Review: (Toronto / Theatre) The Speedy (World Stage)

(photo by Chris Hanratty and Shira Leuchter)

by Greg Bunker

Combining curation, correspondence, comedy, and contemplation, UnSpun Theatre’s The Speedy is as remarkable for its true story as it is for the ways it unfolds. The Speedy was a schooner that left the port of Muddy York (present-day Toronto) in 1804, and sunk on its way to Newcastle with all aboard. Commissioned in 2012 by Harbourfront Centre to celebrate 40 years of theatre at the waterfront, The Speedy distills years of research and development into poignant vignettes of the ship, its forced departure, its ill-fated passengers, the serious historical and political consequences of this sinking, and the process of researching and developing the work itself. This even included which parts weren’t produced and why – that was a nice touch. 

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Mies Julie (World Stage)

Bongile Mantsai, Hilda Cronje (photo by Rodger  Bosch)

Mies Julie Misses
by Jason Booker

The overly warm theatre. Filled with smoke. A vivid red dance floor, painted to look like broken stone tiles. A slowly spinning plantation-style ceiling fan. An old stove turned upstage.

Welcome to South Africa. Specifically the fictitious Veenen Plaas (meaning Weeping Farm) in the semi-desert region known as The Karoo.

And welcome to a show that comes at a fever pitch, intense and shouted and bouncing off the furniture, where strangely the stakes never seem as high for the characters as they do for the symbols and history they represent.

Welcome to Yaël Farber’s Mies Julie.

This is a world where melodrama rules, where the only quiet moments come when the ancestors are invoked and the live-performed score (featuring incredible vocals from Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa) is permitted to overwhelm the audience’s experience.

Review: (Montreal / Theatre) Mies Julie

Bongile Mantsai, Hilda Cronje, Thoko Ntshinga, Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa (photo by Murdo MacLeod)

History repeats itself, over and over again.
by Chad Dembski

Often in reviewing live events we are able to get two tickets to a show and invite a friend or peer to see it with us. For Mies Julie, which opened last night at Place des Arts in their 5e salle series, I invited a designer who I have collaborated with a couple times in the past. A work as complex, intense and layered as Mies Julie deserves a good discussion afterwards as it is a piece with many ideas.  

The play seems to almost begin the moment you walk in the lobby which is filled with smoke that is pouring from the theatre. As I entered I noticed one of the performers sitting in the audience on the far side right who seemed stoic and highly focused. The lights faded down and as the music swelled I got the chills associated with those first moments of an event where you are not quite sure what will happen. The woman in the audience got up and slowly made her way to the stage, adding singing to the music mix and providing a wonderful atmosphere to the mysterious beginning. As each performer entered from the audience doors I got a sense immediately that this would be a more radical adaptation of Stringberg’s classic tale of innocence to experience. Immediately a physical nature is established by the two main characters; Julie and Peter, jumping off tables and using the stage to maximum effect. Physical repetition is used quite often; Peter polishing black boots, over and over again and Julie pulling at her dress and hair. This connection to the physical nature of all three performers was transfixing as I don’t often see so much physical interpretation of character in Canadian theatre.

In a Word... Yaël Farber on Mies Julie

Strindberg's African Dance of Death

by Chad Dembski

Yaël Farber is a multiple award-winning director and playwright of international acclaim. Her productions have toured the world extensively - earning her a reputation for hard-hitting, controversial works of the highest artistic standard. Her most recent work MIES JULIE (written and directed by Farber) has won a string of international awards; was recently named one of the Top Ten Productions of 2012 by The New York Times, and 5th Best Production of 2012 by The Guardian. Ms. Farber was named ARTIST OF THE YEAR in her native South Africa (2003). She is the recipient of four national BEST DIRECTOR AWARDS (South Africa 1991, 2002, 2008; 2012) She has won: twice the SCOTSMAN FRINGE FIRST AWARD (Edinburgh 2000 & 2012); twice THE ANGEL HERALD AWARD (Edinburgh 2003 & 2012); A SONY GOLD AWARD (London 2001) and the BEST OF EDINBURGH AWARD (Edinburgh 2012). She has been nominated for a DRAMA DESK AWARD (NYC 2007) and a TMA BEST DIRECTOR AWARD (UK 2008). Her productions have toured across the major cities of the USA, the UK (including in London's West End and at The Barbican Centre), Canada, Australia, Japan, across Europe and Africa. Ms. Farber is a past invitee of: The Lincoln Theatre Directors' Workshop (NYC1999); Mabou Mines Theatre Company (NYC 2001); and In Transit Laboratory at Haus de Kulturen der Welt (Berlin 2001). She developed a work in residence at The Joseph Papp Public Theatre (NYC 2000); developed a new text atSundance Theatre Laboratory (Utah 2001); was Playwright-in-Residence for Nightwood Theatre (Toronto 2010); and an invited participant in Anna Deavere Smith's 'Bodies on the Line' Artist Residency (NYC 2010). Ms. Farber was Head of the Directing Program at the prestigious National Theatre School of Canada 2009 – 2012. She premiers a new production NIRBHAYA at the Edinburgh Festival 2013 – focused on the rape and death of Jyoti Singh Pandey, which caused an international outcry. Ms. Farber was recently named amongst City Press's top 100 South Africans. Her plays are published by OBERON BOOKS (London, UK). Farber will direct Arthur Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE for London’s West End theatre The Old Vic this year.

CHARPO:  When did the inspiration for the idea for Mies Julie begin?  What were the first seeds for the adaptation?

FARBER:  I love to adapt the classics. I work off the foundation that audiences are familiar with but then subvert that as well. I love the challenge to try and connect to a contemporary classic... find the ways it surprised or shocked its first audiences.  I try to re-discover what those shocking factors were when it was first written. I try to find those outlets, when I read work or see work: What isn’t there?  How is it different now?  

I had read the play 20 years ago as a student but then returned to it again a few years ago when I was teaching at the National Theatre School directing program and came upon a scene from Miss Julie. As I was working with the students, images kept coming to me from the scene we were doing. A tree growing out of the centre of the floor was the strongest image that stayed with me and gave me the inspiration for the adaptation. I always start with images and when I re-read the play images kept flooding in and I instantly knew it had to be set in South Africa. 

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Conte d'amour (World Stage)

(photo by Robin Junicke)

Story of Hatred
Love yourself – stay away!
by Jason Booker

This is a three-hour, intermission-less film plopped onto a stage – not theatre. Allegedly the play is about Fritzl and his house, where he lives upstairs with a family of life-sized cloth dolls which he feeds by crumbling potato chips into their glossy magazine page faces. It’s a highly amusing, if perverse, opening scene that lasts less than ten minutes. However, that is almost the only live action in the piece (at least as much of the piece as I saw, but I’ll get to that), before Fritzl disappears behind the white drywall of his home through a hole in the cupboard. He descends into the darkness below his living room floor, a constructed box with plywood walls on three sides and a translucent plastic wall facing the audience. Inside this rec-room basement live three people. The program informs me that the man in drag is his daughter, who resembles a badly feminized Daniel Craig and mumbling into his hand-mic songs like Love Will Tear Us Apart – a darkly amusing but overly long English commentary on this German-based show. The daughter takes care of their two sons in this dark playroom, all of whom are played by men in their mid-thirties. Everything that occurs in the basement is filmed and displayed live by two cameras – one hand-held and one mounted in the upper corner near the audience, akin to a security camera – projected onto the drywall.

Why do I need to state that the program tells me? Because it isn’t at all clear from the show. Conte d’amour isn’t meant for audiences to understand or participate in – simply to watch in awe. And for them to walk out.

Review: (Toronto / Theatre) Major Tom (World Stage)

(credit: Liquid Photo)

A (Show) Dog's Life

Victoria Melody’s one-woman dog show never quite leaves ground control.

by Christian Baines

@XtianBaines

There’s an eerie foreshadowing when Victoria Melody starts telling us of the numerous Z-list British celebrities that her dog, Major Tom has charmed on his daily walks. Could Melody be giving us a glimpse of what she would eventually become? That’s certainly the question lurking at the back of Major Tom, the 70 minute monologue Melody delivers based on her experience, first on the UK dog show circuit, then as a mature age beauty queen herself.

Melody imbues her story with a delightful everywoman-out-of-her-depth quality. It’s endearing in no small thanks to her resilience in the face of repeated failure. The biggest applause is naturally reserved for the eponymous pooch, an adorable basset hound guaranteed to earn his share of laughs and awwws from the audience.

Review: (Toronto) Untitled Feminist Show (World Stage)

(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Unfettered Joy

by Zoe Erwin-Longstaff

Harbourfront’s World Stage brings us Untitled Feminist Show (UFS), written by New York playwright Young Jean Lee, with choreographer Faye Driscoll, and director Morgan Gould. This is the second display of Lee’s work in Canada after World Stage’s 2013 season included The Shipment, her commentary on the black experience in the United States. UFS similarly grapples with identity politics, but this time, as all promotional material is quick to tell you, the action unfolds without words or wardrobe. What you can expect then, is less of Lee’s signature caustic commentary; instead, the more playful element of her previous plays seems to have exploded into 60 minutes of exuberant whimsy. 

Review: (Toronto) The Radio Show (World Stage)

(photo: Steven Schreiber)

Music Celebrated; Danced

by Beat Rice

New York based dance company Abraham.In.Motion opens the World Stage season with Kyla Abraham’s personal piece, The Radio Show. The piece is an homage to the music Abraham and his family listened to on the only two urban radio stations in his hometown. In the same year the radio stations stopped broadcasting, Abraham’s father also developed Alzheimer’s and aphasia. Abraham has created a dance that connects these two losses, the silence that follows, and how relationships are affected. 

The Radio Show is a celebration of music through movement. The sound design is superb. No sound designer is credited but there is mention of additional editing by Herman Soy Sos Pearl. We hear the switching and tuning of radio stations with bits of pieces of familiar songs mixed in with jarring pink noise. There are intermittent songs, beats, radio noise, and recordings of phone calls and broadcasts. The bouts of radio static are reminiscent of what I imagine a bout of memory loss to be like. At one moment a dancer is moving to a joyful Motown tune and when the song stops, he is at a loss, for movement and words. We see his mind coming in and out of confusion and familiarity while teetering on the edge, of a large circle of light on the floor. 

Review: (Toronto) KAMP

(photo credit: Herman Helle)

Provocative Puppetry
Concentration KAMP on Camera
by Jason Booker

A piece with thousands of puppets sounds accessible, right? 

Imagine though that they are each only eight centimetres tall. For the audience, the best way to view these puppets with smears and holes for faces – expressive but frozen – is actually not to sit next to them or even to look directly at them. 

Instead look up.

This world of miniatures sprawls across one of the deepest stages possible at the Enwave Theatre but is surrounded by white sheets.  Using a series of hand-held webcams and camcorders, the puppeteers project the lives of these anonymous yet adorable puppets onto the back wall so that the audience can watch the minute details of this show.  Really, to watch those same minute details of the characters’ lives as KAMP captures the gruesome details of a day in the life of Auschwitz, the notorious World War II concentration camp.

Review: (Toronto) She She Pop and Their Fathers: Testament

(photo by Dora Tuch)

Authenticity and Shakespeare

And Why She She Pop Has It

by Jason Booker

In theatre, things are rarely what they first seem to be. In She She She Pop and Their Fathers: Testament, the people and players and their relationships are presented as specific and authentic – sometimes truthfully and sometimes not – but always within the framework of ‘performance.’ 

She She Pop, a German performance art collective, has incorporated a bit more reality into this show than their usual, by taking four core members then adding their real-life fathers to the blend.  The result is a hybrid of King Lear (as the promotional materials indicate), a confessional where forgiveness is sought and European performance art complete with partial nudity, symbolic flowers and fruit strewn about and some karaoke versions of American songs.  Not just because the song becomes an earworm, this reviewer enjoyed the referential use of the Sinatra duet, Something Stupid: originally sung by father and daughter, though written for lovers since why would anything be simple or straight-forward in this show?

Review: (Toronto) Lear

(photo credit: Guntar Kravis)

Lear-ing at the Experience

Text falls by the wayside

by Jason Booker

Director Philip McKee’s Lear, offers a modern take that contemporizes and creates a visceral experience of the Shakespeare play using only four actresses. McKee employs a phenomenal bag of tricks here: one can rarely be bored by the text because so little of it is used and the words themselves are not the focus.

Review: (Toronto) Ajax and Little Iliad (World Stage)

Rumours of War

World Stage gets small to approach big

by Beat Rice

Ajax & Little Iliad Produced by Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell and Harbourfront Centre (as part of Worldstage) Created and Performed by Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell

Ajax & Little Iliad is a two part original Canadian work that explores theatre of war and political theatre. Each of the one-act plays draws from stories of Ancient Greece, making reference to real historical events as well as mythology. Little Iliad comes first in the programme, followed by Ajax.

Little Iliad proves that you can stage a conversation that is delivered in an everyday kind of way that is engaging and interesting. The play is a Skype conversation between two old friends, presented uniquely. An intimate audience of 30 enters the space through the backstage area to find riser seating on the Enwave stage facing downstage. Masking blocks off the space and all we see is a table with a laptop and some clay figurines. The conversation is cleverly staged with Evan as the only ‘real’ actor who is physically in front of us, and Thom, a man on the other side of the Skype conversation who is visible through a tiny projection on the white clay models. All of the audience members have individual headphones in which we can clearly hear every word, breath and stutter of the two characters. It is like having an actor in your ear. It was for me, a completely new way of experiencing theatre. You are a close observer of what starts off as a friendly conversation, which becomes an exchange of story-telling that develops into role-play, and concludes in a mini eruption over the justifications of war. We hear the insights of an artist and of a soldier, and in the end we don’t, or at least I didn’t feel the need to pick a side. 

Review: (Toronto) Vieux Carré

Kaneza Schaal (Photo: © Franck Beloncle)

“Loneliness is an affliction.” - The Writer

Wooster Group explodes into World Stage

by Jessica Yen

The Wooster Group's Version of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré is not for the faint of heart. This mind-bending two hour experimental piece takes the audience deep into one of Tennessee Williams' most autobiographical plays.

In signature Wooster Group style, this piece is a multilayered landscape of movement, technology and text. We travel through The Writer's memories of his time as a young man living in the French quarter of New Orleans. In his encounters with the various tenants of the boarding house, The Writer undergoes a transformation, awakening sexually and artistically. 

Review: (Toronto) Everything Under the Moon (World Stage 2012)

Remembering the Awe

World Stage brings it all home

by Beat Rice

Remember those moments when you were a kid and being in awe of something? Remember how your imagination used to bubble up as you listened to someone tell you a story? You can now relive that pure kind of joy at the Harbourfront Centre. Everything Under the Moon is a multidisciplinary piece that involves story told through song and shadow, music and puppets. It incorporates beautiful visuals in the form of light and dark, and hand animated action, using overhead projectors. Everything Under the Moon tells the story of a honeybee and a brown bat, who become friends as they travel north and south.