GARY SMITH’S TOPS AND FLOPS
It’s hard to believe but another theatre season has passed. After watching more than 250 productions it’s fun to look back at what made me blink with admiration and cringe with regret.
Here are the delights and duds of 2016, from Shaw to Stratford, Aquarius to Mirvish.
Thank you for reading and Happy Theatre Going in 2017. Hope to see you around some theatre soon.
High-flyers
Dance of Death: The Shaw Festival found the dark, bitter humour in this play about a husband and wife living in a tower and baiting each other with every breath. That wily old director Martha Henry knew exactly the right notes to strike in this brilliantly staged drama. It was blessed with remarkable performances from the wonderful Fiona Reid, Jim Mezon and Patrick Galligan. It was the Shaw Festival triumph of the season.
The Nether: Theatre Aquarius sucked it up and took a huge risk in staging this frightening Jennifer Hilary drama about a virtual world where avatars become sexual mirages. Not everyone liked what the play had to say about morals and values but there’s little doubt it cast a light on how the Internet, Facebook and the like can be used in wicked ways. And isn’t it worrisome that people enjoy blowing other folks’ heads off and toppling buildings in violent virtual games. What does this reveal about inner urges and anger in the world of cyberspace? Stunning performances from Nigel Shawn Williams and Randy Hughson. Fine direction from Luke Brown.
King Lear: You had to travel the ocean for this one, but Glenda Jackson, that once great star of Broadway and Hollywood, was worth the voyage. Her performance as Lear was never a replication of a male actor’s outlook, nor was it the work of a female pretending to be male. It just was. This Old Vic theatre production may well be shown in a cinema near you soon. The entire cast and creative team under Deborah Warner was amazing.
Onegin: The National Ballet of Canada may have waited until the closing matinee of this John Cranko ballet to pull out all the stops, but pull them out they did. A stunning version of this dramatic piece starring Svetlana Lunkina and Evan McKie was sheer perfection. These are real stars who make riveting dance drama from ballet. That they are doing this at The National Ballet of Canada is our gain. Let’s hope we see them together more often. This was the dance event of the year, a single performance that should have been repeated several times.
Princess: This indie from Hamilton dramatist Sky Gilbert was a thoughtful, corrosive look at gender identity and role models, identifying fake values foisted on the young and vulnerable. The play performed at Artword Artbar was revelatory, taking on subject matter that polarized local audiences. Hamilton actors Anna Chatterton and Ralph Small gave stirring performances that haunted the imagination long after Princess was over.
Come From Away: This musical had its birth pangs at Sheridan College and is a huge success in Toronto. Looking at the way Americans and Canadians came together in Gander, Newfoundland, immediately after the Twin Towers fell, this is a Canadian musical on its way to Broadway. It’s beautifully performed by an ensemble cast and is the success story of commercial theatre in Canada this year. Will it make it in New York? Maybe. It would certainly be a yearly hit at Charlottetown Festival right beside Anne of Green Gables. The Ladies Foursome: A crack cast made this Norm Foster comedy about golf, women and laughter a fine success. Foster knows how to write laugh lines but, more important, he knows how to touch the heart. The Aquarius cast in Hamilton knew how to land Foster’s lines under Marcia Kash’s fine direction.
The whole thing was set in motion on a terrific set by Douglas Paraschuk.
A View From The Bridge: The New York theatre season was elevated with this stunning version of Arthur Miller’s moody play about jealousy, sex and family dysfunction. Director Ivan von Hove took a realistic play about a Brooklyn family and created from it a Greek tragedy. If you were not able to see this play live, there was a filmed version that made the rounds of local film theatres. Look for it to come out soon on Blue-Ray. A Chorus Line: Donna Feore’s staging for this iconic musical about Broadway chorus kids and dance was seriously off-kilter. She ripped from it the sense of it being an “in the moment” encounter with actors’ spewing their guts to get a role in a Broadway show. By staging the songs as musical numbers, not as actors telling real life stories to a crazed director who invades their
private world, she robbed it of authenticity. So why include it here? Because it had sensational dancing the likes you don’t see at Stratford or Shaw too often, that’s why. And the first 10 minutes were thrilling dance theatre.
The Judas Kiss: This import from Britain playing a much too big Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto was touching, heart-pounding theatre. Rupert Everett’s performance as Oscar Wilde captured everything that must have been thrilling yet irritating about this colourful figure who loved unwisely and paid a terrible price for it. The Mirvish series seldom brings real dramas, preferring to soothe us with lighter musical entertainment. What a treat it was to see great acting in a fine play for a change.
Didn’t get off the ground
So what shows missed the mark this year? How about this quintet of duds?
Blind Date: Theatre Aquarius brought this cheesy comedy in a production that looked like the early days of television. Hideous set. Ghastly lighting. Tacky script. And folks laughed their heads off at men from the audience made to look like fools with their hands up a woman’s skirt. Ho-hum. This is theatre?
If I Were You: British playwright Alan Ayckbourn has written many good comedies, almost always with a sharp, acerbic edge. This was not one of them. The comedy was so thin as to be cling-wrap. Though the actors tried mightily to suggest something serious was going on, this was a real dud. Poorly directed and with acting that was facile, it had only one saving grace here at Theatre Aquarius, a fine set from Hamilton’s Ivan Brozic.
A Little Night Music: This brilliant Stephen Sondheim musical was savaged in a Stratford production that was so miscast and poorly staged it looked like a bad community theatre version. Anyone with a whiff of sense knew Cynthia Dale should have played Desiree and Yanna Mackintosh should have safely stayed in those modern and Greek dramas she does best. Sad for Sondheim lovers.
Our Town: This is an iconic play that doesn’t need gussying up. Molly Smith in her prettified version for the Shaw Festival created a fantasy world, not the real life one of Grover’s Corners where people spoke their inner thoughts under moonlight and drank sodas at the drugstore. This frou-frou version of Thornton Wilder’s great play was a disappointment in almost every way.
Alice In Wonderland: Oh dear, this one took the cake for the biggest disaster of the year at the Shaw Festival. It wasn’t just bad; it was boring. It was sad to see good actors like Tara Rosling and Jay Turvey trapped in this over-staged, overproduced show directed by Peter Hinton. The music was dreadful, the sets overpowering and the whole thing just a BIG mistake.