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HADRIAN
by RUFUS WAINWRIGHT (composer) and DANIEL MACIVOR (librettist) at the
CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY with PETER HINTON director and JOHANNES DEBUS
conductor (Oct 13-27, 2018)
Whether you're a Rufus fan or you
simply love good music, then go to see Hadrian. The music is gorgeous
and the story compelling. But Wainwright the composer is no
Puccini/Lloyd-Webber wannabe. Nor is he the Rufus Wainwright we know
from his pop persona.
Wainwright is not breaking any musical
barriers here, except possibly his own. You won't hear him pushing the
limits of twelve-tone music or trying to out-cage John Cage. You will
catch traces of Benjamin Britten and the orchestral colours of Bela
Bartok, with a moment or two of Richard Strauss, but the music is
distinctive rather than derivative.
The story is a cross between
Bellini's Norma, the Druidic priestess who sacrifices herself for war,
and Orfeo's search for his lover Eurydice in the Underworld. Hadrian, a
Roman general, is in mourning for his young lover, Antinous, while
neglecting his country's political affairs. Two spectres, Plotina, who
helped him gain the throne in real life, and Trajan, the former emperor
whose throne he inherited, make a bargain: sign a decree declaring war
against the Jews and Nazarenes in exchange for being allowed to relive
two nights with Antinous.
Act one nicely sets up the crisis in
the senate and the resulting bargain between Hadrian and the shades.
There is virtually no humour in the opera, so Karita Mattila's coquetry
as Plotina is a welcome relief when she arrives. Act two sets a glacial
pace as Hadrian's wife, Sabina, declares her neglect by her husband.
Meanwhile, we await Antinous's arrival, which takes a tad longer than it
should. This is offset by the inventive set, however, whose changing
visuals are powerful. (More of this would not be unwelcome without
risking turning it into a video game.)
Act three begins with a
stunning sex scene between Hadrian and Antinous, as beautiful and
tasteful as anything seen on stage, while the instrumental music soars
and swells. In fact, the entire act is perfection, as we see the love
between the two men re-enacted and the trickery that results in
Antinous's death.
The cast is well chosen, with notable
performances by all the leads (Thomas Hampson as Hadrian, Isaiah Bell as
Antinous, and whose mellifluous tones are memorable, and David Leigh as
Turbo, the Judas figure who plots Antinous's death.) Particularly
outstanding are the two women, Karita Mattila as Plotina and Ambur Braid
as Sabina. It's also great to see tenor Ben Heppner back on stage
again.
The fourth act gave me a bit of pause, especially after
the perfect poise of the preceding act. The pace again was glacial and
the music at its most romantic, almost too much so given the tone of the
earlier parts. At times it felt as though we were approaching the
dénouement of Tristan and Isolde, and the opera's length was clearly
verging on Wagnerian proportions. I also took exception to the
heavy-handed comment on Middle-Eastern politics at one point and the
sticky, quasi-religiosity in the comparison of Antinous with Christ. A
sacrifice does not always a saviour make.
That said, Hadrian is a
highly welcome addition to the operatic repertoire and a considerable
success for Wainwright, who never seems to stop exploring new worlds of
sound. A hearty Bravo! to that.
Jeffrey Round is an award-winning author, filmmaker and song writer. His latest book is The God Game (Dundurn Press.)
THE CHILDREN at CANADIAN
STAGE starring GEORDIE JOHNSON, LAURIE PATON and FIONA REID directed by EDA
HOLMES, set and costumes by EO SHARP
There is a very contemporary tale of caution and fear on at
Canadian Stage until October 21/18. (To be reprised at the Centaur Theatre in
Montreal from Nov 6-25/18.)
Lucy Kirkwood's The
Children unfolds quietly, revealing hints of a recent nuclear catastrophe
that is barely spoken of and then only in reticent terms, like news that is so
devastating adults talk of it quietly amongst themselves not to upset the
children.
Hazel, a retired scientist, is entertaining Rose, a
colleague she hasn't seen in thirty-eight years, and who just happened to drop
by. Or perhaps not. They catch up on old news until it becomes clear Rose is on
her way to the accident site to help with cleanup operations.
In the midst of their conversation, Hazel's husband, Robin,
returns from feeding the cows, which as it turns out are outside the safe zone.
For here, everything occurs either inside or outside the safe zone, though what
is really and truly safe is not entirely clear, or possibly is only a matter of
the characters' willingness to suspend their belief in the immediacy of the
danger.
The writing is taut and confident, the drama's reveals are subtle
and quietly alarming, allowing us to absorb its true depth in bits and pieces, as
though we aren't capable of confronting it all at once. The set itself
contributes to the unease, a dowdy country cottage set at off-angles to the
audience and surrounded by an eerie green moat in an atmosphere of poison gas.
It's a delight to see three of Canada's most accomplished
actors enjoying their roles. Johnson, Paton and Reid take the stage like a
three-way tennis match, the ball bouncing from one to another at a mesmerizing
pace. Lines come at breakneck speed throughout, but these actors can handle it
and it gives the piece a propulsion that shows just how tightly written the
work is overall.
Occasionally, one may want a bit of space between the lines
in order to feel the weight of things revealed or hurled by one character at
another. But here it's, "No emotion, please, we're British." However,
as Canadians we'd like a little more breathing room, please and thanks, to
digest, feel and situate ourselves inside the drama rather than remain
outsiders looking in.
As pieces of the puzzle fall in place, we see both the
contempt and love the characters have for one another, followed by the
realization that there is far more here than meets the eye. For of course Rose
has not just dropped by and, for a very real reason, has had both Hazel and
Robin in her mind for some time. For that reason, she has come to pose a
profound question. Not "What would you do for your country?", as was
hammered into the heads of every British citizen over the course of two world
wars, but something more immediate: "What would you give for an as yet
unrealized future and the children who will grow up to inherit it?"
Both Rose and Robin find it relatively easy to make up their
minds, while Hazel resists to the end. But beyond the fear and the caution,
this is a play about personal responsibility and commitment. For ultimately, we
all sit in Hazel's seat trying to decide.
CORIOLANUS at Stratford
There are three stars
in Stratford’s current production of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Two of them are actors Lucy Peacock, as Coriolanus’s manipulative
mother Volumnia, and Tom McCamus as his staunch friend Menenius, each of whom is
delightfully at home in the prose. They make it both easy to understand and pleasurable
to listen to, far too great a rarity in much Shakespearean acting, whose peculiar
words and clunky phrasings can grate on our pop-culture-honed 21st-century
ears if not handled well.
The third star, of
course, is director Robert LePage’s set, with its mesmerising trompe-l’oeil staging.
The chimerical, visually rich effects include a real car, a Roman bathhouse, a
chic bar, a rainstorm, and texting soldiers, among other things, all of which
are dazzling. Still, one wonders, as with the live elephant in Aida, just how much of it is really necessary
and how much is there to make you forget that the play doesn’t quite live up to
expectations.
Strange to think that The Tragedy of Coriolanus is one of
Shakespeare’s later works, coming between such luminous plays as King Lear and The Tempest. It tells of the rise and fall of a Roman general,
Coriolanus, whose pride is his downfall as he attempts to enter the world of
politics. LePage is clearly making a statement about how media affects the
current state of world politics. Yet, while there is plenty of hubris, most
politicians today are far too canny about their PR to fall into Coriolanus’s
trap of being a good person who’s just too dumb to figure out how to work
things to his advantage.
I have long said that
LePage was the 20th-century Shakespeare—and now the 21st-century
Shakespeare—as much for his stunning reinvention of that writer’s works as for
his staging of everything he does, including his own work. What he was creating
a quarter century ago, others are just catching up with now. The (Ho-Hum) Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, winner of all those
prestigious awards, owes more to LePage than any other stage director, living
or dead. His constant urge to reinvent is often in line with the needs of the
work, but occasionally shows them up, as in this case. What is needed here is
not more inventive staging, but a stronger play and a more charismatic lead to
make us like Coriolanus, despite his flaws.
While competent,
Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus seldom
rises above the merely perfunctory. It’s as though he had a mandate to fill—perhaps
a gambling bill to be paid off post-haste—and so needed to pump out yet another
work between masterpieces. We may never know, but it shows in the effort. Nevertheless,
we have LePage and Peacock and McCamus, all of whom make this particular
staging of it at Stratford more than worth the visit.
Jeffrey Round is the award-winning author of
thirteen books, including the Dan Sharp mystery series. His most-recent book is
the politically-themed thriller The God Game (Dundurn).
https://www.dundurn.com/news/Whose-side-are-you--%E2%80%94-Politics-Division
PI Dan Sharp and author Jeffrey Round are thrilled to announce the publication of The God Game (Dundurn Books), fifth in the Dan Sharp mystery series.
Please Note: I am unable to update my site at this time. In the meantime ...
Hey, folks! Thought I would share some preview notices for THE GOD GAME (the fifth Dan Sharp mystery from Dundurn), coming in February 2018.
"I never thought Queen's Park could provide such a wonderfully dangerous playground for murder and mayhem, but Jeffrey Round has done it again and kept me up until the wee hours wondering if Dan Sharp will find his killer and survive his own personal mayhem."
SHEILA MCCARTHY, actor, writer, director
"Marriage, suicide and murder converge in this high-stakes mystery-thriller that has PI Dan Sharp questioning who to trust when a political scandal literally lands on his doorstep. A climactic ending I never saw coming!"
JON MICHAELSEN, Lambda-nominated author of Pretty Boy Dead
"A slick, intelligent mystery that allows time for characters and settings to breathe deeply. Round proves once again that he is a master of detail. His skilful narration and dialogue insist the reader be present, as Dan follows a tortuous trail of clues through Toronto neighbourhoods and beyond. Whether Dan is conversing with his son, fighting an attacker, or battling his personal demons, Round manages to infuse each page with deep humanity."
LIZ BUGG, author of the Calli Barnow series
SAVE THE DATE: Thursday March 15, 2018 -- 6:30 to 8:30
Dan Sharp will have his fifth book launch for THE GOD GAME as part of the International Festival of Authors' (IFOA) "Toronto Lit Up" series.
Where: Queen Books, 914 Queen Street East, with surprise readers and musical guests. Hope to see you there. Check Facebook for confirmation in the coming months.
Oh, yeah -- I'll be there too!
Jeffrey Round
People have expressed surprise to learn that I write literary books
and poetry alongside my Lambda-winning mystery series. To me, all
writing is genre in one form or another, just as all gender is a form of
drag. ;-)
Here are some recently-released poetry videos from a session at City Park Library. Cheers to Jeff Kirby and Don Pyle on these!
WEDNESDAY MORNING LAUNDERETTE:
PINK LADY:
The festival was a huge success. Even I was impressed with the offerings from so many brilliant writers and creators. Now it's time to move on to other things. This fall has brought a plethora of rewards, including After the Horses, fourth in the Dan Sharp mystery series. When I interviewed Shyam Selvadurai at the Naked Heart festival last month, he asked how I enjoyed writing mysteries, both of us having come from purely literary backgrounds. "I love it," I answered truthfully. "Because I can say things I can't say in other types of writing." I mean that in all sincerity. I can write in a way that enables me to be free of the weight and oppressiveness of academia and considerations such as canon and concern for the literary landscape. It's my way of keeping it real.
Please join me and 120 fabulous writers in Toronto for a history-making event from October 15 through 18, 2015.
www.nakedheart.ca
Unless I've missed some obscure part of his oeuvre, I would hazard
the guess that no one will ever accuse Neil Simon of creating
fully-dimensional, true-to-life characters. Most of them are half-people
who exist largely as comic outlines.
Yet in those one- and two-dimensional creations he touches again and
again on universal themes that resonate with all of us: the need to
belong, the need to be loved, and of course relationship issues. Never
for a moment should we assume that his characters do not deal with
reality, even if we’re usually laughing at them.
In the opening scene, Charity Hope Valentine meets her "boyfriend"
Charlie in Central Park. When he gets his chance, Charlie pushes her in
the lake and runs off with her dowry. Some boyfriend.
… the dance and song numbers keep the story moving merrily along without too much technical razzle dazzle.
 At
the dance hall where she works as a hostess, the other girls tell
Charity to face reality. She refuses. He’ll come back, she claims. How
does she even know Charlie loves her? Because when she tells him she
loves him, he replies "Ditto." Hopeless, unrealistic, and yet how many
of us have been one half of that couple we find so funny on stage,
starving for love?
Director Morris Panych brings out these sweetly comic moments with
ample flair. More than a month after its opening, the comedy is tight
and effective. (I had heard otherwise.) The dancing is mostly in equally
good shape, though a tush or two always seemed to be off the beat in the major ensemble opener, Big Spender.
(Maybe it's hard to choreograph bottoms, but that's not a good thing.)
What is right is very right indeed, however, and the dance and song
numbers keep the story moving merrily along without too much technical
razzle dazzle. Just like in an old-fashioned musical.
Simon leads us to that emotionally-fraught moment where truth is revealed.
The cast of Sweet Charity.
As the self-seeking Charity, Julie Martell delivers a highly capable
performance, nicely supported by co-stars Mark Uhre as playboy Vittorio
Vidal, and Kyle Blair as Oscar, her fussy, purity-obsessed suitor. Their
comic conundrums seem comfortingly real.
True to form, after an array of comic silliness, Simon leads us to
that emotionally-fraught moment where truth is revealed. Charity fears
telling her new boyfriend, Oscar, that she has hoodwinked him and cannot
stand it any longer. She must confess. Little does she realize he
already knows the truth: she doesn't work in a bank. She works in a
dance hall.
For a time, at least, Oscar says it doesn't matter because Charity
makes him feel alive. It's what love's all about. For all the
characters' lack of dimension, these are moving moments and we're right
up there with them sharing in their triumph over petty human foibles.
While it may not last, Sweet Charity has her moment of truth, and so do
we.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sweet Charity runs at the Shaw Festival until Saturday, October 31, 2015.
Performances at the Festival Theatre, Niagara on-the-Lake.
Directed by Morris Panych, with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields.
Based on the book by Neil Simon.
Starring Julie Martell, Mark Uhre, Kyle Blair.
First produced twenty-two years ago, Robert LePage's
production of two one-act operas, Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schonberg's Erwartung, makes a glorious return to the COC. For those who
haven't seen it, suffice to say there are plenty of visual surprises. For those
who have, what's immediately obvious is that the stage presentation now takes
its rightful place alongside the music it once unintentionally upstaged. Bartok's
richly layered score glows under the baton of maestro Johannes Debus. Bass Dan
Relyea gives a superb Bluebeard, fearsome and compelling, as he unveils the
horrors of his castle to his determined new bride, Judith, in a glowing
portrayal by mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova. Strange to think that performances
of Schonberg operas were once almost as rare as they were overly earnest.
Thankfully, our twentieth-century ears no longer treat modern works as a
strange and difficult adjunct to classical music, but as an extended tonal
range on a very full palette. With a new generation of performers and singers
like mezzo Krisztina Szabó, who sings the role of the psychologically
unbalanced Woman in Erwartung with stunning
beauty and agility, these works are now a great pleasure to hear as well as to
see. Kudos to the Canadian Opera Company.
To affirm that
Lambda-Award winner Jeffrey Round writes quick-paced gay pulp fiction is not
to denigrate either the genre or this talented writer. It is merely to
recognize the character of his writing in which the central figures are gay
detectives or private investigators, where some of the other fictional
characters are also gay, and where some of the themes advanced by the
fiction pertain to gay issues. However, it is necessary to point out that
the gay quotient, while a central component, is not necessarily the driving
force. In the Bradford Fairfax novels (such as The P-Town Murders,
Death in Key West, or Vanished in Vallarta), the fact that
Fairfax is a handsome gay secret agent, upholder of justice, and sexy hunk
is crucial to some of the dramatic and satiric allure of the tales—as are
the gay ambience of Provincetown (Massachusetts), Key West, or Puerto
Vallarta, for instance, where the reader is apt to meet such camp characters
as a transvestite ghost; fluttery, a flamboyant female-impersonator named
Cinder Lindquist; lesbian café owner Big Ruby; cosmetically and surgically
enhanced Jarod Scythes; half-blood Cherokee Little Wing; blue-haired “twink”
Zach; the exotic Aztec Drag Queen Esmeralda; and various raunchy, romping
characters in gay resorts where pheromones permeate the settings and where
sex can be a thing of great acrobatic agility and virtuosity. Camp wit is
writ large in these tales, and though the permutations of plot can sometimes
seem inordinately high, the exaggerations can be put aside because of the
compelling ambience and dialogue. Moreover, the principal themes are always
connected to contemporary reality: sexual identity, drug use, desire,
relationships, love, generation gaps, political chicanery, and existential
authenticity.
The Dan Sharp mysteries
are less flamboyant and less camp in characterization, though the sense of
place and wit as large as ever. In The Jade Butterfly, that begins
with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and massacre and moves swiftly to
Toronto and more briefly to Hamilton, Round creates a firm sense of place
with his quick evocation of the Forbidden City and the Square, Toronto’s gay
district, Leslieville, and the Bridle Path, and Hamilton (with its
“smoke-belching chimneys and flame-throwing up-thrust”). But what’s a
setting without a plot and interesting characters? In what is his third Dan
Sharp mystery (following Lake on the Mountain and Pumpkin Eater),
the gay private investigator (father of a teenage son out of a one-night
stand) finds himself hired by a mysterious but strikingly handsome young
Chinese man named Ren (who represents himself as a cultural ambassador for
trade and tourism) to find his long-lost sister, Ling, whom he believes
survived the Tiananmen massacre and is somewhere in Canada. Ren and Dan are
sexually attracted to each other, and this is where the personal and the
political, the sexual and the criminal get entangled. If Ling is alive, Ren
would like her to return the jade butterfly, a family heirloom. But before
you can remember the plot of The Maltese Falcon, Round raises the
ante, showing how Dan’s certitude of certain things gets shaken to the core.
The closer Dan gets to finding Ling, the more confused he becomes about the
brother, sister, politics, and his own self. Warned by his friend Donny that
relationships can be dangerous, Dan is forced to agree by a concatenation of
intense plot complications.
The way Round evokes Dan
Sharp in this page-turner is admirable in its psychological tremors,
representing the man’s self-doubt about his ability to be an effective
parent to a son going through his own issues of adolescence, as well as the
man’s painful acknowledgement that he may not know how to love another man.
Blending the private man with the single gay dad reality, the strong
detective with the emotionally vulnerable sufferer of chronic PTSD, Round
creates a very credible character, who is not simply a puppet on a writer’s
strings. Dan is, of course, is a sober character who is only occasionally
reckless; flamboyant ambiguity enters through Ren and Ling. And mystery
suspense builds and holds till the inevitable denouement where the reader
discovers how Dan has been unwittingly exploited by CSIS, the real
relationship between Ren and Ling, and the real significance of the jade
butterfly.
Introducing volume three in my Lambda-Award winning Dan Sharp mysteries, from Dundurn Books. I hope you pick up a copy or four from your fave independent bookstore. Please ask for it whenever you are in your local library, as well. Every little bit helps promote a starving writer. (Not too proud to ask!)
Everyday life can make it hard enough to maintain your balance without the violence that obliterates the silence and solitude. Despite the way-below-freezing temperatures Wednesday, I found it impossible to stay inside after hearing of the Charlie Hebdo murders. My mind felt like a boom box in an echo chamber, replaying the news events over and over till I had to escape. To me, it wasn't much different than if I or another LBGT author had been targeted for the contents of our books. To shake off the thoughts, I knew it would be better to be surrounded by people, even if I didn't know them. What better choice, then, than to go to a public place that celebrates freedom of expression, freedom of choice and freedom of ideas? As luck would have it, the Art Gallery of Ontario was presenting a show called Art As Therapy. It was made to measure.
Stage One: leaving the house at minus-18 celsius and dropping.
Stage Two: discovering Art As Therapy. And how!
Stage Three: choosing your favourite artists. Van Gogh always tops my list ( A woman with a spade, seen from behind.)
I also love Lawren S Harris ( Old Houses, Toronto, Winter)
Claude Monet ( Charing Cross Bridge, Fog)
More Lawren S Harris ( Autumn Forest with Glaciated Bedrock, Georgian Bay)
And Paul-Emile Borduas ( 3+3+2)
I hope it's not for our wars that we'll be remembered, but for our art.
One of the many pleasures on my recent trip to London was seeing some exciting theatre (and to see it spelled correctly!) First up was John, from DV8 Physical Theatre at the Lyttleton. Not a play in the traditional sense, director Lloyd Newson based John on transcripts of interviews with men involved in various addictions: drugs, alcohol, sex, and anger. The play jumps from scene to vivid scene, while the actors twitch and writhe their "confessions" on a revolving stage that gives the audience the sense of peering into a neatly-quartered doll's house, serving at times as an apartment, a prison and a gay bathhouse. With the flat, seemingly matter-of-fact recitation by the main character in contrast to his turbulent experiences, the piece occasionally seemed slow, but the underlying performances were ultimately mesmerizing.
East Is East by Ayub Khan Din at the Trafalgar Studios was a bit of a surprise. I went to see it for Jane Horrocks, the ever-delightful Bubble from one of my favourite shows of all time, Absolutely Fabulous. The poster shows a reflective, mixed-race cast looking like an Anglo-Indian Partridge Family. Not so. As funny as this play at times was, the underlying themes of misogyny and racism made for an uneasy mix that served it well. Horrocks was terrific, as was the rest of the cast. Bubble's at times barely-decipherable Lancashire accent was not at all out of place in this taut drama of a woman torn between her abusive husband and her children.
The final work, Stephen MacDonald's Not About Heroes, was based on the real-life meeting of two of my favourite literary figures, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Played out as a two-hander in a tiny theatre in the back of the Trafalgar, you were never more than a few metres from the action, listening in on the heated discussions and arguments of two of the greatest anti-war writers of all time. As fate would have it, Owen defied Sassoon's heartfelt advice not to return to the front, where he died in the final days of WWI. Unforgettable and utterly moving.
Here are a few snaps from the past weekend's Word On The Street Festival, where I read from my new book Pumpkin Eater (Dundurn Press) at the Amazon.ca Bestseller's Stage. I also had the honour of being sponsored ("friended") by Don Oravec and Jim Harper, as well as Webcom Inc. It was great to appear at the festival, but even better knowing I was a sponsored writer. If you want to show your appreciation to a particular writer next year, that's one way to do it!
At the VIP lounge. And yes, I felt special!
Amazon.ca Bestseller's Stage with my very own sign language interpreter.
With fellow readers John McFetridge, Andrew Pyper and Russell Wangersky. (The Globe's Jarod Bland was our moderator.)
With Shyam Selvadurai.
With Gilaine Waterbury of Webcom Inc.
And of course you always have to leave room for celebratory dessert afterward. In this case, a fun get together with friends at Mata Petisco Bar on Queen West near Roncesvalles, where I had the perfect trio: guava panna cotta, avocado creme brule, and dolce de lecche cheesecake.
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