As You Like It is a whimsical wonderfest of Beatles songs

All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \ Les Miserables, 1985)

From the footlights : Shakespeare scholar A. L. Rowse declares AYLI to be "pure comedy, with a pastoral background, and a few touches of more serious intent". In the hands of Director Daryl Cloran it retains those qualities. But it jumps from the Elizabethan woodlands of Warwickshire to Vancouver and the Okanagan Valley in the 60's. Its primary conceit is that it includes 25 Beatles's songs. Says Mr. Cloran, "I have cut a lot of Shakespeare's text to make room for the songs. The Bard's story comes alive through song, as the characters find themselves in the woods where emotions can no longer be contained by words alone." 

AYLI is a tale of two sets of brothers (in each, one is squarely on the outs with their mendacious sibling), two girl cousins born the same day who love each other like twin sisters, a clown, some hippie lamb shepherds, omnipresent Billy Bard cross-dressing that kick-starts a bit of accidental homoerotica, and the end where four couples are joined in matrimony by Hymen, the god of marriage.

The troupe of As You Like It belts out "Love, Love, Love" to close the show.
Photo credit : Tim Mathewson

Who gonna like : Faithful readers will observe that this is normally the final section in a typical BLR review. But not for this show. This is truly My Oh My! theatre that Vancouver is blest to have. While the gruesome but crisply-engaged Macbeth has 25+ performances left in its run into September, AYLI with mainly all the same actors has 50 shows remaining after last night's opening. I heard one patron (avec Bard nametag) allow as how this was his 3rd trip already : the dress rehearsal + one preview before last night. No wonder.

Since BLR's launch in Spring 2012, I have had the pleasure to see more than 250 Greater Vancouver performances. With not even a soupçon of hesitation, I say AYLI is the most imaginative and awesome big-stage musical production I have seen over these past years. 

Its creator Daryl Cloran has done an astonishing job of rendering Shakespeare 100% accessible, even to folks who don't generally prefer the Bard's oblique and often-tricky dialogue. As a prim octogenarian ordering up a tea at intermission properly noted to me, meanwhile, Cloran has captured the "pith" of the original script while blending in a rich array of Beatles' songs performed gustily and lustily by the mainstage Bard troupe. 

We both remarked how Act 1 had been just about the fastest 90 minutes of stage fun we perhaps had ever witnessed. Act smartly. Tickets will evaporate overnight I have no doubt!

How it's all put together : A key scene in the original 1598 script is a wrestling match. Cloran snatches the leitmotif of wrestling, sets it in Vancouver's 1960's popular All-Star Wrestling milieu, and the show starts its smackdown silliness instantly.

During a pre-performance "spontaneous" All-Star Wrestling re-do, Kayvon Khoshkam plays the role of ring announcer then quickly segues into leading the audience in a rousing round of "We All Live In A Yellow Submarine". Once the "pith" of Billy Bard commences we find him, fittingly, in the role of Touchstone the clown. 

Younger son of the late patriarch Rowland de Boys, Orlando (Nadeem Phillip) manages to defeat Duke Frederick's itinerant bone-crusher Charles (Austin Eckert) and meets the winsome Rosalind (Lindsey Angell) in the bargain. They both swoon. But do so to the the Fab Four's "She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand!" that are sung out by all on stage, backed by a 4-piece rock band with Gerald King's lighting quick-stops an exceptional add. 

As noted above, the tale is about estranged brothers and cousins and banishment of the losers. Truly it's more like escape, a Shakespeare "back to the land" motif where the stuffy values of big city parlours are scoffed at. In transit and while resettling upcountry, Rosalind masquerades as a man named Ganymede partly for safety, partly because "This is Shakespeare!" as the cast smirks teasingly elsewhere on the night. 

Harveen Sandhu as Celia / Aliena and Lindsey Angell as Rosaline masquerading as Ganymede-the-youthful-male share news about Ros's heartthrob Orlando.
Photo credit : Tim Matheson

Her beloved cuz Celia (Harveen Sandhu) joins her and adopts the name Aliena to reflect her outlaw status with Dad. Orlando heads upcountry as well when he learns that estranged older brother Oliver (Craig Erickson) wants him not just dispossessed of their father's inheritance for him, but dead, full stop.

Production values that enhance the script :  Easy to indulge in plot-spoiler mode here, more than I have already. But I shan't ruin all the surprises in store for lucky viewers. Suffice to say the following : never mind the Beatles music that was just plain trick, the hippie-dippie costumes stitched together by Carmen Alatorre were absolutely an ace throwback to the day. One could almost smell the cannabis implicitly embedded in the tie-dyes and brocades and paisleys and loud stripes and outlandish shoes the cast sported. ("If you remember the 60's you weren't there!" was a popular slogan for that time.) 

Set designer Pam Johnson's wrestlemania opening scene carried the stage for over half-an-hour, backed by scrims reflecting Vancouver's human-scale neon downtown look before the highrise horrors that shortly would take hold. Her Okanagan orchard follow-up with the upstage VW bus declaring Peace and Love and adorned with gaudy flowers was a terrific touch.

But it is the choreography and blocking and stage business and in-character nuances throughout that capture the imagination the most. Credit Director Cloran, of course, but huge kudos to Choreographer Jonathan Hawley Purvis as well for his blocking prowess. Taken all together, a more effective blend of Billy Bard 17th Century dialogue with Beatles-era music that followed it by some 350 years on cannot, probably, be imagined, duplicated or improved upon.

Acting pin-spots : This script is all about Rosalind and Orlando, without doubt. But Lindsey Angell's excellence in her role as mirrored by Nadeem Phillip in his would by themselves not have been enough to take the show over the top the way it did do. As the clown Touchstone, Kayvon Khoshkam was an Elton John lookalike with his outsize glasses, garish striped suit and non-stop histrionica that absolutely charmed the audience the night through.

As Touchstone the clown, Kayvon Khoshkam was pure scamp and slapstick tease, here with his earthy "country wench" (as Shakespeare described her in the script's original  Dramatis Personnae), Emma Slipp playing a randy Audrey. 
Photo credit : Tim Matheson

Simpleton shepherd Silvius by Ben Elliott and his breathless panting after Phoebe (Luisa Jojic) was constant good fun, their slapstick pratfall routine to "Like No Other Lover" a highlite. Harveen Sandhu as Celia / Aliena and Andrew Wheeler as the aging manservant Adam plus stoned-out lay preacher Martext were always fixing to watch. 

From the tortured / murderous Macbeth, Ben Carlson as the wittily ironic, melancholic Jaques in AYLI brought just the right edge to the part. His "All the world's a stage... / ... His acts being seven ages" soliloquy was commanding : subtle and poignant, neither over- nor under-stated.

Fact is my seatmate and I agreed there wasn't a weak performance anywhere ! As well as some fine strumming and singing of these old Beatle favourites spanning the band's full playlist spectrum, everything from "Help!" to "Across the Universe".

Final thoughts : As among Mamma Mia, Once and As You Like It, this is the most robust swack of musical comedy afoot at one time in Vancouver than ever before. I have no hesitation in recommending each and every one of these shows and would happily, eagerly, go see all three all over again. Each is decidedly different from the others, but quite deliciously so. If you have budget for but one, choose carefully, or maybe make your choice with random abandon. You can't go wrong either way.

Particulars : Produced by Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival, Artistic Director Christopher Gaze. At the BMO Mainstage, Vanier Park. Performances : 50 shows between now and the September 22nd closer. Schedule & ticket information @ bardonthebeach.org. Run-time 150 minutes including intermission. 

Production crew :  Director Daryl Cloran.  Costume Designer Carmen Alatorre.  Set Designer Pam Johnson.  Lighting Designer Gerald King.  Sound Designer/Musical Director Ben Elliott.  Head Voice & Text Coach Alison Matthews.  Choreographer / Fight Director Jonathan Hawley Purvis.  Production Stage Manager Stephen Courtenay.  Assistant Stage Manager Rebeca Mulvihill. Apprentice Stage Manager Jenny Kim.  Directing Apprentice Kim Senklip Harvey. Costume Design Apprentice Emily Fraser.

Performers :  Lindsey Angell (Rosalind).  Scott Bellis (Duke Senior; Duke Frederick).  Ben Carlson (Jaques).  Sharon Crandall (Duke Frederick's Attendant; Corin).  Nicco del Rio (Second Lord; William; Jacques De Boys).  Austin Eckert (Charles the Wrestler; Amiens).  Ben Elliott (Silvius).  Craig Erickson (Oliver De Boys).  Jeff Gladstone (Le Beau; First Lord; Hymen).  Louisa Jojic (Phoebe).  Kayvon Khoshkam (Touchstone). Nadeem Phillip (Orlando De Boys).  Harveen Sandhu (Celia).  Emma Slipp (Audrey).  Andrew Wheeler (Adam; Sir Oliver Martext). 

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Once will charm your sox off with its Irish lilt 

All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \ Les Miserables, 1985)

From the footlights : Once is a musical charmer set in Dublin that is based on a 2007 low-budget indie-flik of the same name written and directed by John Carney. Musicians Glen Hansard (Irish) and Marketa Irglova (Czech) did both the tunes and lyrics, their ballad "Falling Slowly" winning an Academy Award for best song.

But unlike themselves, a real-life couple, the show's protagonists don't fall in love and live happily ever after as in most rom-coms. Their reach for one another as lovers finally exceeds -- or more accurately, evades -- their grasp. But not before they've made some very sexy music together.  (Sidebar : Their script names are neutral, just “Guy” and “Girl”. Slightly off-putting “universal pretentious” i.m.o., but no matter.)

Gili Roskies and Adrian Glynn McMorran charm their instruments, each other, and the audience the night through with a string of touching ballads. 
Photo credit : Emily Cooper

Guy (Adrian Glynn McMorran) is a down-on-his luck busker in Dublin. Girl (Gili Roskies) is an immigrant Czech pianist who is eager, serious and earnest to make her mark musically. She along with a passle of friends makes that happen, but other loves in G-&-G’s lives, off-island, spook them still. So in Enda Walsh's book for the show, each of these two wind up as "the one that got away".

How it's all put together : Some cultures produce a striking and remarkably high percentage of artists in their midst. Think Coast Salish carvers here, or Celtic musicians both on Canada’s eastern seaboard and on the Irish rock out in the Atlantic. To drive the latter point home, the show's twelve actors all play not only their own characters but each is a performing musician as well who fill the seats and jam together in the down-to-earth pub set. (It is a "working pub" to boot -- audience are invited up pre-show and can buy a beer while mingling and dancing with the troupe.)

Nearly a dozen instruments are brought into play, lit.-&-fig., including violins, banjo, mandolin, cello, Peruvian drum box [cajon], accordian, uke, tinwhistle, clarinet and piano and a couple more. One conjures a scene where talented performers spill over in their enthusiasm to share pints and tunes and dreams and disappointments all. What one pundit called "the third place" : a social focal point that is almost as central to their lives as their home and where they work. 

Rousing tunes from night after night jamming in an Irish pub is the fun of this show. 
Photo credit : Emily Cooper

The story is simple : Girl talks Bank Manager (Caitriona Murphy) between BM's bouts on cello and violin to front the money for Guy to do a demo album. Girl's Czech friends band together to make it happen and along the way perform stunning music singly, duet, in trio and a cappella as a chorus. 

Production values that enhance the show : This is a “Where do you begin…?” proposition. Three values primarily drive the sense experience that is Once : longtime Arts Club set designer Ted Roberts obviously pulled out all the stops for Director Bill Millerd’s swan song as artistic director of ACT. Having not yet made it to Eire — despite two futile tries and $1,200 in cancellation fees in four months — I can’t vouch for the verisimilitude of the interior of an Irish pub. But having been a life-long saloon aficionado world-wide, I have to speculate that Roberts’ visually grabby set and lighting are outright religious in their mimic as relics of real-time Irish 3rd places.

Alison Jenkins, John Murphy, Gili Roskies and Sarah Donald all throw their talents at this clever and engaging evening's tale of heart-&-soul. 
Photo credit : Emily Cooper

Then there’s the team of Steven Charles as musical director, Ace Martens as sound designer, and Scott Augustine as choreographer : absolutely World Cup pedigree in every note, every crescendo and pianissimo, every jig & reel by the cast. Kirsten McGhie’s costumes are funky and unpretentious just as they should be for this emigre entourage (Marlene Ginader’s Reza with black hot-pants and torn stocking the most perfect of all) .

The music, the dramatic arc, the pull of it all : The show has been called “bittersweet” by more than one critic, and indeed the closing line of the show’s headliner hit “Falling Slowly” suggests that : “I played the card too late / And now you’re gone” Guy sings, ostensibly written back when about his girlfriend. But really, everybody knows, a tear shed about real-time Girl who he’s leaving behind to try once more with Ex in NYC.

When Girl and Guy sing in duet, one can’t help but make comparisons with what i.m.o. is the only aspect of the t.v. soap opera “Nashville” that really resonated —that of the on/off love as sung between the characters Gunner Scott and Scarlett O’Connor. As with them, McMorran’s multiple octaves and Roskies’ sweet but insistent harmonies compel the ears and snatch the heart.

This is, as said before and always will be, a very simple story of life in a new land — “I’m always serious,” says Girl, “I’m Czech”. Of a crew of Girl’s homies who share a flat and are trying desperately to scrabble their way to blend in to the local scene but stay unique, too. Of how blind the eye can be to love — however fleeting and futile it may happen — even over just a handful of days. 

Acting pin-spots :  The team of McMorran and Roskies is, as suggested above, utterly dynamic and delightful as they circle and dance about both their record-demo deal and their nascent romance. Smitten they are, as is the audience -- from Moment 1 to Guy's last lingering minor key lament -- all night long sharing their stories. 

Of the supporting crew, three particularly stand out though each and every is a core support and convincing. As the music store owner Billy, Chris Cochrane is ever and always a robust and chummy presence. Marlene Ginader’s Reza — reminiscent of her chops in Chelsea Hotel — is a force of nature to be reckoned with : her fiddle playing is wholly in-the-groove while her Czech accent and tough-girl demeanour are consistent fun. Long-drink-of-water Alexander Nicoll as Svec is not only a multi-talented musician, his Me-Czech-learn-Irish schtick were both worth the price of admission.

Who gonna like :  There is a quaint innocence about Once that not only charms but magnetizes. Anyone who’s been an immigrant — a stranger in a strange land — will relate viscerally, intuitively. Obviously to like the pulse of Irish music and not be tone deaf to its nuances will boost one’s enthusiasm for this simple musical heartfelt tale. 

No question. As a summer evening’s divertissement from all the usual goings-on of visiting family and friends and endless BBQ’s and then tripping about chasing one’s own vacation adventures, this is a fun holiday night snatched out of Ireland right here on Granville Island that simply should not to be missed.

Particulars : Produced by Arts Club Theatre at its Granville Island stage. On until July 29, 2018. Tickets & schedule information by phone at 604.687.1644 or www.artsclub.com. Run-time two hours, including intermission.

Production team :  Director Bill Millerd.  Musical Director Stephen Charles.  Choreographer Scott Augustine.  Set and Lighting Designer Ted Roberts.  Costume Designer Kirsten McGhie.  Sound Designer Ace Martens. erald King.  Stage Manager Caryn Fehr. Assistant Stage Manager Ronaye Haynes. Apprentice Stage Manager Alannah Korf.

Performers :  Chris Cochran (Billy, playing guitar, penny whistle, clarinet, cajon, melodian, tambourine, drums).  Sarah Donald (Ex-girlfriend playing violin, cajon).  Vera Frederickson (Ivanka, Girl's daughter).  Marlene Ginader (Reza playing violin, cajon).  Erik Gow (Eamon / Emcee playing piano, guitar, banjo, cajon).  Alison Jenkins  (Baruska, playing accordian, piano, percussion, penny whistle).  Adrian Glynn McMorran (Guy, playing guitar). Caitriona Murphy (Bank Manager playing cello, violin, guitar).  John Murphy (Da, playing mandolin).  Alexander Nicoll (Svec, playing mandolini, banjo, cajon, drum kit, ukelele, guitar).  Scott Perrie (Andrej, playing bass, guitar).  Gili Roskies (Girl, playing piano).  

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Macbeth is well-cut treachery, gore & mayhem

All the basic condition theatre requires is that fire last night & those costumes 

& the human voice & people gathered together.  

Sir Trevor Nunn, Director (Cats, 1981 \ Les Miserables, 1985)

From the footlights : Interpretations of Macbeth are as many as there are directors and performers to do the piece. The 2018 Bard show is by Chris Abraham in his local debut. (His regular day job is Artistic Director of Toronto's Crow's Theatre). While he confesses to "radical re-workings" of other Shakespeare scripts previously, this one he "wants to strip down to its muscular core...anchored in a very visceral approach to the language and staging...something like the conditions [its] first audiences might have."

Most critics focus on Macbeth as a greedily ambitious and prideful anti-hero for whom it's all about power. They link his murderous rampages either to his temptress wife and/or to fate as represented by Hecate and the three weird sisters. Director Abraham hints he may be thus inclined, too. This tumultuous tag-team comprises "two of the most terrifying and devastating tragic figures imagined by Shakespeare...at times chillingly amoral and at others superhumanly sublime in their suffering," he declares.

Lady Macbeth (Moya O'Connell) surveys the results of screwing one's courage to the sticking point on the face of husband Macbeth (Ben Carlson) .
Photo credit : David Cooper

There's another possibility, of course. As raised by Shakespeare himself in Act 5 Sc. 3 : mental illness. Just before her suicide, her husband describes her as beset by "the written troubles of the brain" and "perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart". Macbeth's doctor responds as if by rote reflecting society's attitudes over the years toward mental illness : "Therein the patient must minister to himself," he proclaims.

How it's all put together : The moral ambiguity on the cusp between Elizabethan and Jacobean times at the turn of the 17th century is caught by the witches a mere 12 lines into the piece, which -- to be unabashedly trite -- also aptly describes life in DC four centuries hence: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air."

Interesting the obvious disconnect between this 1606 script and the day-to-day Christian schisms between Catholic Scotland -vs- Anglican England.  Eye of newt and tongue of dog are a far cry from bread and wine as the sacraments of Christ's body and blood after all. It is said wretched Puritanism resurrected demonology practices and rituals. And indeed the setting and plot appear to be ripped straight out of pagan druid times and traditions and climes.

The rough-cut wood-hewn functional two-tier set with virtually no stage furniture -- other than, briefly, an empty cradle belonging to the dead baby Lady Macbeth mourns -- allows the audience to focus fully on the dialogue and the insidious self-absorption of the grasping and desperate Macbeths.

What the Bard reveals to viewers right up-front : This imagining by Director Abraham is all about the script and the actors. Any doubt that this alleged anti-hero really is just plain old-fashion villainy writ large is betrayed -- I humbly submit -- only 190 lines into the piece when Macbeth soliloquies this aside : 

"Why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs / Against the use of nature? Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings / My thought, whose murder (sic) yet is but fantastical / Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smother'd in surmise / And nothing is but what is not."  

A more compelling bit of foreshadowing up-close-&-personal probably exists nowhere else in drama or literature.

Some say Macbeth grows "increasingly mad". Maybe not. Maybe consummately mad from moment one. Only more dedicated as time passes to his crescendoing paranoid evil, not unlike a certain Austrian corporal named Adolf. Has moments of doubt, needs some cajoling and badgering and threats from the good wife to steal a t.v. cliche. 

Speaking of "lady" Macbeth -- whether in mourning for a dead infant or no -- mere moments after the warrior's "horrible imaginings" of murder and mayhem she offers up how "The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements. Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty."

So perhaps we should not over-analyze or complexify the obvious. This play is Shakespeare doing a horror-movie in the flesh and real-time. Which quite frankly makes it less the kind of dramatic exercise that Chris Abraham wants from us -- "Macbeth is a play that asks its audience to forge a unbique bond with its protagonists" -- than just plain outright shocking terror with a few psycho-drama moments thrown in. Like Banquo's ghost appearances at dinner and LadyM's "out damn spot" crash just before she suicides.

Production values that enhance the script : On opening night, it being Father's Day, my 25-year-old daughter accompanied me. She was wow'd by the consistency and polish of the actors' performances overall. No upstaging by any one character, no weak cast members at all. By the richness and genuineness of Christine Reimer's costumes, particulary for Banquo (Craig Erickson) and Macduff (Andrew Wheeler). 

By Owen Belton's tympany-thick and pounding soundscape plus its purposely atonal bagpipe skirls and screeches offset by friendlier bird trills and cricket chirps. By the excellence and realism of the fight sequences choreographed by Jonathan Hawley Purvis. By Gerald King's clever lighting and the incessant hazer fog accompanying the lights'  nuanced changes. I couldn't agree more.

Acting pin-spots : Arguably Director Abraham has commanded a production whose protagonists are maybe not Macbeth (Ben Carlson) and LadyM (Moya O'Connell) quite as much as it is a showcase for the Weird Sisters with whom I did indeed form a "unique bond". Kate Besworth as Witch 2 was shriekishly compelling, her voice and stage manner a mirror of her fright hair. But Emma Slipp as Chief Witch and Harveen Sandhu as the third voice in this menacing trio were no mere shadows or also-rans. The crowd jumped to its feet for them all at curtain. Their performances were utterly magnetizing.

But take nothing away in the least from Mr. Carlson and Ms. O'Connell. Each of their iconic soliloquies as they faced their certain fates at play's end were stunning. The 20-second pause between the announcement of Mrs. Macbeth's suicide and the start of her husband's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" lament was brilliant. His rendering of those fate-filled lines of raw unabashed existential agony was perhaps the most unnerving delivery I have ever witnessed either on stage or film. Never has the word "idiot" struck harder.

Who gonna like : This is hard-core Shakespeare. Despite the infamous drunken Porter scene by Kayvon Khoshkam for a moment's wee diversion, there are no giggles to be had here. Evil is as evil does. We choose our persona, we command our life performances. 

Unless, of course, we are certifiably mentally unbalanced. Which I suggest these murderers may in fact just be, all the centuries of psychoanalysis and decrypting of their motives and ambition and greed and self-doubt to the contrary notwithstanding. That may make them more understandable but not particularly pitiable even when our better angels are asked to ramp up the empathy radar.

Folks looking for vehement and unremitting earnestness from their Macbeth "favourites" will find the 2018 Bard version of the show utterly exhilarating, embracing and breathtaking.

Particulars : Produced by Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival, Artistic Director Christopher Gaze. At the BMO Mainstage, Vanier Park. Performances : 28 shows between now and the September 13th closer. Schedule & ticket information @ bardonthebeach.org. Run-time 150 minutes including intermission. 

Production crew :  Director Chris Abraham. Costume Designer Christine Reimer.  Set Designer Pam Johnson.  Lighting Designer Gerald King.  Sound Designer/Composer Owen Belton. Head Voice & Text Coach Alison Matthews. Fight Director Jonathan Hawley Purvis. Associate Fight Director Jacqueline Loewen.  Production Stage Manager Stephen Courtenay.  Assistant Stage Manager Rebeca Mulvihill. Apprentice Stage Manager Jenny Kim.  Directing Apprentice Marie Farsi. Costume Design Apprentice Alaia Hamer.

Performers :  Lindsey Angell (Lady Macduff).  Scott Bellis (Duncan ; Doctor).  Kate Besworth (Witch 2; Fleance).  Ben Carlson (Macbeth).  Nicco del Rio (Macduff's son).  Austin Eckert (Ross).  Ben Elliott (Lennox).  Craig Erickson (Banquo).  Jeff Gladstone (Malcolm).  Kayvon Khoshkam (Sergeant; Porter; Seyton).  Moya O'Connell (Lady Macbeth).  Nadeem Phillip (Donalbain).  Harveen Sandhu (Witch #3).  Emma Slipp (Head Witch).  Andrew Wheeler (Macduff). 

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