DOUBLE BILL: RE(BIRTH): E.E. CUMMINGS IN SONG and WINDOW ON TORONTO by the company (Soulpepper). At the Young Centre (55 Mill). Runs in rep to June 18. $28-$65. 416-866-8666 soulpepper.ca. See listing.
Rating: re(Birth): NNNN Window: NNN
Soulpepper’s Double Bill is made up two very different productions – re(Birth): e.e. cummings In Song and Window On Toronto – that show off the considerable acting and musical skills of the company’s Academy.
Performing with guest artists, the Academy’s group of seven (Ins Choi, Tatjana Cornij, Ken MacKenzie, Gregory Prest, Karen Rae, Jason Patrick Rothery and Brendan Wall) start off with musical settings of cummings’ poetry under the guidance of music director and fellow performer Mike Ross.
It’s an intimate, inventive show, full of surprises, that brings the audience into a world of whimsy and simple insights into human nature. The cast – including Abena Malika and Trish Lindstrom – plays dozens of instruments, the usual sort as well as reception bells, toy pianos, penny whistles and squeaky-toy frogs.
The instrumentation echoes the childlike quality to some of the material. Several in the cast wear paper hats and jumping-into-puddles rubber boots and play with puppets everyone has images of birds sewn onto their clothing.
Designer/performer MacKenzie sets the action under a makeshift tent that doubles as a screen for shadowplay the trunks and suitcases that litter the stage suggest that we’re taking a journey. That’s true musically, with material that ranges from anthems to ballads and jazz-inspired numbers, full-voiced choral work to melancholy solos.
Even the writer is present in a clever number that combines a makeshift puppet who “speaks” a recording of cummings reading his own work.
If re(Birth) is a series of lightly drawn pastels, Window On Toronto is a vibrant, paint-smeared canvas. We watch the Academy artists, here joined by Andre Sills and Lindstrom, as they appear at or whiz past the window of a hot dog stand at Nathan Phillips Square. Each performer plays several dozen characters, quick sketches of people who hang around the square, including lost tourists, skateboarders, demonstrators, flirtatious men and women and obstreperous kids.
Again, the performances are sharp, but here the pace is tiring. The best material is often the surreal moments, where figures emerge magically from the side of the window or float by wearing dreamlike masks. At several points the vendor – Rothery, sitting in the audience and pretty good at improvising retorts to his fellow actors – meets a puppet version of himself and his hotdog truck.
Fun and entertaining, it could be shorter and still show off the actors’ talent and the riotous blend of life in Toronto.
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
