Sep 20 2008
Saturday morning, Sept, 13, 2008
What a day yesterday was! It may have started with missing a golf game, but it got better and better.
I said I was excited and trepidatious about "A Little Night Music" -- that was because I love it so. You don't think of musicals when you think of the Shaw, and I didn't know how it would be to see "Night Music" in the super intimate Court House Theatre. On the other hand, it's not a dancing show -- it rewards nuanced acting, and it is right in the company's accustomed period.
So I needn't have worried: the Shaw pretty much nails it. Some of the individual performances aren't world class, but most are very good, and the musical showed itself to be as wonderful as ever. Both good acting and nuance benefit from that intimacy. The staging makes very clever use of the liebeslieder quintet as combination narrators and stage managers, with something of the officious attitude of Puck from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The postcard-sized stage even seemed to expand through the use of stylized trees on rollers, continually reshaping the space.
"Night Music" is actually based on Ingmar Bergman's one movie comedy, "Smiles of a Summer Night," which itself owes a debt to Shakespeare. Much of my love of the musical goes back to the movie, which is so tart-sweet romantic and wry. And Sondheim's score is a triumph of varied three-quarter time rhythms, all based on the waltz and other period dances. What a treat.
We followed that with another, when I and a portion of the group set off to Peller Estates, one of the big vineyards just outside town, for a sumptuous dinner. We didn't take full advantage of the vintages -- after all, there was another play ahead at night -- but we sure enjoyed the food.
Then back to Githa Sowerby's "The Stepmother" (1924), one of the Shaw's rediscoveries, a text staged briefly in London when new and apparently never since, anywhere. It's a dour tale of a governess married for her money and then abused financially and emotionally by her husband, all the while she is standing by her two step-daughters, protecting them against the shortcomings of their father. In other words, this is a very different stepmother from the wicked witches of folklore and "Cinderella."
Written and set, as the Shaw's typically useful and informative program points out, in the melancholy aftermath of World War I, the play is most obviously about the subservience of women to their husbands, from whom they then had very little protection legally and even less emotionally. I can't say it's an undiscovered masterpiece, not when measured against Chekhov or Shaw, but it certainly fit into this season's informal Shaw dramatic seminar on money and gender, marriage and social class.
For me, the day ended at Butler's Sports Bar, the company's other, rougher hangout, outside the town's tourist center, to listen to Nicole Underhay's group, The Done Me Wrongs. It's an eclectic five- or six-piece (depending) country-western-folk-art ensemble, with an artful fiddle providing an extra dimension. A boisterous evening ended with some of the company dancing with happy abandon.
Now, it's early Saturday morning. We'll be getting on our bus at 9:30, stopping at Greaves to pick up the boxes of jams and condiments group members have bought, and heading back to Pittsburgh via the duty free shop at the border, where we'll stock up on other comestibles.
I started today with a very early walk down Queen Street, soft in the early mist, with the only company being trash collectors, occasional early shopkeepers and the workers who perpetually water the elaborate flower beds and hanging flower baskets that make NOTL such an Eden. The one shop that was open early was Taylor's, where I stocked up on a variety of muffins and sweets, including Chelsea buns, empire biscuits and English egg custard tarts -- all of them a pretty fair visual, flavorful and anglophilic representation of NOTL itself.
Those calories will fade in time. But the intellectual images of the plays will continue to stir and bubble. And I'll never get that insidious Sondheim score out of my head, not until another one equally insidious comes along.
Sep 16 2008
Friday morning, Sept, 12, 2008
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -
This morning I rolled over in my very comfortable room at the Prince of Wales, looked at the rain pattering down, and went right back to sleep -- which is amazing, because I was missing my tee-time at the NOTL Golf Club. In yesterday's gorgeous weather I'd assured myself it would take more than a little rain to keep me off the nice little 9-hole course along Lake Ontario, but when push came to shove I failed the test.
Of course I was coming off a very long day. The third show yesterday was Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession," on the big Festival Theatre stage, and it was a work-out. I've seen it several times before, but it's never before felt so close to tragedy. One of Shaw's earliest plays in his Ibsensite mode -- one of his "Plays Unpleasant," as he called them -- it couldn't even be produced for many years, because, of course, Mrs. Warren's profession is prostitution. She is manager and part owner of a string of brothels in foreign cities, and the play is all about the revelation of this to her intellectual middle-class daughter, just graduated from university, who has been protected from any knowledge of the source of her mother's money.
In fact, the daughter doesn't know much about her mother in any way, since she's mainly been raised by others. The play turns on two great scenes: first, the revelation, when the daughter comes to understand the struggle her mother has had in the world and to appreciate her for the first time, and then, after the further revelation that Mrs. Warren is still actively involved in the business, when the daughter rejects all her support, setting out on her own.
As you can imagine, the subject gives Shaw plenty of occasion to rail about the inequities faced by women, such that you are almost ready to cheer for Mrs. Warren's success. The hypocrisies of the male world that condemns her entrepreneurship but patronizes her services are made clear enough. But Shaw focuses on the ugly alternatives lower-class women face, leaving the business side of the story abstract, avoiding the cruel exploitation it involves. He doesn't really address prostition itself, at all.
The social/moral content is pungent enough, stirring ambivalent response. But the heart of the play is the mother-daighter relationship. I've seen it several times, but I've always seen the title character played with a confident elegance, which sharpens the shock of her revelation but cushions it, too. At the Shaw, though, Mrs. Warren is played by Mary Haney as a tough survivor of the streets. She comes from an entirely different world than her daughter, making their eventual rupture even more painful. In this production, the personal tragedy overwhelms the bracing debate about societal hypocrisy.
After the play the PG tour group returned to a private dining room at the Prince to share a drink and discuss what we'd seen so far. At these gatherings it's up to me to present my first thoughts about the plays, but what I really look forward to is hearing the responses of the group. Inevitably they cite aspects of the plays I haven't considered or even specific details I didn't notice. Every critic should have the advantage of such a focus group!
It was invigorating enough that when we broke up about midnight I was ready for more, so I went back to the Angel, and there I ran into Nicole Underhay, in town for her band's appearance the next day (tonight). She has plenty of friends here, having been a member of the Shaw company for several seasons. She took off this year to try some other things, which is why she was free to do "Salome" at PICT, and I think she may take off another year, since this one has sped by with plenty of options left unexplored.
Surprisingly, Nicole asked me about Lewis Norden, aka Buddy, the fine novelist who's long taught in the Pitt English Dept. She's been a fan of his for several years, having picked up one of his novels back home in Newfoundland and having sought out his books since. She even found one in an English-laguage bookstore in Korea. Or maybe I've got that backwards. Anyway, it was only after leaving Pittsburgh that she noticed in one of the books that he taught at Pitt. She particularly wants to know if his "Sharpshooter Blues" has been optioned for the movies -- the implication being that movies are one of the areas she wants to explore. So now I need to call Buddy and tell him his fans include a dimpled Canadian actress who feels a spiritual affinity for his work.
Nicole introduced me to a good friend, Nicola Correia-Damude -- Nicole and Nicola, blond and brunette -- who had been in the Stratford company before the Shaw. We talked about last summer's arms race, when Stratford, in its final year under Richard Monette, had appointed a successor triumvirate which began to make plans for 2008, offering actors contracts well ahead of the usual schedule. As a result, a few long-time Shaw actors ended up in Stratford, and the Shaw had to speed up its planning, too.
I gather things have quieted down a bit this year. But the Shaw's Jackie Maxwell has finalized her 2009 season and is negotiating with actors. That season will be announced this week or next. I'm still in this season, though. Today we see "A Little Night Music," which I love, so I'm excited and trepidatious, and "The Stepmother," about which I know nothing.
Sep 12 2008
Thursday, Sept, 11, 2008
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -
As I was just saying, 9/11 had been on my mind, as it has been on this September Shaw Fest trip since 9/11/01. That year, the trip was set to leave on 9/12. (If you've heard this story before, my apologies.) During the uproar of that day at the PG, whenever I had a chance to think, I assumed that we would cancel - for one thing, the Canadian-U.S. border had been closed. But during the course of that afternoon, those who called our travel agency, Gulliver's, said they hoped we'd continue.
So we did -- I think only one person cancelled. The border had reopened. The line up of trucks as endless, but they had a lane just for buses and we had only about an hour wait. In NOTL, we have never been so welcome -- it seemed that every Canadian had a special fondness for Americans that weekend. Between plays, we watched the TV coverage unfold on both U.S. channels (Buffalo) and Canadian. And before a matinee, as I wrote the following week, then artistic director Christopher Newton "spoke eloquently about the essential connection between art and life and then led us in ‘O Canada,' ‘The Star-Spangled Banner' and a communal silence. As the tears flowed, the words of our national anthem have never before felt so right."
That memory returns every year at this time, especially when I'm here on 9/11, as I often am. Unfortunately, I slept late today (that all-nighter took its toll), so I never heard until it was over about an early-morning memorial service at the bell tower.
Instead, I started the day reading Robert Cushman's fine appreciation of Richard Monette in the National Post. I know Robert's work because he's one of the most thoughtful, scholarly Canadian theater critics, and I met him when I engaged him as a panelist on Canadian Shakespeare in 2006 when I organized an American Theatre Critics Association conference at Stratford and the Shaw. His feeling appreciation brought back Monette, whom I'd interviewed a couple of times. I especially enjoyed his casual irony, so lacking in any self-aggrandizement or pretension.
Today was my delight, a three-show day, starting with the Shaw's "lunchtime" special, a one-act play that almost every year turns out to be one of the hits of the season. In the past, I've always made it an optional extra, since not every theater-tripper is as gluttonous for theater as me. But this year I included Ferenc Molnar's "The President" ("The CELO" would be a better title) in the package and instead made the matinee ("The Little Foxes") the option, and the group couldn't have been happier.
I'd heard the previous night it was pee-in-your-pants funny, and when I told that to my wife this morning, she gave me the obvious advice: "pee beforehand." I'm glad I did. This is a slick a 59½-minute comedy as I've seen, in which a masterful business man completely remakes a scruffy young man into an ostentatiously fir husband for a rich young woman who's been in his charge - completely, from underwar to haircut, from employment to club memberships, from name to heritage. What a joy.
About "Little Foxes," I was less ecstatic. It ran into the two casting problems that you sometimes find in rep companies. Since they cast from a limited company pool, even one as large as it is here, they sometimes have to compromise. And since it's a rep company, they sometimes lack the starry individual you need for a great role.
In this case, that meant an actor too young and without the sympathetic gravitas (that faded Southern gothic quality) needed for Horace, the dying husband - when Stratford did it in 1996, Horace was played by Brian Bedford!) -- and another too old for the teenage daughter. And although competent, Laurie Paton never showed the incisive glamour and command that are needed for Regina, famously played over the years by the kind of actress who needs only one name, like Tallulah and Bette, or by Elizabeth Taylor or Martha Henry.
Of course Lillian Hellman's play bears up just fine, a sterling melodrama pitting voracious capitalism against fading southern gentility. As such, it fits right into the general theme of capitalism and morality that unites everything we're seeing -- especially with Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" ahead of us tonight!
In fact, this morning I ran into a woman who has been on other PG theater trips - we always encounter other Pittsburghers at the Shaw, more than at Stratford - and I asked her if she were seeing "An Inspector Calls." No, she said, she'd seen that famous London production and didn't need another look at "that left-wing propaganda"! If she objects to the Biblical morality of "Inspector Calls," I expect much of the rest of the festival is making her uncomfortable, as well.
By the way, we've made it a rule on our trip not to talk politics, because of course we don't want to come to blows. But you know, it just keeps coming up anyway, indirectly. Art is like that - it just keeps commenting on real life, no matter what we do to stop it.
Sep 12 2008
Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario --
This is the 27th or 28th consecutive September (did I start in 1981 or 1982?) that I've brought a theater tour to the Shaw Festival here in the heart of Canadian wine country, first under the banner of the Pitt Informal Program but for nearly 20 years under that of the Post-Gazette.
So there were a lot of memories this afternoon as our Butler Motor Coach rolled northward up the Niagara River Parkway from the Falls to NOTL, emerging from a last border of woods onto Queen's Parade, with 19th century Fort George on the right and the brick stage house of the Festival Theatre rising above its trees on the left.
Past that, the road bends and becomes Picton Street, thick with flowers past the Prince of Wales Hotel, right to the start of the town proper where the road turns into Queen Street at the corner of King, just before the memorial bell tower. That Queen is the main street and King secondary is a tip-off that this is primarily a Victorian town. The Prince of Wales, most opulent (and, more to the point for elderly walkers, most centrally located) of the town's three large hotels, is Edwardian, its paneled, wainscoted, fabricked and embossed walls covered with glossy copies of period portraits.
There are 40 theater tourists on this year's 4-day PG Shaw Fest trip, which is a bit more than usual, but it's an easy group to lead, because more than half have been here with me before and the town is so compact no one needs much leading. This year's welcoming dinner was at Queen's Landing, the impressive hotel down by the little harbor where the Niagara River runs into Lake Ontario, just across from the American Fort Niagara.
Then on to the Festival Theatre for our first play, J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls," and there is little praise higher than this: logy as we were from our early morning departure from Pittsburgh, our long bus ride and a very good dinner, it held us firmly as the mysterious Inspector Goole (ghoul?) gradually stripped away the hypocrisies of the comfortably moneyed Birling family to prove that we are indeed all our brothers' keepers.
It held me, at least, which is even higher praise, since I'd pulled an all-nighter to finish the fall theater preview and a couple of other stories for tomorrow's PG. This is a play I know pretty well from previous productions at the Shaw and elsewhere, but mainly from that famous National Theatre production that ran for most of the 1990s in London and came to New York in 1994. I particularly liked the direction of this one, which pitches it between the realistic drawing room interrogation mode in which it was written and the Twilight Zone surrealism of Stephen Daldry's NT version.
So I was pleased to discover it was directed by the same Jim Mezon who was in Pittsburgh this summer to play Herod in Alan Stanford's richly eccentric "Salome" at PICT. I'd seen him perform for many years at the Shaw, but I'd never really spoken to him until he came to Pittsburgh. In hopes that he might be in town, after getting my group back to the sumptuous arms of the Prince, I went to the usual actors' hangout at the Angel.
Mezon is in town, I learned, so I hope to run into him in the next few days. Tonight, I talked with Benedict Campbell and Andrew Bunker, who play the Inspector and Eric Birling in "Inspector Calls." I learned that Nicole Underhay, who played Salome at PICT and performed her memorable dance of half a veil, is also in town, because her band, The Done Me Wrongs (self-described as an old-school country group doing "drinkin' and hurtin' songs, fueled by bourbon") is playing Friday after the evening shows.
Most of all, I learned that Richard Monette had just died. Before retiring at the end of the 2007 season, Monette had been artistic director for 14 years of the Stratford Festival (the Shaw's larger competitor). And before that he'd long been a leading actor at Stratford. Monette was theater royalty, here, like William Hutt who just died last year, but while Hutt was 87, Monette was just 64.
And tomorrow is Sept. 11.