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Drama

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On the town

September 27, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

As trailed in this recent post the autumn (or fall) season that has suddenly announced itself here in BC (to the great relief of fire-fighters and gardeners alike) gets underway for The Girl and I in a haze of cultural events. I thought I would just briefly report back on a few of them…

Having enjoyed one of the season-closing concerts at Butchart Gardens which featured soul/blues stalwart Miss Emily (”An angelic voice with just a hint of sultry devilishness. This gal is a rocket ready to take-off!” – The Tragically Hip) we were more than ready to be splendidly entertained by the wonderful Bonnie Raitt at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria at the start of September. The Girl introduced me to Bonnie back in the UK in around 2007 – at the New Theatre in Oxford as I recall – and I rapidly became a fan. Ms. Raitt is 73! Sorry – I shouldn’t have mentioned that, but if I look half as good, perform with a quarter of the energy and have but a fraction of her vocal talents and guitar chops when I reach that age… I too would probably still be earning standing ovations from 1500 seat theatres some fifty years into my career.

Kudos!

I reported back in May this year the manner in which The Belfry theatre’s closing show for the 2022/2023 season – “Old Stock – A Refugee Love Story” – had gone a long way to restoring our faith in Canadian theatre. I described the production thus: “It is witty but sensitive, riotously risque but touching, beautifully performed by musicians and actor/musicians alike and splendidly directed and staged.”

We have just been to see the opening production of the new 2023/2024 season (the which I will not name to protect the innocent!). I fear that our faith in the theatre is now right back somewhere adjacent to where it was before. This was an odd production which seemed to us not really to know what it was trying to accomplish. It certainly tried hard in so doing; way too hard, some might say. I was unimpressed by the writing (advertised as funny… not funny!) – the direction or the performances. To be fair, the material did not give any of those involved much of a chance. On the journey home The Girl and I found ourselves trying to recall as many as possible of the productions by which we had been impressed in a decade of theatre-going in London before we headed to Canada. It was a goodly list!

Now – something that was funny – a riotous evening in the company of the very excellent Dara O’Briain – also at the Royal Theatre. Dara – for those who have never had the huge pleasure of watching him at work (examples easily found on YouTube should you care to look… you lucky people!) – is perhaps our favourite comedian. He has the great advantage (for a comedian) of being massively intelligent and extremely quick on his feet. He is also, of course, Irish – which gives him a huge advantage.

It makes me very happy when it proves possible to see musicians, comedians and (very occasionally) actors that we know and love from over the water – here on the far west coast of Canada. It makes me even more happy that we get to see Peter Gabriel in Vancouver in about a week and a half’s time.

Can’t wait!

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Come From Away

May 20, 2023 in Life in BC | Permalink

Scarcely a fortnight had passed since our faith in Canadian theatre received a significant boost as a result of our attendance at The Belfry for Halifax-based 2B Theatre’s production of Ben Caplan, Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch’s musical play – “Old Stock” – before we found ourselves once again cheering on a Canadian musical production and enjoying ourselves hugely to boot.

In this instance the show concerned has already garnered a considerably reputation – being none other than the multi-award winning (including an Olivier Award for Best New Musical) – “Come From Away“.

That “Come From Away” (which tells the story of the 7,000 airline passengers who found themselves stranded in Gander, Newfoundland, following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001) might be the most successful musical to have come out of Canada is arguable… but it wouldn’t be a very long argument.

The show is a fabulous ensemble piece, excellently staged and choreographed, which uses the music of Newfoundland and Labrador to paint vivid vignettes of many of those who were involved. Newfie music is, of course, fundamentally Celtic and, in particular, Irish. As you might imagine there is a fair bit of foot stomping and hand-clapping, delivered with a general all-round panache and enthusiastic energy.

The basic message of the work – which celebrates the kindness and generosity with which the communities concerned pulled together to provide comfort and shelter for those caught up in the tragic crisis – sits so centrally in the spectrum of what it is to be Canadian – that I found myself afterwards declaring to anyone who would listen that this was surely the most Canadian thing that I had ever seen. Further, I pronounced myself amazed that no-one had previously (to my knowledge, anyway) used Newfie music as the basis of a show.

I must admit that I felt slightly guilty that the show had been so successfully re-staged in so many places around the world (including on Broadway and in the West End) for so long before we finally caught up with the North American touring production at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria.

Still – better late than never…

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Old Stock

May 5, 2023 in Life in BC | Permalink

To the Belfry Theatre the weekend just passed to catch “Old Stock”, the last production of the current theatrical season there.

You may recall – should you be a continuing consumer of this random reportage – that The Girl and I are long(ish) standing season ticket holders at the home of Victorian fringe theatre. Each year at about this time we have to decide whether or not to renew our subscription for the coming season (the which commences in the autumn). We do this by contemplating just how impressed (or otherwise) we have been by the season just closing and by studying the advance notices of next year’s programme. No surprises there…

It has to be said that there have been years in which we have come close to giving it a miss; this coming year conceivably – until the weekend just gone – being one of them. It would be no exaggeration to say that, for the past couple of seasons, we have not been exactly enthralled by what we have seen. Whereas we must be fair – noting that the tail end of the Covid pandemic has made things a whole lot more difficult for theatre companies far and wide – we cannot ignore the fact that sitting packed together with others in a theatre audience (the majority these days going un-masked!) still carries a fair degree of risk. Should we choose to take that risk it really had better be for something worthwhile…

…which brings us neatly to Halifax-based 2B Theatre’s production of Ben Caplan, Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch’s musical play – “Old Stock” (which bears the subtitle “A Refugee Love Story“).

Let us not beat around the bush. This quite brilliant production has gone a long way towards restoring our faith in Canadian theatre. It is witty but sensitive, riotously risque but touching, beautifully performed by musicians and actor/musicians alike and splendidly directed and staged. The show made us fall about laughing one moment and blub like babies the next. It had plenty to say without being puritanical about it. Most importantly it took the sort of risks that theatre must take to be any good (in any sense!) without being mealy-mouthed about it.

Brilliant!

If theatre companies on this side of the pond really want to win the ongoing and unflagging support of folks like us then they need to do a lot more of ‘this sort of thing‘!

IMHO…

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Every exit

December 5, 2022 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’

This weekend just passed The Girl and I finally got to see a play again at The Belfry here in Victoria (for the previous failed attempts – see here).

Actually – that should more accurately be: ‘Half a play’!…

Oh dear!

In all of my (and latterly, our) many years of theatre going I can count the number of performances out of which I have walked on the fingers of one hand… and still have had spares! It is not something that I like to do and nor is it something that I feel comfortable about doing. As a thespist myself I think it is jolly bad form to give up on any creative performance at the interval (it is no co-incidence that a fair amount of theatre for and by young people has no interval – thus reducing the opportunity for audience members so to do).

I have very occasionally ducked out of a school production – usually because the whole thing has been a huge error of judgement on somebody’s part and well beyond the capabilities of those involved. I have equally occasionally removed myself from adult (and professional) productions when the piece itself has turned out to be deeply disappointing – though this has happened but extremely rarely.

In this case we found ourselves at a loss to know what to make of the play – which is an even more rare occurrence. I would feel guilty that we had not prepared ourselves adequately in advance to know what we might expect, except that our frantic visits to the InterWebNet at the interval did not really turn up any rationale for boycotting the piece.

I am not going to name the play – or the author (though he is Canadian). It is not a new play; having been around for several decades. Previous reviews from elsewhere in the world seemed reasonable. The work is billed as a Black Comedy, though it seemed to us to lack a basic requirement of a comedy – namely the delivery of laughter. The first act seemed to me to essentially consist of the same ‘humourous’ twist repeated over and over.

We found it impossible to empathise with, or to believe in, either of the characters presented to us, or indeed with their situation. Even once we realised that the second act must contain some sort of plot/character twist that would somehow justify the inertia of the first act – we did not feel that the piece (or the characters involved in it) had done anywhere near enough to have earned our continued engagement.

We thus absented ourselves for the second half, went across the road for a coffee and struck up a fascinating conversation with someone whom we had not previously met…

Much more entertaining!

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Stephen Sondheim

November 27, 2021 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Stephen Sondheim

1930 – 2021

RIP

 

Sad news yesterday of the passing of the last of the four iconic creators of what is almost certainly the best musical ever conceived – West Side Story. Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents were all in their late thirties at the point at which the show was created in the late 1950s, whereas Sondheim was the baby of the quartet at just 26 years of age.

I was slightly (though entirely unreasonably) shocked to learn that Sondheim was 91. Time really has flown! West Side Story has been with us for pretty much all of my life and – though I have not myself been involved in a production – I have been close to those who have on numerous occasions.

Sondheim is also, of course, renowned for many other groundbreaking productions in music theatre in addition to West Side Story (Company, Follies, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, A Little Night Music etc). Others far more qualified will write far better valedictions than can I; and I commend them to you.

Way back in the mid 1980s I saw Sondheim give a most erudite platform at the National Theatre in London, to accompany the National’s production of Sunday in the Park with George. If ever I find myself musing that his work tends to be rather too cerebral (and clever!) and not to carry a sufficiently direct emotional charge I remind myself that he also wrote the immortal ‘Send in the Clowns‘.

‘Nuff said. Respect!

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Every picture…

December 23, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

…tells a story.

 

Well – part of one, at least!

So – what might be going in this particular picture then?

(You might wish to click on the image to see it in greater detail!)

I wrote in this forum a little earlier in the year about the wonderful live-streamed performance that we had enjoyed from the Old Vic in London of the late Brian Friel’s ‘Faith Healer‘ – one of my favourite plays.

Now – The Girl and I usually treat ourselves to a visit to the theatre at around this time of year, usually to take in something of a festive nature and very much as a prelude to the Christmas season itself.

This year, of course, there is not much on offer in this line – for the obvious reasons. The splendid Old Vic has – however – re-staged for live streaming Matthew Warchus’s production of Dickens’ immortal classic – ‘A Christmas Carol‘ – as adapted by Jack Thorne. We eagerly signed up to experience the production this Monday just past.

So – to the right of the picture above you can see our TV, showing the opening scenes of ‘A Christmas Carol‘. This is streaming live from London over Zoom. It is 7:00pm in London – 11:00am in Victoria.

To the left of the picture is our Christmas tree. That in itself has a tale behind it, which may be told in another post.

Through the windows one can see that the crisp morning air is filled with something else. Snow!

It is true that we don’t get much snow in Victoria – certainly when compared to other parts of Canada – but we do occasionally get things like this – a sudden, sharp and highly unpleasant snow storm with vigorous winds.

Now – the temperature outside on Monday was not particularly cold and, as a result, this snow was very wet. It came down hard and the gusting wind blew it into thick drifts covering everything in a short space of time. The snow froze on the branches of the many pine and fir tress in the surrounding areas and – assailed by the accompanying winds – brought down many sizeable branches, not least in our own garden.

At around midday – just as ‘A Christmas Carol’ had paused for its intermission – the power went out! This of course not only deprived us of the TV but also of our Internet connection. After some frantic scrabbling about we were able to watch the second half of the show – huddled closely together – on The Girl’s cell phone. Not quite the experience we had imagined, but we still gleaned enough to be moved anew by this excellent production.

The power was out for some four hours, as crews from BC Hydro struggled to fix the trail of faults that the storm left in its wake as it crossed the peninsula. The power finally came back on at around 4:00pm and – as it was by then getting dark – we breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later we heard a loud ‘bang’ from somewhere down the street. A transformer had blown and we were plunged once again into darkness. It is at a such times that we are extremely glad that we had gas installed in the house when we moved in. Our fire in the drawing room kept us warm and we were able to cook our supper on our gas range – by the light of the new LED headlamps that The Girl had thoughtfully and recently provided for just such occasions.

By the time the power came back on some three hours later the impetus to seize the day had somewhat evaporated, so it was not that long before we headed for bed.

Rather more ‘excitement’ for one day than we had anticipated!

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Faith Healer

September 28, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Last weekend we saw again one of my favourite plays – the late Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer“. Though I have read it again in the interim I have not seen it since the splendid 1992 Royal Court production in London.

“Faith Healer” is a three hander but written in an unusual form – comprising as it does four long monologues, starting and ending with those of the play’s protagonist – the ‘Fantastic Francis Hardy’ (as the poster for the faith healer’s one-night performances in small towns and villages throughout Wales, Scotland and – fatally – Ireland has it).

I am not usually a big fan of the monologue (a fact that I have broadcast within these musings on more than one occasion) and particularly of the way that it forms the core of the majority of one-person shows. It seems to me in most instances to lack the dramatic power of dialogue, reducing the performance to a one-dimensional perspective. Now – there most certainly are exceptions to this generalisation, but they have to be exceptional to be so as the form itself mitigates against it.

That Friel’s masterpiece does so triumphantly only starts to become apparent some minutes into the second monologue – delivered by the faith healer’s English mistress, Grace – or is it his wife – and is she actually English after all? Even those familiar with the concept of the unreliable narrator will find it difficult to keep their feet as the play lurches from one telling of the tale to the next (the faith healer’s manager Teddy completes the trio) and even the faith healer’s own second monologue contradicts his first in vital respects.

The audience is left to try to pick the elements of truth from this tangled web of narratives – a brilliant device that renders the play instantly multi-dimensional and restores to the form one of the elements it most commonly lacks – that of subtext!

In the aforementioned 1992 Royal Court production a good friend played the part of Teddy – the which he was to repeat in the 2016 London revival to five star reviews. We were sadly unable to see the latter production – having already moved to Canada.

This latest production was live-streamed from an empty Old Vic in London as part of that wonderful institution’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic – “Old Vic: In Camera”. The theatre sold the same number of tickets (at heavily discounted prices) for Zoom streaming as the house usually seats and for “Faith Healer” there were just four live shows – which were not recorded. For us this meant watching the excellent Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall at 11:30 in the morning (that being 7:30 in the evening UK time) and it really did feel a little like being present at a live theatrical performance. It was – at any rate – about as close as we are going to be able to get anytime soon.

Our grateful thanks to all concerned for a wonderful and thought-provoking experience.

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The Children

October 6, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

To the Belfry last weekend for the first production in the new season – English playwright, Lucy Kirkwood’s, 2016 piece – ‘The Children‘.

The original production’s website contains this teaser:

“In a remote cottage on the lonely British coast, a couple of retired nuclear engineers are living a very quiet life. Outside, the world is in utter chaos following a devastating series of events. When an old friend turns up at their door, they’re shocked to discover the real reason for her visit.”

I think that it is fair to say the heart of the play turns out to be about something other than that which seems obvious from the get-go. Whilst not being perfect (what is?) The Girl and I both found the production engaging, rewarding and thought provoking and I strongly recommend it should you yet be able to get a ticket.

It seems a little harsh to say that it was good to see a ‘proper’ play again, though regulars of these musings will doubtless have heard my plaintive little cries on the subject before. Nonetheless we greatly enjoyed watching believably three-dimensional characters engaging with each other in a work which is strongly about ideas.

One of Kirkwood’s previous plays – ‘Chimerica‘ – was in the news quite a bit in London in 2014, before – of course – we moved across the pond, but I had rather lost track of what she was doing since and that turns out to be a little embarrassing. ‘The Children‘ is a three-hander – with two good female parts and one male. In the Belfry’s production we felt that the latter was the weaker of the performances.

Reading up on the play beforehand – however – we realised that in the original Royal Court production this part had been played by a friend of ours – to very good reviews. Furthermore he subsequently transferred with the piece for a successful run in New York. The embarrassment arises because whilst in London earlier this year I had lunch with him and we talked about all the various things that he had been doing over the last few years. He probably mentioned ‘The Children‘ but I clearly did not later make the connection. The trouble is that – though he is a fair bit older than I am – he is still working furiously and successfully on stage and on the screen. It is hard work keeping up!

Now – of course – I wish that I had seen him in the production. Apart from anything else I know that he would have been splendid in the role.

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The magic circle

September 8, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”

P.S. Baber – ‘Cassie Draws the Universe’

Our relief at discovering – subsequent to our arrival four years ago from London (arguably the theatre capital of the world) – that Victoria is consistently able to offer a rich bill of fare in thespian terms… was palpable! As I have written before in these pages, we routinely hold season tickets for The Belfry and one of the reasons that I was keen to sit on the Board of Intrepid Theatre was my admiration for the work that they do in bringing adventurous theatre to the provincial capital.

I have waxed lyrical before within these musings on the subject of the Victoria Fringe Festival (for those seeking proof posts may be found here, here and here). Of the three festivals operated by Intrepid Theatre the Fringe is perhaps closest to my heart, my healthy love of fringe theatre having been nurtured over many years at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The posts referenced above extol the delights of the shows from the past three fringe festivals with which we were particularly impressed and this post will do likewise for 2019 – but I do wish first to make a brief observation concerning the changing nature of fringe theatre.

When I first visited the Edinburgh Fringe in 1976 I am very sure that there was on offer more drama than there is now and certainly less comedy. Now, I have nothing against comedy – whether as stand-up or as comedy plays – but it is good to have a balance. Likewise in the field of drama the trend over recent decades has been towards small cast shows – presumably as much as anything on grounds of cost – with the emphasis often on solo shows based on personal experience. Again – nothing wrong with that as a form, but I do find myself longing for a ‘proper’ script, preferably containing subtle and thoughtful dialogue and (please god!) subtext!

Is that too much to ask?

So – the production that I enjoyed most this year was “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Theatre Alive Productions. Mitch Alborn’s play dates from 2002 and is a sensitive and profound text that was beautifully and movingly performed by the company. I love to see new work but I also greatly enjoy a piece that has been properly honed over a number of years and through numerous rewrites.

Elsewhere Englishman Charles Adrian’s “Dear Samantha” was as funny and delightful as when we first encountered him/her two years ago and the frankly bizarre – but also very funny – “Ballad of Frank Allen” by the Australian company Weeping Spoon Productions rounded off our fringe viewing on a high. The premise of this latter – featuring a janitor who has been been accidentally shrunk to microscopic proportions and who is living in the beard of another man – pretty much embodies the sense of the unexpected that one hopes to find in fringe theatre.

 

 

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Month to month

April 10, 2019 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image from Pixabay“The hardest thing to do is dig deep and be patient about the things you’re going to learn month to month and quarter to quarter.”

Christina Tosi

It seems perhaps a little superfluous to link back to my last post – the first part of this quick catch up of where we are a quarter of the way through 2019 – but I am ever one for completeness.

My original ‘things to come in 2019‘ post back in January made reference to two other items on the agenda for this busy year.

The first of these is my intention to mount a dramatic production at the Intrepid Theatre Club in October. It is – of course – still early day in this regard but progress is being made. My script has again been rewritten (I have lost track of the number of rewrites now, but it is at least five or six) and a website established. I have also started looking for interest from potential actors. Given that I am to be out of the country soon for nearly a month I thought it best to get ahead of the curve. Initial details of the piece concerned can be found here and of course more will be added as we proceed.

The other exciting new development for me personally concerns the wonderful world of music. My January post included the following observation:

“There will surely also be more music to be made this year. 2018 was particularly creative in this regard so I have high hopes.”

This somewhat cryptic allusion (barely) conceals a most interesting development on the music-making front. I had decided last summer that I was not going to be able to progress further in my endeavours unless I had could find a co-conspirator with whom to collaborate. Specifically – I had pushed my humble voice as far as it would go and needed to find a proper vocalist with whom to work.

The process of so doing involved asking certain well placed friends and acquaintances for recommendations and then undergoing a period of testing the waters through trial projects in the hope of meeting a like mind. I said and wrote nothing of this at the time for fear of jinxing the whole project.

Well – the good news is that I seem to have found someone and we are busy writing and recording music. The lady concerned has the voice of an angel and we seem to have found musical common ground. Not only are we both most impressed with the results of our initial efforts, but the whole thing has spurred me on to write new songs at a previously unheard of rate.

The next step is to establish an online presence so that others can access the results. More on this in due course.

All most exciting!

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