Stick with me... |
My wife and I attended two plays
usually given austere treatment — Shakespeare's Coriolanus and
Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. In our case both productions
were intelligently teased apart to yield insight and, yes, laughter,
where lesser talents have plodded directly into the morass. Both
plays are tragedies, but the humour — even if it is ironic — is
finally what makes a production humane and relatible.
Robert Lepage's Stratford production of
Coriolanus is sensational and not to be missed.
Lepage's enthusiasm for designing dynamic set-pieces is put to
excellent effect.
The play is given a contemporary setting, and a
fifth-act exchange of texts between two soldiers is guaranteed to
bring down the house. Lepage and cast clearly understand that
Coriolanus' twin defects are his pride — he is a gifted soldier, but
also a belligerent moralist and a stiff — and his entitled
status as a mama's boy. The latter is played to great effect, keeping
audience reception warm and engaged.
Menagerie's Tom Wingfield is also a
mama's boy, albeit one whose sense of entitlement is deliberately
leading him out of the family fold.
Most productions feature Tom in a
remorseless state of pique, well past receptivity to any of his
mother's expressions of love — which are fraught, to be sure, but
needn't be played with po-faced “Mommie Dearest” hideousness. Annette Stokes Harris' and Michael Serres' direction of Menagerie for Port Perry's Theatre On The Ridge artfully avoids that temptation.
You can't rewrite the play — Tom is clearly beyond ready to leave — but Liam Lynch embodies Tom with a fading, but still present, awareness of his mother's love, as well as his for her. Where other actors present a seething mien when Amanda spins off into yet another southern belle reverie, Lynch lets slip a reluctant smile, and the sense that his initially sarcastic response to her play-acting is a mask he wears for his own sake, and occasionally slips as the three Wingfields settle into their co-dependent fortress.
You can't rewrite the play — Tom is clearly beyond ready to leave — but Liam Lynch embodies Tom with a fading, but still present, awareness of his mother's love, as well as his for her. Where other actors present a seething mien when Amanda spins off into yet another southern belle reverie, Lynch lets slip a reluctant smile, and the sense that his initially sarcastic response to her play-acting is a mask he wears for his own sake, and occasionally slips as the three Wingfields settle into their co-dependent fortress.
Full disclosure: Annette and Michael
are our dear friends. My wife and I enjoy their company, in large
part because they embody the creative/collaborative spirit. With
Theatre On The Ridge they have pulled together a cast of
up-and-coming actors-on-the-cusp, and the results for Menagerie are
utterly spectacular. Lexi MacCrae, Michael Williamson and Lynch are
all advanced students in, or recent graduates of, esteemed drama
programs — the fusion of youthful energy/hunger with the keenness
to go pro must have been an absolute gas for our friends to work
with, and it shows.
The concluding performance of The Glass
Menagerie is tomorrow, 7:30 at Port Perry's Townhall Theatre. Don't miss it.
Coriolanus runs until October 25, in
Stratford, Ontario.
2 comments:
Tangentially related--I've never actually seen Coriolanus myself, but I found this video essay on it very interesting:
https://youtu.be/cB7xMwGCIlM
Good essay -- thanks for sharing. Fiennes' film is very good -- if you can track it down it's well worth watching. The mother-son relationship is played with subtler nuances, I'd say. As are some of the socio-politico issues. This guy was a little nervous about Lepage's treatment. I can't say I disagree with him.
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