Jamie Portman, Author at Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

An Inspector Calls gets solid treatment at Perth

By Jamie Portman | August 24, 2016

There’s no denying the polemic in J.B. Priestley’s 1944 classic, An Inspector Calls. And it’s not played down in the Perth Classic Theatre Festival’s excellent production. That’s evident from the compelling moment near the end when actor William Vickers, excellent as the play’s mysterious Inspector Goole, confronts the audience and warns of the “fire and blood and anguish” that will descend on society if human beings fail to recognize their collective responsibilities to each other.

The play wears its socialist colours proudly, as did its author throughout a remarkably long career. And when Britain’s National Theatre unveiled a historic revival in 1992, the notes in the printed program took unflinching aim at Margaret Thatcher’s notorious assertion that “there is no such thing as society” and therefore no case to be made for shared human concerns.

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The Stratford Festival’s Bunny has sex on her mind.

By Jamie Portman | August 23, 2016

Photo: David Hou. Maev Beaty and David Patrick Flemming.

STRATFORD, Ont. — Hanna Moscovitch’s new play, Bunny, had its world premiere at the Stratford Festival the other afternoon — and this was a cue for theatre staff to go all cutesy for the occasion by wearing rabbit ears on their heads.

Given that we were definitely not in for a cosy afternoon of G-rated entertainment in the company of Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, it was more than a little bizarre to be confronted by ticket takers decked out like participants in a kiddies’ picnic. Or perhaps this was intended as some sort of ironic statement on the numerous sexual couplings we would soon be witnessing in the intimacy of the festival’s tiny Studio Theatre.

“Let me tell you about Sorrel,” announces Maev Beaty, the resourceful actress who will be guiding us through this saga of unquenchable sexuality and unfulfilled needs. Beaty is actually portraying Sorrel herself, although the script requires her to discuss her character in the third person. And Sorrel’s nickname is “Bunny” — hence the title — and that comes from that frightened rabbit-in-the-headlights look she gets when she’s in situations where her lack of social skills leaves her unable to cope.

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The Shaw Festival delivers a worthwhile Dance Of Death

By Jamie Portman | August 10, 2016

Photo: Emily Cooper.

There’s a peculiar moment in the Shaw Festival’s production of The Dance Of Death when a character arrives on stage carrying a head of cabbage.

But that moment has purpose. And it does have a connection to the emotional mayhem engulfing the stage. It’s also a reminder of director Martha Henry’s crafty approach to this potentially troublesome play. Given its volatile sensibility, why not introduce an an element of absurdity into a dramatic situation mired in marital discord? But no — perhaps “discord” doesn’t really describe the scalding enmity existing between Edgar, this perpetually soured artillery captain, and his resentful spouse, Alice, on the eve of their silver wedding anniversary.

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The Shaw Festival season triumphs again with Fugard play

By Jamie Portman | August 4, 2016

Photo David Cooper.

Master Harold and the Boys, by Athol Fugard, directed by Philip Akin

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the racism that has been quietly simmering beneath the surface begins boiling over in the Shaw Festival’s superb production of Master Harold And The Boys.

But that very difficulty is one of the points of Athol Fugard’s painfully nuanced play, set as it is in South Africa in 1950 when apartheid was tightening its grip. Fugard has a particular fascination for the conventions of day-to-day living in an entrenched racist environment, and for those moments when the conventions crumble and the veneer starts to crack. South Africa’s apartheid government had no problem spotting Master Harold’s lurking sub-text — which is why it banned performances of Fugard’s play in 1982 when it first came out.

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A Robust Arms and The Man at Perth

By Jamie Portman | July 27, 2016

Logo: Classic Theatre Festival, Perth.

George Bernard Shaw sub-titled Arms And The Man an “anti-romantic comedy” when he wrote it in 1894. His intent was serious — to challenge romantic illusions about the glory of war. But his methods were playful as he set up farcical situations to make his point and created a memorable gallery of comic characters who continue to delight audiences more than a century later.

Perth’s Classic Theatre Festival has mounted a robust revival that declares its purpose immediately when we’re introduced to Raina, the romantically inclined heroine whose heart begins fluttering at the very thought of the heroic Balkan war happening around her. She — fantasizing with schoolgirl fervour about the stalwart conduct of her betrothed, Sergius Saranoff, on the battlefield — is actually bursting into song as the stage lights go up. To be sure, there’s no singing in the text of the Shaw play, but director Laurel Smith has cunningly chosen to launch the evening with a few bars of the aria, My Hero, from The Chocolate Soldier, the 1909 Oscar Strauss operetta based on Arms And The Man. That’s sufficient for actress Lana Sugarman, an ongoing delight as Raina, to start giving shape to a character addicted to head-in-the clouds romantic nonsense until she’s brought down to earth with a resounding thud by the Swiss mercenary who seeks sanctuary in her bedroom.

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The Stratford Festival scores with its two Breath of Kings plays

By Jamie Portman | July 20, 2016

Photo.David Hou. With Geraint Wyn Davis and Ayala Mengesha

The first point to be made about the Breath Of Kings duo, now at the Stratford Festival, is that they bring Shakespeare’s history plays to renewed, freshly burnished life.

The histories can be a hard sell these days, despite the fact that they contain some of Shakespeare’s finest writing. Richard lll, with its irresistible villain, is of course the exception. But in general the history plays, although indispensable parts of the canon, can often seem problematic when it comes to attracting audiences.

One immediate virtue of Graham Abbey’s masterful distillation of four major works — Richard ll, the two parts of Henry lV, and Henry V — into two epic evenings of entertainment is that they should win over the must reluctant playgoer. That’s because they provide narrative clarity, honour some of the greatest moments of Shakespearean verse, and bring immediacy to a particularly turbulent period in English history. They also make for exciting theatre, thanks to a powerful ensemble cast, which includes Abbey himself in a crucial role, and to the incisive direction of Mitchell Cushman and Weyni Mengesha.

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A Woman of No Importance: The Shaw Festival lays an Egg with Oscar Wilde play.

By Jamie Portman | July 13, 2016

Photo: David Cooper. A Woman of No Importance.

It seemed welcome news when the Shaw Festival announced that it would be tackling Oscar Wilde’s A Woman Of No Importance this season. One hoped that the festival would be redressing the wrong done this play in a previous production in 2004. After all, this current revival would be in the capable hands of Eda Holmes, a director responsible for some of the finest moments in the festival’s history.

How quickly can one’s high expectations be dashed. The production now on view at the Festival Theatre seems intent on baring the play’s weaknesses and diluting its strengths. It’s hard to be believe that the same director who unveiled a brilliant production of Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession in May could follow up with such a mish-mash.

To be sure, A Woman Of No Importance has long been considered the slightest and most problematic of Wilde’s plays. It begins with an extended upper-class gathering, the sort of situation that allowed the playwright to indulge himself with barbed and witty epigrams about society. But it’s a scene fraught with hazards — the most immediate of which is the challenge of keeping the endless talk, talk, talk from turning static.

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Stratford Embraces the Supernatural in Macbeth

By Jamie Portman | June 28, 2016

Photo: David Hou. Ian Lake as Macbeth

Macbeth directed by Antoni Cimolino

The supernatural is eerily alive and well in the Stratford Festival’s new production of Macbeth. But those who submit to its allure are fallibly, destructively human.

In our own age, this youthful Macbeth and his lady would probably worship social media and be dangerously susceptible to its excesses and its mistruths. Stratford’s revival may be very much in period, but a similar dynamic can still apply, even in 11th Century Scotland. This Macbeth may be a hero on the battlefield but he’s also a product of his times. In his world, ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night are not an unnatural phenomenon. So, if he is dangerously ambitious, why shouldn’t he prepared to listen to the Weird Sisters and heed their prophecies of a great future for him?

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Bernard Shaw’s Black Girl Arrives at the Shaw Festival

By Jamie Portman | June 26, 2016

Photo David Cooper. Featuring Natasha Mumba

It might best be described as a 60-minute explosion of zaniness.

It comes to us courtesy of the Shaw Festival, which — in the immortal words of the Monty Python guys — wanted to program “something completely different” for this summer’s lunchtime theatre slot.

At the same time it wanted us to remember the bearded playwright who has provided the essential mandate for one of the largest theatre festivals in the world.

So it commissioned Canadian playwright Lisa Codrington to prepare a stage version of George Bernard Shaw’s controversial 1932 novella, The Adventures Of A Black Girl In her Search for God.

The result, now on view at the venerable Court House Theatre might best be described as inspired mayhem.

To say that Codrington plays fast and loose with the GBS original is to put it mildly. It’s a slyly subversive reworking of an already subversive text, but she doesn’t dishonor the rationalist sensibility that led Shaw to write this satire about the young African girl who offends her missionary mentor by asking too many unanswerable questions about the nature of God and then sets out to find the answers for herself. Instead, Codrington holds Shaw in mischievous affection to the extent of giving the old boy his own place in the script.

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Gilbert without Sullivan takes the stage at the Shaw Festival

By Jamie Portman | June 26, 2016

Photo: David Cooper . Engaged

The Shaw Festival has decided to sprinkle a bit of nonsense into a Niagara summer — but it’s nonsense with a satirical agenda.

William S. Gilbert’s Engaged is an 1877 farce about marriage and money — not an unfamiliar theme but one that has proved of abiding interest throughout centuries of drama.

In this instance, it inspired Gilbert to filter it through his own somewhat sour prism, and the result is perhaps his most enduring stage comedy.

The playwriting half of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership had a view of the universe that ranged from barbed whimsy to outright scorn, and that viewpoint finds particular utterance in this scathing send-up of human greed. Morris Panych’s new production at the Royal George Theatre takes due note of Gilbert’s jaundiced disposition, but he also ensures that Engaged is an airborne delight in performance.

Panych can do frivolity very well, and Engaged is no exception. But he also sustains an undercurrent of irony. At one point in the proceedings, a key character bemoans the mercenary culture of the day: “What a terrible thing is this insensitive craving after money,” he tells us.

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