Glorious: when life is stranger than fiction!

 Photo: Maureen O’Neil.   Janet Uren as Florence Foster Jenkins at Carnegie Hall.

We know this is supposed to be a sendup so it’s perfect community theatre material. We know it seems too ridiculous to even bother suspending our disbelief but the shocking thing is that this is based on a true story and that is what makes this play a lot more complex than one would suspect. Janet Uren plays Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy, most cuddly, warm, delightful human being who is adored, mocked, sought after, teased, and who either refuses to face the truth or who cultivates an extraordinary fantasy world all her own.

As we see in the play, Madame who lives in a lush apartment in New York towards the end of the war, is a former coloratura soprano who can no longer hear properly so she is tone deaf, has no sense of rhythm or timing and certainly can’t follow music but continues giving her little private concerts to a very select set of society people. . These concerts are avidly followed by people like Irving Berlin and Cole porter who send her flowers and say ambiguously nice things about her, in spite of the fact that when she opens her mouth she sounds like a hyena being tortured. It’s so unbearable it’s hilarious. But are we the audience laughing with her or at her? Well, I suspect it’s a bit of both. And Janet Uren maintains the ambiguity all the way through, sometimes betraying a slight nervousness at the thought of those people “laughing at the back of the hall” but then completely convinced of her own great talent. .or is she?

The play shows Mme Foster Jenkins preparing her concerts, engaging a new pianist, sharing her life with her lover Saint Clair, a most charming and elegant Barry Caiger who fits perfectly into this role as a worn out former Shakespearean actor, and carrying on as though everything were normal but of course nothing is normal and that is what intrigues us during the whole evening. How is it possible that “Madame” can carry out this pretense of being a star of the operatic stage without having something like a nervous breakdown?

Well, it soon becomes clear that the life of this woman has been transformed, by the playwright, into an exquisite study of High Camp, a parody of a parody drowned in manifestations of excruciatingly high kitsch where wobbly signs of gender and outrageous style become the pinpoints of this performance. One might have wished this performance to go a little bit more over the top just to make this even clearer and perhaps more comic energy given to some of the characters. However, Madame is transformed into a a creature that drag queens would love to imitate because she heightens the signs of the adulated DIVA that overflow into the wildest of situations dripping in kitschy images from head to toe. Masses of flowers pile up all over the place as the “singer” comes flowing out like a fluffy angle, as slight but ever so tasteful allusions to being surrounded by a “gay” cohort run through the dialogue, including her own pianist Cosmé McMoon (kurt Shantz) who is very clearly not interested in women. That is what makes him the perfect candidate for the job. He looks after his piano and doesn’t bother with anyone else once he is over the initial shock. In fact his first mask of disgust was just as amusing as the way he calmed down and came to accept the situation, because he melts right into that kitschy décor with great ease

. They have slightly underplayed the fun here and director Bowditch might have pumped it up a bit but as it was, we could see that they had an excellent cast that sustained it all right to the end. Even the tempermental Mexican maid was a sample of that over the top bad taste which fit in so well with this whole world. Carolina Barrios spoke much too quickly during the first act but calmed down during the second act so she became understandable…for those of us who do speak Spanish —and that is when we realized she is a fine comic actress whose traditional dress had its place in this exaggerated set where it was almost making fun of itself. Equally suited to this style was the way her “exotic” presence forced all the other to reveal their gross ignorance as they attempt to speak a most horribly broken Spanish. The ultimate kitschy experience.

Linda Barber trotted around the stage like a nervous little bird chirping about her latest ensemble and the outraged Mme Verrinder-Gedge (Sarah Hearn) showed that even those who try to denounce this musical game become just as ridiculous as the person at the centre of it all. And for good measure, the playwright has the former Shakespearean actor acknowledging the presence of the fine society ladies in the audience just to let us know we are all part of the heightened bad taste that spares no one.

One could possibly call this a viscious attack on phony people who don’t understand music at all but who pretend to love it or who easily fall for the seductive power of someone capable of making them believe that she really has a good voice. Or else this is just what it seems, a study in cheeky performance that exacerbates all the stylistic qualities of the theatrical scene….a big playful hoot that obviously amused set designer Riddihough , costume designer Monica Browness, musical director Skye Macdiarmid, props manager Barbara Merriam and all those who created this “work of art”. Olé!

Glorious by Peter Quilter

Directed by Robin Bowditch

Set designed by Robin Riddihough

Costumes designed by Monical Browness

Pianist (the recorded ) Bonnie MacDiarmid and Jenny Ross

Cast:

Kurt Shantz as Cosme McMooon (pianist)

Janet Uren as “Madame” Foster Jenkins

Barry Caiger as St Clair

Carolina Barrios as Maria

Linda Barba as Dorothy

Sarah Hearn as Mrs Verrinder –Gedge

Bob Johnson as