Theatre 2022: Mirvish - Shark is Broken, Mean Girls, Fisherman's Friends

The 2021/2022 Mirvish subscription season ended with a bang with the stellar musical Singing in the Rain.  My husband Rich and I looked forward to the start of the new 2022/2023 season since the lineup sounded fantastic.  We have finally upgraded our subscription seats to the second price tier in the Dress Circle and will be sitting next to our friends for the entire season.  No more looking jealously at their seats two rows ahead of us!

Unfortunately, the first show of the new Mirvish season started with a whimper.  The Shark Is Broken is a play about the troubles that arose during the making of the 1975 hit movie Jaws that starred Robert Shaw as Quint, a professional shark fisherman, Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper, an oceanographer and Rob Schneider as Brody, the police chief. Shaw’s son Ian co-wrote and is also cast as his father in the play.  The lengthy show with no intermission depicts the three actors bickering for 90 minutes while sitting in a bobbing boat, waiting for the mechanical shark (which is never shown) to be repaired.  I read that the best part of the show was the set design, which included a real boat that appears to be sitting on actual water, thanks to some brilliant video effects.

Sadly, the rest of the show did not fare as well, as we had heard negative reviews from various sources.  My brother-in-law returned from the performance and promptly messaged me with “Well that was 90 minutes that I will never get back again”. The headline of the review from Now Toronto was “The Shark is Broken, and so is this play”.  The Globe and Mail called it a “performance piece by the son of Quint” rather than a fleshed-out play.  Nevertheless, I wanted to watch this play and come to my own conclusions about it.  I also wanted to sit in and experience the view from our new seats!  Alas, the theatre gods were not with me since I caught COVID just before we were supposed to go to the show.  The only bright side of this is that if I had to miss a show from our subscription series, this is the one that I would least regret. Our friends who we gave our tickets  told me that we didn’t miss much.  The closest I got to the eponymous shark was when I posed in front of the giant plastic one positioned in front of the Royal Alexandra Theatre.  But given that no shark was ever seen in the play, I guess this is the closest that anyone else got as well.

I would have been much more disappointed if I had to miss Mean Girls the Musical, since I love musicals in general and have fond memories of watching the 2004 movie starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried and Tina Fey that this show is based upon. Luckily, I recovered in time to watch this Mean Girls the Musical and was delighted by the wonderful job that was done in adapting the movie into the musical.

Like the movie, the musical deals with the coming-of-age story of Cady, an intelligent but naïve teenager who goes to an American public school for the first time after growing up and being homeschooled in Africa.  Cady initially makes friends with outcasts Janis and Damian, who teach her about navigating high school politics, cliques and social hierarchy. Janis encourages Cady to infiltrate and try to bring down “the Plastics”, a trio of popular “mean girls” considered to be school royalty, led by Queen Bee Regina George along with her minions, Gretchen, who is desperate to be liked, and Karen, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Cady is on board with the plan, especially after Regina cruelly and deliberately thwarts Cady’s attempts to connect with her love interest, Aaron, who is Regina’s ex-boyfriend.  But soon Cady loses her way and is seduced by the power and popularity of being one of the Plastics.

The initial song “A Cautionary Tale” sung by Janis and Damian, foreshadows the plot with the telling lines “How far would you go to be popular and hot”, and “Mean is easier than nice”. Regina is introduced with my favourite song on the musical, “Apex Predator” which compares her to a wild beast like the ones Cady would be familiar with in Africa.  Janis starts the song by conveying warnings such as “She’s the queen of beasts, she can smell your fear” while Cady realizes the advantages of being associated with Regina by singing “I’m in her pride, I have hitched a ride, with the apex predator”.

While the plot of the musical follows the movie quite closely, there have been some not-too-subtle changes which modernize a few scenarios and address current sensibilities and political-correctness touchpoints.  The most obvious change between the 2004 movie and the 2018 Broadway musical is the advancement of the Internet, social media and the use of cell phones where phone calls have evolved into texting. In the movie, to bully a rival, Regina (played by a young Rachel McAdams) uses her cell phone to call and speak to the girl’s mother.  This scene obviously did not make it into the musical.

Yet, one anachronistic element of the movie that is retained in the musical is the “burn book”, a pink-covered scrapbook of nasty slurs, rumours and disses that the Plastics use to disparage their enemies or those they consider beneath them. Having an actual physical book seems out of place in our online world.  But the book is so integral to the plot and so prominently visible to a live audience that I guess it was important to keep it.

The musical further pushes the movie’s themes of female empowerment and anti-bullying rather heavy-handedly by invoking references to #MeToo. At one point in the musical number “Stop”, Karen sings about being convinced by a boy she liked to send him nude photos which he then posted on the Internet.  Stopping the song (pun intended), she awkwardly throws in the comment that “Someone should teach boys to not do that in the first place”. This elicits the obligatory cheer from the audience but totally takes you out of the flow of the song.  The initial set design at the start of the show mimics pages from the Burn Book (or they could be interpreted as Instagram posts) with mean comments like “Saggy Boobs”, “Carol & Lucas Still Virgins”, “Masturbated with a Frozen Hot Dog”.  By the curtain call, after lessons were learned by all, the pages take on affirming messages like “Teen Female Power”, “Respect”, “Dignity”.

Mean Girls is a fun musical with great, upbeat songs that propel the plotline and good choreography. I found the sound to be too loud which muffled the lyrics being a sung and the words being spoken.  Good thing I listened to the soundtrack before watching the show, so I had an idea of what to listen for.

Our final Mirvish show to wrap up 2022 is another musical based on a movie, which in turn is based on a true story. Fisherman’s Friends is a folk music group hailing from Port Isaac, Cornwall, England, who sing traditional songs of the sea. The group is comprised mostly of fishermen, coast guards and lifeboat-men whose voices blend in beautiful harmony. Starting in 1995, ten friends sang together as an a cappella group, regularly performing on the Port Isaac Platt (harbour) with the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing behind them.  In 2010, they were discovered while singing on the Platt and were signed to a million-pound contract with Universal Music Group, a major record label.  Their first album debuted at #9 on the UK charts, going gold by selling over 500,0000 units. They have since released four more albums, sang for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and toured both at home and abroad.  In the intervening years, band members have come and gone, and the number of members in the group has fluctuated. With the addition of new members who play guitar and accordion, the group has added instrumentation to their performances.

The earlier albums consisted mostly of famous old sea shanties. A sea shanty follows a pattern of call and response, where the shanty man or lead singer belts out the main lyrics of the song, to which the remaining members sing a repeated chorus in unison. The group seems to rotate the role of shanty man from song to song.  Some of the more popular shanties and the ones I like the best include Drunken Sailor, Nelson’s Blood, Wellerman, John Kanaka and Keep Hauling.  Most of these shanties are lively, foot-stomping jigs, sometimes with humorous lines such as all the suggestions about “What will we do with a drunken sailor?”.  The Cornish accent is also prominently heard in the songs, such as when they sing the word “early” and it is pronounced as “er-lie”.

Fisherman’s Friends also sing slower, soulful songs that describe hard times in Cornish history and the dangers of the sea. The folk song Cousin Jack, written by English folk-rock performer Steve Knightley, is based on an 1860 poem describing the 19th century Cornish miners who were known as “Cousin Jacks” who emigrated abroad looking for work.  Proportionately, Cornwall lost more of its population to this emigration than Scotland or Ireland. Wistful lyrics describing this loss include “Where there’s a mine or a hole in the ground, that’s where I’m headed, that’s where I’m bound ... I’ll leave my country behind, I’m not coming back”.

A beautiful, haunting song called Widow Woman was written by Fisherman’s Friend members Bill Hawkins, Jon Cleave. It describes the local legend of a tragedy that occurred in Port Quinn, a neighbouring cove near Port Isaac.  As the story goes, all the men of Port Quinn were out at sea herring fishing when a huge storm blew in, drowning the entire fleet and making widows of every woman in the village.  In some tellings there were 24 widows while in others, there were 32. The song Widow Woman starts with the lyrics “Why do you sit widow woman? Why do you stare out at me?” as if the sea itself is posing the question.

In 2019, a U.K. movie also called Fisherman’s Friends was released, loosely based on the group’s rise to fame.  To add drama and romance to the plot, the movie adds a slick, cynical London music executive named Danny who discovers the group and becomes their manager.  It then throws in a love interest for him in Alwyn, a feisty fisherman’s daughter and mother to her own a cute young daughter. The movie follows the traditional romantic comedy clichés of the “meet cute”, and the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl and boy gets girl back” trope. Amidst the romance were a few other fictional plotlines including the local bar being deep in debt, Danny’s struggles to get a record company to give the group a chance, and the death of one of the elder members of the band.

Throughout the movie, songs are sung by the Fisherman’s Friends, with the real members augmenting the singing of the actors. It depicts the group singing on their lobster trawlers, on the Platt, in the Port Isaac church while recording a demo and in various locations in London while trying to secure their big break.  The film was well received, and a sequel subtitled “One And All” has just been released in November, 2022.  The saying “One And All” (perhaps a riff on “All For One and One for All” from the Three Musketeers?) is a tenet that the group stands by and is the title of their second commercial album.

In 2021,a live musical of Fisherman’s Friends debuted in Truro, Cornwall before heading to Toronto to play at the Mirvish Theatre in 2022.  It is of note that the show has come to Toronto without first debuting on London’s West End. The musical closely follows the general plot and characters in the movie with a few differences. The role of Alwyn’s daughter has been dropped, since it did not make sense to have a child actor in the cast for eight shows a week when her character did not really contribute to the storyline.  The reason for Danny coming to Cornwall has been extremely simplified for the musical (arriving on vacation) compared to the movie (attending a stag party where he is pranked into trying to sign the Fisherman’s Friends to a record deal).  In both cases, Alwyn’s father Jim is initially against trying for a record deal, but the motivations are different.  In the movie, it is merely suspicion of outsiders and a desire for to maintain the status quo of their simple but content life, while the musical alludes to Alwyn’s wayward mother who deserted the family in search of fame and fortune as a singer in London.

The musical opens up with some creative staging using ropes and pulleys to simulate a fishing boat swaying through rough waters while the shanty "Keep Hauling" is sung.  It is interesting to note that along with The Shark is Broken, this is the second show of the 2022/23 Mirvish season that involves staging of a boat on water.  In Fisherman's Friend The Musical, the boats return for two more scenes including a thrilling sea search and rescue sequence that involved fog and search lights.

As with any adaptation from film to live musical, there are many more songs and sea shanties to fill out the show, and it is not just the Fisherman’s Friends members who are singing.  The main female characters including the bar owner’s pregnant wife, Alwyn’s grandmother, and especially Alwyn (who is now an accomplished guitar-strumming singer in her own right), get to perform a few numbers. Not quite the typical musical or even the typical jukebox musical, the lyrics of songs make no attempt to advance the plot, which usually is a must for me to enjoy a musical. But as a "bio-pic" musical, the shanties are integral to lives of the Fisherman's Friends and so joyful to listen to,  that it didn’t matter.

Given the feel-good origin story of the real group, it is not a surprise that both the movie and the musical are fun to watch and leave you with a warm, happy feeling while you exit the theatre humming or singing the words to catchy sea shanty tunes.

Theatre 2022: CanStage - Choir Boy, Little Dickens

Towards the end of 2022, we watched two shows at the theatres owned by the Canadian Stage Company. We always need to take care to check which theatre our shows are playing at, since the Bluma Appel Theatre (on Front St. between Yonge St. and Church St.) and the Berkeley Theatre (near Front Street and Parliament St.) are a good 13 to 15 minutes' walk apart.  Showing up at the wrong theatre would not be an easy mistake to recover from.

Choir Boy is a play first performed in 2012 in London, England and then on Broadway in 2018.  It is a coming-of-age story revolving around five members of a prominent gospel choir at a prestigious all-black school for boys. Pharus, the self-proclaimed best singer and leader of the choir is an effeminate, gay senior whose brash and sassy façade hides a hurt and vulnerable young man who has battled homophobic slurs ever since he was a child.  Bobby, the headmaster’s nephew, is Pharus’ rival for the choir lead, and never misses an opportunity to harass and denigrate his nemesis.  But Pharus finds refuge in the “healing power of music” and takes solace in his belief in his own talent amidst the pressures to conform to social norms.  He is not afraid to push buttons to promote his own ambitious agenda, even when it invokes jealousy and pushback from others like Bobby.

The other members of the choir include “Junior”, who is Bobby’s sidekick and acts as comic relief, David, who intends to become a priest but struggles with his own demons as well as with issues trying to please a strict father, and Anthony, Pharus’ athletic and self-confident roommate, who is generous and accepting of Pharus’ queerness, in strict contrast to Bobby’s reactions.  In the current cast of this show, each of the five choir boys is a well-defined character with very distinctive personality traits and even physical appearance.  It is interesting to note that in an original 2013 staging of the show for Manhattan Theatre Club, there were more boys in the cast. Based on what I saw in Youtube clips, the extra boys were more backup singers and dancers for the musical numbers as opposed to additional characters who contributed to the plot.  I like that the current version of the show focuses on just the five main characters, as I would have found the extra ones to be distracting.

Integrated between dramatic discussions and arguments about identity, ambition, privilege, racism, slavery, and homophobia are beautiful performances of spiritual hymns, sung a capella by the choir in perfect harmony. The only song that sounded familiar to me was “Motherless Child”, and only because John Legend released a jazzy, pop version of it. In Choir Boy, this haunting slave song that laments being taken “a long, long way from home” is sung by the boys while they are in the showers of their dormitory.  In a feat of superb staging, the boys are shown seemingly nude, each behind a frosted shower door, with actual water coming out of the faucets and a horizontal strip of tiles strategically obscuring their private regions. Both symbolically and physically stripped naked of their defenses, this powerful song conveys an extra sense of vulnerability, sorrow and suffering.  This setting plays an important role in a climactic scene towards the end of the show.  This is a deep and thought-provoking play, made even more special by the glorious, soulful choral singing.

We have wanted to watch a marionette show by the renowned Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett for quite some time now.  We finally got our wish with Little Dickens, a raunchy re-telling of The Christmas Carol which comes with the warning that children under age 16 will not be admitted! 

For over 40 years, Burkett has been designing and building his intricate marionettes, as well as writing and performing his own shows that are designated for “adults only”.  Burkett provides all the speaking and singing voices and controls the marionettes while in plain sight, hovering above the “puppet stage” on “the bridge”.  We had the perfect seats to watch Little Dickens, in the centre of the third row from the stage.  We could clearly see Burkett's spread-out fingers manipulating the strings of up to two marionettes at a time. More puppets could be on stage but the ones he was not actively moving were hung loosely from stands protruding from the bridge. It was amazing to watch his dexterity as he could make the head, limbs and occasionally even props move separately or simultaneously, all while providing dialogue for the puppets that propelled the storyline.  It was incredible to witness the energy and stamina that he exerted in singlehandedly carrying on the show for almost two hours without intermission.

Recipient of many awards and honours including the Order of Canada, Ronnie Burkett became fascinated with puppets at an early age.  He was inspired by the puppet show in classic 1965 movie musical The Sound of Music and idolized Bill Baird, the puppeteer behind that iconic scene.  Ronnie confessed in an interview for the Theatre Museum Canada that as a child, he had written to Baird several times offering to move in with him in order to learn from him.  Baird never responded. Burkett laughed ruefully and said that if some random kid wrote to him today offering to come live with him, he would not respond either!  Ronnie eventually did get to perform in New York with Baird’s puppet theatre company.

Earlier in his career, Burkett would write shows with fixed scripts and plots while creating the puppets that would animate each story.  In 2013, he came up with a new concept called “The Daisy Theatre” which involved a set up over 50 marionettes who would perform a show that included vaudeville, burlesque and cabaret acts, but was largely improvised and included audience participation.  Each performance would be different and partially dictated by the reactions of the crowd.

Little Dickens combined his two concepts, using the basic outline of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but casting his Daisy Theatre puppets to play the main characters of the classic tale, as well as some periphery roles that went beyond the well-known story. To set the tone, the first scene of the show featured a mainstay marionette act of the Daisy Theatre. The sultry striptease artist Dolly Wiggler performed a burlesque act while singing the highly sexually suggestive song “Santa Got Stuck in my Chimney”.  As she strutted back and forth across the stage, she would peel off another layer of clothing until she was down to her underwear and pasties. Getting on with the Christmas Carol storyline, another stock puppet character, Esme Massengill, the selfish, self-aggrandizing has-been actress, took on the role of Scrooge.  Other members of the Daisy Theatre entourage played roles such as the alms collectors, Bob Cratchit and the ghosts of Christmas past and present.  Other than Esme, the star of Little Dickens is also the star of the Daisy Theatre.  It is Schnitzel, the tiny elfin fairy-child, playing the role of Tiny Tim complete with a limp and a crutch.  Burkett’s skill was on full display as he manipulated the marionette across the stage, working the arms, legs and crutch with perfect timing.

Supplementing the characters from the main story were various vaudeville acts including a ventriloquist, a Frank Sinatra impersonator, a song by grandmotherly, small-town Alberta redneck Edna Rural dressed up as a Christmas Tree, and even a comedy schtick by no other than Jesus!  There are no boundaries that Burkett does not dare cross! Interlaced between the dialogue are curse words and lewd jokes such as listing all the Christmas carols with the words “come” in the lyrics (All Come all Ye Faithful, Here Comes Santa Claus, Baby Please Come Home for Christmas …).  “I could go on all night”, Burkett quips.

As is common in the Daisy Theatre, there was scenes requiring audience participation. One woman sitting on the front row was asked to come on stage to wind the box that would make a series of “orchestra puppets” pop up and play the background music to Jingle Bells while the rest of the crowd was encouraged to loudly sing along.  In that same skit, a socialite puppet waxed poetically about her shirtless pool-boy Ray. A man on the aisle was persuaded to come on stage to play the part of Ray while wearing a Santa hat and jingling sleigh bells.  Burkett teasingly instructed him to take his sweater off to properly play the role and incredibly, he did (probably to the horror of his wife!).  Being a great sport, this man pranced around shirtless, ringing his bells while we continued to lustily sing the last verses of Jingle Bells.  Afterwards, I leaned over to my husband Rich and whispered, “This is why you never sit in accessible seats and never make eye contact to avoid being picked”.  In another scene, a witch puppet tried to take on the part of one of the Christmas Carol ghosts and was told that the audience would not go for this and would swear at her.  Then en masse, the audience was instructed to yell “F***-you Debbie” at the puppet.  This was probably a common routine of the Daisy Theatre improv shows but it was not clear if our crowd would participate.  When the time came, our entire group yelled out the curse and then roared with laughter as the puppet slunk back off stage.  Another man came on stage to flip lyric cards that prompted us to sing along to the carol "Deck the Halls".  Burkett feigned disappointment when this new volunteer declined to take off his shirt.  After his stint, Ronnie asked the man's wife to come up to play the non-speaking role of the Ghost of Christmas Future, giving her a black robe and a skeletal arm as props. Her job was to point "over here" and "over there" based on verbal cues from Esme, but being sure not to block the puppet with her arm.

Attending and participating in this show in English pantomime style was so much fun and such a unique experience.  After the initial fascination in watching Burkett manipulate the puppets, you eventually get immersed in the show and just watch the marionettes as they act out the story. For most of the show, the action was fast-paced and joyful and hilarious. It was a good thing that we picked a show that was at least partially based on a well-known story like A Christmas Carol, since it gave us some familiarity and structure to follow as we took in the rest of the craziness that accompanied it.

The only part that didn’t work that well for me was the finale where the Christmas Carol part of the story was wrapped up too quickly and unsatisfactorily and then the show slowed right down to try to deliver an “emotional” ending. Schnitzel delivered a speech thanking the audience and then was joined by Esme and Edna to sing a final inspirational song. The ending zapped the energy out of the show and felt like a bit of a letdown to me after everything that came before.  Still, overall I loved the puppetry and would like to see another Ronnie Burkett production.

Theatre 2022: Crow's Theatre - Red Velvet

 Crow’s Theatre is located in the east end of Toronto, at Carlaw St.and Dundas St. East, far away from the downtown theatre district that is dominated by Mirvish-owned theatres.  Crow’s Theatre seems to specialize in avant-garde productions, often with very innovative staging set up in its two performance spaces. In 2019, when we watched The Flick about ushers in a movie cinema, we walked into Crow’s main space to find stadium seating where the stage would normally be, mirroring the stadium seating that represented our seats for the show.  In 2020 when we watched Julius Caesar (just before everything shut down for the pandemic), we were in that same theatre but sat in stadium seating in the round while the action took place at floor level.  We watched Red Velvet, as the final production of 2022 and found a traditional stage setup. We plan to watch two other shows next year and are interested to find out how they will be presented.

The play Red Velvet is based on real-life events that led a black man to take on the titular role in Shakespeare’s Othello at London’s prestigious Theatre Royal, Covent Gardens in 1833. The part of the Moorish military commander was originally played, in blackface, by British actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833), considered the most famous stage actor of the time.  Kean was starring in the play alongside his son Charles, who was cast as his duplicitous advisor and nemesis Iago.  When Edmund suddenly fell collapsed on stage during a performance and died shortly after, Theatre Royal’s manager Pierre Laporte controversially hired African American thespian and noted Shakespearean actor Ira Aldrige (1807-1867) as Kean’s replacement.

Aldridge started acting at age 15 in New York City but since black actors were not well-received in the United States, he moved to England.  He played Othello in a small London Theatre when he was 17, becoming the first black actor to take on the role. He was also an abolitionist who often spoke out against slavery. Aldrige continued to star in abolitionist dramas as well as Shakespearean plays across Europe.  By the time of his death in 1867 in Lodz, Poland, Ira had become an acclaimed and award-winning stage actor who acted alongside white actresses, despite facing racism throughout his career. Both Edmund and Charles had met Aldridge and supported his career, prior to Aldrige filling in as Othello following Edmund’s passing.  Unfortunately, the British press were not as generous and Ira only lasted for two performances before the show was canceled, receiving undeservedly scathing and racist reviews. 

Not many details have been documented about this brief period when Aldrige stepped in as Othello at Covent Gardens. Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti’s work Red Velvet takes the basic facts and re-imagines what might have happened during this time. In her play, Aldridge joins an all-white cast who regard him with varying degrees of unease, fear, and even racist hate. Using dramatic license to add conflict to the situation, Edmund Kean is merely ill, not dead, Charles Kean now plays Cassius instead of Iago, and his fiancé Ellen Tree has the role of Desdemona. Charles assumed that he would take over the role of Othello and is appalled and aghast that it was assigned to a black man instead!  In real life, Charles and Ellen Tree did act together and eventually married but there is no indication that she was in the play with Ira.

Ira Aldridge comes across as a confident, talented actor who espouses realism in his style of acting. In a scene where Othello confronts Desdemona about her supposed affair with Cassius, Aldrige roughly manhandles Ellen (with her permission).  Having a black man touch a white woman in this way, even if it is just acting, is not well received. The reviews by the British Press are damning and lead to Aldridge’s termination after a bitter argument with Laporte, who had championed Ira’s hiring in the first place. It is strongly implied that Pierre Laporte is a closeted homosexual and there is a distinct homoerotic feel to the interactions between the two men.  I’m not sure if this was also added in for dramatic purposes, as nothing that I have read supports this.  In their argument leading to Aldridge’s firing, Laporte hints at his own burdens in overcoming the stigma of his sexuality in order to succeed in his field.

One interesting character is the black servant Connie, whose job it is to serve tea to the actors. Although she is prominently positioned at the back but smack-dab in the centre of the stage, she does not speak through most of the show.  Connie silently fulfills her duty as tea-lady, but visibly reacts to discussions about slavery and abolition, and the overt bigotry shown to Ira by some of the other cast members. Even the more liberal characters who claim to support the end of slavery basically treat her as a slave who is at their beck and call.  Her reactions are magnified as she listens to the horribly racist theatre reviews that are read aloud by the cast, and she doggedly tries to protect Ira and hide the newspapers from him when he demands to see them.

The events of 1833 in Covent Gardens are told in flashback and are bookmarked by scenes of an aged Aldrige in Poland, 1867, just prior to his death. He is getting ready to play King Lear and it is ironic that he is shown putting on white makeup and white gloves to hide his dark skin, doing the opposite of what Kean did to play Othello.  The show starts off with two characters speaking German(?) for several minutes before Aldrige appears and we learn that the woman is a female reporter who has barged her way into his dressing room in hopes of an interview.  The misogyny that she deals with in trying to gain respect from her male colleagues is set up as a parallel to the racism that Aldridge has endured.  In answering her questions, Ira reminisces about the events of Covent Garden, setting the crux of the play into motion.

This was an interesting and enjoyable play that taught us about an important time in theatrical history, while addressing racism, homophobia and misogyny.  That is quite the accomplishment for one evening of entertainment.

Theatre 2022: Soulpepper - Bad Parent, My Ex-Boyfriend's Yard Sale

My husband Rich and I were amongst one of the first theatre lovers to discover and enjoy Ins Choi’s now famous play Kim’s Convenience. We stumbled upon it quite by accident during the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival where it had its theatrical debut. That year, we had purchased a 10-pack of tickets that we could redeem at the location of each show that we selected to watch.  Usually, we could stroll up about 15-20 minutes before the start of the show, get our tickets, join the line and be ushered in shortly after. For the Kim’s Convenience showing, we misread the time of the show and ended up getting there over an hour before the start. To our surprise, there was already a long lineup waiting to get in and when we went to redeem our tickets, we found out that we had scored the last two tickets for the show and that it was sold out for the rest of the run!  Word of mouth had made this the hottest ticket of the festival and we were lucky enough to be a part of that.

The play Kim’s Convenience is Choi’s sweet, semi-autobiographical comedy about a Korean immigrant family that owns and runs a convenience store in Moss Park, Toronto.  The cast for the Fringe show included Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as “Appa”, the fierce head of the family, Jean Yoon as the matriarch “Umma”, Esther Jun as daughter Janet and Ins Choi himself playing the estranged son Jung.  After its success at the Fringe Festival, the play got picked up and remounted in 2012 by Soulpepper with all the main actors reprising their roles.  The show continued to be part of the Soulpepper repertoire for several more years.  We watched this version in 2014 and enjoyed it just as much the second time, even though only Paul Sun-Hyung remained in the role of Appa at that point.

In 2016, the play was further adapted into a Canadian TV sitcom running on CBC for 5 seasons. The show was filmed in Toronto and the storefront, decked out with the “Kim’s Convenience” sign could be found at 252 Queen East during its run.  Even more exciting for us was the fact that our good friend's brother had a recurring, supporting role on the show, as one of Appa's friends who would frequent the store. We watched all the seasons of the TV series until it was unceremoniously canceled in 2021.  Unfortunately, it ended without being able to properly resolve all the plotlines, including the reconciliation between Jung and Appa that gave the original play its heart.

Thus, we were quite excited to hear that Ins Choi had written a new play that is on the Soulpepper lineup for their 2022 season.  We were prepared to buy tickets to watch this play when Soulpepper made an announcement about their ticket price policies.  Probably due to a slow post-COVID return to live theatre for many regular patrons, the company has decided to slash all its ticket prices almost by half.  Now tickets will range from $65 down to $25 for the season.  For those people (like us) who had already purchased tickets at full price, Soulpepper was offering either a refund, or two free tickets to another show.  We happily converted this offer into tickets to see Choi’s new endeavour.

Continuing with the old adage to “write what you know”, Choi’s new play Bad Parent is a two-hander dealing with a married couple’s struggles adjusting to life with their first child, now a 24-month-old toddler. It draws heavily from Ins and wife Mari’s own past experiences and difficulties raising their children.  The actors Josette Jorge and Raugi Yu portray the harried new parents, Nora, a proficient career woman and Charles, an unsettled man-child and wannabe rock star. It is probably pure coincidence, but hearing these names immediately brought to my mind the characters from the classic movie “The Thin Man” who were named Nick and Nora Charles. The baby, named “Mountain”, (symbolizing strength to Charles, but sounding like a wrestler to Nora) is never seen on stage but his loud, anguished wails are heard from off-stage throughout the show.

Jorge and Yu each also play a second role, acting as a character foil to the original character as well as a sounding board for the other parent. Norah, (with an “h”), is the Filipino nanny hired to look after Mountain so that Nora can return to work.  Norah is the perfect housewife, mother and cook, having no problems with coaxing little Mountain to sleep in his own bed.  This is a feat that has so far eluded Nora, who feels much more comfortable and competent in her professional job than she does as a mother. At the office, Nora confides her troubles to co-worker Dale, questioning why it is so much easier to deal with and to talk to him than to Charles. Dale sagely replies that since they are just colleagues, they can present their best versions of themselves to each other, and that their relationship is easier since they don’t love each other and if things get tense, they can always just leave and return to their mutual offices.

Bad parent uses the common theatre device of “breaking the 4th wall” by having the main characters address the audience. But as Rich put it, they don’t just break the 4th wall, they demolish it.  Nora and Charles start the show by bringing microphones up to the front of the stage as if they were doing a stand-up comedy act, and speaking in turn, they describe how they first met, fell in love, got married and had their baby.  From there, the arguments between the pair escalate as the pressures of their lives mount and the cracks in their marriage start to show.  Through it all, they continue to lobby the audience for support as each is trying to gain our approval for their position.  This is taken the extreme when at one point Nora pointedly asks anyone in the audience who thinks she is wrong to raise his or her hand.  One brave man in the row in front of us does so and she disparages him in her rant. You are left to wonder whether he is a plant, or what would have happened if no one had raised their hand (although Rich told me later that he was tempted to do so himself).

After a while, you realize that the audience is a stand-in for society as a whole, and what Nora and Charles crave is external affirmation, whether from friends, family, strangers, or even from the audience, that they are not the bad parents they each fear they are. Nora recalls the incident where she is bottle-feeding Mountain in the park and is chastised by a stranger for not breast-feeding, which she could not for physiological reasons, but Charles did not step up to defend her. It is clear that they are each deeply affected by what others might think of them. Towards the end of the play, they even accuse each other of pandering to the audience, and then both admit that this is exactly what they are doing.  When they finally take off their “public persona masks” and get real with each other, we hear the real version of how they actually met, and it is much less glamorous than what was initially described.

Bad Parent is a very relatable play with a few comedic moments, presented in a smart, interesting way that led to some good discussions and analysis after Rich and I watched it.  But it is not the feel-good comedic gem that Kim’s Convenience was. There is only so long that you can listen to two people yell at each other before it begins to feel a bit oppressive and depressing.  As they battle over child-rearing techniques, division of labour, unpreparedness to be parents, loss of self-worth and identity, and whether their own bad parents make them doomed to be bad parents themselves, it becomes clear that parenthood is difficult and there is no manual on how to make it work.  

It is really great that Ins Choi’s plays have provided much needed work for Asian actors. Unlike Kim’s Convenience which was specifically representing a Korean immigrant family, Bad Parent’s tale is universal and can be recognized by everyone, so to have two Asian actors play the roles in a Soulpepper production is all the more gratifying.

The show that we had already purchased tickets at full price was the one-woman show called “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale”.  We first bought tickets to watch this comedy in May 2020, but then the pandemic forced the entire run to be canceled before it even started, and our money was refunded.  Over 2 years later, we are finally able to watch it.  I mistakenly thought the title was “My Ex-Boyfriend’s Yard Sale”, implying the protagonist was selling items from a single ex-boyfriend. I imagined a comedic rant about a relationship gone sour, and the cathartic rite of dumping his stuff (at a profit, no less).  The concept of purging remnants of a former romantic relationship reminds me of a previous piece of performance art that we saw during Nuit Blanche 2008.  Titled “Smash It”, the artist tossed items from a past love affair down to the ground from atop a raised cherry picker, then came down and smashed them further with a sledgehammer, all while giving running commentary about what she was destroying and why.

As it turns out, The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale refers to eight items that the show’s author and performer Haley McGee retained from eight different relationships that she had from age 16 to 32.  As an unemployed Canadian actress in major debt while living in London, England, Haley was desperate to generate income while still being able to ply her trade as a working theatrical performer.  She thought of holding a yard sale but realized that all items in her possession that had any monetary value were given to her by ex-boyfriends.  These included a “mixed tape”, necklace, jewelry box, ukulele, vintage typewriter, t-shirt, backpack and bicycle.  But selling these mementos would only result in one-time income and would probably not fetch amounts that reflect her own sentimental valuations of them.  Instead, she came up with the idea of developing a show about selling her exes’ gifts, in which she explains how she developed a mathematical formula to put a price tag on each item, and by extension, allowed her to assign a monetary value on the relationship that each article symbolized. In short, this show tries to create a formula to evaluate “the cost of love”.

McGee’s formula is complex with many variables that fall into the following main categories: Market Value, Time Invested, Narrative Impact, Relationship Index and Wild Cards.  Two factors within the Market Value category required audience participation. As people wandered into the theatre, they were given the opportunity to go up on stage and provide estimates of how much they would spend on each object if it were offered at a yard sale.  The estimates were tallied and later in the show, it was revealed what the average audience estimate was for each item, ranked from lowest to highest.  Haley then provided narratives for the items, explaining how and why she received them, polling the audience afterwards to determine whether an item rose or declined in value after being presented in context.

Speaking non-stop in rapid succession while racing around at a frantic pace, McGee built up and presented her formula with the use of some innovative staging that included scrawling notes on large sheets of brown parcel paper hung on the back wall of the stage, triggering charts to drop from the rafters, opening side and trap doors to reveal more lists, and having special delivery envelopes traverse down a zip line from the back of the theatre onto the stage.  After completing her explanations of the various parts, Haley’s grand finale involves writing out the entire lengthy formula from start to finish, seemingly without needing to take a breath.

Overall, this was an impressive tour de force performance of a memorable show with a very interesting premise.  A few gimmicks did not quite work well though.  Part of the narratives of the items included recorded interviews with the actual ex-boyfriends, which were played aloud on stage.  Unfortunately, some of the voices were muffled and it was difficult to hear.  As Haley’s explanations grew more and more complex and frenzied, she matched this with her actions which included wrapping herself up with the paper on the wall and a big sheet of bubble wrap, holding it all together with masking tape.  There might have been a point to this, but if so, I missed it.  The craziness took my attention away from the ideas that she was trying to convey.  McGee has published a book by the same name as the play (available at the Toronto Public Library), which gives more insight into her life, relationships and the development of the formula and this show.

Theatre 2022: Fall Season Has Started / Singing in the Rain

Live theatre is a back with a vengeance in the fall of 2022, as there are so many interesting shows to watch from all the major theatres throughout Toronto!  My husband Rich and I have enthusiastically jumped back into the theatre scene with upcoming shows at Canstage (Bad Parent, My Ex-Boyfriend’s Yard Sale) and Soulpepper (Little Dickens) in addition to our Mirvish subscription series.  In addition, we plan to watch some plays at Crow Theatre in the new year and have our eyes out for the offerings at some of the smaller venues around the city.  We will also be looking at some regional theatre around Ontario, as we continue to take mini vacations a few hours away from our home.  We currently have a comedy lined up for Brighton, Ontario, during an upcoming 3-day vacation to the Cobourg/Port Hope area.

Our 2021/2022 Mirvish subscription season is winding down but already the shows from the 2022/2023 season are ramping up.  For the new season, my husband Rich and I have upgraded our seats so that we will be in the dress circle for the first time, after years of sitting in the back of the theatre. Hopefully I will finally be able to see the expressions on the actors’ faces without the use of my binoculars.

The last show of the 2021/22 Mirvish subscription season was Singing in The Rain, based on the 2012 musical adaptation of the iconic 1952 movie classic about silent screen stars in the 1920s dealing with the invention of sound on film.  The movie’s cast of Gene Kelly as movie heartthrob Don Lockwood, Donald O’Connor as his comedic sidekick Cosmo Brown, Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont, Lockwood’s leading lady with the face of an angel but the voice of a crow, and a very young Debbie Reynolds as the plucky ingénue and love interest Kathy Seldon is so ubiquitous that it is difficult to picture anyone else in any of the roles.

With that in mind, the Mirvish show was well cast for the most part with the actors playing Cosmo and Lina looking like doppelgangers of their movie counterparts, at least from where we sat, and had the comedic talents required for their roles. The actor playing Don Lockwood had long graceful legs and the singing/dancing chops to do justice to the Gene Kelly role, although he looked like a clone of Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) of Mad Men.  The casting I had most trouble with was the actress who played Kathy Seldon. While Debbie Reynolds was brunette and petite in contrast with Jean Hagen’s statuesque, blond bombshell physique, giving their interactions a David vs Goliath-like feel, the actress playing Kathy in the musical was also a tall blond that looked too much like the Lina character.  On top of that, when she was not singing songs that required her to adapt a deep, sultry voice, her natural speaking voice raised to a higher pitch that was not that different from what was supposed to be the problem with Lina’s voice.  This took away from some of the intended comedy.

While I recall most of the movie vividly, I had forgotten what happens at the very beginning.  It was only after re-watching it on Crave TV that I realized how closely the musical mirrors the scenes from the film.  Starting with the red-carpet premiere of Lockwood and Lamont’s new film at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, to the flashback recollections of how Don and Cosmo got started on Vaudeville, to the online screening of “The Royal Rascal”, the musical did an excellent job of recreating what we saw in the movie.

The musical also did an amazing job recreating the Broadway Melody dance interlude, both in terms of choreography, wardrobe, set, design and colour schemes.  A couple of subtle changes were noticed in the two ballet sequences where Lockwood’s character first performed a sensual dance with a sexy seductress, and then a dreamy, elegant ballet with a young innocent.  The two dances mirrored Don’s relationships with Lina and Kathy. 

In the movie, both dances were performed by the incomparable actress/dancer Cyd Charisse, who was dressed in tight, shimmering green dress for the first dance and a white, flowing dress in the second.  In the musical, the Charisse look-a-like was dressed all in black for the first dance, further accentuating the metaphor of good vs evil, or in terms of Don’s career, maintaining the integrity of his craft vs. selling out for the glitz and glamor of fame. The second dance was performed not by the same dancer, but by the actress playing Kathy Seldon. I tend to think there were several reasons for this change.  First, Debbie Reynolds probably could not execute the ballet as well as Cyd Charisse.  Also, in the musical, there would be no way for the same actress to make the costume change, as the dances happened in quick succession. Finally, having the Kathy Seldon character perform that last dance goes further to reflect on Lockwood’s own circumstances, so it made much more sense to me.  I wonder if they would have used Reynolds in the movie if she was capable of performing that ballet.

Because I do know the movie so well, it becomes jarring when there is a noticeable change, especially when it is not for the better (in my not-so-humble opinion).  This happened in the climatic finale when Kathy was forced to sing behind a curtain while Lina lip-syncs, only to have Don, Cosmo, and movie producer R.F.Simpson raise the curtain to reveal the charade. In the movie, the song sung was a reprisal of the upbeat theme song Singing in the Rain.  The sequence extended for quite a while before Lina caught on to what was happening and Kathy dashed off stage in mortification. The three conspirators did a jaunty little strut as they cheerfully pulled on the ropes in exaggerated fashion to raise the curtain, and then Cosmo did a hilarious bit of replacing Kathy in the singing while mimicking Lina’s arm gestures. There were shots of the audience howling with laughter after the reveal.

In the musical, they replaced the song sung with a reprisal of “You Are My Lucky Star”, one of the slower love ballads, which immediately made the scene less funny.  Then they rushed through the raising of the curtain and Lina caught on right away, causing the scene to end abruptly.  This totally robbed the ending of its buildup and the poignancy of Don pronouncing that Kathy was the real star of the show and singing the final love song.  This was too bad since up until this point, the show was humming along, perfectly recapturing the magic of the movie.  The only improvement made by the musical came when Lina had to ask Kathy what key she would be singing in and Kathy replied “A-Flat” which Lina repeats to the conductor. In the musical, Lina misinterpreted the answer and replies “a flat” instead.  This elicited a big laugh from the audience.

It is understandable that a stage musical needs to be longer with more songs than the movie, which is why so many of the best-known songs from the movie were reprised in new scenes.  In the 2012 musical revival, a hilarious new comedic song was written by Katherine Kingsley specifically for Lina Lamont to sing.  Called “What’s Wrong With Me?”, that extra song works really well, highlighting Lina’s shrill, shrieky voice as she laments with incomprehension about why Don is not in love with her her. An extra ballad called “You Stepped Out of a Dream” was also added to the musical, but this one is actually an old Jazz standard that was originally featured in the 1941 musical Ziegfield Girl.

This stage musical version of Singing in the Rain was so much fun to watch and brought back so many good memories. The acting, singing and dancing were all excellent for the most part, and the bright colour-scheme of the sets and costumes channeled the Techno-colour craze of the movie.  But the main star of the show was the rain, or the staging of the iconic “singing and dancing in the rain” scene.  This was not a drizzle that fell on the stage but a deluge.  As Don Lockwood stomped, splashed, twirled and kicked at puddles in the downpour, I’m sure that a few patrons in the front rows got a bit damp.  The scene ended the first act and during the intermission, we stayed in our seats and were thoroughly entertained watching the stagehands work hard to clear the water and dry up the stage with brooms that swept the bulk of it into holes on the floor boards, and then by dragging towels around to address the final dampness.

We thoroughly enjoyed watching this live musical version of Singing in the Rain. To quote a line from the eponymous song, “What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again” that live theatre is back and thriving in Toronto.

TIFF 2022 - Digital TIFF

Although TIFF 2022 saw the return of in-person screenings with the arrival of directors and stars to participate in Q&A sessions, a very small number (less than 20?) of the 200+ TIFF films were also available for digital rental.  It is not surprising that most of the festival's movies were not offered for online rental, since the loss of revenue for this distribution method is significant.  Not only is the price of the rental ($18.95+tax) less expensive than that of an in-person ticket ($20-$80+ per person), but the digital movie can be viewed at home by more than one person.  Also, there are significantly fewer pre-movie ads (which can be bypassed via fast-forwarding), making it less attractive to sponsors.  This means that the rental provides much less sponsor revenue as well.  

As a result, the options were limited when we decided to rent a few digital movies to augment our two in-person viewings.  TIFF digital rentals were available for a fixed 48-hour window and once you started watching, you had 24 hours to complete the viewing, although you could re-watch as many times as you wanted during that period.

Our first digital film selection was the Canadian comedy "The End of Sex", starring Emily Hampshire (of Schitt's Creek fame) and Jonas Chernick as a married couple looking to revitalize their sex life while their two children were away at camp for a week. Hijinks and hilarity ensue as they try various ways to spice up their marriage including an awkward, lopsided attempt at a threesome, and checking out a sex club, all while fending off infatuations from colleagues and a former schoolmate.  A running joke involves counting down the days before the kids come home by knocking over one of 7 garden gnomes each day.  This is an excellent, old-fashioned, feel-good, laugh-out-loud comedy, which is a rarity in movies these days, let alone at TIFF.  It is a reunion for the two lead actors plus their director/script writer.  Back in 2012, they are worked on "My Awkward Sexual Adventure" where Jonas' character tries to improve his sexual prowess through lessons from Emily's exotic dancer with a heart of gold.

Our second film was the documentary Casa Susanna, about a popular weekend and vacation destination in the Catskills in the early 1960s that catered to cross-dressing men and transgendered people.  The resort provided them with a sanctuary where they could be themselves without the fear of persecution or prosecution, since cross-dressing in public was a criminal offense back then.  Consisting of a series of bungalow camps set on 150 acres of land, Casa Susanna (originally named Chevalier D'Eon Resort) was run by Susanna Valenti, who was originally a male named Tito with a wife Maria before transitioning into a transgendered woman.  Surprisingly, Maria stayed married to and lived with Susanna even after her transitioning.  In fact, it was mentioned that many other wives would actually drive their mates to Casa Susanna each weekend or would occasionally stay there as well.  I am not sure that wives today would be as understanding or accommodating.

The documentary focused on the memories of two transgendered women (Katherine who came all the way from Australia and Diana from Indiana) as they recalled their childhoods as males, what they went through to transition and their fond memories of staying at Casa Susanna.  Also featured was Betsy, the daughter of a Science Fiction writer Don Wolheim who was a cross-dresser, and Gregory, the grandson of Susanna and Maria.  Gregory recalls the early days of the resort when drag shows would be hosted and as a child, he would peek through the windows at the action.  This was a fascinating look at a part of American history that I knew nothing about, and now I have a totally different image of the Catskills than I had after watching the movie "Dirty Dancing".

Our final movie was Luxembourg, Luxembourg, about twin brothers Vasily and Kolya who live in Ukraine. Vasily is an upstanding, stable young man who works hard to join and rise in the ranks of the police force, while Kolya is a ne'er-do-well who still lives with their mother, drives a bus and secretly deals drugs.  The movie opens with the twins as children, with Vasily dressed in blue and Kolya in red.  This colour scheme is maintained throughout the entire movie, which was a good thing since the real-life twin brothers who play the characters as adults look so alike that it was difficult to tell them apart without the clothing cues.  Even as children, Vasily was the brave, decisive one who needs to look after and help his brother.  As adults, Kolya is constantly getting into trouble, which adversely impacts Vasily's trajectory in the police force.  When they get word that their estranged gangster father, who deserted them as children, is dying in Luxemboug, they need to decide whether to travel there to pay their final respects. In the end, the trip to find their father is really a Macguffin, as the real crux of the story is the relationship of the two brothers.

It was really interesting to watch this film with our Ukrainian friend, since she could understand the dialogue, commented on the veracity (or lack thereof) of the translation as well as pointing out locations other points of reference that brought back memories for her.   The wallpaper and decor in one setting reminded her of her grandmother's house, while an image on a book made reference to her hometown.  

This movie set in Ukraine takes on extra poignancy given the real-life horrors of the war raging there.  In an interview, the director describes how the Russian invasion caused the filming to pause as cast and crew had to scatter to find shelter or to join the fighting.  Somehow, they were able to get to post-production of the film, but still had to race around Kviv to retrieve portions of it that were stored on different hard drives while bombing was occurring in the city.  Miraculously, the film was completed in time for the Venice Film Festival, and the stars, Amil and Ramil Nasirov (who are also rappers) appeared there proudly holding the Ukranian flag.

Watching these smaller movies that lack major movie stars or buzz, that are often foreign language films or documentaries, and which may or may not secure theatrical distribution, was once the main draw of the Toronto International Film Festival.  In the past, the festival would be our only chance of ever encountering most of these films.  Now with the saturation of streaming service content that comes in all languages and forms, TIFF has lost some of its cache and importance in our movie viewing agenda.  It is becoming more difficult to justify paying continually steeper prices to watch each film at the festival, when high quality fare such as Squid Game (Korean), Money Heist (Spanish) and Call My Agent (French) are so readily available on our streaming services.   We shall see how this all plays out in the future.

TIFF 2022 - Return after the Pandemic and a Look Back

I have been attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for over 20 years, but my level of participation has changed radically over the decades.  My first TIFF experience occurred in the early 1990s.  Someone had given me a ticket (they were much cheaper and easier to secure back then) and I went in blindly without really knowing what I was in for.  I don't recall much about the movie other than sitting there dumbfounded for what felt like forever, watching laundry sway gently in the wind while a cow mooed in the background.  There may have been shots of the grass rustling as well. I think it was a foreign film but am not sure, since there was no dialogue and nothing happened before I got up and left.  Following this experience, I stayed away from the film festival for years, feeling that it was too artsy and esoteric for my tastes.

In 2001, being older, wiser and more knowledgeable about how the festival worked, I decided to try again--this time accompanied by my husband Rich, who is also a movie lover.  That year, we watched one Dutch and two French films.  The only one that I remember well is Amélie, which went on to be nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar and has even been adapted into a stage musical.  

Buoyed by this more satisfying experience, we continued to attend TIFF annually, ramping up our movie consumption each year.  As the festival became more popular with tickets becoming more difficult to secure, we quickly realized that the way to go was to buy an advanced ticket package, which gave us the opportunity to purchase our movies before the people buying individual tickets.  During the earlier part of this decade, the process for fulfilling the ticket package was all manual, involving several trips down to the festival site and much standing in line.  If memory serves, the process went something like this:

1. Decide some time around July or early August how many tickets you want (without having any idea what movies would be available to choose from) and pre-pay for these tickets (at a slight volume discount)
2. Wait for the movies to be announced and the booklets with the synopses and schedules to be released (around the last week of August)
3. Trek down to the festival headquarters to pick up your booklets
4. Return home to peruse the movie synopses, making a list of must-sees vs "maybes".  Include alternate choices in case your first picks are sold out by the time your package is fulfilled.
5. Juggle the scheduling to make sure you have enough time to travel between back to back movies
6. Once your selections are made, mark up the schedule guide using a green highlighter to indicate your first choices of movies, dates and times and a yellow to indicate your second choices
7. Package up your selection book in the envelope provided and return to the festival headquarters to drop off your picks
8. Your envelope will be placed into the next available numbered box that starts at 1 and increments up to as many boxes are needed to handle all the packages purchased
9. About a week or so later, there is a random draw to determine the starting box number.  The ticket packages are then fulfilled beginning with the packages in that box number, continuing to the last number, then wrapping back again to the first box until all the boxes are processed
10. Yet another visit to the headquarters is required to pick up your physical tickets.  This is already the third trip down, and it is not even a guarantee that you receive all your desired movies
11. If you happen to get get a bad draw resulting in your package being processed towards the end, then it is likely that some or most of the movies you selected are already sold out.  In this case, you will be given vouchers to redeem your tickets for whatever movies are left

I remember how nerve-wracking it was waiting to see which box number was drawn, relative to the one we were assigned.  One year the worst-case scenario happened and we ended up being the LAST box to be processed.   That year we did not get most of our picks and were left to select from the dregs of movies that we didn't really want to see.

By the end of the decade, TIFF had moved to online ticketing which eliminated the first two trips down to the Festival headquarters to pick up the schedule and drop off our picks.  It is still a lottery system to determine what your timeslot was to be able to purchase online.  At this point, Rich and I were both still working and therefore had limited time to watch movies during the festival.  We would usually buy a package of 10 tickets which gave us 5 movies each.  One year, we took a "TIFF holiday" and scheduled a full week of vacation during the festival, allowing us to watched 10 movies each.  

When Rich and I both retired in 2012, we celebrated by jumping full-throttle into the festival-going scene.  As luck would have it, our friend Peter had just become a TIFF patron donor, which provided him with a much earlier package fulfillment window,  practically guaranteeing that all selected films would still be available.  I quickly struck a deal with Peter whereby I would use his purchase window to buy both his and our tickets.  This was a mutually beneficial arrangement since I would be the one to put up with the frustrating technical difficulties that continues to plague the TIFF website since its inauguration, and go through the tedious task of searching for and selecting all the movies.  That year and for the next three years, Rich and I were watching 25-30 movies each in the 11-day span of the festival.

In 2016, Peter increased his TIFF membership level to Gold Patron status which gave him access to join the Press and Industry (P&I) screenings so that he no longer needed to purchase tickets.  He was allowed to specify a co-member who would have the same access and kindly assigned it to me.  This really allowed me to ramp up my movie watching even further, since I no longer needed to purchase tickets.  With this pass, I was able to watch between 30-40 movies each festival.  Unfortunately Rich did not have the same access, so by the following year, we decided to purchase our own Gold Patron membership and soon, Rich was matching my viewing capacity.

While I have forgotten most of the movies that I've watched over the years, there are a few memorable ones that I recall to this day.  The 2003 French comedy La Grande Seduction (later remade as Seducing Doctor Lewis) is still one of the sweetest and funniest movies that I have ever watched.   The Japanese drama about a high-school girl band who sing the titular song "Linda, Linda, Linda" (2005) created such an earworm that Rich and I still spontaneously start singing the chorus.  Sunshine on Leith (2013), a jukebox musical based on the songs of the Proclaimers is one of my favourite movie musicals and one of the first TIFF movies that I have been at where the crowd leapt up for a long standing ovation at the end.  I can't be sure, but I think we also watched the Chinese gangster/cop thriller Infernal Affairs (2002) at the festival and its jaw-droppingly poignant ending still stays with me.  The Americanized remake The Departed starring Leonardo DiCaprio is a pale imitation.  

Rich and I enjoyed our Patron Gold status for the next two years, waltzing into press screening after press screening, sometimes watching up to 5 movies per day.  It takes a significant amount of energy and concentration to watch so many movies in such a short span of time, so I am not sure how long we could have sustained this pace at any rate.  But in 2019, TIFF made a move without warning to change the Patron member experience that severely limited our access and complicated our ability to get into movies.  This soured the relationship and angered the group of patron members that paid a hefty "donation" to TIFF and expected the promised rewards in return.

Rich was especially incensed and had vowed not to renew our patron membership unless TIFF rectified the situation and restored our previous access. While the festival made a few weak gestures to try to mollify the patrons, they were not going to be enough to keep our loyalty.  We had already decided that for the 2020 festival, we would buy the smallest level of membership instead, which would still let us make movie selections before the non-members.  Then the pandemic hit!

In 2020, there was no in-person festival.  TIFF offered about 50 movies to be screened digitally but the choices were so sparse and not to our taste that we just didn't bother.  The 2021 Festival was a hybrid of both digital and in-person screenings with over 100 films on offer.  Still in the height of COVID, we did not want to brave in-person crowds but tried to dip our toes back into the festival scene by purchasing a 3-pack of digital films.  No longer being members, we had a very late selection time and by then most of the movies were sold out.  We felt deja vu from our early years!  It took some doing, but we finally settled on 3 movies that would not have been our first choices, and actually enjoyed one of them more than we expected.

The 2022 festival is mostly back to normal with over 240 films which would all have in-person screenings, although this was still down from the pre-pandemic numbers that totaled over 300.  The movie stars, gala events and Q&A sessions are all back.  There is still a very minor digital component of the festival consisting of smaller movies with less prestige.  It has been 3 years since we last took part in the in-person TIFF madness and we are a bit surprised to realize that we didn't really miss it.  We have grown accustomed to being outdoors to enjoy the pleasant climate of early September.  So initially Rich and I did not intend to participate in the festival at all this year, or if we did, then at most we would rent a digital movie.

This changed when we got a pleasant surprise from a woman from California that I met in line and struck up a conversation with at the festival years ago. We had kept in touch with throughout the seasons and have become good friends.  Every year we would try to find space within our intersecting movie schedules so that we could meet up downtown for lunch, dinner or at least a coffee.  This year, she was returning to the festival after the same 3 year absence and had a few spare tickets from her advanced ticket package that she could give to us.  So Rich and I jumped back into the festival scene, speed-reading from hundreds of synopses to select a couple of movies to watch.

Our first pick was the South African comedy "The Umbrella Men" which is as much a love letter to Cape Town as it is a caper and heist movie.  Estranged son Jerome returns for his father's funeral and is burdened with the huge debt that is attached to his father's Jazz club.  Faced with the prospect of losing his family's legacy to an unscrupulous land developer, Jerome hatches a plot to rob the local bank during the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival which occurs on January 2 each year.  

This festival has a long history in Cape Town.  It features a lively musical parade where troupes of performers and musicians (i.e. minstrels) sing and dance down the street with painted faces, dressed in colourful, flamboyant costumes while carrying umbrellas, with some playing musical instruments.  Also known as Kaapse Klopse or once shamefully as the "Coon Carnival", the festival dates back to the 1600s when slaves were given one day of freedom to celebrate and party amongst the Dutch colonists.  In the current day, the festival continues as a celebration of the end of slavery and includes competitions between the troupes.

Just like Cape Town, the Carnival acts as a character that is integral to the plan for the bank heist.  Despite being billed as a caper movie, the film is fairly slow and low key for a good portion of the run time.  When the planning and execution of the heist finally gets going, the details are rushed and a bit convoluted and confusing to follow.  A few plot points are left hanging as well.  Putting all that aside, you can just appreciate the beautiful cinematography that highlights the city's charms and fill your senses with the vivacious, joyful sights and sounds of the festival.

During the Q&A, South African director John Barker talked about how it took him over 15 years to make the movie, which he needed to film during the actual Carnival so that he could use the actual minstrel groups as background rather than needing to recreate the festival using extras.  Due to loss of funding and other factors, the film continued to be delayed.  He mentioned how at one point, they had South African actor/comedian Trevor Noah all lined up to star in the film but that was the exact time when Noah was named as host of the Late Show.  When Noah's name was mentioned, the entire audience gasped, causing the actual lead actor Jacques De Silva to mockingly protest as if to say, "You didn't do so bad to end up with me!"  Given his smouldering good looks and sexy demeanor in the movie, I don't think anyone in the audience was really complaining.

We picked our second movie from the selections that our friend had already made, so that we could watch a film with her.  Our choice was the American movie Susie Searches, a comedy/thriller about a shy, geeky, "Nancy Drew wannabe" college student who hosts a true crime podcast on which she documents her progress as she tries to solve cold cases.  Hoping to increase followers, Susie sets out to find a popular fellow student, Jessie, who has vanished.  When she succeeds in locating him while the police have failed, both she and Jessie are propelled into "Insta-fame" and notoriety, leading to unforeseen and unfortunate results.

We didn't know much about this movie and were not sure what to expect.  As the movie starts with sunshine, bright tones and a peppy, enthusiastic Susie flashing her large smile that is covered with colour-striped braces, you think that you are in for a light-hearted young-adult afternoon special.  This soon changes as her investigations lead to darker scenes.  Suddenly you feel like you are in a horror movie with creaking doors and ominous music that is laid on a bit thick.  The movie plays as a bit of a satire, warning of the unhealthy need of today's society for fame, recognition and popularity.

This movie has a smart script and excellent acting by all the cast, but especially actress Kiersey Clemens, who plays the role of Susie perfectly, subtly showing all the complexities of her personality.  When asked how she developed all the quirks and ticks in Susie's behaviour, Kiersey replied that director Sophie Kargman (who also wrote the script) incorporated many of Kiersey's own natural tendencies, but that the braces were the key.  When she put on those braces, she suddenly became Susie. 

We thoroughly enjoyed Susie Searches, finding it a lot of fun to watch and all the more gratifying since we did not come in with any preconceived expectations.  One of the joys of TIFF is being able to watch a smaller, lesser known movie that might not normally cross our paths, and discovering a hidden gem.

It has been a few years since Rich and I have been back at TIFF in the midst of the general public, as opposed to watching screeners with the press and industry crowd, or digital movies at home.  There are some aspects that I have missed and others that I don't miss at all.  I definitely do not miss the long waits in line in order to able to secure a seat towards the back of the theatre where I like to sit.  I whiled away the time working on my crocheting while Rich did puzzles on his phone, but my poor back did not appreciate all the standing.  I also didn't miss being forced to repeatedly watch the same commercials prior to every public screening.  I only did it twice this year but already found it annoying.  I don't know how I endured this when I was watching 20+ movies.  I must be getting less patient as I get older.

Yet, I found that I did miss the buzz and excitement of watching an enjoyable film with a large audience, as well as the witty repartee and insightful information that you can sometimes receive from an especially good Q&A session. (Unfortunately, this is not the case for all Q&As).  I think our days of watching 30+ movies over 11 days are over, but I have reignited my desire to be part of the festival scene again.  Let's see what next year brings.