Now that Toronto’s stages have returned to (almost) normal – with anywhere from three to six productions opening in any given week (not even counting Stratford, Shaw or the other festivals) – things have become too busy for me to write full-length reviews of everything I see.
Last week I spent most of my time helping assemble NOW’s biggest issue of the year, the Hot Summer Guide, which included a cover interview with comedy writer and stand-up Brandon Ash-Mohammed, who performs at Pridezilla this week. And at least for the time being, there is no budget for freelance stage reviewers.
So I’ve decided to resurrect NOW’s Stage Scenes column to include my thoughts on recent productions, news items, upcoming shows, etc. Including something in this column doesn’t mean it’s less important than a show that gets a full review. But Stage Scenes will allow me to mention one-offs like cabarets, talks, comedy shows and albums. I’ll also get to weigh in on shows that had limited runs.
So look for this roundup semi-regularly. And if you have any tips or news items, please send them my way at glenns at nowtoronto dot com or @glennsumi.
The Herd is back
Tarragon Theatre‘s production of Kenneth T. Williams‘s The Herd had to pause last week because of illness in its cast. But it returns for a final week of performances before its scheduled June 12 closing.
I wish I could recommend it more. When rare twin white bison are discovered in a Saskatchewan First Nation herd, the reserve is thrown into chaos. Indigenous geneticist Vanessa Brokenhorn (Tai Amy Grauman) tries to study them; YouTube vlogger Coyote Jackson (Todd Houseman) hopes to capture footage of the animals and perhaps discover whether their rare presence fulfils an ancient prophecy; and an Irish woman from the EU named Aislinn Kennedy (Shyanne Duquette) has an economic interest in the discovery, which we will soon find out.
While both the plot (the prophecy is never explained) and characters’ interactions could use more development, and the acting more nuance, what comes across well in Tara Beagan‘s production is the various ways this small community is being exploited. Which, sadly, is nothing new.
Pearle Harbour’s cautionary tale
A couple of years ago, I wrote that Justin Miller‘s drag alter ego Pearle Harbour had, in just two full-length shows, become one of the most engaging, thoughtful performance artists around. Last month, in a run at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Miller and Pearle presented their most ambitious show yet: Distant Early Warning, a post-apocalyptic tale that resonated in these anxious, fraught times.
Pearle, looking understandably less glamorous than in her previous incarnations, is earth’s sole survivor holed up in an auxiliary station somewhere in the Arctic Circle. While she keeps to her routines – exercise, maintenance, cigarette-smoking and drug-taking – she’s basically counting down the days until the appearance of The Grand Prize Winner, a mythical figure who’s equal parts Godot and Gentleman Caller. But will she survive until his arrival?
Although there’s an obvious repetitiveness to Pearle’s actions, Miller and director John Turner keep us absorbed, both in the vivid details of this bleak world – kudos to designers Jackie Chau (sets), Jareth Li (lighting) and Chris Ross-Ewart (sound) – and the wanderings of Pearle’s mind.
As always, Pearle’s language is studded with suggestive language (“I’ve got the deepest shelter in town,” she quips early on), and she occasionally assumes stylized poses fit for propaganda posters.
There’s lots of savage critique in here, especially about rampant consumerism and environmental destruction; everything Pearle touches seems branded by a sinister mega-corp called MoonMist. While the artists have difficulty landing the material, and the songs don’t resonate in the same way they have in earlier Pearle shows, certain images remain harsh and haunting.
Two (terrific) Weird Tales
The return of Toronto theatre wouldn’t be complete without a fiendishly fun show by Eric Woolfe and Eldritch Theatre.
His recent double bill Two Weird Tales – consisting of adaptations of Franz Kafka‘s Metamorphosis and H.P. Lovecraft‘s At The Mountains Of Madness and directed by Mairi Babb – more than lived up to its title. The weirdness is psychological and metaphoric in Kafka’s tale of salesman Gregor Samsa, who – in one of the most famous openings in all of 20th century literature – wakes up one morning to discover he’s a giant insect.
Woolfe, clad in a robe and looking like he hasn’t slept properly in weeks, narrates the piece with appropriate paranoia and absorption, as if he’s doomed to play out this ritualistic scenario regularly. Lindsay Anne Black‘s miniature set and designs, with skewed angles and grotesque puppets, helps evoke a sense of claustrophobia and unease – imagine a German Expressionist take on The Friendly Giant. Overall, it’s a faithful, disturbing and at times poignant realization of Kafka’s nightmare. And Woolfe’s narrator has a few secrets up his sleeve to add menace to the tale.
For the more ambitious Lovecraft segment, Woolfe, Babb and designer Melanie McNeill use a variety of means to bring the creepy sci-fi tale to life, including projections, magic tricks, audience participation and a few mysterious boxes. Woolfe plays a geologist who survived a tragic expedition to Antarctica and is telling his story now to dissuade people from taking another expedition there. Toggling between past and present and making great use of humour and pregnant pauses, the stuffy professor creates lots of mystery about what happened. When the answers arrive they are gruesomely effective and, indeed, weird – in all senses of the word.
R.U.R. A Torrent Of Light shines brightly
If you think of opera as an art form of the past, Nicole Lizée and Nicolas Billon‘s R.U.R. A Torrent Of Light will change your mind. In subject matter, setting and form, it looks to the future.
Vividly directed by Michael Hidetoshi Mori for Tapestry Opera, Lizée’s haunting, hypnotic score and Billon’s suggestive libretto about married software company co-founders and developers (Peter Barrett and Krisztina Szabó) tell a timely story about both the rich potential of AI (artificial intelligence) and the ethical, philosophical and human implications of it.
While some of the couple’s background details remain hazy, that’s addressed later on when several secrets come to light. It’s in the opera’s second half, too, that Szabó, hitherto stuck in a mostly reactive and passive role, gets to let loose – not just vocally but emotionally.
Mori makes fine use of the shallow but wide playing area at the OCAD University theatre, gorgeously lit by Michelle Ramsay and featuring a haunting set by Cameron Anderson. I especially liked the use of the chorus of AI robots, who echo words and phrases and occasionally weave in and out in Jaime Martino‘s choreography.
The performances by both human and AI characters (Scott Belluz and Danielle Buonaiuto) are excellent. Under musical director Gregory Oh and musicians on either side of the playing area, Lizée’s complex score comes alive with twitching, propulsive power. The instruments are a mix of found items, acoustic and electronic – fitting for a story about the connections between humans and machines.
This Queen rules
What if Mozart’s Queen of the Night, one of opera’s most iconic female characters, could come down from the stage and spill some tea? And what if that character were created and performed by a queer, trans, non-binary and multi-racial artist? The result is The Queen In Me, Teiya Kasahara‘s bold, intelligent and beautifully sung critique of the art form and its practices.
During a performance of the Queen’s famous aria Der Hölle Rache, Kasahara stops the show and launches into an entertaining diatribe about the constricting roles for women, who are limited to being either good (Rigoletto’s Gilda), pretty and consumptive (Bohème’s Mimi) or fallen (Macbeth’s Lady M). Outfitted in an appropriately stiff and regal dark gown (by designer Joanna Yu), Kasahara speaks and sings these pronouncements to some of the most glorious music from the canon. Unfortunately, because of the nature of their show, the arias, conducted with maximum drama by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and sung with commitment by Kasahara, are often cut short.
There’s a bit too much jargon in the monologue, and it’s unclear when the story by the centuries-old German-accented singer performing the Queen of the Night ends and Kasahara’s story begins. But there’s so much else in this co-production between the Canadian Opera Company, Amplified Opera, Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Gargantua that works brilliantly. When Kasahara begins getting out of that stiff gown, they do it to Salome’s Dance Of The Seven Veils music, for instance; when they want to metaphorically wash their hands of the opera biz, they do it while singing Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. Clever.
And the final 10 minutes are so thrilling dramatically and musical that they make up for any repetitiveness that came before. Fitting for a show that happened in the first few days of Pride Month.
Colin’s cabaret
The last time I saw Colin Asuncion at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre he was performing in Brian Francis’s Box 4901 (which has since been expanded into a best-selling book, Missed Connections), a few weeks before the pandemic hit. Late last month he returned to the same theatre, this time as composer and singer, launching songs from his upcoming EP, Open Up, along with some fave covers.
Asuncion, who’s also a well-known baking influencer (he was one of the finalists on The Great Canadian Baking Show), is a warm and generous performer with a soulful voice and charismatic stage presence. Between numbers like Superstitious and How Will I Know, he told anecdotes about doing musical theatre, his one-time ambivalence about Pride (preceding a very moving performance of Elton John’s Rocket Man) and a disastrous breakup that happened on what should have been a celebratory night.
His four original songs, composed with Kevin Wong (part of the lively band), show off his vocal range and show an artist who’s unafraid to speak his truth and reveal his heart. To borrow the title of one of his songs, he’s Unstoppable.
Gabs Sings Babs should get people gabbing
If you caught Jake Epstein’s recent show Boy Falls From The Sky, you may have heard snatches of his sister Gabi Epstein‘s singing during the exit music at the Royal Alex. Those songs were from Gabs Sings Babs, a just-released album that reaffirms Epstein’s reputation as a delightful and original cabaret artist.
The 12 tracks are all from Streisand’s enormous songbook, of course, but these aren’t impressions or impersonations. Epstein has performed Funny Girl before – and this album could very well enter the discussion about whether it’s possible to remount that show without its famous original leading lady – but her intention isn’t to recreate the cuts we know but to explore them, have fun with them, rediscover them.
That’s obvious from the opening track, Don’t Rain On My Parade, which begins with a spare, jazzy rhythmic accompaniment (Mark Camilleri on piano), letting us focus on the poetry of the lyrics and the song’s meaning before taking on a Latin feel as Epstein goes on to belt out the climax.
There’s a similar approach to the uber-familiar The Way We Were, which in Epstein’s version becomes a lilting, waltz-like number that captures the quiet intimacy and poignancy of the song.
Epstein, who played Audrey a couple of years ago in Stratford’s Little Shop Of Horrors, knows how to do vaudeville-style shtick, and she has ample opportunity in numbers like Second Hand Rose and Miss Marmelstein. And it’s clever to mash up Everybody Says Don’t and Enough Is Enough.
She’s at her most affecting, however, in numbers like Papa, Can You Hear Me?, which she juxtaposes movingly with the Jewish prayer Avinu Malkeinu, and As If We Never Said Goodbye. Sure, she’s a couple of decades too young to sing Norma Desmond’s big number, but her clear and simple interpretation makes the song take on new layers, especially since we’re all returning to live performance after two very long years.
