We caught several of the two dozen or so performances that were part of last weekend’s Global Cabaret and liked a lot of what we saw, including the Toronto Masque Theatre’s The Soldier’s Tale, a work by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Larry Beckwith, narrated by Derek Boyes and danced by Stephanie Brochard and Sebastien Ventura.
Boyes, a member of both the Toronto Masque Theatre and Soulpepper, Global Cabaret’s hosting company, did double duty, not only bringing to life the dozen or so characters in the Stravinsky, but also keeping Soulpepper founding member William Webster on track for Webster’s Opera Corner.
Webster, a long-time opera fan, is a regular in the Soulpepper weekly cabarets and often gets so excited about what he’s discussing that he goes on a bit too long. Here, with Boyes helping him focus, Webster had an hour to fill us in on why he loves opera and also to showcase the work of a quintet of singers (sopranos Miriam Khalil and Teiya Kasahara, mezzo Jean Stilwell, tenor Ryan Harper and baritone Diego Catala) and music director Nicole Bellamy.
They performed excerpts from six shows, including a run-through of Bizet’s Carmen in about 10 minutes. Standouts here were Khalil, who always reveals the melodic and emotional core of her characters, Kasahara’s note-perfect Queen of the Night and Catala, an engaging performer who moved the audience with a heartfelt Some Enchanted Evening.
The most unusual show we saw was Dido And Aeneas: 21st Century Remix, in which music director Gregory Oh took Purcell’s short 1680s opera and blended the original orchestrations with more contemporary musical styles.
The period sections stood quite comfortably alongside the modern percussion, bluegrass, Irish reels, Cape Breton fiddling and more, with Andrea Ludwig a poignant Dido (her lament at the end was mesmerizing), jazz singer Alex Samaras a firm Aeneas and Suba Sankaran a nastily wicked sorceress, singing her melodies with classic South Asian musical intonations. Hailey Gillis shone in a bluesy solo composed by John Millard, who also added some mean banjo playing to the show.
Like previous Global Cabaret workshops such as (re)Birth: E.E. Cummings In Song and Spoon River, which were then developed into full-length productions, Dido And Aeneas is the kind of bracing, entertaining work that deserves a larger audience and a longer run.
Playwrights Canada Press, which has for decades been serving Canada’s stage writers by making their scripts available for reading and performing, turns 30 this year.
To celebrate the occasion, they’re holding Thirtybash!, a cocktail party on Monday (November 3) at Hotel Ocho. The evening includes a cash bar and playwrights’ reading from their newly published works.
The writers include Sky Gilbert, David S. Craig, Judith Thompson, Kristen Thomson and David Yee. NOW’s Susan G. Cole and Jon Kaplan host.
See listing.
The Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) presented its annual Tom Hendry Awards Monday (October 27), with prizes given in three categories.
The Carol Bold Award for the best work by a PGC member went to Colleen Murphy for Pig Girl the short list included Sean Dixon’s A God In Need Of Help and Matthew Heiti’s Mucking In The Drift.
The Stage West Pechet Family Musical Award, presented to a PGC member whose work is in development, was taken by Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille’s Evgeni Onegin Project, an immersive show in which the performers share the space with the audience.
Also in the running were Sara Farb’s Bremen Rock City and The Remarkable Journey Of Prince Jen, by Lezlie Wade and Daniel Green.
Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes’s Something Fishy picked up the Stage West Pechet Family Comedy Award, beating out Jordan Hall’s How To Survive An Apocalypse and Lea Daniel and Gary Kirkham’s Pocket Rocket.
Like a mixed program for your evening of dance?
Toronto Dance Theatre offers a triple bill of works for its performance as part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps series.
The show includes two remounts, Thomas Hauert’s Pond Skaters (a Dora nominee in 2013) and the 1991 Early Departures, one of artistic director Christopher House’s first works for the company. A new piece by House, Martingales, has live music performed by electronic indie composer Thom Gill.
See listing.
