National Post (National Edition)
Written in German isn’t automatically good
Liv Stein Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
There’s a sturdy dramatic tradition, from The Master Builder to All About Eve, of stories about ambitious young women inserting themselves into the lives and careers of famous artists. Liv Stein is the latest play in the line, but adds very little to it. It’s the work of Nino Haratischwili, who was born in Georgia but lives in Germany and writes in German.
Liv Stein is a piano virtuoso who gave up on music and largely on life when her son Henri, in his early twenties, died of brain cancer. To her house comes Lore, an aspiring pianist, asking for lessons. Liv refuses at first, but eventually relents when Lore announces that she knew Henri and can tell the mother, from whom he had been estranged until his last days, all kinds of things about him. Lore restores Liv’s will to live and to dress well and to give recitals, and even has an effect on her repertoire.
Under her influence Liv moves away from Rachmaninov (order) and toward Ravel (passion). Lore also gains the confidence of Liv’s manager and of her ex-husband who has taken a second wife but still carries a torch for his first. Or you might say that she restores their confidence. She brings passion, largely but not entirely of the sexual variety, back into their lives too.
For a play that talks so much about emotion, this one — certainly in Matthew Jocelyn’s CanadianStage production — communicates hardly any of it. The only character whose feelings and memories are made to matter at all is Emil, Liv’s ex, and that may be because Geraint Wyn Davies, who plays him, is the one actor whose voice and presence can carry to the back of the Bluma Appel. The other performances come in varying shades of grey.
Liv is played by Leslie Hope, to whom I was looking forward to seeing, having pleasant memories of her in the first season of 24 as Jack Bauer’s doomed wife. As a stage actress, though, she proves colourless, certainly for this role. Liv is presented as a creature of extremes, some of them grotesque. Hope keeps her on the same bland level throughout.
Still, she’s nearly always audible, which is more than can be said for some of her colleagues. To cast someone just out of drama school in the pivotal intruder’s role is unfair to everyone, herself included. Lore is supposed to cast a spell on everyone she encounters. Sheila Ingabire-Isaro’s performance is a distant blank. It’s also full of fake pauses. Here’s a suggestion, certainly not limited to this actress, for the instant improvement of Canadian theatre: stop leaving gaps after the words “and,” “but” and “because.” Nobody in real life ever does it.
Both Caroline Gillis (manager) and Nicola Correia-Damude (new wife) are fuzzy, though the latter may have the excuse that her role is drastically underwritten. Debra Hanson’s set is imposing at first glance and an unhelpful void when people have to pretend to live in it. But then the production isn’t going for realism. There are momentary blackouts just after the beginning of most, though not all, of the scenes.
In one, an un-erotic threesome, a disembodied voice recites the stage directions. But no amount of concept can make up for poor acting, and besides, this one is half-baked. The intention may be to make us doubt our senses; to question how many of Lore’s stories are true. But we’re never invested enough to care, and the play ends up providing its own prosaic solution. I actually thought it a rather convincing one, but the device by which it’s offered is amateurishly clumsy.
The author was 25 when she wrote the play and it has the pretentiousness of youth without the excitement. I sympathize with Jocelyn’s ongoing project of bringing a European esthetic to Toronto, but just because a play is written in German doesn’t automatically make it good.
Liv Stein runs until Feb. 12.