Month: November 2011

And Slowly Beauty: a homage to the transformative power of theatre that does not invite involvement.

And Slowly Beauty: a homage to the transformative power of theatre that does not invite involvement.

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The very amusing opening scene, the brilliant set and the beautifully choreographed movements indicate that And Slowly Beauty…is to be a special piece of theatre. And there is much to enjoy about the English-language premiere of Michael Nadeau’s stylized drama, written in collaboration with a French collective in 2003 and now translated by Maureen Labonté.

But the early charm wears a little thin long before the conclusion two hours later — there is no intermission — and the saga of middle-aged crisis interspersed with excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is a little too much in love with itself for too much of the time.

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White Christmas – an Orpheus Musical Theatre production of an inferior musical of 1957. “Why do a new production?” asks Jamie Portman.

White Christmas – an Orpheus Musical Theatre production of an inferior musical of 1957. “Why do a new production?” asks Jamie Portman.

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Orpheus Musical Theatre’s decision to offer the stage version of the 1954 film, White Christmas, prompts one immediate question.

Why?

This was an inferior musical 57 years ago and it remains so today, whether you experience it on stage or the big screen. Yet, it inexplicably has assumed the status of a classic. It arrived in 1954, protected by built-in insurance — its title. Indeed, there’s a widespread misconception today that this was the movie which introduced Irving Berlin’s irresistible Yuletide ballad to the world. Not so: the song had been introduced 12 years earlier in a much better film, the 1942 Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Crosby was smart enough to make it one of his signature songs — a song which attained such potency that Paramount saw rich commercial potential in capitalizing on it with a new movie called White Christmas which would once again star Bing.

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White Christmas is less successful as a stage performance.

White Christmas is less successful as a stage performance.

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Crossing from one medium to another works best with first-class material. For example, the novella Gigi by Collette became a delightful movie at the hands of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe in 1958. Despite the high quality of the movie, the stage versions, musical or play, were less successful.

When the original is not top notch, the result is even less likely to be entirely successful. The 1954 Paramount movie, White Christmas, had very mixed reviews (to put it mildly). Therefore, when David Ives and Paul Blake delivered a stage version, they were faced with numerous problems.

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And Slowly Beauty: a script to make the audience ponder the meaning of their own lives. Haunting and inspiring.

And Slowly Beauty: a script to make the audience ponder the meaning of their own lives. Haunting and inspiring.

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Photo of Michael Shamata.

As much a love letter to the power of theatre as an exploration of life’s passing, sometimes mundane and often heartbreaking beauty, director Michael Shamata’s And Slowly Beauty…spins a story at once incredibly complex and devastatingly simple.

The play, originally a collaboration between writer Michel Nadeau and his Quebec collective, Théâtre Niveau Parking, is currently showing as a co-production of Ottawa’s National Arts Centre and the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, B.C. and is emotionally rich and intense. It is the story of the average middle-aged Mr. Mann, played by the brilliantly talented Dennis Fitzgerald, who wins tickets at a work draw to see Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. The play, about sisters living in a provincial Russian town and longing to return to Moscow, is also a story of unfulfilled dreams, the fruitlessness of continually chasing something, and the beauty which is sometimes lost in everyday life. Mr. Mann attends alone and in the process finds himself shaken to his core and suddenly awoken to the dreariness and emotional isolation of his own situation. Cekhov’s play is henceforth intertwined throughout the events happening to Mr. Mann.

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And Slowly Beauty

And Slowly Beauty

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For the Ottawa Citizen

Can art transform the viewer? If your name is Mr. Mann, then yes – or at least it can be a catalyst in finding yourself. And in a world where there’s insufficient time to even get through your daily to-do list, being inspired to go looking for yourself is no mean thing.

Mr. Mann, a genuinely nice, slightly sad-faced middle-aged guy who you’d pay no heed were you to pass him on the street, is the central figure in And Slowly Beauty …, Michel Nadeau’s warm and insightful play from 2003. The six-person show is making its English language premiere – and a fine premiere it is – at the NAC following a well-received run in Victoria.

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Maggie’s Getting Married at Kanata Theatre. Norm Foster has fun with the family!

Maggie’s Getting Married at Kanata Theatre. Norm Foster has fun with the family!

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Are the crashes of thunder in the Kanata Theatre production of Maggie’s Getting Married the director’s way of ensuring that the audience doesn’t miss any verbal bombshells in the dialogue? Maybe such a device could be justified in a drama with an obscure plot line and archaic language. But for a Norm Foster comedy?

Foster, often called Canada’s answer to Neil Simon, generally writes sit-coms, simple in language and often simplistic in plot. His plays offer the comfort of familiarity. Via light comedies, sometimes with serious undercurrents, audiences see themselves, their neighbours, aspects of their lives — exaggerated just a little.

Such is the tone of Maggie’s Getting Married, first performed in 2000. Set in the Duncan family’s kitchen on the night before the wedding, the focus is on sibling rivalry, pre-wedding jitters and family quirks.

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