Mozart was a genius: even when he was dying, poor and taking gigs for money.
La Clemenza Di Tito is a powerful story, of love, friendship, honour, betrayal and redemption. The music is beautiful and the singing was mostly great. So why this gimmicky, "let's see how cool and ironic we can be" production was foisted on the last work of a dying genius by the COC is anyone's guess.
This production was contrived and without respect for either the story or the performers. It pushed for comedy where there wasn't any. It bent gender so we had four female voices in more or less the same range. It used sight gags: a constantly stretching runner, an Emperor wearing his pyjamas for the entire production, including his wedding, complete with a fuzzy Linus-blanket for a cape. The director's choices undermined the performers and the story and robbed both of dignity and impact.
There was a lot of action for the sake of action: Tito knocking down the velvet ropes one by one for example, that did nothing to support the emotion the performer was trying to convey.
The singers struggled heroically to bring substance, intellectual and emotional integrity to this vacuous interpretation of what could have been a far more enjoyable opera, The power of the singers and the orchestra did much to convey Mozart's story's heart in spite of the ham-fisted and attention-seeking direction.
Women in trouser roles are a long tradition and had they been presented less ironically, it could have worked to better effect.
Opera is struggling to find a younger audience, but vacant pandering without respect for either the opera, the performers or the audience is no way to get it. Note to directors: you're not smarter than Mozart or Shakespeare or Aristophanes. Get over yourselves and just do the bloody play by illuminating the characters and the emotional truth in the story.
It is possible to dynamically revisit a great work from a fresh perspective. Robert Lepage's production of BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE was inventive and spell-binding. The COC did a great production of OEDIPUS some years ago that was visually compelling and emotionally harrowing. These productions respected the moral universe of the operas. Directors who fail to do so can't possible hope to illuminate the work for the audience and serve to alienate us. Sorry, no: you're not being fresh or avant-garde: you're just being lousy at your job.
Mozart believed in Heaven in Hell, in truth and justice and in the power of love to transform and redeem people and relationships. He lived, as many people in the world still do, in a country where it was possible for the state to put someone to death, horribly, for treason. The production could have been set in Syria, Egypt or the U.S. if the director wanted to offer the audience a more contemporary exploration of the relationship between the power of the State to both set a moral tone for its people and uphold the rule of law.
I am tired of seeing productions with no respect for the moral universe in which the work was originally created. Scorched Earth irony seldom serves a production where someone is trying to talk about the balance between power and mercy and what it is possible for love to achieve.
Opera Atelier packs people in and does pull a young audience by doing productions that respect the history of the time in which they were written and the style in which they were originally performed. The next time the COC does Mozart, they might want to visit the competition who deliver stylish baroque opera with heart.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Pyscho B***ch and a Few Thoughts on Mental Illness
Last night I headed to the Electric Theatre to see Tamara Lynn Robert perform PSYCHO B***ch, her very moving, intensely personal monologue about her experiences as a woman trying to manage her life with bi-polar disorder.
Robert describes a harrowing struggle to obtain some kind of equilibrium through therapy and use of medications. Therapy worked (eventually). Medication never did. She now has a good career (as a therapist) a loving partner, and the openness and insight to speak out about a subject that largely remains taboo.
Robert is a confident and compelling performer. I've seen this show before, but I went back out tonight, in part because it's great material well-performed and, in part, because she is donating the proceeds of her run to Youthlink, a counselling service for gay, bi and trans-gendered youth, a community with a very high suicide rate.
Left untreated, mental illness can cost sufferers theirs jobs and relationships, leading to homelessness, isolation, and poverty. Mental illness can also cost an afflicted person their physical health or in some cases, their life.
Sadly, the stigma attached to disclosing mental illness remains a powerful barrier to sufferers seeking treatment. A lot of people with mental illness and their loved ones continue to suffer in silence, too ashamed to go get help. Substance abuse and addiction are both often efforts, conscious or unconscious, to self-medicate a mental health issue. We all know how well that tends to work out.
One in five Canadians suffers with some form of mental illness, me included. It is often a hereditary illness as was the case for me. A GP can refer you to a qualified mental health professional, assuming there are any where you live. It can takes months to get in to see a therapist covered by Medicare in smaller cities. In Winnipeg, I waited 6 months and I found my own therapist that was covered by Manitoba Health. The GP I disclosed my crushing depression to handed me a suicide hot line number on a piece of paper and sent me home. The shrink I did get to see, once, thanks to a doctor friend pulling some strings, told me she wasn't taking new patients.
One of the many ways we stigmatize the mentally ill is by providing so little treatment for mental illness under Medicare. By not financing mental health treatment as a health care issue of equal importance to say cancer or heart disease or diabetes, our society powerfully reinforces the idea that seeking treatment for a mental health issue is flaky or self-indulgent.
Here in Toronto, the Canadian Centre for Addictions and Mental Health did a great campaign to support the destigmatization of mental illness when they opened their new facilities, but good luck getting them to give you or your loved one anything but an assessment. It's great to know what's wrong with you but it is not much use without someone who is willing to try and help treat you fix it. The artist-health clinic at Western Hospital refers artists (average income $15K a year) to non-medicare covered psychotherapists who charge $89 an hour. Help you can't afford is worse than useless.
Can you imagine this being the way we deal with cancer or cardiac patients? "Yup, you're sick, sorry we won't treat you" or " Here's someone to treat you: pay them yourself " or my favourite " we know you're still sick but you can only have short-term therapy and anti-depressants. We don't do long-term therapy, even though we know it works best for some people. It costs the system too much." It would be a national scandal. This is in large measure how we treat the mentally ill until something catastrophic happens: job loss, marital breakdown, a suicide attempt, a run-in with the law, out of control substance abuse.
Many people with mental illness were horrifically traumatized as children and young adults. Rich or poor, kids get abused at school and at home and it sets them up for mental health issues as adults. You don't have to grow up in a camp or a war zone to be abused as a child.
In her talk-back session tonight, Robert said she had paid tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to get the talk therapy that actually worked when drugs didn't. That someone diagnosed with a serious mental illness was forced to go to the private sector for treatment in a country with universal health care is a disgrace.
Some of the smartest, most accomplished, creative and talented people I know have struggled with mental health issues. We lose out on their abilities to give their best to society when we fail to provide them ready access to decent mental health care when they need it.
Poor mental health often leads to self-destructive habits that lead to poor physical health. As a society we need to accept that the mind and the body are connected and equally deserving of qualified, publicly funded care. When we don't, we get to pay for our neglect of mental health by treating the physical problems that result as a consequence.
As it is, many mentally ill people are left to struggle with no help. If they have the personal resources they often end up having to both find and finance their own help, often-times from questionably qualified therapists. Those with no means to pay often end up with well-meaning but unregulated and largely untrained self-help groups and peer counsellors, if they get any help at all. Twelve step is a great resource but it is no substitute for a mental health professional.
Mental illness deserves the same compassion and care as any other form of chronic illness that can lead to death. Thanks to people like Tamara-Lynn Robert and Clara Hughes, the great Olympic athlete and mental health champion, attention is finally being given to this important issue. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the support of family and friends and an excellent psychiatrist here in Toronto to facilitate the treatment of my own metal health issues. My life is immeasurably better thanks to good treatment. I've survived depression. I know not everyone is so lucky. There have been suicides in my extended family.
I'd like to see Health Canada put pressure on the provinces to provide more and better access to qualified mental health practitioners covered by Medicare. How about a mental health check-up along with the annual or bi-annual physical? I have a great GP who does check-in with me and who led me to my psychiatrist but it is not always the case as I found out in Winnipeg.
It's hard enough work trying to recover from mental illness without having to scramble for treatment. Trust me I know.
Robert describes a harrowing struggle to obtain some kind of equilibrium through therapy and use of medications. Therapy worked (eventually). Medication never did. She now has a good career (as a therapist) a loving partner, and the openness and insight to speak out about a subject that largely remains taboo.
Robert is a confident and compelling performer. I've seen this show before, but I went back out tonight, in part because it's great material well-performed and, in part, because she is donating the proceeds of her run to Youthlink, a counselling service for gay, bi and trans-gendered youth, a community with a very high suicide rate.
Left untreated, mental illness can cost sufferers theirs jobs and relationships, leading to homelessness, isolation, and poverty. Mental illness can also cost an afflicted person their physical health or in some cases, their life.
Sadly, the stigma attached to disclosing mental illness remains a powerful barrier to sufferers seeking treatment. A lot of people with mental illness and their loved ones continue to suffer in silence, too ashamed to go get help. Substance abuse and addiction are both often efforts, conscious or unconscious, to self-medicate a mental health issue. We all know how well that tends to work out.
One in five Canadians suffers with some form of mental illness, me included. It is often a hereditary illness as was the case for me. A GP can refer you to a qualified mental health professional, assuming there are any where you live. It can takes months to get in to see a therapist covered by Medicare in smaller cities. In Winnipeg, I waited 6 months and I found my own therapist that was covered by Manitoba Health. The GP I disclosed my crushing depression to handed me a suicide hot line number on a piece of paper and sent me home. The shrink I did get to see, once, thanks to a doctor friend pulling some strings, told me she wasn't taking new patients.
One of the many ways we stigmatize the mentally ill is by providing so little treatment for mental illness under Medicare. By not financing mental health treatment as a health care issue of equal importance to say cancer or heart disease or diabetes, our society powerfully reinforces the idea that seeking treatment for a mental health issue is flaky or self-indulgent.
Here in Toronto, the Canadian Centre for Addictions and Mental Health did a great campaign to support the destigmatization of mental illness when they opened their new facilities, but good luck getting them to give you or your loved one anything but an assessment. It's great to know what's wrong with you but it is not much use without someone who is willing to try and help treat you fix it. The artist-health clinic at Western Hospital refers artists (average income $15K a year) to non-medicare covered psychotherapists who charge $89 an hour. Help you can't afford is worse than useless.
Can you imagine this being the way we deal with cancer or cardiac patients? "Yup, you're sick, sorry we won't treat you" or " Here's someone to treat you: pay them yourself " or my favourite " we know you're still sick but you can only have short-term therapy and anti-depressants. We don't do long-term therapy, even though we know it works best for some people. It costs the system too much." It would be a national scandal. This is in large measure how we treat the mentally ill until something catastrophic happens: job loss, marital breakdown, a suicide attempt, a run-in with the law, out of control substance abuse.
Many people with mental illness were horrifically traumatized as children and young adults. Rich or poor, kids get abused at school and at home and it sets them up for mental health issues as adults. You don't have to grow up in a camp or a war zone to be abused as a child.
In her talk-back session tonight, Robert said she had paid tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to get the talk therapy that actually worked when drugs didn't. That someone diagnosed with a serious mental illness was forced to go to the private sector for treatment in a country with universal health care is a disgrace.
Some of the smartest, most accomplished, creative and talented people I know have struggled with mental health issues. We lose out on their abilities to give their best to society when we fail to provide them ready access to decent mental health care when they need it.
Poor mental health often leads to self-destructive habits that lead to poor physical health. As a society we need to accept that the mind and the body are connected and equally deserving of qualified, publicly funded care. When we don't, we get to pay for our neglect of mental health by treating the physical problems that result as a consequence.
As it is, many mentally ill people are left to struggle with no help. If they have the personal resources they often end up having to both find and finance their own help, often-times from questionably qualified therapists. Those with no means to pay often end up with well-meaning but unregulated and largely untrained self-help groups and peer counsellors, if they get any help at all. Twelve step is a great resource but it is no substitute for a mental health professional.
Mental illness deserves the same compassion and care as any other form of chronic illness that can lead to death. Thanks to people like Tamara-Lynn Robert and Clara Hughes, the great Olympic athlete and mental health champion, attention is finally being given to this important issue. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the support of family and friends and an excellent psychiatrist here in Toronto to facilitate the treatment of my own metal health issues. My life is immeasurably better thanks to good treatment. I've survived depression. I know not everyone is so lucky. There have been suicides in my extended family.
I'd like to see Health Canada put pressure on the provinces to provide more and better access to qualified mental health practitioners covered by Medicare. How about a mental health check-up along with the annual or bi-annual physical? I have a great GP who does check-in with me and who led me to my psychiatrist but it is not always the case as I found out in Winnipeg.
It's hard enough work trying to recover from mental illness without having to scramble for treatment. Trust me I know.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
THE PENELOPIAD: classically great theatre
"Now that I'm dead, I know everything." So begins Penelope, the narrator and protagonist of the PENELOPIAD, as she floats out of the mists of Hades in the theatrical adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel, currently on at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto.
The production is a remount of last year's Dora-award winning production. It is that rare show that is great on every count: acting, direction, choreography, script and production.
Distance allows a dispassionate view and a wiser if broken Penelope ( a sharp, understated performance by Megan Follows) has come back from the underworld to explain how she ended up married to a serial killer.
Atwood is arguably my favourite writer of fiction. Here the great author offers a blackly humorous, deeply empathic, wickedly smart and inky dark feminist retelling of the classic tale of Odysseus and the Trojan war.
The battle of Troy and the voyages of Odysseus are shared, not by the male hero but by his wife, the long suffering Penelope and her gaggle of lovely, murdered maids who died at the hands of Penelope and Odysseus' only child and heir.
The wily and much admired Odysseus (the brilliant Kelli Fox) marries the 15 year old Penelope and carts her off to Ithaca where he seduces her, knocks her up with a trophy son and then abandons her.
For the next twenty years, she waits for him to come home: on a pile of rocks with a bunch of goats, his overbearing nursemaid, her spoiled and resentful son, a senile father-in-law, a toxic mother-in-law and twelve loyal, clever beautiful, female servants who help her keep her wits and her virtue. Meanwhile Odysseus is off in Troy to fight a war in honour of her hotter and - totally self-absorbed cousin, Helen, (a luscious and droll Pamela Sinha).
Odysseus doesn't bother to write and Penelope doesn't know if he's alive or dead, but she's a good woman, and her husband has told her he'll kill her if she sleeps with someone else, so she waits.
In Atwood's version of events, Helen runs off with the hot Paris because her father has married her off to a rich, disgusting idiot and she wants to get banged by a guy she actually wants to sleep with. Odysseus heads off to war, well, because he can, oh yeah and because he likes to screw around. Apparently sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander. Nice guy.
The long-suffering Penelope enlists her maids to fend off and contain a stable of boorish opportunists, who are trying for her husband's kingdom and her fine form while she tries to deal and remain faithful to a totally unfaithful man who is in no hurry to come home.
Atwood shows the audience the dark side of being a hero's handmaiden: the largely unappreciated and overworked stick propping up the entitlements of a glamorous, self-important and heartless narcissist.
Kelly Thornton and her fine cast unfold the drama with all its power, beauty, absurdity and awfulness. With a few effects, great lighting, effective movement and unadorned embrace of a powerful story the cast and director bring the author's vision to majestic life.
It's not that narcissists don't care about anything. They care, as Odysseus cares, about ideas, principles and battles. They care about opportunities for self aggrandisement: a hot wife, land, winning, a son. More than anything, they cares about appearances, especially how they appear to the world. What they never care about is other people. They just never care about you. Not even the gods can protect you from their entitlements and the wrath of their wounded egos and morally vacant souls. Penelope learns this lesson the hard way. Atwood gives voice to a woman who never managed to get a word in edgewise.
It's a great play. Go, just go.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
SKYFALL: Bond in Autumn
I have a confession to make: I am not a Bond junkie. I've never particularly been a Bond fan. I think that might just have changed.
Last week was a rough one and I needed a distraction . Sometimes there's nothing quite like a big screen movie to take you away from your troubles, especially one that just churns out plot, jumps around from one exotic location to another and features an impossibly handsome, contained and somewhat troubled cipher at its core. Off I went to see SKYFALL, the most recent installment in the seemingly tireless Bond franchise, in a packed theatre at the Varsity.
After half an hour of trailers and commercials (seriously?) the film finally started. It was completely worth the wait. It's a very well-crafted script that draws on the history of the series of films but is at the same time, a very contemporary story about a man coming to terms with his place in the world and his relationship with his own past as he enters the autumn of his life.
The title sequence was gorgeous and scary, drawing the audience deeper and deeper into a world where death and dark forces are constantly present.
It is the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise and this feels very much like Bond in autumn: confronting the frailties of a body that is beginning to fail him, ghosts he has avoided seeing and feelings and fears he has avoided facing.
The film proper begins with an electrifying chase though a famous bazaar in Turkey that leads, if not exactly to the death of Bond, at least to a moment where he comes in perilously close contact to his own mortality. Afterward, he takes a time out on a beach, but duty calls in the form of a terrorist incident in his hometown of London. He puts down the bottle and returns to face a series of demons from his own past and from the pasts of other friends and colleagues.
Daniel Craig is a great Bond, bringing depth and resonance to a character that could, in the hands of a lesser actor, descend to parody. Javier Bardem makes a terrific nemesis, carefully walking a razor's edge of menace, humour and pathos. He is a devil for who we can actually muster some sympathy. The stellar cast includes Judi Dench as "M", Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney. Dame Judi outdoes herself as a lady who is not for turning.
There are two "Bond girls" but they feel more like colleagues than arm candy and the film is pretty tame in that regard. People were there with quite young children, though I certainly wouldn't recommend it. The story is too complex and the film is frankly too violent for a child under 11 or 12.
If you only go for the exotic travel locales, you'll still have fun. I particularly enjoyed Macau.
It is when the film journeys to the bleak and austere beauty of a Scottish highland, however that the picture truly comes home, literally and metaphorically. This is not just a battleground where old scores need to be settled or where good must defeat evil, but one where certain ghosts from the past must finally be laid to rest.
I don't want to say more, for fear of spoiling the plot. If you need a good distraction for a few hours, as I did last weekend, this is time well wasted. The trailer assures us Bond will be back for more and so will I.
Last week was a rough one and I needed a distraction . Sometimes there's nothing quite like a big screen movie to take you away from your troubles, especially one that just churns out plot, jumps around from one exotic location to another and features an impossibly handsome, contained and somewhat troubled cipher at its core. Off I went to see SKYFALL, the most recent installment in the seemingly tireless Bond franchise, in a packed theatre at the Varsity.
After half an hour of trailers and commercials (seriously?) the film finally started. It was completely worth the wait. It's a very well-crafted script that draws on the history of the series of films but is at the same time, a very contemporary story about a man coming to terms with his place in the world and his relationship with his own past as he enters the autumn of his life.
The title sequence was gorgeous and scary, drawing the audience deeper and deeper into a world where death and dark forces are constantly present.
It is the 50th anniversary of the Bond franchise and this feels very much like Bond in autumn: confronting the frailties of a body that is beginning to fail him, ghosts he has avoided seeing and feelings and fears he has avoided facing.
The film proper begins with an electrifying chase though a famous bazaar in Turkey that leads, if not exactly to the death of Bond, at least to a moment where he comes in perilously close contact to his own mortality. Afterward, he takes a time out on a beach, but duty calls in the form of a terrorist incident in his hometown of London. He puts down the bottle and returns to face a series of demons from his own past and from the pasts of other friends and colleagues.
Daniel Craig is a great Bond, bringing depth and resonance to a character that could, in the hands of a lesser actor, descend to parody. Javier Bardem makes a terrific nemesis, carefully walking a razor's edge of menace, humour and pathos. He is a devil for who we can actually muster some sympathy. The stellar cast includes Judi Dench as "M", Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney. Dame Judi outdoes herself as a lady who is not for turning.
There are two "Bond girls" but they feel more like colleagues than arm candy and the film is pretty tame in that regard. People were there with quite young children, though I certainly wouldn't recommend it. The story is too complex and the film is frankly too violent for a child under 11 or 12.
If you only go for the exotic travel locales, you'll still have fun. I particularly enjoyed Macau.
It is when the film journeys to the bleak and austere beauty of a Scottish highland, however that the picture truly comes home, literally and metaphorically. This is not just a battleground where old scores need to be settled or where good must defeat evil, but one where certain ghosts from the past must finally be laid to rest.
I don't want to say more, for fear of spoiling the plot. If you need a good distraction for a few hours, as I did last weekend, this is time well wasted. The trailer assures us Bond will be back for more and so will I.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The MASTER : false gods and feral idols
Last Sunday afternoon, I had one of those experiences in a cinema that sometimes happens when a famous and well-regarded director makes a big film about a tough subject. My friend and I arrived with high expectations and saw a film that is gorgeous, thought-provoking, wonderfully acted and ultimately disappointing.
In THE MASTER, director Paul Thomas Anderson ( Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) takes on the American fascination with and devotion to quasi-religious cults. What creates the mental and spiritual void in some of the most privileged people on Earth that allows them to became sucked in by charismatic charlatans time and time again? What kind of narcissistic swindler manipulates the emptiness and longings of his fellow humans for his own sexual and monetary gain by setting himself up as a demi-god with answers to unanswerable questions?
Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a drunken sailor home from the war with mental health issues, advanced alcoholism, frustrated sexual desires and a hairpin temper. Phoenix gives an achingly brilliant portrayal of a man who is in turns both affecting and terrifying. He's at sea: drowning in a toxic soup of rage, sexual frustration and existential loneliness he seems powerless to escape.
After being fired from one job as a department store photographer and fleeing another after murdering a man with bad homemade alcohol, Quell stows away on a pleasure boat where he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of the finest performances in his stellar career) who offers him a father figure in an ersatz family of souls adrift. Drawn into his quasi-religious cult that offers people a chance to redeem both their present and their past lives through a system of brain-washing called "processing" Freddie becomes both a defender of the faith and a fish caught in a net he neither understands or is able to escape.
Dodds is as full of rage and repressed desire as his protege, Freddie. In the end the Master is as much a slave to denial and carnality as any of his followers.
Men wrestling with each other occurs over and over in the film. It is his repressed homosexuality Dodds is really trying to come to grips with as he swindles women so he can hang out with men. His wife (a terrific Amy Adams) gets who is but desires the facade of the 50s marriage and status it confers too much to accept the truth about her husband in any real way.
There is a beautiful recurring image in the film of wake churning up behind the boat. It evokes all kinds of things: floating hearts, Rosarch blots, the nebulous dreams and desires that churn up in the wake of consciousness. The film is lovely to look. The quality of the performances give it moments of great emotional resonance.
The problem with THE MASTER isn't the subject matter, which is intriguing especially given Hollywood's love of Scientology, The Work, twelve-step meetings and all manner of quasi-spiritual psychic cure alls. It isn't the acting, which is stellar or the cinematography or the compelling score. It's not that Anderson has nothing to say, he does: about the effect of the war on men who came home from it lost and psychically damaged, about alcoholism, about fantasy and longing and desire and repression, about the emptiness of the lives of people who want for nothing material and live in a spiritual and emotional vacuum.
Like his antagonist Dodds, I felt that Anderson was making it up as he went along with no clear picture of where he wanted to end up. He too has a position to maintain as a great commentator on American mores. This time however, like the cult followers he's trying to portray, he has foundered and lost his way.
I can't agree with the critics who have said Anderson offers no easy answers or fails to spoon-feed the audience and tell them what to think. He clearly understood the interior lives of his characters and the environment that created them but he hadn't figured out the story he wanted to tell with them. The problem with THE MASTER is Anderson doesn't know what he thinks.
In the end, THE MASTER is as frustrating and slippery as the leader of the cult it is ostensibly about.Go for the acting but don't expect to be compelled by the story.
In THE MASTER, director Paul Thomas Anderson ( Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) takes on the American fascination with and devotion to quasi-religious cults. What creates the mental and spiritual void in some of the most privileged people on Earth that allows them to became sucked in by charismatic charlatans time and time again? What kind of narcissistic swindler manipulates the emptiness and longings of his fellow humans for his own sexual and monetary gain by setting himself up as a demi-god with answers to unanswerable questions?
Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a drunken sailor home from the war with mental health issues, advanced alcoholism, frustrated sexual desires and a hairpin temper. Phoenix gives an achingly brilliant portrayal of a man who is in turns both affecting and terrifying. He's at sea: drowning in a toxic soup of rage, sexual frustration and existential loneliness he seems powerless to escape.
After being fired from one job as a department store photographer and fleeing another after murdering a man with bad homemade alcohol, Quell stows away on a pleasure boat where he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of the finest performances in his stellar career) who offers him a father figure in an ersatz family of souls adrift. Drawn into his quasi-religious cult that offers people a chance to redeem both their present and their past lives through a system of brain-washing called "processing" Freddie becomes both a defender of the faith and a fish caught in a net he neither understands or is able to escape.
Dodds is as full of rage and repressed desire as his protege, Freddie. In the end the Master is as much a slave to denial and carnality as any of his followers.
Men wrestling with each other occurs over and over in the film. It is his repressed homosexuality Dodds is really trying to come to grips with as he swindles women so he can hang out with men. His wife (a terrific Amy Adams) gets who is but desires the facade of the 50s marriage and status it confers too much to accept the truth about her husband in any real way.
There is a beautiful recurring image in the film of wake churning up behind the boat. It evokes all kinds of things: floating hearts, Rosarch blots, the nebulous dreams and desires that churn up in the wake of consciousness. The film is lovely to look. The quality of the performances give it moments of great emotional resonance.
The problem with THE MASTER isn't the subject matter, which is intriguing especially given Hollywood's love of Scientology, The Work, twelve-step meetings and all manner of quasi-spiritual psychic cure alls. It isn't the acting, which is stellar or the cinematography or the compelling score. It's not that Anderson has nothing to say, he does: about the effect of the war on men who came home from it lost and psychically damaged, about alcoholism, about fantasy and longing and desire and repression, about the emptiness of the lives of people who want for nothing material and live in a spiritual and emotional vacuum.
Like his antagonist Dodds, I felt that Anderson was making it up as he went along with no clear picture of where he wanted to end up. He too has a position to maintain as a great commentator on American mores. This time however, like the cult followers he's trying to portray, he has foundered and lost his way.
I can't agree with the critics who have said Anderson offers no easy answers or fails to spoon-feed the audience and tell them what to think. He clearly understood the interior lives of his characters and the environment that created them but he hadn't figured out the story he wanted to tell with them. The problem with THE MASTER is Anderson doesn't know what he thinks.
In the end, THE MASTER is as frustrating and slippery as the leader of the cult it is ostensibly about.Go for the acting but don't expect to be compelled by the story.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Between The Sheets: new play on a hot topic opens Nightwood's fall season
First off, I want to apologize for my absence these past few weeks. My holiday this summer did not, as it often does, include a sojourn at one of the major theatre festivals. I saw stars and mountains and butterflies and Montreal cafes. I saw my sisters and few dear old friends and had long, in-depth, catch-up conversations. I went midnight skinny-dipping in a bath-tub warm pool. I ate a lot of great dinners and saw some beautiful Quebec countryside but I saw no films and no theatre.
Then I came back here to a few fairly grueling but extremely productive weeks at work.
While I was in the midst of that, the film festival flew past and the fall theatre season began in Toronto. I needed a fix. Today I zipped off to the Tarragon to catch Nightwood Theatre's season opener at the Backspace, a two hander called "Between The Sheets" by first-time playwright and recent National Theatre School graduate Jordi Mand.
Spoiler alert: below there are some plot details, though nothing about the great twist of an ending.
Two women, a high-powered parent in her late 40s, and a pretty, organized and almost stupidly confident grade three teacher in her late 20s have an unscheduled meeting in a classroom after-hours on parent-teacher interview night.
This mom isn't there to interview the teacher about her son's progress in school: at least, not only to interview the teacher about her relationship with her son. She is there to confront her son's teacher with evidence she has unearthed suggesting that the teacher's relationship with her husband, the student's father, is more than professional.
It's a brilliant premise that just churns out conflict. Sex, power, money, home-wrecking, kids and how to raise them are all on the table in this one hour drama. While the script is better in some places than it is in others, there are two great actresses onstage to make a meal of a high-stakes confrontation loaded with controversy and they do.
Susan Coyne is quite possibly my favourite actress in the country. I'd watch her read a phone book. Her intelligence and the depth of her skill and craft shine in everything I have ever seen her do. In this she is four steps past fabulous as Marion, the high-powered executive and harried parent of a difficult child, struggling to hang onto her long marriage to a depressed slacker of a husband. Sporting slick black boots and a steely power suit, she's like a lioness with a kill in that cage of a classroom as she paces and grills her adversary.
Christine Horne does a fine job of making Teresa, an idealistic and self-righteous prig of a school-teacher into a compelling and sympathetic character. It's to her credit that the twist ending holds the resonance it does.
The play is well-directed and the realistic setting works well with the story. In this school, everyone learns a lesson.
I didn't love the musical underscore at the beginning of the action. Under the blackout, it might have been a mood-setting device but placed where it was I felt as if the director was trying to tell me how to feel off the hop, never a good thing. The script sags in a few places and strains credulity in a few others, but on the whole it's a very fine first effort: thought-provoking and mostly well-constructed.
Whether you're in the 20-something camp or with the middle-aged women living with or divorced from Mister mid-life crisis, you'll certainly have plenty to discuss in the bar after the show. It is probably not your best bet for a first date.
This is absolutely worth seeing for the script's spirited look at a tough subject and two terrific performances.
Next week: CLEOPATRA and hopefully, Michael Healey's new and controversial play, PROUD.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
HUFF at Summerworks: Tragedy and Hope from one to watch
I saw a workshop of Cliff Cardinal's story of a dysfunctional and profoundly damaged family on the Rez back last fall. I was excited by the funny writing, the realistic and well-voiced characters, the great story-telling and by Cardinal as a performer.
HUFF arrived at SUMMERWORKS off good press from Winnipeg where it was part of the Fringe.
I wanted to see how Cardinal had managed to distill all that story and all of those characters (around 20, including a skunk and a dog) into a one-person show. With a tight story driven by a central character, excellent direction, a wonderful, atmospheric set and an astonishingly grounded and assured performance: that's how. HUFF is bleak and blackly droll, sharply observed and excruciating to watch.
Huff is a euphemism for sniffing gasoline and other solvents. It causes hallucinations which the show brings vividly to life. It also cause irreversible brain damage.
Cardinal the writer unrolls the story with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Substance abuse and all of the ills that attend it, is rampant on Shit Creek reserve. You can't grow up in Manitoba and not know a place like Shit Creek, you can't live in Winnipeg and not see the consequences of growing up the way Huff is growing up on Shit Creek.
Cardinal shows the legacy of inter-generational substance abuse and the awful despair and destruction that attends it as the Trickster's reign of folly. In less skilled hands, this would be another exercise in hand-wringing. Cardinal simply shows the audience what is and lets his characters have their own voices, their own power, their own tragedies and sorrows, their own dreams, their own hope.
There are places where things could use a little space between character shifts, a slight slackening of the pace: just a little more room to breathe. Cardinal's ease and confidence on a stage and his committed presence in the moment more than made up for any minor technical issues.
"The Creator gives everyone a gift". Mr Cardinal has clearly been given a few gifts. He's still quite young. If this is any indication of what he's capable of at this tender age, I can't wait to see what he does next.
It was a fine night of theatre. I hope it gets a remount and a tour across the country.
HUFF arrived at SUMMERWORKS off good press from Winnipeg where it was part of the Fringe.
I wanted to see how Cardinal had managed to distill all that story and all of those characters (around 20, including a skunk and a dog) into a one-person show. With a tight story driven by a central character, excellent direction, a wonderful, atmospheric set and an astonishingly grounded and assured performance: that's how. HUFF is bleak and blackly droll, sharply observed and excruciating to watch.
Huff is a euphemism for sniffing gasoline and other solvents. It causes hallucinations which the show brings vividly to life. It also cause irreversible brain damage.
Cardinal the writer unrolls the story with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Substance abuse and all of the ills that attend it, is rampant on Shit Creek reserve. You can't grow up in Manitoba and not know a place like Shit Creek, you can't live in Winnipeg and not see the consequences of growing up the way Huff is growing up on Shit Creek.
Cardinal shows the legacy of inter-generational substance abuse and the awful despair and destruction that attends it as the Trickster's reign of folly. In less skilled hands, this would be another exercise in hand-wringing. Cardinal simply shows the audience what is and lets his characters have their own voices, their own power, their own tragedies and sorrows, their own dreams, their own hope.
There are places where things could use a little space between character shifts, a slight slackening of the pace: just a little more room to breathe. Cardinal's ease and confidence on a stage and his committed presence in the moment more than made up for any minor technical issues.
"The Creator gives everyone a gift". Mr Cardinal has clearly been given a few gifts. He's still quite young. If this is any indication of what he's capable of at this tender age, I can't wait to see what he does next.
It was a fine night of theatre. I hope it gets a remount and a tour across the country.
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