Diego Matamoros, Stuart Hughes (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)
A Songful Premise
by Keely Kwok
I arrived 15 minutes early to last night’s performance of Soulpepper’s The Gigli Concert and took a few of those minutes to admire the artistry of Ken MacKenzie’s set. With dirty windows, rustic walls, an unmade sofa bed, and absolute chaotic clutter everywhere, MacKenzie shows you exactly who lives here. The lights dim, music plays, and as the lights come back up, out stumbles JPW King (Diego Matamoros) in a morning-after stupor. King wrestles to pull a sweater over yesterday’s shirt and scrounges in an almost empty jam jar for some substance before washing it down with a swig of liquor. MacKenzie hit the nail on the head.
On the acting front, The Gigli Concert has a very talented cast consisting of Diego Matamoros as JPW King, Stuart Hughes as the Irish Man and Irene Poole as Mona. Admittedly, it took until the second act for me to realize just how talented this trio is, but I think that has more to do with the writing and my lack of interest in the story than anything else. The Gigli Concert is about a troubled Irish Man who seeks assistance from self-proclaimed dynamatologist, King (a doctor of an invented science), because the Irish Man desperately desires to sing like the famous Italian opera singer, Beniamino Gigli. Sorry, but not my cup of tea.
