SHANIQUA IN ABSTRACTION - REVIEW OF WATSON’S PLAY AT CROW’S THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

Shaniqua in Abstraction is a new play written and performed by bahia watson. It is a solo performance and watson deserves huge credit for a bravura performance. Shaniqua is a woman of mixed race with blond hair and dreadlocks. watson takes on half a dozen or more personalities from a modern woman to a nineteenth century slave, to a young mother and microphone-in-hand performer. She adopts different accents, does dance steps and acts with ferocious energy when necessary and more quietly when need be. The performance lasts about 75 minutes without intermission.    

bahia watson as Shaniqua. Photo by Roya DelSol

What the play is about is more difficult to describe. “In abstraction” of the title may indicate that this is not a straight narrative about Shaniqua. There is much said about black and mixed-race women in an impressionistic way so that we get  numerous vignettes but rarely a concrete picture. Watson deals with the relations between black men and white women, black men and black women and white men with black women.

Like a chameleon, watson takes us through the time periods indicated above and the different personalities but being an abstract or an impressionistic portrait there is no coherent narrative. It often sounded like a stream-of-consciousness recitation of memories, or expressions of thoughts that went through Shaniqua’s mind that she shared with us.

The production is done in the small Studio Theatre and there is liberal use of lighting effects and projected videos including some news reports about black women. Warson wears an orange exercise outfit and portrays the many facets of Shaniqua's life or the lives of black and mixed-colour women but the details provided are too numerous, quick and opaque for me to retain more than an impression of what I was watching.

The set by Echo Zhou consists of a chair and a bench with the rear of the stage  used for projections  of shimmering lights, videos of news reports and some titles designed by Kimberly Purteil.

watson’s performance is worth seeing, otherwise be prepared for impressionistic, abstract, stream-of-consciousness theatre.   

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Shaniqua in Abstraction by bahia watson. a Crow’s Theatre production in association with   paul watson productions and Obsidian Theatre Company,  continues until April 28, 2024, in the Studio Theatre of Streetcar/Crowsnest Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.  http://crowstheatre.com/

ALL IS LOVE – REVIEW OF OPERA ATELIER’S ECLECTIC PRODUCTION OF LOVE SONGS AND MORE

Reviewed by James Karas

No one can overestimate the talents of Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg because you may praise them highly only to see your estimation needing to be amplified. And that’s one way of opening my review of their current production of All Is Love in Toronto. 

They do provide a gorgeous array of arias about love, mostly from the Baroque era with splendiferous daces  by the Artists of the Atelier Ballet. There are 19 pieces of arias and ballet segments that are done in about 75 minutes so exquisitely, that you simply want more. 

Henry Purcell, Handel and Rameau provide four compositions each and several composers from the Baroque era and up to the twentieth century complete the program. There are two pieces by Claude Debussy (the opening scene of Pelleas et Melisande and the haunting “Nuit d’étoiles”) as well as compositions by Charpentier, Reynaldo Hahn, Edwin Huizinga (who also performs his work for solo violin) and Matthew Locke,   

The gorgeously-voiced Measha Brueggergosman-Lee starts off the program with the All is Love, an aria described as a mix of Henry Purcell and Reynaldo Hahn, created specifically for Brueggergosman-Lee by Christopher Bagan (who is also the piano soloist). It is a perfect vehicle for her luscious voice with beautiful arching phrases in praise of sweet and mellow love. She also sings “Nuit d’étoiles”, a poignant reminiscence by their fountain and of her deceased lover whose blue eyes are the stars and the rose is his breath. A superb rendition of beauty in melancholy.

There are eight singers including Measha and they deserve a standing ovation which, together with the Artists of Atelier Ballet, they got.

 

Soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee with Eric Da Silva
 as Amour and Tyler Gledhill as Morpheus. Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Tenor Colin Ainsworth is a veteran singer with Opera Atelier and around the world. He sang “Plus j'observe ces lieux” from Rameau’s Armide and “Where’er you walk” from Handel’s Semele. In the latter aria Jupiter serenades his love Semele and assures her that wherever she sits the trees will crowd to provide her with shade. Beautifully done.

Baritone Jesse Blumberg as Jupiter robustly and authoritatively assures  the mortal Semele to “Lay your doubts and fears aside.” He also sings “L'heure Exquise” by Reynaldo Hahn and the title describes both the aria and Blumberg’s rendition of it.

Soprano Meghan Lindsay and Bass-baritone Douglas Williams perform the touching  opening scene of Pelleas and Melisande. Prince Golaud meets the distraught Melisande by a well in the forest. She is lost and he tries to help her, touchingly done by Lindsay and Williams. Lindsay and Cynthia Akemi Smithers sing the alluring “Two daughters of this aged stream” from Purcell’s King Arthur. The “daughters” try to lure Arthur to share pleasures with them but, like Odysseus and the Sirens, he resists them.

Mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan sings “Music for a While” from Purcell’s Oedipus. The melancholy aria assures the unfortunate king that music will beguile all his cares as MacMillan beguiled us. She also sings “Mi Lusinga il dolce affetto from Handel’s Alcina. Ruggiero sings that his beloved delights him but is there treachery as well? A moving and sad aria done by MacMillan.

Some of the arias have dancers participate and the  Artists of the Atelier Ballet perform between the vocal pieces. The choreography, as always and unfailingly beautiful  is by Zingg. 

The Tafelmusik orchestra, a sine qua non for Opera Atelier is conducted by David Fallis. And all adds up to a wonderful, magical evening.

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All is Love is being performed from April 11 to 14, 2024 at Koerner Hall in the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, 273 Bloor Street West, Toronto. www.operaatelier.com/

THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK - REVIEW OF BALLET BY LEPAGE AND CÔTÉ

Reviewed by James Karas

“Who’s there?”

Those are the opening words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet but you will not hear them or any part of the text of the play in Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté’s brilliant balletic version of the play, Lepage and Côté have codesigned the production and the former directs with the latter providing the choreography to the music composed by John Gzowski.

The story of Shakespeare’s play is danced for us by a corps of nine dancers who must convey through movement in 100 minutes what the bard needed several hours to achive.  It is a fascinating, intriguing and superb production that never lags and always fascinates.

The spare use of surtitles gives us a clue as to what part of the play is being represented. Guillaume Côté as Hamlet dominates the production and we see the Prince as a disturbed young man with his friend Horatio (Natasha Poon Woo), his father’s murderer Claudius (Robert Glumbek), in the furious scene with his mother Gertrude (Greta Hodgkinson) and of course Ophelia (Carleen Zouboutes).

The hot-headed Laertes is danced by Lukas Malkowski and Polonius is done by Bernard Meney. The clownish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are handled by Connor Mitton and Willem Sadler respectively.

We witness the angry scene in Gertrude’s bedroom where Polonius is mistaken for Claudius, killed and his body is dragged out by Hamlet. Ophelia’s drowning is shown with her fighting against a shimmering sheet, a very effective illustration of her death that we do not see in Shakespeare.

The final scene with the sword fight between Laertes and Hamlet is also shown and we see Claudius’ attempt to have Hamlet poisoned by Laertes’s sword. The stage is strewn with bodies in the end with Horatio as the only survivor.

I cannot comment on the quality of the dancing (I am a theatre critic with scant knowledge of the intricacies of ballet) except to acknowledge its beauty and effectiveness in conveying the story of the Danish prince in a different media with extraordinary beauty and emotional impact.

The largely dark costumes designed by Michael Gianfrancesco and Monika Onoszko convey the bleakness and tragedy of the prince and the entire situation where only one person survives. I would have preferred some more differentiation among the costumes to help identify the characters more readily but it is a small matter.

Gzowski’s music is moving, dramatic, approachable and splendid work that deserves a much bigger audience.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Demark is a big and complex undertaking. This was its first production and it played for only five performances. It is a moving, dramatic and splendid work that deserves a much bigger audience.

Who’s there? Well, it’s a brilliant version of a familiar work.

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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark designed by Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté, directed by Lepage and choreographed by Côté for Groundbreaking Dance Theatre Productions, Showone Productions et. al. played between April 3 and 7, 2024 at the Elgin Theatre, 189 Yonge Street, Toronto.

 

RED VELVET - REVIEW OF ARTS CLUB THEATRE PRODUCTION IN VANCOUVER

Reviewed by James Karas

Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti tells the dramatic story of an American black actor doing Othello in London in the 1830’s. The actor was Ira Aldridge who was successful across Europe but in England he met bigotry and critical opposition on a massive scale and despite his popularity was drummed out of that country. He found great success on the continent and died in Poland in 1867.

English actor and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti has written a paean to Aldridge and the play has received a redoubtable production by the Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver. Quincy Armorer plays Aldridge with finesse and resonance. We see the great actor in old age in Poland, cantankerous and arrogant and as a young man called upon to replace the great Edmund Kean. He gained recognition as a great dramatic actor but also attracted the opprobrium of the critics and much of the theatrical establishment.

The play opens in Poland where Halina (Tess Degenstein, who also plays Betty and Margaret Aldridge), a young reporter tries to interview the impatient star. The scene opens with the characters speaking German (or was it Polish?). It is annoying and unnecessary but that is the fault of the author and not of the production.

Quincy Armorer, Nathan Kay, Anthony F. Ingram, 

Kyla Ward, and Lindsey Angell in Red Velvet,.

 Photo by Moonrider Productions for the Arts Club Theatre Company

The stage boards open creating a large hole in which a part of the set is lowered and we next see Aldridge in London. He meets the cast of Othello where he is stepping in as a replacement for Edmund Kean. The deep-rooted prejudices and perhaps loyalty to Kean of the English cast against the newcomer becomes obvious. The most vehement opponent to Aldridge is the arrogant and vicious Charles Kean, the son of Edmund. Sebastien Archibald gives an outstanding performance, nose up in the air, of unrelenting hatred and superiority.

Lindsey Angell plays Ellen Tree, the fiancée of Charles Kean and Desdemona to Aldridge’s Othello. In a superb performance, Ellen becomes attracted to Aldridge and realizes the quality of his interpretation. Aldridge believes in a more realistic approach to the Moor with fewer melodramatic hand motions.

John Emmet Tracy plays Pierre Laporte, the theatre manager and Aldridge’s friend who is forced by management to fire the popular performer, we know, because he is black. There is a riveting scene where Laporte tries to defend the indefensible in the face of Aldridge’s powerful but useless arguments against his dismissal.

The vicious racist attacks on Aldridge in the press and some of the actors are more than management can endure and they decide irrevocably to close the theatre rather than continue with a production that is popular with the audience.

The set by Amir Ofek is excellent. Aldridge and his desk are lowered below the stage boards when the opening scene in Poland is over. Backstage in the theatre and Aldridge’s home scene are intelligently designed and we get the idea of a performance on stage.

Director Omari Newton handles everything judiciously and superbly. He illustrates the overdone acting of the early 19^th century as well as giving a fine reading of the play. The opening scene and the closing scene are unclear and unnecessarily unhelpful to the play. But one thing is clear in the final scene. Watching Aldridge putting gobs of white makeup on his face in preparation for playing King Lear is powerful and bitingly ironic.  Chakrabarti, it seems could not find a satisfactory beginning or ending, aside for the application of makeup by Aldridge. The rest of the play more than makes up for these glitches and are forgivable in a first play.

I should note that I saw the play in its final preview and consider it a polished performance.
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Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti will run until April 21, 2024, at Staley Industrial Alliance Stage, 2750 Granville St. Vancouver BC https://artsclub.com/shows/2023-2024/red-vel.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

FATHER TARTUFFE - REVIEW OF ARTS CLUB THEATRE PRODUCTION IN VANCOUVER

Reviewed by James Karas

Father Tartuffe: An Indigenous Misadventure is a hilarious reimagination/adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe set in Canada during Expo 67. The would-be victims of the religious fraudster are indigenous Canadians who refer to themselves as Indians at the time of our centennial celebrations in Montreal.

Playwright Herbie Barnes is imaginatively faithful to Moliere but also shows inventiveness in setting the play in a middle-class indigenous family whose father falls for Father Tartuffe’s hypocritical holy roller lies.

Orin (Sam Bob) works for Canada’s centennial bash in Montreal and lives in a well-appointed house with his family. He comes under the total control of Father Tartuffe (Aidan Correia), a fervent religious hypocrite who goes after Orin’s money, daughter, and wife.

Orin’s lively daughter Maryanne (Danica Charlie) is in love with the handsome Valant (Frankie Cottrell) and we are momentarily concerned that true love may be thwarted by parental interference and hypocritical lust.

Tartuffe has his eye and other parts of his anatomy on Orin’s wife Elise (Quelemia Sparrow, also co-director) and he makes a valiant attempt to establish contact with her anatomy. 

                            Quelemia Sparrow and Aidan Correia. Photo Moonirider Productions 

Braiden Houle as Orin’s red-bandana-wearing son Dennis showed anger but no humour. Marshall Veille as Granny had an awkward time dealing with his lines at the beginning but was funnier in the end when he was allowed to crack lines about the rhyming couplets.

Cathy (Cheri Maracle), a statuesque friend of the family was effective and funny as was Samantha Alexandra as Darlene. Barnes adds another element to his play by making Cathy a feisty lesbian.

Barnes’ adaptation and his rhyming couplets are good and there are some very funny lines about Canada’s indigenous people. Cathy, a friend of Orin has one of the best lines when she snaps that she has not ceded her body yet. Correia as Tartuffe was energetic and could remove his clothes at great speed. His attempts to seduce Elise were full of enthusiasm.

But the production in general has a few problems. Most of the actors have problems dealing with rhyming couplets. The lines require speed, enunciation, and poetic diction that most of them unfortunately lack. Without the ease of speaking the couplets, the actors looked like they were trying to walk quickly through mud. The rhyming couplets should propel the delivery of the lines and the action. In this production it did not work that way. 

Directors Quelemia Sparrow and Roy Surette have done much well but apparently could not solve the fundamental problem of the delivery of the lines.

The set by Ted Roberts showed a well-appointed middle-class room. The costumes and hairdos were appropriately 1960’s style.

The directors show some admirable inventiveness. One example is the position of Tartuffe and Orin on the couch as they express their religiosity. They twist and turn until they stop looking like God and Adam reaching towards each other in the famous tableau of the creation scene of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

How do you finish the play? Moliere had no difficulty wrapping up his play. Well, there is a modern and hilarious solution in this production which I will not reveal.
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Father Tartuffe: An Indigenous Misadventure by Herbie Barnes based on the play by Moliere played until March 24, 2024, at the Granville Island Stage, 1585 Johnston Street, Vancouver B.C.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

THREE SISTERS – REVIEW OF INUA ELLAMS’ PLAY AT YOUNG CENTRE

 Reviewed by James Karas

Many of us who were around in the late 1960’s may recall a news story that dominated the media and was known as the Nigerian or Biafra Civil War. It raged from 1967 to 1970 leaving between five hundred thousand and three million people dead. The region of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria and the rebellion was subsequently crushed.

The story of the Biafra Civil War is shown in Three Sisters, a play by Inua Ellams in a coproduction by Soulpepper and Obsidian Theatre companies at the Young Centre in Toronto. The play is subtitled “After Chekhov” and is a brilliant work of originality that echoes its Russian inspiration.

The three sisters of the Onuzo family are Lolo (Akosua Amo-Adem), Nne Chukwu (Virgilia Griffith) and Udo (Makambe K. Simamba), the daughters of a general who died a year ago. They are living in a small provincial town in Biafra, a province of Nigeria that, unlike Chekhov’s town, is seeking independence from Nigeria. The sisters are living with memories of their life and glamour of the capital. They have memories, dreams, hopes and perhaps even illusions about life in the great city of Lagos and it is the central motif of their life. They have fervent hopes and dreams of returning to the almost magical city.  

                                 Akosua Amo-Adem, Virgilia Griffith and Makambe K. Simamba 

                                    The three sisters. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Lolo is a teacher and dreams of changing the curriculum of her school to make it more relevant to their Igbo ethnic background rather than follow what was left by the British and adopted by the central government.

Nne Chukwu is the victim of an arranged marriage and turns unfaithful when she falls in love with Ikemba (Daren A. Herbert), the philosophy-prone army commander.

Their feelings are exacerbated by the memory of their father. Their brother Dimgba (Tony Ofori) is a feckless professor and reckless gambler who is married to Abosede (Oyin Oladeja), a Yoruba woman from a different ethnic group who does not fit with the ethnic group of the three sisters. She is dressed peculiarly and perhaps gaudily and is the butt of jokes. She will develop into a different person during the three years of the civil war and “pay back” the sisters.

The personal lives of the Onuzo family are inextricably affected by the civil war because their house is the hub of activity for the military leaders of the secessionist Biafra. The play takes place on two latitudes, the personal lives of the Onuzo family and the national issue of the civil war.

Army doctor Eze (Sterling Jarvis) is a disillusioned and cynical alcoholic who is ever present in their household.  Nmeri, (Ngabo Nabea) is the idealistic suitor of the youngest sister Udo. Rebellion leaders come and go from the pleasant house of the Onuzo family as matters deteriorate leading to a tragic end.

But hope persists for a while. Lolo the teacher dreams of changing the school curriculum to cover the history of the Igbo nation. But like the hopes and dreams of returning to Lagos all are crushed by reality

Perhaps there is a subterranean third latitude.  It is instructive to recall that Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960 after being a part of the British Empire since 1884. The play and much of Nigerian history reflects the British imperial presence, none of it in complimentary terms to the conqueror.

Director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu does superb work in directing an outstanding cast. This is theatre that is historically important and drama at its best.
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Three Sisters by Inua Ellams continues until March 24, 2024, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 3C4. www.soulpepper.ca.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press

NO ONE’S SPECIAL AT THE HOT DOG CART - REVIEW OF NEW PLAY AT THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE

Reviewed by James Karas

No One’s Special At The Hot Dog Cart is an ambitious one-actor play written and performed by Charlie Petch. A big hot dog cart is on stage and we are told it does business at Yonge and Dundas and at Gerard and Church, two well-known corners in Toronto.  

Petch receives a laudable description in the program listing a long catalogue of achievements and is also described as “a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto.” He is a “poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host” and has won numerous awards and distinctions all of which are praiseworthy. My concern is the comment that they/he is disabled and I am not sure what if any effect it had on the performance of No One’s Special.

The title of the play may lead one to expect a play about interesting, perhaps humorous and dramatic events while selling hot dogs but there is much, much more than that in a play that lasts about an hour.

Charlie Petch in No One’s Special At The Hot Dog Cart

Photo: Nika Balianina 

 In addition to selling hot dogs, Charlie (they/he) becomes an emergency responder, a social worker able to help a troubled, homeless person  with his family problems and encounters with others in horrible situations by using  de-escalation techniques.

Charlie describes his work as a 911 responder and then as a worker  in a hospital emergency room and a bed allocator in a hospital. That is a long way from the hot dog cart and the play covers a much wider canvas than my summary suggests.

Petch performs several poems and we hear a couple of songs and have fleeting attempts at psychological depths. Unfortunately, it does not work.

Much of the time Petch speaks in an almost  monotonous voice that expresses a limited emotional range. Raising your voice’s volume is not the same as being expressive. The play tries to cover far too much ground in any event and the chances of reaching all the issues are slim. Speaking over a cacophony of voices does not help. Humour is almost non-existent and maybe we have the right to expect some amusing events at the hot dog stand or in Charlie’s other endeavors.

I do not know under what disability Petch is working and I speak of my perceived shortcomings of the play and the performance with trepidation. But my reaction was that of disappointment.  
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No One’s Special At The Hot Dog Cart by Charlie Petch, a Theatre Passe Muraille and Erroneous Theatre coproduction, continues March 23, 2024, at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. www.passemuraille.on.ca

 James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press. This review appeared in the newspaper.