tiny wings

Posted by riverwriter on Apr 29th, 2009 | 0 comments

Even now her voice sounds far away
even farther than across the country
whispering over phone lines and satellite.

I hold the receiver against my ear
my clutching fingers ache, arthritic
warm plastic crushes my earlobe.

At first the conversation is in the room;
she talks about her kids and her kids’ kids;
she ttalks about her garden, the hard soil.

Then she drifts far away, to the holy land,
the land of truth that brooks no argument:
her voice tiny, sibilant vibrations and space.

I can see the color of her rage, tendrils
of green and sparking blue drift through the room
like cigarette smoke through afternoon sunlight.

I see her dancing among the clouds
her lips snapping like maracas on a Mexican patio
the words beading on a Corona bottle.

Housefly settles on the lip of the bottle
performs the ritual frantic toilette
that fills its caustic life, then lifts and flits away.

Review: Kingfisher Days by Susan Coyne

Posted by riverwriter on Apr 26th, 2009 | 0 comments

Coyne’s sweet story of a five-year-old girl’s summer at the family cottage in northwestern Ontario is presented within the framework of a narration by her older self. The set was an ingenious adaptation to the very tiny Glen stage: stage right is a cutaway exterior to a cottage living room, stage left is the outer steps and patio of a summer cottage, and centrestage are the dock, shoreline and upstage, the vine covered old fireplace, central to the action.

Susan Coyne’s script is a rich tapestry with references to Thoreau, Shakespeare’s Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, and probably Coyne’s own experience as a young cottager. It taps into all of the positives and very few of the negatives of the cottage experience, and very definitely rings true. Coyne has obviously written from what she knows, and it certainly pays off in the script.

For this play to work, the audience has to believe Susan’s transitions from an adult to a five-year-old girl, has to see her neighbor, Mr. Moir, as a sympathetic wise  and creative free spirit; but most of all, the audience has to believe that Nootsie Tah is truly a wondrous fairy princess. I think you will agree with me that the last of those requirements is the most difficult to achieve. Actors who can make you suspend disbelief in the face of the fantastic are like magicians: once they have us, they have us. Such was the case last night at The Glen.

Nancy Munro (Susan) managed to tread the very fine line between cartooning her character and sentimentalizing her.  We were able to believe both that Susan the narrator was an adult with life experience and that Susan the five-year-old girl had an imagination and a natural naïveté that allowed her to believe in fairies. There was no confusion about which version of Susan we were watching at any moment, as Munro handled the transitions smoothly and clearly without extraneous artifice.

Bill Roddy played Mr. Moir with just the right nuance of gentle wit and expressed empathy. In our paranoid times, the actor playing a part like this really has to establish that when the little girl enters his house and sits down beside him she is not in danger. I would imagine that anyone else who was in the audience with me last night would think I am nit picking here, because Roddy depicted Mr. Moir as a genuinely nice person who really had only the good for Susan at heart. Mr. Moir’s part in the script is to establish, at first, that he, an innocent bystander, takes the fairy story seriously; and later, to depict without going over the top, exactly what the relationship is between himself and Nootsie Tah so that we can understand his totally benign relationship with Susan. Roddy projected this gentle delight so effectively that we were able to immerse ourselves in it.

Nikaiataa Skidders wove a delightful and fantastical Nootsie Tah, using wonderful facial expression and fluid movement to generate the joy, lightness and energy of the character. It takes a special kind of commitment to make a character like Nootsie Tah work. The actor must make the audience believe in this character, one that is magical, but never actually demonstrates the ability to perform magic. We also have to be able to follow the character’s relationship with both the naïve five-year old girl and the wise and understanding Mr. Moir. Skidders displayed full commitment and considerable graceful animated skill in portraying the character.

This is a cast with no weak links. Jean Leger gave us a substantial father who seems slightly more sympathetic than the very practical mother, played by Pat Haaksman; the success of both portrayals was evident near the end of the play when each in turn becomes involved in the fantasy. Aaron Beaudette (Stagehand) gave a very subtle performance as multiple characters. His Burt Lancaster grin will serve him well.

This production obviously benefited from Director Michael Togneri’s understanding of the emotions of this play. The audience must be drawn into sympathy for parental concerns yet must feel empathy for Susan’s relationship with the fairy princess. Within this dynamic, we see the parents’ practical concerns for the safety of the child and their desire for the child’s happiness. This dynamic in this play was never false: we were caught up in the tension; yet, we believed.

The various aspects of art direction for this production, from the poster design to set design construction finishing and costume design and production were really well executed. I was especially impressed by the depiction of the dock and the overgrown fireplace. Considering the limited lighting facilities in the Glen Theatre, lighting was effective and undistracting.

The production as a whole faithfully conveyed the emotional message of the play: that there are amazingly wonderful imaginative people in this world who can touch our hearts.

Production reviewed: April 25, 2009 Glen Theatre 8 PM running time 1:21 no intermission

Vagabond Theatre presents

Kingfisher Days by Susan Coyne

Producer: Dan Youmelle
Director: Michael Togneri
Stage Manager: Micheline Lacasse
Properties: Ashley McCool
Set Construction: Brian Fourney and Ray Prince
Sound and Projection: Mike McAnany
Technical Director: Dan Youmelle
Poster Design and Program: Adrian Black
Advertising and Promotion: Nancy Munro and Brian Lynch

Appyhay Irthdaybay

Posted by riverwriter on Apr 25th, 2009 | 0 comments

I was intending to read this at Connectionz Open Mike last night, but the event was moved to this coming Friday, so I guess it won’t work next Friday—or what the hay: maybe I will read it. Anyway, at some point the podcast will appear.

Do any of you speak Latin? Pig Latin?
Well, here goes; the poem is called

Appyhay Irthdaybay

(–that’s (pig) Latin, for those of you born after the fifties–
anyway, here’s the poem:)

Tomorrow’s my irthdaybay.
I’ll be twenty-two point two-two
in Celsius
actually, for the math students in the crowd
that’s twenty-two point two-two repeated
ad infinitum
That’s a real Latin phrase;
it means “forever”:
I like that part.
At my age, I like any part.
Those of you in the Viagra generation
will be pleased to know that
even at the exalted age of twenty-two
point two-two ad infinitum
we still like looking–
at any part we can get into focus.
In my case something larger than a cantaloupe
but smaller than Ontario.
My wife doesn’t like cantaloupe
especially what I’m implying about cantaloupes
and she especially hates that I’m mentioning her
right now. Is she glaring at me? Is she cringing?
I can feel the Curse of the Cat People
burning into my forehead.
That’s one of the senses that develops
after you’ve been married for
oh, thirty years–that’s Fahrenheit years by the way
and right now, it’s accurate because
I can feel the below zero stare from here, Dear.
Anyway, appyhay irthdaybay otay emay.
Tomorrow, ad infinitum, to the stars!

Review: The Net by Marcel-Romain Thériault

Posted by riverwriter on Apr 24th, 2009 | 0 comments

Warning: spoilers.

Here we have an all-too-common paradox: superb actors performing a severely limiting script.

That David Fox and John Koensgen are worth seeing any time is not in question; I would travel some distance (as I did this time) to see them in a vehicle beneath their abilities (as it was this time) any time I could—they are that good. Fox (how does a powerful man that big make himself so vulnerable?) is certainly ready to give us a remarkable Lear; Koensgen (the range of the man always intrigues me) was menacing and intense as never before in my experience. Ben Meuser was not given much range to work with, but was infuriatingly naïve and focused, as required by the script.

But. Here we have a one act play that screams its limitations. Granted, it is a longish one acter (81 minutes); but there was simply not enough meat in the plot to sustain even that. Thérault gives us a narrowly focused concept: the grandfather (Fox) and his son (Koensgen) have to get the grandson/nephew (Meuser) to sign a paper, thus mysteriously solving everything. Everybody in the action is a villain: Grandfather (despite his melodramatic monologues) is an intense, humorless manipulator, Uncle is a menacing addicted gangster, and Junior is an egocentric snot. How do we identify with anyone here? At the end of the play, we are left to wonder if uncle will kill nephew, who is helpless, tangled in the net of the  title (and tangled in the family politics, of course—yes, I got the metaphor). Sorry, I didn’t wonder. I had to find the washroom.

Now about the set: as is customary at GCTC, the audience arrives to see the open set, moodily lit. I had time to wonder about the symmetrically hung rather small fishnets all over the place; they looked more like Ontario home basement bar decorations from the fifties than Acadian fishers’ home decor. And the bar stuck out as a strange concept for the house. Of course its purpose was realized at the climax of the play when nephew is subdued behind it, in a directorial decision that I cannot understand. Here you have a visceral action that the director decides to put offstage. Except for uncle’s dramatic, almost balletic gestures as he is binding nephew, out of sight, behind the questionable bar, you cannot see the action. The uncle is played by John Koensgen, who makes his living designing stage fights! Is the director afraid of offending the delicate sensibilities of the audience? This is beyond me.

Staging required a strange set, with a blank wall downstage right for Gramp’s monologues, lit by a special that came on like a prison spotlight for these ventures into communion with the dead grandmother. The other lighting effect was the climactic explosion that must have been amazing to so illuminate all the windows. I am reminded of The Monkey’s Paw.

The characters, as I have intimated, are written with no depth and little motivation. Nephew does not have an inkling his uncle is a dangerous man, let alone a murdering mobster. Gramps has no idea his grandson is an obstinate selfish twit, nor that his son is willing to murder his own father. The plot is based on this total lack of knowledge on the parts of the grandfather and the grandson. Shakespeare’s Othello is a play with such frustrating and crucial naïveté, and it does not work, either. The program notes tell us that when this play was produced in French, the crab fishermen in the community rioted at the theatre. I don’t blame them; but I don’t think it was politics or the depiction of crab fishermen they were rioting about.

Performance seen: April 23, 2009 8 pm 81  minutes

The Net

A GCTC English world premiere

By Marcel-Romain Thériault

Translated by Maureen Labonté and Don Hannah

Directed by Michel Monty
STARRING:
BEN MEUSER
DAVID FOX
JOHN KOENSGEN

creative team:
Sound Designer and composer: Pierre Michaud
Lighting Designer: Rebecca Miller
Set and Costumes Designer: Brian Smith
Stage Manager: Jean Vanstone Osborne
Apprentice stage manager: Adrian McGrath

production team:
Lighting Operator: Jon Lockhart
Sound operator: Jon Carter
Head carpenter: Darrell Bennett
Head scenic painter: Stephanie Dahmer

Crew:
Mike Keller, Kevin Kenny, Sheldon Poulin, Sean Ready

turnstile

Posted by riverwriter on Apr 17th, 2009 | 0 comments

Here for a day
reading their poems
on a cross-country
book promotion.

Gradually nine assembled:
two passers-by,
mother and sister of him,
the gallery manager,
two friends,
two acolytes from an earlier reading.

We heard the poems
too quickly I thought:
too little time to think;
soon we were shmoozing
over beers and tea.

They left the next day.
accompanied by a soft
metallic squeaking sound.