By Dan White – Special to the Sydenham Current
Last week Joni and I travelled to Stratford three times in eight days to take in preview performances of Annie, Macbeth, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. For the last two shows our friend Janet Barnes and her friend Britany joined us. I believe this marks fifty consecutive years of me taking in at least one show in The Festival City. It was great fun introducing Janet and Britany to one of my favourite places as neither of them had been to a show in a great many years.
Annie was on the boards at the Festival Theatre and it was a nostalgic show for me as it was the first musical I ever attended. Back in the 70’s my drama teacher, Linda Gibb, arranged a school trip to see it at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit. This was Joni’s first time seeing it live.
We began our experience by stopping in the hall and standing in front of the musicians playing the fanfare. They are always excellent and we took a moment to acknowledge that fact. After they played we noted that only brass players would stand in front of four herald trumpets and a parade snare drum, and love it. They did appreciate the attention. It’s always nice to be appreciated for what you do, especially when you are often in a role that is taken for granted. As a tuba player married to a French Horn player, we get that. We play key roles within our ensembles, but the spotlight always drifts to the flashy instruments.
From the opening song to the finale, Annie was wonderful. Child actors can be a risk and this show relies heavily on 9 of them. Harper Rae Asch in the title role was superb. She has just the right balance of attitude and adorable mischievousness to make the character lovable. Her voice is beautifully suited to the role and we got lost in the story.
The balance of the girls were excellent. The dance numbers had energy to burn, were fun and the cast pulled off the playful choreography perfectly. The acting was solid throughout and the singing exceptional. These girls were having fun and it was contagious.
Laura Condlln played a deliciously nasty, and often inebriated, Miss Hannigan. Her comic timing was stellar and you couldn’t wait for her to get a kick in the shin or another well-deserved prank pulled on her by the girls.
If you have children that you would like to introduce to theatre, this is a great one. Watch for sales or call the box office to inquire. Full price in Stratford is a tough sell for families. Joni and I took advantage of a “pay what you wish” promotion.
(Full disclosure, Joni almost cried when Sandy, the dog, entered the stage.)
A few days after Annie Joni and I returned to Stratford with Janet and Britany to see Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
I have attended a great many productions of this show and even directed it at SCITS. Our pre-show was great fun. We bumped into friends from Sarnia and met up with our friend Mark from Stratford. Mark always has interesting stories to share about the season as he is a scenic carpenter there.
The show was sold out! This is outstanding as it is in previews, and it is a Shakespearian play, which often has the same appeal as cod liver oil to those subjected to Shakespeare dissection in English class.
This production had a very different feel from the opening. We knew that Robert Lepage directed the play and that it was set in a biker war in Quebec rather than medieval Scotland.
Lepage has a stellar reputation as a director, playwright and the founder and artistic director of a multidisciplinary production company, Ex Machina. I have never witnessed the excitement and anticipation the audience had as the house lights went down.
The opening looked and felt like a movie theatre with projection scrolling through the production team, the title and the act. Thunderous applause arose as Lepage’s name graced the set… and that was the bell that summoned the disappointment that arose over the ensuing two hours.
Rarely does a director in theatre take center stage and pull the focus toward themselves. Lepage’s opening credits did just that.
The set was truly stunning. It was a two-story roadside motel that moved and shifted from interior to exterior views, a single section or an entire row of rooms, stairs and doors. It was impressive to see. The cast wore microphones as they were often behind plexiglass and projection was impossible.
There were incredibly cool scenes with projection and the use of a scrim/mirror. I’ve never seen something like that in a theatre and it truly was an impressive effect. Actors could “appear” and multiply using lighting and the scrim.
That pretty much ends what I was impressed by.
The biker gangs used e-motorcycles with a “Harley” sound effect to rumble across the stage. While this was effective initially, the bikes were omnipresent and the effect lost its roar through overuse. If they were horses, the cast would not constantly be on their mounts.
The largest frustration was with the acting of the leads. I have seen most of these actors in other shows over the years and they are some of Stratford’s best and most experienced thespians. Yet, as I struggled to decipher what was missing for me in this show I realized what I found lacking. Depth.
There was no depth in the dialogue. The characters did not emote anything from me, the words were simply that, words. I did not believe the evil arose in the Macbeths, nor did I believe that the couple truly loved one another. I didn’t feel the growing distrust, envy and fear in Banquo. I felt nothing… and I wanted to!
My friend Jay from Sarnia, an avid theatre consumer and someone whose opinion I respect, even if I don’t always concur, texted me as we made our way home. “So, what did you think of THAT?!” I called him the next day to see if I had missed something that he saw. He had the same opinion… spectacle without substance.
So, if you want to see a fun and entertaining show, I recommend Annie. If you can get really cheap tickets and want to check out a very interesting set and can look past the fact that this production hath murdered emotion… go see Macbeth.
I’ve run out of space for this column, so, in my next column, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And a teaser, as Meatloaf said, “Two out of three ain’t bad”.
