Beauty or Beast?

This evening, I saw, La Belle et la Bete: A contemporary Retellng, performed as part of the Toronto Luminato festival.

Using as its jumping-off point three elements, the famous Perault fairy-tale, Henry Fuseli's painting, The Nightmare, and the question: "Who are you?" this play asks us to adress the stories we tell ourselves, the narratives that we create and participate in, and the roles we play for ourselves, and for each other.

I'll start by telling you what I didn't like. Then I'll tell you why it's worth seeing.

The production has two key faults:

First, it tries to juggle far too many balls, and ends up dropping most of them. In the fisrt few minutes of a 90- minute performance, the production opens up questions of roles, of narrative, perspective, and humanity. It introduces motifs of fairy-tale and of stories-within-stories. It introduces interesting and damaged characters, and motifs of painting, and of scarring (emotional and physical). Unfortunately, by mid-way through the production, so many of these themes have fallen by the way-side, and motivations make less sense.

The scar motif, so rich in the first half of the show, dissapears.
Belle's relationship to her "distant" father seems to path itself up when the plot requires her to be away from her beast.

Even the question of what role we play in our own and each other's stories seems to take back-seat for all characters excpet The Lady.

Second, the production has a voice that is inconsistant with the subject matter, and with itself. I don't know if this is a fault in the original script, or a fault of the translation, but this is a show dealing with myth and story. The text succeeds best when it is in an elevated voice and I often found myself wishing for the text to be in poetry rather than prose. The show has such amazingly vivid and engrossing visuals (one of the reasons that it is so worth seeing) that the plain and rather stilted dialog, delivered in an unfortunately plain and stilted way by Benedicte Decary and Stephe Demers as Belle and The Beast respectively, felt incongruous. The staging and story deserve an elevated language and depth of emotion in delivery. Generally, I got neither.

Despite these faults, however, this is still a show worth taking in.

First, the performance of Diane D'Aquila is a beauty indeed. She manages always to strike the right note, and turns her meaning and motivation on a dime, making the very utmost of the text and character she is given. As a result, her journey as The Lady (witch or fairy?) is the one that is most engaging of all.

Second, the design of this production is outstanding! I saw in this production some visual effects that even now I have no idea how they were achieved. Gates appearing and dissapearing; actors interacting with projection that seem to move in three-dimentions; projected sets that grow out into the audience; scenes that changes seemlessly and echo or react to the scenes taking part. Visually, this is a piece of beauty, and showcases, I have no doubt, the state of the art in visual interaction.

Even more to their credit, the visuals don't overwhelm the action. They serve the narrative, they serve the story. Likewise, the score of this show is wonderfully suited to it, underscoring the scene work, assisting the narrative, but not drawing attention to iteself above the action.

Overall, the visual and auditory experience is poety, and I feel the narrative flow (overall) has the potential for poetry. I would LOVE to see the team behind the design and technology of this show have a run at something highly poetic, like The Tempest.
In summary, I feel that had the language been more elevated and the themes more focused, this could have been a truly sublime performance. As it stands, however, I can only say that it is worth seeing, but not worth raving about.

La Belle et la Bête: A contemporary Retelling
Created and directed by Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon
Created and written by Pierre-Yves Lemieux
Translated by Maureen Labonté


Plays until Jun 12 at the Bluma Appel Theatre as part of the Luminato Festival.

MacBeth - Full of Sound and Fury

Shakespeare's famed Scottish play gets the Jeremy Hutton treatment at the University of Toronto's Hart House theatre.

Mr. Hutton has a sense for engaging visuals. Aided by a stunning set by Melanie McNeill, delicious lighting design by Simon Rossiter, and costumes by Ming Wong, the eyes are certainly satisfied. Mr. Hutton must also be praised for his sense of pace and engaging fight direction. As might well be expected when the director is a fight director, the battles are well composed, though some of the violence cross into unrequired gratuity.

Unfortunately, much as happened in last year's Richard III, Mr. Hutton seems to have become enamored of his clever stage tech to the point that it becomes detrimental to other parts of the production. Light changes were almost always accompanied by a whoosh, rattle, shriek or thump. A strobe light used with great effect during MacBeth's encounter with the Weird Sisters was less effective in setting up his coronation. And, while changes of location were well communicated, the natures of the locations were not. I wondered early on why the court of Scotland was meeting in the forest before, after a while, I realised they were supposed to be inside.

MacBeth is known for many things: for its famous curse, its witches, its battles and bloody murders. But at its heart, the tale of a Scottish Thane inspired by prophesy and spurred on by his wife to commit regicide is a character-driven piece. As his fear, unease, and ambition drive him to tyranny, it is the emotions of MacBeth and Lady MacBeth that drive the piece. It is the human depth, the exploration of darkness and nobility, that was missing.

Jackie Rowland as Lady MacBeth came across as far too worried and fragile for a woman who early in the play entreats the spirits that attend on mortal thoughts to unsex her. William Foley as MacBeth, gave satisfying performances in scenes of action and command (and is therefore particularly strong in the latter half of the play), but hit uneven notes in his other scenes.

To paint with a broad stroke, the cast seemed comfortable enough with what they were saying, but seemed not to have a grasp of why they were saying it.

A couple notable exceptions to this rule should be called out, however. John Fray as Banquo impressed me in a couple of his quieter scenes, and Mischa Aravena has some excellent moments as MacDuff. His reactions to the news of his family's death at the order of MacBeth stand out particularly. I have seen him in a few other productions recently, and I hope to see him in others soon.

I am probably coming down a little hard on this production. After all, both I and my guest for the evening felt that it was two and a half hours well-enough spent, and overall enjoyed the night. It is just that MacBeth is such a meaty play, and the characters have so much richness and depth in them, that it is disappointing when that depth is not plumbed.

Ultimately, I was engaged by the sound and fury, but found no significance.

MacBeth runs at Hart House until November 26th.

Tickets and information available at

http://www.harthouse.ca/hart-house-theatre/macbeth

Much Ado at Spadina House

On the evening of Friday September 30th, I had the pleasure of being immersed in the Shakespearean world of Much Ado About Nothing.

What stands out about this production, and I am tempted to say adaptation, is the tremendously site-specific staging and presentation of the piece. Most site specific staging takes existing locations and uses or transforms them into a local within the play. In this production, director Jonathan Langley takes full advantage of the location: the historic Spadina Museum Historic House and Garden.

Audience members, under the pretense of being "downstairs" staff in training are split at the beginning of the evening into two groups: one who will witness the scenes of Hero and Beatrice, and one who will primarily follow Benedick and Claudio. Scenes with Dogberry and Don Jon are split more or less evenly between the two groups.

The time period of the production has been set as 1918, making it almost contemporaneous with the 20's and 30's decor of the historic space. The close matching, actual historic local, and intimacy of the small audience, who watches discretely the happenings of the "upstairs" inhabitants all lends an immersive feeling. One gets a sense of historic reenactment more than traditional performance.

I will say now that I wound up following the male storyline, and so missed some of the more key female scenes. However, I did see enough to say that Helen Juvonen provides an excellent performance as Beatrice as does Thomas Gough as Leonato, both of whom give a realistic performance with a depth and size befitting the space. Brandon Crone also gives a good turn as Claudio. Unfortunately, at the opening night performance Adam Wray as Benedick felt as if he was out of his part. The lines and actions were there, but I felt as if I was watching Adam reciting, not Benedick living.

Vikto Lukawski as Dogberry gave a fantastic performance. He has command of his comedy and physicality, and, when playing Friar Francis, shows that he has more serious acting chops as well. However, I took issue with the directorial choices of the Dogberry. While the rest of the production immersed us in a highly realistic world, the Dogberry scenes were peppered with antics, anachronisms, and improvisations that took us away from the text, setting period, and feel of the rest of the production. The text of the Dogberry scenes is funny in and of itself, and does not require references to Alien, or Back to the Future to make them funny. The whole effect unfortunately pulled me out of the evening, rather than keeping me immersed in it.

One other change to the script also jarred, and that was the substitution for "Pardon Goddess of the Night" with a sung rendition of "In Flanders Fields." The departure from the script made no sense to me, and the use of that poem in particular seemed inappropriate since Hero is reported dead due to a broken heart, and not as a result of fighting in WWI. The elegy written by Shakespeare ain't broke, and I didn't understand the need to fix it. It is too bad, too, because the outdoor setting, a field lit by candles, was perfectly suited to the poem originally in the text.

Overall, however, this evening was an experience that I strongly recommend. The cast is generally strong, the pacing is tight, and the delivery is clear. Other than the specific departures from the text that I mention, the direction is creative, makes excellent use of the venue, and serves the production well.

Those unfamiliar with the play may be a bit lost by what is happening. The text has been significantly reduced, and you will miss about a third of the play. However, the sense of immersion is the world is remarkably rewarding for those who are even passingly familiar with the play. You really do get the feeling of being a fly on the wall, and a feeling almost that you are watching historic events that may one day turn into a play. And to have that sense of newness and freshness brought to words that are over 400 years old is a treat. It is a rare opportunity to see a performance like this in a venue like this. Don't miss it.

The Single Theatre Theatre Company production of Much Ado About Nothing runs until October 16th at the Spadina Museum: Historic House and Gardens. Tickets ($20 each) are available at http://www.totix.ca

More information at http://www.singlethread.ca/