Tag Archives: nancy mcalear

The other Miss Bennet, in Christmas at Pemberley

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I have not always been a Jane Austen fan.  When I was young, I had some difficulty understanding irony, cutting politeness, and the dry humour of understatement, so I think my early attempts to read Pride and Prejudice and Emma probably left me missing most of the point.   A performance of Pride and Prejudice at Red Deer College a few years ago,  some Austenophile friends who shared movie versions of Pride and Prejudice and of Lost in Austen, and the PD James mystery novel Death Comes to Pemberley have given me a better appreciation of the comedy of manners style and the story of the Bennet sisters.

The current Citadel Theatre production of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, by Lauren Gunderson and Margaret Melcon, directed by Nancy Macalear, is a lot of fun, given that I already knew the basics of the story and had wondered what happened afterwards, especially to the younger Bennet sisters.  I don’t think it would have been quite as amusing if I didn’t already know the characters. This play takes place a couple of years after the ending of Pride and Prejudice, with Jane (Emma Lalshram) and Elizabeth (Allison Edwards-Crewe) happily married to Mr Bingley (Cameron Kneteman) and Mr Darcy (Mat Hulshof), Lydia (Emma Houghton) not so happily married to Mr Wickham, Kitty off in London with some aunts and uncles and not part of this story, and Mary — middle sister Mary (Mikaela Davies), the bookish and musical one who kept butting into conversations with awkward pronouncements about facts, had at first enjoyed having her sisters away from home, because she could play the piano and read as much as she wanted, but had gradually become dissatisfied and restless, realizing that she would be expected to remain at home caring for her aging parents until they died, and then would lose her home as some distant male relative would inherit the estate.  One of the things that pleasantly surprised me about the story in this play was that the girls’ parents, Mr and Mrs Bennet, were not really part of it, but they were not dead either.  The grown sisters manage their own lives and each other’s, acknowledging their parents’ flaws affectionately and finding their own solutions.   I enjoyed seeing how the sisters still knew exactly how to irritate each other, and at the same time worried about each other and had fun together.  Like the Bennet sisters, I too have four siblings whom I don’t see very often, and this felt realistic to me.

Mary and Lydia are the interesting ones in this play – Lydia’s outrageousness made me laugh and wince and feel sorry for her, and Mary’s isolation and longing for study, travel, and kindred minds made it easy for me to identify with her.

The cast of characters was rounded out with Anne de Bourgh (Gianna Vacirca), a canonical status-conscious cousin and former fiancee of Fitzwilliam Darcy, and added character Arthur de Bourgh (Umed Amin), Anne’s own cousin who has just inherited Anne’s home Rosings after the death of her mother the awful Lady Catherine.

I was a little disappointed in the portrayal of Elizabeth and Darcy, because the conflicts between her snarkiness and his shyness-coming-across-as-rude were the most interesting feature of the original book/movies/play.  Elizabeth can still be a bit sarcastic, but she and Darcy seem almost boringly in tune with each other (except about one item of household decor).  In a couple of charming scenes, Mat Hulshof’s Darcy shares his own muddled romantic history  with the even more awkward Arthur and gives him useful advice – while Bingley’s more generic courting advice doesn’t fit at all.

I enjoyed the bits where one character complains about feeling trapped, and another character calls him or her on it, pointing out the existence of choices – especially when Arthur is griping about the burdens of inherited estate and familial expectations and Mary points out that his situation actually has much more flexibility than her own, the female side of property-entailment.

Miss Bennet:  Christmas at Pemberley continues until December 9th in the Shoctor Theatre, meaning that it overlaps with Christmas Carol in the Maclab downstairs.

 

More good plays

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Assassins (the Sondheim musical) was the first musical I’ve seen at this year’s Fringe.  With a cast of ten and a musical ensemble, it’s well placed in the Westbury.  It’s a series of vignettes about everyone who assassinated or tried to assassinate a US president.  As I wasn’t familiar with many of the stories and I didn’t get a program until afterwards, I probably missed the ones in the middle – I remembered about John Wilkes Booth (Jacob Holloway), John Hinckley (Maxwell Lebeuf), and Squeaky Fromme (Emma Houghton, with Nancy Macalear as her collaborator Sara Jane Moore), and partway through I started wondering whether I’d missed the part about Lee Harvey Oswald killing President Kennedy – but that was the climax which came near the end, since I guess it’s the most memorable one for a lot of living Americans too.  Scott Shpeley, who had been playing with the musical ensemble, also turned out to be Lee Harvey Oswald.  Chris W Cook, Jeff Page, Rory Turner, and Billy Brown played other assassins I wasn’t familiar with, and Dan Rowley, and Larissa Pohoreski other characters in the ensemble.

Typhoon Judy was also a performance focused on music, with Christopher Peterson playing an aging Judy Garland, in song, in reminiscence, in flirtation with accompanist (Nick Samoil), and in four fabulous costumes.  The portrayal was credible and touching.

MAN UP! was a wonderful dance show with social commentary.  It’s being held over at the Westbury next weekend, so you have a couple more chances to see it.  Four male performers dance in high heels, powerfully, poetically, and conveying a range of emotions.  Some pieces include all four (Gregory P Caswell, Joshua Wolchansky, Jordan Sabo, CJ Rowein) and some have smaller groups or solos.  Rowein and Wolchansky’s love duet was particularly moving, as well as Wolchansky’s barefoot solo on the side stage.  Monologues and video clips provide context and discussion-starters about the limitations of conventional gender expectations (as well as allowing time for costume changes).  I was fascinated to realize afterwards that the performance had been lacking the personal flirtation aspect of burlesque dancing.

Every Fringe I see Rocket Sugar Factory, the improv duo of Jacob Banigan and Jim Libby, because they are so much fun to watch.  Along with their local accompanist Jan Randall, they are masters of crafting long-form stories and playing them out with delightful characterizations.  This year their show involves creating the pilot episode for a new television show, and the one they created in front of me, Mister Jules Verne, was something I would watch if it existed.  I love the way these two switch characters seamlessly, borrowing mannerisms and language habits, and I’m also a fan of Jim Libby’s near-corpsing, letting his delight in the game show through the characters he’s embodying.  (One of the 2 For Tea performers, James, does this as well.)

I also made time to see a new comedy, Harold and Vivian Entertain Guests, written by University of Alberta acting student Jessy Ardern.  Take the premise of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – the older couple full of malice entertaining a couple of starry-eyed naive newlyweds, and wield them as weapons in their battles with each other – and make it funny instead of horrible – and that’s the start of Harold and Vivian.  David Feehan and Kristen Padayas play the eponymous hosts, and Rebecca Ann Merkley and Eric Smith play Janet and Mike, the young couple who arrive with over-the-top optimism and PDA and gradually crack into full-on hostility as well.  Corben Kushneryk (also seen this Fringe in Who am I?…) is credited as director and designer, so he must be responsible for the delightful set conveying the reality of a starkly divided household before the show even starts.  I was especially taken with Padayas’s portrayal, the perfect pink bouffant homemaker with twitches of panic and surges of rage.   Eric Smith’s brand of pomposity and pratfall may also be seen in Death Comes to Auntie Norma (one more show, Sunday 8 pm).

 

 

The Falstaff Project: hanging out in a bar with Thou art Here Theatre

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  • Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I is a story about the prodigal Prince Hal, the heir to the throne of his father King Henry IV.  While the king is busy fighting rebels, the Prince of Wales is carousing with disreputable companions in taverns.
  • Thou Art Here Theatre is a local company focusing on site-sympathetic and immersive adaptations of Shakespeare.
  • The Artery is a small community-driven liquor-licensed arts and music venue near downtown.  (They’re being forced to close their doors at the end of the month, but are working to find a new location and continue with their mandate.  Their fundraiser is here.)

Put these three together and you can see where it’s going:  telling the story of Henry IV Part I as seen from inside a tavern, at The Artery.  Andrew Ritchie developed the adaptation and directed the show, cleverly bringing the important bits happening outside the tavern in using multimedia – clips of breaking TV news read by the Messenger (Katie Hudson), TV interviews with the rebel Hotspur hiding out in a cellar (Ben Stevens) and with the King giving press conferences in City Hall (James MacDonald), Hal’s texts and FaceTime calls with the King.  Prince Hal (Neil Kuefler) and his friend Falstaff (Troy O’Donnell) hang out in the tavern managed by Hostess Quickly (Nancy McAlear) and her employee Francis (Ben Stevens), and their bluff sidekicks Poins (Alyson Dicey) and Bardolph (Jesse Gervais) drop in with rowdy schemes.

If you’re feeling hesitant about what you have to do as an audience member in an immersive theatre experience, this is a good one to start with.  Because basically, you can just sit in the tavern with a drink and watch the story happen around you, with no more work than twisting your neck.  Or you can get up and go get another drink, or you can engage with the players a bit more if you want.

I’m not very familiar with the source text, so I can’t tell you how the adaptation varies.  It seems to have much of the original language, but all the performers are comfortable enough with the Shakespearean text that it’s easy to follow and not distracting.  McAlear is especially natural as a timeless tavern-keeper.  Kuefler manages Prince Hal’s transition from irresponsible scamp to a smooth officer for his father with a surprising shift in body language as well as costume.  And O’Donnell was a delight as the lazy greedy opportunistic middle-aged knight Falstaff.  I got a little tired of all the fat jokes, but I guess I should take that up with Shakespeare and the audiences he was writing for.

The Falstaff Project is playing at The Artery until Sunday night – and oh! I forgot to tell you the other cool thing.  There’s music afterwards.  Different local musicians are playing after every performance, and admission to that is free with the play ticket, or $5 just for the music.  Advance tickets are here.

 

Studio Theatre season ends with When the Rain Stops Falling

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The last play in the six-show season at U of A Studio Theatre was the MFA directing thesis project for Megan Watson, just as the first show last fall was directed by MFA candidate Nancy McAlear.  When the Rain Stops Falling was written by Andrew Bovell, and first produced in Australia in 2008.

There was a program insert with a family tree.  A quick study of the family tree and the cast of characters showed that it wasn’t going to be obvious who was who, with two women being portrayed by two performers each, with other performers playing more than one character, and with two characters named Gabriel (played by David Ley and by Tim Welham) and one named Gabrielle (played by both Sandra Nicholls and Bobbi Goddard).   Other performers included Christopher Hunt of Calgary, Nancy McAlear, and Kathleen Weiss.

The story started with a long monologue by performer David Ley (a faculty member in the Department of Drama, like Sandra Nicholls and Kathleen Weiss.  He seemed to be a solitary and self-justifying man, anxious about a reunion with his son.  The time seemed to be some unspecified future and the setting seemed somewhat dystopic and somewhat magic-realist, with a fish falling from the sky and a comment that nobody gets to eat fish from the sea any more.   Another clue was that the character, whose name turns out to be Gabriel York, had a subtle Australian accent.

I like plays with non-linear narrative, where I get to figure out gradually who everyone is and how they connect with each other.  I also like plays where people are coping with the aftermath of something sad or awful, and we gradually find out about that without having to see it directly.  This play hit both those buttons for me, as well as the one where I get to feel smart as an audience member when I figure something out for myself shortly before it’s explicitly revealed.

The story was told in many short scenes, with much repetition of dialogue and stage business.  The action moved smoothly as characters for the next scene usually took their places on stage silently before the previous scene had finished, adding to the sense of overlapping and repetition.  The sets/props were minimal and didn’t give much information about era or location – a long dining table moved about the stage, chairs, coat-hooks, a soup kettle and soup plates, a pile of diapers, driftwood and a big windowframe, behind which were projected various images of weather, seaside, and Uluru (Ayers Rock).

After the various disjointed scenes of abandonment and secrecy through generations, the final scene provides some satisfaction as the old man of the opening scene, David Ley as Gabriel York, gives his son Andrew (Tim Welham) a suitcase full of family mementos.  Each artifact is handed around the long table by the silent witnesses of the cast, and by this point the audience knows enough to place each of them even when the characters don’t.  My companion admired the complexity of the story and the closure in the storytelling.

I was particularly touched by Sandra M Nicholls’ portrayal of an aging woman aware that she is losing her memory, and impressed by the way David Ley distinguished between the two characters he played.  I was also impressed by watching Bobbi Goddard’s fairly straightforward portrayal of a young woman seeking to move past her unhappy family background, since last night I saw her play Lady Macbeth in the Theatre Prospero production at the Thousand Faces festival.

When the Rain Stops Falling is playing until May 24th.  Next year’s Studio Theatre season starts with Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour in mid-September.

Sapientia, a disturbing tale of child martyrs and a fascinating portrayal with puppets

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The author credited for this play was Roswitha of Gandersheim, a 10th century playwright, poet, and (according to the Canoe Festival program and Wikipedia) secular canoness.  A Wikipedia link explains that this referred to a woman who lived in a monastery but did not take religious vows, so it might have been a handy way for a woman of the aristocracy to pursue a single scholarly life.

This adaptation as object theatre was made by Joseph Shragge of Montreal.  Mia van Leeuwen of out of line theatre was credited with direction and design.  Object theatre is a sort of puppetry using found objects.  The four puppet performers were David Barnet, Kara Chamberlain, Nancy McAlear, and Brendan Nearey.  The objects were simple and ordinary (a kettle for the emperor, teacups of diminishing size for the three little girls, a mirror for the mother), but the small gestures of the puppeteers and their voices made it easy to picture the characters as the story unfolded.

The subject matter of the tale was a Christian woman and her three young daughters, defying the Roman emperor Hadrian to the extent of torture and martyrdom.  It was a classic martyr story, with the satisfying ending being death without surrender leading to frustration and loss of authority of the murderer.  I imagine that in the 10th century it might have been particularly radical to have the woman and her young daughters being strong and determined and logical, while the male emperor and his advisor/executioner appear ineffective, emotional, and flailing.   The stories of my 20th century childhood might have found beauty in sacrifice and justice in choosing the right belief, but the responses from my 21st-century heart as a parent and aunt and leader of young people are so strongly opposed to the idea of encouraging children to die for a belief or ideal that I couldn’t finish this blog post last night.  I can admire the courage and honour the choice of Aitzaz Hasan, the 15-year-old Pakistani who tackled a suicide bomber to save his classmates, but I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of a parent encouraging his or her children to choose a principle or belief over staying alive.   And I don’t think I’m the only modern person who feels this way, or we wouldn’t have discussions about whether Christian-Scientist or Jehovah’s-Witness parents should be prevented by a just society from refusing their children conventional life-saving medical treatments or whether small children are able to make those decisions themselves.  Anyway, it’s upsetting, but the play made me think, and I’m glad of that.

I’ve also been interested to notice how the genre of the storytelling, with the simple symbols representing the characters and their fates, allowed some graphic but elliptical imagery to address the horror of the tortures and deaths more closely than would have been bearable for a more conventional acting genre.  For example, the executioner broke a teacup, or crushed a ripe pomegranate, and the audience gasped in shock for the brutal murder of a child represented.   I won’t record any more of the details because I need to be able to sleep – but it was fascinatingly well-done.

Canoe Festival 2014 continues this week with showings of National Elevator Project Part 2 Tuesday through Sunday, and Tanya Tagaq’s Nanook of the North with one performance Wednesday.   Twitter hashtag #canoe2014 and a series of guest bloggers posting at http://canoetheatrefest.tumblr.com continue the conversations about performances and performers, theatre and life.