Acquiesce - Theatre Review

By: Angela Guardiani

November always makes me think of Margaret Atwood. I know that seems like a non-sequitur, but bear with me. In Negotiating with the Dead, she writes that, as a child, she hated having a November birthday because of its grim symbolism. No sunny summer flowers or Valentine's hearts for her! But as an adult, she “discovered that November was, astrologically speaking, the month of sex, death and regeneration, and that November First was the Day of the Dead. It still wouldn't have been much good for birthday parties, but it was just fine for poetry.”

Fellow Canadian and playwright David Yee has a new play at the Factory Theatre, and in keeping with the season, it's also about death and regeneration. Like poetry, it's deeply symbolic, complex and nuanced, and like Margaret Atwood, it engages with ideas of Canadian-ness and otherness. Beautifully staged and elegantly structured, Acquiesce will give you plenty to think about.

It's hard to summarize the story of Acquiesce in a quick synopsis. The play unfolds like a flower simultaneously forward into the future and backwards into the past, revealing its truth slowly and deliberately. To tell you the whole story is to strip the experience of its power. But I can tell you that the play centers around Sin Hwang, a Canadian novelist coping with his father's death with anger and bitterness. As Sin carries his father's body back to his native Hong Kong, we are shown that he carries other burdens, both visible and invisible, that affect his relationships with his girlfriend (the cryptically named Nine) and Kai, his strangely resentful cousin. As events move forward and Sin is given a monumental task to complete, we learn more about his past, and why he faces the world with such self-loathing disguised in sharp-edged wit. 

It's impossible to talk about this play without mentioning how strongly it features Asian voices. Acquiesce is a dual production of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre and Factory Theatre, whose season this year is – for the first time – completely made up of artists of colour. The entire production is dedicated to exploring Chinese and Canadian identity. The Canadian-ness of it comes through in the mundane, the everyday, like Sin's Mountain Equipment Co-op backpack and smartass backtalk. The Chinese-ness is evident in images and symbolism. The set – beautifully spare, designed by Robin Fisher – features leaning pillars that look like joss sticks and delineate spaces not just geographically but in time, too. The pieces of baggage Sin carry hold shirts and underwear, but in brief, wordless scenes, they also hold water, light, ancestry, history. Scars – another form of baggage – are an important plot point in the second act, and instead of being portrayed realistically, they take the form of Chinese characters written across the body. Everything contributes to the visual poetry of the production.

There are only four actors in this play. Like the set, it's minimalist. Yee does double-duty as Sin Hwang; I have to admit, at first I didn't care for his brash acting style, but as his character evolved I found myself really enjoying his hilarious but bitter take on the character. Rosie Simon and John Ng are remarkably versatile actors, filling a variety of roles – a nosy fan, a bubbly funeral attendant – but also taking on Nine and Tien Wei, Sin's father, with power and gravitas. I think Kai is the most important character in the play. Both in the way he is written and in the way he is played (by Richard Lee), Kai explodes Asian stereotypes. He is funny but not a caricature – he has real depth, an identity beyond that of just being Chinese. He guides Sin on his journey and makes his own too, a mirror image of Sin's long, slow path of ignorance to enlightenment. In the end – which is also the beginning – Sin and Kai acquiesce to the injustices and pain they have carried and let go. 

There's so much to see and experience in Acquiesce – it's dense, with a lot to say crystallized into an intense two hours. If you feel like exploring poetry, death, and rebirth, then a visit to the Factory Theatre may be the best birthday present you can imagine.

Acquiesce, a fu-GEN and Factory Theatre production, plays until November 27 at the Factory Theatre. Tickets are $30 to $45 and are available at factorytheatre.ca.

Photos by Dahlia Katz. 

Cuisine & Confessions - Theatre Review

By: Angela Guardiani

Acrobatics. Music. Heartbreak. Dance. Love. Flight. Language. Guitars and memory and banana bread.

Readers, I can't wait to tell you about this one.

The current show from the Mirvish's 2016-2017 season is called Cuisine & Confessions, performed by a company called The 7 Fingers (Les 7 Doigts). I'd never heard of them before, so I had no idea what to expect. All I could gather from the promotional material was that this show was food-themed and had some kind of circus aspect. What unfolded in front of me that night, though, was something incredible, something far beyond that rather prosaic description. It was indeed food-themed, in a set that was half dream kitchen and half gymnasium. Nine performers shared stories of their lives, from the beautifully mundane (the merits of round versus square kitchen tables) to the painfully raw (the loss of a father), and they did it through music, dance, and circus arts.

Remember the Rio Olympics this past summer? I remember watching those athletes, especially the gymnasts, and marveling at the beauty and power of the human body, at its flexibility and strength and the amazing feats of athleticism it can accomplish. Cuisine & Confessions is better, because all that same miraculousness of the human form is there but it's in the service of story and song, not competition and technique. Frankly, this was the most engaging, enjoyable show I've seen in a long time. If you are human, you will love this show.

Cuisine & Confessions has no intermission, so it flows organically from pre-show to finish. The show feels intimate, even in a theatre the size of the Princess of Wales. As you enter, the stage is fully lit, and the performers walk around freely, on and off the stage, joking, laughing, talking, eating gummy bears and offering them to the crowd. Normally, I hate audience participation – I hate the cutesy forced jolliness of it – but this was a different thing altogether. This was audience participation that was friendly, shared, consensual. It was something I could get behind – and I did, joining the performers on stage to julienne vegetables. The set is a completely working kitchen. The sink works, the oven works, the knives are real, the counters are solid, and the zucchini and peppers I chopped were absolutely real (and very delicious). Someone's always cooking something, right there on stage, in the background or in the spotlight.

All the stories are real and personal. One of the first is that of Melvin Diggs and Sidney Bateman. We hear their voices (pre-recorded) telling us about the difficulty of life as young Black men in St. Louis, of how hard it is to escape poverty and oppression. They tell us about the metaphorical hoops they had to jump through as they literally leap through Chinese hoops – wooden rings sometimes no wider than a foot - bodies alternately soaring and flowing like liquid. They look at each other with perfect trust as they support each other through complicated lifts and throws.

Anna Kichtchenko, the Russian aerialist, moves across the stage with slow, dragging movements as the other cast members read her grandmother's recipe for borscht and fling dresses over her head, more and more, until she rises out of the tangled mess of cloth into aerial silks – the burden of memory. And lovely Nella Niva, the Finnish acrobat, tells us the story of a childhood in the circus through clowning and song.

My favourite story, though, belongs to Matias Plaul. He performs on something called the Chinese pole, like a firefighter's pole but textured so it can be climbed. He tells us about his father, taken and presumed killed in the state sponsored terrorism of Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970s. There's an awful moment of total silence, and then he climbs the pole, past of the point of comfort, higher and higher. He stops at the top, turns himself upside down and is suspended for a moment, graceful, weightless, almost floating. Then he plunges straight down in a sickening freefall and catches himself with his nose no more than two inches from the ground. I have never seen death shown so beautifully.

Did I mention the music? It's fantastic, all original, created by New York jazz pianist Spike Wilner. And the juggling? And the corny comedy, the silly running gags? The multilingual cast? The food we watched being made and were invited to share at the end of the performance? There are so many things to love about this show. I want to tell you about all of them, but I would be doing you a disservice.

Thinking about this experience warms my heart. I honestly can't imagine a better show for right now.

Cuisine & Confessions plays until December 4, 2016 at The Princess of Wales Theatre. Tickets are $21 to $99 and are available at mirvish.com.

Photos by Alexandre Galliez. 

Fight Night - Theatre Review

By: Paul Lewkowicz

The interactive play Fight Night provides for an interesting opportunity to reflect on the state of democracy and how and why we and others choose to support (or not support) political candidates. The show opens with host, Angelo Tjissens greeting the audience and explaining how voting devices allow each audience member to anonymously vote on various questions posed throughout the evening. 

Tjissens then introduces five “political” candidates, who arrive on stage in black garments covering their regular attire. Charlotte, Michai, Aaron, Aurelie, and Abdel take off their black garments and are then subject to a vote by the audience as to which of them is the preferred candidate based solely on appearance and after little or no discussion. On this evening, after the audience vote, Aaron emerges in first place (but with a plurality and not majority of votes), followed by Aurelie and Charlotte close behind, with Michai and Abdel at the bottom of the pack. Each candidate then ponders the result: Aaron emerges as a 25-year old fighter, Aurelie as a defender of the low income, Michai as someone who banks on votes because of his looks, Charlotte as the intellectual, and Abdel as the loser.

What follows throughout the night is each candidate gradually revealing broad perspectives on life and politics and how this compares to the results of polling from the audience. Aaron admits he has a racial bias in favour of Black people; Aurelie reveals herself as an anti-establishment candidate who wants to not change but rather eliminate the system; Michai campaigns as the proponent of democracy as a way to build consensus; and Abdel prides himself as the fighter for the underdog. 

Fight Night aims to expose the flaws and polarizations within democracy. Declining voter turnout has small groups of voters deciding elections for the entire populace; candidates emerge as successful, despite not having the majority of support from voters or the populace, beliefs that none of the candidates are worth voting for and that the public has to choose between “the lesser of two evils”; mobilizations to fight against the system, and strategic alliances or new candidates that go against voter’s initial intentions or expectations. These feelings are extremely relevant to the audience in light of the recent American presidential election. 

Fight Night explores, with different results based on different audiences, what it takes for “voters” to gravitate or move their support away from certain candidates. For instance, after admitting his racial bias, Aaron’s share of the vote from the audience declines rapidly and coalesces around Michai who reveals himself as a moderate proponent of democracy and appears to be more in line with the values of the audience. We are able to examine our political systems: what influences our decision to vote or not vote for candidates or abstain from voting and what changes we could make to our democracy that would make it more engaging and healthy. Given the extensive media coverage on the personalities of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and their recent election campaigns, the show is extremely relevant and timely and allows us to further reflect on current events with new perspectives.

Although the show is enjoyable and worth seeing, Fight Night would be even more exciting if each candidate more thoroughly expressed their perspectives on the state of democracy and on key issues currently facing society. This format would have helped to better explore the pros and cons of debate and topical issues.

Ultimately, Fight Night is a show that makes us think and its reliance on audience engagement gives it that added excitement and unpredictability while still weaving through core themes and opportunities to reflect on the state of democracy.

Fight Night is playing at the Panasonic Theatre (651 Yonge Street) until November 20, 2016. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit: www.mirvish.com/shows/fight-night. 

Photo courtesy of Mirvish Productions. 

Titus Andronicus - Theatre Review

By: Angela Guardiani

Gentle readers, let's do a quick experiment. When I say, “Shakespeare,” what's the first word that pops into your head? Is it “classy”? “snobby?” “elitist?” It's true that Shakespeare these days can be presented in a pretentious, out-of-touch way, but Seven Siblings Theatre is doing something really interesting at the Citadel; their version of Titus Andronicus has a creepy sci-fi slant, with hints of Star Trek and Mad Max that are thoroughly contemporary and totally accessible to a modern audience. 

A word on the play itself – Titus Andronicus can be both weird and difficult to stage. It's one of Shakespeare's earliest works, and unlike his later plays, the characters here exist only to wreak terrible vengeance on each other. The play is a revenge triangle between three groups; Titus, a career soldier whose life is ruled by violence and honour - Tamora, Queen of the Goths and Titus's prisoner of war - and the two squabbling sons of the recently deceased Emperor. And from this inauspicious beginning, things go straight to hell. The soldier, the queen, and the princes jostle for power, and they kill, mutilate, and rape for the sheer delight in seeing their enemies suffer. By the time the audience arrives at the final scene, there's barely a character left standing who isn't drenched in blood. 

So when you have a play like this, so violent and so dependent on storylines that disgust modern audiences (the aforementioned rape, plus racism, plus honour killings...), how do you make it relevant? I just love what Seven Siblings has done; they've taken the whole play and placed it in a dystopian alien world. The bunker-like set looks and sounds like nowhere on Earth, and it's populated with terrifying giant insectoids and other bizarre human/creature hybrids. Five characters are played by puppets, but don't go in thinking that this is cute. The elder prince is a nearly seven-foot insect-like creature, hissing and clicking and moving menacingly across the stage in a way that could unsettle the most been-there-seen-that among us. I really can't say enough good things about the puppets and the actors that operate and voice them. The larger puppets require groups of two or three people to move them, and all actors share the lines, giving these characters a chilling, choral quality to their speeches. The actors aren't hidden, either. They're dressed in bloodstained rags and are connected to their puppets with hospital tubing, obviously unwilling donors for their alien overlords. It's such a creative idea, brilliantly planned and perfectly executed. 

The human actors do solid work as well. The nominal villain of the piece is Aaron, Tamora's Moorish (i.e. black) lover, but it's her sons Demetrius and Chiron that bear the brunt of evil in this production. Reece Presely and Dylan Brenton play the young Goths as swaggering steroid-fueled jocks, and it works. The way they chortle and sneer and leer gave me goosebumps. Dorcas Chiu has the unenviable task of playing Lavinia, Titus' daughter, whose rape and mutilation set the play's violent endgame in motion. It's so hard to take a character like this one, who's clearly written as an object, and give her humanity and a measure of autonomy, but Chiu does it. Her interactions with Jamie Johnson as Titus were some of my favourite parts of the play. But the standout performance for me was Jordin Hall as Aaron. From the moment he strides on to the stage, Hall exudes a tremendous stage presence. He speaks in iambic pentameter like he's thought of the words only seconds before, natural, confident, fluent, and he moves with powerful grace. He is a talent to watch.

A rowdy Elizabethan crowd would have eaten this show up (pun intended!), so why not do something different and see a creative and bold production that advertises itself as a “supernatural blood bath?”

Titus Andronicus, a Seven Siblings Theatre production, plays until November 6th at The Citadel, 304 Parliament Street. Tickets are $25 for general admission or $20 for arts workers and are available at sevensiblingstheatre.ca.

Breathing Corpses - Theatre Review

By: Shari Archinoff

When I was invited to see the play, Breathing Corpses that opened near the end of October, I assumed I was in for something that would fit in with the macabre nature of the Halloween season. This play, however, wasn’t about the supernatural or the undead, but simply told the stories of ordinary people just trying to get through life, but not always making it. 

Breathing Corpses, written by award-winning English playwright Laura Wade, opens in a fairly nondescript hotel room where Amy, the chambermaid discovers another dead body. Through its use of non-linear narrative, Breathing Corpses tells the story of the man who ended up dead in the hotel room and how he came to be there. Each scene takes us to a different point in time and features a different set of characters, but still cleverly provides enough context clues so that the audience can understand what’s happening as the tale unfolds. Each set of characters lead completely different lives, but they all end up being connected in ways they’ll never really understand. Just as I thought the winding story had come full circle, it ended with a little twist that kept me thinking all the way home. 

Even though the play could have been adapted to suit the natural accents of the mostly local cast, director David Ferry kept the original English setting, and the small ensemble cast rose to the challenge of keeping up convincing British dialects throughout the show. Even though some of the actors only had a small amount of stage time, they all managed to create well-rounded characters and gave impactful performances. One scene that depicted a particularly intense moment of domestic violence felt so real that I found myself actually holding my breath. Yet despite the inherently heavy subject matter, there were still a number of light moments sprinkled throughout to provide comedic relief.

If you’re interested in seeing the Breathing Corpses, it plays at the Coal Mine Theatre on Danforth Avenue near Coxwell Avenue until November 13, 2016. The theatre space, which holds less than 100 seats per performance is extremely intimate, allowing you to be very close to the action on stage and appreciate every nuance of the actors’ performances. I highly recommend checking out the production and supporting this neighourhood theatre company. To find out more information about the play or about any of the other exciting productions coming up during the 2016-2017 season at the Coal Mine Theatre, visit http://www.coalminetheatre.com/breathing-corpses.

Photos by BensoPhoto.