UNCLE VANYA

   CROW'S THEATRE UNTIL OCTOBER 2ND

                                               

Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.
                                                    Anton Chekhov

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The current Crow's Theatre production of Uncle Vanya captures all of the comic pathos essential to a script that can seem bleak at the best of times. Lisa Repo Martel's brilliant adaptation contains a slick contemporaneity that allows the dialogue to move quickly, with flashpoint moments of quick-witted dialogue - words and emotions combust, ignite, and become the flame of language Chekhov so eloquently exemplifies in his work.   

Matched by fast-paced, expansive direction by Chris Abraham, the overall experience becomes an epic portrayal of a decaying culture wrought by the conflict between city and country. The devastation of nature becomes a thematic testament to the playwright's concerns for an earth ravaged by over-development and a thirst for capital. The only thing Chekhov got wrong was the timeline. It did not take a hundred years for the world to acknowledge the damage that has been done - the stupidity and the tastelessness that litters both urban and rural landscapes. But it is taking forever for reparations to materialize in any profound way.

A beautiful and engaging semi- environmental set by Julie Fox allows the audience to feel as though we are part of the action as actors sweep to and fro in the midst of a large playing space that inhabits every corner - within and beyond the viewer's eye and yet always a sensory and scenic success. Lighting (Kimberly Purtell) and sound (Thomas Ryder Payne) collaborate in a smoky, enticing haze of aural and visual delight and atmospheric annotation.

The ensemble is remarkable as they play and squabble with fast-paced conversational flair and intense emotional  fervour. Scenes near the end with Sonya begging Vanya to cooperate reach peaks of poignant pleading that could have seemed too emphatic in the hands of another, less layered, performer. And yet Bahia Watson's Sonya somehow delivers a seamless performance that allows the most pessimistic of Chekhov's lines and sentiments to soar into a believable and engaging characterization.

Eric Peterson's Alexandre brilliantly portrays the brilliant, blustering and boorish gadabout dominating a family that has selflessly responded to his every need. Shannon Taylor's Yelena creates an elegant, subservient young wife to Alexandre's infamous fading charm - engaging with Sonya and Astrov with varied and complex emotion as she navigates her position as the bored beauty. Ming Wong's costumes excel in Yelena's simple classic dress forms, and move into varied tones and beautifully contrasting patterns and vibrancies in dtaborah johnson's layered ensembles.

Anand Rajaram, dtaborah Johnson, and Carolyn Fe take on secondary roles that provide the solid sense of family and community that holds the overall structure together, delivering performances that punctuate the emotional narrative, and fill the space with layered characterizations of a family dependent and devoted to all the people they must love in a day.

Together, as warring friends ultimately separated by their love for the same woman, Tom Rooney as Vanya and  Ali Kazmi as Astrov bring two emphatic kinds of romantic energy to the stage that makes for a complex and thrilling way of perceiving love and desire. Their physicalization and vocal diversity create such convincing portrayals that one might wish they could both win in this tortured game of love, or better yet, fall in love with each other's grand desires.

But of course, no one fully triumphs in Chekhov, but still, the emotion engages, runs high, and overflows in a boiling pot of tragicomic familial stew - simmering, bubbling, and overcooking emotion for an audience whose tastebuds are never disappointed in this wonderful adaptation of a timeless play addressing the humanity and the inhumanity of so-called civilization. 

How's that for a string of menu metaphors creating fabulous and theatrical food for thought. Alliterative. Dramaturgical. Delicious!!!

                                                PHOTOS BY DAHLIA KATZ                                            

Eric Peterson as Alexandre

                                                           Bahia Watson as Sonya

                                                         

                                                           Shannon Taylor as Yelena

                                                   Carolyn Fe as Marina

                                             

                                                              Ali Kazmi asAstrov

                                             

                                                          dtaborah johnson as Maria

                                             

                                                             Tom Rooney as Vanya

RUNNING AT CROW'S THEATRE 

UNTIL OCTOBER 2ND

Artwork “Stewardess Fight” by Kirsten Johnson 

@kirstenjohnson_art_film kirstenjohnson.com

O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute 
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,
He would not then have touched them for his life.
Or had he heard the heavenly harmony
Which that sweet tongue hath made,
He would have dropped his knife and fell asleep...

Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, Act 2,Scene 4

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Alongside the intense violence that marks Shakespeare's critically acclaimed, frequently maligned play, there is the trademark beautiful and startling poetry that has become his signature trait as a playwright of extreme poetic capabilities coupled with intense and violent murder enactments. The many graphic killings in the play reaches a peak in the character of Lavinia. An especially brutal incident is replayed as the ravaged body is viewed and pontificated upon with exquisitely arranged words and images form nature. In the hands of Sky Gilbert, the body being poeticized and grieved upon is a complex and re-arranged portion of the text, given to a character who does not speak the words in the original, thus becoming an overtly and extremely successful example of post-modern adaptation that adds new life to a very complicated text. The "lily hands...like aspen leaves" refer to severed fingers, revealing the bard's ability to take even the most gruesome of acts and make them somewhat palatable through a kind of brutalizing beauty - like nature. Making the gruesome palatable comes across in Gilbert's adaptation through simple stylized props representing gore, and skilful performances that begin with a high camp entrance and gradually move into the spoken, conversational tones that serve Shakespeare's contemporary audiences so well.

Elley-Ray Hennessy enters in the first scene in a kind of Rocky Horror, Sally Bowles, Cruella DeVille costume persona and manically measured physical poise, speaking lines with an animated camp intensity that draws you immediately into the character's enraged state. Gradually she joins the other cast members in a heightened yet metered conversational tone that allows the poetry to find a rhythm that will take us through the many scenes of violence, lament, and revenge.

Some have insisted that the original was a parody - Shakespeare's attempt to match-cum-mimic the very popular and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries. He has been accused of "mocking and exploiting Marlowe", and it has been suggested that the best director for Titus Andronicus might be Mel Brooks. Sky Gilbert rises to the occasion and becomes a skilful and clever director for this bloody tragedy, bringing out the comedy, the horror, and the supposed parody in an engaging blend of stylized forms. 

The final scene gives pink balloons a poignant and comic presence as spectators are asked to join the cast in the outdoor space, alongside a parking lot, to watch the final moments take a signifying plunge into the hideous beauty of the central plot. The blue of the mid evening sky and the solemn playfulness of ascending air-filled hearts punctuate the closing moments as the audience descends back into the black box playing space.

                   Elley-Ray Hennessy as Tamora (Queen of the Goths and later Empress)

Standout performances by Veronica Hurnik (Narrator/Saturninus/Young Lucius/Nurse) and Augusta Monet (Lavinia 1) reveal the necessary additions and alterations to the original script that Gilbert has expertly inserted, bringing the audience into a world of observation and delineation as the director/playwright creates a mesmerizing take on the ways which violence can become an aspect of unmanaged fear and unbridled lust. 

                                       Elley-Ray Hennessy, Augusta Monet, Max Ackerman

                                                                  Veronica Hurnik 

George Alevizos' as Lavinia 2

Elley-Ray Hennessy's Queen of the Goths and George Alevizos' Lavinia 2 create intense moments of great expression and presence that consistently demands engagement, and instills great pathos and rage. Max Ackerman and John Humeniuk as the sons add varied masculine prowess as they skilfully insert bumbling, hapless personalities into the action.

                                     l-r - Joe Humeniuk,  Veronica Hurnik, Max Ackerman

Ray Jacildo as Aaron the Moor (Tamora's lover)  creates powerful land poetically charged presence with his eloquently delivered lines and his agile physical presence. More physical entanglement might have been made of the connection between him and Tamora, adding what appears to be a slightly absent sexuality in a play all about lust, blood, power, and revenge. And yet, there are some titillating homoerotic moments that come to a gruesome end.

 

                                             Ray Jacildo as Aaron the Moor, (Tamora's lover)

 (rear) Ray Jacildo as Aaron the Moor, (Tamora's lover) (front) Elley-Ray-Ray Hennessy (Tamora)

Brian Smegal's Titus is an understated, emotionally complex performance that gives the title character a kind of complicated and engaging shallow-depth, which serves perfectly Gilbert's notion that Shakespeare was trying to tell his audience that plays do not need a message, or 'depth', or justification. They simply need to instil something, be it fear and loathing or delight in parodic gore - satiric bloodthirstiness in the hands of a gruesome cast of characters hell bent on causing as much mayhem as humanly possible. Which is precisely what happens in this production, with the aid of Glibert's original narration that, in the hands of a skilful and sympathetic narrator (Hurnik) makes for a diverse and frequently environmental evening of theatre. 

At one point the narrator guides the audience into a basement area for a brief scene where Titus contemplates and endures the infamous fly killing scene with manic grace and a violent exit back to the main playing space. Youtube links accessible through cell phones are provided for any spectators who cannot go into the basement area, providing yet another intriguing element to the drama.

                                Brian Smegal as Titus Andronicus (a noble roman general)
 

And set them upright at their dear friends' door
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly;
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.” 

                                                                                    ― William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

And thus ends/begins the old and the new - Shakespeare's penchant for the blood and guts of beautiful and unsettling drama. Mixing comedy, tragedy, violence, and tender poetic rants-cum-meditations on the beauty and the terror of human nature. And the new - Sky Gilbert's innovative preoccupation with the study of the iconic bard in a rigorous and enlightening attempt to instil new life and energy into the work of one of the most produced playwrights in the history of theatre.

Max Ackerman, Ray Jacildo, Elley-Ray Hennessy, John Humeniuk and George Alevizos in ‘Who’s Afraid of Titus?’

                WHO'S AFRAID OF TITUS

 

RUNS AT THE RED SANDCASTLE THEATRE (922 QUEEN STREET EAST) UNTIL SEPTEMBER THIRD