Calpurnia (Toronto)

I wish I could tell you all to go see Nightwood Theatre and Sulong Theatre's Calpurnia... but the rest of its run sold out after the first week. So instead, I'm going to tell you how this 90-minute family comedy, set around another dinner party, challenged my beliefs about allyship, racism, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Julie (Meghan Swaby) has hit a wall in writing her screenplay, the untold story of the Finch family's maid Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird. As she goes to great lengths to unlock this character's voice, she unsettles and unravels the racial politics within her own house--most importantly, the relationship between her upper class Jamaican-Canadian family and their Filipino housekeeper, Precy (Carolyn Fe).

I have missed going to Buddies in Bad Times! Toronto's LGBTQIA+ theatre felt so much more open than other theatre houses in Toronto. Walking in, I didn't recognize the same faces in the audience. Which meant it wasn't just members of the theatre community attending, but members of so many other communities, too. I also wasn't the only one with crazy-colored hair. Best of all: this rainbow of an audience made up the background for every scene in Calpurnia. Due to the profile staging, I got to watch the other half of the audience react to each uncomfortable moment.

A New Brain (Brooklyn)

While watching the Gallery Players' highly entertaining production of William Finn's odd but engaging musical, A New Brain, I found my own old brain full of questions. First, about A New Brain itself:

Jesse Manocherian, Justin Phillips
Photo: Alice Teeple

• What makes a musical worth writing?
• How does a writer decide what specifically to musicalize?
• Is Finn's leaning toward silly rhymes a form of brilliance, audacity, or laziness?
• How do you know when to end a musical?
• What does a song need to offer in order to be worth keeping in a show?
• What is Finn really about as a writer? 

X or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation

Who assassinated Malcolm X? The answer remains a matter of debate in some quarters and may never be totally resolved until the New York Police Department releases the files on the case, which they have thus far refused to do. In X or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation, Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's widow, is certain about the assassins, and she argues her case in a court in the afterlife, somewhere between earth and heaven.

Jimonn Cole, Roslyn Ruff
Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Playwright Marcus Gardley is a powerful and poetic writer, and X is well worth a visit. However, the play is also overwritten, with much repetition and a framing device and songs that are wonderful in themselves but also slow down the play. X is full of strengths but ultimately uneven; I suspect that, with judicious cutting, it would be brilliant.

Director Ian Belknap maximizes X's strengths through dynamic, imaginative, and beautifully paced direction. The cast is excellent, led by Jimonn Cole--who has a remarkable resemblance to Malcolm X and presents a man full of love and anger, hope and despair, and great intelligence--and Roslyn Ruff, who brings vivid life to Betty Shabazz. The other cast members are Harriet D. Foy, Kevis Hillocks, Cedric Mays, J.D. Mollison, Austin Purnell, Joshua David Robinson, William Sturdivant, and Tatiana Wechsler.

Jimonn Cole
Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Lee Savage's scenery is imposing and attractive; Mary Louise Geiger's lighting adds a great deal to the emotion and clarity of the play.

Photo: T. Charles Erickson

I would wish two things: (1) that the program include a brief history of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, and (2) that Marcus Gardley also write a play focusing on Betty Shabazz herself.

Wendy Caster
(press ticket, 4th row)

Art Times: Let's Make Sure Their Time Is Up

My latest piece is up at Art Times. It's about how we can help women in the arts get more power.

Almost as far back as I can remember, people have been labeling various time periods as “The Year of the Woman.” Each of these years succeeded in getting conversations started and speeches given, but progress remained slow.

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Hamlet (Toronto)

For an English major who only took one course on Shakespeare, I have very strong ideas about Hamlet. Usually these keep me from enjoying any production because the director's choices will inevitably fail to line up with my expectations.

I thought the same would happen when I attended Tarragon Theatre's 2018 production. Instead, I found myself captivated by a minimalist production of Hamlet set to live music.

Richard Rose and Thomas Ryder Payne's Hamlet begins as soon as the lights go down. There is no context, no preamble or pre-show speech, but suddenly the lights change. The light blasts at the audience through an opaque fog, two characters appear, and it begins.

Throughout the play, sound and lighting creates another character--the atmosphere of Denmark. With the set of a rock concert, only a few feet were left at the front of the stage for the playing space. But as the actors move between making the music behind the play and stepping into the playing space, it never feels like a limit. Or at least, it feels like one that makes sense in the "prison" of Denmark.

Hamlet ensemble. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

The rock and roll setting leans into Hamlet's teenage angst. Hamlet (Noah Reid) wears a hole-y hoodie the entire time and the cast passes microphones back and forth, a la Spring Awakening. Leaning into this, instead of away from it, focuses the production on the big dramatic gestures and the lyric images woven into all of Hamlet's language instead of the psychological motivations of each character.

Hindle Wakes

Sex. It's a tricky thing, is sex.

Throughout history, including now, cultures have sought to tame sex's complexity via rigid rules, assumptions, and limitations (particularly for women), with little success. In fact, the rules invariably make sex more complex by adding layers of morality, expectations, and even property ownership. Perhaps most importantly, rules deny sex's mundane side: sometimes people just want to get laid.

Jeremy Beck, Rebecca Noelle Brinkley
Photo: Todd Cerveris

In the excellent Hindle Wakes, it's the early 20th century, and Fanny Hawthorn (a weaver at the Jeffcote mill) has just had a weekend tryst with Alan Jeffcote (son of the mill's owner and engaged to be married to someone else). Due to an unexpected circumstance, their parents find out, and all hell breaks loose.