Yin-yang buddies = The Odd Couple : a 2015 Lower Mainland reprise tour for The Arts Club

BLR note : What follows is a slightly modified version of BLR's original review from January 30, 2014 of ACT's Stanley Theatre production. As the principals both on-stage and off- are mostly the same, a re-mount of last year's review seems appropriate given the play's B.C. tour about to commence. See Particulars at review's end for location & performance details. 

Plot quicky :  Since its launch in 1965, The Odd Couple's first act has been hailed by some critics as arguably the single-best scene of American comedy ever scripted for the stage. And maybe so. Even despite the considerable time-warp between that back-in-the-day moment and now.

Hot summer Friday night. New York City. Poker night at Oscar Madison's apartment where his mid-life bachelor gig plays out since his wife Blanche quit their marriage some six months back and escaped to California. 

The five players at the table take turns kvetching, snarling and growling about their lives, their wives, their fates and the crappy slow pace of the night's game. They scarf back leftovers out of Oscar's defrosted fridge -- whether aged cheese or mold doesn't particularly faze them. They fist their poker cards with gusto and throw chips and cards and commentary around as randomly as teenage burps or gas attacks.

Number six at the weekly table, Felix Ungar, is late, MIA. Unknown to his posse, his wife Frances has just drop-kicked him out of their house. When they learn this news, they fear he may be suicide-depressed. No wonder : he has just telegram'd his wife telling her that's what he is about to do. 

Divorce was typically a serious mid-life crisis for men back then -- statistics reveal that marriage in the early 60's stood a 4:1 chance of succeeding. And both Oscar and Felix have failed the test. They are rejected husbands who work day-jobs, not lothario playboys of the Mad Men stripe who are serial cheaters. When Felix finally appears, his chums rally round to prevent a 12-storey fall from grace and the tale of Oscar-&-Felix and their upcoming life together under the same roof begins.

A Tale of Its Time :  I reckon no English-speaking North American can possibly not know of this iconic Neil Simon script. The original Broadway stage mount in '65 featured Walter Matthau as Oscar and Art Carney as Felix. The 1968 movie paired Matthau with Jack Lemon. Then TOC morphed into a 70's t.v. sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. 

To recap : both of Simon's characters are professional news writers, but that's about where the similarity ends. Oscar is a highly-paid cigar-chomping sports gob whose preferred lifestyle is casual / messy / live-for-the-moment, not unlike many sports contests. He's often tardy with the alimony and child support payments because of his saloon skills and chronic poker losing streaks. 

Bosom buddy Felix (Robert Moloney), meanwhile, is a fuss-o-matic : a neat-freak finicky neurotic who writes straight news for CBS and likes life orderly, from kitchen utensils to emotions. So unlike the more cavalier Oscar, Felix is rattled to the core now that his right-tight suburban married world has fractured and splintered.

The yin-yang personality clash set up by Simon survives mostly because we are parachuted, wholesale, back into the early 60's -- pre-VietNam; pre-Woodstock; pre-Steinem's Ms. magazine and the advances of feminism since. Too, the play features two long-time male buddies who're thrust together by chance, not design. Were they man-&-wife there would be no play. Sexual politics ain't yuk-yuk. Particularly today. 

But two age-old chums from Ike's time who play poker together? They can riff and natter and scold one another like frat-rats because comic incompatibility works when played out at this level. Indeed, Neil Simon's gift to the stage throughout his storied career has always been to find scads of punchy laugh-lines right in the midst of existential fear, heartache, and the uncertainties that pounce when dreams go awry. No better vehicle than this frozen-in-aspic script to prove the point.

WYSIWYG :  Director John Murphy does what he often does with timepiece material. He madcaps the action with lots of slapstick blocking and choreography. Wildly contorted individual facial gestures, hyped-up coughs, Keystone cop chases, 3 Stooges pratfalls -- they're all part and parcel of the ACT re-mount [that is reproduced in toto for tour in 2015 except for actor Mike Wasko who replaces Andrew McNee as Oscar]. 

Murphy does take liberties with his casting : the poker bunch, ostensibly all in their 40's, include a couple of sexagenarians whose ages belie Simon's dialogue. But no matter to the 2014 audience eye. Because the fact is many groups of friends nowadays, both men's and women's, include 2-3 generations all playing well together in the same sandbox : age differences matter way less now than they did to our folks. 

The NYC cop in the poker bunch, Murray, was played by Joel Wirkkunen who gave the most robust and witty turn of the group. But Josh Drebit's Speed as the ever-impatient card sharp was a mere 1/2 kph behind in comic delivery. Great body language in the card table routines from each of the older two, too -- Alec Willows as Roy, Oscar's long-suffering accountant, and Cavan Cunningham as the penny-pinching and henpecked Vinnie.

Murphy's slapstick approach coupled with direction to his cast to hyper-ventilate Simon's dialogue saves TOC from its fundamental irrelevance in today's uber-caffeinated-nanosecond-attention-span culture. Because who cannot laugh when Oscar tells the ever-agitated Felix early on : "You have a low threshold for composure. You're the only man in the world with clenched hair." But Simon also manages to make his characters empathetic, as well as comic, such as when Oscar confesses he's lonely living alone. He invites Felix to move in to his 8-room apartment : "I love you almost as much as you do," he says. "I'm proposing to you."

Felix agrees. And before the night is over he has antisceptick'd the entire pizza-box Chinese take-out carton gerbil-cage apartment. Director Murphy does this cleverly, having the poker bunch act as Felix's proxies to complete the task. 

Scene 2 opens on the next poker night with the set in full-Felix fashion : the table is decked out with coasters to prevent watermarks; oversize serviettes for all; BLT sandwiches on crustless pumpernickel; ashtrays emptied after each ash is flicked. But when Roy smells Lysol and ammonia on the playing cards, the group exits en masse stage left in a snit over F.U.'s fastidious buzz-kill of their Friday fun. 

Still, it's what Oscar sees as Felix's "wimp factor" vis-a-vis his estranged wife Frances that drives him the most crazy. He puzzles aloud : "In a world full of roommates why do I choose the tin man?"

The second act looks promising for the odd couple. Oscar arranges a soiree with two British sisters, the Pigeons, who live in the same building. Felix, master chef, plans the meal, a London broil. But when widow Gwendolyn (Sasa Brown) and divorcee Cecily (Kate Dion-Richard) arrive, he goes nearly catatonic and can hardly talk due to first-date jitters. 

Only when Oscar repairs to the kitchen to fetch drinks does Felix warm up, showing the girls pix of his family. Felix whimpers "Divorce, it's a terrible thing." Cecily, with a perfect Liverpool lilt, quips back : "It can be if you don't have the right solicitor!" Immediately, however, she realizes Felix is in "unmanly" tearful pain. Soon there's a 3-way crying jag as they all swoon over their imperfect but lost marriages. In a heartbeat both of them love "poor, sweet, tortured" Felix.

Rewind moment to 2014 ! Suffice to say the London broil burns to a crisp in the kitchen. A fire bell sounds, as if to signal the set's kitchen oven is on fire. But No!, truth is the hazer ACT was using to generate faux-smoke in 2014 shorted out, smoked up a storm and set off the Stanley Theatre alarm for real. The play resumed after a 14-minute delay as firefighters from two streets north re-set the alarm panel. [Well handled, ACT team!]

Back to script: The incinerated London broil forces the party to move to the Pigeons' apartment, but Felix demurs out of shyness and guilt over his ex-, Frances. Oscar both implodes and explodes over the botched date. Their ensuing hunt-&-chase around the apartment with Oscar threatening to kill his buddy was vintage. Even mid-chase Felix manages to straighten the dining table chairs and scoop up some paper litter off the floor. He's promptly sent packing but winds up, of course, bedding down with the Pigeons in their upstairs roost -- irony and fun being Simon's signature traits. 

N.B. The Pigeon sisters were very welcome comic relief within this goofy romp. Relief because up till then the show had been as if plastered with For Men Only stickers given all the poker motif among a bunch of grunty post-WWII men. When the Pigeons descended, these two birds delighted at every move : they sat almost in each other's laps, finished each other's sentences, sported complementary 60's dresses, had matching red and blond bouffie hairdo's and shared a swack of Liverpool giggles. Pure fun !  

Production values :  David Roberts' set was a nice cut at 1965 Manhattan chic. Ceiling arches. Pale blues and pinks on the walls,  inset applique flower accents, scalloped furniture throughout, and a chrome floorstand ashtray to covet even for a non-smoker. Barbara Clayden's costumes were perfect for the times, even slobby Oscar's What Not To Wear blue/brown sport coat and pant mix. Marsha Sibthorpe's lighting was spot-on, particularly the solar eclipse blue lighting during scene changes by the poker bunch. And last but not least, sound designer Murray Price underscored the antics with some tight jazz quartet charts matching progressive sounds one would surely have heard at Birdland in the 60's.

Who gonna like : This is a period piece, as noted. Some may find the trip down memory lane a chance to smile and smirk, sentimentally, at the mores of a distant era. Others may find the dialogue too dated and man-centric for their liking, now, nearly 50 years hence. 

Still, Andrew McNee as Oscar [in 2014] brought a nuanced interpretation to his mostly macho role, and Robert Moloney did some fine excruciations as the tightly-wound Felix. [2015 reviews of Moloney\Felix and Mike Wasko\Oscar t.b.d. by other critics as I shan't see this year's mount.]

Neil Simon is a master of the genre. His lines and timing provide much to amuse in a performance bursting with energy and wit. 

Particulars : The Odd Couple. By Neil Simon. Sponsored by The Arts Club Theatre of Vancouver. On tour commencing January 9, 2015, as follows :

North Vancouver \ Capilano College Centre for the Performing Arts. January 9.  604.990.7810.

Maple Ridge ACT Arts Centre & Theatre. January 10.  604.476.2787.

West Vancouver Kay Meek Centre. January 12-13.  604.981.MEEK (6335)

Surrey Arts Centre. January 14-24.  604.501.5566.

Mission / Clarke Theatre. January 26.  1.877.299.1644

Coquitlam / Evergreen Cultural Centre. January 27-31.  604.927.6555.

Burnaby / Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. February 2-3.  604.205.3000

Chilliwack Cultural Centre. February 4.  604.391.7469

Production Team : Director John Murphy. Set Designer David Roberts. Costume Designer Barbara Clayden. Lighting Designer Marsha Sibthorpe. Sound Designer Murray Price. Stage Manager Allison Spearin. Assistant Stage Manager Ronaye Haynes.

Featured Actors :  Robert Maloney. Mike Wasko. Sasa Brown. Cavan Cunningham. Kate Dion-Richard. Josh Drebit. Alec Willows. Joel Wirkkunen. 

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Cohen cabaret Chelsea Hotel cleverly captures 

the man & his music

Quick take : Leonard Cohen's musical poetry will once again astound you and steal your heart at the Firehall Theatre's fourth reprise of Chelsea Hotel. As they did a year back, six song-&-dance troupers weave a clever tapestry showing us Cohen-the-man, Cohen-the-loaner, Cohen-the-hustler. Melancholy, loss, romantic dread and love's wreckage are never far from the tip of Cohen's quill & inkwell. That's why a famous NYC hotel that's tattered and torn is the perfect backdrop for his stories put to song.

Redux : Leonard & Janis :  Vancouver's Tracey Power conceived, scripted, directed and choreographed the show as well as performs in it this year. She must be as exhausted as she is exhilarated. She pitches the story on an endlessly re-written Cohen storyline, "Chelsea Hotel #2". In it LC recalls a night of sharp drugs and limp sex with Janis Joplin.

As Cohen sings it he's enjoying some wee-biddy fellatio from JJ to the hum of streetscape chirps & sirens below. "You told me again you preferred handsome men / but for me you would make an exception / And clenching your fist for the ones like us / who are oppressed by the figures of beauty / You fixed yourself, and you said / 'Well never mind, / we are ugly but we have the music.'" Janis explained it somewhat differently in a 1969 Texas interview. She maintained Cohen "gave me nothing" the night in question. Then quickly added : "I don't know what that means. Maybe it just means (he was) on a bummer."

Power's power unclenched : Power's cabaret format features some two dozen Cohen songs in whole and in bits, intermingled and refrained again-&-again (e.g. "I am the one who loves / Changing from nothing to one.") The plotline works but is a bit wimpy : unless you like hearing all about writers who write about writers having writer's block. "Script constipation" I call it. And chitty-chat of same should be off-limits just like the bathroom kind. Still, Marshall McMahen's clever set rescues the scene : Kayvon Kelly, writer manque, emerges from a mountain of scrunched-up poetry and song lyric detritus piled high and wide. Classic Cohen, this. The sufferer championing his angst and dread. Words not only fail him but taunt and defeat him altogether. Stacks and stacks of them.

Kelly shares the stage with five other actor musicians. Three women -- Power, Rachel Aberle, and Marlene Ginader are the lost / abandoned / forsaken loves who are central to Cohen's world : Suzanne, Marianne and Jane. Along with Kelly, Benjamin Elliott and the show's musical director Steve Charles join the women in this two-hour bittersweet musical caper. Once again I was doubly amused by "I'm Your Man" that this year features Power prancing about in a bedsheet blowing a kazoo. How could I not remember the Sigmund Freud vignette : the good Dr. puffing away on one of his signature stogies during a lecture. After sucking in a good mouthful off the thing, Freud released it ever-so-slowly and lovingly from his lips. With a wee grin he proclaimed : "And it's also a cigar!"

Throughout the show the women sing songs designed by Cohen to be for men about or to the women in their lives. But these days gender is more a matter of preference, choice and public declaration. Out-of-the-womb biology is less relevant. So who sings what to whom works regardless. Analogous to the basement bathroom markers at the Firehall : one with pants, one with a skirt, and one 1/2-pant \ 1/2 skirt on each door.

The songs tell the tales : Fortunately not all of the songs in Chelsea Hotel have the same tempo and tone and melancholia of Cohen's oh-so-famous lost lover laments. Musical director Charles jazzes up LC's tunes to make them a lot less "drone-y" than he is famous for. Surprise stylings galore pop off Charles' arranger's notepad, notably the chirpily up-tempo "Closing Time". "Suzanne" countrified with cello and banjo was a treat. As last year, the layered harmonies of "Marianne" were tight tight tight. And I can never tire of "First We Take Manhattan" done in 2:2 rock double time. More whimsical and less Teutonic than Jennifer Warnes' famous cover of it with its jackboot heel-clicks echoing underneath.

Indeed, it's the cabaret collection of cover songs deconstructed from Cohen's originals that are then re-synthasized with a dizzying array of instruments : banjo, accordion, tambourine, blues harp (a.k.a. harmonica), double acoustic bass, electric bass, violin, cello, electric guitars, acoustic guitar with pick-up mic, drums, ukulele, keyboard piano and organ and if my ears didn't deceive, an off-stage mandolin plink'd once or twice for good measure. Each of the cast play a slew of these instruments in this talent jamboree of theirs.

Poor ol' Lenny, gotta love him : The leitmotif of Leonard Cohen's lyrics and poetry is always rejection, loss, hoped-for redemption. "I cannot follow you, my love / You cannot follow me. / I am the distance you put between / All of the moments that we will be" he mourns. Reminiscent of Dave Matthews' haunting song "The Space Between". Love is real, physical, metaphysical and lyrical always. "Now I am too thin and your love is too vast." Or, "Lover come back to me [repeated seven times] / Let me start again, I cried." Which of course is but the flip-side to "I know from your eyes and your smile / Tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine / For awhile." Or this priceless line : "I heard of a saint who loved you / He taught that the duty of lovers / Is to tarnish the Golden Rule" -- done richly and memorably by Kelly and Power. 

Indeed, LC's entire oeuvre is what I would term "universal self-indulgence". It's that universality in our common western 1st- world experiences that rescues some lyrics from a bend toward banality. 

Music highlights : To start the second act Kelly sings "Chelsea Hotel #2" with a clarity and sensitivity and poignancy and subtlety I quite frankly don't remember him achieving a year ago. He does the same at show's end with "Bird on a Wire" with its romantic opener "Like a bird on a wire / Or a drunk in a midnight choir / I have tried, in my way, to be free...". Bravo!

Another of my favourite Charles arrangements was "That's No Way To Say Good-bye". The Cowboy Junkies style is spot on with string bass and banjo. Superb stuff. Many of the exchanges musically and dramatically are very touching between Kelly and Ginader as various iterations of Cohen's star-crossed lovers. 

For his part, Elliott at moments almost steals the show acting as Kayvon's muse and conscience. Aberle and Power choreograph well indeed the twin angels / devils forever teasing and taunting the show's self-absorbed cad of a protagonist. Steve Charles' singing and string-play throughout are champion. The cacophonous "Hallelujah!" at the end starts off wonderfully jarring, then resolves into its original melodious self to finish off.

Production values : Once again Power's choreography was clever, engaging and utterly in synch with the McMahen set. No corner of the homey Firehall stage was left out of the exuberant action. Designer Barbara Clayden stitched together an eclectic mix of plain-jane off-the-rack twills and Converse runners plus circus get-ups and cocktail waitress black-&-whites and funky ribbon'd hair for lover Ginader. The white-face make-up throughout on most of the cast added a neat thematic hue. Ted Roberts' lighting aided all the right moves at all the right times. Slight mic-ing sound balance problems in act one -- Ms. Power's mic particularly all but screeched. But problem solved by Act 2. 

Who gonna like : No doubt there are scores of folks who find Leonard Cohen's writing not only self-indulgent but mawkish and melodramatic. I am not one of those. Tracey Power's script produced by Donna Spencer is a true joy to watch jump into action.  Chelsea Hotel is entertainment that not only excites and thrills both eye and ear, it displays all the verve and spunk and spice of Vancouver's rising stars of the future. Move over, Boomers, the next wonderful wave of stage performers is not only at the door but right in front of you in a Must see! performance.

Particulars : Chelsea Hotel : The Songs of Leonard Cohen at the Firehall Arts Centre theatre, 280 East Cordova Street (corner of Gore), until January 3, 2015, Box Office 604.689.0926.

Production Team : Artistic Director / Producer Donna Spencer.  Creator / Director / Choreographer Tracey Power.  Musical Director and Arranger Steven Charles.  Set Designer Marshall McMahen.  Costume Designer Barbara Clayden. Lighting Designer Ted Roberts.  Sound Designer Xavier Berbudeau.  Stage Manager Jaimie Tait.  Apprentice Stage Manager Emma Hammond.  Assistant Stage Manager Jillian Perry.

Featured Actors :  Rachel Aberle.  Steve Charles.  Marlene Ginader.  Tracey Power. Ben Elliott.  Kayvon Kelly.

Appendices :  

The Vancouver connection in the Janis / Cohen story

The dubious get-on between Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen occurred shortly after Janis's final Big Brothers and the Holding Company concert here in Vancouver at the Coliseum in October, '68. The band formally dissolved at midnight. Warm-up for them that night was a newbie group called Chicago Transit Authority. Their big-band instrumentals, reminiscent of David Clayton Thomas's Blood, Sweat & Tears, excited the crowd. Soon CTA would become, simply, Chicago, after the actual bus & elevated train company CTA sued them over name copywright. Personally I enjoyed the band CTA much more than I did Big Brother : Janis was uber-pissy on a quart of Southern Comfort bourbon, a x3 or x4 margin above her normal altitude and cruising speed. I can still hear the words "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz" : they sounded mushy, sort of like "Lorne, wonja buy me a moozhiging frien'?". It wouldn't be long before Janis' last moozhiging frien' was a needle stick in a 2nd class L.A. motel room.

Backdrop to the show's title

The Chelsea Hotel in NYC has been a famous and favourite drop-in home for artists of all sorts ever since it opened back in 1885 and was, for one brief shining moment, NYC's tallest building. Joni Mitchell's chipper & cheery "Chelsea Morning" gave the place rock start status, though its fame had earlier been marked, darkly, when poet Dylan Thomas died there on a grey November day in 1953 after bragging about the 17 or 18 or 19 whiskies he'd just finished polishing off at his favourite watering hole the White Horse Tavern up the street. 

The 250-room 12-storey Victorian gothic with iron brocade balconies gained further notoriety when punk rocker Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols allegedly stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death there in 1978. (Out on bail, Vicious himself would die in Greenwich Village of a heroin overdose just five months later. The investigation into the murder in Room 100 at The Chelsea was promptly abandoned by NYPD and never proven or solved.)

Cohen stayed at The Chelsea in the late 60's along with Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, among others, when Cohen was chasing them around The Big Smoke to absorb their genius. This was around the time the Canadian National Film Board championed the emerging Montreal persona. His metier was poetry in those days that he shared both in books and in coffee house gigs. The NFB put out a 16mm black-&-white bio-pic I used to show my senior high English students, Ladies and Gentlemen : Introducing Mr. Leonard Cohen. Clever and amusing, the flick includes Cohen bathing in a clawfoot tub at a seedy Montreal hotel while he smirks at the lens and writes the words caveat emptor on the bathroom wall as a kind of warning to viewers about all this precious fooferaw over him. But music was bursting in Cohen's breast, too, not just poetry, and NYC was where those times were a-happenin' and a-changin'. 

Best description of the hotel from Cohen's time there came from someone named Nicola L. in a 2013 Vanity Fair article by Nathaniel Rich entitled "Where The Walls Still Talk". Quoth she : "Anything could happen... It was either Janis Joplin or the big woman from the Mamas and Papas who tried to kiss me in the elevator. I can't remember which. It was a crazy time." 

"Hallelujah" out-take : 

Cohen's iconic 1984 spellbinder "Hallelujah" reportedly had some 80 (!) original verses to it. After years of slashing and re-writing, Cohen managed to bring it down to just seven. Its final two verses perhaps say all Cohen himself might, ultimately, want to conclude about his life as a writer and performer:

"There's a blaze of light in every word / It doesn't matter which you heard / The holy or the broken Hallelujah.../ I did my best...I've told the truth...And even though it all went wrong / I'll stand before The Lord of Song / With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah."

k.d. lang's performance at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver is probably unmatchable among some 300 other covers of the song that media journals report as having been recorded, one of the more recent by Rufus Wainwright in his best-hits album "Vibrate" from last year. 

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Dylan Thomas a feast for noise-infested ears

Backdrop to the show : Dylan Thomas. Many who think of the Welsh poet (born one century ago at the start of the Great War) are apt to recall three factoids about him. (1) That Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota adopted Thomas's forename to become Bob Dylan. (2) That Thomas died in New York City after downing some 17 whiskies at the White Horse Tavern up the street from his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel. (3) That one attending physician listed Thomas's cause of death "total abuse of the liver". It's been said before : all of this is true, and some of it might be factual.

Bob Kingdom reprises his one-man show Dylan Thomas : Return Journey in a final tour. The script was first written nearly 30 years ago. Sir Anthony Hopkins originally directed him in the role. The two of them edited & re-edited the piece over the years. Time to "return" Thomas to a picture of the man as he was in toto, not always the philandering drunk. At various times Kingdom has been quoted protesting "Any fool can drink and fall over. We're talking about a painstaking craftsman who made his poetry in the cold light of a Monday morning, not while standing at bars." Hemingway famously put it slightly differently : "Write drunk, edit sober."

How the piece works : The structure of the show is a lecture of the kind Thomas was giving across the USA during the last years and months of his life along with countless other Euros, lecturers with "pot-boiling philosophies". He accused the bulk of them suffering "with elaphantiasis of reputation -- huge trunks and tiny minds". But, like them, he certainly enjoyed himself when "the lovely money rolled luckily in". Autobio accounts of his childhood in Swansea are tangled up with full poem recitations -- notably "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and "Death Shall Have No Dominion" and "Fern Hill".

Curiously this "quintessential Welshman" as he is known hated the Welsh tongue as did his schoolmater father, noted to be both militaristic and an atheistic whipcracker. Neither one learned to speak "the mother tongue". Thomas had equally little time for flag-waving : "Fuck Welsh nationalism!" he spat at an interviewer once. Thus to some critics he is too English to be Welsh, to others, too Welsh to be English.

Kingdom's Thomas is a storyteller, lecturer, raconteur, a poetry slammer before his time. To listen to Kingdom's lilt is to lose oneself in a remarkable persona. (Truth be known I would not be able to tell if Kingdom's accent is Welsh or Irish or Icelandic, just not Glaswegian or Cockney, of that I'm roughly 90% certain.)

Critics' cut at him : Thomas is known as a lyric poet who immerses himself in rich images. He's clearly a romantic -- intuition, imagination, spontaneity, emotion -- all these are hallmarks, not the rigorously stylized religiosity of T.S. Eliot, say. Academic R. B. Kershner notes as well : "He has been a pagan, a mystic, a humanistic agnostic; his God has been identified with Nature, Sex, Love, Process, the Life Force...". 

Clearly Thomas was an early subscriber to the worldview of psychologist Ernest Becker. Becker's concluding sentence in his 1973 epic treatise The Denial of Death is this : "The most that any of us can seem to do is to fashion something -- an object or ourselves -- and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force." How else to parse this priceless line to his dad, where he notes how people are perhaps remembered for "their frail deeds [that] might have danced in the green bay".  

Kershner asserted further that Thomas "became the wild man from the West, the Celtic bard with the magical rant" whose rhythms were foreign to straight-jacket'd Britons. But those rants were obviously just the stuff for brash Americans who wooed him as much as he wowed them.

My favourite descriptor, meanwhile, flows from the pen of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, himself an accomplished poet. "He was undoubtedly all that he has been represented as being -- a drunkard and philanderer, compulsively incompetent and dishonest about money, a parasite on the generosity of many friends...but his entire work struggles to articulate both a sense of the appalling and rich depths of the natural world and a clear-eyed compassion for all varieties of human oddity." Would we all could be worthy of the Archbishop's final eight words of benediction for Thomas. 

When Kingdom comes : "The rich depths of the natural world" indeed!  I came away from Mr. Kingdom's performance with tears in my eyes as he ended with a moving rendition of "Fern Hill". As the show concluded, I thought (if it has not already been done by some Ph.D. monk somewhere) how an analysis of the uses of the word \ colour "green" in Thomas's poetry would be fascinating. The green of innocence, the verdant Swansea hills and seashore, the green of naivete, it's all there. 

Then the myriad words to highlight "all varieties of human oddity". He speaks of his "steaming hulk of an uncle breathing like a brass band" in the wonderful piece "The Outing" where the men pub-hop of an August Sunday to a dozen or so Welsh roadhouses where they "hollered and rollicked in the dark hole like big bad boys" as they "hymned and rumpus'd all the beautiful afternoon" in their bus "bouncing with voices and flagons". Much to the chagrin of their wives and the amusement of the town kids.

In "Lament" Thomas notes there's "time enough when the blood breathes cold", summoning "a black sheep with a crumpled horn" in one image, ending by noting "all the deadly virtues [that] plague my death". During one lecture he laments : "I fall down stairs, I frighten myself in the night, my own plump banshee." These are just rich, rich images.

Back when he was a child at Christmas, however, he would rejoice at the church bells from the "bat-black belfries [that] boomed for joy under my window" and marvel at the "aunts [who] scuttled to and fro with their tureens", particularly Aunt Hannah who toggled between tea-&-rum and parsnip wine and wound up serenading the universe from a snowbank in the garden.

And I find the finish to "Child's Christmas" surprisingly unsentimental in its capture, oh so elegantly, of an innocent day become night :

"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-coloured snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed, I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept." 

Who gonna like : Dylan Thomas : Return Journey is in fact a journey of return. A return to words, words in the hands of a master, a master to whom the words themselves meant to him more than their Collins' or Oxford Unabridged Dictionary definitions.  How else could he come up with lines that speak of "lovers [who] lie in their beds with all their griefs in their arms...the griefs of the ages". 

Yes, it's Thomas's keen sense of language -- with all its assonance and consonance and dissonance, its numerous hard-k's, its rhythms of short snap-shot sentence fragments -- that is executed so deliciously, poignantly and memorably by Bob Kingdom. 

For folks who love life, laughter, and the lilt of language that dances on the ears, this performance of Richard Jordan Productions (UK) surely is a Can't miss! proposition.

At the Cultch Historic Theatre through December 21. In two acts, 45 minutes apiece. Visit thecultch.com or phone 604.251-1363 for more info & tickets.

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Mary Poppins is spit-spot fun !

Text check  : Mary Poppins was produced by ACT for its 2013 season. It has been re-mounted for the 2014 holiday season with the same principal actors and production team who thrilled the community with their collaboration a year back. As well as many of the same folks in the dance and music ensembles. Then -- as a slip of bad luck would have it -- a sprained foot has prevented my attending opening night tonight, December 10th. Thus the decision taken to repeat and update what I wrote about MP a year back. I trust what follows will provide readers both some of the play's interesting historical context and some foretaste about this year's re-mount.

Disney torments Mary's creator :  The 1964 Disney movie version that made Julie Andrews a star had little in the way of character dynamics. Neither Andrews nor the indefatigable Dick Van Dyke was three dimensional. Just celluloid (albeit charming) figurines. And it was their one-dimensional characters that perhaps caused Aussie author P. L. Travers to sob at the end of the movie's premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Or her pique at not having been invited by Disney to the movie's opening due to their numerous ego-clashes during its production. More those reasons for her tears than Disney's cartoony bits, I reckon. Andrews needed a dose of no-nonsense brimstone in her soul and more acid on her tongue to make her a proper nanny, Travers felt. Still, if Walt's goddess-fairy Andrews was unreal, the irrepressible and constant Van Dyke grinnery was downright annoying to her.

Fast-forward to ACT's stage-musical version of the Travers stories. Mary P. is no longer a toothy-white charmstress. Slightly edgier -- not quite a "pitbull with lipstick" -- but closer to "real" if only a centimetre or two. The waspish and acerbic Travers -- who died at age 96 in 1996 still not suffering fools gladly -- would likely have appreciated the changes from the movie parts that made her cringe so. (Fact is, however, Walt's celluloid characters made Travers and her estate multi-millionaires with 5% of the movie's gross receipts hers for the taking. Currently MP is 23rd on one all-time highest-USA-earnings list, having pulled in over $500M and counting. Interestingly, MP doesn't appear to crack any of the "Top 100" international movie charts.)

First impressions : Folks who fondly remember Disney's MP film recall its magic turns -- the legerdemain, the illusion, the trickery pulled off by Mary and Bert. Such stuff, though still there, is not the primary source of magic in the ACT production. No, it's in the fact of the hand-picked cast of actors and performers selected by Director Bill Millerd and choreographer extraordinaire Valerie Easton. They all explode off the Stanley Theatre stage with unmatchable vigour, enthusiasm and antics that are just plain fun. What better comments than these overheard last year from an elderly couple on their way out : "I enjoyed every single bit of this play from start to finish!" said one, while the other remarked : "I honestly think this is the best stage play I've ever seen in Vancouver." 

Story -- a quicky re-visit : Set in Victorian England instead of Travers' more familiar outback in Oz, dad George Banks (Warren Kimmel) is a banker -- an overworked and stressed-out one at that. His wife Winifred (Caitriona Murphy) is a gentry-wannabe trying to manage the household with its two kids, maid/cook and inept butler. The raising of the children is outsourced to a nanny. Rather to a half-dozen nannies in the past year. All of them have quit because the kids are so bratty, scheming and incorrigible it seems.

The play kicks off with the most recent nanny fleeing #17 Cherry Tree Lane like it's a zoo with lions and tigers on the loose. In her dust the kids draw up an "ideal nanny" newspaper advertisement. She must

Take us on outings, give us treats

Sing songs, bring sweets

Never be cross or cruel, never give us castor oil or gruel

Love us as a son and daughter.

Dad George blows a wee gasket, tears up their clever wish-list and whistles it right smartly into the fireplace. Karma clicks in. Who should appear with a Poof! but Mary Poppins (Sara-Jeanne Hosie). Dad is all aflutter. He wants precision, order, efficiency in his domain that he declares is a mad house. Mary promptly marches the kids upstairs with her customary refrain "Spit spot!" Her two-part reign with the kids begins as son Michael (Graham Verchere) notes wryly : "We best keep an eye on this one, she's tricky...!" Michael would be just young and wise enough to realize the double-entendre there.

Not from one book alone : The current stage play is a comic musical pastiche of some eight Mary Poppins books and stories Travers wrote between the mid-30's and the late-80's in addition to the Disney film script and the original Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman songs. There's an updated book by Downton Abbey's creator Julian Fellowes plus new songs and additional music and lyrics supplied by Englishmen George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.

Hilarious, I found, that Travers had a provision in her will that nobody who worked on the Disney film could be a part of producer Cameron Mackintosh's proposed live theatre version (his stage pedigree including Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon.) Contributors all had to be English, no Yanks allowed, thanks, Travers insisted. 

Why? Because under Walt -- b.t.w. unlike the rest of the world, Travers refused to call him by his first name -- Travers felt the Americans had all conspired to sentimentalize her cherished pet character, sweeten Mary beyond Travers' recognition. Theirs was a simple-minded cotton-candy version that she thought was cynical -- all done to make money. Her preferred Mary : In the introduction to a Harper Collins re-issue of the original Travers book from 1934 some years back, stage maven Mackintosh declared : "Mary Poppins is, and always will be, unique : stern, dependable, businesslike, magical and yet eternally loveable." Travers felt too much of the stern and businesslike traits were flat-out lost in the Disney flick. Truth-&-accuracy sacrificed for mammon.

Character take redux : Five characters who reprise their 2013 roles will no doubt attract individual shout-outs again in 2014, can't imagine otherwise. 

Here was my cut at it a year back :

"As Mary, Sara-Jeanne Hosie is probably as close to perfection as possible. Her set jaw, her disapproving scowl when the kids or parents (!) misbehave are counterbalanced by her whimsy when it's time to fun -- terrific comic turns each one. Her singing voice is melodic and even powerful at times, though the mezzo soprano range suits her more than the upper-octive soprano stuff. Marvelously crisp execution of Director Millerd's scene blocking and Easton's dance footwork, too. Mesmerizing to watch from moment-one to moment-end.

As Bert, Scott Walters warrants an extra Bravo! or two because he discharges forever the memory of Dick Van Dyke's always-smiley performance in the Disney movie. Walters wondrously engages his role, displaying dynamic and clever facial shifts and nuances to suit every line, every dance step and kick-up.

Susan Anderson as Mrs. Brill and the Bird Woman in the park huckstering two-pence breadcrumb bags was non-pareil. The comic timing of her panic! disapproval! and sheer aghastness! at the Banks' "mad house" was split-second each line, each moment. As Bird Woman her turn was a pure moment of zen.

As Michael Banks, (now-Grade 7) student Graham Verchere bloody well nearly aces his performance as a Brit-kid-snot with lots of love in his heart to match his mischievous and playful soul. His sustained British accent -- assuming he isn't British-born -- was astonishing.

(Now-Grade 8) student Kassia Danielle Malmquist stayed 100% in character with charm and typical older-teen-sister flippancy and toy-tossing snitteries."

Character take, Part 2 : It was impossible a year back to review this play without extending Huzzah's! to all the actors and performers for their contributions. Mom Winifred by Caitriona Murphy was wholly convincing as a bemused and slightly estranged wife. Katey Wright as the replacement nanny -- Dad's childhood nanny "The Holy Terror" Miss Andrew -- betrayed robust dislikability. Warren Kimmel struck terror in viewers' hearts when he exploded. His "conversion" to huggy-dad was perhaps too quick to convince, but that's a script problem, not Kimmel's as actor. The 2013 song-&-dance ensemble to a person were step-perfect from my Row 2 perspective then. Many of them are back on the boards for this year's re-make.

Production values : Choreographer Valerie Easton is the well-known Artistic Director of Royal City Musical Theatre. She is to this viewer's eye simply brilliant! each and every time I see her work. Her staging of "Step In Time" in 2013 had all the chimneysweeps in taps and everyone gamboling at breakneck speed across the entire proscenium at the Stanley. I said then I'd go to the show a second time for that number alone. Same with the familiar "Supercalifragilistic..." dance number, "Jolly Holiday", oh hell's bells, every one of them.

Costume Designer Sheila White's togs for everyone were rich, even when they were the streetrags of the 'sweeps. Better costumes for the period would not be imaginable. The colour interjections in the park dance scene were a clever touch.

Set Designer Alison Green's sets all worked great both visually and "choreographically". With its two storeys, the Banks' home played effectively by exploiting both levels. The sight gag of Mary pulling a coat-tree rack, a floor lamp and a wall mirror out of her kit-bag upon arrival was a crowd-pleaser. For their part, the drop-screens for the park scenes were cleverly wrought and painted. Lighting Designer Marsha Sibthorpe's shadowy birds and raindrops flashing about quite merrily were an added visual treat.

Who gonna like : As big-stage song-&-dance entertainment with wonderful music from the Bruce Kellett orchestra behind again this year, Mary Poppins is delightful finger-snappin' and heart-strings-pulling stuff tailor-made for our Pineapple Express late-fall monsoons. A wee dose of sentimentality about the goodness that swells in people's hearts is okay already. On occasion. When done just right. For choreography, visuals and delightful tunes in a package, Mary Poppins is a Go! for sure.

Particulars : Until January 4, 2015 at ACT's Granville Street mainstage Stanley Theatre. Hit up artsclub.com for showtimes, tickets and available seats.

The show : A musical based on the stories of P. J. Travers and the Walt Disney film. Original music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. Stage-play book by Julian Fellowes. New songs and additional music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Co-creator Cameron Mackintosh.

Production team : Director Bill Millerd.  Musical Director \ Keyboard Bruce Kellett.  Choreographer Valerie Easton.  Set Designer Alison Green.  Lighting Designer Marsha Sibthorpe. Costume Designer Sheila White.  Sound Designer Andy Horka. Original Sound Designer Andrew Tugwell.  Projection Designer Craig Alfredson.  Magic Consultant Chris Stolz.  Stage Manager Caryn Fehr.  Assistant Stage Manager Anne Taylor.  Apprentice Stage Manager Michelle Harrison.  Assistant to the Choreographer Robert Allan.

Featured actors : Sara-Jeanne Hosie, Mary Poppins.  Susan Anderson, Mrs. Brill \ Bird Woman.  Warren Kimmel, George Banks.  Kassia Danielle Malmquist, Jane Banks.  Caitriona Murphy, Winifred Banks.  Graham Verchere, Michael Banks. Scott Walker, Bert.  Katey Wright, Miss Andrew \ Mrs. Corry.

Supported by : Robert Allan, Poseiden \ Ensemble.  Scott Augustine, Neleus \ Ensemble.  Darren Burkett, Sweep \ Ensemble.  Bobby Callahan, Sweep \ Von Hussler  Ensemble. Kayla James, Annie \ Ensemble.  Alissa Keogh, Sweep \ Ensemble.  Anna Kuman, Katie Nanna \ Ensemble.  Brianne Loop, Fanny \ Ensemble.  Jennifer Neumann, Miss Lark \ Ensemble. Michael Querin, Admiral Boom \ Ensemble.  Shane Snow, Robertson Ay \ Ensemble.  Daniel James White, Policeman \ Ensemble. 

The Orchestra : Ken Cormier, Keyboard. Graham Boyle, Percussion. Henry Christian, Trumpet. Angus Kellett, Keyboard. Sue Round, Cello.

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