Theatre: Reframed

Basing a live musical on a famous painting is not a new concept.  The most famous example of this is Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, inspired by the 1884 pointillism painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by George Seurat, depicting Parisians out for a weekend stroll.  Sondheim's musical allows these characters to come to life and interact with Seurat so that we can find out their back-stories.

The Acting Up Stage Company is a Canadian theatre group dedicated to performing contemporary musicals and developing and producing original, new musicals.  We have watched and thoroughly enjoyed many of their excellent productions in the past, including Wild Party, John and Jen, Craigslist: Do You Want What I Have Got, Parade, Ride the Cyclone, and Tick, Tick Boom. A second mandate for this group is to train, mentor, support and promote Canadian musical theatre writers via a teaching program called "NoteWorthy" which pairs up lyricists and composers to create mini 10-20 minute musicals as teaching exercises.  A popular assignment for the NoteWorthy group involves picking an image out of a book of paintings and using that image as the inspiration for the musical.

Extrapolating on this idea and taking it to the next level, the artistic director Mitchell Marcus negotiated a partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) whereby three teams of writers and composers would each create a 20-minute musical based on one of the paintings found in the Richard Barry Fudger Memorial Gallery, where the artworks are hung side by side from floor to ceiling in "Paris-salon" style.  Furthermore, the resultant shows would be performed right in the gallery, with the paintings of choice as a backdrop.  And so, the unique presentation called "Reframed" was brought to life.

The three paintings selected were "The Marchesa Casati" by Welsh painter Augustus John (1919), The Young Botanist by Canadian painter Paul Peel (1891), and He is Coming by Dutch painter Otto Willem Albertus Roelofs (late 19th Century).   The audience sat in several rows of folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle on the floor of the Fudger Gallery.  The same three actors, Eliza-Jane Scott, Tim Funnell and Kaylee Harwood, performed in all three musicals and it was interesting to watch each of them playing very different roles in quick succession.  The three musicals were performed with minimal sets, props or costumes and the actors spoke and sang their lines with scripts in their hands, so that it felt like we were watching a technical run-through rather than a full performance.  The musical accompaniment was provided by a three-piece orchestra consisting of a piano, cello and woodwinds.

Because the musicals were performed in a small space not meant for such activity (with poor sight-lines for all but those sitting in the front rows, poor acoustics and limited lighting options), the audience was provided with libretto of the three shows so that we could follow along with the dialogue and the singing.  Despite the fact that the actors had to glance at their scripts occasionally and missed a line or stage direction once in a while, they were obviously very talented and the informal presentation added to the charm of the intimate setting.

The first musical was called "La Casati" (Music/Lyrics by Bryce Kulak Book/Lyrics by Erin Shields).  It is based on Augustus John's provocative portrait of Marchesa Luisa Casati, the vain, flamboyant and extravagant Italian heiress who is portrayed with flaming red hair and large piercing eyes that defiantly stare straight ahead, as opposed to the typical demure portraits of women of that time.  At one point, Luisa owned the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, which was subsequently bought by Peggy Guggenheim and is now home to the latter's famous art museum.   Known for her wild hairstyles, outrageous clothing and love of exotic pets, Luisa, who was also John's lover, frivolously spent all of her fortune and died penniless in London.

According to the stage directions of the libretto, the musical starts with the elderly La Casati "sitting on a throne in her crumbling Venetian Palace surrounded by two cheetahs, a gray hound, a parrot and a boa constrictor".  Obviously much of this was left to the imagination.  Augustus John arrives to beg her to stop her excessive spending and they reminisce about the old days when they first met.  John sings of her "eyes, drowning in pools of kohl" and as he describes her, the third actress enters playing the young Luisa and asks that he immortalizes her through portraiture.  John agrees but demands that she forego all her usual masks and costumes so that he can paint the real her–"I don't jewelry, I don't want paint ... you've got to let it show .. inside those eyes".  Eventually the scene fades back to the present where La Casati is left alone with her portraits, which she will have to sell to pay off her debts.

The second musical called "The Preposterous Posthumous Predicament of Paulie Peel" (Music/Lyrics by Kevin Wong, Book by Julie Tepperman) is inspired by the painting "The Young Botanist" by Canadian artist Paul Peel, who tragically died of a lung infection at age 31, just a year after he painted this whimsical portrait of an innocent young boy (possibly his son?) looking with fascination at a frog.  The musical imagines how the boy and his mother (named Paulie and Pauline for the musical) might be be coping with Paul's untimely death, and is the most poignant of the three short plays.  The scene opens with Paulie spotting and chasing a frog in the ravine behind his house, then quickly switches to Paul Peel's funeral where we learn through flashbacks that he and Paulie shared a love for Biology.  We find out that Paulie believes his father has been reincarnated as the frog that he captured and it is this belief that helps him come to terms with Paul's death and to bond and reconnect with his grieving mother.  Pauline sings a heart-wrenching song called "What Do I Do Now" and converses with the frog/Paul who, in between croaks of "Ribbit", advises Paulie and Pauline to listen to each other.  This short musical was so touching that there were audible sniffles and signs of weepiness throughout the audience–not bad for a 20 minute segment.

The third musical titled He Is Coming, the same as the painting, (Music/Lyrics by Britta Johnson, Book by Sara Farb) was the least effective, probably because the least amount of background information was known about the painting or the painter.  Accordingly, there was not the same point of reference as with the other two and the plot was based mostly on the title of the painting as opposed to the subject matter.  In the musical, Irene, a 92-year-old artist is waiting to be evicted from her apartment.  While she waits, she reminisces and her past portraits of friends and family come to life and talk to her.  There is Charlotte, a glamorous young movie star, 50-year-old Marvin who thinks his portrait makes him look mean, Janet, who was painted nude, and finally Irene's husband Bill who she dances with.

All three plays felt a bit like light opera, in the vein as Stephen Sondheim's latter work "Passions" or Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Aspects of Love" and each had a sombre, wistful air.  The actors ran around the room and weaved in and out of the audience throughout each of the musicals.  This was a really unique, enjoyable experience in a cool setting and the three actors did a really good job with these original works. Yet, I think the concept of basing a mini musical on a painting would work just as well if not better on an actual stage where we could see and hear properly.  I would love it if Acting Up Stage tried this again, and maybe tackled some more recent art movements like Pop Art (Andy Warhol, Roy Litchenstein, etc.) and maybe some happier subject matters.