto follow the September-May schedule except for Soulpepper Theatre Company which follows the calendar year for its season. As such the end of the year is the appropriate time to review what they did during 2009 and comment about their 2010 season.

There is little doubt that if you want to see good plays in Toronto, Soulpepper is your best bet in terms of repertory, number of plays and quality of production.

Soulpepper produced a hefty eleven plays during 2009. All were written in the twentieth century. Three were Canadian, three American, two English, two Hungarian and one French.

The season opened in February with Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, a brilliant and intricate play that features verbal pyrotechnics and requires acting with precision and finesse. Unfortunately, Soulpepper’s production fell short of what one would expect of them or would want to see in a Stoppard play.

The wide-ranging references to art, poetry and fiction and the lines from The Importance of Being Earnest that are interwoven in the dialogue of Travesties fell flat. The great speeches and witty lines failed almost completely to connect with the audience leaving one with a bad evening at the theatre.

The second production was American David Mamet’s classic outpouring of vitriol and obscenities, Glengarry Glen Ross. If nothing worked in Travesties, the opposite was true of Glengarry. It was a pitch-perfect production that happened to have connections to the current subprime mortgage mess created by American banks’ insatiable greed.

David Storch directed Eric Peterson, Peter Donaldson, Albert Schultz and William Webster through the orgy of immorality represented in the play. A riveting night at the theatre was the result.

With Joe Orton’s Loot we moved to a different type of morality completely. Joe Orton’s world is matter-of-factly amoral and vicious. The play opens with a woman in a coffin at centre stage. Her husband displays little emotion and is mostly concerned with the flowers while her son uses the coffin to stash away stolen cash.

The dialogue is like a sadistic Oscar Wilde and I am not sure if director Jim Warren captured all the blackness of the play but it was an enjoyable production none the less. Oliver Dennis, Nicole Underhay and Matthew Edison had the leading roles.

Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing is set in the more familiar and congenial (for the audience) atmosphere of a working class apartment in New York in the 1930’s. It tells the story of a family (could be Greek, Polish or anything but in this case it is Jewish) that tries to make ends meet, maintain family traditions and morals in a new world and just survive. A moving production of the play’s several subplots with Nancy Palk’s powerful performance dominating the evening.

For its next production Soulpepper maintained a similar milieu. This time it was an immigrant family in Toronto in the 1970’s in David French’s Of the Fields, Lately, As in Awake and Sing this is a family drama in which a strong woman tries to effect reconciliation between her husband and her son. It is an emotionally charged play superbly directed by Ted Dykstra with marvelous performances by Diane D’Aquila, Kenneth Walsh, Eric Peterson and Jeff Lillico.

Billy Bishop Goes To War was the next production of the quintessentially Canadian play by John Gray and Eric Peterson. Bishop was the most highly-decorated Canadian war hero of World War I and the play about him has become the most frequently produced Canadian play. Ted Dykstra directed Peterson in the one-man show with Peterson paying some 20 characters. A planeload of kudos to Peterson and the production.

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf presents a family drama of a different kind, to put it mildly. Two couples meet for drinks after a party at a New England college. They could treat us to witty repartee à la Neil Simon or they could launch vicious verbal warfare and cruel games. They do the latter as they examine and reveal not only their lives but by extension American history. Diana Leblanc directed Diego Matamoros and Nancy Palk in stellar performances.

A married couple engaged in verbal warfare is at the center of Ferenc Molnar’s The Guardsman but the atmosphere is one of hilarity rather than brutality. The warring couple are actors and the jealous husband (Albert Schultz) has to pretend he is his wife’s (Kristen Thomson) secret lover in order to win her back. There are several layers to the deception and perceptions of the play all adding up to a thoroughly enjoyable night at the theatre. Molnar was a Hungarian playwright and you don’t see too many plays from that part of the continent. Take it as an added bonus from Soulpepper.

The promise of moving away from twentieth century drama and offering a Greek tragedy, unfortunately did not materialize. The brochure containing the 2009 productions stated that we will get Sophocles’ Antigone. It was to be “in a new adaptation by Evan Webber with Chris Abraham” which is enough to send chills up your spine but, eh, it’s better than nothing.

We did not get even that. We had to settle for Jean Anouilh’s version of the myth as he saw it during the Nazi occupation of France.

Liisa Repo-Martell and R.H. Thomson did fine work in the leading roles of Antigone and Creon. But director Chris Abraham never brought the production to life and the whole thing was a big disappointment. Soulpepper can and should do more classics and move away from the twentieth century.

The penultimate production of the year was Parfumerie by Miklós László, another Hungarian playwright whom you do not run into every day. We are in the spirit of Christmas and a romantic comedy where love triumphs is de rigueur. Parfumerie tells the story of two people who do not get along at work but who are carrying on a passionate epistolary affair. We all know how that is going to end!  Oliver Dennis and Patricia Fagan are the lovers and Joseph Ziegler is the humane owner of the shop where they work. Morris Panych directs the heart-warming comedy.

Production Number 11 for the year was Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies. This was poetry recital combined with singing with piano accompaniment. There are a number of unusual elements to the event. It is based on a poem by Lee, who was Toronto’s first Poet Laureate. It is about Toronto and it consists entirely of verse. No doubt there are other plays based on poetry but I am not aware of one that combines all of the above.

The show was put together by Mike Ross (who also performs it) and Lorenzo Savoini. Albert Schultz directed. This is unusual fare and all we can do is encourage them to give us more.

In 2010, Soulpepper will produce twelve plays in what appears to be a more restricted repertoire. Canadian content is increased to four plays, the Americans and the English get three each and the Russians and the Irish one apiece. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country are the two non-twentieth century offerings.

Four of the productions are revivals: Billy Bishop Goes to War, Glengarry Glen Ross, A Raisin in the Sun and A Christmas Carol were all seen in the last couple of years. They are worthy productions but there are countless plays out there that could have been produced instead of regurgitating recent successes.

John Murrell’s Waiting for the Parade, David French’s Jitters, Sharon Pollock’s Doc are the other Canadian plays and although one can quibble about their choices one cannot mount a serious argument against them.

Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood, Theatre Workshop and Charles Chilton holds a lot of promise and may be an interestingly compared to Waiting for the Parade, another war-time play. Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country was produced a couple of years ago at the Shaw Festival and we could have waited for a while longer for another staging. That was the Brian Friel version and we will have to see what Susan Coyne has in mind in her adaptation of the play.

Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, a dark comedy, is to be eagerly anticipated as it comes hot on the heels of Loot. I have never seen Sharon Pollock’s Doc nor Brian Friel’s Faith Healer and I can hardly say anything about those choices. Arthur Miler’s
Death of a Salesman is a classic that can be seen repeatedly with profit.

I could do without the revivals but that’s because I am not Soulpepper’s Chief Financial Officer or fundraiser.

One can always wish for more or different plays but one can also be grateful for a company that started on a shoe string and provides the richest and most varied theatre in Toronto.

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The 2010 season starts on January 22 with previous of Billy Bishop Goes To War. It opens on January 26, 2010 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Toronto, Ontario. For more information telephone (416) 866-8666 or go to www.soulpepper.ca