Burning Love at PTE

It was the Actors' Fund benefit performance of BURNING LOVE at PTE tonight and the theatre and the company in their opening week generously gave an extra performance to support the charity that supports their fellow artists in need. It was a lovely gesture.

Sylvia Fisher was sitting at the desk,handing out buttons and taking donations. It a city where there are many,many actors and theatre workers and this is a local play I wonder how only 40 people could manage to make it out to support their own community. Certainly the $10 ticket price couldn't have kept people out of the room.

Like the company's largess tonight,BURNING LOVE is a show with a big heart that encompasses, in no particular order: single parent families,bulimia,out-of-body experiences,bull semen, palliative care,star-crossed young love,mai-tais,car crashes,unlikely reunions and Elvis impersonators. Think magic realism meets soap opera with musical bridges provided by The King.

There's no shortage of plot on Sharon Bajer's script and that's occasionally problematic. There are story elements and twists that really,really strained my very willing suspension of disbelief. The play could also probably lose 10 minutes in the first act.

Having said that,the cast of Chelsea Rankin,Miriam Smith,Zachary Stevenson and Richard Waugh has good chemistry. Their warmth and charm coupled with solid musical performances mostly succeeds in wall-papering over the many plot holes and moving the heart-felt story ahead. The two Elvises who admittedly have the more fun part of the show were particularly delightful tonight.

The great set and lighting design by Brian Perchaluk and Scott Henderson respectively certainly helped move things along as did Metcalfe's brisk direction though I could have done with a bit less hop-scotch from light to light. I would love to have seen Miriam Smith's character in more than one costume to better distinguish between her younger,more carefree self and the troubled unhappy grown-up she becomes.

This is a show whose warmth and charm make up for its structural shortcomings. It's a very enjoyable night at the theatre.

The December Man at PTE

On my last evening in Winnipeg for a week, my sis Lisa and I set out to PTE to see THE DECEMBER MAN, a story about what happens to a family in the aftermath of the Montreal Massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique.

This is an issue play: always a dicey gambit. If the show is great, you get "Commencement" about to be presented by The Winnipeg Fringe in March or "Scorched" which was done at the Warehouse last season. If it's not, you get this kind of thing: half polemic, half kitchen-sink drama, clumsily constructed and clunkily written. Not even the able Anne Hodges in the director's seat is able to save this thing from itself.

The narrative unfolds backwards (think Pinter's BETRAYAL) which can be an effective device. In this case it means we don't meet the protagonist until a third of the way through the play and spend a lot of time mired in a zone of domestic siege until then.

The actors do their best to make a meal of this mess of a script but it is tough slogging. Ron Lea fares best here finding both the humour and the pathos in Benoit, the working-class dad. Marina Stephenson-Kerr unfortunately never gets a grip on her accent and is stuck playing a badly-written, two-dimensional unsympathetic character: the nagging, overtly religious mother.

Tristan Carlucci as Jean gets the unhappy task of delivering most of the author's own musings on the tragedy: why did a room full of men leave a roomful of women to be shot by a lone gunman?

Jean's relationship with one of the deceased is alluded to but never developed in the narrative. That relationship, centred on the young people's ambitions for themselves instead of their family's aspirations for them might have given the play the poignancy and depth it clearly strives for and misses.

In fairness, I have to tell you, gentle readers, that my sister quite enjoyed it and was moved by it in ways that I was not. It also won the GG so I am in a dissenting minority position when I tell you I thought the script a mess.

Since survivor guilt is the play's main theme, there are at least two deaths too many. After a disaster like Montreal, it is living, not dying that's hard and leaves us here to wrestle with our consciences, our memories and our thoughts. Go, but make sure if you do, to also see COMMENCEMENT next month and compare this uneven if well intended offering at PTE with a truly great production of a brilliant play on the same theme.

Tainted Love - A Festival of Strindberg

Tonight was the final of Winnipeg's annual winter theatre festival focused on the works of one master playwright. This year someone decided three of the coldest weeks of the winter were perfect for August Strindberg, one of the major freaks of late 19th century European theatre.

All three pieces I saw were adaptations: Julie Tepperman's "The Father" at WJT, Ross McMillan's "Miss Julie at the Gates" a staged reading presented by MAP and Patrick Marber's post-war take on Miss Julie "After Miss Julie" at MTC Warehouse. I really wish I'd seen more but a late taxi last Saturday night kept me out of "The Creditors".

To say Strindberg had a twisted view of human relations is putting it mildly. Strindberg it seems, was never happy and neither is anyone in any of his plays. It's often pointed out that he's a misogynist but really he doesn't like anybody very much.

Ross's tale about an imaginary visit by Strindberg's theatre company to a well-to-do Winnipeg home of dilettante theatre producers was charmingly quirky. Gord Tanner was a very convincing Strindberg, managing to make the paranoid misanthrope almost endearing. Supported by a fine cast of Winnipeg stalwarts including Carolyn Gray and Sharon Bajer, it was a most enjoyable romp.

The cast of AFTER MISS JULIE over at the TOM HENDRY was uniformly great and the whole servant-master, dom-sub gamesmanship of the piece was mostly quite effective. There was real sexual and emotional tension onstage and all of the relationships were believable. The third act of the play doesn't really work as a piece of writing. No amount of hard work on the part of the actors, director and designers can make biting the head off a bird really playable in a drama in 2011. John Cleese could have pulled this off in FAWLTY TOWERS but it's just so overwrought here it bordered on the ridiculous. CLOSER is a much better script from Mr. Marber, but kudos to the cast for a game take on a tough script and a mostly fine night of theatre.

My final day of the festival was spent at the WJT watching THE FATHER. In the aftermath of the tragic loss of one of their children, a couple becomes embroiled in a blame game leading to an act of brinkmanship that takes down their marriage and completely destroys the father of the title.

The great cast of Graham Ashmore, Jennifer Lyon, Miriam Smith and Arne MacPherson was very well directed by Mariam Bernstein. I particularly liked her use of family photos projected in the background as a constant visual reinforcement of what had been lost and what was at stake. Mr. MacPherson in particular gave a galvanizing and completely affecting performance as a man driven to madness by the idea that he's going to lose the only child he's got left. It was a great afternoon of theatre.

Now unlike our friend Robb who had seen EVERYTHING the festival had to offer, this was all I managed to get to. However, fine as these offering were, they were for the most part, well, grim. May I gentle readers, and gentle festival programmers, make a suggestion? I'm all for serious theatre. Hell I write the stuff myself. But people, it's January in Winnipeg! It's -29 without the windchill. I got my M/C card bill from Christmas this month and coupled with my Fringe debt, it's not pretty.
I need cheering up. Can we have someone - a little more lighthearted? Cheerful? Romantic? Funny, even? Just for one year? There's a recession on and we've been at war for 9 years and we're stuck with a dead-locked minority parliament and that's before we get to the international news. Three weeks of tragedy is over. Please Mr. Schipper, a comedy tonight?

The King's Speech

I have a terrible weakness for this sort of historical costume drama and I was not disappointed tonight. THE KING'S SPEECH features a cast of luminaries that includes Colin Firth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce, Claire Bloom and Derek Jacobi performing a fine script that is sensitively and intelligently directed and beautiful to look at.

As you might expect from a cast of this calibre, the performances are uniformly fabulous. Firth, Rush and Bonham-Carter do some of the finest work of their careers here.

As with THE BLACK SWAN, this is a film about the nature of performance.
What does it take to prepare for the role of a lifetime, especially if you're an understudy who never expected to have to go on?

This time the hero is not a performer but a prince who rather than ardently desiring the starring role of king has "greatness thrust upon him".
When his brother, Edward VII abdicates for "the woman he loves" as England and its Empire teeters on the precipice of war, the incredibly decent Duke of York instantly ascends to the throne.

In the age of radio, this meant a lifetime of public speaking, broadcast globally. For a diffident man with with a bad stammer, speaking to and for his people is a potential disaster.

THE KING'S SPEECH is nominally about a great moment in history. However, the film is really an intimate portrait of an unlikely friendship between a King(Firth)and his speech therapist, a failed Australian actor(Rush).

Logue may not have a great stage career himself, but he realizes being the King of England is the part of a lifetime and he's not about to let his favourite client pass on a good gig.

The abdication is not romanticized in this film in any way. We see two weak, spoiled people take off leaving others holding a massive bag of duties and responsibilities in a very difficult moment.

In the end, honour, duty, perseverance, loyalty and bravery do carry the day. I enjoyed seeing the good guys prevail in a film with no car chases and explosions only alluded to. This is drama, not melodrama with a fairly stiff upper lip.

Tom Hooper dedicates the film to his grandfather who was killed in WWII. I'm sure he would have appreciated this old-fashioned, lovely hero's journey.

I doubt I'll see many better films this year.

The Black Swan

In spite of some great theatre offerings in town this fall, (The Seafarer, The Savannah Dispute and White Christmas all come to mind) I haven't reviewed much theatre or film lately.

There's one simple reason for this: I've been mostly working nights, and the evenings I've had away from my day job, have been spent onstage or on camera as a performer, rather than as a paying customer. Mea culpa.

New Year's Resolution #1: more blogging in 2011.

So in the last week of the year, my lovely housemate Brenda, arranged for me to join her, and a few friends at a screening of "The Black Swan".  Director Darren Arnofsky has done interesting work in the past, (The Wrestler) and I was anxious to see what he would do with ballet as his subject.

We were not alone in our enthusiasm. The theatre was so packed, we had to sit right at the front, a thing I hadn't done since my days at TIFF screenings, in years gone by. The curved screen, and the constantly moving camera made for unsettling viewing.

It's an unsettling picture. Nina, played by Natalie Portman, is chosen from the corps de ballet to replace an aging prima ballerina (Winona Ryder chanelling Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard") and dance one of classical ballet's most challenging roles: Odette/Odile the white and black swans in "Swan Lake".

Nina is a rigid perfectionist, sandwiched between a narcissistic, suffocatingly controlling, failed dancer of a mother (Barbara Hershy) and a Svengali-like director (a seductive Vincent Cassel) whose manipulations border on sexual and emotional sadism.

The tightly wound dancer begins to unravel under the stressors of both preparations, and expectations, to say nothing of jealous and competitive peers. She is driven to the brink of madness, as she tries to achieve both the technical perfection and the emotional depth and passion required to completely evince the duality of the role.

Arnofsky plays an interesting game with perception and reality in a portrayal of a discipline that is surreal to begin with. The film is told almost completely from the point-of-view of Portman's character and her increasingly intense emotional state affects our perception of the people surrounding her. Is it drugs? Is it a dream? Is it insanity? Or is it just a great performer surrendering fully to the heightened state necessary to play a great dramatic role?

I felt the "hot" lesbian sex was just a way to get straight men to see a film about about ballet and the swan-morphing went too far: come on, webbed feet?

However, a film this passionatly intense, beautifully shot and brilliantly acted is a rare treat. The costumes by Rodarte are perfection.

The film's misssteps are more than compensated for by its pleasures. Get there early if you want a good seat.

Stratford as I Like It

I'm currently in Ontario having a time out with the Eastern part of the chosen family.

Yesterday my dear friends Allan, Robert ,and I capped off Allan's birthday celebrations this week, with a trip to Stratford, a place we all love. We stayed at BRUNSWICK HOUSE, a B&B run by Gay Allison and her husband Geoff. Both of them are writers as well as story editors.Their charming old Victorian home is full of books, a short stagger from the town's main drag of bars, shops and restaurants, and one block from both the Avon and Studio theatres. Allan and I have stayed there many times before, but it was Robert's first visit to the house, and he loved it.

He was less enthusiastic about our theatre experience: Des McAnuff's production of AS YOU LIKE IT, currently playing at the Festival Stage.

When I was last in Stratford, three years ago, it was June,and John Huston and I saw three days of great theatre. It was Richard Monette's last season at the festival, and it was a good one. Monette directed a crowd-pleasing COMEDY OF ERRORS , but also a smart, sexually charged, and cheeky production.

Maybe it was the rain, or maybe it's the economy, or maybe it was the not entirely bloodless coup that preceded McAnuff's ascent to the artistic directorship of the country's largest theatre festival, but the place seemed tense this time. Certainly, the production of AS YOU LIKE IT felt a little too eager to please.

AS YOU LIKE IT is one of Shakespeare's great romantic comedies.  The story of family strife, mistaken identities and star-crossed lovers has been a crowd-pleaser for nearly 500 years.

Perhaps Mr. McAnuff is still finding his feet with classical texts, or perhaps he thought, given his successes on Broadway with hits like JERSEY BOYS, the audience wanted a musical from him.

However, AS YOU LIKE IT isn't a Broadway musical: it is Shakespeare.  What was chiefly wanted was a brilliant realization of the text. McAnuff focused on hitting the audience over the head with visual metaphor, and flashy musical production numbers, leaving the actors to largely fend for themselves with the actual play. This directorial strategy met with mixed success.

The Nazi inspired red and black of the Duke's court in Act One was a bit on the nose. The mostly fine company of actors more than conveyed the violence, greed, and menace of the court without needing such obvious sartorial trappings. It was as if McAnuff thought the audience was too dumb to get what the play is about.

He seemed capable with music, production numbers, fisticuffs, and staging broad comedy, but not with the heart of the play itself. This meant seasoned actors, especially Lucy Peacock, Ben Carlson, Randy Hughson, Tom Rooney and Brent Carver did fine work, because they were able to bring their experience to the table. The young lovers were good, especially Phoebe and her besotted sheppard.

It was the play's main engine, Rosalind,who suffered the most in McAnuff's choosing to privilege the production over the play. The lovely young Andrea Runge struggled undertaking one of Shakespeare's most challenging ingenue roles. Runge is a graceful actor ,and her gamine form made her physically well-suited to the role. However, her speaking voice lacks range. She didn't breathe well through the text. Her Rosalind had charm, but little depth. She seemed less like a girl dressed as a boy ,than a young musical theatre performer thrust into a role way over her head, with not much help from the director. She shone at the end, but for most of the performance seemed way out of her depth.

I saw Susan Coyne play Rosalind, about twelve years ago in Coronation Park. Coyne's acting shone with intelligence and passion from the time she graduated theatre school at NTS. Her Rosalind remains one of the greatest performances by an actress in a classical role I have ever seen, or likely will see in my life. Coyne crawled inside that text and illuminated the play from the inside. Coyne worked at Stratford as a young actress, as did Seanna McKenn, and Lucy Peacock. I expected someone of similar gifts at Stratford yesterday, and came away disappointed.

It's not Runge's fault she was in over her head. Blame for that falls squarely on the shoulders of the director.

It was, in many ways, an enjoyable production. There was great ensemble work from the company in the large scenes, and a beautiful Arden created by Debra Hanson, and Stratford's talented design team. The live music mostly enhanced the production, and made for a truly joyous finale. In the end, it was Shakespeare light: pretty, and mostly unchallenging.

I had a nightcap with two young actors in one of the town's bars last night. They were excited to be part of McAnuff's company, particularly at the prospect of perhaps going to New York in one of the star director's hits.

However, Stratford's primary role is NOT to serve as a farm team for Broadway producers. Stratford is one of the English-speaking world's great classical repertory theatre festivals.

McAnuff needs to focus not on New York, or on people who would rather be there,but on the task at hand: developing and maintaining Canada's pre-eminent repertory theatre company. McAnuff's primary focus must be doing great classical plays not just with style but with depth, insight and intelligence. We,the festival audience, deserve no less and we don't haul out to Stratford to see stuff we can see on King Street in Toronto.

I look forward to next season.

after the party's over, it's time to go down gambling

The touring Fringe crew has moved on down the road to Saskatoon and Edmonton, the tents are packed up, the shows are over, and dinner at the King's Head tonight will doubtless be more quiet than it was last month, during the Winnipeg Fringe.

This was a bittersweet festival for me. Sweet, because I was in a hit show, and got to feel the love from audiences, sweet, because people love comedy in a way they seldom love drama, sweet, because the marketing strategy we devised for the show worked REALLY well, sweet, because our numbers moved up every day, culminating in a sold-out closing night.

I saw some old friends, and went to a few good parties, and saw a lot of great shows. I got to be "in nose" for the first time in my career. I was onstage with the friend who got me into the business of Fringe touring in the first place: Alison Field. My fellow cast members all shone in their unique ways, and mostly, we had fun.

The weather was warm. Laura Anne Harris who billeted with me, five starred in the Free Press, and on CBC, and sold out her run, and I got to share in her joy in a critical and financial hit for a play about Judy Holliday and the McCarthy hearings. I can't tell you how that heartened me, because it means there's a Fringe audience with an appetite not only for comedy, but for serious drama. Muriel Hogue won the Harry Rintoul Award! Yah! Barb Popel and Brian Carroll were back in town, seeing 50 shows, and reminding me what a great, engaged audience this Fringe draws.

And there's the bitter part of the thing: money. At the end of the day, being in a five star show with four other people paid (barely) for about a month of my life. Because there are so many people in our cast, and because a number of my fellow actors are the parents of young children, touring our hit show is a near impossibility. We may do Edmonton - next year. We could get picked up by a regional theatre in a year's time: but until then, a girl's gotta eat.

At the end of this Fringe, after our critical and box office hit, I realized I could no longer afford my apartment. Everything I own, that won't fix into two suitcases, is going in storage this month, and I join the ranks of the itinerant.

I'm not alone in this in my profession. A number of performers I know on the Fringe circuit have no fixed address. Touring cost $5-700 per festival up front, in fees paid to the festival for the theatre, tech support, and a listing in the catalogue. Those fees get paid between October and December, mostly. Add in a director, any design elements, posters, fliers, photos, press kits, a website, costumes, rehearsal space, travel from town to town (some people come here from New Zealand or Los Angeles) and figure a minimum of three months on the road, but more likely four or five where you need to eat, and sleep (thank you billets!). I figure my COSTS to tour for the previous 2 seasons amounted to $ 5 - 6k per tour. 100% of ticket revenue is turned over to performers but at an average price of $8 a ticket you need to put a lot of bums in seats to get to 6K.

Given I'm not going to be in my apartment for at least three months next year, and given that some incredibly generous friends are willing to let me house-sit and crash out this winter, I decided, in the interests of actually being able to afford to mount a show next summer, I would give up having an apartment this winter.

I resumed performing in a serious way three years ago, after a long hiatus. It's going pretty well. I have an agent, I've been in two films this past summer, I'm on my way to a union card, and each play I've done on the circuit has fared better critically than the last. In spite of that, my income is half what it was three years ago. Yes, I do other things for money besides acting, but even with that factored in, expense reduction was a necessity, and rent is a huge expense. When my irreplaceable room mate returned to France to pursue HIS career as an artist (and a really cute French girl) I knew I was going to have to let my beautiful home on the river go.

Now I love touring on the Fringe circuit, and it is my personal and professional goal to write and perform in that most elusive of creatures: a critical and box office hit. If I'm lucky, and I work really hard, and I make good choices, maybe my gamble will pay off, and I'll get that hit show next year. If I'm really lucky, I'll get one of the grants I'm going to apply for this month, and I'll have some cash to hedge my next touring bet.

I know I'm incredibly lucky already. I have friends who will just give me a place to live, while I write my next play. Not everyone is so fortunate. And I know this is a precarious way to make a living, but that's what I do. Theatre is not my hobby, in my spare time.

I also know that the in-town hit, as great as it was, did not satisfy me the way touring does.

When my friends left town last week, I knew that next year, I had to join them again on the road. To be able to have the experience of taking a new play across the country, to see over 100 shows in 5-7 cities, to spend months living with other people who are willing to make their art their life's work: and to know, if the show goes REALLY well I can take it to New York or Australia, that's worth taking a gamble for.