Rixosous

Dracula: A Chamber Musical (Stratford Shakespeare Festival / TV Ontario)

I was thrilled during my recent trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to be able to finally buy a DVD of the Festival's 1999 production of Dracula: A Chamber Musical.  This isn't a movie; it's a straight-up film done by TV Ontario of an actual evening of live theater with only a few moderate effects (fades, multiple camera angles) added.  I saw the production in person ten years ago and own a copy in VHS, but with the advance of technology and growing layer of dust on my VCR, it's good that the Festival finally reissued it.  I promptly bought two copies so I could have one to loan to friends, since for some unaccountable reason it doesn't seem to be available outside the Festival's bricks-and-mortar stores.  (Left: Amy Walsh as Lucy and Juan Chioran as Dracula; click to enlarge.)

This version of Dracula is an original Canadian musical which intended to be a more accurate adaptation of the novel than the Hamilton Deane version, Dracula: The Vampire Play in 3 Acts, which was written and first produced in the 1920s and then revived on Broadway with Frank Langella in the late 1970s (presumably inspiring the Langella Dracula film).  That's not a high bar; the Deane play, among other weirdnesses, swaps the names of the female leads, kills Mina (originally Lucy) off before it even begins, then makes Lucy (originally Mina) the daughter of Dr. Seward (in the novel, one of Lucy's suitors) and gives her Jonathan (who did marry Mina).

Richard Ouzanian's book returns both women to the stage with their proper names in a speaking/singing cast of only seven people (though three other women make silent cameos as Dracula's undead brides).  Lucy Westenra (Amy Walsh) is Dracula's first victim; Mina Murray Harker (June Crowley) the second.  Lucy's three suitors are combined into one, the young doctor Jack Seward (Shawn Wright).  Dracula is magnificently sung by Juan Chioran, a favorite of mine since my very first Festival.  Rounding out the cast are Roger Honeywell as Jonathan Harker, Michael Fletcher as Abraham Van Helsing, and a spectacular Benedict Campbell as the insane Renfield.  Music and orchestration are by Marek Norman.  Ouzanian directs, with Allan Myers additionally credited for the television version.

Where to begin?

Biscuits with Aunt Mildred

When I stay at my Aunt Mildred's, I make biscuits.  Not always, but enough times over the years that I have a small collection of pictures of myself making them in her kitchen down in North Carolina.

Aunt Mildred is actually my great-aunt, one of my maternal grandfather's twelve brothers and sisters.  With that size family, the generations get a bit skewed, so she's actually only about ten years older than my mother.  I stayed with her and her husband, Hubert, for a couple of weeks when I was a toddler while my parents were relocating from New York to Dallas, and off and on as a child and teenager.  I've only been back a few times as an adult, most recently over the last few days for a family wedding.  And I wanted to make biscuits, and to get the recipe while I had the chance.

If This is Tuesday...

I'm off again, this time for a wild string of trips that involves planes, trains, and Boltbus, and will take me through the following places, not counting airport layovers:

Greensboro, North Carolina (family wedding)
Baltimore, Maryland (costuming and dancing)
New York City (just passing through)
Newport, Rhode Island (teaching)
New York City (teaching)

In between all of this there will be approximately eighteen total hours at home, two or three of which will be spent in the office catching up on my day job.  My net access will be rather spotty, but I'll be around now and then.  I have a lot of in-progress posts that I plan to work on offline and finally get up for folks to read.  (We'll see how well that clever plan works...)

I'm actually writing this from the airport, and it's time to go through security. 

Have fun, folks.  Don't wreck the place.  Tea is to the left, fruit juice to the right.

Macbeth (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/11/09)

I was wary of Des McAnuff's production of the Scottish play after having discussions with other patrons and friends in the town.  All the conversations went something like this:

Me: So, how was it?

Other Person: (loooong pause)  Well, the banquet scene was amazing.  (another long pause)  And the handwashing scene was great.  (silence)

Damning with faint praise, indeed, for a production directed by the Artistic Director of the Festival and starring golden boy Colm Feore (no longer so boyish, but still a major star at the Festival).  At this point I've been at more Festivals than Feore has, so I feel free to mention that I have often been underwhelmed by his performances (including much of his performance in Cyrano a couple of days ago).  The attention given him raises expectations higher than I have found warranted.  And from what I'd heard, McAnuff had cast the play in a way as much race-conscious as race-neutral and moved it to mid-20th-century Africa, allowing him to play with colonialism and a lot of explosions.  I don't object setting Shakespeare in different periods and places (that his works travel so well is part of their greatness), but it's not clear to me that this play is in particular needs either an exploration of colonialism or explosions.  (Above left, Yanna McIntosh as Lady Macbeth and Colm Feore as Macbeth.)

So why see the show?  Well, I felt a little silly going to Stratford and seeing only one play by Shakespeare (yesterday's excellent Caesar).  This year's third, the Dream, won't open until later in the summer.  So I decided, somewhat nervously, to wind up my Festival with Macbeth.

Julius Caesar (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/11/09)

Finally, I got to the Shakespeare!  This afternoon's production of Julius Caesar was superb, maybe the best Caesar I've ever seen, including two previous Stratford productions in 1990 (my first season) and 1998.  Caesar is not a particular favorite of mine, but I'm happy to finally find a production I could admire unreservedly.  I tend to forget how much the first act feels like a string of "Shakespeare's greatest quotations," with so many memorable lines coming from this one play.

The leads were all strong.  I particularly liked Tom Rooney as an excellent "lean and hungry" Cassius and Jonathan Goad as a very charismatic Marc Antony.  Geraint Wyn Davies (left; click to enlarge) made a noble Caesar.  I'm not a huge fan of Ben Carlson (last seen a few days ago as Jack Worthing in Earnest), but he was quite a competent Brutus.  It was interesting to watch the two "spin" speeches by Brutus and Antony and feel myself respond to Antony's emotional appeal, even in my awareness that it was manipulative demagoguery.  Not that this is news to anyone who's studied the play, but there's a timely political lesson here about the failure of logic in the face of emotion and a charismatic leader.  Last fall's election was, frighteningly, something of an exception in having the Antony figure (Palin) not succeed.

West Side Story (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/10/09)

Wow.

Where do I start?

West Side Story is another show I have a long history with, starting with the summer stock production I worked in the costume shop for when I was a teenager.  I will never forget sweating over a sewing machine churning out circle skirts for the dance in the gym.  I've seen it a couple of other times, including at Stratford in 1999, when it was staged at the Avon Theatre, which has a typical proscenium stage.  This time it was staged on the thrust stage at the Festival Theatre.  I went to see it mostly to fill a hole in my schedule and because I figured it was a pretty idiot-proof classic that really can't get much worse than pretty good.  If nothing else, I'd get to see that fabulous Jerome Robbins choreography danced by a high-quality cast. 

I was blown away. 

Ever Yours, Oscar (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

(posted from an island in the middle of the Avon while ducks and swans float by)

I wound up Thursday with a short (less than ninety minutes) one-man performance that isn't actually a play: Brian Bedford reading a selection of letters from Oscar Wilde, ranging in time from when he was a teenager at school through his intellectual triumphs as a speaker and writer and, sadly, his prison stint, brief continental exile, and death.  The letters were compiled by Peter Wylde (no relationship to Wilde).

Mr. Bedford is an experienced performer and has beautiful vocal control, so he can pull a great deal of emotion out of a simple reading, with no costumes or props required and only brief introductory remarks before a few of the letters.  This was in the Tom Patterson Theatre, which is quite small, with a relatively long "runway" stage with the seating in a U-shape around it.  No amplification is needed there.  The stage was mostly bare, with only a music stand for the letters and a small table for a glass of water.  A photograph of Wilde was projected against the back of the theater.  Mr. Bedford wore an elegant black suit with a pale gray-blue tie.  On-stage seating was offered, so a group of devotees was settled happily on cushions almost at his feet.  I was just as happy with regular seating, and I'd been warned that he directed all his readings straight forward, so I spent the money to get a good seat where I'd be able to see his face.

The letters were entertaining, and often more sentimental than I'd expected.  While some were arch and witty -- I particularly liked his description of lecturing to miners in California and putting them to sleep with his discussion of Florentine art before waking them up by mentioning Botticelli, whom they thought was a new drink --  many, especially the later ones, were quite poignant.  Who would have expected to find Wilde negotiating with a prison warden from his cell to arrange to pay the fine to have two poor children released from prison?

Also included was a letter offering a synopsis of The Importance of Being Earnest, with the basic plot recognizable even though most of the characters had different names.  This was a pitch for the (unwritten) play when he was desperate for money and needed the advance.  There was also a letter mentioning the card left by the Marquess of Queensbury at his club (the "posing somdomite" card) which inspired Wilde's lawsuit against the Marquess and triggered his own trial and imprisonment.

I was thrilled to be sitting in front of a whole row of neatly-dressed teenagers, on whom I eavesdropped shamelessly.  They were happy to be there and very pleased to be hearing Bedford read before seeing Earnest later in the week.  Hopefully they will become hooked on theater and turn into regulars; Stratford's audiences are still gray-haired enough to be alarming.  They were chattering happily about the performance when I left at the end.

Ever Yours, Oscar is running a limited number of performances through August 29th only, but they've added half a dozen to the schedule which have not been well-publicized, and those still have seats.  It's worth seeing for anyone within range of Stratford.

Cyrano de Bergerac (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

Of course, I couldn't miss Cyrano de Bergerac.  It's one of my all-time favorite shows.  I first saw it as a young child in Dallas, probably at the Dallas Theater Center, where it made an indelible impression on me and helped shape my love for period drama and swashbuckling romance.  I saw it again in New York in the early 1980s, the magnificent Royal Shakespeare Company production with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack, which remains my ideal.  And fifteen years ago I saw it here at Stratford.  I can't offer any opinion on the one I saw as a child, when I pretty much loved everything I saw on a stage, but the RSC and 1994 Stratford versions were both superb; I count myself lucky to have seen two such productions.

(Photo: Colm Feore as Cyrano intimidates Robert Persichini as Montfleury; click to enlarge)

But this one was oddly dissatisfying. 

The Importance of Being Earnest (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/8/09)

"If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated."

Continuing my little comedy-binge, with the level of farce decreasing ever so slightly, I spent this afternoon at Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.  I've seen Earnest before, of course, including the excellent four-act Festival production directed by the late, lamented Richard Monette back in 2000.  But Wilde is Wilde, and always amusing, and this production has Brian Bedford double-dipping as both director and Lady Bracknell.  Bedford doing period comedy is a must-see for me.  As a bonus, the production was designed by the great Desmond Heeley.  (Left, Bedford in costume.  Click the image to zoom in.)

Overall, it was excellent.  First things first: Bedford makes a surprisingly convincing woman.  This was a not an obvious drag performance.  Over-the-top physical comedy isn't really necessary in such a role and Bedford is not one to overdo.  He simply played the part thoroughly and effectively.  His personal star power is well-suited to playing the sublimely self-centered Lady Bracknell, absolutely confident of her ability to dominate her family and the center of every scene she's in.  I'm not entirely sure I'd have read him had I not known beforehand.

Oh, Canada

I'm heading off to Canada on an extended vacation, or set of vacations: three days at an SCA event (Known World Dance Symposium), then about twenty-four hours in Toronto visiting a friend, followed by a week in Stratford seeing the usual cluster of shows.  I'm aiming for nine, but being spontaneous by not getting tickets in advance, so who knows what will happen.  I also have a brand-new tent which I've never put up.  Hopefully raising it won't be too interesting.

After last year's exciting experience at the border, I've made sure there is not so much as a stray twig anywhere in my car, and I plan to cross at Niagara rather than Lewiston.  It's going to be a rather interesting drive, since I'm getting started several hours later than plan and will be driving through most of the night.

I won't be totally offline, since there's net access everywhere I'm going, but I won't be around too often since it's, y'know, vacation.  Rixo is also likely to turn into all theater, all the time for awhile, though some back-posting may also occur as I finish up stuff I've had sitting around not-quite-finished for, um, a long time.

Everyone should take the opportunity to drink tea while I'm gone.  Try not to wreck the place.  And we're coming up fast on comment #6000, so if you talk up a storm while I'm gone it just might be you!

Have a happy holiday weekend, if you're celebrating Canada Day or Independence Day (U.S.A.)!