There is certainly no shortage of live theatre in Toronto, especially in the fall season. With our Mirvish subscription plus the extra shows that they offer, we've been watching a myriad of shows in rapid succession.
We've felt many times before that we often enjoy the smaller musicals more than the big productions. Such was the case when we watched
Bloodless - The Trial of Burke and Hare at the Panasonic Theatre, and
La Cage Aux Folles at the Royal Alexandra Theatre within two days.
Bloodless is a dark musical, originally shown as part of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. It is based on the
true story of 19th century Scottish serial killers William Burke and William Hare. They killed 14 people during the years of 1827-28 and sold the cadavers to the Robert Knox School of Anatomy to be used for dissection and research. Cadavers were scarce and valuable in those days, resulting in the trade of grave robbery. However Burke and Hare felt that having to dig up bodies was too much work and preferred to source them through murder instead. Their first body came relatively innocently when an elderly lodger at Hare's boarding home died without paying the rent. Making a tidy sum from selling his body, when another lodger fell ill they decided to help him along. The song they sing as they debate this plan ("
The Bugger is Better Off Dead") oozes with macabre dark humour.
Joined by their common-law wives, Burke and Hare became more brazen and careless with their murders as they enjoyed the monetary rewards of their crimes. The musical focused on one of the murders in particular - that of local prostitute Mary Paterson and the quest of her friend Janet Brown to prove that Burke and Hare killed her. Eventually their crimes caught up with them and they were arrested along with their wives. Lacking enough physical evidence, Hare was given immunity to testify against Burke. Burke was found guilty and hanged. Ironically, his body was donated to the Edinburgh University for dissection and still remains on display at their Anatomical Museum.
We really enjoyed this musical, finding the story to be compelling and the songs to be witty, with the lyrics conveying the complex story well. While the staging was dark and sparse, it fit the tone of the musical. One particularly clever and humorous staging was created for a dissection scene where organs were removed from the body in mason jars. Some people have compared this musical to Sweeney Todd, mostly because of the subject matter. From the perspective of melody and songs, especially the opening number, I found it to remind me more of the musical Jekyll and Hyde, which we will be seeing soon!
In comparison, we did not care as much for
La Cage Aux Folles, especially with what felt like stunt-casting of George Hamilton in the role of Georges. Hamilton is not a Broadway trained actor or singer and it shows in his performance. In playing the gay owner of a cabaret whose son from a one night stand is getting married, it felt like he was all gleaming white teeth and tan with not much substance. On the other hand, Christopher Sieber who plays Albin, Georges' drag queen lover, has a wonderful voice and was the best thing in the show. His big number "I Am What I Am" was heartbreaking and brought the house down. Too bad the rest of the show could not follow suit.
This musical was full of forced campiness but lacked heart. Various subplots with minor characters playing a cafe owner, his wife, and a nightclub owner added nothing to the story and just slowed it down. We've found other productions of this show and even the Robin Williams movie version "The Bird Cage" to be much more enjoyable.
Our faith in the big production musical was restored after seeing
Sister Act. This show was funny, full of spirit, with great singing performances and a feel good story that made you want to stand up and cheer. It flushed out all the plot lines from the Whoopi Goldberg movie with great songs that really captured the essence of each character. The actress who played Delores, the lounge singer who hides in a convent after witnessing a murder, does not have the zaniness of Goldberg, but her voice is terrific. The songs sung by an exasperated Mother Superior, and the comic relief provided by the three thugs sent out to look for Delores were especially funny, as was the Barry White styling of Monsignor O'Hara as he got into the groove of the nuns' new act.
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