the Company of Fools misses its mark in the park!!
Twelfth Night based on Shakespeare. A production of the Company of Fools directed by Bronwyn Steinberg.
No need to outline the plot here for this pleasant evening in Strathcona Park played out on Brian Smith’s colourful set glowing with contemporary forms but perfectly adapted to this fantasy of overseas voyages, shipwrecks, disguises, impersonation, and shifting genders. It prepares us for a rollicking adventure in an imaginary land where strange puppets speak their mind or pop out from behind the greenery with their funny screechy little voices.
Shakespeare’s great comic creations such as Sir Toby Belch, and Andrew Aguecheek, and Fabian transformed into a chattering little hairy puppet, as well as the sly fun-loving Maria ( Olivia’s servant) played by Kate McArthur who took on other roles alongside a cast of professional actors with much experience and magnificent costumes designed by the very talented Vanessa Imeson. All this created great expectations for an excellent evening of fun. .
However, apart from several moments that worked fairly well because the actors involved projected high verbal and corporeal energy , there is no doubt that the Company of Fools has lost a lot of its spirit this summer. Something happened to give us the impression we were watching a student production that could not always attain the traditional “Fools” mode of speech . Such was the case with many of these excellent actors whose performances were almost neutralized by a lack of strong direction so that the staging appeared to work against the performers’ instincts.
We have seen how theater companies do change, especially if they are working on a specific acting tradition or esthetic which was their trademark at the beginning. Take The Odyssey theatre which began its summer life in Strathcona Park as a tightly trained team of actors inspired by the masked theatre of the Commedia dell’arte . Their work has been evolving over time and is now at a point where it is experimenting with various versions of masked theatre and rewritings of plays that are not necessarily suited to masked performances at all. Thus , much thought is given to the mixture of performance styles, to the way the script suits the acting form (and sometimes they don’t fit perfectly) and how best to interpret the essence of the play while allowing each actor to give vent to his or her own talents . This kind of mixture needs a director like Andy Massingham or even Al Connors and actors such as Katie Ryerson, Scott Florence, Margo MacDonald and many more who have gone on to greater glory since their Fools days but who were trained specifically to capture the style of the fools which did not come that easily. Nowadays, such a background is necessary to capture the ins and outs of masked performance while being able to take advantage of the talents of each actor to assure that he/she never misses the bounding rhythms of these corporeal styles that flow through the spoken word just as much as through the moving body, sweeping the spectators and participants forward into moments of great delight.
Here such encounters were rare. The actors seemed trapped in the text. They did not try to create an interesting encounter between the words , the characters and the rhythms embedded in Shakespeare’s writing. There were long moments of monotony, of sliding over the text as though it did not exist. In the past, that was one of the great strengths of the company, the way it played with Shakespeare’s writing in a most sharp and witty way. More use might have been made of the music with a better sound system to bring out more of the atmosphere of a public fair, where certain characters transformed themselves into strange puppets and suffering lovers without ever conveying any of the emotion we hoped for; a mischievous Garret Quirk slipped between aristocracy and a debauched and mumbling drunken noble without making his transformations strong enough; Olivia( Kate Smith) had her moments as a saucy Madonna who eventually worked it all out as the cheeky Andrew Aguecheek ; then there was Viola (Catherine Rainville) a rather bland lovesick young lady disguised as a man, nothing more transpired! The encounters with all the characters portrayed by Kate McArthur shot out great sparks that lit up the stage and drew us back to the original Fools. When she came on stage as Viola’s lost brother Sebastian or as Maria (Olivia’s servant), the energy soared up to the trees, even when she barely moved . Of course Shakespeare’s plot is wonderful and carries it all along, especially when he has poor Malvolia tortured by Maria’s cruel joke.. Nevertheless the proof was there. Malvolia ( the exquisite Mary Ellis) emerged a crushed creature who evaporated in her text because she seemed miscast.
If the Company of Fools is to find its past glory it will have to find artists who have experience with masked theatre or at least corporeal theatre of all sorts so that a new concoction of performance styles might eventually emerge. It just doesn’t happen by accident. It can’t just be willed by strong convictions. It has to be sought out and studied. Laurie Stevens trained her actors as did Massingham and he experimented with various styles as well, but he left Ottawa. Such a shame for us.
Im convinced there are still artists/directors – male and female, who could certainly follow in the footsteps of these founding people. . Let’s see what happens next year.
Twelfth Night directed by Bromwyn Steinberg. Produced by a Company of Fools. Check the timetable as the performances take place in parks across the city:
http://fools.ca/2018/03/30/twelfth-night-july-2nd-august-18th-2018/
see the schedule across the city JULY 2 to August 18.