Whew. The historic, jam-packed, we’ve-waited-two-years-for-this spring stage season is finally winding down before the summer season begins, with several shows finishing their runs on the weekend. (Also gone is Soulpepper and Native Earth Performing Arts’ excellent Where The Blood Mixes.)
Shows still playing include 2 Pianos 4 Hands, the walkabout Sweeney Todd (although the run is all but sold out) and Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, which is currently selling tickets until the holidays. Upcoming theatre events include Kim Senklip Harvey’s Governor General’s Award-winning play Kamloopa, which I will be seeing but not reviewing; Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit; the pre-Broadway Toronto run of the musical & Juliet; and, of course, the Toronto Fringe Festival, back to live performances after two virtual years.
The Cave, excavated
I missed the initial Luminato 2019 run of The Cave, John Millard (music), Martha Ross (book) and Tomson Highway‘s (lyrics) “apocalyptic cabaret” about a group of animals holed up in a cave while the forest around them burns. So I was happy to catch up with it at Theatre Passe Muraille before it goes on to tour.
On the surface, this parable about how climate change is endangering the world’s fauna sounds earnest, almost twee. The creators play with that misconception, and more, imparting a serious yet funny, urgent, all-ages environmental message with a decadent, downtown feel.
Musician Millard narrates the show with his tongue firmly in his cheek, introducing a menagerie of animals seeking temporary protection in the dwelling of a bear. Characterful singing actors Neema Bickersteth, Andrea Koziol, Derek Kwan and Alex Samaras deliver solos as various animals, outfitted in Allie Marshall‘s stylish but never-too-literal costumes. Millard’s songs and Highway’s lyrics (in English and Cree) are tuneful, amusing and catchy.
And though the show, directed by Adam Paolozza, with Gregory Oh acting as musical director, lacks momentum, it’s consistently entertaining. Bruce Alcock‘s haunting animation projections are a new addition, and they’re nicely integrated into the handsome production, which made me think of everything from kids’ theatre and Weimer-era cabaret to Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
Swan Lake’s ripples
If you missed the world premiere of Karen Kain‘s pandemic-delayed new staging of Swan Lake for the National Ballet of Canada, never mind. It’ll likely be in regular rotation in the company’s programming for years to come. And the changes to Erik Bruhn, Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa‘s original choreography, danced herself by Kain, won’t be that noticeable to the casual ballet-goer.
What Kain, who also directs, has done is emphasize the human element of this beloved fairy tale; Odette (Jurgita Dronina in the opening night performance I saw) is one of many young women abducted and entrapped by predator Rothbart (Spencer Hack) to live in captivity as a swan. When Prince Siegfried (Harrison James) meets her in the forest, she’s been transformed back into a swan – which should stifle any jokes about the work’s implied bestiality. And Kain has solved the problem of the act two Odette/Odile switcheroo by staging the latter’s appearance at a masked ball.
Dronina and James are beautifully matched, with Dronina managing to create two distinct characters – her Odette is achingly fragile and graceful, her Odile fiery and spontaneous. The ensemble sequences are easy on the eyes but a little less dramatically engaging.
Gabriela Tylesova‘s sets and costumes are one of the production’s most memorable aspects, particularly a bejewelled wing motif that’s picked up in the frame bordering the stage; Sean Nieuwenhuis‘s projections help establish changing locales nicely. Then again, Rothbart’s complicated costume seemed to have interfered with the choreography in the ballet’s closing moments, resulting in a fall that, with more rehearsal and staging, was hopefully avoided in future performances.
Cynthia Dale blooms at the Winter Garden
It takes a big talent to fill the elegant stage of the historic Winter Garden Theatre. Musical theatre favourite Cynthia Dale more than fit the bill in her intriguing, if not-quite-polished solo show, Take The Moment, for the Musical Stage Company‘s Marquee series.
Punctuating personal stories with songs by the great Stephen Sondheim, Dale chronicles everything from her memories of her parents to working as a child performer and eventually having to deal with rejection and aging in showbiz.
Some of her memories are tinged with old-world romance; she recalls her parents dancing at the Palais Royale, her mother applying makeup before going out. This nostalgic thought contrasts powerfully with her mother’s future decline. Dale sings Sondheim’s I Remember Sky, not as as it’s usually sung – elegiac, bittersweet – but as an angry statement about the brutality of losing someone to dementia.
In the sequence that gets the warmest, most generous audience response, Dale recalls returning to her childhood home with her siblings and trying to disperse her late father’s ashes in a nearby creek and golf course decades after his passing. It’s pure tragicomedy, and Dale handles the ironies beautifully.
Dale is a warm and sensitive Sondheim interpreter – a medley of songs chronicling the stages of love is a highlight – but the work, directed by Richard Ouzounian and featuring the rich piano accompaniment of David Terriault and Benjamin Kersey, could use a stronger, less rambling, dramatic throughline; it might also work better if she included songs by other composers.
Three Ordinary Men in an extraordinary story
Five years ago, Steven Elliott Jackson wrote The Seat Next To The King, about a fictional meeting between civil rights activist Bayard Rustin and LBJ aide Walter Jenkins. In Three Ordinary Men, he looks at a better-known event from that same era involving Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, who disappeared in Mississippi in 1964 and whose story inspired the film Mississippi Burning.
Directed by Seat’s director, Tanisha Taitt, this Cahoots Theatre production recreates the men’s final day, as they drive to restore a burned-down church that Schwerner had set up as a school, only to get pulled over by the police, jailed and then, after they’re set free, shot.
Jackson introduces us to the men through a series of monologues and then by having the more experienced activists Schwerner (Tristan Claxton) and Chaney (Jamar Adams-Thompson) joke about the more naive, idealistic Goodman (Jack Copland). Gradually, however, the seriousness of their situation dawns on them, and we get an idea of the racism they’re dealing with. (The townsfolk criticize Schwerner and Goodman for “betraying” their race.)
While Taitt’s production is spare and effective – she makes fine use of cubes to present car seats and the disordered church – and the actors are strong, there’s a bit too much reliance on Shawn Henry’s projections to establish the era and locations. I wish the script had a bit more layers to it.
But I have a feeling this script is in development. And with the blows to human rights we’ve witnessed recently, the play’s themes couldn’t be more relevant.
“It’s not much of a time to be a kid,” says one character, in a statement that could easily apply to our current political situation.
Steph Tolev kills
Toronto-born stand-up Steph Tolev has been living in L.A. for several years now; if you’ve missed her local appearances you can now watch her destroy as one of the guests in Bill Burr‘s recent Netflix Is A Joke special, Friends Who Kill.
“I actually just saw a clip of her on Instagram a few months ago and instantly became a huge fan – she’s absolutely hilarious,” says Burr, introducing Tolev. The Juno-nominated comic lives up to that praise, joking about how her mullet isn’t helping her find straight men, and discussing how she cleaned up on Tinder during the early stages of the pandemic, when dudes were sad and desperate and pretty blonde women weren’t swiping right. (“Guess who was?” she growls, suggestively.)
Frank, fierce and forthright, she lets it all hang out, discussing STDs, how 69 changes as you get older and the importance of genital hygiene. She has the focus and authority to switch topics with ease, and she illustrates her material with a brilliant physicality – just witness her offer to masturbate two young men from the audience at the same time. You won’t look at the ropes at the gym in quite the same way again.
