Posts Tagged ‘Stratford Festival’

Notes on Oedipus Rex at Stratford- July 16 opening

July 18, 2015

This is not a review, just assortment of points, mostly personal.
While I didn’t enjoy this production, it did give me much to consider.

I have read published reviews and comments and am surprised by the favorable ones. I think what I am reading is people sensitive to and commenting on the excellence of Sophocles’ play. I guess what I have is a sense of what is can look like staged by this company, and I feel there were opportunities missed.

Was looking forward to this for these reasons: enjoyed the Stratford Elektra a couple years back, have never seen Oedipus live, and because Daniel Brooks was directing. I knew Daniel briefly when we were undergraduates at U of T, and performed in a play with him. Thought we’d see all kinds of inventive staging applied to this classic. Further excited by the involvement of Camellia Koo whose work I’ve admired for her way of serving the play and not just providing a strange design for the sake of looking interesting. She also does a full design, not just set.

In attendance for the opening that I could see from my seat were: Globe critic Kelly Nestruck; Festival AD Antoni Cimolino; and actor Colm Feore. I now know, based on Antoni’s location, which is the choicest seat in the TP theatre.

I bought a last minute discounted ticket and drove (2 hours each way) to the opening. Lesley didn’t want to go.  On the way to the theatre I listened to the audio of the 1950’s Stratford production starring Douglas Campbell, by way of review and preparation. Mannered, old fashioned and stuffy, it did the job reminding me about the script.

The five minute hold didn’t seem necessary, but one sound effect, lx dim,  and we were off. Auspicious beginning. Character in clad in red robes, a shade of red that I think of as Cardinal Red, “incensed” (distributing smoke about) the playing space with a modern smoke machine.  Those machines are now shoe box size.  It was beginning both ancient and contemporary.  O enters in a cream suit and asks the audience simply “Why are you here?” A couple of lines later it becomes clear that these words are Sophocles’, and that we are being addressed as though we were the chorus. (Who are suppliants to O). It also becomes clear that this translation has been de-poetrified, it is very pedestrian prose. O paces some, because we don’t answer, and then sits to listen to the Priestess (also seated) who is now incensed (very angry) about the plague and wants O to do something. It is not clear why she is so angry about this because that is not what Sophocles wrote, and there is no other business to explain her ire. Perhaps in this productions yelling will indicate intensity. God I hope not.

Well, O seems a bit miffed about this treatment and explains that he’s already on the task. He’s almost sarcastic, and does this speech pacing I believe. He does a lot of pacing around the rectangular perimeter of the TP stage. (BTW-I thought Daniel Brooks attended the same lecture on Oedipus by Margaret Visser that I did while we pursued our Drama BA’s. She explained at great length about the importance of the circle as the central image in Oedipus. This was over 35 years ago and I still remember parts of it). I begin to notice that this prose translation, besides being rhythmically benign, is also longer than verse versions, as the translator wishes to convey so much of the original, compressed verse.

About 20 – 25 minutes into the show, the fellow two seats from me began to snore. Fortunately he woke himself up and he managed to fight off the zzzz’s the rest of evening.

Creon returns and seems ready to leave again immediately. He doesn’t want to say what he’s learning in front of us (we’re the Chorus, remember?) He lays it out, and the plot of course takes off.

The on stage Chorus entrance was dramatic and ritualist in its slowness. Each person approached a silver platter and laid paper money in it. While consistent with the notions of sacrifice and offerings paid to gods, this isn’t in the text, and the I was wondering if Brooks intended some kind of dig at Christianity or at modern Greek economics. The Chorus leader looked unreasonably like Angela Merkel to me. Chorus members then self-applied some clown white to their faces in a ritualistic manner to …. to… I don’t know why they did that. When completed, the Chorus was easily identifiable by these markings, but it was awfully abstract. Anyways, they were already identifiable by their grey business attire.

Periodically, at least three times, the lights flickered as though a distant thunderstorm threatened. It was a small detail and I found it more distracting than anything else. I recalled Theatre Centre type electrics (some of which I was responsible for at 666 King St. location) and how questionable the lighting grid can be in alternative spaces. Also distracting were the regular drum thuds that persisted throughout: this was the most consistent part of the soundscape. When it started I was glad because I thought it signalled a rhythmic ground against which the play (and especially the chorus). No, it wasn’t. I found that I tuned it out after a while.

Loved the entrance of Tiresias and his costume and performance. Here it made some sense for an actor to be seated, but he didn’t stay so.

The Chorus was behaving with a reduced set of techniques. Very little choral speech, because odes were turned into solo speeches made into a microphone. (Note to visiting directors at Stratford: your actors have trained for years so they can be heard clearly in all settings and situations. They do not need to be amplified.) I’m not sure what Brooks intended, but to me, they looked like audience members posing questions at a public meeting. That made all the involved invocations to the gods seem ridiculous. On the whole, very still and non-descript, sometimes in prolonged freezes. Some of these performers were the same ones who’d energized last year’s Mother Courage, and here they were seated, staring into the middle distance. Here I felt the director’s creativity was missing: give these great performers something to do. It was akin to watching finely tuned sports cars in stop and go city traffic. Frustrating.

Jocasta’s (Yanna McIntosh) performance energized every scene she was in, from her entrance right through her final exit. She seemed perfectly at home with the task of mingling a non-realistic text with a realistic emotions. I don’t think anyone else in this production came near to her in this.

Lally Cadeau’s messenger entered with a pail and I thought “charwoman.” She sat herself down and spoke one of the most compelling speeches in western literature in some kind of accented English. It may have been English as spoken by someone whose first language is Greek, but I couldn’t be sure. I thought it sounded more like one of Luba Goy’s crazy Ukranian ladies. Honestly, while I listened, I took nothing in, because I could not answer these questions: why a charwoman, why the accent, and what actor in her right mind elects to sit for a speech like this?

Nigel Bennett’s shepherd used a modified dialect too, and he elected the old British standby for rustics: west country. Arrgh, he be’s a roight Summerzet shep’erd, he be. Oh yah, character is seated.

Messenger from Corinth: seated for much.

We had to wait until about the 90 minute mark to find out what the plastic sheet was for. O, buck naked and much bedaubed in stage blood, crashes through it and it falls to the ground. It is a great effect. Not so great is watching our naked O unpack his thoughts. It’s an uncomfortable duration until he is covered with Creon’s coat. I looked over at Colm Feore a couple of times and he was very rapt. I imagined that he was very taken by the total nakedness of the performance; he more than most of us knows what Gord Rand was going through–centre stage and absolutely no tricks possible.

Ismene and Antigone entered weeping and I found their huddled grief very affecting.

At times, O’s intonation and cadence put me in mind of, and this is going to seem weird, Eric Peterson. I think of him as possessing an unmistakable Canadian accent, and Gord Rand, at times, sounded like him, I thought, right down to raspy-harshness of some upward inflections.

Two omissions I noted: The messenger from Corinth reminds the Theban shepherd of their shared time together. This was cut. I thought it an essential point, in terms of the plot and their relationship. Also, speeches were snipped from the end, including the all important “call (or “judge”) no one happy who is still alive”

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Midsummer Night’s Dream Chamber Piece at Stratford Festival, July 16 2014

July 18, 2014

We saw this production and were disappointed and unhappy.  Here are some macro points and then, later, some detailed grumpies:  If Shakespeare were a living writer he could take action against this production and shut it down because it is so far from the intent of his play named A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It is so uncompelling, so hostile to its audience, I have to ask myself if the director is not charlatan or an incompetent. I have participated in (usually in workshop or classroom settings)  and seen performed pieces like this, but nothing that goes on for 2 hours. The fault is not in the stars, the cast, who are clearly all talented and adept at their craft.  I put responsibility for this entirely on the director.  I have great sympathy with opera audiences around the world that have railed against Peter Sellars. It was like he had never seen AMND and thought the script was by Strindberg or Ionesco.  There is a thing called the spirit of comedy.  In many ways, Puck embodies it, and it permeates the entire play.  Not so in this production.

Details:  the installation/audience space was cool and I liked it a lot.  But afterwards, I felt that the preponderence of junk hanging from the ceiling was actually an omen of the production, that barely suspended refuse was the visual representation of the play’s style.  Also a worrisome sign was the excessive courtesy of the FOH staff.  They did inform that it was two hours without intermission.  Okay, sighted two actors entering through the house through door stage right before houselights down–that’s fine.  TBO. Lights up on tableau, 4 characters in what looks like blacklight while cacophony literally shakes the seating area.  It goes on for an uncomfortable duration. The play’s opening lines are spoken one actor directly to another, and that can be supported by the text (although there are plenty of indications in the text that speech is in fact declamatory and meant to be public). The carnal nature of this relationship and its current nature ( a pillaging brute is offering something gentler to his victim) appears to be the motivating factor. It isn’t fitting together as expected, but that’s okay, that’s why we’re here, to see something different. We listen and hear the piece skip forward (there are plenty of omitted lines, but the play continues in sequence).  It becomes clear what we will not see or hear: blank verse treated in stylized, old fashioned cadences, nor will line endings nor punctuation in the text be used as guides for delivery; actors will not assume conventional roles of the varied characters (ie, Theseus is noble, Bottom is ridiculous egotist, and so on) but also, there will be no effort to substitute alternate characterizations–in fact, there will be none: the lines recited in flat, uninflected tones of character A sound identical to character B even when new sections of the play begin and the actor takes an alternate role.  The actors do not respond to one another very much at all–they give their attention to each other, but rarely indicate that the other person’s words and actions have any impact.  Occasionally a character will explode in anger (and frankly, when this happened, I thought it was the actor venting and letting off steam that s/he had their work so seriously compromised by the director’s obscure and perverse approach to this play)
The stage is lit by coloured led strips left, right, above and below.  The colours appear to change and/or cycle through colour mixes without any regard to anything.  An exception to this are the lights that are used spot-light like, to isolate a specific area, and this did occur occasionally.  The  actors seemed to have been given very few directions, and they appeared to be: wherever possible, treat speeches as though they were excuses for sexual overtures or just get really mad  and yell.  (I was reminded of the advice to actors given in the book I think is was Audition by Michael Shurtleff in which he recommends that in order for an auditionee to make a strong impression, either be seductive or angry.   Do this as an alternative to making no impression at all). So, it was a lot of automatons reciting some beautiful verse, and doing their damndest to remove any fun from it, and divorce it from the narrative from which it sprung.
Very rarely did this approach make any sense to me–Helena’s speech to Hermia (Lo, she is one of this confederacy) is one place though where it did work for me.  Helena has been through emotional hell, and when she finds that her bosom pal girl friend has contributed to this misery, she is surprisingly rational and evokes details of their years of intimacy. Here the dispassionate delivery underscores the pain of a betrayal.
There was a plodding rhythm to this as well that one could tell was deliberate and very much at odds with the tempo of the text, much of which can be said very quickly (and there are many sections of prose, too). No props, no costume pieces, nothing to indicate the transformation of Bottom, until his return to normal state, and then the removal of  his “scalp” is mimed.  For me, it’s a rule–when you establish a convention (no props), you must stick to it.  No props means no props. Suddenly miming non-existent props makes no sense. In Act 5 Scene 1 when the fairies are meant to be spreading their blessing/good luck spell through the house, the back wall of the stage cannot now become a significant, real, defined space, ie. Theseus’ palace.
One actor seemed so uncomfortable with all this that s/he did not face out for at least a half hour.
The uncomfortably loud sound that shakes the seats was repeated, I don’t remember when or why.  It may have been Act 3  when the lovers seek to fight.
The entire piece is performed in a small grey box that may have been a reference to the famous Peter Brook production in the 60’s . That was a white box.
Oh, the microphones.  This is a tiny space, seating for perhaps 150 people.  These actors are trained and have proven themselves in projecting to 2000 people in the Festival Theatre. The microphones were clearly not needed but were an effect.  And what was the effect?  Well, they could speak very softly.  One actor appeared to be making an effort to move his/her lips as little as possible at times.  The effect was something like voice over in film or radio play performance.
There were many audience walkouts during the performance, which does not by itself prove anything, but they weren’t leaving because of smut or radical politics.
I was waiting for Puck’s stylized apology and invocation to the audience for their goodwill, but the play’s final speech is delivered to the other actors only. It was a like a capper–here we’ll tamper with the clear meaning and intent of the text, we’ll ignore all good sense, we’ll stand this speech on its head for no good reason and although topples over because it can’t be supported, we’re doing it that way anyway.
I do not recommend this production to anyone, traditional Shakespeare lover nor fan of new, cutting edge alternative theatre.  It, beyond everything I’ve mentioned, commits the unforgivable sin: it’s boring.  It’s boring because it makes no sense, and does not have the saving grace of sounding well, nor looking all that interesting.

    Additional: June 26, after opening.

Rave reviews from Kelly and Richard for this show. I was surprised. Perhaps they confused intention with execution and/or forgot their recommendations turn into hundreds of dollars of cost for anyone travelling to see this show. It doesn’t help to second guess the critics. Perhaps they are just desperate to see something new. If this is what they crave, and they want to see more of this, they can sit in on any production directed by a 3rd or 4th year university student and see similar high concept shows. Not as well spoken, of course, but “brave” and “unconventional” can be found many places, Theatre Centre et al.

I’ve been watching a UK tv show about California by American comedian Rich Hall. He constantly returns to the themes of swindling, chicanery, and grandiose con games in the history and culture of California. Can’t shake the notion that Duke and the King are still intent on staging the Royal Nonesuch and we are complicit in letting them. Switching allusions here, but do we always need a child to say the emperor has no clothes?

Now, here’s a bugaboo: do we need to import our edgy artists, or can we grow our own? This is related to the foreign worker issue, except these are highly skilled people. So, can we justify importing a NY artist to scavage around Stratford and nail junk to the ceiling and walls (btw reviewers and tweeters have all missed the walls and only talk about the ceiling-curious) and a Californian to theorize and promote a dubious re-interpretation? Don’t we have our own outside-the-box people? Who was it that did the Inuit King Lear? David Gardner with lots of Stratford Festival personnel and help.

My favorite MND was an Equity Showcase production I saw in Habourfront. It had no budget but it did have a central theme-Pygmy drum rhythms. Loved it. Titania was a Spiderwoman, and she crawled down a rope mesh (head first as I remember it) to the beat of an on stage drummer playing a large conga-like drum. She then danced an African-beat Tarantella. Bottom’s donkey mask was a head band with 2 small ears. The audience cheered every low cost or no cost innovation, because, yes, this approach put the words first.

I was disappointed, yes. I’m angry at what I see as a waste of potential, because of my high regard for the festival performers, designers and techs. I am affronted by an approach which says to me as audience member “If you don’t appreciate this, it’s because you’re not clever enough to recognize how clever we are.”

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