Turning a Page at MusicFest 2012

I've blogged before about music--especially of the classical variety--being a rather big lacuna in my live performance spectrum. But this year Richard insisted we make an effort to see some of the offerings at MusicFest Vancouver, which just concluded its 10 day run this past Sunday.

I'm glad we did, for two reasons. First, because the concerts we went to--the Gryphon Trio performing the Czech Masters (Dvorák and Smetana) at Christ Church Cathedral Friday morning, and Philippe Cassard and François Chaplin in a four hands tribute (on one and then two pianos) to Debussy at the Vancouver Playhouse on Saturday evening--were both excellent. And, second, because I've discovered what has to be among the most nerve-wracking of supernumerary stage jobs: being a page turner for the piano score. In addition to the ability to sight read music, of course, one must be an at once discreet and alert presence on stage, expertly timing when to stand up and begin one's reach, making sure to grab only one corner of one page at a time, and, most importantly, being able to distinguish between a performer's subtle sign (usually a nod of the head) to turn and what just might be an aspect of his or her exuberant playing of the music.

I am pleased to say that at both concerts all three page turners acquitted themselves with aplomb. And, indeed, my eyes were often as riveted on them as on the performers. Not listed on the program, as per proper form, I trust these unsung individuals get other forms of kudos--including from the accomplished professionals they are serving.

Speaking of turning a page with aplomb, at Saturday's concert Morna Edmundson, in her curtain speech, noted that the passing of the torch from MusicFest Vancouver's outgoing Artistic Director, George Lavarock, to its current AD, Matthew Baird, has been absolutely seamless over this past year. I look forward to what Baird and his team have planned for next year.

P.

Olympic Hangovers

Given that this blog was set up in part as a local anticipatory response to the 2010 Winter Olympics here in Vancouver, you would think I’d have something to say about the most recent Summer spectacle that has just concluded in London. Especially now that the postmortems have begun: on the pre-Games embarrassments for the host country (the line-ups at Heathrow, the security concerns and costs) that slowly gave way to collective national pride as the weather cleared and their athletes started racking up the medals; on the potential post-Games legacy for East London, and for Mayor Boris Johnson, who many are already touting to replace David Cameron as ruler of the Conservative Party (especially now that Cameron’s coalition with the Lib Dems seems to have collapsed); on the rote American jingoism and frustrating time delays of NBC’s television coverage; on the IOC’s continued corporate fascism in monitoring everything from British citizens’ infringements of the official Olympic brand to what messages athletes could or could not tweet; and, as is usually the case here in Canada, on our failure once again to ascend the heights of the medal podium in several events that were supposed to be a lock.

Let the public bloodletting begin!

In fact, I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to avoid, as much as possible, anything to do with the Olympics (which is easier said than done, believe me—even for someone who doesn’t have cable and was squiring around visiting relatives to local tourist destinations). I maintain that the entire enterprise is a colossal waste of money, a media spectacle whose excesses seem grotesque when set alongside the corresponding diminution of coverage for real crises like the civil war in Syria, and a largely pre-determined sporting contest whose outcomes seem designed only to maintain the divide between moneyed Western nations and the entire global South (though we’ll see if that changes somewhat when the Games move to Rio in 2016).

What I wrote about the Olympics in my book World Stages, Local Audiences two years ago (in a chapter comparing the Beijing and Vancouver showcases) still seems the most apt performative response. At the Olympics, I suggested, “tribal nationalisms join forces with late capitalism, neo-liberal individualism, cultural tourism, gender binarism, the modern security state, and local weather patterns to produce a two-week media showcase of drug and judging scandals, political grand-standing, corporate sponsorships, regional boosterism, heart-tugging human interest stories, spectacular opening and closing production numbers and, very occasionally, sublime moments of athletic excellence” (18-19).

Plus ça change à Londre.

P.

Talking Turkey

It's a measure of my immense admiration for her work that Jan Derbyshire was able to lure me, on what was one of the most spectacular days we've had so far this summer, to a Saturday matinee performance of her newest play, Turkey in the Woods, on at the Roundhouse Community Centre through this Wednesday. Programmed as part of Vancouver's fifth annual Queer Arts Festival, in a co-production with Screaming Weenie Productions (through whom the play received an early development reading two years ago), the play focuses on Hale (in a drily mordant turn by the playwright herself), a manic-depressive recovering alcoholic lesbian. Did I mention it's a romantic comedy?

As the play opens, Hale has abandoned her long-suffering lover, Peach (Morgan Brayton), in Vancouver in order to join her mother (Suzie Payne) and her sister Lilah (Cherise Clarke) in the wilds of Alberta for a Thanksgiving weekend reunion meant to lay the ghosts of family dysfunction that have long haunted Hale to rest. However, those ghosts turn out to be as numerous as Ma’s compensatory white lies and as hearty as sister Lilah's liver (she, like everyone else in the family--including a father and brother we hear about but do not see--drinks to excess, though in her case she might actually have a legitimate reason in the degenerative spinal disease she may or may not be suffering from). As this description so far suggests, the first half of Turkey pushes the limits of family psychodrama to some absurd extremes, and Derbyshire is fearless in testing her audience's identification with her characters by a) burdening them with multiple neuroses, and b) making none of them terribly likeable. It's a credit to all of the performers that they give their all to the material, making these three women's simultaneous desire to connect and inability to overlook the obstacles to that connection seem absolutely real, no matter the surreality of their circumstances--including building a picnic table amidst the backdrop of hunters stalking wild turkeys for dinner (which seems as apt a metaphor as any for the unfinished business of self-discovery at the heart of this play).

My one complaint (besides the somewhat clunky and overly static blocking of director James Fagan Tait) is that, at present, the play’s structure feels a bit too skewed toward the biological family trio. We hear about Peach very early in the play, but we do not meet her physically until the last third of the 90 minute one-act, when she arrives, deus-ex-machina-like (in spike-healed boots, no less), to rescue Hale from the morass into which she has further enmeshed herself. But not before she forces Hale to reinvent herself (and the play) on the spot, casting off her abject self as a daughter and sister weighted down by the past and stepping boldly into her present role as romantic partner. It’s a tall order, but Brayton makes the most of what in less experienced playwriting hands might have been just a walk-on part. Trust me when I say that it’s not, and that the dramatic payoff is well worth the wait.

Which is where the kiss comes in, a kiss Derbyshire had talked about in press for the piece, and which absolutely delivers on her goal to serve up some girl-on-girl heat that would melt even your grandmother’s knees.

P.

Due Praise

My niece, Erika, who is visiting from Ontario, and who will be attending a performing arts high school starting this September, has pretty sophisticated musical theatre tastes. But she's also a teenager who, while disdaining the Justin Biebers of this world, nevertheless has her boy band fixations--One Direction, from the UK, apparently being her current obsession. So after last week's visit to TUTS to see The Music Man, we decided an appropriate bookend on an overcast last day in the city would be to catch a matinee of Altar Boyz, which is back playing at the Arts Club Revue Stage on Granville Island after a successful production in 2009 directed by Bill Millerd.

A 90-minute confection of pop-style songs packaged around the premise of four good Catholic boys and one honorary Jew rocking it out on a cross-country tour in praise of the man upstairs, the work actually treads the line between irony and sincerity surprisingly well. There are lots of knowing jokes (though none, interestingly, about groping priests), and what suspense there is in terms of plot hinges in part around whether or not Mark (Geoff Stevens), who is closeted, will reveal his love for the band's de facto leader, Matthew (Jeremy Crittenden). Instead, in the disco-tinged power ballad "Epiphany" (which contains musical allusions to Helen Ready and Effie from Dreamgirls, among others), he comes out as a loud and proud Catholic. It's a very funny moment, but in a way that doesn't condescend to different kinds of believers (be it in God or in Gloria Gaynor) in the audience.

And while I can't say that any of the tunes by the composing team of Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker (the book is by Kevin Del Aguila) have stuck in my head, the high octane performances by the entire cast--including fleet-footed Jak Barradell (and his abs) as Luke, the charismatic Michael Culp (and his pecs) as the orphaned Mexican Juan, and beat-box Brandyn  Eddy (and his yarmulke) as Abraham--were uniformly impressive. Both Erika and I agreed afterwards that, as musicals go, we still preferred a classic like The Music Man. But as audience members yesterday at Altar Boyz, we also had heaps of fun.

P.

Music Man at TUTS

Last night was our annual pilgrimage to Theatre Under the Stars in Stanley Park, something of an extra special outing this year not just because the weather cooperated, but also because we were introducing my sister and niece (visiting from Ontario) to Vancouver's venerable open-air institution. We chose The Music Man rather than The Titanic, because Richard and I have a special fondness for the Robert Preston/Shirley Jones film. And also because it's a meta-musical, the huckster Harold Hill literally striking a chord with the residents of River City, Iowa, despite knowing nothing about music himself.

What is so striking about writer/composer/lyricist Meredith Wilson's first Broadway outing (he also is the brains behind The Unsinkable Molly Brown, in addition to writing classical symphonies and composing numerous film scores) is how varied is the mix of musical styles and idioms, many of them seemingly antithetical to the musical theatre genre itself. For example, he builds much of the narrative around recitative and counterpoint and "in the round" orchestrations--which must be incredibly demanding to sing. Then, too, there are multiple moments of barbershop crooning from the quartet formed by Harold of the bickering school board men. It's both a bold and ego-busting mood for a composer, especially in a musical about forming a marching band, to leave off with all of the instruments in the pit and give things over entirely to a cappella harmonies for significant stretches at a time. Happily, in all cases the company was in excellent form and up to the tasks set for them.

And, to be sure, all of these seemingly "non-musical" elements are offset by the big production numbers, including "Seventy-Six Trombones," and of course the classic "(Ya Got) Trouble." As with that number, so too with the entire musical: its success depends, like his character's proposed swindle of River City's residents, on the charisma of the actor in the lead role of Harold Hill. Robert Preston's film version is, in most respects, unsurpassable. But LA and Toronto veteran Daren Herbert comes close. On stage for almost every number, Herbert's Hill is as effortless in his dulcet tones and nimble steps as he is in the guile behind each. It is a credit to Herbert that we not only believe in him in the role, but also in Hill's crazy scheme--first to dupe River City, then to seduce its uptight and on-to-him librarian, Marion. Samantha Currie provides fine support in the latter role. As does the entire cast, especially the many child actors.

As with past TUTS offerings, the evening did not disappoint.

P.

The Grade on Guns

Following the performative posturing that was yesterday's photo op between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on gun violence in Canadian cities, a salutary intervention by my colleague, David Chariandy, into the recent shootings in Scarborough and those who would seek to dismiss or de-complexify the politics of disenfranchisement and the economics of disadvantage that are always part of the equation of crime and/in racial minority communities. Click here to read more.

Then, too, following upon recent events in Colorado, and especially President Obama's rote platitudes and outright refusal to open up a conversation about gun control in the US, made me think how prescient a recent episode of Aaron Sorkin's amazing new series, The Newsroom, was. In it, the recently re-galvanized prime time anchor, Will McAvoy (played by the brilliant Jeff Daniels), decides to take on the gun lobby and their political and media pundit apologists. He does so by excerpting a series of clips in which people like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh decry the limits that Obama is surely going to place on Americans' right to bear arms; this is then followed by a scorecard from the Brady Campaign (an initiative begun by the wife of Jim Brady, the White House Press Secretary shot during John Hinkley's assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) tallying the Obama administration's performance on a number of key issues related to tighter regulation of guns. On all counts, as McAvoy, points out, Obama receives a failing grade.

Michael Bloomberg, a mayor several thousand times smarter (and thinner and richer) than Rob Ford, tried to open up and honest and enlightened debate by suggesting that gun control become a major issue of the upcoming presidential campaign. But Obama refused to bite. I don't get it. Would alienating the gun lobby really lose him that many more votes? And how many more might he gain? I don't know if Sorkin, whose series is so-far pulling its plots from real-world headlines (most recently the Arab Spring), will catch up to or plan to intervene into this fall's presidential campaign. But thank heavens he's back on television and giving us, as with The West Wing, an imagined political discourse we might one day aspire to north and south of the 49th parallel.

P.

Effort over Time

Heidi Strauss and adelheid dance projects' this time was a splendid way to finish my 2012 Dancing on the Edge experience. The piece, as the program notes inform us, is a response to a 1970 play by Ken Gass. Until his recent and unceremonious firing, Gass was Artistic Director at Factory Theatre in Toronto, where Strauss has worked as dance-artist-in-residence for the past several years. Indeed, Strauss has choreographed frequently for theatre and opera, and while this time is a wordless performance, the narrative it crafts out of its intense physicality, combined with the canny use of lighting and projections, suggests that Strauss is a choreographer who is very comfortable with theatricality.

In the case of this time, that theatricality began with the transformation of SFU Woodward's Studio T, where the performance took place. Upon entering, we discover that the black box space has been reduced in size by about one-third, an internal wall having been erected, and through which, we soon discover, the seats have been arranged on opposing sides, with audience members, once positioned, facing each other like sports fans cheering for different teams. However, as we wait for the performance to begin, we have something other to watch than each other; below each set of raked risers is a long and narrow screen, on which we glimpse a loop of projected images of dancers Justine A. Chambers and Yuichiro Inoue, presumably in rehearsal for the piece.

Turns out the sporting arena metaphor is an apt one. Upon entering, Chambers and Inoue, dressed casually in street clothes and both wearing trainers, eye each other warily while leaning in the doorway, or sitting down next to the opposite wall, or circling each other gladitorially in between. At this point, the house lights are still up and there is no sound other than the tap of the dancers' shoes on the floor. Gradually music builds and the first of a series of horizontal shafts of light bisects the floor, and the dancers begin a contest of wills that, we eventually discover, is less about self-expression than collective submission. When, after 45 minutes of intensely physical movement, Chambers and Inoue end up in a clutch on the floor, we get that this is not about a "you" or a "me," but an "us"--and what it takes for "you" and "me" to become that "us." If one definition of power is the expending of effort over time, then this piece demonstrates just how much more effort it takes--and how delimited our time might be--to give up power.

It's a lesson that is equally apt for an audience that becomes an "us" (that is, something more than the sum of our individual selves) through compelling performances such as this one.

P.