The Vancouver Opera has just wrapped up its inaugural festival format--in which it has moved its operations from a full season of stand-alone productions spread out over the course of a calendar year to a two and a half week festival incorporating three works in repertory and a number of parallel concerts, talks, installations, and related events. Richard and I finally got to see one of the main stage productions yesterday afternoon when we attended one of the final performances of The Marriage of Figaro, which was playing at the Vancouver Playhouse.
I have to say that this production, following upon the PuSh Festival's very successful presentation of Third World Bunfight's version of Verdi's Macbeth, has confirmed that the Playhouse is now my preferred venue to see opera in the city. The intimacy of the space makes the music and singing feel at once warmer and fuller, and the action just generally more alive. Additionally, given that Mozart's score (which is closer to chamber opera than the grand 19th-century romantic works of Verdi) calls for the recitative parts of the libretto to be sung to a harpsichord, being that much closer to the orchestra means that every note feels that much more resonant.
Of course proximity also means that the design of your production needs to hold up to thorough visual scrutiny. Happily on that front this version exceeds expectations. Director Rachel Peake has opted for a modern-dress take on the comic plot, but one that allows for a few historical anachronisms. As such, Drew Facey's gorgeous set--which morphs over the course of the opera's four acts from the interior of servant Susanna's chambers to those of her mistress, Countess Almaviva, to the grand hall and finally the exterior gardens of the estate--references 18th-century neoclassicism in its pediments and brocaded walls, but it is also sleekly and unfussily modern, with minimal furnishings and, most arrestingly, a mirrored floor for the interior scenes. The costumes, by hot young Albertan designer Sid Neigum, alternate between finely tailored monochromes for the lovers Susanna and Figaro to riotous patterns for the buffon characters of Cherubino and Barbarina, and from the plainly utilitarian (the quasi-military fatigues worn by the Count) to the overly decorative (the hooped dress worn by the Countess in Act 3). All of this is beautifully lit by lighting designer John Webber.
The performances were also uniformly excellent. The new paradigm in opera these days is for singers, no matter how fine the voice, to also be actors, and Peake draws fine comic texture--and timing--from the entire cast. Because this is opera buffa, most of the characters are broad and recognizable types; nevertheless, for us to be seduced by the sentiment of the arias, not to mention accept the implausibility of the plot, we have to believe the Countess' pain and the see-saw outrage of Figaro and Susanna at each other's apparent infidelity. On this front, the characters' various asides--a key part of the myriad stratagems and deceptions and counterplots set in motion in this opera--are especially well handled, not least in the opening act's catfight between Susanna and Marcellina, the latter seeking Figaro as her own boy-toy, only to have it revealed in Act 3 that she is his long-lost mother!
For me, the women in this production outshone the men in terms of overall vocal quality. Caitlin Wood as Susanna, Leslie Ann Bradley as Countess Almaviva, and the wonderful Mireille Lebel as a willowy and physically elastic Cherubino were special standouts. Among the men I was most captivated by Phillip Addis as Count Almaviva, both in terms of singing and acting. Alex Lawrence was suitably dashing as our put-upon hero, Figaro, but he had some trouble with breath in his lower register (which, to be sure, is pretty low given that Figaro is written as a baritone and not a tenor), and there were a few cracks in the upper register as well. But these are minor quibbles and the entire cast and crew are to be commended for this spirited and refreshed take on a classic from the operatic repertoire.
P
Showing posts with label Rachel Peake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rachel Peake. Show all posts
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Angels in America at Studio 58
Twenty-three years after it premiered on Broadway, Vancouver audiences get to revisit the first part of Tony Kushner's searing and historically epic AIDS drama Angels in America not once, but twice this theatrical season. The Arts Club's staging of "Millennium Approaches," which together with its bookend, "Perestroika," makes up Kushner's swirling and queerly Shavian "Gay Fantasia on National Themes," will be up at the Stanley next March. But right now, Studio 58 launches its 2016/2017 season with its own production of the same play. Under the assured direction of Rachel Peake, it's a terrific take on what is now a contemporary classic (if that doesn't seem like an oxymoron).
While Kushner's richly complex and linguistically luxurious dissection of American politics ensures that the work transcends its Reagan-era setting (indeed, the resonances of Roy Cohn's take-no-prisoners conservative bluster with Donald Trump's current election campaign are eerie), Peake nevertheless wisely eschews the potential trap of making this an artifactual period piece (though the 80s pop soundtrack pre-show and in between scene changes was greatly appreciated). She also enlists her incredibly talented cast and crew to help create the play's many moments of design magic in ways that are utterly quotidian, but no less breathtaking because of that. The Angel does not crash through the ceiling of Prior Walter's Manhattan apartment in this version of the play; instead, she enters on foot from upstage, the twinned concave walls of Drew Facey's elegantly simple set parting to let her and her impressive wingspan through as rock star lighting illuminates her way. A small army of silent but physically adept supernumeraries is crucial to achieving the Spielbergian effect of this climactic scene, as they are to ensuring earlier low-fi, high-impact bits of stage spectacle, as well as, more generally, the smooth transitions of set and properties between scenes. In this regard, Peake takes to heart Kushner's injunction in his notes to the play that it is alright--and maybe even imperative--that the wires show, as seeing the unseen hands that give shape to and support a worldview (be it an imagined theatrical one or an all too real ideological one) is a crucial element of the politics of this play.
But what deserves the most praise in this production are the performances. Dramaturgically, Kushner's play calls for many of the parts to be double cast, a conceit designed not just to save money, but that also thematically structures elements of the text, with different characters played by the same actor often echoing each other in terms of their dialogue or actions. However, in a student production like this it makes sense to draw upon Studio 58's deep talent pool and have each character, no matter how briefly on stage, played by a different actor. Happily, almost all of the supporting ensemble make the most of their short time in the spotlight, with Chloe Richardson's intensely physical Mr. Lies, Stephanie Wong's acerbic and practical Sister Ella Chapter, Krista Skwarok's weary and wise Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz, and Camille Legg's Republican Washington fixer Martin Heller making especially memorable impressions (and on the latter two fronts I was glad to see that Peake preserved the play's penchant for cross-gender casting). Josh Chambers and Raylene Harewood play Belize and Hannah Pitt, respectively, characters who enter late in the plot of "Millennium Approaches," but who become important figures in "Perestroika." Here both actors deliver quietly confident performances, with Chambers channeling just the right amount of camp and simmering resentment in Belize's dealings with "white crackers" like Louis, and with the physically tiny Harewood nevertheless giving us a sense of how the no-nonsense Hannah is able to command others to do her bidding, while also revealing a bit of the compassion that lurks underneath Hannah's hard exterior.
Conor Stinson O'Gorman's take on the historical figure of Roy M. Cohn, the closeted gay henchman of Joseph McCarthy and de facto executioner of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, is an idiosyncratic one. He dials down the loud outward bluster and the explosive kinetic energy that I've seen other actors bring to the part (including F. Murray Abraham on Broadway and Al Pacino in the HBO miniseries); combined with a way of speaking that suggested to me more midwestern drawl than New York Jewish verbosity, and an almost laconic way of dealing with Roy's beloved multi-line phone in the scene in which the character is introduced, I was worried that things would go south very quickly with this crucial part. But cumulatively, over the course of the play, O'Gorman is able to give us a sense of the anger and deep self-hatred roiling underneath this Roy's more contained and deliberative surface appearance, which makes the character's late-in-the-play confrontation with his wayward surrogate son, Joe, all the more terrifying when it is unleashed in all its fullness of volume, physicality, and latent eroticism.
At its heart, however, this production is anchored by the stellar performances of the actors who play the two sets of couples whose relationships are imploding. Mason Temple and Elizabeth Barrett, as the unhappy Mormans Joe and Harper Pitt, and Brandon Bagg and Julien Galipeau as Louis Ironson and Prior Walter, gay lovers dealing with Prior's recent AIDS diagnosis, manage the delicate dance of conveying with utter conviction and heartbreaking honesty just how much they love their partners, but also how completely and hopelessly alone they are. The montaged scene in which Joe and Louis separately tell Harper and Prior that they are leaving is tricky not just because of all the different emotions that must be kept in balance, but also because of the rapid shifts in intercut dialogue. Here it is accomplished with affecting precision on both fronts, and that is thanks as much to savvy choices Peake has made in her casting as it is to her own exacting direction.
Temple's Joe, struggling with his repressed homosexual desires and with the weight of Roy's poisoned mentorship, is literally gutted by the years of denying and stamping out what he wants, coughing up his self-lacerated insides in the form of a bleeding ulcer. Joe, who feels so unloved, in fact becomes the least lovable character by the end of the second part of Angels in America; but it is to Temple's immense credit that here we genuinely understand Joe's struggle and even support Roy's and Louis's separate urgings of him to transgress. That such a transgression comes at the expense of the happiness of his long-suffering wife, Harper, is part of this play's heartbreak; Barrett plays this wronged character, who is also something of a truth-saying Cassandra in terms of what (both with and without the aid of pills) she sees going on around her in the universe, with such openness and vulnerability that the flip side of her pain, namely the wonder she experiences with the aid of Mr. Lies during her hallucinations, comes as such a marvellous and surprising balm. It is hard to convey genuine astonishment on stage, but Barrett accomplishes this task with great naturalness and spontaneity, such that the delight she experiences upon arriving in Antarctica is immediately transferred as something to share and feel alongside her.
Any actor who takes on the part of Louis has his work cut out for him. Not only does the character have the most lines to speak, many of them further freighted with the weight of Kushner's dialectical philosophy, but Louis also does the most despicable thing of all the characters in the play: he walks out on his lover at his time of greatest need. Bagg is an utter natural as Louis, luxuriating in the complex richness of Kushner's dialogue while also conveying how utterly wracked by guilt is this man who, as adept as he is at spouting the theoretical cant of revolutionary struggle, is not so good with the practical day-to-day struggles of dealing with sickness and death. Bagg also successfully taps into his character's gay Jewish charm; despite the actor's avoir du pois and bad hairpiece, it is easy to see why both Prior and Joe would fall in love with Louis. Finally, there is Galipeau as Prior, fabulous chosen messenger of the heavens who would give up that role for a little bit more time as a depassé diva on earth. Galipeau is tall and muscular, with a deep and sonorous voice that commands attention, making it easy to understand why he might be an angelic spokesperson. But he is also not afraid to tap into his feminine side, moving with lightness and grace while in drag and also, in the face of his illness and Louis's abandonment, showing us just how small and afraid he feels. The aforementioned split scene, which culminates in a shattered Prior indicting Louis for his crimes, is all the more powerful for how spent and empty and even more alone Galipeau makes Prior appear after Louis has gone.
In my personal repertoire of canonical works of Western drama, Angels in America holds a special place. I saw the play soon after it opened on Broadway, and subsequently in a very accomplished staging in Seattle. I also own DVDs of the HBO miniseries and have taught the play many times (and will be again this spring, in conjunction with the Arts Club production). Coincidentally one of the students I introduced the play to more than a decade ago during a course devoted to Kushner at SFU came up to me at intermission. He reminded me of the class and said that this was actually the first time he was seeing the play live. We both agreed that this production was an absolutely stellar way to experience this work in performance.
P
While Kushner's richly complex and linguistically luxurious dissection of American politics ensures that the work transcends its Reagan-era setting (indeed, the resonances of Roy Cohn's take-no-prisoners conservative bluster with Donald Trump's current election campaign are eerie), Peake nevertheless wisely eschews the potential trap of making this an artifactual period piece (though the 80s pop soundtrack pre-show and in between scene changes was greatly appreciated). She also enlists her incredibly talented cast and crew to help create the play's many moments of design magic in ways that are utterly quotidian, but no less breathtaking because of that. The Angel does not crash through the ceiling of Prior Walter's Manhattan apartment in this version of the play; instead, she enters on foot from upstage, the twinned concave walls of Drew Facey's elegantly simple set parting to let her and her impressive wingspan through as rock star lighting illuminates her way. A small army of silent but physically adept supernumeraries is crucial to achieving the Spielbergian effect of this climactic scene, as they are to ensuring earlier low-fi, high-impact bits of stage spectacle, as well as, more generally, the smooth transitions of set and properties between scenes. In this regard, Peake takes to heart Kushner's injunction in his notes to the play that it is alright--and maybe even imperative--that the wires show, as seeing the unseen hands that give shape to and support a worldview (be it an imagined theatrical one or an all too real ideological one) is a crucial element of the politics of this play.
But what deserves the most praise in this production are the performances. Dramaturgically, Kushner's play calls for many of the parts to be double cast, a conceit designed not just to save money, but that also thematically structures elements of the text, with different characters played by the same actor often echoing each other in terms of their dialogue or actions. However, in a student production like this it makes sense to draw upon Studio 58's deep talent pool and have each character, no matter how briefly on stage, played by a different actor. Happily, almost all of the supporting ensemble make the most of their short time in the spotlight, with Chloe Richardson's intensely physical Mr. Lies, Stephanie Wong's acerbic and practical Sister Ella Chapter, Krista Skwarok's weary and wise Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz, and Camille Legg's Republican Washington fixer Martin Heller making especially memorable impressions (and on the latter two fronts I was glad to see that Peake preserved the play's penchant for cross-gender casting). Josh Chambers and Raylene Harewood play Belize and Hannah Pitt, respectively, characters who enter late in the plot of "Millennium Approaches," but who become important figures in "Perestroika." Here both actors deliver quietly confident performances, with Chambers channeling just the right amount of camp and simmering resentment in Belize's dealings with "white crackers" like Louis, and with the physically tiny Harewood nevertheless giving us a sense of how the no-nonsense Hannah is able to command others to do her bidding, while also revealing a bit of the compassion that lurks underneath Hannah's hard exterior.
Conor Stinson O'Gorman's take on the historical figure of Roy M. Cohn, the closeted gay henchman of Joseph McCarthy and de facto executioner of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, is an idiosyncratic one. He dials down the loud outward bluster and the explosive kinetic energy that I've seen other actors bring to the part (including F. Murray Abraham on Broadway and Al Pacino in the HBO miniseries); combined with a way of speaking that suggested to me more midwestern drawl than New York Jewish verbosity, and an almost laconic way of dealing with Roy's beloved multi-line phone in the scene in which the character is introduced, I was worried that things would go south very quickly with this crucial part. But cumulatively, over the course of the play, O'Gorman is able to give us a sense of the anger and deep self-hatred roiling underneath this Roy's more contained and deliberative surface appearance, which makes the character's late-in-the-play confrontation with his wayward surrogate son, Joe, all the more terrifying when it is unleashed in all its fullness of volume, physicality, and latent eroticism.
At its heart, however, this production is anchored by the stellar performances of the actors who play the two sets of couples whose relationships are imploding. Mason Temple and Elizabeth Barrett, as the unhappy Mormans Joe and Harper Pitt, and Brandon Bagg and Julien Galipeau as Louis Ironson and Prior Walter, gay lovers dealing with Prior's recent AIDS diagnosis, manage the delicate dance of conveying with utter conviction and heartbreaking honesty just how much they love their partners, but also how completely and hopelessly alone they are. The montaged scene in which Joe and Louis separately tell Harper and Prior that they are leaving is tricky not just because of all the different emotions that must be kept in balance, but also because of the rapid shifts in intercut dialogue. Here it is accomplished with affecting precision on both fronts, and that is thanks as much to savvy choices Peake has made in her casting as it is to her own exacting direction.
Temple's Joe, struggling with his repressed homosexual desires and with the weight of Roy's poisoned mentorship, is literally gutted by the years of denying and stamping out what he wants, coughing up his self-lacerated insides in the form of a bleeding ulcer. Joe, who feels so unloved, in fact becomes the least lovable character by the end of the second part of Angels in America; but it is to Temple's immense credit that here we genuinely understand Joe's struggle and even support Roy's and Louis's separate urgings of him to transgress. That such a transgression comes at the expense of the happiness of his long-suffering wife, Harper, is part of this play's heartbreak; Barrett plays this wronged character, who is also something of a truth-saying Cassandra in terms of what (both with and without the aid of pills) she sees going on around her in the universe, with such openness and vulnerability that the flip side of her pain, namely the wonder she experiences with the aid of Mr. Lies during her hallucinations, comes as such a marvellous and surprising balm. It is hard to convey genuine astonishment on stage, but Barrett accomplishes this task with great naturalness and spontaneity, such that the delight she experiences upon arriving in Antarctica is immediately transferred as something to share and feel alongside her.
Any actor who takes on the part of Louis has his work cut out for him. Not only does the character have the most lines to speak, many of them further freighted with the weight of Kushner's dialectical philosophy, but Louis also does the most despicable thing of all the characters in the play: he walks out on his lover at his time of greatest need. Bagg is an utter natural as Louis, luxuriating in the complex richness of Kushner's dialogue while also conveying how utterly wracked by guilt is this man who, as adept as he is at spouting the theoretical cant of revolutionary struggle, is not so good with the practical day-to-day struggles of dealing with sickness and death. Bagg also successfully taps into his character's gay Jewish charm; despite the actor's avoir du pois and bad hairpiece, it is easy to see why both Prior and Joe would fall in love with Louis. Finally, there is Galipeau as Prior, fabulous chosen messenger of the heavens who would give up that role for a little bit more time as a depassé diva on earth. Galipeau is tall and muscular, with a deep and sonorous voice that commands attention, making it easy to understand why he might be an angelic spokesperson. But he is also not afraid to tap into his feminine side, moving with lightness and grace while in drag and also, in the face of his illness and Louis's abandonment, showing us just how small and afraid he feels. The aforementioned split scene, which culminates in a shattered Prior indicting Louis for his crimes, is all the more powerful for how spent and empty and even more alone Galipeau makes Prior appear after Louis has gone.
In my personal repertoire of canonical works of Western drama, Angels in America holds a special place. I saw the play soon after it opened on Broadway, and subsequently in a very accomplished staging in Seattle. I also own DVDs of the HBO miniseries and have taught the play many times (and will be again this spring, in conjunction with the Arts Club production). Coincidentally one of the students I introduced the play to more than a decade ago during a course devoted to Kushner at SFU came up to me at intermission. He reminded me of the class and said that this was actually the first time he was seeing the play live. We both agreed that this production was an absolutely stellar way to experience this work in performance.
P
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
