Theatre 2023: Fringe Festival

My husband Rich and I watched four performances at the Toronto Fringe Festival this year and enjoyed three of them.  This is an acceptable success rate given the adhoc, open-access nature of the selection process for Fringe shows and the lack of reviews for the most part when we choose which ones to watch.  It has always been hit and miss what we end up with.

Our first show was a relatively safe magic act called “Absolute Magic With Keith Brown”.  This was Rich’s pick since he likes magic shows.  The magician performed the typical slight-of-hand card tricks and telepathy/mind-reading routines. Rich participated in one of the mindreading tricks where he was one of four people who secretly drew a picture and Brown guessed which one Rich drew (a wristwatch .. I could have figured that out!).  In the finale of that trick, the magician actually reproduced what the last person had drawn.  None of this was particularly novel for a magic show.  But what made the act interesting was the running story-telling narrative that Brown gave with his smooth, hypnotic (and distracting?) voice while performing his tricks, which actually resulted in a life lesson.  Through hutzpah and sheer determination, when he was able to wrangle a visit from the wife of the President of Iceland when he did a show in that country.  The lesson was that you will never succeed if you don’t at least try.

Next we watched a musical comedy called Choir by Barbara Johnston and Anika Johnson (sister of Britta Johnson who wrote Kelly vs Kelly).  This team wrote the musical Blood Ties, another Fringe show that then had a snippet featured in an episode of the SciFi drama Orphan Black. Through small vignettes, Choir follows a year in the lives of a group of teenagers who are part of the “Tierce de Picardie Children's Chorus".  This is not a pop music or show choir like Glee, but rather a youth choir that sings Classical music by composers such as Bach, Handel and Mozart. They are led by conductor Mary Dean, played hilariously and with the utmost camp by actor Dean Deffet.  The cast is comprised of over 30+ singers ranging from ages 11-18 and their voices blend in beautiful harmony although the singing abilities of the individual soloists are not quite as strong and belie their young ages. The short scenes range from funny to touching as the youngsters deal with cliques and social status (being choir cool vs school cool), singing exercises and performances as they prepare for a big competition in Sudbury, and of course peer pressure, crushes and dating.  This was our favourite of the four shows that we watched.

Our third show was a one-man puppet show called The Family Crow: A Murder Mystery where all the characters are crows including the detective Horatio P.Corvus who shows up at the Crow family mansion to investigate the murder of the eldest son “Russell Crow”.  Puppeteer extraordinaire Adam Francis Proulx provides the voices of the detective, who is also the narrator of the story, as well as each of the suspects within the Crow family including daughter “Sheryl Crow”.  Before the actual mystery part of the show starts, Proulx walks around the stage and explains that we are about to endure an hour of really bad puns and invites anyone who wants to leave to do so now.  We can’t say that we were not warned as the puns come fast and furious and are mostly groaners, starting with the play on the word murder which is also the term for a group of crows. Proulx spins an exciting tale as his detective prances across the stage interviewing each suspect who one by one also are found dead.  He has 5 lamps pointed inwards that illuminate the stage which he turns on and off with foot switches as he traverses back and forth.  This was an extremely entertaining play to watch.

Unfortunately, our last play Killing Time: A Game Show Musical was the one that Rich and I did not like.  Surprisingly we are in the minority since the rest of the audience seemed to love it.  This show was actually selected Patron’s Pick over all the other shows playing at its theatre and got rave reviews. The plot was straightforward with a smarmy game show host being murdered and the police arrive to question the suspects including a producer, stagehand, Vanna White-esque show girl and two contestants. Loving musicals, we did enjoy all the songs but found the acting to be so hammy and overwrought that it was cringeworthy for us as opposed to humorous.  The rest of the audience obviously disagreed based on all the laughter around us.  Maybe we just didn’t have the right sense of humour for the show and its intentional overacting. Too bad this was not a sung-through musical with all songs and no dialogue because the musical numbers were quite good.

Theatre 2023: Good, Hadestown, Prairie Nurses, The Chinese Lady, Kelly vs Kelly

I had been so behind in writing about my 2022 vacation to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton that I decided to devote all of my time to my travel blog until I caught up.  As a result, I then fell behind on writing about all the theatre that my husband Rich and I watched over the past few months.  This is a catch-all blog of some of the shows that we watched between May and July 2023.

Having watched several other National Theatre plays that were filmed and then screened at Cineplex movie theatres including Life of Pi, The Crucible, and Jack Absolute Flies Again, our next one was the 1982 drama “Good” starring David Tennant, known for playing Doctor Who. It tells the fictional story of John Halder, a German literary professor who is initially forced to join the Nazi party, but eventually ends up embracing fascist beliefs as a high-ranking officer in the SS, Hitler’s paramilitary group. The play acts as a cautionary tale of how an intelligent and basically moral family man can end up rationalizing and fostering acts of pure evil. In effect, it uses Halder’s arc as an example of how Nazism was able to spread through Germany and illustrate how easy it is to be led astray by the seduction of power.  It is horrific to watch through the course of the play as Halder systematically betrays his Jewish best friend, his depressed wife and his mother who is suffering from dementia, justifying his changes in stance along the way as he participates in book burnings, experiments in euthanasia and finally the genocide in Auschwitz.  While this was not the most enjoyable play to watch, its themes were definitely profound and all the more important and relevant today when radicalization and far-right extremism is on the rise around the world.

As much as we enjoy watching these filmed versions of National Theatre plays on the big screen, they get to be expensive for a movie experience at $19+tax per person, (although a bargain in live-theatre-going terms). However, a much better deal is to get a subscription to National Theatre At Home which costs just $18 per month or $180 per year and will give both Rich and I unlimited access to an archive of past plays.  I think we will try this for a month and see how it goes.

We watched the Tony award winning musical Hadestown for a second time as a road show production that is part of our 2022/23 Mirvish Subscription Series.  Rich and I watched this show for the first time on Broadway in 2019 on our last trip to New York City, just before COVID hit.  We loved the jazzy songs, innovative sets and staging, and great choreography.  I won’t describe the show again since I wrote about it the first time, but it is always interesting to see how a road show adapts the original production, often with a new cast and a scaled down version of the set. I always think back to the first production of Les Miserables where the barricade was so enormous that when revolution leader Enjolras is shot, his entire body hangs upside down from the top of the barricade. On the road show version, the barricade was merely chest height and Enjolras just slumped over it.

The set for the Hadestown Toronto road show differed from the Broadway version in a major way.  On Broadway, the stage had a circular lift that lowered down to reveal a large hole, signifying the descent into the Underworld. Eurydice first descends when she accepts Hades offer of food and shelter, and then is tragically sucked down again for the last time when Orpheus fails the test set out for him as he tries to lead her back to Earth.  Since the stage of the Royal Alexandra Theatre could not accommodate such a contraption, the path to Hell became a big metal gate at the back of the stage that opened and closed like the “Jaws of Hell”.  This did not have the same dramatic effect as the Broadway version but was still a good interpretation.

The other major difference was the appearances and performances of the casts from the two productions.  Having seen the Broadway one first, that is the lasting impression for me of what the characters should look like. On Broadway, Hades and Persephone were both tall and slender while Eurydice was petite compared to Orpheus, making her seem more vulnerable. The statures of the female leads were reversed in the Toronto version with Eurydice being tall and lean and just about the same height as Orpheus, while the actress playing Persephone was much shorter and curvier.  None of that mattered in the context of the musical but because I had such a vivid image in my mind of the original cast, the differences felt jolting to me.

The more significant difference in my mind was the performances by a few key roles. On Broadway, Patrick Page who played Hades is an accomplished baritone who was able to sustain the extremely low notes required for the role throughout the performance.  In Toronto, Matthew Patrick Quinn only seemed to sing in the really low notes for short periods of time and therefore felt much less menacing.  Comparing the two actors who played Hermes, André de Shields (who won a Tony award for his performance) played the role with more gravitas while Toronto’s Nathan Lee Graham played it with more camp. I also found the actor who portrayed Broadway’s Orpheus exuded more of the required innocence, earnestness and naivety than Toronto’s version.  All this might be a bit biased only because I saw the Broadway version first.  Judged on its own merit, the Toronto production was very good, and the musical was just as entertaining as the first time.   In fact, Maria-Christina Oliveras who played Persephone had a voice that blew the roof off of the theatre!

We went to Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre to watch a delightful comedy written in 2013 called Prairie Nurses about two nurses named Penny and Puring who arrive from the Philippines to work in a community hospital in small town in Saskatchewan.  Hilarious misunderstandings ensue when most of the employees at the hospital including the Scottish doctor Miles, hot-tempered head nurse Marie-Anne and hockey-playing lab technician Wilf cannot tell the two young women apart.  Wilf falls in love at first sight with Puring, then inadvertently proceeds to woo both nurses thinking they are the same person because he never sees them at the same time until the end of the play.  Only candy-stripper Patsy can tell the difference but makes things worse as she tries to play matchmaker for Wilf and Puring, since her efforts get directed towards the wrong nurse.

The action takes place in the common room of the hospital which has a door centre stage leading to the rest of the hospital and one stage left that leads outside the building. The play includes elements of farce as the two nurses alternately enter and exit through the doors, causing confusion when they are mistaken for one another.  There are also tropes found in Restoration comedies with the plot devices of misdirected letters and mistaken identities. One may almost consider this a variation on “Comedy of Manners”, but gently lampooning race and cultural differences instead of the usual target of the upper class.  Although they could not visually tell the two nurses apart, Marie-Anne and Miles would deliberately curse, knowing that the more religious Puring would react to this while Penny would not care.

In today’s overly politically correct landscape, Prairie Nurses could have been considered racist if it were not so charming and inoffensive.  This is probably because the play is written by Toronto-based Filipino playwright Marie Beath Badian who based the plot of this fictional story on  real-life experiences. Her mother worked as a nurse in a small hospital in Arborfield, Saskatchewan (population 300) and was frequently mistaken for “the other one”—another Filipino nurse named Penny.  In fact, the most racist thought conveyed in the play is spoken by Penny (short for Indepencia) when she was appalled by the news that another Filipino nurse had married a white man, commenting that “their poor children .. will be sadly unattractive.. giants with enormous feet and mismatched eyes”. Badian occasionally tosses in Tagalog (Filipino) dialect when the nurses speak to one another, which adds to the authenticity but makes it more a bit more difficult to follow the dialogue, especially when they are engaged in a heated argument.  I’m not sure if the casting was intentional to add to the humour, but the two actresses who played Puring and Penny looked nothing alike (even from a distance) and one was noticeably talker than the other, making the confusion all the more ridiculous and funnier.

While Prairie Nurses was really more about culture clash, the show that we watched at Crows Theatre definitely dealt with themes of racism against the Chinese population in the early part of the 19th Century. The Chinese Lady, a play by Lloyd Suh, is based on the true story of Afong Moy, who was brought into the United States from Guangzhou, China and is supposedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on American soil in 1834.  Based on sketchy records, she was somewhere between 14-19 years old and was probably sold by her family to American traders who wanted to use her to promote interest in and help sell their Chinese furniture and wares.  This play imagines what her life might have been like as she spent decades on display like a circus attraction, feeding Western desire for glimpses of the “exotic East”.  Tickets were sold (25 cents for adults, 10 cents for children) for people to watch Afong as she poured tea, ate with chopsticks and walked around on her 4-inch feet that were a result of having them repeatedly broken and bound when she was a child as per the Chinese customs of the time.

As we entered the theatre, the actress playing Afong Moy was already seated silent and motionless in her chair, allowing herself to be gawked at by the audience in the matter that Afong would be watched during her “performances”. This stagecraft device has been frequently used in recent plays.  In The Dollhouse, Jessica Chastain’s Nora sits quietly spinning her chair for twenty minutes before the play starts, signifying how she feels trapped in her life and is spinning out of control.  In the musical Parade, Ben Platt stays silently on stage during the 15-minute intermission as his character Frank is isolated and trapped in his prison cell awaiting his fate.

When The Chinese Lady finally starts, Afong Moy introduces herself in a perky, cheerful manner and explains that she is in the United States as an ambassador to promote relationships between America and China.  It is 1834, she is 14-years old and will only be here for two years before her father comes to bring her home.  She proceeds to pour the tea, eat a bowl of rice and gingerly walk on her tiny feet around the boxed enclosure that is her stage.  This scene repeats with time jumps every few years and it eventually becomes apparent to her that no one is coming to retrieve her.  The year and her age increases, the rituals remain the same, but Afong gets more jaded and it becomes harder and harder for her to maintain the façade of happiness.  As her fame and notoriety grows, she is taken to tour other cities and even gets to meet President Andrew Jackson.  The most heartbreaking scene occurs when she visits a Zoo and while looking at the animals in captivity, finally fully grasps the reality of her own situation.

Throughout the play, Afong is accompanied by the manservant Atung who acts as her translator, brings out her tea and food and sweeps up after each show.  Atung has a more skeptical view of the world and has no illusions about his role as a slave to the masters who brought him from China when he was a boy. He acts as Afong’s confidant but cannot save her from her fate, anymore than he can save himself.  On top of the historical aspects of the story, this play asks us to look beyond the cultural curiosities to see the human behind the performance.  Afong Moy’s final lines are “Are you looking at me?  Can you see me?”.  Just like the play Good, The Chinese Lady has become more relevant since its first performance in 2018 given the rise of xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiments brought on by the pandemic and a demented American president who deemed it “The Asian Flu”.

Kelly vs Kelly is also based on a true story.  In 1915, Eugenia Kelly, a 19-year-old wealthy socialite was sued by her mother Helen Kelly and threatened with jail for being “incorrigible”, which apparently was a crime back then?  Chafing under her strict and proper mother’s smothering rules, Eugenia rebelled by visiting tango bars to pay suave, charming professional dancers known as “tango pirates” to dance with her.  She fell in love with dancer Al Davis, who was already married.  When she refused to end the affair, her mother took her to court in a case that scandalized the nation.

This story is the basis for a new Canadian musical by composer and lyricist Britta Johnson, the first winner of a 3-year residency with the charitable musical theatre group Musical Stage Company (MSC), whose mission is to help develop and produce new Canadian musicals. Johnson has been dubbed “Canadian musical theatre’s next great hope”. Being a huge supporter of MSC’s mission, we watched Johnson’s other two productions written during her residency with MSC—Life After and the immersive musical Dr. Silver: A Celebration of Life, about a cult where the audience literally got to “drink the Kool-Aid”.

Performed at Canstage’s Berkley Theatre, Kelly vs Kelly starts in the court room where the infamous trial takes place. As the court waits for Eugenie’s arrival, Helen explains her case. Approaching belated while flocked by reporters, Eugenia is flighty and defiant and dressed relatively flamboyantly with her flowing hair and lacy dress, in contrast to the tight bun and prim gown wore by Helen. Through flashback scenes, we see Eugenia's sheltered childhood spent playing cards with her mother in the garden and her desire to break free from the safe, comfortable but passionless life that her mother led and now wants her to lead. Further flashbacks show Helen as a young woman, entered into a disappointing loveless marriage of political convenience.  

Some of Johnson’s songs are hauntingly beautiful and lamenting, while songs sung during the tango scenes are sensual and seductive.  One hilarious number highlights the misogyny of the times as the male members of the court including the lawyers and the judge despair about the irreverent “New Woman”.  The book for this musical is by Johnson’s frequent collaborator Sara Farb, who we know more for her acting roles in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the musical Fun Home.  While the plot does a good job of showing Helen’s youth and why Eugenie wants to escape from repeating it, in general it felt a bit rushed and could have provided more depth into the back stories of the dancer Al or Helen’s husband Edward.  The costumes are sumptuous and accentuated by the lighting.  The choreography is superb and makes good use of the two tiers including the catwalk on the Berkley stage.  Overall this has the makings of a great new musical that could use a few more songs and a bit more plot.

After watching this play, I googled to find out more about the original history of the Kelly vs. Kelly case and came across New York Times archival articles from 1915 about it, with headlines such as “Eugenia Kelly is a Victim of a Plot” and “Eugenia Kelly Says She Will Marry Davis”.  How cool is that?

Theatre 2023: Life of Pi - National Theatre @ Cineplex

Lately, with each new play filmed by London’s National Theatre that we watch at Cineplex, I marvel at how good the production is and think that it will be difficult to top, only to be proven wrong by the next show.  After watching “Life of Pi”, the stage adaptation of Canadian author Yann Martel’s 2001 philosophical, religious allegorical novel, I can confidently say that this one will be tough to beat.

In the book, Piscine Molitor Patel, named after the French word for swimming pool and nicknamed Pi (as in 3.14159…), lived in Pondicherry, India with his brother Ravi and his parents who ran a zoo with an array of wild animals. The first part of the book details Pi’s happy childhood in India and at the zoo.  We learn of Pi’s quest for spirituality when he practices not one, but three religions, as a Catholic, a Muslim and a Hindu. When challenged with the need to pick one, Pi disagrees, indicating that each religion believes in a God.. they just tell a different version of the same story.  Pi’s reluctance to pick one religion ties directly into one of the main themes of the novel.

Due to political issues in India, Pi’s father closes the zoo, sells off the animals to various zoos in America and makes plans to emigrate his family to Canada aboard the Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum.  “The ship sank.”  With those three stark little words, we are thrown into the second part of book when the ship bringing his family to Canada is lost and Pi is the only human survivor sitting in a lifeboat.  He is joined by a zebra who broke its leg jumping overboard, a vicious hyena, a maternal orangutan named Orange Juice, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Over the course of some weeks, the hyena kills and eats the defenseless zebra and then beheads the weaker orangutan in gory fashion, before being killed by the tiger.  This leaves Pi alone, trying to survive not only the elements and scarcity of food or drinkable water, but also being trapped in a small space with a wild tiger for the remaining of his 227-day ordeal.  In the end, Pi is able to partially tame and learn to co-exist with Richard Parker, whose presence actually keeps Pi sane and gives him the will to survive before finally hitting land and being rescued.

The third and final part of the book deals with Pi in the hospital, telling his tale to insurance claim adjusters who are trying to determine how and why the ship sank.  When they challenge the story of Pi and the animals as fantastical and unbelievable, Pi offers an alternate and even more horrific tale.  In this version, the zebra is an injured sailor, the orangutan is Pi’s mother, and the vicious hyena who brutally kills and cannibalizes the others is the merciless, amoral cook of the Tsimtsum. That leaves Richard Parker to represent the savage will to survive in Pi himself.  The insurance adjustors are asked which of the two is the more palatable story and which one is more likely to be allowed by an all merciful God?

I read Yann Martel’s novel when it first came out to critical acclaim.  I found the story interesting and the themes of search for spirituality and surviving horrific adversity through storytelling by changing the narrative or perspective, to be admirable.   But I cannot say that I enjoyed the book that much.  I found it a bit too mystical, ethereal, and unrelatable for my taste.  I also thought the interspersed short chapters narrated by some unidentified, third person interviewing an adult Pi to glean his story, to be distracting from the main “flashback” storyline.

It was therefore with a bit of skepticism that I went to see the live production of Life of Pi.  But the notion of using puppetry to represent the animals intrigued me, especially after enjoyng the productions of War Horse and The Lion King.  As it turns out, while I was ambivalent about the book, I loved the staged version.  The staging of this show as amazing.  The manipulation of the puppets was so skillful that although you clearly see the puppeteers (sometimes multiple ones required to move one animal), you soon forget them and only see the extremely lifelike beasts.  At the 2022 Olivier Awards (Britain’s version of the Tonys), Life of Pi won 5 awards including best play and Hiran Abeysekera for best actor in his role of Pi.  But best of all, the seven puppeteers who manipulated the tiger Richard Parker won the award for best supporting actor.

Being able to see the animals in motion during the zoo scenes, aboard the Tsimtsum and on the lifeboat was thrilling and made what felt unrelatable in text absolutely magical.  In addition to the larger animal puppets, there were also birds soaring through the sky, a giant sea turtle, and fish that glow as they swarm around the boat in the water (created through the use of video). During the early scenes at the zoo, sets of gates are lifted in the air, shifted around in an almost dance-like movement and reconfigured to form different views of the cage enclosures.  In one such scene where Pi’s father is trying to teach his children how dangerous the wild animals are, a goat that the kids lovingly named Buckingham is fed to Richard Parker, who pounces upon and devours it.  Even though you know that these are puppets and that no actual animals are being harmed, the action feels so real that the powerful emotions invoked are palpable.

The stagecraft was also excellent in representing Pi’s time at sea.  Although it is may not have been noticed in the earlier scenes, the stage is shaped like the bow or front of a boat. Use of video projected on the background and floor of the stage helps to create different settings. When Pi is at sea, water appears to crash and swirl during stormy weather but shimmers during calmer times.  A physical lifeboat rises up from the stage during the scenes at sea, allowing Pi and the animals on board to jump acrobatically back and forth and even wage battles with each other.  But the cleverest piece of staging occurs at one point where Pi falls out of the boat while trying to escape Richard Parker.  The stage was created with a flexible floor with slits cut into it.  When Pi "falls into the water", he goes right through the floor, submerging “under water”, and then pops his head up again at another part of the stage, before climbing back on the boat.  This effect of this sequence was absolutely amazing.

In addition to the breathtaking visuals, I think the reason the stage play works better because it uses a more concise framing device. The play foregoes the anonymous current-day narrator who is interviewing an adult Pi.  Instead, the play starts with a newly rescued and still traumatized teenage Pi, who is compelled to tell his story (or stories) solely to the insurance adjusters, thus concentrating on the main action. With the masterful puppetry and amazing staging, this was one of the best plays that I’ve seen in a long time.

Theatre 2023: The Crucible - National Theatre @ Cineplex

We love watching filmed versions of London’s National Theatre plays because the quality of the productions always seems to impress.  This was certainly the case with Arthur Miller’s iconic 1950’s play “The Crucible” which at face value is about the Salem Witch Trials. But on a deeper level, it is also an allegory that comments on the McCarthy era where instead of witches, the hunt was for Communists.

The Witch Trials occurred between February 1692 through May 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts. This was a strict, cloistered, ultra-pious and superstitious Puritan community who feared the unknown and were suspicious of anyone who did not conform to, and therefore threatened their prescribed way of life. They used the doctrines of religion and blind faith to justify oppression towards anyone that they considered to be “the other”.  Belief in witches was substantiated by quoting from the Old Testament, such as “Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” or “Leviticus 19:26 “Ye shall not … use enchantment…”.  Mix this in with resentments between neighbours caused by rivalries and conflicts over property lines or other slights and this was a powder keg situation just waiting for a match.  Claiming “witchcraft” became a convenient answer for any inexplicable occurrence or a spiteful way to settle scores and put one over on your enemies.

The spark that led to the first accusation of witchcraft in Salem arose when multiple children around the village had unexplained fits that could not be attributed to any known medical science of the time. Girls including Abigail Williams (age 11) and Betty Parris (age 9) started to shake and contort into weird positions, uttering strange sounds, screaming, and throwing objects. They claimed they were being pinched and pricked by pins.  Without any logical explanation, it was concluded that they had been “possessed by the devil” and the search was on for witches (i.e. scapegoats) who were afflicting the poor children.

Pressured to name their attackers, the children accused three social outcasts--Tituba, an enslaved woman from Barbados who told tales about voodoo and spirits, Sarah Good (an ironic last name for someone accused of dallying with the devil), a lower classed woman of ill temperament who was disliked by her neighbours and Sarah Osbourne who had not been to church for 3 years (due to illness) and was in land disputes with the powerful Putnam family.

Once the accusations started to fly, a mass hysteria took over the community and people were being accused spuriously.  Some of the accused such as Tituba randomly threw out other names in order to save themselves, since confessing to witchcraft and identifying the person who bewitched you was seen as a road to salvation. Other accusers selected their targets in order to settle scores or usurp land. Those who maintained their innocence (with no way to prove it) were found guilty and sentenced to hang. During this period over 200 people were accused of witchcraft with 30 people found guilty and 19 were hanged.  Among those executed was farmer John Proctor, an outspoken man whose challenge of the veracity of witchcraft claims likely led to him and his wife Elizabeth being accused.  While both the Proctors were found guilty, Elizabeth was given a temporary stay because she was pregnant.  By the time she gave birth, the trials had ended, and she was spared.

The parallels between the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Hearings are significant and proof of the adage “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.  Shortly after the second World War, with Russia amassing power and developing nuclear weapons, the mass hysteria and fear gripping America was about Communism and the “Red Scare”.  Whether taking advantage of this sentiment for his own political gain, or truly believing that he was protecting his nation, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy began his own version of the witch hunts in his search for subversive or treasonous people who had Communist leanings. 

In 1950, McCarthy claimed to hold a list of 205 names of employees in the State Department who were known Communists. By 1953, he was presiding over Senate committees that allowed him and his chief counsel Roy Cohn to hold closed-door hearings where alleged Communists or Communist sympathizers were questioned without the right to have an attorney present or to cross-examine their accusers.  McCarthy even tried to discredit his critics and political opponents by accusing them of having Communist allegiances.  Those found guilty of Communism were jailed, fired from their jobs, or had their employment prospects severely limited.

Even before McCarthy’s political run, the House of UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) employed “blacklists” which prevented members of the entertainment industry from being hired for work in Hollywood, often ruining their careers. To save themselves from being blacklisted, the accused were encouraged to name other Communists who they conspired with or who tried to enlist them.  Arthur Miller landed on the blacklist in late 1940s for refusing to cooperate and name others in Hollywood who engaged in Communist activities.

In addition to Communists, McCarthy’s group targeted homosexuals, reflecting “the fear of the other” or prejudice against those not conforming to social norms.  Although the actual crimes and punishments were different, the motivations behind and persecution tactics used by 1950s McCarthy Hearings are alarmingly similar to the 17th Century Salem Witch Trials—so much so that the Crucible was immediately recognized as a direct attack on McCarthyism and had a relatively short initial run on Broadway as a result. The term “McCarthyism” is now known as “the practice of making reckless and unsubstantiated accusations”.  But given the recent hysteria about the U.S. 2020 “Election Steal”, has anything really been learnt?

In his play The Crucible (meaning “severe test”), Arthur Miller referenced historical facts and actual people from the Salem Witch Trials but changed some salient facts for dramatic purposes.  He did ensure that each of his characters met the same fate as their real-life counterparts. Miller chose John and Elizabeth Proctor to be his protagonists, using the tragedy of their fate to personify the ordeals suffered by all who were persecuted. The age of Abigail Williams was increased from eleven to seventeen, as she was depicted as a servant of the Proctors, who had an affair with John and was fired after his wife became suspicious of the dalliance.  Out of spite and vengeance, Abigail accused Elizabeth of witchcraft in hopes of eliminating her rival and securing John for herself.  The play highlights the absurdity and capriciousness of the accusations, the helplessness of the accused who are considered guilty once the accusations were made, with no way to prove innocence, and the “holier than thou” attitudes of the judges who spout scripture to justify their verdicts.

The National Theatre’s version of the play stars Erin Doherty (Princess Anne in the TV series The Crown) in the critical role of Abigail and she gave an impressive performance.  Her duplicity was conveyed not only by her words and actions, but by the slouchy way that she carried her body, her shifty eyes and conniving expressions. It was clear right from the start that this woman-child would say or do anything to save herself and to cast dispersions on others.  Australian actor Brendan Cowell portrays John Proctor as a flawed (adulterous) but ultimately honorable character, while Irish actress Eileen Walsh exudes a quiet strength and dignity as the falsely accused Elizabeth, aka “Goody Proctor”.  The women in Miller’s play are often called by the title “Goody” which is a shortform for the   archaic term “Goodwife” and used for the lower class (as opposed to “Mistress” for the upper class).  Once again, I found the prefix “Goody” to be ironic when applied to women accused of being witches.

The set design for the play is dark and oppressive with a deluge of rain falling at the start and end of each act that adds to the tense atmosphere.  It felt like the stage was crying because of the tragedy that was happening upon it.  When the group of children, who form the core accusers of witches, are not centre stage simulating their fits, they stand or sit in the background like watching, vengeful spirits while eerie choral sounds can be heard.  I thought this play was enthralling and the double layer of meaning behind the historic tale and its modern-day counterpart to be fascinating.

The next filmed play from National Theatre Live will be based on Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, with large-scaled puppets representing the various beasts.

Theatre 2023: Mirvish - Pressure

Pressure is a Scottish play which deals with an unlikely Scottish World War II war hero who never fired a shot, but whose actions saved the lives of over 300,000 men and affected the outcome of the war. The play was first performed in 2014 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh before moving to London’s West-End in 2018 and now to Toronto in 2023, delayed by several years due to the COVID shutdowns.

James Martin Stagg (1900-1971) was a senior meteorologist with the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force who was tasked with leading a team of 6 who had to predict what the weather would be like over a period of 3 days between June 5 to June 7, 1944. The Battle of Normandy, a massive military campaign codenamed “Operation Overload”, was planned to take place some time during this narrow window, based on predictions of favourable tides and the phase of the moon.  The assault would begin with air bombardment by 1200 planes to take out German airfields and fuel supplies, followed by the approach of 5000 warships carrying soldiers for ground battle. 

 The allied forces led by American general Dwight D. Eisenhower had tentatively scheduled “D-Day”, or the first day of a major military operation, to be on June 5.  It was up to Stagg to confirm if the weather would cooperate.  A successful mission depended on clear skies and a full moon so that the air operations would have good visibility to see their targets, low winds and calm seas so that the fleet could safely approach the shore, and low tides so that the descending ground troops could see German  mines and other obstacles. 

Stagg, who was native to the area and familiar with the capricious nature of the English Channel, predicted a huge storm would descend on the scheduled D-Day, despite the weather being sunny and pleasant several days before. His American counterpart, commercial meteorologist Irving Krick, strongly disagreed and predicted good weather.  While Stagg used both experience and technical measurements of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloud cover and wind patterns for his forecast, Krick used a misguided and since debunked method of predicting future weather based on similar historical patterns and cycles.

Stagg was correct in his predictions and luckily convinced Eisenhower to postpone the original D-Day, thus avoiding catastrophe since a major storm did blow in. His heroics went even further when he then spotted a brief window of improving weather for the next day, which allowed D-Day to go forward on the early morning of June 6, 1944.  Although the conditions were not ideal, they were good enough for a successful operation and the rest is history, as the saying goes.  Stagg was awarded the Legion of Merit and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his invaluable war efforts.

Haig's play Pressure focuses on the big decision of whether to proceed with the scheduled D-Day with a secondary plot exploring the rumoured war-time affair between Eisenhower and his secretary/personal chauffeur Kay Summersby.  In the first act which sets up the scenario, we are a bit overwhelmed by weather-forecasting lingo and statistics as Stagg analyzes information from maps and data that are gathered remotely from off-shore observers and weather balloons. There were no satellites to aid him back in 1944.  To help with our understanding, the large weather maps that are delivered intermittently throughout the play are covered with large swirly weather patterns with storms identified in large red letters named L1, L2 .. L8, and a big red H representing a high-pressure system which theoretically would bring good weather.  As each new map is rolled out, we could see the markers for the storms shift and grow as Stagg explains the meaning of the movements. 

The role of James Stagg is played by Kevin Doyle (known for playing the butler turned schoolteacher Joseph Molesley from the TV show Downton Abbey).  The name of the play cleverly alludes to both the atmospheric pressure that Stagg measured, as well as the extreme pressure that he was under to come to the right conclusion about the weather on June 5.  Adding further to the drama was his concern over his wife’s difficult pregnancy and impending child-birth.  This may or may not have been added for dramatic purposes, but Stagg’s second child was indeed born in 1944.  As the antagonist in the play, Irving Krick is portrayed (perhaps excessively or stereotypically) as a loudmouthed, overbearing American who spouts his misconceptions as facts, living up to his reputation as being more of a showman than a scientist.

Although all the action took place in the single room where Stagg performed his analysis, a clever piece of staging helped to accentuate the problem that he faced.  To the right of the stage were a set of double doors that opened up to reveal the "weather outside”.  Through use of lighting to simulate bright sunshine, it was clear that the weather was fine for days leading up to D-Day.  This made Stagg’s prediction of the impending storm even more difficult to accept. The harbinger of the big storm that finally arrived was conveyed by a gust of wind that caused the curtains around the doors to flap and some papers to fly around.  Then the skies darkened as pelting rain, thunder and lightning could be seen and heard, all through these doors.

Rounding out the play are multiple tender interactions between Eisenhower and Summersby that left no doubt as to their emotional (and perhaps physical?) connection.  It was also made clear that with the success of Operation Overload and the impending end of the war, this relationship, borne out of extreme and heightened circumstances, would also be coming to an end. Sadly for Summersby, she would be left behind as collateral damage.

Considering how often weather predictions are wrong today, even with all our modern technology, the feat achieved by James Stagg and his team was remarkable, especially given the dire importance of getting it right.  This was a gripping piece of history, but having said that, it still was quite the accomplishment for this play to make weather sound exciting.

Theatre 2023: Fifteen Dogs @ Crow's Theatre

On stage at Crow’s Theatre, the play Fifteen Dogs is based a novel by Canadian author André Alexis, which my husband Rich and I both read and enjoyed a few years back. The premise revolves around a wager between the Greek Gods Apollo and Hermes as to whether animals would be unhappy if they were given human intelligence.  Passing a veterinary clinic where 15 dogs were being kept, the Gods decided to pick these animals as the test subjects to settle their bet.  Apollo wagered that burdened with human qualities, all the dogs would die unhappy.  Hermes bet that at least one of the 15 dogs would benefit from the additional awareness and would feel happiness at the point of death.

Imbued with human consciousness and intelligence, the dogs quickly figured out how to unlock the doors of their cages. Twelve of the dogs fled their captivity while three decided to remain and were unfortunately put down once the escape was discovered.  The rest of the book follows the twelve dogs for the durations of their lives as they grappled with their unnatural new traits and skills, occasionally with further intervention from the two Gods, as well as from their peeved father Zeus, King of the Greek Gods.

Of different breeds, temperaments, sizes and ages, the dogs reacted differently to the new thoughts and feelings that befell them. Atticus, a grey Neapolitan Mastiff abhorred the changes and was determined to suppress them and only display “normal and natural” canine traits.  As one of the largest and most powerful dogs in the group, he assumed the role of leader and demanded that all who wanted to remain in his pack would follow suit in acting like “real” dogs. Joining him were Rosie, a female German Shepherd, Frick and Frack, two Labrador Retrievers, Benjy, a cunning self-serving Beagle and a few others.

Any dog who did not readily obey Atticus or fit into his plans would be killed by his gang.  While they were successful in eliminating several dogs including the Great Dane Bella and little Teacup Poodle Athena, two dogs managed to survive.  Of all the dogs, the mutt named Prince embraced his new powers of thought the most.  He became a poet, speaking in flowery, abstract terms that drove Atticus to distraction.  But before he could be killed, Prince was given a warning by Hermes and escaped into exile. The large black Poodle Majnoun was a threat to Atticus’ leadership status and therefore was attacked en masse by the group.  He was left for dead but managed to survive when he was rescued by Nira and Miguel, two humans who adopted him.  Much of the book follows the exploits of Majnoun (renamed Jim by his new owners) and Prince.

André Alexis set this fable in Toronto, his hometown, focusing on High Park where the dogs made their new home after their escape, and the Beach where Prince spent much of his time after his exile.  The printed version of the novel even contains maps of these two areas.  On Bloor Street, Bella was hit by a car after being tricked into racing across it by Frick and Frack.  Alexis also name-checks many other well-known streets including Kingston Road, Glen Stewart Park, Trinity-Bellwoods, Parkdale, and even St. Clair and Avenue Road which is close to where we live!  These specific Toronto-based settings made this fantasy a bit more grounded as we could imagine all the places where these dogs roamed.

While reading this book, I was reminded of the classic novel Lord of the Flies where an isolated group of boys struggled for dominance, formed cliques and empowered by groupthink, lost their sense of morality and performed unspeakable acts as a collective that might never have occurred if each acted individually.  I found it interesting that in Lord of the Flies, the boys turned into “depraved animals” while in Fifteen Dogs, the innocent, inherently loyal creatures turned into “depraved humanoids”. 

Given its subject matter, Fifteen Dogs is not an easy novel to perform in live theatre, but Crow’s Theatre is known for its creative staging and Marie Farsi who adapted and directed this play did a fantastic job. The Guloien Theatre, Crow’s main stage, can be configured in all sorts of arrangements.  This time, the audience sat in “the round” with 5 rows of tiered stadium seating surrounding the “stage”.  Six stellar actors each played the roles of multiple dogs, as well as the Greek Gods, humans who interacted with the dogs, and narrators who would convey the parts of the book that involved lyrical exposition.

We wondered with some trepidation about whether we would see actors prance around in “full-body dog suits” like the creepy movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats.  Wisely, for this production the costumes were much more subtle, merely hinting at the breed by the colour of clothing and the occasional scarf or hat.  The wrinkly ridges of skin on the Mastiff, Atticus, were represented by layers of grey scarf wrapped around the neck of the actor portraying him.  Rosie, the German shepherd had a piece of sleek fur draped over her shoulder. The tall slender actor playing Majnoun was dressed all in black, while the loopy, free-spirited poet Prince had wild, curly hair and was dressed in dark brown tones, with a fur-lined vest and boa-like scarf.  The sly Beagle Benjy had on a beige-toned checkered jacket and fedora hat, resulting in a look that channeled Nicely-Nicely Johnson from the musical Guys and Dolls.

While the clothing helped, the essence of each dog was conveyed more by the sounds, body movements and facial expressions produced by the actors’ performances.  In a stroke of stage-craft genius, fifteen plastic models were used to visually represent each of the dogs in the story.  They were first brought out in a tray during the scene in the veterinary clinic and then moved to one of the rocks on stage.  Being able to see the breed of each dog really helped to augment the performances of the actors.  Then one by one as the dogs died, their corresponding figure was carried off stage as the circumstances of their death was explained.  It felt like we were watching Agatha Christie’s classic mystery Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None).

This was a terrific and creative interpretation of a difficult novel to adapt into a play.  We thoroughly enjoyed watching Fifteen Dogs at Crow’s Theatre.

Theatre 2023: Jack Absolute Flies Again

 With all the streaming options on TV, my husband Rich and I don’t often go to a cinema to watch mainstream movies, although in December 2021 we did head out to watch the Jets and the Sharks battle on a large screen in Steven Spielberg’s remake of the iconic musical West Side Story.

However, we do love going to watch London’s National Theatre plays, which are filmed live performances that are then shown at movie theatres across North America.  This gives us the chance to watch West-End plays and musicals that might never make it to Toronto, with the original (often all-star) cast.  Watching a filmed version of a play always gives you the best seat in the house, with both closeups and long shots when appropriate, as well as behind-the-scenes interview segments shown before the play starts or at intermission.  Past filmed plays often show up as rentals on National Theatre At Home in case you miss the limited screenings (usually two per play).

Last year we saw Jodie Comer’s tour-de-force performance in Prima Facie (Latin for “burden of proof”) where she held us breathlessly enthralled for almost 2 hours with no intermission. The one-woman play deals with a brash, intelligent, and successful defense attorney whose views on the fairness of the legal system related to sexual assault radically changes when she herself is date-raped and seeks justice. Less to our liking was Straight Line Crazy, the biographical play about Robert Moses (1888-1981), New York’s head urban planner and Parks Commissioner between 1934-1960.  Moses’ bullying personality and undeterrable drive led to the construction of highways and bridges across New York City. This happened often at the expense and displacement of poor, under-privileged and predominantly black residents who resided in the path of the construction. Ralph Fiennes did a fine job portraying Moses, but perhaps because the character came across as so obnoxious and unsympathetic, we just did not enjoy this play as much.

The first National Theatre play that we watched in 2023 was a delightful comedy called Jack Absolute Flies Again, co-written by Richard Bean, the playwright behind the comedy One Man Two Guvnors, and actor Oliver Chris who we have seen in several other National Theatre plays. Jack Absolute Flies Again is a modernized reimagining of a famous 1775 “Comedy of Manners” play called “The Rivals” by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Comedy of Manners plays were popular during the Restoration period (1660-1710) and were witty comedies that mocked behaviour, speech patterns and manners of various social groups, especially the upper class.  They usually featured bawdy, sexually explicit (for the times) dialogue, rakish behaviour, gossip, intrigue, scandals, rivalry, as well as romance, love and marriage.  Stock characters included pretentious fops or dandies, clever but duplicitous maids who mishandle letters and messages, schemers, jealous lovers, and rivals for the affection of the female lead.

Although a bit past its heyday, Richard Sheridan wrote The Rivals in the Comedy of Manners style with all its expected tropes.  The heroine is Lydia Languish, a young heiress who feels it would be romantic to give up her fortune and marry a poor man for the sake of love alone.  To pursue her, wealthy army Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the penniless foot soldier Ensign Beverley.  At the same time, Jack’s uncle Sir Anthony Absolute and Lydia’s aunt Mrs. Malaprop try to force a financially beneficial arranged union between Jack and Lydia, which Lydia adamantly resists. Two other rivals (unsophisticated landowner Bob Acres and Irish baronet Lucius O’Trigger) vie for Lydia’s affections. A secondary romantic pairing involves Lydia’s cousin and Sir Anthony’s ward Julia Melville, who is engaged to Jack’s best friend, the insecure and unreasonably jealous Roy Faulkland. A final romantic complication is introduced when Mrs. Malaprop writes anonymous loves letters to O’Trigger, the object of her infatuation, but Lucius believes the letters are from Lydia. Mistaken identifies and hijinks ensue with the mischievous maid Lucy adding to the confusion.

Sheridan infuses humour in the character of Mrs. Malaprop by having her misuse words in a failed attempt to sound intelligent.  When trying to get Lydia to forget about Beverley, Malaprop says “you must illiterate him from your memory” (instead of saying “eliminate” or “obliterate”?). Mrs. Malaprop’s mangling of words became so popular that the terms “malaprop” and “malapropism” are now valid words in the dictionary.  If you search for the etymology of these terms, you will see a reference to The Rivals.

In addition to Malaprop, Sheridan’s choice of surnames for his characters invokes interesting connotations.  The name “Absolute” makes Jack seem like a strong, solid heroic protagonist while the name "Languish" portrays Lydia as the impressionable ingenue who pines for the type of romance found in books.  Acres is an appropriate name for the landowner while “O’Trigger” alludes to the impulsive, hot-headedness of the baronet who is quick to challenge perceived opponents to duels.

Moving the basic premise of The Rivals to more contemporary times, Jack Absolute Flies Again is set amidst the Battle of Britain in August 1940, and was written to commemorate  the 80th anniversary of that event.  The action takes place on the property of Mrs. Malaprop’s estate, which has been converted into an RAF air base. Jack Absolute is a brash, cocky fighter pilot and squadron leader in the RAF.  Heiress Lydia Languish is an aircraft delivery pilot, who is a feisty feminist and more than Jack’s intellectual equal. Jack’s attempts to woo Lydia are thwarted by her socialist ideals which dictate that she should love a “common man” rather than a “gentleman”.  

Lydia throws her attentions towards the grease-covered head mechanic Dudley Scunthorpe, who in turn is in love with Mrs. Malaprop’s maid Lucy.  In keeping with the main story line of The Rivals, Jack decides to impersonate Dudley to continue his pursuit of Lydia. But instead of merely creating a persona of lower status and income, Jack pretends to be another character within the play, leading to hilarious scenes of mistaken identity in the mode of a bedroom farce, but without the bedrooms.  The character of Bob Acres remains but is now a comical Australian pilot in the same squadron, while the O’Trigger character is now Sikh pilot Bikram Khattri (nicknamed Tony as "no one can pronounce his name").  While Acres vies for Lydia’s affections through ludicrous actions and gestures, Tony struggles to write love letters, both to hilarious effect.

The sub-plot of Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony trying to set up the young couple remains in this new version, as well as the malapropisms which are delivered in rapid succession. Just within one scene, Mrs. Malaprop talks about employing a little centrifuge (i.e. subterfuge), training the mammary to forget (memory), falling in love with the gardener’s appendage (apprentice) and making an involuntary emission (admission).  Some of the mistakes are subtly suggestive and some are outright lewd.  With the O'Trigger character no longer in this version, the romantic pairing becomes one between Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony, leading to many more humorous interactions.  The relationship between Julia and Roy remains the same as in The Rivals.

In both versions of this comedy, Lydia’s various rivals gather for what is equivalent to “a duel”.  In the Rivals, the duels are to be fought with swords with Bob Acres being goaded into challenging who he thinks is Ensign Beverley and O’Trigger wanting to fight Jack Absolute. Playwright Richard Sheridan had firsthand knowledge about duels, since he fought two of them himself over the honour of his fiancée, suffering serious injuries in the second duel.  The newer version of the play cleverly turns this scene into a laugh-out-loud boxing match where the real Dudley turns out to be a champion boxer who doesn’t really understand why he needs to fight but is up for the challenge against the three hapless rivals. Jack Absolute Flies Again also throws in a dance interlude, as Jack and Lydia reminisce about when they first met and won a dance contest together.

Jack Absolute Flies Again makes some interesting use of the “Breaking of the 4th Wall” trope.  In the very first scene of the play, the actress portraying Mrs. Malaprop addresses the audience directly.  She intimates that she only got the part because Imelda Staunton was not available and Helen Mirren thought she was too young for the role, but that Kristen Scott Thomas would be her understudy on Wednesdays.  The maid Lucy also speaks to the audience with asides that indicate her actions are to be expected in a Comedy of Manners play.  And at one point when Jack is in total distress over an argument with Lydia, Lucy quips “Relax, it’s a comedy .. you’re going to get the girl!” These little interactions draw in the audience and makes us feel like we are part of the fun.

Despite being a comedy and a very funny one at that, Jack Absolute Flies Again never lets you forget that the action is taking place in midst of a war. Whether it is the sound of airplanes buzzing overhead, the military uniforms worn by characters for many scenes, or discussions about the war and air battles in the dialogue, the serious subject is always lurking underneath the laughter and frivolity.  To close off Act 1, the members of the RAF squadron race to their planes (off stage) and then an aerial battle is shown via video with sound and images of the pilots in their cockpits as they fight off a German air attack. By Act 2, the mood has lightened again as all the misunderstandings and mistaken identities are eventually resolved and the various sets of lovers are properly paired up again, as would be expected from a traditional romantic comedy.

Surprisingly though, this was not the end of the play.  A second German attack sends the boys back to the skies and this time, tragedy occurs. The play ends on a sad note, reminding the audience that war is not a matter of fun and games.  I felt a bit cheated by this ending, as I had come to watch a comedy and was not prepared for the abrupt change in tone, which felt tacked on and a case of “bait and switch”.

Despite my ambivalence towards the ending, in general I was happy that we were able to watch the filming of this play.  I would love to rent it to watch again if it shows up on National Theatre At Home, in order to catch more of the malapropisms that flew by so quickly.  Next up for National Theatre at Cineplex will be The Crucible, showing in March.

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.