Theatre 2025: Narnia @ Soulpepper

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (known as LWW) is the first book in a children’s fantasy series titled “Chronicles of Narnia” written by C.S. Lewis between 1949-1956.  Set in 1940 during WWII, the story deals with the four Pevensie siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (aged 13, 12, 10 and 8 respectively), who are evacuated from London to evade the German Blitz.  They are sent to live with an old professor in a Victorian manor in the English countryside.  During their stay, first Lucy, then Edmund and finally all four siblings discover a magical passage through the back of a wardrobe leading them to the mystical land of Narnia, which is full of talking animals and mythical creatures including fauns, centaurs, dwarves, giants, tree spirits and water nymphs.  Under the control of the wicked White Witch, Narnia is stuck in perpetual winter.  The children are met by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver who greet them as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve and reveal that the witch fears them because the four are prophesized to defeat her with the assistance of Aslan, a great and powerful lion who is returning after a long absence.

On Lucy’s first visit to Narnia, she meets a faun, Mr. Tumnus, who is supposed to turn her over to the witch.  Instead, he shows her the way back home and is punished by being turned to stone.  When Edmund first finds Narnia, he encounters the witch and is initially lured into helping her with promises of power and the addictive magical treat “Turkish Delight”.  This makes him a traitor against his family and by invoking ancient laws of “Deep Magic”, the witch claims the right to kill all traitors.  Aslan offers to take the place of Edmund and is killed by the witch but is soon resurrected under an even “Deeper” magic.  Along with Aslan’s army, the Pevensies fight a vicious battle against the witch’s minions and eventually triumph, vanquishing the witch and freeing all the creatures that were turned to stone.  Spring returns and the four are crowned Kings and Queens of Narnia, ruling peacefully for many years into their adulthoods.  One day while out hunting, they come across the entrance leading to the wardrobe.  Stumbling back into their own world, they are children once again and discover that in this realm, no time has passed since they entered the wardrobe.

I read this book many years ago as a child, enjoying the fantastical adventures without recognizing all the religious themes imbedded throughout the story.  I did not remember much about the book when we watched Narnia, a joint Crow’s Theatre/Soulpepper musical production based mainly LWW with a few references to later books.  Experiencing the tale as an adult, the references to Christianity now seem so apparent.  Aslan is obviously a Jesus figure who dies for the sins of others and is resurrected, while the children are referenced as offsprings tracing back to Adam and Eve, the Witch could refer to Satan and Edmund’s temptation for Turkish Delight might allude to the “Original Sin”.

As is the tradition of Bad Hat Theatre, who developed the show, this rendition of LWW is presented as a musical. Songs composed by the actor Landon Doak, who plays Edmund, are added sporadically to the action. Actor-musicians play instruments on stage including violin, guitar, piano, accordion, bass, drums and other rhythm-making apparatus, often while in character and as part of the choreography during fight scenes.  It seems lately that more and more shows are using actor-musicians although it is not clear whether this is an artistic choice or a cost-savings decision?  Another trend that seems prevalent these days is to have the actors/musicians roam around on stage for an extended period of time prior to the start of the performance.  This was a bit confusing in this show since the jigs and reels being played evoked a Maritime kitchen party feel, which while entertaining, had nothing to do with the vibe of the show once it started.

The play makes a major plot change to the source material by making the four children not blood relatives but fellow orphaned evacuees.  This deviation allowed the concept of the “found family” to be highlighted, where bonds of love, loyalty and community span beyond blood ties.  The children come from different ethnicities (White, Black, Asian) and to further extend the ideas of diversity and inclusiveness to the LGBTQ communities, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are now Mr. and Mr. Beaver. While the outfits of the children seem too modern for the 1940s setting, the elaborate costumes of the characters from Narnia are fitting, especially the luminous bejeweled robes and crown of the White Witch.

One artistic decision that I questioned was not transforming the stage more to represent the magic of Narnia.  The set was designed to represent the old Victorian manor and in particular, the room with the wardrobe whose doors opened up to reveal a bunch of coats hanging from the racks.  When the children crawled into the wardrobe and then emerged into “Narnia”, the only visual indication of this was some “snow” falling from above and a lamp post off to one side.  There was no backdrop depicting a winter wonderland with glistening trees, shimmering icicles and snow.  Throughout all the Narnia scenes, we stared at the original set of the mansion in the background.  A pair of moving stairs were pushed around to help choreograph scenes of traversing over terrain but it was difficult to conjure the enchantment of this mythical land without any visual cues.

In fact, it was the lobby of the Soulpepper Theatre that was decked out in a fashion closer to how I imagined Narnia should look like.  There were tinsels hanging from rafters to represent icicles, several large Christmas trees decorated with lights and bulbs, a tangle of interwoven frosted tree limbs covered with shards of ice within Narnia’s forest and a cool blue hue to reflect the cold winter enveloping the land.  There was even an entrance into the theatre with coats hanging from above to give you the impression of stepping through the wardrobe.  Perhaps this was to allow those who did not have tickets to the show to take part in the world of Narnia.  Too bad the ones who did watch did not get that extended experience on stage.

Theatre 2025: Ava - Secret Conversations @ CAA Theatre

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was a famous American actress working under contract for MGM between 1941-1986, which overlapped Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Known for her stunning looks and famous husbands as much as for her movie roles including “The Killers”, “Show Boat”, “The Barefoot Contessa”, “Night of the Iguana” and “Mogambo”, Gardner was dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal”.  She was briefly married to Mickey Rooney (1942-43), Artie Shaw (1945-46), and Frank Sinatra (1951-57).  All this can be discovered from a basic Google or Wikipedia search.

It was a bit of a disappointment to watch the play “Ava: Secret Conversations” which was based on a collaborative autobiography of Gardner that was ghost-written by Peter Evans.  Despite the implicit promises of the title, there were not really any new insights about the star.  Rather, the play focuses on the period in 1988, towards the end of Ava’s life, when Evans and Gardner held multiple private interviews in preparation for the book, only to have it all fall apart at the end. Gardner walked away from the project out of loyalty to Sinatra after learning that Evans had been successfully sued for libel by Ava's last husband, who she considered the love of her life despite their divorce.  Instead, Gardner worked with other writers on “Ava: My Story” which was published a few months after her death in 1990.  Peter Evans’ book was not published until 2013, a year after his death, after Gardner’s estate finally granted permission.

The role of Ava is played by Elizabeth McGovern of Downton Abbey fame, who also wrote the screenplay adapted from Evan’s book.  If McGovern’s portrayal is accurate, in the last years of Ava’s life, she was skittish, acerbic, foul-mouthed, temperamental and elusive in revealing much detail about her personal life.  The sole humorous moment in the play was when Ava protested about all the swearing that Evans had included in the biography but did so by cursing like a sailor. On the whole, I thought her performance felt overwrought and whether that was because of the acting or what was required by the screenplay, both can be attributed back to McGovern.

Aaron Costa Ganis, in the role of Peter Evans, fares much better.  He also portrays all three of Ava’s husbands, aptly mimicking each of them while video cues in the background help to clarify which character he is playing.  In particular, in the role of Sinatra, Costa Ganis does such a great job of singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” that I watched closely to determine whether he was lip-syncing (he wasn’t). Towards the end of the show as the relationship between Evans and Gardner was fraying, there was implication that Evans had fallen for Gardner, which does not seem to be substantiated by history and could have been added just for dramatic purposes.

In the end, I found this play to be lightweight and not that memorable. For me, the two most intriguing questions that arose from attending this show were not even about the content of the play.  The first was why no photographs were allowed, even at curtain call.  Most shows encourage you to take photos at curtain call and post them as part of free publicity, which you would think this show could use.   The second was why Elizabeth McGovern looked so shockingly thin? Perhaps she always looks like this but you couldn’t tell from watching Downton Abbey since she wore long sleeves and flowing outfits and we never saw her bare limbs.

Theatre 2025: CHILD-ish @ Tarragon Theatre

My husband Rich and I watch so many shows in a year just based on our 3 subscriptions to Main Mirvish, Off Mirvish and Crow’s Theatre alone that I am reluctant to add many more to our plate.  This is especially true since I want to write about the shows that I watch and am overwhelmed when they come too frequently.  Rich, on the other hand, is tempted by every good review that he reads in the paper.  This is how we ended up buying last minute tickets to CHILD-ish at Tarragon Theatre.

CHILD-ish is a “verbatim play” meaning that the dialogue of the work is taken directly from words spoken by people in real-life interviews.  These words are reproduced by actors exactly as the original speaker said them, including any pauses, hesitation words, coughs or other verbal ticks.  We have watched other verbatim plays in the past, including the musical London Road where the lyrics of songs are taken from interviews of residents of Ipswich, UK as they discuss their fears about a serial killer preying on their town.  Taking the concept of a verbatim play to extremes is Dana H where the actress actually lip-syncs the words from an interview that was pre-recorded and is playing on the sound system.

In CHILD-ish, playwright/interviewer Sunny Drake spent multiple years interviewing over 40 children from ages 5-12 on a variety of topics, then selected and edited together interesting and poignant moments to form a play.  The set resembles an office break-out room with a wide screen on the back wall, two round plush stools, and a segmented couch that is pulled apart and reconfigured into separate formations throughout the play.  An actor portrays Sunny conducting the interviews but the spin or conceit of the show is that four adults portray an amalgamation of the various children, providing their responses and reactions verbatim and as delivered by the children.  Yet these actors are dressed like adults in office attire (one is even in a suit and tie) and try hard not to “act like children” as they literally speak the words out of the mouths of babes. 

The interview starts comically as the interviewees get a feel for what their boundaries are, gently pushing the limits to see what is allowed.  Can they say whatever they want and the adults will be forced to repeat what was said?  Can they cluck like chickens (as the four proceed to do so while strutting around)?  Can they swear?  One interviewee proceeds to sing a song about unicorns, claiming to be one as the others all mimic a unicorn’s horn with their finger.

They are first asked some soft questions covering topics including love, friendship, dating, and marriage (as seen through the eyes of 5 years olds!).  “What do you think love is?”, “How do you know if someone likes you?”, “How can you get someone to like you”.  The responses are genuine, spontaneous, refreshing, sometimes surprising, and occasionally quite funny, especially when coming from younger kids while being spoken by adult actors.  After the interviewer (Sunny) asked questions for a while, it was decided that some of the older children could interview him, and then each other.  Eventually more serious topics are broached including bullying, self-harm, depression, consent, racism, immigration, war, death, and the state of the world including climate change.  Hearing such brutally honest, intelligent and touching responses in this format makes one realize that more attention should be paid to what children say and feel.  We should not need to channel these thoughts through adults in order to give them the gravitas that they deserve.

From this perspective, the play worked for us and we found it both entertaining and enlightening. One segment where the kids complained about their parents being on their cell phone devices too much, not being present, and paying too little attention really struck home.  Another impactful interaction dealt with consent and seemed to come from the dialog of a fairly young girl who complained that she didn’t always want to be kissed by the little boy that she planned to marry, but didn’t feel like she could say no since she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  It drove home how early this concept of consent becomes relevant and needs to be taught.

Where the play fell apart for us is during the second half of the 70-minute show when an attempt at audience participation felt forced and unnecessary.  The lights were turned on and the audience was directed to pair up and interview one another with a set of questions that were projected on a screen.  Full disclosure, but Rich and I really dislike shows that include audience participation and avoid going to them if at all possible.  We also make sure never to sit on the aisles or in the front rows for these types of shows so that we won’t be picked. While there regularly are trigger warnings about loud noises, smoke, coarse language, etc. in the description of a show, there is rarely, if ever, a warning about audience participation and there should be!  

Then a bunch of children appeared on stage and played a game where they used the couch sections and stools to create various animals out of them.  It was not clear what the point of this part was, other than to provide an example of what it was like interviewing and interacting with the actual children.  Finally, the play ended with the audience being prompted to stand and repeat the “children’s manifesto” which was highlighted on the screen, including “Listen to Kids!!!” and “Play, Play, Play”.  None of these last scenes resonated with us and ended up detracting from what was initially an interesting and promising premise.  We would have preferred that the show just stuck to the interview format and provide more examples of what was said by the kids since we found that part to be fascinating.

At the post show talkback, one of the actresses talked about the actors needing to keep on an “adult mask” when saying their lines in order to treat the words seriously and with respect, which worked fairly well until they had to cluck like chickens and act like unicorns.  She also quoted a newspaper review that said it was too bad it takes hearing the valid thoughts of children coming out of the mouths of adults for them to be taken seriously.  One fun moment came when a question from the audience ended up being from the father of the actor playing Sunny.  She prefaced her response with “Hi Dad! That’s my father!”  If he had been used as a plant used to get the questions rolling, it worked!