Theatre 2024: Four Minutes Twelve Seconds

It is more or less a universal fact that a good story is the most important element in the presentation of any type of narrative, be in a book, movie or play format.  For live performances, while fancy sets and costumes, music, lighting, and especially good acting are all useful elements, they cannot compensate for an inferior plot.

A case in point is the 90 minute play Four Minutes Twelve Seconds which has a riveting plot with many twists and turns.  Luckily, it also has a cast of stellar actors led by Megan Follows, who will always be known for her 1980’s portrayal of Anne of Green Gables, and Sergio Di Zio, who coincidentally was in an episode of Law and Order Toronto, Criminal Intent, that we just watched days before attending the play.

Currently performing at Tarragon Theatre, this is a family drama that feels like a thriller. The action starts with upper middle-class parents Diane (Di) and David discussing what happened to their seventeen-year-old son Jack after Di finds his shirt covered with blood. David initially downplays the blood as the result of a simple nosebleed, and then due to some inconsequential teenage rough-housing.  None of this rings true and under intense interrogation from Di, David’s explanations continue to change as he is caught in lie after lie. The tension rachets up as the real story involving a leaked sex video slowing unveils itself.  By the end of the play, the couple learns some hard truths about their “perfect” son and about each other.

The play is set up as a series of vignettes mainly featuring continued debates between Di and David with the passage of time being marked by subtle changes in clothing and Di’s hair which is tied into a ponytail then loosened repeatedly.  In trying to learn the truth of what happened, Di has confrontations with Jack’s friend Nick who she labels  as “slow” and Jack’s ex-girlfriend Cara who she dismisses as being “too Scarborough” (as in poor and trashy).

Megan Follows gives a powerful performance as her character Di goes through a wide range of emotions that almost mirrors the stages of grief, as she deals with the ever changing information that comes her way.  She starts with denial and anger as she rages against perceived injustices levied upon her son.  Then comes bargaining and depression as the truth starts to permeate and she struggles to come to terms with Jack’s culpability in events that led to his beating.  When she finally reaches acceptance, her proposed solution is shockingly tone-deaf and reeks a bit of wealthy, white entitlement.  Di Zio plays David perfectly, outwardly conveying an upstanding, devoted father and husband while subtly oozing with duplicitousness that makes you want to smack him on Di’s behalf.  Although their roles were small, the actors playing Nick and Cara were excellent as well.  I was especially impressed by the impassioned final rant that Cara directs at Di, where the meaning of the title of the play is finally revealed.  It is interesting that although he is referenced throughout the entire play, Jack never appears on stage.  You are left to imagine him through the dialogue carried on by the other characters.

The set is simple but effective, with most of the action taking place around the dining table of David and Di’s home.  For the few scenes where Di ventures out to speak with Nick or Cara, there is a lit-up V-shaped white line with a bench at one end that delineates the street or a setting outside of the house.  Nothing more is required since the set is inconsequential when you are so engrossed by the dialogue.  Four Minutes Twelve Seconds is a terrific play that dwells on issues of trust, privacy, consent, male toxicity, entitlement, class, race, and the perils of living in the age of technology.  It does a fine job of illustrating the point that a great plot is everything.

Theatre 2024: Dana H

What a strange feeling to be absolutely horrified yet totally mesmerized at the same time while watching a play.  Such were the emotions invoked while watching Dana H, a verbatim play with a twist.  Prior to this, my only experience with verbatim plays was with the 2014 musical London Road where the lyrics of all the songs were taken directly from interviews with citizens from Ipswich, U.K. as they commented on their thoughts about the serial killer that was plaguing their town.

Crow's Theatre's production of Dana H., which premiered on Broadway in 2019, takes the concept of a verbatim play to the next level.  All the dialogue in this one-woman show is taken from interviews with Dana Higginbotham, a chaplain from Florida who describes her ordeal of being kidnapped by psychiatric inmate Jim, a white-supremist neo-Nazi member of the Aryan Brotherhood who held her hostage for 5 months back in 1997.  We hear about how Dana meets, councils and advocates for the violent, deranged man, who repays her compassion by capturing her and dragging her from one seedy motel after another as they head south-west across the country.  She speaks mostly in a calm, dispassionate, almost emotionless manner as she details being abused both mentally and physically, only breaking down slightly when she recalls being brutally raped and assaulted.  For this memory, she shakily reads lines from a manuscript that she has written about her traumatic experiences.  Most appalling are her descriptions of the pair’s interactions with policemen during their travels, who she claims recognized her plight and saw her bruises but were too afraid of Jim’s Aryan Brotherhood association to provide her with much, if any, help.  The Aryan Brotherhood is described in Wikipedia as a neo-Nazi prison gang and organized crime syndicate with immense powers both inside and outside of the prison systems within the United States.

Playing the titular role, actress Jordan Baker enters a set that is made to represent one of the seedy motel rooms where Dana was held captive.  The décor is perfect, right down to the grime that can be seen on the walls, the filthy air-conditioning unit, and the tacky painting hanging above the bed.  Baker enters through the “front door” of the motel and sits down on the chair positioned centre stage facing the audience.  A sound technician follows and makes a point of helping her put on her earpiece.  Then we hear the voice of the interviewer ask his first question and the play begins as Dana opens her mouth to answer.

But rather than Baker reciting the lines from this interview, what the audience hears is an edited-together version of the audio interviews with a male voice asking the questions and Dana Higginbotham’s actual voice as she responds.  Baker lip-syncs in perfect timing to the audio, not only mouthing the words but mirroring the tone and context of the content with the appropriate facial expressions and body movements that include tapping of the chair or her thigh, rustling of paper or drinking from a water bottle, all in sync with the sounds generated from that audio.   As we were seated about 5 rows away from the elevated stage, my husband Rich and I had a clear view of Baker’s face and at first we concentrated on the exaggerated motions of her lips as she mouthed the words.  Very quickly after, we became so immersed in the story and the perfect execution of the lip-syncing that we totally forgot that the actress was not actually speaking.

Towards the end of this one-act play, shortly after describing the horrific description of Dana’s rape, the stage went black and when the lights came back on, the room was empty and the bed disheveled.  After a few seconds, there was a knock and then a maid came in and calmly went about cleaning the room and making the bed, all while multiple audios of Dana’s voice continued to play in a dissonant, jumbled manner.  The payoff of the scene came when the maid removed the bedsheet which revealed a huge blood stain.  With no reaction at all, she just added it to the pile of dirty laundry and left.  The scene seemed to serve two purposes.  From a practical perspective, it allowed Baker to rest off-stage for a few minutes.  In terms of the narrative, I guess it indicated how that area had become inured to violence and bloodshed as if it was an everyday occurrence.

The play Dana H. was written by Higginbotham’s real-life son Lucas Hnath, an acclaimed playwright known for penning A Doll House Part 2, a sequel to Ibsen’s classic play, The Doll House.  While the play describes Dana’s rescue and escape, as well as her eventual spiritual healing and new role in hospice end-of-life counselling, it does not describe how Dana reunited with Lucas nor how the ideas for the interviews and subsequent play came about.  The conceit of using his mother’s own voice to narrate her own story lends authenticity to the tale, making it all the more harrowing and impactful.

Whenever possible, I select the performance of a play that holds a post-show talkback in order to gain more insight regarding what I just watched.  This was more important than ever after watching Dana H since this performance was the most unique and unlike anything that I ever watched before. Hosted by Crow’s Theatre’s assistant director Paolo Santalucia, the talkback allowed us to hear the real voice of actress Jordan Baker and learn about her process in preparing for this challenging role.

Baker described the lip-syncing process to be almost like a dance, as she had to marry not just the enunciation of the words but also the body movements and emotions behind them.  While sitting on stage, in order to concentrate and listen as deeply as required to sync up with the sounds of Dana’s voice coming through her earpiece, Baker is put in what she describes as a “bubble”.  The lighting is set in such a way that she cannot see the audience and stares out at darkness.  The earphones block out all external sounds in order to further eliminate distractions.  Baker recalled one performance where the lights malfunctioned and she could actually see the audience as they shifted, coughed, reached for candy and so forth.  That made it exponentially more difficult for her to get through the show.  In terms of miming the actions such as slapping of the chair, she had to make sure not to actually hit the chair and make a second noise in addition to the one coming from the audio.  She explained how this play first made it to Broadway since under normal circumstances, such an avant-garde, intimate and intense show would have been relegated to Off-Broadway.  But it premiered during COVID when theatres were looking for shows with few actors in order to control the spread of the disease.  Baker was worried about whether she could carry what would be her first one-woman show, let alone one that required such a radically different technical performance.  She needs to wonder no more, as she was terrific.

Theatre 2024: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

The final show in our “Off-Mirvish” subscription series was the remounting of Tom Stoppard’s 1966 absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, highlighting two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Within the context of the play Hamlet, Rosencranz & Guildenstern (henceforth mentioned together as R&G) are two bumbling former childhood friends of the Danish Prince who are summoned to Elsinore Castle by his mother Gertrude and stepfather Claudius to observe and report on Hamlet’s strange behaviour.  They watch on as Hamlet mounts the play  “The Murder of Gonzago” to trap Claudius into admitting that he murdered Hamlet’s father.  In response, Claudius bribes R&G into betraying Hamlet by escorting him by boat to England with a letter to the English King requesting Hamlet’s execution.  Hamlet discovers the plot and switches the letter with a new one indicating that R&G should be put to death instead.

To some degree, Stoppard’s play retells this small subplot of the play Hamlet, but from the perspective of R&G.  We first meet the pair as they sit together in an indeterminant location, repeatedly playing a game betting on whether a flipped coin comes down heads or tails with the winner pocketing the coin. Guildenstern stubbornly calls “Heads” and loses 89 consecutive coins which seems to violate basic laws of probability.  This coin flip scene is our first clue that we are watching an absurdist play.  Absurdism is the philosophy that the universe is irrational and meaningless and trying to find meaning is a useless endeavour that leads to conflict.  Theatre of the Absurd is a term coined for plays that focus on absurdism.  Throughout the play, Guildenstern becomes upset at the incongruity of his experiences and acts out aggressively because of it.  Rosencrantz is gentler in nature and seems satisfied to just go with the flow since he can’t (or won’t) actively change anything anyways.  He just wants to be happy and to make his friend happy as well, to the point where he rigs a new coin game so that Guildenstern would win every time.

R&G seem unsure of who they are (mixing up each other’s names), why they are there, where they are headed, or what they can remember.  This theme of Individual Identify or lack thereof, further accentuates the irrationality of the universe.  They meet up with a theatre troupe led by a character known as “The Player” who seems to hold the answers to their confusion but does not or cannot reveal them clearly to R&G.  When they first meet, the Player refers to R&G as “fellow artists” as if alluding to the fact that the pair are actually actors or characters within a larger story (i.e. the play of Hamlet?).  Because of this, it is debatable whether R&G have any free will or ability to change a destiny that has already been pre-determined for them. While they consider it, they make no efforts to choose any path other than the one laid out for them.  Their fate and the inevitability of their deaths are so set in stone that it is actually in the title of Stoppard’s play (no spoiler alert required).  In this regard, R&G act as a stand-in for the “everyman” since death will ultimately come to us all.

Stoppard cleverly weaves actual scenes from Hamlet with the extra discourse and musings between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and the Player. When speaking to any of the other characters within the play Hamlet, the Shakespearean text is quoted making it very meta since we are watching a play within a play.  The two titular characters are played by Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd who previously paired up to play the Hobbits Merry and Pippen in the movie version of Lord of the Rings.They are both excellent in their roles as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern respectively, especially Monaghan whose facial expressions exude his character’s sweet innocence and bewilderment.

I’m not sure that I fully appreciate Theatre of the Absurd and why plays of this genre are considered entertaining.  Perhaps it takes too much brain power for my taste.  At very least, Hamlet is referenced in this Stoppard play, which gives it some relatable context for those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s classic as opposed to watching the absurdist play Waiting For Godot, or as I like to call it, “Waiting for this Play to End”.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a three-act play that spans over three hours including two short intermissions.  This is an extremely long time to concentrate and try to follow along while inane, nonsensical dialogue is rapidly dispensed.  In the end, what I got out of it is this: “Life is absurd and then you die”.  I think this could have been conveyed in about half the time.

Theatre 2024: Aladdin

The next show in our 2023/24 Mirvish subscription series was a touring revival of the 2014 stage musical Aladdin, adapted from the same-named 1992 Disney animated film featuring songs by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.  This movie was part of Disney’s “Renaissance” of commercially successful animated musicals that included The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.  In turn, the film is based on the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, a much darker Middle-Eastern folktale associated with the stories told in One Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights.  In that folktale, Aladdin is portrayed as lazy, greedy, self-entitled and kills two men (abeit evil sorcerers)—hardly the hero of modern-day depictions.

In Disney’s sanitized film version, Aladdin is a poor, thieving street urchin with a heart of gold who roams around the Middle-Eastern city of Agrabah with his sidekick Abu, a chattering little monkey.  He meets and falls in love with Princess Jasmine, but it is decreed by her father the Sultan that she must marry a prince.  The evil sorcerer and royal advisor Jafar seeks possession of a magic lamp with a genie inside who can grant three wishes.  Jafar’s minion is an ill-tempered parrot aptly named Iago.  The lamp is hidden inside a cave that only can be entered by a heroic “diamond in the rough” and Jafar realizes that Aladdin is the one.  Through mishaps in retrieving the lamp, Aladdin ends up becoming the genie’s master and wishes to be turned into a prince so that he can marry Jasmine.  Aladdin arrives at the palace riding a giant elephant (actually a transformed Abu) and woos Jasmine by taking her on a magic carpet ride while singing the now iconic song “A Whole New World”.  Jafar unmasks the fake prince and takes control of the lamp and genie, but Aladdin outwits him and marries Jasmine for the prerequisite Disney happy ending.

The late, comedic genius Robin Williams was the voice of the giant blue genie, and his manic, tour-de-force performance still acts as the gold standard for all subsequent portrayals of the genie in live action movies and stage musicals.  Singing the showstopping song “A Friend Like Me”, the genie goes through all sorts of magical gyrations to prove his powers, including morphing into various forms and multiplying into many genies, as only can be done through animation. To adapt this movie magic into something that would work in a live theatrical production takes some fancy stagecraft.

The musical does a great job of recreating the look and feel of the movie, with bright, colourful sets depicting the ancient city of Agrabah, the gilded and bejeweled cave where the lamp is found, and the palace.  The flowing silky costumes and in particular, the genie dressed in bright blue and Jafar in his long black robe, all channel the wardrobe of the characters in the film.  The animal sidekicks of the film have been replaced with human versions of Iago and Abu, but in place of the monkey are Aladdin’s three goofy but loyal friends Babkak, Omar and Kassim.

While the musical retains the same opening songs to introduce Agrabah (“Arabian Nights”) and Aladdin (“One Jump Ahead”) as in the film, additional songs were added including “Babak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim” which the four friends sing to busk for money.  My favourite additional song is “High Adventure” where the three friends set off to the palace and fight royal guards in an attempt to save Aladdin who has been captured and imprisoned by Jafar.  Unfortunately, the new song “Proud of Your Boy”, meant to show Aladdin’s desire to honour a promise to his deceased mother to stop stealing, has taken on an infamously negative association when an American far-right, neo-fascist group named themselves “Proud Boys” after this song.  Poor Disney must be horrified.

To reproduce the animated extravaganza of the song “A Friend Like Me”, the extended live production number includes dancing waiters performing acrobatic moves, slinky harem girls and a slew of gold-clad, top-hatted tap dancers that look like they just came from the finale of A Chorus Line.  Additional lyrics are added to the song including a brief interlude where in quick succession, the genie sings notable lines from other Disney animated musicals including Beauty and the Beast (“Tale as old as time..”), Little Mermaid (“Look at this stuff..”) and Pocohantas (“.. And you’ll never hear the wolf cry…”).

The romantic magic carpet ride scene where Aladdin and Jasmine “soar” through the air was a bit of a letdown in this revival version of the show.  My husband Rich and I had actually watched this musical when it first previewed in Toronto in 2013 before heading to Broadway.  In that initial production, I seem to recall the carpet swooping across the entire stage with a large moon and starlit backdrop.  From what I see on Youtube, it is still like that on Broadway.  For our show, the stage went dark, and the carpet made short, constrained movements across a much smaller section of the stage with merely a spotlight on the Aladdin and Jasmine.  Also when “Prince Ali” (aka Aladdin in disguise) made his grand arrival at the palace, instead of an elephant he was pushed on stage sitting on what looked like a slightly raised Ikea trolley used to access objects on the top shelf.  At very least they could have created a taller platform and covered it with royal trimmings and decorations.  I guess these are the staging cuts and compromises that are made for a traveling road show that is only in town for a short period of time.

Better special effects were on display in the grand finale when Jafar takes control of the genie and wishes for himself to be the Sultan and ruler of the lands.  In a flash, Jafar’s black robe turns into a white Sultan’s robe.  Then when Aladdin tricks Jafar into wishing that he could be the most powerful genie, in another flash his robe turns bright red before he “vanishes” into the lamp that he is now trapped in.  Now that is some fancy stagecraft.

In general, this musical version of Aladdin provides all the feel-good fun of the Disney film.  Although it was probably targeted more for families with children, it was still a refreshing change from the many serious, tense or depressing plays that we have watched recently.  It was nice to just relax and enjoy an evening out, forgetting about the woes of the world. That is the power of good theatre.

Theatre 2024: Uncle Vanya @ CAA Theatre

Are the terms “Russian play” and “happy” oxymorons?  Or perhaps it is the concept of Chekhovian plays that is incongruous with anything lighthearted or joyful?  Because after watching a performance of Anton Chekhov’s classic 1897 work “Uncle Vanya” for the first time, it is hard to imagine a group of more morose, ineffectual people who are not only disappointed with their lots in life but are also bored, unfulfilled and so instilled with inertia that they make no efforts to change their lots in life.  There are a few moments of dark comedy since the characters are so pitiful that you are induced to laugh at the absurdity of their often self-imposed plights.

The setting of the play is a country estate run by Sonya, a plain looking spinster and her uncle, Vanya.  The pair toil endlessly to keep the run-down property going and send all profits to Sonya’s father, an elderly professor who lives in the city.  Also present at the estate is Mariana, an old nursemaid, Vanya’s mother Maria who is an ardent admirer of the professor, Astrov, an old county doctor who Sonya is secretly in love with, and an impoverished neighbouring landowner nicknamed Waffles because of the pockmarks on his face.

Sonya and Vanya’s mundane but familiar existences are thrown into turmoil when the Professor comes for a visit, accompanied by his beautiful and much younger wife Yelena, who he married after the death of his first wife (also Sonya’s mother and Vanya’s sister).  Both Vanya and Astrov are attracted to Yelena and try to woo her despite her being married.  She responds to Vanya’s advances with disdain but reciprocates Astrov’s feelings.  In a North American play, Yelena and Astrov would end up running away together in pursuit of their happy ending.  But this is Chekhov’s world where Yelena stays with the elderly professor who she no longer loves, either out of guilt and a sense of commitment, or more likely due to inertia and lack of will to act.

The other major dramatic plot point occurs when the professor insensitively announces that he has decided to sell the estate in order to fund a more lavish lifestyle for himself and Yelena in the city.  Perhaps they can buy a “summer cottage in Finland”.  He treats the issue that this will leave his daughter and brother-in-law homeless and jobless as a minor inconvenience that he hasn’t fully considered yet and totally ignores the fact that the estate actually belongs to Sonya and is not his to dispose of.  The professor’s thoughtlessness and lack of gratitude towards him finally causes Vanya to explode in rage.  This leads to a huge fight culminating on Vanya firing a gun at point-blank range, missing the professor twice. He is a failure even in this regard and his dismay is comical. After decades of apathy and acceptance, when Vanya finally tries to take action to change his fate, he does not succeed.  In the end, the professor backs off from the idea of selling the estate and leaves with Yelana.  Sonya and Vanya return to their old routines with Sonya comforting Vanya by implying that although they feel unhappiness now, one day they will find peace and joy in heaven.  She softly repeats the words “we shall rest” over and over and over again, as if to emphasize the monotony and emptiness of their current lives.  Despite her hope for the afterlife, this ending felt extremely depressing.

Ironically, Uncle Vanya is based on a prior unsuccessful comedic play called The Wood Demon that Chekhov wrote eight years earlier in 1889.  Featuring a cast of 15 characters (compared to Uncle Vanya’s 8), The Wood Demon was panned as being long-winded, convoluted and facetious, perhaps curing Chekhov from further attempts at writing comedies.  That he was able to trim the cast by half, take the best ideas from The Wood Demon and convert it into the classic drama which is Uncle Vanya speaks to his talent.  Unlike the characters in his play, his strength of character allowed him to turn failure into triumph.

Uncle Vanya was one of the first plays to concentrate on the environment and the harmful effects of over-development at the expense of Nature.  Dr. Astrov was a great proponent of conservation, lamenting the destruction of Russia’s forests.  The play was also lauded for its realistic characters, naturalistic dialogue and universal themes of unfulfilled potential, wasted lives, unrequited love and failed ideals.  Yelena’s name is interesting as this translates to a variation Helen in English and her character draws parallels to Helen of Troy.  While not quite launching a thousand ships and starting an epic war, Yelena’s presence did ignite previously dormant emotions in both Vanya and Astrov.

Although it is part of the Off-Mirvish subscription series, this version of Uncle Vanya is actually a remount of a 2022 Crow’s Theatre production.  Crow’s has impressed us time and again with their innovative staging and while the fixed structure of the CAA theatre limits what can be done, there were still some great touches added to the setting of the crumbling estate where the play takes place.  To emphasize how run down the manor is, in the first scene, water appears to be dripping from the ceiling into a bucket and when Vanya makes his entrance through a set of rickety wooden doors, one of the doors actually comes off its hinges.  A broken beam representing the rafter of the manor extends beyond the stage into the audience, further emphasizing the decrepit state of the home as well as adding a slight touch of immersive staging to the set. The glass wall stage right gives the illusion of a garden on the other side.  I would have liked to see the original staging of this play within Crow’s Theatre’s Guloien Theatre since from accounts that I read, that production was truly immersive and in the round.

The excellent cast included a few familiar faces.  One was the Tom Rooney who played Vanya.  We saw him in the Crow’s Theatre production of 15 Dogs in 2023 and he was superb in that show as the black poodle Majnoun.  Rooney is equally impressive in Uncle Vanya, making you feel his pathos and share in his pain.  Eric Petersen plays the smaller role of the professor with the right amount of arrogance, bluster and insensitivity.  We watched him in several past productions of Billy Bishop Goes to War.  I’m not sure if this is becoming a new Crow’s Theatre trademark, but just like Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 which we watched earlier this year, the program for Uncle Vanya contained a Family Tree to help us tell the characters apart.  Maybe it is because both of these Russian-based plays feature characters with impossibly long names.

From the purpose of enriching our literary and cultural knowledge, watching Uncle Vanya was enlightening and important.  But from an entertainment perspective, my husband Rich summed it up best.  It felt like the theatrical equivalent of eating a kale salad.  He knows that it is good for him but saying he enjoyed the experience might be a bit of a stretch.  One thing that it did do was make us appreciate our own relatively happy and fulfilling lives all the more.

Theatre 2024: Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

We originally had tickets to see the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 back in February 2021 before COVID canceled all live theatre.  In January 2024, we were happy to finally be able to watch this demanding show that is based on part of Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1225-pages literary tome War and Peace.  That opus spans from 1805-1820 and weaves fictional interactions between five noble families within the timeframe of the Napoleonic wars.  It also includes lengthy discussions on history and philosophy.  The musical over covers a very small section (less than 100 pages) of the second of 4 books and 2 epilogues within the novel.

As its unwieldy title implies, the musical concentrates on the plight of Countess Natasha Rostova, an impressionable young romantic pining for her fiancé Andrey who is away at war.  Natasha is further disillusioned by Andrey’s father and sister who don’t approve of her.  To distract herself, Natasha travels to Moscow to visit her godmother Marya with her cousin and best friend Sonya accompanying her.  While attending the opera, Natasha meets and is seduced by the lothario Anatole who convinces her to break her engagement to Andrey and “elope” with him instead, despite his already being secretly married. Anatole is the brother of Helene, who is married to the titular Pierre, a wealthy, socially awkward misfit who struggles with philosophical questions that are a reflection Tolstoy’s own beliefs.  Natasha is saved from total ruin when Sonya discovers and foils the elopement plan.  But Natasha has destroyed her chances with Andrey and unsuccessfully attempts suicide in despair. Pierre comforts Natasha and gives her hope for the future, then witnesses the passing of the Great Comet of 1812 (the other part of the musical’s title and a historic phenomenon that was visible by the naked eye for 260 days).

The first song of the show, titled “Prologue”, acknowledges and makes fun of the complicated source material as well as the large cast of characters with lengthy Russian names.  Singing a cumulative song, in the same vein as “Twelve Days of Christmas”, one by one the characters appear on stage to introduce themselves and then each refrain adds the name and main trait of that character to the top of the verse before reviewing all the previous names mentioned.  “.. Anatole is hot .. Marya is old-school .. Sonya is good .. Natasha is young.. and Andrey isn’t here”.  There is a visual family tree included in the program which is actually referred to in the song with the lyrics “If you want to keep up with the plot .. complicated Russian novel .. Everyone’s got nine different names .. So look it up in your program”.  While singing this amusing song, the cast members dance around and actually gesture to the programs on the laps of the audience members sitting in the front rows.

The musical is sung-through meaning that there is no spoken dialogue, except for a few comforting lines expressed by Pierre to Natasha for dramatic effect in the penultimate scene.  Some of the libretto is taken word-for-word from the English translation of War and Peace.  As a result, while most of the lyrics represent dialog between two characters, occasionally they also reflect a character’s inner thoughts or emotions.  When Natasha and Sonya first arrive in Moscow,  Marya praises Natasha on her engagement to Andrey and Natasha next sings “I blush happily”.  This is obviously not part of the conversation, but rather her inner thoughts.  Within the same song, Sonya occasionally turns into a narrator.  When Natasha tells Marya “My cheeks are glowing from the cold”, Sonya sings “She said, gazing at Marya with kind, glittering eyes”.  It is almost as if she is reading text from the novel.  There are also instances where a character sings about himself in third-person as Pierre does in his last interaction with Natasha.  Pierre sings about himself “Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but he didn’t speak …”.  This constant change of perspective within consecutive lyrics of a song is disconcerting and you have to pay attention to discern between dialogue, internal thoughts and descriptive exposition.

In addition to the lyrics, the music is also challenging to listen to, with its use of dissonant chords, harsh sounds and varying musical styles. The score is a mixture of Russian folk, classical, indie rock and operatic music and is described by the composer as an “electropop opera”.  The songs are definitely not “hum-hum-hummable” to quote an ironic and winkingly self-referential line from Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Row Along.  Yet they work when heard in the context of watching the play. These tunes that sounded strange and alienating when merely listening to the soundtrack suddenly feel appropriate and engrossing when supported by the actors in costume, the stagecraft and choreography.

While the main orchestra can be seen situated up high, at the back of the stage and the sides of the theatre, they are supported by some of the actors who also play instruments when they are not the central characters of the current scene.  When the actor who portrays Andrey and Andrey’s crotchety father is not playing his minor roles, he wanders around playing a clarinet.  The actor in the role of Dolokhov, a friend of Anatole who flirts with Helene and gets into a duel with Pierre, plays the accordion, guitar, drums and cello when he is not in a scene.  Looking at the program, you see that many of the musicians are also understudies for the main roles.

As with all the shows that we have watched in the past at Crow’s Theatre, the most impressive part of this musical is the breathtaking staging.  Decked out like a Russian opera house bathed in hues of pink and purple and decorated with gilded railings and sparkling chandeliers, the theatre is set up almost “in the round” with stadium seating on 3 sides, forming a “U” shape around the stage.  The first row of seating on each side consists of small tables to give the theatre an intimate “cabaret-like” feel.  The main stage is a small platform in the centre of the floor with posts on each corner that allow it to be rotated.  High above behind the stage and on both sides above the audience are raised “theatre catwalks” where not only the musicians can be found, but also where some of the scenes take place.  Steep stairs on either side of the stage lead up to the catwalks and during the show, the actors repeatedly run up and down the stairs and in a circular motion along the catwalks, occasionally while carrying and playing instruments.  The energy expended by these actors and musicians is incredible and it felt exhausting merely to watch them.  Because the catwalks do not make a full circle, to complete their circuits, the actors would come back down through the audience, often pausing on the steps to sing their songs.  To follow all the action, you have to look up and down, left and right, front and back, at least if you are lucky enough to be seated in the centre section as we were.  If you are positioned under one of the catwalks, you would miss what was happening above you.

There is much audience interaction in the musical, starting right off the bat with that Prologue song that breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the crowd to instruct us on how to keep the characters straight by reviewing the program.  This continues throughout the show with the characters wandering up and down the aisles and in one case, Anatole even plops himself in a chair between two female audience members, wrapping his arms around them and chatting for a minute.  In the show, this illustrates a strange Russian custom to sit quietly for a few minutes before embarking on a journey. Another time, Anatole makes his grand exit by running out the back of the theatre, offering to kiss the hand of any audience member who extends it.  I was too shy to stick out my hand but regretted it afterwards as I could have been part of the fun.  In other scenes, some of the people sitting in the front rows were pulled onto the stage to join a dance, share a toast or otherwise participate.

I am assuming that those who wanted to take part chose to come early and claim the seats right up front, since we were forewarned that audience participation would happen. The audience advisory email we received was hilarious as we were told to be prepared for fog, strobe lights, dueling with gunshots, poisoning and (..gasp) ... sleigh riding!!.  In fact, the sleigh ride scene where Anatole prepares to run off with Natasha was the most creative bit of staging of the entire show.  Balaga, the crazy Trokia (a sleigh pulled by 3 horses) driver races with Anatole to retrieve Natasha while singing “Who’s that madman flying at a full gallop… knocking people over..”.  To enact this scene, Balaga stands at the top of the back catwalk and holds long reins in his hands which are attached to the poles on the platform stage below.  As he snaps the reins and sings with the clip-clop sounds of hoofs in the background, you can totally imagine the horses racing in front of him.

The choreography was very impressive in using the allocated space in the small theatre and especially the small stage.  In one party scene, what seemed like the entire cast was twirling and dancing at high speeds on that tiny platform all at once and then a few of the men performed the Russian Squat dance.  One false move and someone would have been accidentally kicked off the stage.  I watched a Broadway version of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 on Youtube and in my opinion, the intimate setting of the Crow’s Theatre version of worked much better than the staging of the huge Imperial Theatre.  In our theatre, the entire audience was relatively close to the action as opposed to on the gigantic, multi-layered Broadway stage where only the few lucky (?) ones with cabaret table seats right on or in front of the stage had that feeling.  The people in the nosebleed sections of the stadium seating would be too far away.  And while it might have been a cool experience to be sitting in a sunken section on the stage, I’m not sure how much of the show you could actually see from there?

The only time that I was disappointed in the Crow’s Theatre staging of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 was in the representation of the comet in the final song.  In consoling Natasha, Pierre realizes that he loves her, and that realization brings new energy and meaning to his life.  This is symbolized in his sighting of the comet which before this moment portended disaster and the end of the world.  But now he sings “The comet brings no fear.  No, I gaze upon it joyfully.  This comet .. feels my joyfully uplifted soul, my newly melted heart blossoming into a new life”.  With such big words, the sighting of the “Great” comet should be spectacular, and it is so in the Broadway production.  The lights go dark, hundreds of lights glow as stars in the sky, and then a gigantic celestial orb lights up above the stage.  In the Crow’s theatre production, a small row of 20 lights hanging under the catwalk at the back of the stage light up to represent the comet.  They didn't even darken the stage so that we could see them better. This supposedly miraculous and significantly symbolic sighting turned out to be a bit of a letdown in an otherwise brilliantly staged play.  It is interesting that historically, this comet actually was visible in 1811, not 1812.  Perhaps the word eleven contained too many syllables in an already lengthy title for a musical.

I deliberately selected a show where there was a talkback session with the cast following the performance.  We heard about how some of the actors were musicians first in their careers, and how they dealt with learning their complicated roles.  While watching the show, I thought some of the cast looked familiar and I was right.  Marya was played by Louise Pitre who is best known for starring in Mamma Mia which we watched in 2000.  I first saw her even earlier when she played Mrs. Johnson in Blood Brothers back in 1993.  Evan Buliung who played Pierre was in Fun Home back in 2017.  We actually attended several previous shows starring Hailey Gillis who was Natasha in this one.  She was in Ghost Quartet at Crow’s Theatre in 2019 and back in 2017, we saw her in Onegin which is another operatic period piece with themes very similar to this show.  I asked the production manager whether they were influenced by the staging on Broadway, and he informed me that they were not allowed to use any part of that since it was copyrighted.  This was just as well since for me, the staging for this show was vastly superior.