Silly Little Country

Silly and Rich

My view is that if the government insists on subsidizing activities I do not feel should be subsidized, but that I like, I will take advantage of it. And partly as a result of excessive funding of the arts, I have just spent a very rich weekend. Between Thursday evening and this afternoon, I have been able to enjoy the following bits of live theatre in Toronto:

a) Imperatif Present (both the first e's should have acute accents) at the Toronto French Theatre
This play is a wonderful riff on the theme of mouthing off about the resentments built up over a lifetime, written by Michel Tremblay, Canada's dominant playwright of the last 40 years. This is a tricky theme. At the end of the first act both my wife and I felt we could not handle yeat another hour of the son's complaining about his father. And at that point Tremblay did something very smart and made the play not only easy to endure but very satisfying. At that point the best piece of theatre we had seen this year. The actors (Jacques Godin and Robert Lalonde) were wonderful.

b) Chekhov's Heartaches
This was yet another Chekhov-themed performance by Theatre Smith-Gilmour at the Factory Theatre. This team puts on wonderfully idiosyncratic performances based on Chekhov's stories. They capture the tone of the stories for me, and part of how they do it is with wonderfully mischievous staging, part of the purpose of which is to allow four actors to play many more roles, as they (almost literally) roll back and forth between the characters they play. They are a complete treat and I go out of my way to watch them whenever I can. This was no disappointment and the couple my wife and I dragged along really enjoyed it as well.

c) Trying
Canadian Stage Company is the current dominant theatre company in the city. Overall I have found their season this year disappointing, but this play was a treasure. It was about people of very different sorts connecting through work (and about a lot more), and featured stunning performances by Caroline Cave (I do not know much about her) and Paul Soles (who performed through my childhood on the CBC, and impressed me here more than ever before).

d) The End of Civilization
A George F Walker play. He is the dominant English-Canadian playwright of the last 20 years. I do not know how to say more - he has a glorious hand with low-life comedies. And this was another one, brilliantly performed at Factory Theatre in Toronto. I never know what to think as I leave his plays, and I think that is as it should be.

OK that was one weekend!

But let me tell you about another show from the last few weeks.

Charpentier's Acteon followed by Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, put on by Opera Atelier. This company is amazing! I have avoided 17-18th century opera with few exceptions studiously and they have broken that foolish prejudice. Their Mozarts are the best I have ever seen. See everything they do!

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:26 PM