Theatre Theatre!
What is going on in the world of Torontonian Theatre? I haven’t re-capped what I have seen in a while.
Before Christmas, a friend and I saw Arcadia: the Tom Stoppard rubik’s cube that still hurts my brain
when I think about it. It was so
transcendentally intelligent as it switched between the present and a room of
scholars and the Regency. It was a wild
maze of philosophy and romance and ideas and I have trouble winding my brain
around all that happened. It was more an
exhilarating brain-dance than a night out at the theatre and I could
deconstruct forever the platitudes it hoists itself upon and the vulnerable
lows and depths it scrapes with its fluent and fragile word-span.
I loved it.
A friend and I saw Spring
Awakening at the Lower Ossington a few weeks ago and I wasn’t sold on
it. Prior, I think the last Torontonian
show I had seen was the usual Wicked launch
that shows up every few years.
c/o the Star |
On Saturday night, we trekked down to the Berkeley to see How Do I Love Thee: a painfully
beautiful exploration of the tragic love between creative forces Robert
Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Honestly, it was wrenching. First, it was light and airy as
correspondence was exchanged between the two poets, name-dropping Wordsworth
and Coleridge, and their letters (literally) filling the air. To add, the director staged bawdy innuendo
that flitted in perfect beat alongside the passionate letters crossing between
them. They intersected---emotionally
and creatively--- and eventually decided to marry and take off to Italy.
Penniless. But, once they wed, Barrett
Browning (Ba, to her friends) showed a side more Kubla Khan than Westminster
Bridge: she was addicted to opium to laudanum and to brandy. A love story more like a wretched passion
piece, How Do I Love Thee takes the idea of two people trapped in a marriage
unsure of how to make their creative minds soar while bound to the expectations
of each other, their patrons and the world.
It also delves deep into the heart of addiction: made more tenuous by
the fact that it propels creative juice.
One of the most vibrant and sensual pieces of theatre I have
seen--- it is equal parts lusty and erudite, passionate and sizzling ---it
buzzes with words and the two titular characters step into the skin of these
Victorian romantics and move around so comfortably I was surprised I wasn’t
watching an age-old film reel.
Definitely made me want to exhume all the bare bones
knowledge I had on both from my time at University.
Read about it here http://torontoist.com/2015/02/sex-drugs-and-sonnets/
c/o Manitoba Theatre Centre |
Last night I saw the pre-Broadway production of The Heart of Robin Hood: a
Shakespearian, cross-dressing acrobatic affair which reimagines the legend in
more of the BBC vein than the Errol Flynn. Here, it is Marion who is the brains
and guts behind the outlaw operation,
two steps ahead of the weaselly Prince John and the maniacal Guy of
Gisborne. Featuring the anachronistic
musical flare of Parsonsfield, it is a buoyant but odd production that was a
little too pantomime for my taste. That being said, the staging and the lush
green set (used to within an inch of its life ) was breath-taking to behold.
I quite enjoy re-imagining Marian as a cross-dressing, sword-wielding
force of nature more at home in the forest than in the traditional upscale life
meted out for her in the castle. There
was a nice zest of feminism here tempered with the slow, expected romance----
but even as they wed you know that Robin will meet her on equal terms.
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