It’s been a wild week for nine indie companies and fans of playwright Tennessee Williams. The companies spent the first week of May staging 11 Williams one-acts around town they performed in seven venues, with shows rotating to a different space each day.
The Tennessee Project’s organizing directors, Alex Johnson and Daiva Zalnieriunas, jumped into the deep end of the pool with this, and while we’re sure such a big festival offered a steep learning curve for everyone involved, the three evenings we saw were all worthwhile.
And Tell Sad Stories Of The Deaths Of Queens, directed by Aaron Rothermund for Afterglow Theatre, was a touching piece about a New Orleans transvestite, Candy (Seth Drabinsky), deserted by her older lover (represented by a photo of Williams himself). Candy woos a rough sailor (Mark Waters) to become her new partner, with less than happy results.
Rothermund added some foreshadowing with moments of Madame Butterfly and the pop tune Poor Butterfly, turning Candy into the Puccini heroine and having her neighbours (Geoff Stevens and Adam Norrad) become a drag geisha chorus.
Drabinsky pretty well stole the show in a series of outfits by Samantha Aylsworth, capturing the fragility and determination of a Blanche Dubois-type who depends on the kindness of men. He projected a winning ethereal quality that made us want Candy’s new relationship to work out, even though we knew it wouldn’t.
Theatre Caravel’s two short scripts, This Property Is Condemned and Talk To Me Like The Rain And Let Me Listen, offered looks at relationships, one tentative and fresh, the other long-term and tired. Movingly directed by Eric Double and Julia Nish-Lapidus, both are brief character sketches filled with the playwright’s suggestive poetry.
Actors Steve Boleantu and Elisabeth Lagerlöf captured their characters with sure performances, Lagerlöf having the flashier material – first as a loner whose fantasies buoy her world, then as an unhappy wife whose dreams give her momentary freedom – and taking fine advantage of it.
The red light district staged the best-known of the festival’s plays, Suddenly, Last Summer, in which a Southern matriarch, Violet Venable, tries to keep the memory of her adored poet son, Sebastian, pure by having his cousin and companion Catherine lobotomized so she won’t tell the details of his horrible death.
Director Ted Witzel adapted the text and made the stage directions’ jungle metaphor literal, at times turning the characters into wild animals and accentuating Williams’s point about humanity’s violence and viciousness. The stylized production, designed largely in white and black by Lindsay C. Walker, Erin Telegdi and SJ Thiessen, suggested the action took place in a hothouse, which suited the intense nature of the writing.
Nicky Guadagni made a magisterial Violet, attempting to bribe and intimidate everyone to get her way, while Maarika Pinkney as Catherine, the woman whose memories she wants erased, was her ultimately formidable and steely opponent, delivering a powerful final monologue.
Congrats to all the troupes and the festival producers for pulling it off. Let’s hope there’s another such festival linking companies and audiences around town.
But next time, do more marketing and publicity so people know that such a large event is happening. We spoke to far too many artists and potential audience members – even in the middle of the festival – who had no idea it even existed.
Harold huzzahs
The latest round of the Harold Awards were presented last Monday (May 7) at the El Mocambo.
At this 18th annual ceremony, 14 people were honoured for being an integral part of Toronto’s performance community.
Those presented with the prize include artists Ann Page, Sheldon Rosen, Shawn Wright, Alison Smiley, Bob Roscoe Van Dyke, Hillary Thomson, Marjorie Chan and Allison Cummings. On the administration side, winners were the Fringe’s Kathryn Westoll, designer Blair Francey, public relations director Claudine Domingue, productions manager Kate Ann Vandermeer, education manager Farwah Gheewala and producer David Abel.
The Ken McDougall Award for rising new director went to Leora Morris.
The Harolds also initiated a new honour this year, the Barbara Fingerote Award for volunteerism. The first presentation – deservedly – went to Fingerote herself. If you attend theatre even occasionally, you’ve likely seen her taking tickets, ushering or doing other helpful things at a performance. And she probably sees more theatre than just about anyone in town. As with the Harold winners, she’ll choose the recipient of next year’s award, who will then choose the following year’s winner.
Creative Canadian Stage
If you’re looking for some tantalizing works in development, you can’t do better than to check out Canadian Stage’s Festival Of Ideas & Creation, organized by Natasha Mytnowych.
Readings, workshops and discussions fill the next four days.
Tonight (Thursday, May 10) you can catch a selection from Noor Over Afghan, an opera by librettist Anusree Roy and composer Christiaan Venter, directed by Sue Miner. The plot deals with two sisters whose lives become complicated when one asks the other to take her place in marriage. Gein Wong’s Ocean Carving is the story of a woman who flees China by swimming away.
Also tonight is a conversation with singer/songwriter Justin Rutledge.
Friday’s (May 11) shows are Gesture Transmissions, by choreographer Hari Krishnan and composer Debashis Sinha, in which classical South Asian dance moves control the show’s sound design. Single Thread Theatre, known for its site-specific work, presents a part of The Loyalists, about the 1813 occupation of York. Raoul Bhaneja’s Life, Death And The Blues, directed by Eda Holmes, explores the heart of the blues with a live score and singer Divine Brown.
Saturday (May 12) presentations include Jordan Tannahill’s Concord Floral, in which an abandoned greenhouse becomes a teen refuge for ritual and subversion, and Barbara Nichol and Tom Bellman’s The Sparrow Songs: A Country Song-String, billed as part concert and part historical artefact.
Finally, Sunday’s (May 13) show is Nik Beeson and Richard Sanger’s Dive, an off-site event (312 Sackville, tickets at dive.mermaidproject@gmail.com or 416-927-1534), featuring the wonderful Fides Krucker performing an electro-acoustic score. This also runs May 12, 18 and 19.
Other than the last show, all events are at the Berkeley Street Theatre. See listing and canadianstage.com.
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