Venus In Fur supplies laughs & lots more

In Ars Poetica Horace famously declared that literature has two purposes : prodesse et delectare -- to teach and to please. The David Ives script Venus In Fur now robust-in-delivery at ACT's Granville Island stage may not set out to teach much, but it sure delectares the heck out of us with a swack of put-on S-M hoopla. A night of mostly-feigned whippings, chains, bulldog collars, trussings and spiked leather boots is what you'll see and what you'll get. But in the process no small bit of perspective on sexual politics over the past 150 years -- a chunk of prodesse after all about the politics of gender -- underscores the comic riffs.

On one level, the play is almost trite and self-conscious: a play about two players practicing at playing in a play. On a psychosexual level, however, VIF is about power, dominance, submission and a whole other range of goofy human tricks -- including cruelty, verbal and physical -- that mark our species' tromp through life. Director David Mackay has coughed up the perfect R-rated comic fare for Vancouver in preparation for Hallowe'en -- plopping us for 90 consecutive minutes in a world where to know for certain when the costumes, games and shenanigans end and "reality" begins is ever up for grabs.

Plot overview : Playwright Ives creates a fictional playwright, one Thomas Novachek (Vincent Gale) who has written a script based on a 19th century Austrian eroti-novel Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (a.k.a."Masoch"). The novel's plot involves an aristocrat named Severin Kushemski who wills himself into sexual submission at the hands of lady Vanda Dunayev. The play opens at the end of a day during which director Novachek has auditioned some 35 women for the part of Dunayev -- vainly. Abruptly one somewhat-too-conveniently-named Wanda -- Wanda Jordan (Linsey Angell) -- washes in, blown through the door late-in-the-day by a thunderstorm. Novachek is bitchy. Jordan's name was not on the call-list and besides Thomas is late for a date with his fiancee. To capture his bad hair day, he's just yelled into his cell phone : "Whatever happened to femininity?" This to his "true love" in 21st-century time. Enough said. His karmic blast of pique foreshadows the schemes and themes of the rest of the play. 

When Novachek tries to brush her off, Jordan -- dressed in black leathers under a trench coat -- whines and wheedles and pouts and sulks like a ditz with lots of Fuck! and Thanks, God! But in the end Thomas surrenders, tellingly. There is something about this Wanda Jordan that's more than ditz & chutzpah. He lets her try out to be Vanda in the Dunayev role while he reads Kushemski's lines. In doing the audition schtick, Novachek and Jordan each jump in and out of their Masoch characters and nitter-natter back-&-forth:  What does this line mean? What is this character about, here? On the meta level, it's an intricate dance of power : does the director have the lead or the actress? When is Novachek being Kushemski, when is he just himself, the schmuck Thomas? When is Wanda being Vanda Dunayev, when is she Jordan? Who knows? Does playwright David Ives even know? It doubtless helps to be reminded, meanwhile, that the word "masochism" -- the melancholy erotic love of subjugation and dominance and sexual release therefrom -- was coined in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing, derived after his reading of Masoch's roman a clef, said Venus in Furs.

First impressions & character-take :  VIF is perhaps not genius play-writing, but it's closer than most fare we see locally. David Ives overlays adaptations from the Masoch script that "Thomas Novachek" has written with instantaneous flips back to the contemporary audition action. And it's actor Angell who is the centrepiece of his focus despite the fact that Gale is the play's protagonist. Angell's ability to shape-shift from somewhat scatter-brained but street-smart 2013 lipster to a 19th century dame a la Vanessa Redgrave is the reason to see this show not once but more. In doing so she mines the two scripts she's working from for pertinent observations about sexual repression in the Hapsburg empire and that of to-day. As Kushemski/Novachek, Gale is dynamic and forceful and utterly worthy, but no one! could match the magic that Angell inspires. Hers is a mix of juicy comic facials riddled with Aha! pronouncements about the sexism behind both scripts -- that men for all time have subjugated women but when they triumph doing so, they then blame women for creating men's self-inflicted miseries borne of bullying and repression. Yang quashes yin instead of blending with it harmoniously -- symbiosis be damned -- power is all. 

What happens, what doesn't :  The play-within-the-play -- the one about Kushemski and Dunayev -- is the perfect set-up  to reveal playwright Ives' truths. Kushemski recalls a beating when a youth by an aunt with a birchwood cane while he was restrained by two household servants. He subsequently has erotic dreams about the incident. Women, he says, supply men "delicious cruelty". He wants to live in a world where "there can be nothing more sensuous than pain or more pleasurable than degradation." Kushemski tells Dunayev he wants "...to have no will of my own, to be your property and vanish in your sublime essence." 

For her part Dunayev resists. She's an early feminist : "In our society, a woman's only power is through men. Her character is her lack of character. She's a blank, to be filled in by creatures who at heart despise her. I want to see what woman will be when she ceases to be men's slave, when she has the same rights as he, when she's his equal in education and his partner in work. When she becomes herself. An individual." 

After this speech, Wanda jumps out-of-character and remarks about the script "She's really ahead of her time, isn't she?" To which writer/director Novachek glibly replies : "Women's rights, yadda, yadda...".  Flip back to the Kushemski/Dunayev script. Vanda's lines are these : "Severin, don't you see? Don't you understand you'll never be safe in the hands of a woman? Of any woman?" Real-time Wanda snaps once again at Thomas: "Now this part is so sexist it makes me like scream. This is like some old Victorian Teutonic tract against Das Female. He forces her into a power play and then he blames her." 

At this the male ego of writer/director Thomas explodes : "How can you be so good at playing her, and be so fucking stupid about her? You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot woman. Yes. Idiot woman. Idiot actress." Wanda calmly but incisively replies : "It's a good thing there's no such thing as a goddess or you'd be fucked, buster." Aha! for the audience. S.s.d.d. is what Ives is driving at. The more men change the more they stay the same. Patriarchal values rule. Sexual dualities are still the norm. Or so men insist.

The end of the play brings first of all a sex scene induced by Wanda without any great amount of fondling or petting or squeezing or even deep-throating -- just some tame kissing. Still a hush falls over the house the scene's so breathtaking in its intimacy. Quickly followed by the climax, a role-reversal scenario that promises bloodshed and revenge to exquisite thunder and lightning. As mentioned, karma prevails. Enough said.

Production values : Sound designer Brian Linds replicates thunder as good as anything God ever provides Bard on the Beach during a summer squall. Maybe better. Set and lighting designer John Webber produces a functional set of rented warehouse faux brick and fluorescent lights, though it's a bit too orderly. The love seat enshrouded in covers, however, works both "real" and as symbol quite nicely. Costume designer Christine Reimer's duds for the characters in both scripts -- leathers to lace to gentlemen's smoking jacket to footman's frock -- are spot on. 

The key pieces : (1) Timing. Ives' remarkable talent in this script lies in how quickly his characters can jump from their roles acting out the "Masoch 19th-century script" back to themselves as 2013 "Novachek audition" participants -- Jordan as prospective actor Dunayev in his play and Novachek as writer/director reading the actor Kushemski's lines. (2) The patriarchal theme. Patriarchy underscores the action both then and now. Appropriately, its hypocrisy is all but neutered, if just for an eye-blink, in the final scene. (3) Linsey Angell. Nevermind the ironic catch of her real-life last name. Hers is a bravura performance of wit and subtlety that will make any viewer's heart race. Doubly impressive given her recent graduation from the Langara College Studio 58 program.

Who gonna like : Anyone who has ever acted or written for theatre or directed or done technical support will love the play / meta-play interaction of David Ives' script. People looking for something different to amuse & titillate & challenge their crania in ways a typical sit-com cannot will find their money well-invested. People who prefer straightforward tales with predictable thematic or stylistic tropes will find Venus in Fur a wee challenge, but should stretch their boundaries because they will agree the execution by actor Linsey Angell is just flat-out terrific. And Victor Gale is a mere half-gasp behind her. 

P.S. The drama-zine American Theater reports there are 22 productions of VIF either currently underway or scheduled for the '13-'14 professional season in USA -- more than any other play.

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Other Desert Cities reminds of Streetcar &c.

To 2013 Americans, a family showdown at Christmas between retired Depression-born Republican parents and Democrat GenX children might seem trite. Not so much perhaps for Canadians accustomed to Handshake Dad Steve Harper. So ACT's Other Desert Cities that opened last night will likely find enthusiasts of various ages in Vancouver.

The script by Jon Robin Baitz neatly captures Count Leo Tolstoy's insight at the start of his novel Anna Karenina : "Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Plot Overview : Meet the Bickertons, er, the Wyeths,  gathering in Palm Springs, 2004, a year after George W. Bush and his fake WMDs scammed the U.S. into the Iraq war. Daughter Brooke (Anna Galvin) swoops home from Long Island after a 6-year interlude trying to write a second "promising" novel. Only to get pock-marked by writer's block, depression, and hospitalization at a Harvard hospital. Shortly she announces she's written a memoir instead -- about the suicide of her brother Henry at age 15 after he'd got caught up with Weather Underground-style anarchists. A bomb they built "accidentally" killed somebody at the Venice City army recruiting office c. 1974 at the same time Nixon was carpet-bombing Cambodia. Henry freaks and flees. A suicide note is found in a discarded shoe of his on a Black Ball ferry out of Seattle, though his body never did wash up.

As powerful blue-blood Republicans who were personal friends of President-to-be Ronnie Reagan and wife Nancy back in the day, mom Polly (Gabrielle Rose) and dad Lyman (Alan Gray) clearly would prefer Brooke not scrape away madly at their scar tissue and re-aggravate such a grievous family wound via her memoir. There are family appearances and reputations at stake, don't you know. For her part, Polly's alcoholic sister Silda (Gwynyth Walsh) delights to catalyze all the crackly interpersonal snipes and jibes that gush out of these people. Baby-of-the-family son Trip (Benjamin Elliott) tries, unsuccessfully, to act as peacemaker.

First impressions :  ODC is all about its dialogue. Lovers of Neil Simon-style clever smart-ass commentary a la that in The Odd Couple will find much to amuse. A typical Trip observation refers to the boozy, increasingly resentful reunion as a "stiff upper-lipped thermonuclear family war". Such stuff resonates throughout, mostly from mom. Dad, a former 'B' movie actor and Reagan-appointed ambassador, pines for his past : "Maybe I prefer acting, with my lines written down." Polly says of her neurotic daughter Brooke : "There are lots of locked doors in her doll house." Of sister Silda she remarks : "Families get terrorized by their weakest members." Of the constant bickering, Polly says : "Acting or real, the two are hardly mutually exclusive in this family." Trip says of Brooke : "You think being depressed makes you 'special'; your depression makes you banal." Brooke dismisses the family : "I am so tired of the indentured servitude of family." On a superficial level this is potboiler stuff, but Tolstoy's "own way" dictum for unhappy families imagines the possibility of love behind all the anger and angst and corrosive byplay being rhymed off on-stage. And ultimately does reveal itself.

What happens, what doesn't :  The first act starts out agreeably enough with the family playing tennis together. When they get home, the character development starts innocently. Brooke calls the endless sunshine of Palm Springs "ridiculous". Mom Polly is revealed as a faux-Texan who's really a countryclub Jew -- a wannabe goy -- and acts like one to a fault.  Trip writes and produces "Jury of Your Peers", a reality t.v. show that dad dismisses, airily, as a show where "being right or wrong is less relevant than being funny".

Shortly, however, the verbal knives come out between Brooke and Polly, primarily, with Silba also exchanging zingers and challenges with her sister. (Once upon a time they co-wrote schlock Hollywood screenplays together.) During the VietNam era Republicans stood for the proposition "My country right or wrong!" During the post-9/11 epoch, Republicans seem to endorse Polly's views that include : "I don't like weakness." "The world can die of too much sensitivity." "I hate to be fair." "Children today want a free pass." Silba, for her part, counters: "Your politics are offensive to normal people; you goad people with them." 

This flip-flop between Simon-esque glibness and family character assassination continues, troublesomely, throughout the play. Is this situation comedy Robbie Baitz wants us to enjoy, or is this more Streetcar Named Desire stuff or that of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Finally comes the climax of the second act that propels the script more toward the latter than the former. 

Brooke, pig-headed like her mother Polly, insists she's going to go ahead and allow the New Yorker to serialize her memoir starting two months hence. Polly claims that would be a betrayal and would destroy the family and would put an end to her "love" for her daughter. Normally mild-mannered diplomat dad Lyman concurs -- his "love", too, is conditional. He asks that Brooke defer publication until after he and his wife have died. If she goes ahead, her doing so will result in her permanent banishment from his version of the family. Still Brooke threatens to go back to New York to do just that. At that point Lyman cracks, and out comes the great family secret that changes everything. BLR would serve no useful purpose to provide this plot-spoiler.

Character take : Director Rachel Ditor calls ODC a "well-made play" whose script carries the night. "Casting might be the most important decision a director makes," she declares in the program notes. "The closer you can get to really hearing the rhythms in the writing, the tone, the humour, the author's interests, the stronger your production will be." 

Okay, let's start there. It's the rhythms in the casting that don't always work here. Particularly so with Rose as Polly. From her opening line she doesn't project her character so much as shout! it. Her delivery throughout, until the climax, is about 10 decibels louder than anyone else's and was distracting rather than engaging. She brought to mind Ken Kesey's character Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Off the page of Kesey's book Ratched shouted and stormed. In the excellent Milos Forman movie adaptation, by comparison, actress Louise Fletcher made Ratched 100-times more sinister by being restrained, controlled, more visceral than loud. So needs Polly's character to be.

As Brooke, Galvin displays the part of neurotic daughter writer histrionique with gusto, but not much subtlety except with some scenes with Elliott as Trip. For his part Alan Gray's dad Lyman was a journeyman mix of loving father / struggling patriarch / victim of his times then and now.

Two best performances i.m.o. were from Walsh as Silda in her depiction as the alcoholic in whom in vino veritas spews forth regardless even as the dry drunk she now is. Highest kudos, however, go to Elliott as Trip. His dialogue captures the play's best themes due to his delivery, as when he challenges Brooke : "You mean art comes before life? Losing the trust of the people you love for the sake of these opinions of yours?" Or to the entire family near the end : "I just see that we all live with each other's divergent truths." And : "As you take your last breath all that will have mattered is how much you loved, that's it." 

Production values : Set designer Amir Ofek wins the prize for his clever 60's stage-wide set of Palm Springs : acorn fireplace in front of floor-to-ceiling syncopated sandstone flatbrick. Rectangular squat chairs and settees. IKEA liquor cabinet of ersatz wood. Built-in wall-length bookshelves with pix of Nancy and Ronnie. Cantilevered steps out to a swim pool that shortly slides under the living room floor to bring the action closer downstage. 

Costume designer Drew Facey executed well, overall, but why Lyman's signature blue blazer was two inches short in the body -- off-the-rack from Zellers instead of Brooks Brothers tailor-fit -- I just can't fathom. 

Choice of the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" as background was just right except for selecting some anonymous contemporary cover group rather than using the original score by the Boys themselves. God only knows indeed.

Who gonna like : Folks who like family squabbles or feuds or dysfunction as their preferred fare -- I love such stageplay! -- will come away not displeased by this energetic and eager but somewhat flawed production. While uneven, the Baitz script is nevertheless worth a listen and plays out well on the Ofek set that spans the Stanley stage. 

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Actors rip into Findley script at Vanier Park

First impressions :  Elizabeth Rex is a spicy, sex-driven tale purpose-built for the contemporary stage: power politics meets sexual politics meets theatrical games. The late Canadian actor, novelist, essayist & playwright Timothy Findley fantasizes that Shakespeare's acting troupe spends a night yakking it up with Queen Elizabeth I in a barn behind her castle in 1601. The play is staged as a 15-year flashback viewed through the prism of Shakespeare's mind hours before his final exit: he supposedly imagines all this on the eve of his death at 52 in April, 1616. It's as if he's directing the play that in the time QEI lived (d. 1603) would dare not speak its name because of its myriad sexual revelations. The setting is almost whimsical, like an impromptu talk-back between cast and audience replete with chicken fingers & ale. WS opens the show thus: "These are the only truths I know -- I know no other truths but these. We play so many roles before we die -- and then...we die." Sandwich'd between his front-&-back-end monologues is the following play-within-a-play.

Plot overview : Shakespeare's troupe, Lord Chamberlain's Men (LCM) has just performed Much Ado About Nothing for Queen Bess as divertissement. The 67-year-old monarch is troubled this Shrove Tuesday night because her former lover turned traitor, the 30-something Earl of Essex, is to be beheaded at dawn on Ash Wednesday by her command. Thanks to a convenient curfew on the streets of London -- Bess fears there may be a pro-Essex uprising -- LCM is forced to bivouac overnight in the royal stables. Seeking further distraction throughout the long night of waiting, the queen joins the troupe unannounced and demands their continued entertainment of her.

The play's conceit : In real life QEI is quoted as having said: "Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak, you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind." And further: "I have the heart of a man, not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything." The queen wonders whether she can now tame her constant "manliness" and summon the emotion to mourn her lost love. Her antagonist, meanwhile, is LCM actor Ned Lowenscroft whose career championed his playing women's roles because women were not permitted to act in Elizabethan times. He is not only gay (as was Findley himself), his late soldier lover Captain Hal gave him the "pox". AIDS-like lesions now cover his body. He fears he will die soon. In contrast to "King Elizabeth", Ned the perpetual woman on-stage wonders whether he has sufficient "man" in him off-stage to face death bravely. Most of the action involves bouts of sometimes surreal verbal jousting between the so-called "virgin queen"and the commoner gay actor whom Bess was so impressed with when he played Beatrice in the MAAN performance. For his part WS wanders through the barn fitfully. He scritches out snippets of dialogue for his latest work-in-progress and along the way admits his chief love in life was Essex's co-conspirator the Earl of Southampton. 

What to expect @ Vanier Park :  Despite a cast of 14, Findley's focus is clearly on the three principals -- the queen (Colleen Wheeler), Lowenscroft (Haig Sutherland), and WS (David Marr). Because of Bess's intrigue at the "how" Lowenscroft brings to his women's roles on stage, she offers him a carte blanche ticket to act in whatever role he wants during the evening's long wait for the axe to fall on Essex's neck. This leads at one point to the nearly absurd exchange between them when she shrieks at him he's but a "Beatrice in britches!" and he retorts she's but her father "King Henry in skirts!" That's a script problem, however, not the actors' fault. Generally Wheeler finds just the right words to shout out with full-on regal contempt, such as "Ingrate!" that she bellows to correct one of the troupe who has referred to Essex as a "reprobate" instead. Wheeler conjures for me the memory of Glenda Jackson's Elizabeth R role, a tour de force, on USA's Masterpiece Theatre some 40 years back. Powerful. Richly evocative. Sarcasm in whiffs, drips and globs. She and Sutherland swap words with rapier-fast delivery and artful, purposeful injury to one another in search of each other's alter ego, if there in fact is one for either of them. Findley tries to convince us here, but his words don't quite pull it off by play's end. [See "warnings" section below.]

As WS, David Marr infuses the Bard with fretful believability. When Bess accuses him of being a "vagabond from reality" who produces on stage "histories that are lies", Marr quite forcefully lets her know he wears such an accusatory mantle proudly. Stage plays are "art", not "life", he insists, always plumping for compassion to triumph over vengeance. Which in his world he lets happen; in hers she does not. "And if, because I love him I spare him, I will then have killed the man in me who is England's only defence against her enemies," she says. And : "I killed the woman in my heart, that England might survive...".

Thank god for comic relief in the play. It comes from two sources primarily, the role of the troupe's nearly-blind seamstress Kate "Tardy" Tardwell who's always kvetching at the actors for how they abuse her costumes. Lois Anderson absolutely nails this role with wonderful stage business, gesticulation, voice and body action. As the aging former clown Percy Gower, Bernard Cuffling never fails to raise a giggle with his various plaints and antics. Mention, too, must be made of Andrew Wheeler in his Irishman's Jack Edmund turn. A proper blend of a stiff and unhappy obeisance to Her Majesty, with his Dublinesque peasant's contempt for the English nevertheless right on his sleeve at all times. Strong and steady performances by the balance of the ensemble, though Findley didn't give them much to do but to watch and listen to the Main 3. (As Lowencroft's "rescue bear" -- saved from certain death in the bear bait pits of the times -- Benjamin Elliott makes the life-size ursine Hush Puppy almost, well, "believable".)

Production values : Rachel Ditor squeezes every ounce of skill from her cast in this compleat outing at the studio stage. While Findley's script gets somewhat rambly and redundant and preachy in Act II, Ditor manages her crew well so they deliver crisply and evocatively regardless. Still, to hack maybe 10-15 minutes off thru use of a deft editor's scalpel wouldn't hurt the play's intent or impact, i.m.o. Scenic designer Drew Facey's Elizabethan barn / actors' hang-out acquits itself admirably, as did his Measure for Measure New Orleans grillwork. Costume designer Mara Gottier has both eye and touch that please : whether brocaded gowns or actors' skivvies -- not to mention Bess's wigs atop her shaved head -- all of it suits the time and the characters perfectly. Patrick Pennefather's period music helped set a proper Elizabethan tone and mood. 

Politics-of-sex warnings : Since its premier in 2000, critics have termed Findley's script "didactic", "derivative", "contrived" and "dated" given the yin-yang stereotypes being examined: yin "softness" -vs- yang "hardness; head -vs- heart; ideas/decisions -vs- feelings/empathy. Even the gender-swapping aspect of the play -- the butchy queen 

-vs- the bitchy quean -- is declared cliche and finds no end of detractors. But like WS scripts themselves such as Taming of the Shrew, Findley's Rex requires suspension of disbelief and tolerance for stereotypes both traditional and contemporary. For prospective viewers, it's a case of wysiwyg and caveat emptor both.

Should you go? : The above "warning" notwithstanding, Elizabeth Rex squares nicely with the Bard on the Beach Shakespearean format, no question. And the excellent cast performances will delight, particularly Colleen Wheeler's Elizabeth. Another "big win" for this year's ensemble that year-after-year helps shape summer's cultural identity in Vancouver.

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M4M is no tragicomedy as done by BotB, nosiree!

First impressions : The trick in staging Measure for Measure for contemporary audiences is for the director to determine whether the show is more comic than mordant, more tittle than tattle, more to fun with or to preach. As adapted nearly wholesale by director John Murphy, there is not one scintilla of the tragic in any of it. His version exploits the script for every ounce of fun, sport & amusement Billy Bard imagined and then...a lot more ! Song, dance, mardi gras masques galore, horns, strings, drums, parades, a whole she-bang! of stuff dancing about studio stage. The crowd's eager laughter and clapping throughout prove this Murphy's law is quite unlike the usual "If anything can go wrong..." warning of the original.

Plot overview : 1603 Vienna is re-set by Murphy in 1903 New Orleans, in The District, a.k.a. Storyville. The Duke of Creole duchy wants the place cleaned up of its "bawds" -- WS's all-purpose word for brothels, pimps, prostitutes, johns, barkeeps, entertainers and anyone else even remotely infected by association with such venues. But the Duke lacks the fortitude to do it. Because for nearly two decades he's let rompery and debauchery prevail. So he fakes a sabbatical in friar's tucks and gives his oxymoronic deputy Angelo the job to do for him. This challenge Angelo undertakes with satanic alacrity. He sees Julietta about to give birth. He knows no banns were ever published by her betrothed Claudio. So under an age-old puritan law against fornication, he orders Claudio beheaded to make an example of him. Sister Isabella, a novitiate at a nearby convent, pleads with Angelo to spare her brother. Angelo agrees, on the condition Isabella sleep with him. Enter Friar/Duke once more. He plots with Isabella to have Angelo's former fiancee Mariana sleep with Angelo instead, thus saving Isabella's virtue and Claudio's life -- WS's popular "bed trick". Friar/Duke schemes yet another switcheroo in prison when he learns Angelo has reneged on the deal : Claudio is to lose his head anyway despite Angelo's midnight laydown with "Isabella" as previously agreed.

What happens, what doesn't : Dixieland music written by musical director Benjamin Elliott leaps out from Moment 1 of the production with a classic Bourbon Street funeral dirge plunked out on the ancient Mendelssohn Piano Co. upright by the Duke (Andrew Wheeler). Within a bar or two, bordello matron Mistress Overdone (Lois Anderson) belts out a torch song "Lady of the Night" and we know quite where this version of "tragicomedy" is headed. Fact is critics and academics often assail WS's Measure because the first act's set-up is viewed as largely tragic (the fall from grace of arch-Angelo), while act two slips more into a series of comic relief bits. In #M4M2013, it's all slapschtick from front-to-back, both vertical & horizontal mambo the reigning dance routine. Lots of nudge-nudge/wink-wink with the audience. Circus whistles. Cued mission bell chimes. Sight gags. Keystone cop chases. Pratfalls. The works. A host of cheapjack brothel denizens panting and slavering in dixie cadence.

Obviously Shakespeare purists ain't a-gonna get as smitten by all this madcap tomfoolery as both the BotB cast and the crowd obviously were. As noted in the Hamlet review -- judging by their robust enthusiasms -- the Vanier Park bunch generally will plump for more accessibility to Shakespeare's wordsmithery through imaginative staging than for faithfulness to 17th century Elizabethan manners, costumes and script. So that's what this crew provides. Tunefully. Effervescently. Splashily.

Character strengths : To try to isolate or rank excellence in performance in this year's Measure is a mug's game, for sure. As Duke/Friar, Andrew Wheeler flips back-&-forth between the slapsticky stuff but also gives off dukely airs in a more serious way. He does so capably and convincingly. The four comedians of the piece -- Lois Anderson as Mistress Overdone; Anton Lipovetsky as Lucio; David Marr as Pompey; Chris Cochrane as constable Elbow -- almost trip over one another in excellent turns. WS gave Lucio the biggest bit, and Lipovetsky nails it, but Marr as circus clown Pompey steals many a scene, except the ones Cochrane does. For her part Anderson is torchy and raunchy and humpy-manic line-after-line. And the more minor comic parts for Froth/Bernardine were executed bibulously by music man Elliott. 

Though somewhat small a part for all its central-ness, Claudio (Luc Roderique) makes us believe. But it's sister Isabella (Sereana Malani) who is featured in the promo photos no doubt quite on purpose. Along with senior bureaucratic advisor Escalus (Bernard Cuffling), only those two characters are more traditional in their staging and delivery. Mr. Cuffling as always brings his "just right" mature style and sonorous delivery to each of his lines. For her part, Malani was word-perfect, to this ear, in every soliloquy, every importuning plea to Angelo (David Mackay). I would see Measure again to hear her words and watch her deliver them, passionately, alone. Mackay, meanwhile, was solid and consistent in portraying Angelo's hypocrisy and duplicity.

Production values : Again it's difficult to weight the praise. Scenic designer Drew Facey makes the most of the studio stage potential with its New Orleans grillwork doubling as prison bars plus the three trapdoors to the jail's bowels. Costume designer Mara Gottler excels particularly with Mistress Overdone's garish but sumptuous get-up. Lucio's suit-&-spats and cane were spot-on, while the mardi gras parade costumes and masques on the musicians were clever beyond description. Choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg delivers many crisp flings and jumps and pirouettes to add to the fun. In the end, however, it has to be Benjamin Elliott's original N'awlins ersatz music -- kind of Jacques Brel meets Buena Vista Social Club meets Tennessee Ernie Ford meets the Dukes of Dixieland. His playful tunes and soft ballads punctuate and best capture the cachet of John Murphy's adaptation of WS's Measure. One wee caveat : all the faux Southern accents were, well, not only contrived and irregular in delivery, were also quite unnecessary as Malani's accent-less excellence proved. 

Who gonna like, who not so much : As noted, period piece prefer-ers will not enthuse. But that's not what Studio Stage is all about. For the rest, there's lots to amuse visually and much BillyB language precision and Elliott-music to tickle the eardrums.

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Hamlet is Jonathon Young writ large

First impressions : Contemporary troupes are all about making Shakespeare "accessible" to 21st century playgoers. Bard on the Beach director Kim Collier aces that concept in her version of Hamlet. Her staging exploits i-Phones and laptops and split-screen 40" t.v.'s as active devices, not just stage props. For its part the setting could be Abbotsford for all the gangster motifs in it, including myriad handguns. But conceiving and blocking and staging a play can be for nought if the players aren't equal to the challenge. No issue here. Because as Hamlet, Jonathon Young gives viewers endless scene after scene of breathtaking originality, imagination, creativity and kinesis.

Plot overview :  Make no mistake. This is Shakespeare. Serious WS. There may be two laughs in the entire performance. It's Hamlet's existential sizzle that sells the steak here. He's a Wittenberg campus frat-boy come home to Denmark. Only to find that his dad, King Hamlet, is dead. Worse, Mom Gertrude has up and married the new self-appointed king, his uncle Claudius, within a month or two of Hamlet pere's demise. And if all that weren't sufficiently Freudian and iffy in deed as well as thought, there're also rumours floating about of an agitated ghost who's haunting Elsinore nightly. Sure enough. Dad. And he wants revenge for the fratricide / regicide by little brother.

What happens, what doesn't : Whereas Macbeth has lots of plot activity, Hamlet is a thinker's play. He's a ditherer and a procrastinator and a morally-riven soul. He "wants" to revenge Dad's death, but he just "can't". Hamlet plots and schemes, but he just can't seem to bring himself to "do". Part of his scheming is to fake madness. In doing so he renounces his love for Ophelia and orders her to hie herself to a whorehouse (nunnery). And because Collier opens the play with Hamlet and Ophelia nuzzling horizontally downstage centre -- an original insertion and part of the "accessibility" piece -- the result is a boy-breaks-off-with-girlfriend speech that wounds grievously, viscerally. It was one of the most poignant and compelling scenes in the play (whereas the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy was done somewhat matter-of-factly, in a kind of "on the one hand this, on the other that" style that nevertheless quite worked.)

Fact is Hamlet's famed "antic disposition" -- the phony madness -- is a gambit he tries out mostly to buy time : to determine if Dad's ghost is for real and is to be trusted and not a Satanic trick; to see if he can find the "smoking gun" in Claudius's hand; to muster up the guts and energy to actually pull off the revenge-killing like a Tony Soprano or one of the Bacons. Ironically, the murder of Claudius occurs almost by accident in the play's final tumultuous moments.

Character strengths :  As noted, Jonathon Young commands the stage. Full-stop. But as the aging Lord Chamberlain Polonius, Richard Newman is still the delightful doddering blabberer always offering up "fruits of advice" in 10 words where two would do. [Ed. Note. Sort of like a typical BLR review.] Collier assigns the role of Hamlet's bosom buddy Horatio to Jennifer Lines, who early on has marvelous blocking and hand gesticulation to accompany her eager speeches. Rachel Cairns as Ophelia is a compelling ingenue. Her final soliloquy with brother Laertes (Todd Thomson) is the second-most poignant scene in the play, the two of them equal in that respect. Barbara Pollard as Queen Gertrude is convincing as a "Who me...?" person who never quite gets why Hamlet is upset with her. Bill Dow as the usurper Claudius is a steady kind of Nixonian evil with flashes of brilliant temper. Casting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as lovers (Naomi Wright and Craig Erickson) was a touch well executed. They were a delight playing off one another. Hard to decide whether Duncan Fraser as Ghost King was better than his gravedigger antics. 

Production values :  For all the "black" in the play, scenic designer Pam Johnson's strikingly white set projects the right images both visually and morally. The furniture sheets as shrouds in the opening scene were spot-on. Costume designer Nancy Bryant produced a clever blend of black, grey, and white suits, offset by more colourful and elegant togs for the royalty. The music and sound design by Torquil Campbell and Chris Dumont was superb, with Hamlet punching up background riffs off his i-Phone including the Beatles' "Revolution" and the cheeky "Is That All There Is?" when he confronts Mom Gertrude about her horrible, ugly duplicity in all of this. (Loved Dawn Upshaw's backdrop of Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" during the final Hamlet / Laertes fight scene.)

Who gonna like, who gonna not : Don't take Shakespeare newbies to this. It's for WS aficionados and Hamlet hand-wringers. It's l-l-l-long, 190 minutes with Int. It's w-w-w-w-wordy. But it's Jonathon Young doing whirlygig manic depressive shout-outs flipping to pained reflective ruminations in hair's breadth timing, one after another after yet another, each word and line and nuance with astonishing absorption and clarity and verve every time. For that alone, go! 

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Boffo buffoonery by puppets clever, raunchy

Overview : As a dad for the first time 45 years back, I remember watching Sesame Street with my kids on a black-&-white 16" screen. The conceit of the show was its ability to educate youngsters and adults both through clever puppetry and pop-up screens flashing words and phonics and social ideas they wanted us all to learn.

Fast forward to Avenue Q now playing at ACT's Granville Island mainstage. These same Sesame Street-type characters have morphed to Gen Xers with krappy college degrees and superb existential angst living communally on the eponymous Ave. Q. Together they fret about jobs and bills and sex and social relations circa Y2K. And "they" here means both the flesh-&-blood actors themselves and the hand-held puppets attached to their person. Sometimes you watch the actor, other times the puppet. It's fun! 

Meanwhile in today's Q update there's a wonderful "learn this word" screen -- schadenfreude -- let's derive joy from others' misery. Between that bit of sniggery and the number "We're All A Little Bit Racist" -- well, the innocent stuff me'n'the kids enjoyed back in the day went Poof! in a jiffy, har-har.

The show kicks off with a 23-year-old named Princeton (Andrew MacDonald-Smith) lamenting "What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?", which segues nicely into the company challenging one another with assertions "It Sucks To Be Me" that ends with them all wondering "Is there anybody here it doesn't suck to be...?" 

First impressions : Today's matinee played to a decidedly white head/blue rinse crowd, for the most part, and it was obvious the sass of Q both delighted and "squeamed" them at the same time. Particularly the number "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)" which featured the puppets Princeton and Kate Monster having endless congress in more positions than even the Kama Sutra spells out. Tenement super Gary Coleman* (Evangelia Kambites) has the line that aces it: "If you're doing the nasty, don't act as if you're at the ballet."

A decade back when Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx stitched together the characters and plotline and Jeff Whitty did the book, "Sex and the City" still reigned despite the "reality t.v." of 9-11 a couple years earlier. America was looking for divertissement driven as much by phantasy as by autogiography, thanks. Q answered that need nicely because of its hooks back to muppetry and Sesame Street as well as the relative innocence, still, of young people living communally trying to both break out and break in -- break out of juvenile mind-traps and break in to careers and security and "purpose". "Gotta find my purpose, gotta find me !" Princeton wails.

Plotline look : While the script has not exactly surpassed its "best-by xxx" date, for all its cleverness it is no longer as fresh as it might be though still scrappy and punchy.

The "in-the-closet homosexual" Republican investment banker, um, Rod, who's got the hots for roomy Nicky, denies he's gay and sings of a fictitious girlfriend in Canada as his cover. Well, quite frankly, that's post-trite in 2013.

The fleshy [non-puppet] Japanese therapist named Christmas Eve (Shannon Chan-Kent) is obviously an off-shore Pacific immigrant, but use of the expressions "ruvv" for "love" and "kirr" for "kill" clanked even on these utterly non-PC ears.

The kindergarten teacher (Jeny Cassady) is named "Mrs. Thistletwat". The over-the-top-ness of that name is just that -- was a decade back, too -- but not helped in the least when Kate Monster stresses the t-ness of the 3rd syllable emphatically each time she utters it.

The wonderful Trekkie Monster character -- Big Bird on bad acid -- played by Scott Bellis insists that the Internet has one primary purpose : "for porn". In Y2K that was probably a major purpose for newby computer users delighting in the medium's possibilities first-hand. But again, in 2013 when cyber-bullying and priests storing whole caches of child-porn on their laptops are daily news items, the joke loses some of its comic tumescence of yore.

Character take : Quibbles aside, Q is a marvel of flesh, felt and thrown-voices choreographed superbly by Director Peter Jorgensen who brags tongue-in-cheek he can now add "muppet porn" to his live theatre curriculum vitae.

Rick Lyon's puppets and their persona are wonderfully wrought and acted out by their puppeteers even as they have their own flesh characters to project, too. The Bad Idea Bear characters (Bellis and Cassady) are a delight of comic mischief, straight from the creators' amygdalae.  Bellis's Trekkie Monster and Bad Idea Bear personation are a highlight of the show. His voice projection in both parts is spot on. The choreography between Cassady and Bellis sharing the puppet character Nicky was step-perfect.

As the protagonist Princeton, MacDonald-Smith was expertly cast, a song-&-dance diva of the first order. Counterpart and occasional girl friend Kate Monster (Kayla Dunbar) has the best pipes on stage, no question, though Chan-Kent was no slouch in the aria arena either. Wannabe comic Brian (Andy Toth) was cast stereotypically, too -- the fatman struggling to urge laughs out of his brain, first, then out of his buddies. His wedding day costume by designer Jessica Bayntun replete with virgin yarmulkes for the goys was non-pareil.

Production values : Memory of this show will always take me back to previous-Jessie Award winner Marshall McMahen's striking tenement set -- an asymmetrical caricature of 1930's walk-ups in dirty reds and rust, like pop-up illustrations of skid road housing one might imagine from a kid's learn-to-read-book. The scruffy paving stones with candy-wrappers and other detritus littering the stage were just right. Musical Director Sean Boyntun led an able ensemble, his own dance on the keyboards and the crisp strokes by Niko Friesen on the drums particularly earful.

Who gonna like, who maybe not : The key to Avenue Q's success for viewers will depend on the degree to which they are prepared to just play along with puppets as people and people as puppets singing and dancing out this catalogue of familiar (if-dated) neuroses on stage.#   In my view the ideal demographic to enjoy it would be the 14-45 set, though Boomers will also relate from their break-out / break-in years. 

In 50 words or less... : A 20-something actor acquaintance told me last week she raved over ACT's Q and compared it favourably to a NYC production she had seen previously. "I'm going again!" she enthused. I heard some blue-rinsers say "Gosh that was funny!" while others I spotted looked simply glazed. In the end, when it's children's dreamworld meets adult reality -- Oz is Oz after all --probably any age can find something to relate to and have a heck of a laugh while doing so. 

* Coleman's character is based on the erstwhile t.v. child star of the show Diff'rent Strokes whose aura later in life dimmed to being a tenement manager in slummy NYC. His finest adult life moment, Kambites tells us, was when he sued his parents for ripping off his Strokes royalites, only to file for bankruptcy later. That vignette sync's terrifically with the overall tenor of Q and its characters.

# Here's how ACT describes the show in its media promotional materials. I could never improve upon it by tittle-or-jot so I simply reproduce it for readers for their benefit:

Warning : Full puppet nudity and other vulgarities will induce laughter. This is a puppet show. However this is not your kids' puppet show as it sneaks a peak at raucous sexual congress, failed childhood stardom, excessive drinking, moving in and out of a slummy neighbourhood, investing, mix-tapes, cute creatures doing bad things, singing boxes, getting laid off, finding your purpose, getting fired, getting rehired, ruvving [sic] someone but wanting to kirr [sic] them, exotic dancing, erotic dancing, exotic erotic dancing, homosexuality, racism, pornography, masturbation, interracial marriage, interspecies relationships (monsters and humans), roommates, coming out of the closet, coming out of your apartment, getting ahead in real life, going to college, pan-handling, wishing you were back in college, coming out of your shell, and recycling.

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Twelfth Night delights fans at Vanier Park

Overview : Critics and academics over the centuries have tried too hard to make too much out of Shakespeare's goofy Twelfth Night. All Billy Bard was trying to do was give the clever patrons and the cheap-seat-rabble at The Globe lots of shenanigans to tittle and guffaw at. TN is like a Hallowe'en party on speed -- scads of silly people playing games in costumes sewn not just of thread but of thought and deed as well. Mistaken identities, disguises, romantic fantasies, cozening capers, songs, drunk scenes, homoerotic dilly-dallying, omg what a swillery of good cheer. Indeed, maidservant Fabiana captures Shakespeare's intent in her ironic observation : "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."

Funny, this. Because even Director Dennis Garnhum falls for the traditional academic conceits over the script.  Viz., from his program Notes : "I noticed that at the beginning of the play we are introduced to many characters at a crossroad in their lives. It seems that everyone is blocked or struggling with tragedy or neglect. Love is not being reciprocated. Feelings are being held back. Everyone here is looking for guidance, or direction, or a path to reveal itself." Really now. Really? Naw, say I -- it's none of that new-agey stuff at all. No disrespect to Mr. Garnhum but i.m.o. it's nothing but farce and slapstick and riotous good fun without a scintilla of The Serious about it in the least. And I think WS intended it precisely that way.

First impressions : Despite my disagreement with Mr. Garnhum on the purported theme of the piece, his execution of the script is why we go to theatre, starting with his setting the play in 1913 in the ragtime era at a sumptuously tricked out spa and resort. He writes : "As luck would have it, the true inspiration for this production was ignited while reading the play on a lounge chair at a glorious resort in Southern California. As I alternated between sipping on my glass of Chardonnay, looking at all the beautiful people lounging about and reading these delightful words, I couldn't help but wish that these characters (Olivia, Viola, Orsino and all) would jump from the pages and join me, poolside, for a much needed rest." His production has these characters do precisely that -- "jump from the pages" -- much to the fun, sport and amusement of the actors themselves and us participants in the giddy opening night (ON) audience. The "much needed rest" part will have to await the run's end.

Plotline: A long, long time ago in a land far, far away called Illyria, Duke Orsino pines piteously over the lovely Countess Olivia. She meanwhile is in grief over the recent deaths of both her father and her brother and proclaims she will grieve for seven years. She thus refuses Orsino's advances utterly. Enter Viola who is plopped unceremoniously onto Illyria's shores thanks to a wild storm at sea that takes her twin brother Sebastian from her. Viola hears the local gossip and decides she would like to work as servant to Olivia, but is certain the woman behind the black veil would reject her in her grief. So instead she dresses herself in the kind of no-nonsense manly get-up her twin brother might sport, re-brands herself as the young buck "Cesario", and succeeds to be hired as Orsino's "manservant". This initial act of cross-dressing sets in motion all of the play's hijinks. Admits Viola to herself : "Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness, Wherein the pregnant enemy does much."

When Orsino (Todd Thomson) dispatches "Cesario" (Rachel Cairns) to plead with Olivia (Jennifer Lines) to reciprocate Orsino's swooning of her, it takes Olivia a nanosecond -- well maybe a New York minute -- to feel twitches of "love" for the cross-dresser, and immediately throws herself at "him" in spite of her grief.  Meanwhile Cesario, for "his" part, finds his lovesick boss Orsino quite a buff hunk and dreams of winning his heart, but of course s/he can't without blowing his/her cover. Enter Olivia's puritanical manservant Malvolio, who entertains thoughts of winning his mistress Olivia's heart and her wrenching him from service to become her hubby and a Count. It's Downton Abbey's upstairs, downstairs and all the landings in between.

The play is riddled with comic riffs, most notably by Olivia's bibulous cousin Sir Toby Belch (Bill Dow), his buffoon sidekick Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Richard Newman), and Olivia's fool Feste (Jonathon Young). Feste is a classic verbal trickster but also chief barkeep and spinner of 78's for the ever-besotted Belch and for Aguecheek -- aptly named for a man nervous of his own shadow. As with all fools in WS scripts, their insight and wisdom drive the humour they speak. Enter Olivia's maidservant Maria (Naomi Wright). Cheeky and pissy at Malvolio (Allan Zinyk), she conspires with Belch and Aguecheek and Fabiana (Barbara Pollard) to trick him into believing Olivia truly does have the hots for him -- his alternate universe granted reality status -- if only he'll dress like a nerd and smile at her unceasingly until his parchment skin cracks. Major Uggghhh! reaction from Olivia. Declared "mad", Malvolio is dungeoned, only released as part of the denouement.

And so we have everyone "loving" someone other than anyone they might succeed in winning over. Misery loves company. Until twin brother Sebastian (Daniel Doheny) shows up at the end having been saved from drowning by naval officer Antonio (Craig Erickson). Can't go unnoticed -- Antonio's "love" of Sebastian smacks of more than just dadly benevolence. But I digress. Sebastian arrives en scene dressed identically to Viola/Cesario. This "coincidental" occurrence is the catalyst for the heterosexual coupling-up that typically occurs in Elizabethan romantic comedy. It all finally happens and everyone goes away happy except poor abused Malvolio, i.e. Olivia dumps "Cesario" ker-plop! and immediately weds-&-beds Cesario's twin Sebastian. Proof positive this is slapschtick, not messagy-stuff. Further in this drift, Billy Bard would be fully aware of the Latin roots in Malvolio's name that bespeak the playwright's intent with this character : a man who comports himself poorly and with intention in doing so. No question. Malvolio is a comic character pure-&-simple, not a "cause" at all. 

Characters -- good, bad & ugly : Potential playgoers will be happy to note none of the cast is either bad or ugly! in their performances. Judging by ON reaction at curtain, Jonathon Young's Feste stole the show for a bunch of folks, with Dow's Belch nipping at his heels and Newman's Aguecheek chasing closely after his, or maybe vice-versa for those two. Bard newcomer Cairns as Viola/Cesario wins kudos for her skill as a s/he fending off Olivia. The blocking and stage business between Viola and Olivia as Viola arches her back incessantly to avoid Olivia's groping hands discovering s/he has breasts are terrific.  Well-conceived and well-wrought action staged by Director Garnhum and superbly delivered by Cairns and Lines. For their parts Young and Dow were neck-&-neck heading into the final turn for excellence in voice projection and diction, with Young in the end maybe beating Dow by a mere half-length or so.  Malvolio : Allan Zinyk's take on the part is superb.  It's without a hair's breadth of "take me serious" at any point -- all hyperbole and exaggeration throughout. His reading of Maria's fake letter ostensibly from Olivia was one of the...

Best scenes : Toss-up between Malvolio's letter-reading and the drunken revelry scene with all the frat-rat tennis boys, including the Sea Captain (Duncan Fraser) whose deft dodge of Malvolio's grab at his drink was choreography and timing as tight as anything recently seen. Both of these scenes alone are worth the shell-out of ducats to see.

Production values : ON winner in this category was without a doubt False Creek in the backdrop with its lovers hand-in-hand, twinkling West End lights, the odd Mayor Moonbeam cyclist wandering by. But scenery designer Pam Johnson did her damndest on-stage to compete with God's grandeur outdoors. The all-white spa set was marbly and steamy and richly decked out with cathedral doors, schmancy concierge reception, well-stocked bar, chandaliers. Costume designer Nancy Bryant balanced the suit-y stuff with the swim-y stuff and the shipwreck-y stuff right smartly. The ragtime motif by sound designer Jeremy Spencer kicked off with great promise but seemed to this ear to fizzle thereafter. Final Hey-Ho! number, however, was sheer delight. 

Who gonna like, who gonna not : Shakespeare aficionados of course will certainly do (unless perhaps they're purists who think Malvolio is a "wronged" man, bullied, and thus a bit "tragic" who are looking for some "dark" and "deep" layers to the play.  I obviously share not that cut at this script).  Newbies to Billy Bard will find much to like -- while they may struggle with the lingo and Elizabethan idioms and metaphors -- likely they'll find the sheer force of the comedy will sweep them along. Pre-teens and social media wonks, uhh, don't waste your money buying tix for them, but engaged high school lit. students for sure should go.

50 words or less : This is puppy-love stuff, not the stuff of Romeo and Juliet.  No amount of academic preening will change my mind about that. Go. Get silly. Get horny. Laugh. All while looking out at False Creek and the West End under a circus tent. Tell me what's wrong with this picture. 

http://www.bardonthebeach.org/2013/twelfth-night

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