Play teeters between cleverness, grandiosity
Liv Stein
K (out of 4) By Nino Haratischwili, translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, directed by Matthew Jocelyn. Until Feb. 12 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front St. E. Canadianstage.com or 416-368-3110 What’s the difference between a real artist and a charlatan? Are there boundaries between an artist’s work and their life? If someone tells you a story you desperately want to hear, does it matter if that story might not be entirely true?
These questions confront audiences of Matthew Jocelyn’s latest production at Canadian Stage on multiple levels. They are the subject matter of Georgian-German writer Nino Haratischwili’s play, about a worldclass concert pianist, Liv Stein (Leslie Hope), whose life came to a halt after her son Henri died of cancer in his early 20s, 14 months before the play begins.
The plot kicks into motion when a young woman named Lore (Sheila Ingabire-Isaro) arrives at Liv’s home saying she’s a friend of Henri’s from music school and asking for piano lessons in exchange for stories about Henri. As Lore insinuates herself into Liv’s life and that of her ex-husband Emil (Geraint Wyn Davies) and manager Simone (Caroline Gillis), intrigue mounts about the young woman’s credibility and motives.
The play, written when Haratischwili was 25 and translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, makes an ambitious foray into questions about the relationship of artistic reputation to creativity and mental health. Is Liv making a fool of herself by buying Lore’s argument that Ravel was a “subtle genius” when the current wisdom (within the play) is that he was “no special talent?”
Lore believes that struggling with “madness” is part of what makes Ravel and many artists great, but is embracing her world view a way back to creative and personal fulfilment for these unhappy characters, or is she herself representative of some kind of break from reality or sanity?
The play nearly pulls off a hovering ambiguity but towards the end veers into pulpiness and then, in a coda, offers a more literal interpretation of what’s happened.
Jocelyn pushes its questions of what’s real and what’s not further in a risky, large-scale production that teeters between meta-theatrical cleverness and grandiosity. A crucial factor holding the production back is the performers’ lack of capacity to deliver the kind of psychic and physical intensity this style demands.
As with his 2015 production of Harper Regan, Jocelyn strips back the Bluma Appel stage so that audiences see the performers long before they make their entrances onstage, and announces scene changes with dramatic blasts of technology (here, blackouts and recorded piano music).
Debra Hanson’s set of the interior of Liv’s house stretches wide, with a massive, dirty bay window on one side and an isolated drapery on the other. The performers are frequently called on to fill the space with exaggerated blocking that does not land effectively as choreography (à la Robert Wilson) nor as things these people would really do with their bodies.
Hope is an accomplished television performer and has a highly watchable, almost hypnotic beauty, which costume designer Hanson particularly complements in the “wow” reveal of Liv’s outfit for a climactic concert. But like the other performers Hope appears to be struggling to meet the demands of this production style, particularly in a final meltdown sequence.
Rwanda-born Ingabire-Isaro gives the production’s most compelling performance (something particularly impressive as she graduated from George Brown Theatre School less than a year ago) and, like Hope, looks stupendous in Hanson’s gowns. Ingabire-Isaro is better at communicating Lore’s self-confidence and seductiveness, however, than the struggle and self-doubt that’s also communicated in Haratischwili’s script.
That this mysterious figure of desire is the only person of colour on the stage adds an unpalatable layer of exotification, though information that comes right at the end provides some context about her place in this world of privilege.
For its stylistic risks as much as the script’s intriguing — or maddening? — ambiguities, this seems sure to be one of the year’s more talked-about shows in theatre circles.
Advice for those wanting to join the debate: don’t look at the program first.
You’ll thank me.