Chris Abraham. Photo courtesy of Red Eye Media.

When Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham announced that the 30-year-old company would be opening a permanent venue at Dundas Street East and Carlaw Avenue in 2015, the Toronto theatre community breathed a collective sigh of relief and let loose a collective “ooh” of anticipation. People have complained for years about the physical state of Toronto’s independent theatres—an issue which came to a head last year when the Factory’s board of directors dismissed Ken Gass over a renovation dispute. Meanwhile, there’s been a significant amount of debate about the existence and accessibility of space where emerging artists can create and show work, coinciding with a recent mini-boom of new, DIY art spaces. What better time to hear about Crow’s new 200-seater, coming soon to the ground floor of a Leslieville condo tower?

We spoke with Abraham about the decision to open a new venue, and what he thinks it will mean for Toronto’s developing performing-arts ecology.

Torontoist: What made you and Managing Director Monica Esteves decide Crow’s Theatre needed a home?

Chris Abraham: When Monica first joined the company, I approached her about the notion that I wanted to radically change what I was doing at Crow’s. I felt like, with the energy that I had and the ambition and drive that I knew Monica had, I wanted to do something really different with the company. I wanted to take the resources that we have and think “wow, companies like ours still have those resources.” And then, thinking about larger, more systemic challenges that are facing theatre in general—the stagnation and decline of funding, the rumoured declining and aging audiences—we looked at what our opportunities were and where we stood to do something different to address those and other challenges.

The choice to open a venue in Leslieville, far off the beaten path so far as Toronto’s professional theatres are concerned, is bold. Why Dundas and Carlaw?

Both Monica and I live in the East End. I moved there ten years ago. And it was obvious to me immediately the psychic barrier that exists between the East End and the rest of the city. And the absence of cultural institutions. For people like myself who moved here with their families, there was an opportunity to be part of a kind of community that was—much like the West End in days gone by—in the process of identifying what kind of neighbourhood it wanted to become. And while I think we’re well into that at this point, we have not seen in the East End any kind of significant cultural infrastructure develop. There’s an audience here. And we looked at other strategies that had been tried and met with varying degrees of success in other parts of the city. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to try making a commitment to a specific part of the city, while not shutting the doors on the rest of the theatregoers in town. But, because we live here, we felt that we could really throw down the gauntlet and say “we wanna be here and launch a long-term conversation with you about what we do.”

And what about theatregoers used to the West End? Do you think people will be prepared to go to the other side of the Don to see a show?

I think that audiences that love theatre tend to go where there’s excellent theatre. There are potentially some obstacles there, but the East End is also a destination now. And that’s just going to get easier as the next ten years unfold.

You commented on the recent Praxis blog entry about Videofag and the somewhat contentious “crisis of space” many young artists are currently responding to. What do you think? Is there a crisis?

It’s important for emerging artists to practice regularly. And to do so on their own terms and to define the terms of their own expression. But my hope is that that doesn’t create ghettoes or circles of Hell, and that there’s mobility between those venues which have different audiences and different kinds of conversations that are going on. That’s one of the things that I miss about the city. I feel like the conversation about what it is that we do has become more homogenized and more singular, which wasn’t my experience coming up.

There’s been a rash of emerging artists opening up spaces like Videofag in recent months: storefront venues and rehearsal spaces. Is there a connection between this impulse and what Crow’s is doing?

Ours is certainly on a larger scale, but I think that the whole DIY thing is involved in what we’re doing. I mean, I would argue that the DIY impulse that’s at work is what Soulpepper did. Which is taking your destiny as an artist and as a culture-maker into your own hands and deciding that you’re going to create something that is more lasting than a production. And taking the challenging work of deciding for yourself what kind of an institution you want to have and what audience you want to cultivate around your venue. It’s not surprising to me that people are thinking more along these lines, because the funding landscape is changing. The audience landscape is changing…If you can’t find or can’t create access for yourself within the existing institutions, then I think you should make your own, and I think that’s really the way the world goes round.

If Crow’s is taking its destiny into its own hands, what is that destiny? What’s the plan for programming the new venue?

We’re gonna continue to do what we do. We will continue to curate, to commission, to develop and produce two to three new shows a year, some of which I will direct and develop. And it will be new Canadian work. We will also become presenters and curators, so we will showcase work of other artists who will we choose to present. Another important pillar in what we are going to do is create space and support for community-based work that will be part of the kind of outreach and education stuff that we do, but that will also be trying to create space for non-professionals to exercise their creative muscles onstage beside the work of professionals. And that’s very important to us. We won’t really have a theatre season, we won’t sell a season subscription, but we will have a full season of activities that will stretch from fall and winter into spring. And I would expect to see more varied programming other than theatre, including different kinds of performance, dance, comedy, and what we do in all three venues. We have our main theatre, a small studio space, and a cabaret. And we’ll expect all those places to be busy.

In a perfect world, what do you see in Crow’s future?

I’m hoping that we have one of the most exciting, engaged, and risk-taking audiences in the city. That artists are clamoring to come work at our theatre because they feel like there is an appetite for risk and challenge in the audience that comes to see us. I think that would be our greatest success. That our theatre is very well-attended, and attended by a whole mix of people who all have this special quality where you feel like when you perform there, that’s the place you wanna be. What else would be a measure of our success? That our best work—our work that feels like it has something to offer people outside of Toronto—is lasting, continues to tour, continues to do festivals. That we have an existence outside of the city, but are rooted in the neighbourhood that we’re in. And ten years from now, I’m hoping that our success will have inspired other like-minded artists to think about their capacities and to take a big jump.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Jessica Moss, Clare Coulter, and Caroline Gillis reminisce in Was Spring. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Was Spring
Tarragon Theatre Extra Space (27 Front Street East)
April 4–May 6, 2012
Tuesday–Saturday 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2:30 p.m.
$39–$46

In Was Spring, Daniel MacIvor’s newest to premiere at Tarragon, Jessica Moss, Caroline Gillis, and Clare Coulter play, respectively, women named Kitty, Kath, and Kit. Their similar names are no coincidence, and while there is some initial ambiguity, it doesn’t feel like much of a spoiler to reveal that they are all playing the same character at different stages of her life. It’s sort of like Act Two of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, although somehow gentler. The conceit is that, although they’re all the same character, Kitty, Kath, and Kit are truly different women, and their memories of the events that made up their lives can sharply contrast.

We open with Coulter—who has a long-standing relationship with Tarragon—as Kitty, and it’s mesmerizing. Her character is bitter and a bit paranoid, but with a dark sense of humour. Kitty tells us how her life has ended up: living alone in an apartment that could give Grey Gardens a run for its money and from which she is eventually removed. As Kath and Kit enter the scenario, we get filled in on the earlier details of her life: a tryst with a young man behind a barn, a strained relationship with a daughter, a tragedy that happened in the spring.

Was Spring is technically in the same cycle of plays as 2010′s Communion, which also featured a cast of three women ruminating on motherhood. But tonally, we’re more in the territory of Marion Bridge‘s understated drama, with just a touch of A Beautiful View‘s existentialism—though Was Spring doesn’t plumb the same depths. MacIvor is usually scrupulous in explaining the rules of the worlds in which his less naturalistic shows live, but in this case we never quite discover where it is that Kit/Kath/Kitty are supposed to be conversing, or why the audience, whose presence they acknowledge, happens to be there. And while the overlapping portraits of the character’s life are interesting enough, certain areas (particularly the relationship with the troubled daughter) feel a bit glossed over.

As always, MacIvor’s prose is beautiful, and he lets his ladies get off a few particularly good rants. Gillis’ Kath delivers a searing indictment of traditional gender roles that should delight any regular Jezebel readers. And Coulter alone is worth the price of admission. If you haven’t had the opportunity to see her in action, Was Spring is an excellent chance simply to watch one our country’s finest performers do her thing.

Abena Malika's eyes avoid Arsinée Khanjian's bloody handprints. Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Cruel and Tender
Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front Street East)
January 21–February 18, 2012
Monday–Saturday 8 p.m.; Wednesdays 1:30 p.m.; Saturdays 2 p.m.
$20–$99

These days, Greek is chic. At least, it is in the theatres of Toronto. At SummerWorks last year, we had two different takes on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, as well as a musical version of Hero and Leander. The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood’s feminist revision of The Odyssey, is currently burning up the stage over at Buddies in Bad Times. And now the Canadian Stage Company—who only this past November brought us choreographer Marie Chouinard’s version of, you guessed it, Orpheus and Eurydice—has brought us a new production of UK playwright Martin Crimp’s 2004 play Cruel and Tender, which is, of course, a post-911 meditation on Sophocles’ The Trachiniae.

And why not? The Greeks knew drama. Hell, they invented it in its Western iteration. Stories about war, murder, betrayal, family, journeys, sex, politics, and revenge never really go out of style. So it’s hardly surprising that Crimp (also chic in Toronto these days; we just saw his translation of Genet’s The Maids at Buddies last fall) wanted to turn The Trachiniae, which chronicles the troubled marriage of Hercules and his wife Deianeira, into a modern story about a bored housewife waiting for the return of her military general husband from a war in Africa.

In lieu of Deianeira, we get Amelia, portrayed by the incomparable Arsinée Khanjian (who notably went Greek last year as the title role in Necessary Angel’s Andromache, and who happens to be Atom Egoyan’s wife). Amelia waits and waits for her husband to come home, and fills her days by chatting with her housekeeper (Brenda Robins), her physiotherapist (Cara Ricketts), and her beautician (Sarah Wilson); ordering around her son James (an intense Jeff Lillico); and sparring with double-speaking government minister Jonathan (Nigel Shawn Williams having an absolute ball). But everything changes for Amelia when Jonathan brings two African “children” (a small boy and a rather mature looking young woman named Laela) to her house. At first, Amelia is told the two strangers are “survivors” from her husband’s brutal assault on an African city. Later, she’s told that her absent husband’s sexual attraction to Laela was the entire reason behind the siege; that he has, in fact, taken Laela as a second wife; that the little boy who accompanies her may not be Laela’s little brother but hers and the general’s son. From this revelation comes a disastrous decision from Amelia involving some very peculiar germ warfare that leads the action of the piece to its inexorably Greek tragic conclusion. Abena Malika is quite wonderful as Laela, and really lets you experience her many layers and contradictions (she also gets to show off her gorgeous singing voice).

In keeping with the structure of The Trachiniae, the first two thirds (at least) of the action centre on Amelia, who then disappears and is replaced by her home-at-last husband. Khanjian always brings a tremendous amount of gravitas to her work as an actor, and her performance as Amelia is no exception. But there is something strange about seeing Khanjian—whose shattering monologue from Palace of the End is likely still branded on the brain of everyone who saw her deliver it—play a character so, initially at least, silly. We’re used to seeing Khanjian as a woman whose tragedy is both her backstory and her backbone, but as Cruel and Tender begins, Amelia’s real pain is still in the post. As the action progresses (and her situation dramatically worsens), Khanjian becomes easier to accept in the role, but her casting never stops standing out. She’s a terrific actor (there is even evidence to suggest that she is the world’s best actor), but the combination of her own Armenian accent (which she always acts with) and the energy she naturally exudes onstage makes it hard ever to be entirely comfortable with her as Amelia.

But maybe Egoyan (and Crimp, who was there on opening night) don’t want you to get too comfortable. After all, this is a play that abandons its protagonist midway through and replaces her with another, à la Psycho. When Daniel Kash does arrive as the general, his performance is alarming and upsetting, and it’s impossible not to long for the return of his wife, who has been guiding you through the story up to this point. Lighting changes are unpredictable, and sometimes blindingly bright. A video projection element appears, suddenly and boldly, in the last five minutes of the play without any warning. Audience members gasp as actors crumble wine glasses in their hands and toss full colostomy bags at each other. Crimp’s words are sharp, cryptic, brutal, and often very funny, while Egoyan has created a sublimely sparse and antiseptic world for the characters to inhabit. And sometimes, for no reason we’ve been able to decipher, there’s some intentionally bad karaoke singing. Yet somehow, it really, really works.

In going over the individual elements of Cruel and Tender, it’s hard to find fault. There’s a lot of fine work here, and the show leaves you with lots to think about. But there was a feeling in the air—at least, there certainly was on opening night—of an audience not quite knowing what to make of what it had just seen. It’s bold and exciting work, but it’s certainly not perfect, and it’s often inscrutable. And that honestly might be the desired effect.

Jim Mezon as Mark Rothko, seeing red. Photo by Bruce Zinger.

Red
Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front Street East)
November 19–December 17
Monday–Saturday 8:00 p.m.; Wednesdays 1:30 p.m.; Sundays 2:00 p.m.
$29–$99

So, here’s a little art criticism for you. Red‘s director Kim Collier (along with designer David Boechler) have placed Mark Rothko, his beleaguered assistant, and a bunch of very big red canvases in a big box—a womb, perhaps—wherein Rothko’s oil-based “children” gestate and develop before being born. And instead of a curtain, we get sliding panels that sometimes close entirely, denying us access; sometimes coyly dilate, allowing us a peek at Rothko smoking a cigarette; sometimes spread all the way open, allowing us to penetrate the artist’s sanctum.

Do you get the yonic allusion? It’s interesting to see a touch of the feminine at play in a work that is so utterly masculine. It’s about paintings, not football, but at some points listening to two men expound their theories on art—particularly if it’s their own art, particularly if it’s about how their own art has changed the world—is about the dudeliest thing imaginable. There are no obelisks or swords or bananas in Red, but it’s an absolutely phallic piece of theatre. And that’s what makes it a bit of a drag to watch.

Back to that in a minute. First, let’s talk about the critical discourse going on about this production right now. Richard Ouzounian’s review in the Star was pretty scathing. Ouzounian wrote that he loves John Logan’s script but hates Kim Collier’s production, blaming what he perceives as the play’s shortcomings on Canadian Stage Artistic Director Matthew Jocelyn and “a regime that seems to feel that being different is the answer to everything.” Over at the Globe, Kelly Nestruck struck back with a piece defending the Canadian Stage and Matthew Jocelyn’s programming risks. For the record, we’re with Nestruck. The Canadian Stage Company languished for quite a while in a period of decidedly unrisky programming that frankly resulted in some pretty dull theatre. We’re willing to accept a few missteps if it means we get to see things like Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God in Another Africa, or Robert LePage’s sublime The Andersen Project. We’re also not convinced that the problem with Red has anything to do with Kim Collier’s production. It’s John Logan’s script.

This is a slightly controversial thing to say. After all, the 2010 Broadway production did win the Tony Award for Best Play. But a lot of the hype about that production was centred on Alfred Molina’s performance in the lead role. And while Jim Mezon is truly terrific as the moody, tortured artist in the Canadian Stage production, he’s obviously not as famous as Alfred Molina, and perhaps its that lack of celebrity glamour that make the show’s flaws more obvious.

Because it’s honestly not the production. The design looks like a million bucks, and Kim Collier makes sure that everything that happens on stage remains active and visually interesting. As we said, Jim Mezon is terrific, and David Coomber as Rothko’s long-suffering assistant Ken does about all he can with a part that exists solely to provoke the artist’s next diatribe or proclamation. Sure, the mid-show Lichtenstein/Warhol video montage representing the arrival of Pop Art smacks of subscriber hand holding, but at least it’s some top-notch A/V. And frankly, Collier is just following Logan’s lead on this one. His script gives the audience zero credit in terms of ever having heard of art before or knowing anything about it whatsoever. We get lines like “Exit stage left, Rothko, Pop Art has destroyed Abstract Expressionism.” This is dialogue? What’s missing in Red is a sense of its characters having any kind of inner life. As it stands, they become mouthpieces for different artistic manifestos and the result is something like an undergraduate fine art history textbook talking to itself.

Alfred Molina probably made a fabulous meal of Red‘s macho grandstanding. And perhaps he was good enough to make you ignore the fact that nothing really happens in the play. There are moments when the Canadian Stage production almost achieves this, which is why we’ve given it a three-star review. It’s a great production of a mediocre piece. But let the blame fall where it belongs, bring Kim Collier’s Siminovitch Prize-winning direction back to the Canadian Stage, and for goodness’ sake, give her a smarter script to work with. It will probably knock our socks off.

Wednesday may be all grown up, but she still loves to torture her brother, Pugsley. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.

The Addams Family
The Toronto Centre for the Arts (12 Alexander Street)
November 16 – 27
Tuesday to Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2:00 p.m.
$51–$120

It is a universally acknowledged truth that a single commercial property in possession of good name-recognition must be in want of a musical adaptation. And, so, who was surprised when a musical inspired by The Addams Family came to the Great White Way in the spring of 2010, helmed by Broadway icons Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth? In fact, the creepy, kooky clan (including parents Gomez and Morticia, children Wednesday and Pugsley, servants Lurch and Thing, as well as Uncle Fester, Grandmama, and Cousin Itt) have been through scads of adaptations at this point, and they usually come out on top. For our money, the “good” Addams projects are the black-and-white TV show, Barry Sonnenfeld’s inspired 1991 film version and its sequel, and, of course, the original New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams that started the whole thing. Sadly, the new Addams Family musical is more in line with that corny, low-budget (and Vancouver-shot) The New Addams Family TV series from the late ’90s.

The show’s a turkey. It would be hard for us to put it better than Ben Brantley did in the New York Times:

A tepid goulash of vaudeville song-and-dance routines, Borscht Belt jokes, stingless sitcom zingers and homey romantic plotlines that were mossy in the age of “Father Knows Best,” “The Addams Family” is most distinctive for its wholesale inability to hold on to a consistent tone or an internal logic.

Ouch, right? But here’s the interesting part: while kinder reviews have killed better shows, The Addams Family has been something of a Teflon musical. The bad reviews simply haven’t stuck, and now here we are, well over a year after it first opened in NYC and The Addams Family is still running on Broadway as well as hitting Toronto on its North American tour. Maybe it’s that the show isn’t egregious or offensive so much as it is lame and hackneyed. Maybe it’s that the brand is so well-known no one cares that you won’t leave the theatre humming any of the songs or quoting any of the jokes. Maybe The Addams Family is simply the perfect show for people who don’t really like theatre: slight, mildly diverting, relatively painless.

The setup for the story is surprisingly banal for a musical about a macabre family of supernatural weirdos. Wednesday, now a twentysomething who’s chopped off her trademark pigtails, has fallen in love with a normal boy, Lucas Beieke. Lucas and his parents, Mal and Alice, come over for dinner at the Addams manor. “Hilarity” ensues. There’s also some stuff about Uncle Fester summoning the ghosts of Addams ancestors, but the show barely gives any thought to this subplot, so neither will we.

Thank goodness the touring cast is game. The songs are limp and witless, the choreography absolutely phoned-in, and even the costumes seem more Halloween than Broadway, but Douglas Sills’ Gomez is appropriately charismatic, Blake Hammond’s Fester a peculiar delight, and Sara Gettelfinger’s Morticia adequately deadpan—although the script reduces her character to a one-note sexy shrew. Cortney Wolfson’s Wednesday, sadly, is a bit of a pain, but it’s hardly her fault. Remember what a revelation Christina Ricci was in the role? So incredibly frosty and intimidating, and only six! Well, at 26, that shtick just doesn’t work the same way, and Wolfson’s Wednesday is basically just a spoiled, emo brat. Also, her relationship with Pugsley, who hasn’t been aged, is now really uncomfortable, especially when he asks if she’ll still torture him once she’s married, to which she responds, “Sure, at least until you find a girl of your own.” Yuck!

Our favourite cast member, ironically enough, was Crista Moore, who doesn’t even play an Addams but rather makes the most out of Alice Beineke. By far the most developed of the original characters, Alice’s journey from poetry-spouting goody-goody to Addams-friendly kook is the emotional core of the show. If only it went further! It’s impossible not to think of Brad and Janet arriving at Castle Frank-N-Furter when the Beinekes arrive at the Addams manor (inexplicably located in Central Park for the purposes of this show). And that makes us want Alice to go from this to this. But this show certainly doesn’t have the balls to go that far, and it’s a shame.

There are moments where the production gets it together. The second act, on the whole, moves much faster and works much better than the first. It also contains the two best musical numbers: Morticia’s gleefully grim “Just Around the Corner” and Fester’s “The Moon and Me,” a weird, left-field gem that basically has nothing to do with the rest of the show but features a truly magical moment where Fester dances with his true love: the moon. But for the most part, we’re left thinking about how much better things could have been.

The Addams Family belongs on stage—they’ve always been highly theatrical—but they deserve a show worthy of their peculiar charms, including a plot with genuine conflict and formidable antagonists instead of some tired old cliche about gauche in-laws (not to mention more-than-cameo appearances by Thing and Cousin Itt!). Our Addams Family musical would have the daring and the subversiveness of Rocky Horror, the sinful gallows humour of Sweeney Todd, and real, campy, scary villains like the ones Dan Hedaya, Elizabeth Wilson, and Joan Cusack play in the Sonnenfeld films. When can we see that show?

Ryan Kelly, Paul Essiembre, Jonathan Wilson, and Jonathan Seinen (left to right). Photo by John Karastamatis.

The Normal Heart
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street)
October 14 to November 6
Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
$35 (PWYC Sundays)

There was a moment during a climactic scene between Jonathan Wilson and Jeff Miller at the opening performance of the Studio 180 production of The Normal Heart currently playing at Buddies when we heard some faint white noise behind the actors’ voices: the tell-tale sniffling of a roomful of people trying to not cry. There’s a great feeling of union among an audience who share the need to weep combined with the knowledge that any excess noise could ruin something they don’t want ruined. All this to say, The Normal Heart is one sad fucking play. But it’s also a wonderful one, and you should definitely see it.

For those not up on their AIDS activism/queer art history, Larry Kramer is a pretty important figure in both fields. He wrote the Academy Award–nominated screenplay for controversial Ken Russell movie Women in Love as well as the classic gay novel Faggots. He also founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first-ever AIDS service organization, and when that group ousted him for his controversial views, he founded ACT UP, probably the most well-known AIDS advocacy group in existence, with chapters all over the world. And he wrote the plays The Normal Heart and its sequel, The Destiny of Me. There’s been a definite resurgence of interest in the 1985 off-Broadway hit recently. A Broadway production starring Jim Parsons, Ellen Barkin, and Lee Pace just completed a Tony-winning limited run earlier this year. And Glee mastermind Ryan Murphy claims to be preparing for a film version starring Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts.

In The Normal Heart, Kramer dramatizes his experiences with GMHC, using the protagonist Ned Weeks as a proxy for himself. Usually, we’re supposed to avoid looking for autobiography in fiction, but in this case Kramer wants us to. In his program notes from the Broadway revival (reprinted in the Studio 180 production’s program), he urges us to “please know that everything in The Normal Heart happened.” He goes on to outline the names and histories of the real-life counterparts of all the characters in the play, several of whom are, sadly, no longer with us. With this in mind, it’s tempting to view The Normal Heart as a historical document; a record of the bad old days when politicians were criminally negligent about the AIDS crisis, gay men were dropping like flies, and no one even knew what HIV was or how you got it. And, sure, it’s a fascinating chronicle of that moment in history, as well as a compelling call-to-arms against institutional homophobia and gay apathy. But in a way, that’s all gravy. Exciting politics are fine, but they don’t make an audience of hundreds of people cry unless they’re grounded in compelling characters, story, and relationships—all of which The Normal Heart has in spades.

Jonathan Wilson plays Ned Weeks, a writer and reluctant activist who founds a never-named AIDS service organization with the help of Mickey Marcus (Ryan Kelly), Tommy Boatwright (Jonathan Seinen), and the handsome Bruce Niles (Paul Essiembre), who beats out Ned to become president because of his broader appeal, despite his being semi-closeted. Ned is a real gem of a protagonist. He’s kind of an asshole, but he’s also really likeable. He’s extreme, but he’s also convincing. And watching his relationships with the other characters develop over the course of the evening is a real joy. He’s got a complicated relationship with his brother Ben (John Bourgeois), who loves him fiercely but doesn’t understand homosexuality as something more than another of his brother’s neurotic tics. Their scenes together are electric, but so are his scenes with Emma Brookner (Sarah Orenstein), his doctor and the only person telling him that he actually needs to make more of a stink about AIDS, not less. As are those with Felix Turner (Jeff Miller), the closeted New York Times fashion writer he falls in love with, and loses, and Essiembre’s Bruce, whose style of advocacy through politeness and respectability is anathema to Ned while still understandable to the audience.

It’s a fantastic cast, and Wilson does a great job anchoring the evening (he’s onstage nearly the entire time). Orenstein has practically made a career out of playing hard-edged women who tell it like it is, and if you’re going to listen to someone yell at you about something, she’s one of the best yellers our country’s got. Ryan Kelly also deserves a shout-out for his last Mickey scene, where he breaks down after realizing that the sexual liberation he and the gay rights movement have espoused for years has contributed to creating a promiscuous environment where AIDS was able to spread in the horrific way that it did.

Studio 180 artistic director Joel Greenberg directs the play, and while he draws great performances from his cast, some of his choices feel a bit arbitrary. Why the dance music during scene changes? Why stage the show in-the-round? Why the all-white chessboard stage? But it’s basically a straightforward production of the play, and it works. Greenberg also directed Studio 180′s acclaimed production of The Laramie Project. The reason The Laramie Project is one of the most frequently produced plays of the last decade is that as well as having a vitally important political, gay-rights message, it also works as storytelling: the unjust murder of a good man and the community it tore apart. The Normal Heart is another example of a brilliant marriage between great theatre and great politics.

Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross leave their TV alter egos in the dust. Photo by Hugo Glendinning.

Private Lives
Royal Alexandra Theatre (260 King Street West)
September 16 to October 30
Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m.
Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2 p.m.
$35–$175

We admit to some level of trepidation when we went to see the much-hyped, Broadway-bound production of Noël Coward’s classic comedy Private Lives. As you no doubt already know (thanks to a ubiquitous ad campaign), this production features Canadian TV star Paul Gross and Canadian-ish American TV star Kim Cattrall as feuding ex-spouses Elyot and Amanda. Sure, Gross was great on Due South and Slings & Arrows, but his stage record is spotty, and included a somewhat notoriously not-awesome Hamlet at Stratford. As for Cattrall, she’s probably best known for such classic films as Mannequin, Police Academy, and Porky’s (and some cable show about sex or something). Do either of them have the chops to pull off Coward’s darkly scintillating comic masterpiece? The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

If you don’t know the play, it’s about two newlywed couples: deadpan cad Elyot and his bubbly bride, Sybil, and zesty, temperamental Amanda and her strait-laced husband, Victor. In act one, both honeymoon at the same hotel in Deauville, France, and discover their rooms have adjoining balconies. The twist is that Elyot and Amanda used to be married, and their discovery of each other leads to shock and anger, then nostalgia, then an impassioned flight to Amanda’s apartment in Paris, where we spend acts two and three. They fight, make up, and make love in about every conceivable configuration, and if the whole thing sounds rather like that episode of Frasier where Dr. Crane goes to Bora Bora with JoBeth Williams and runs into Lilith, that was probably an intentional homage on the part of the Frasier staff (or maybe not, but whatever).

Clearly, much of the interest in a revival of this show rests on the seductive shoulders of Kim Cattrall. Even SATC‘s strongest detractors have to admit she had solid comic chops as the iconic Samantha Jones, but most of us haven’t seen her do much else. In fact, so eager was the audience to take in Cattrall’s performance that they immediately burst into enthusiastic applause the second an attractive blonde woman entered the stage at the beginning of the show. Things got awkward when they realized it wasn’t Cattrall, but Anna Madeley, this production’s Sybil. But it only made Cattrall’s actual entrance even more show-stopping, particularly since she enters wearing an about-to-fall-off white towel that wouldn’t at all look out of place on sexpot Samantha. That moment seemed crafted to acknowledge Cattrall-the-actor, and the character we associate her with, while easing us gradually into the world of the play and the character of Amanda.

She soon switches into the first of several stunning gowns designed by Rob Howell (who also did the set), leaving all memory of Ms. Jones far behind. She speaks with a throaty sophistication that seems halfway between Miranda Richardson and a sexier Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins (um, which is a compliment). Her British accent is flawless, although that shouldn’t really be a surprise: despite growing up mostly in Canada, she was actually born in England and attended LAMDA. But perhaps most impressive is her physical comedy. Cattrall is a natural onstage, able to seamlessly transition from sultry poise to goofy, manic slapstick in seconds.

As Elyot, Gross doesn’t disappoint either, particularly in the latter two acts. We found him a little stiff at the beginning of the show, but maybe it’s just that most of Elyot’s more fabulous bits of cruelty, wit, and passion come after the intermission. The chemistry between the two leads is palpable, and watching them do anything to each other, whether sweet or savage, is simply delicious. As the abandoned Sybil and Victor, Anna Madeley and Simon Paisley Day, respectively, also hold their own, but Private Lives belongs to Elyot and Amanda and their all-consuming amour fou.

Rob Howell’s set is magnificent, if a tad distracting. Act one treats us to a solid wall of French window shutters well downstage that act as a backdrop to the action. Acts two and three use the full depth of the space to recreate Amanda’s apartment. Flouting convention, Howell dresses it as a sort of expressionist subterranean aquarium, complete with surreal globular koi tank. It’s strange and beautiful and affords for some fantastic pieces of stage business involving a very high window that must be opened and closed, but there are times that it pulls you from the reality of the story.

And there is a reality underlying Coward’s script. Despite the lightning-fast, screwball punchline-punchline-punchline approach directors often take with Coward, Private Lives is more than an acid bon mots bonbon, and that’s something that does at least poke through in Richard Eyre’s direction. When Elyot and Amanda beat each other, we should gasp. When they seduce each other, we should feel it. This is a play about monstrous emotions, the difficulty (or impossibility!) of maintaining romantic relationships, the cruelty of chance, and the harsh disconnect between fantasy and fact. Eyre’s production—with no small thanks to the phenomenal performances by its two leads—succeeds because it buoys you along with so much laughter you’ll almost think it’s an accident when you leave the theatre having deep thoughts about your own love life.

Greg Gale, Richard Donat, and Daniel MacIvor get ready for a night at the theatre. Photo by Seán Baker.

His Greatness
Factory Studio Theatre (125 Bathurst Street)
September 20 to October 23
Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday 2 p.m., Sunday 3 p.m.
$40–$60 (some PWYC Sundays)

The weirdest thing about Daniel MacIvor’s new play His Greatness, currently playing at the Factory Studio Theatre, is that it isn’t a new play. It premiered in Vancouver all the way back in 2007, and the script was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2008. It seems like an incredibly easy sell: an accessible two-act play about Tennessee Williams written by one of our country’s most celebrated theatre artists. As a bonus, this particular production even features MacIvor himself (a rare appearance in one of his multi-character plays) in the pivotal role of Williams’ personal assistant. What took so long for this show to come to Toronto? And why wasn’t in programmed into a season at any of the theatres in town instead of debuting as a rental produced by the brand-new independent Artists Repertory Company? Whatever the answer to these questions, it was worth the wait. His Greatness is, well, great.

In a way, the timing makes sense. Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, making this the centenary of his birth. And while we think of him now as the celebrated author of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, in his theatre career Williams had at least as many flops as hits, and the last 15 years of his life were not marked with success. In 1980, he premiered a re-worked version of Red Devil Battery Sign—a show that had already flopped in both London and Boston—in Vancouver, to little acclaim. Increasingly reliant on drugs and alcohol, Williams’ time in Vancouver is better remembered for his own notorious rehearsal-hall behaviour than for the play he created.

His Greatness takes place over the course of a few days in Williams’ hotel room in Vancouver before and after the opening night of Red Devil Battery Sign. Kind of. MacIvor’s script never actually mentions Williams by name, or Red Devil Battery Sign, even though the poster features a picture of Williams and the play tagline “A potentially true story about two days in the last year of the great American playwright Tennessee Williams.” The word “potentially” should tip you off that this isn’t a slavishly faithful bio-play, and MacIvor plays fast and loose with the facts: Williams actually died in 1983, and produced four plays after Red Devil Battery Sign; the assistant character is surely inspired by Frank Merlo, William’s longtime personal secretary/boyfriend, but Merlo died of cancer in 1963, long before the events of His Greatness. But that’s all a bit academic. This show feels like Tennessee Williams, and it feels true.

Richard Donat, who actually appeared in the Vancouver Playhouse production of Red Devil Battery Sign all the way back in 1980, is perfect as an aging, debauched Williams, peppering the tragic, ruined genius role with moments of genuine charm and levity that make his present state all the sadder. Greg Gale gives a surprisingly goofy turn as a young rentboy who falls under the playwright’s spell and doesn’t leave in the morning when he’s supposed to. But the real heart of the show is MacIvor as the nearly fed-up assistant. The relationship between him and Donat’s Williams is palpably real; it’s bitter and mean-spirited in a way that makes you know it was once loving and kind. Ed Roy directs the piece in an even, naturalistic style that makes great use of Kimberly Purtell’s frankly astonishing hotel room set. The highly detailed playing space looks like a million bucks and is absolutely the best (and the biggest!) the Factory Studio has ever looked.

This show’s a real treat for Tennessee Williams fans. But at the end of the day, His Greatness is as much a story about addiction, decaying relationships, and the fickle nature of artistic success as it is about the great American playwright. And so, even if you don’t know Blanche Dubois from Blanche De Chambly, it’s still well worth the trip.