My Fair Superstar -- Free Live Musical Theatre

Luminato brings the Stratford Shakespeare and Shaw Festivals to Toronto on Monday, June 13^th in a free evening of song featuring two of this season’s most highly anticipated musicals:  Jesus Christ Superstar directed by Des McAnuff (Artistic Director of Stratford) and My Fair Lady, helmed by Molly Smith (A.D. of Washington’s Arena Stage).  This exciting evening will take place in Metro Square, also known as David Pecaut Square, located on King Street West next to Roy Thomson Hall.

            Titled “Broadway’s Night Out,” the show will be hosted by talented and popular  cabaret stars Sharron Matthews and Shawn Hitchins.  The program will include the “biggest hit songs” from current productions and contemporary shows. 

Also on the bill will be internationally acclaimed cabaret artist Meow Meow, known for her creative brand of “kamikaze cabaret” and “performance art exotica.”  Lance Horne and his house band will back her.  Also appearing will be VJ John Bantay, host of “Musical Monday” events at New York’s renowned Splash/SBNY bar.

 

-Dennis Kucherawy

Spirit of Elizabeth Taylor (and Quebec nationalism) live on in "Hosanna"

…"The first movies I ever saw were Elizabeth Taylor movies.  And the last movies I’m ever going to see will be Elizabeth Taylor movies.  And someday, when I’m old-old-old and rich-rich-rich, I’m going to buy me a movie projector that will run nonstop, and I’ll sit and I’ll watch Elizabeth Taylor make her entrance into Rome until I croak.

“I’ve drooled over Elizabeth Taylor…I’ve laughed like an idiot, I’ve bawled like a baby over Elizabeth Taylor, and I’ll go on doing it over Elizabeth Taylor until I croak!  I even skipped work to see Elizabeth Taylor make her entrance into Rome.  And I’ll sell my last false tooth, if I have to, to see her do that again!”

If Montreal hairdresser Claude Lemieux were alive today, it’s likely he would still be inconsolable over the death last month of screen glamour goddess Elizabeth Taylor.  That is, had Lemieux even lived. 

Lemieux is actually the Taylor-obsessed drag queen “Hosanna,” the title character of Michel Tremblay’s classic drama that the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is reviving this summer in its original English translation at its Studio Theatre, directed by Weyni Mengesha, beginning previews July 26^th.

The original French production of Hosanna received its debut 38 years ago when transvestites and the gay demi-monde were rarely if ever depicted in popular culture.  Now, after La Cage Aux Folles, The Torch Song Trilogy and presently Priscilla Queen of the Desert on Broadway and the West End, Hosanna returns in a more knowledgeable and sophisticated era.

Hosanna premiered in 1973 at Montreal’s Theatre de Quat’Sous starring Jean Archambault with Gilles Renaud as Hosanna’s leather-clad biker lover, Cuirette.  A year later, translators John Van Burek and Bill Glascco’s acclaimed English-language production debuted at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, starring Richard Donat as Cuirette and, in the title role, the late Richard Monette who, years later, would go on to become the artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.  Hosanna was arguably one of his most acclaimed roles, a passionate tour-de-force in a play that broke barriers.

Often outrageously hilarious and often sadly tragic, Hosanna is set on Hallowe’en on Montreal’s Blvd. St. Laurent, colloquially known as “The Main.”  The play begins with Hosanna/Claude quietly returning from a Hallowe’en ball to the depressing bachelor apartment on Plaza Saint-Hubert he shares with Cuirette.  Many who saw Richard Monette in the Toronto production will never forget his spellbinding entrance into his lonely apartment in tears.  He was dressed in cheap, full drag, with a cobra head-piece, necklaces, sequins, a wine-red lace dress, serpents entwined around his/her arms, painted face, false eyelashes, a black Egyptian wig, a cloak and carrying a scepter and an orb – an image of defeat and chagrin, an ironic mirror reflection of Taylor’s triumphant entry into Rome with thousands cheering.  Hosanna’s entrance is greeted by silence.

From that moment on, the play becomes a psychological and emotional strip-tease, peeling away layers of Hosanna and Cuirette’s psyche as they confront illusions and delusions in an exploration of who and what they really are.

            However, in an interview published in 1977 in Performing Arts in Canada, Michel Tremblay told me the play is more than a relationship between two men and a search for personal identity; it is also a metaphor with political implications.  

            “For me, Hosanna is Quebec,” he explained.  “When Hosanna is produced outside of Quebec, a layer that is found in Quebec productions is missing.  It is never there.  And this is the political layer.  What (translator and director) Bill Glassco has done with my plays is really very good, but the political meaning is just suggested; it is not really there.  It’s OK that people like Hosanna just as a play about the crisis of identity, but since my country is facing this problem, when the people of Quebec see Hosanna, they know much more what I mean.

            “Hosanna has been dreaming of being something else, just like Quebec.  For the past two hundred years, we’ve been caught between English Canada, Europe, the English and the French from Europe, and the United States.  So we are facing an identity crisis, but all we have now, all we can and must say, is `Look at us.  We are Quebec.  We’re not a mixture of an English actress playing an Egyptian queen in an American movie made in Spain.  We are Quebec.  Here we are!”

-Dennis Kucherawy

Guest contributor Dennis Kucherawy, an award-winning writer about Canadian and international theatre, bought his copy of Hosanna at Theatrebooks at our first location.  He’s been shopping here ever since.

Linda Griffiths Contributes to Great Arousal in Edinburgh

When Linda Griffiths read last month at TheatreBooks as part of Meaningful Words A Playwrights Reading Series, she created quite a stir, as you might expect. She read/performed from early works including Maggie and Pierre; O.D. on Paradise, Transformation of Jessica as well as some new work in progress. She also read from her most recent success, Age of Arousal. We were excited to hear that Linda was leaving in a few days for Scotland to join rehearsals for a new production of Age of Arousal at The Royal Lyceum. The play premiered at Alberta Theatre Project's Playrites Festival in Calgary in 2007. It has had further productions in Toronto at Factory Theatre and at Shaw Festival in the 2010 Season. Linda said how fascinating it has been to see how different directors have approached the play. She was eager to get into the rehearsal room at The Lyceum. We are happy to report that Linda sent us a very happy message about her experience in Edinburgh a part of which we'd like to share with you...
" The show opened on Saturday amid a glorious drizzle - the theatre is fantastic, like an installation built entirely for the play. A gorgeous late eighteen eighties beauty, complete with a crystal chandelier and gilt for days, in the middle of the stage is a perfect minimalist set - creating a perfect contrast to the theatre itself, but also referencing the theatre. Hard to describe. I've been in rehearsals, of course, working on the thoughtspeak. It's a wonderful production - directed by Muriel Romanes." ( http://www.stellarquines.com/ )
Kudos to Linda and the company at The Royal Lyceum

We dug around and found some quotes for this new production of Age of Arousal:
" Griffiths's rich dialogue is punctuated throughout with manic internal asides that throb with locked-up passion, the collective voices overlapping and counter-pointing each other to make little vocal symphonies. Physically there's a glorious archness beyond the play's erotic pulse..."
The Herald Scotland
" This is great theatre, an intelligent, lively and funny production which avoids stereotypes and pastiche in this commentary on female , ( and male) sexuality. "
" A brilliant cast with some crackling laugh-out-loud lines, had the full house tickled by the bristling wit and political humour of the play."

Age of Arousal runs at The Royal Lyceum until March 16 and tours in Scotland until April 16th.
LMcH

Assassins Hits the Mark

In his printed Director's Notes for Assassins, Adam Brazier says "Sondheim and Weidman take huge risks using the musical forum to convey their ideas. Rarely has a musical tackled such dark and culturally significant subject matter and done so with such success. ... It is this writing and that argument that attracts the quality of artists you are about to enjoy."
And man oh man, did we enjoy !
The brilliant Adam Brazier assembled a first rate company of outstanding performers for this re-mount production of the 2010 Dora Award winning musical. Brazier's thoroughly conceived production allowed all his collaborators to bring their individual talents to the creative process in developing this complex musical into a unified whole.
Kudos to Zorana Kydd of Birdland Theatre in partnership with Arkady Spivak of Talk is Free Theatre for their continued commitment to ensemble collaboration.
LMcH

Meaningful Words: Morris Panych uncensored

Last night at Theatrebooks we were paid a visit by playwright, director, actor and all around Canadian theatre icon Morris Panych. Morris visited us as part of our monthly Meaningful Words reading series (stay tuned for info on our next Meaningful Words night, Wed. March 16th with Damien Atkins!). In our intimate space on the top floor of the store Morris dazzled an audience of students, professionals and fans with material both new and old, familiar and completely alien. We started off with some Panych favourites; a stretch of monologue from Vigil (which has been translated into 26 languages, often as Auntie & Me Morris later explained), some gut busting back-and-forth from The Dishwashers, and some dialect heavy dialogue from What Lies Before Us which, as Morris pointed out, was hated in Toronto but loved in the prairies. In Panych's hands (and voice) these are all gems (although oddly fixated on all things testicular).

But the real treat came when we were given a sneak peak at some of Morris' newer material.  First came a scene from Gordon, which premiered at Montreal's SideMart Theatrical Grocery last October. Gordon will be available for sale at Theatrebooks by the end of March. It's a play based on a story his mother used tell, Morris informs us, about a young man her family knew who would frequently leave home, coming back weeks or months later. Sometimes he would return having earned tremendous amounts of unexplained money, and other times he would return flat broke and hungry. In Gordon, the title character has also been away from home.  His father thinks he's been at college, when in fact he's been learning a criminal trade. In the scene Morris reads us Gordon returns home to his father's house along with his simpleton sidekick and his girlfriend waiting in the car. Their repartee is vicious and hilarious. Particularly the joke about the blind man in the fish market.... "hello ladies!"
We then hear a scene from an as yet untitled work in which a rookie grocery store security guard interrogates a career shoplifter after a steak falls out of her dress. It sounds promising. Morris finishes off his readings with a scene from In Absentia. This is not Morris' usual style, he explains. It's not a comedy. In Absentia is a play about a woman whose husband has disappeared in Colombia, presumed kidnapped or worse. It is nothing if not intriguing. In Absentia will premier at the Centaur Theatre in 2012.

The best part of the evening, for me at least, came with the Q&A at the end. The questions were mostly about the art of playwriting itself. "Do you start with characters or plot?" "Characters." "Has any ever asked you to write a play, like for a commission?" "No one asks me to write plays." One young student asked Mr. Panych how someone new to playwriting might start working on a play.  The advice? Don't censor yourself. Even if after twenty pages of writing you feel like you've got nothing but garbage, just keep on writing. Commit to writing a terrible play and who knows what you might end up with. Morris tells us an anecdote about a film made of Picasso painting on glass, with the camera on the other side so that the viewer can watch Picasso stare, contemplate, experiment and then fill the "canvas" with what, to the viewer's eye, seems like a masterpiece. Picasso then wipes out the whole thing, leaving just a corner, or a spot of paint. he then starts over from that point and fills the "canvas" again. And the process repeats itself until at last he is satisfied. "I find comfort," Morris says, "that even one of the greatest artists of all time sometimes has no idea what he's doing".  His final piece of advice on writing is simply this: "To me a writer is someone who wakes up in the morning and wants to write."

Don't forget to check out our next Meaningful Words reading night on Wed. March 16th with Damien Atkins. It's 7PM at Theatrebooks and, best of all, it's free!

-JDH