In case any Toronto Dopers are at loose ends this weekend - I’m performing on Friday and Saturday night in Crazy to Kill - a detective opera, presented by Toronto Masque Theatre. Two Nights Only, November 11th and 12th, 8 PM, at the Enwave Theatre, 231 Queen’s Quay West.
This is an amazing production. A cast of 22 characters performed by 3 actors and 3 singers using puppets; an eerie, atmospheric score, played without a conductor, telling the puzzling story - who is killing the patients at Elmhurst Asylum, and who will solve the mystery? This has been a hugely challenging piece to mount - the music is daunting, and all of the performers have been stretched to go beyond their usual skills. Here’s a link to the current Toronto Masque Theatre Newsletter.
Hoping some of you can make it; it’s going to be a blast!
Starring Brendan Wall, Ingrid Doucet, Mike Petersen, Kimberly Barber, Shannon Mercer and Doug MacNaughton.
Music by John Beckwith, Libretto by James Reaney
Based on the novel by Ann Cardwell.
Musical Director - Greg Oh, piano with Ed Reifel, percussion.
Directed by David Ferry
Stage Manager Marinda de Beer.
Set design by David Ferry.
Costume design by Sue Lepage.
Lighting by Gabriel Copley.
Sound design by Adam Harendorf.
Original puppet design by Anna Wagner-Ott.
Puppets refurbished by David and Ann Powell at Puppetmongers.
Many thanks to The Mods for granting their permission to post this.
Detective Fry - a suave, romantic detective who occasionally lapses into jazz crooning. Rather eccentric.
Lieutenant Hogan - a hard-nosed, no nonsense cop.
Miss Currie - a policewoman (actually, a policeman in drag) disguised as a nurse to further the investigation.
Dr. Peter Holman - a mild-mannered intern at the Elmhurst Asylum.
Fry and Hogan appear as both live performers and puppets; Currie and Holman only appear as puppets.
As a puppeteer, I manipulate many of the other characters, however briefly. James Reaney is a Canadian playwright most famous for his trilogy about the Donnellys. His aesthetic includes having actors play multiple roles, often with some archetypal connection between the different characters. He enjoyed having all the actors onstage throughout a play, going to the side for costume changes and using the same prop fragment to represent different objects. Sound effects and music were often done by the actors live, either with voice or with Foley-type sound sources.
This is no different - the actors and singers all have to manipulate puppets, the two musicians in the pit come up on stage, Fry and Agatha Lawson (a rather Jessica Fletcher sort of character who plays Miss Marple to Fry’s Poirot and Hogan’s Inspector Japp.) have to play drums and piano respectively for about 20 bars, everyone makes sound effects, costume changes happen just offstage, the props table and puppet racks have been made part of the set, all scene changes happen by manipulating furniture in front of the audiences eyes… It has been a remarkable three weeks, as every member of the cast has had to come to terms with taking cues from a difficult score, and working puppets that were designed by an artist who wasn’t a puppeteer. This is one of the most challenging pieces I’ve done in a long time - we could easily have rehearsed for another 2 weeks. I’ve been having a blast, though.
Oh man - will you be taping it? You’ve gotta get that recorded.
So you are playing Twister with your fellow puppeteers above/outside the scene while also singing parts? Jeez, talk about a level of coordination to master…
Both performances went extremely well - far better than we had any right to hope. Good sized crowds, too; from where I was, it looked like Friday was sold out and Saturday was about 90%. A few moments of ‘What the f*&k do I do next?’, but all in all, remarkably smooth.
Only one review from some blogger who hated the show. Nothing in the daily papers or any of the Classical radio stations. I have to say, it’s a little disheartening. The Toronto Star was the last newspaper in Canada to have a full time Classical music reviewer, and he got shoveled sideways to the business section this fall.
It’s like when a small town loses its school, then the churches start to go, then they lose the post office - everybody gets the sense that the place is dying. Same with classical music right now - if we lose the reviews and the announcements in the papers, and we lose the reviews, announcements and broadcasts on CBC and other radio stations, how long is it before we’re reduced to calling it ‘the music they play at the 7-11 to scare the kids away’?
Ah, well - on to the next projects; a recital at the Arts and Letters Club, and a production of ‘Like an Old Tale’, an adaptation of ‘A Winter’s Tale’ for Jumblies Theatre.
Even the little opera company I sang with this past summer (in St. Louis, which is pretty small town compared to Toronto) was garnering 6 or 7 reviews per production. Although we’re really down to only one full-time newspaper reviewer, the independent sites and blogs have really picked up the slack. Hopefully the same sort of thing can happen there, too.
What a pity after all of your efforts, although at least you got a positive comment of your own. We’ve just had much the same here. After five performances of a program of contemporary American choral music we didn’t get any reviews. So disheartening.
However, onwards and upwards! We have four runs of Mahler 2, followed by three Messiahs and a Christmas concert, before we turn to our next really interesting gig, for January’s Sydney Festival. It’s called Assembly. I saw it in Melbourne in October. It’s a mix of 8 professional dancers, 6 opera soloists and 40 choristers. And the choristers get to do some of the dance moves. Should be a hoot learning it!
I was thinking at the dog park (where I do most of my thinking, in fact…) - much of why the review bothered me is wrapped up in how closely associated I am with John Beckwith. I performed at the 1999 retrospective concert, the 80th birthday concert, I’ve done the e e cummings songs on at least two recital programs and recorded them, I commissioned the Beckett Songs which I’ve performed on three recital programs, I’m doing the premiere of ‘Singing Synge’ in four weeks, and I’ll do the premiere of ‘Love Lines’ as soon as the cellist and I figure out what the Hell we’re going to do for the other ~40 minutes of the program. He’s a neighbour whom I see often. In fact, I’ve performed more Beckwith than I have Bach, Wolf or Mahler, even though I love those other three composers.
So the blog writer rather ticked me off by comparing him to a list of other composers whose music I know, many of whom write in a very percussive vocal style that (in my opinion) doesn’t suit lyric music at all. (Leaves me with the impression that the composer wants me to bawk like a chicken all night, in fact.) I thought the theatre would carry ‘Crazy to Kill’ even if someone didn’t like the music - where I saw archetypes, this reviewer saw cliche. Where I saw an intriguing non-linearity, she saw only a paper-thin plotline. Deep breath; okay, I’m over it.
And the next projects are approaching much faster than I had thought - Dec. 8th is when I open a Jumblies Theatre adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’, and Dec. 12 is that Arts & Letters Club concert, with its two premieres - Buczynski’s ‘Letters to a Musical Friend’ and the Beckwith ‘Singing Synge’. Excuse me, I’ve got some notes to learn…
Cunctator - please keep letting us know when your choir’s concerts are broadcast. Has ABC ever thought of a telecast of the Assembly? That sounds fascinating. (Whoever is programming for you guys has a very good sense of balance between established and new works.)
There will be a live broadcast on Monday 28 November of the last of our Mahler 2 performances. I’ll post some details closer to the date, but it won’t be at a convenient time for you I’m afraid.
I’m not sure, but probably not. The Sydney Festival is a commercial venture, so I doubt the broadcast rights would go to the ABC anyway. If you want to see some clips from the Melbourne production, go onto Youtube and search for ‘Assembly’ and ‘Chunky Move’ (the name of the dance company). I think there are some available.
Yes, our Musical Director likes to keep it reasonably balanced: a bit of this and a bit of that. Here’s our list of programs for 2012. I’m looking forward to the Frank Martin Mass/Rautavaara new work concert, as well as the Beatles Unplugged gig.
Plus we’ll be doing four programs with the SSO (Sydney Symphony) in 2102:
Beethoven 9 to open the season (again - boring!). Four performances.
Mozart Requiem/Poulence Gloria. Three performances.
the Two Towers (singing the soundtrack to a live screening of the second LotR film. The first film in May this year was a phenomenal success). Three performances.
Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades. Two performances.
How disappointing that it didn’t get any real recognition. It sounded marvelous.