Sara Topham and Ben Carlson in The Misanthrope at Stratford.

Two or three years ago, Robert Brustein took back the notorious position he had sketched out in his 1967 call-to-arms, "No More Masterpieces," with a wimpy apology titled, aptly enough, "More Masterpieces." (For some reason, he forgot the "please.")  In it, the former artistic director of the A.R.T. - who had given the go-ahead to one desecration of the Western canon after another for something like two decades - finally whimpered that he was "ready to concede that the postmodern movement may have gone too far."

Okay - thanks for sharing, Bob!  We'll file that under "Far Too Little and Twenty Years Too Late," as we trip off to see Diane Paulus's Happy Meal re-write of Porgy and Bess at the theatre you founded!

But what recently called Brustein's pathetic essay(s) to my mind was the sad response to a genuine masterpiece that's unfolding right now at the Stratford Festival in Canada.  David Grindley's sparkling production of Molière's The Misanthrope - in Richard Wilbur's brilliant translation, of course - will be lighting up the Festival's main stage through October 29, and if you're in Toronto or Detroit, or on the East Coast, or really anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere during that time, you may want to make the journey out to Stratford to catch it.  If you love Molière, you really owe yourself the trip.

For I promise you will never see a better production; indeed, this is the best version of the great French playwright I've ever seen - even the best I've seen at Stratford, which has a long tradition of exquisite success in Molière. The idea for this mounting was originated by Brian Bedford - fresh from his triumph on Broadway with The Importance of Being Earnest - and was clearly chosen as a showcase for two of the Festival's leading actors, Ben Carlson and Sara Topham (at top), both of whom have made reputations for themselves as exponents of articulate theatre for thinking people. Bedford himself has a curiously similar rep, only with a twist.

This distinguished actor is, I'd argue, also the most versatile and successful director at Stratford (which makes him one of the best in North America); I always schedule his production on the roster of my annual visit, and frankly I've never been seriously disappointed, even though the variety of his output has been stunning (everything from Waiting for Godot to Private Lives to King Lear - yes all of them strikingly good). But Bedford's method makes him an outlier in our current theatre; over the years he has known everyone and been in everything, and so clearly bases his productions on his own well of experience from past versions he's had first-hand knowledge of; indeed, I'm not sure I've ever seen Bedford direct a script that he himself hadn't already been in, years before.

This makes him the last exemplar of an oral tradition which is dying in the theatre - he is clearly passing down how things are done to the next generation of actors, just as parents pass down their religious and cultural customs to their offspring. Indeed, when you watch a Bedford production, you sometimes wonder if you aren't also watching the ghosts of Michael Langham and Tyrone Guthrie moving across the stage behind the actors. Bedford is, in short, the personification of everything that Robert Brustein was trying to destroy with "No More Masterpieces."

Alas, due to illness Brian had to step down from The Misanthrope (he had also hoped to play Oronte - as he often manages smoothly the double trick, as in Earnest, of directing a sterling production while also shining as its star). But the ailing actor left the production in good hands - director David Grindley is also an old hand at Molière, and he has replaced Bedford with the able Peter Hutt (whom we usually see at the Shaw). The rest of the cast, which included Stratford mainstay Juan Chioran and another Shaw alumna, the great Kelli Fox (the more-talented sister of Michael J.) left one with little doubt that the production would be splendid.

Still, I was slightly surprised at just how splendid it turned out to be. John Lee Beatty's set - all chandeliers and Boucher - was ravishing, and Robin Fraser Paye's costumes would have seemed almost too scrumptious if they hadn't also been so sly - Célimène floated in a cloud of cream and cherry, below, while Alceste stewed in a vat of pale green.  For the record, the production wasn't entirely "traditional" - it was subtly updated by a century, from Molière's own era to the decades just before the "deluge" that Louis XV predicted, when rococo manners had reached their absolute zenith. Thus the usual brittle chorus of seventeenth-century harpsichords was replaced by the mournful calls of eighteenth-century viols, and a melancholic, twilit mood always seemed to be almost in the offing.

A perfect cast in perfect costumes on a perfect set . . . but sorry, the critics aren't buying!

At the center of all this corrupting luxury, Ben Carlson's unhappily honest Alceste and Sara Topham's delectably flirtatious Célimène were clearly a match for each other intellectually - and a match romantically, too, which brought to the comedy's bitter finale a surprisingly poignant tinge of tragedy; I've never felt more for these two, or for the loss of their mutual love. Perhaps this was because Carlson proved a surprisingly humane Alceste - he was more exasperated than disgusted with mankind's hypocritical follies, an approach which generally worked wonderfully, although perhaps at the finish Carlson lacked the inner, puritanical rigidity which makes sense of his final ultimatum to poor Célimène. Meanwhile Topham - who has never looked more beautiful - was far more than just a vivacious coquette; she had a taste for snark, it's true, but her Célimène was also a brilliant wit as well, and one both rebelling against the strictures of her social role while understanding that at twenty she was still allowed a little room for child's play.

These two lead performances were wonderful enough - I'd even go so far as to say that Topham's was definitive - but Grindley's work with the milieu of these two mismatched romantics was what really made the production memorable. Generally Molière's misanthrope must make his way through a gallery of simpering fops - but here, he was swimming in a tank of sharks. Kelli Fox's Arsinoé - a would-be moral puppetmaster with her claws only barely in her gloves - was truly chilling in her hauteur, and for once her conversations came off as the calculated duels they truly are. And even Peter Hutt's Oronte - often played as something close to an idiot - was here a scheming climber, with an angry taste for brutality sometimes peeking out from under his silks. Given this environment, the weary gentility of Juan Chioran's Philinte and Martha Farrell's Eliante truly charmed - although it must be said that with an exquisitely attentive irony, director Grindley allowed even his villains their own heartbreaks and disappointments.

Indeed, perhaps the intellectual balance of this production was what made it most remarkable; sometimes Molière's brilliant point-counterpoint structures seemed to almost float in space before us as the characters conversed.  I confess I've never really felt that Molière, great as he is, was quite in Shakespeare's league; but this production made me almost change my mind (at least in the case of this particular play).

But alas, few of the Canadian critics were so persuaded - because, rather obviously, they'd never gotten Brustein's second memo, and were still in thrall to the first.   Their reviews were in a way heartbreaking, however, because they could tell how wonderful a show this was, but somehow they just couldn't admit it to themselves.  The erratic Richard Ouzonian, of the Toronto Star, for instance, confessed that the acting was "flawless" and the production "beautifully designed and carefully staged." But that wasn't enough, he carped - because there was no concept:

Except for some hats and scarves that Celimene tries on at her first entrance, there are no props. None. No one sips a coffee or drinks some wine. There’s no texture, nothing to tell us more about the world these characters live in other than that they’re well-dressed, bitchy and chatty.

And finally, in a line that might have been lifted directly from Brustein:

Before our eyes, it turns into a classy evening of museum theatre, something from long ago we look at and revere, but never really understand.

Ugh. One wonders, then, why costume dramas like The Tudors flourish on cable.  Meanwhile J. Kelly Nestruck, of the Globe and Mail, likewise half-believed his own eyes, and wrote:

"David Grindley’s production of The Misanthrope dares to let an audience find the modern resonance in Molière’s masterpiece, rather than thrusting it upon them with camera-phones and references to Twitter."

But then in an abrupt reversal he added:

"It neatly illustrates both the pleasures and the perils in such a straight-forward approach, however, as its solidness is matched by a stuffiness – and actors stuck in gorgeous, but stifling costumes that seem to wear them rather than vice versa."

Sigh.  Almost schizophrenic, no? Yet those were both typical of the press's scarily anhedonic reactions: "This is a marvelous production," the critics agreed, "only it's not, really, because it's traditionally costumed." It's enough to make you wonder at the superficiality of these people, and perhaps muse at the lock-step orthodoxy of the supposedly "revolutionary."

So please, somebody send around Brustein's latest to the Canadian papers! Then maybe theatres can continue to keep what's best about our theatre alive - until that happy day when Brustein himself is long forgotten, and we'll once again be allowed to have more masterpieces.

Is Stratford better than Broadway?, Part I

Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell.

My recent trip to the Stratford Festival confirmed what I'd already heard via the Web - new Artistic Director Des McAnuff had consolidated, and perhaps extended, the artistic achievements of his inaugural year (which had been been marked by the collapse of a short-lived artistic "triumvirate"). What I saw on Stratford's stages last summer led me to opine that of those three contenders, McAnuff seemed the best man for the top job - so I was happy to take this season as confirmation of that hunch. What's striking about the Festival now is its consistency - under the previous artistic director, Richard Monette, the company hit one or two out of the park, reliably, every year, but each season dropped a few bombs, too. But this time, as last, even the weakest production I saw (Phèdre) was intelligently, if misguidedly, produced, and the acting company struck me as stronger across the board than ever before (perhaps because McAnuff has skimmed some of the cream from the nearby Shaw Festival).

Of course perhaps I just missed the bombs this year (word was not good, I admit, on Macbeth), but the season boasted at least three proper smashes - Brian Bedford's The Importance of Being Earnest, Colm Feore's Cyrano de Bergerac, and an electrifying revival of West Side Story, all of which I caught; meanwhile friends who opted for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum over Cyrano (they were in the same time slot our weekend) proclaimed it a witty hoot (despite having lost its original lead, Stratford stalwart Bruce Dow). I also enjoyed an ambitious production of the more-rarely-done-than-you'd-think Julius Caesar, which proved flawed, but still worthy, as well as a lavish, inventive production of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair that almost succeeded in putting the play's obscurities over. More mottled, but still intriguing, were a new production of Three Sisters (directed by Martha Henry) and a revival of Zastrozzi, an early work by Canadian playwright George F. Walker.



First, the hits. Brian Bedford's production of The Importance of Being Earnest (above), felt at times almost textually definitive, although its pace was perhaps too leisurely (and its Algernon was only adequate). Bedford not only directed but took the role of the imperious Lady Bracknell - he approached the part utterly seriously, however; his Bracknell was no dragon lady in drag, but instead proved a closely observed, delicately scaled skewering of Tory insanity. The rest of the cast was nearly as good, led by Ben Carlson's tormented Earnest/Jack and Sara Topham's breathlessly blank Gwendolen, who were themselves sometimes outshone by supporting players Sarah Dodd and Stephen Ouimette, who made the best Miss Prism and Reverend Chasuble I've ever seen. But what was striking was Bedford's consummate comprehension of every subtlety in the play - as evidenced by the superb set from Desmond Heeley, which neatly tied together a kind of Gorey-esque, end-of-empire morbidity with a strange sense of false spring. Bedford is of course widely known as one of our leading stage actors, but I don't think his accomplishments as a director have been lauded nearly enough. Over the years, Bedford has directed the best Lear and Othello I've been lucky enough to see, as well as the best Waiting for Godot, believe it or not, along with sterling versions of Coward's Private Lives and Present Laughter. So I'll say it out loud, just so someone somewhere has said it once: Brian Bedford is among the best directors working in America.

Another production which had a claim to the title "definitive" was Cyrano de Bergerac, featuring Colm Feore, a former Stratford leading man who left to make a name for himself in Hollywood. Feore didn't quite attain stardom, but did appear in several blockbusters, before notoriously stealing a New York production of Julius Caesar right out from under its under-trained American stars. At any rate, he has now returned (along with other Stratford stars like Geraint Wyn Davies and Christopher Plummer, who'll be back next summer for The Tempest), with the clout to pick his own projects, and he's chosen the perfect vehicle to showcase his strengths in Cyrano. Feore was never the most interior of actors, but his physical gifts are superb (and he needed them all in this three-hours-plus lead performance) - and he's been technically trained to a level that's almost unheard-of today. All this, plus the crafty intelligence of a born actor, and the thoughtful direction of Donna Feore (his wife!) led to a Cyrano that never devolved into grandstanding or ham, but grew steadily in emotional stature over the course of the play; by its finish, this cynical old critic was misty-eyed, and many in the house were weeping.


Colm Feore as Cyrano, with Tom Shara as Christian.

The rest of the Cyrano cast was solid, but only occasionally sparkling (although the reliable John Vickery was a standout), but Feore was matched by a truly smashing physical production, which came complete with pyrotechnics, convincing swordplay, full moons of course, and even autumn leaves drifting down into the crowd. It was the kind of old-fashioned, satisfying spectacle that lets its audience out into the night in a happy buzz of romantic amazement - and utterly eclipsed the last Cyrano I saw, with Derek Jacobi in New York.


The dance at the gym from West Side Story.

But then "better than New York" was what you also heard about another show, Gary Griffin's restaging of West Side Story. (The same comparison was whispered a few years ago about Stratford's South Pacific, too, but this time the murmur has grown to a chorus.) To be honest, Griffin, of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, has embellished West Side with a few unwanted accoutrements: having a young, modern-day boy wander through the proceedings to warble "Somewhere" like some second coming of the promised Obama-child, for instance, was a little dumb, and a little much. But generally Griffin colored energetically within the spectacular lines of the great original, and choreographer Sergio Trujillo expertly retooled Jerome Robbins's famous choreography for the Festival's thrust stage. And the cast all but tore through the material, dancing and singing its heart out, led by Paul Nolan's amazingly athletic Tony (his hand-over-hand up Maria's balcony was a hoot), Chilina Kennedy's refreshingly earthy, at times even knockabout, Maria, and Jennifer Rias's happily snappy Anita. West Side Story is rarely revived because of its intense demands - Bernstein at times pulls his vocal lines up into operatic territory, while Robbins pushes the dancing past the brink of ballet - and yet the pay-off when a production is firing on all cylinders is intense, and immense; it is probably the single most exciting musical ever written, and Stratford more than delivered its inherent thrill.


The climax of Bartholomew Fair.

Meanwhile, on its smaller Tom Patterson Stage, the Festival was mounting a piece nearly as challenging: what may be the North American premiere of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, a sprawling Jacobean hootenanny that cynically casts a large cast of Puritans into the labyrinth of the eponymous fair, a notoriously debauched public spectacle in Jonson's day. Unsurprisingly for this particular playwright, everyone pursues their particular "humour" (or obsession), which results in adventures that reveal (or confirm, in the case of the earthier types) their true natures (Justice Overdo, played by Tom McCamus, at left, receives a particularly brutal comeuppance).

What's unusual for Jonson, however, is how in the end he forgives his many hypocrites and fools; Bartholomew Fair may be cruel, but the playwright skips his usual final damnations for a surprisingly touching moment of (unlikely) community, that reads as his own sleazebag version of a Shakespearean comic climax: the humiliated Justice Overdo, at last converted to an appreciation that he is, in the end, mere "flesh and blood," invites the bawds, pimps and whores to dinner at his home (!), an invitation which is enthusiastically accepted.

This proved a hearty dénouement to what was admittedly a brilliant production, the best version of any Jonson play I've seen. Director Antoni Cimolino (who also administers the Festival) poured resources into the project, and cast many of the company's leading actors in key roles (backed by up-and-coming youngsters from the Birmingham Conservatory). The results were studded with brilliant performances (from Lucy Peacock, Juan Chioran, Cliff Saunders, Kelli Fox), and Cimolino's stagings and musical interludes were clever, apt, and fearless (I won't soon forget Peacock, locked in a grotesque fat suit, spreading her legs and fanning her privates - likewise the jar of communal urine that gets tossed about onstage is seared into my memory).

Still, despite just about the best production it could ever hope to receive, the play eventually seemed to be grinding on, as in my opinion Jonson always does. The trouble is that he's such a schoolmarm - a dirty-minded schoolmarm, true, but a schoolmarm nonetheless, and one locked in a "humour" as intense as that of any of his characters. And despite the final pseudo-Shakespearean flourish, the play is nothing like those of the Bard, who is continually opening up new perspectives on his characters and even his plots - while Jonson relentlessly drives home, through a zillion variations, a single anti-moral we long ago figured out for ourselves (it's telling that he wraps the proceedings with a caustic puppet-show; that's what he's been writing all along). So while I had to admire this virtuosic production, I have to admit I was happy when Bartholomew Fair finally folded for the night.

Tomorrow: the more problematic Stratford productions.

Stratford Festival Round-Up

Sorry for the gap in blogging, but I've just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Festival in Ontario. At left is Brian Bedford, in the title role of King Lear - which, incredibly, he also directed. Reviews were mixed - the gist was that Bedford had delivered a star turn, but had neglected to shape a full production - but by the time I saw it, through the alchemy of repeat performance, somehow the precisely opposite effect had been achieved: now the production as a whole was stronger than Bedford was, and easily eclipsed the Christopher Plummer/Jonathan Miller staging which Stratford mounted some five years ago and toured to New York.

Bedford has given us a traditional (if somewhat creatively edited) and strikingly straightforward Lear - and the results are always gripping, and at times staggering. In fact, this is the best Lear I've ever seen (although that call may change after I catch Sir Ian at BAM later this year, in a production which crosses the pond to very positive buzz). Bedford's own performance is not perfect; he doesn't quite bring off the shattering finale - and even, unforgivably to some, leaves Cordelia's corpse to expire by himself, in a spotlight, of course. But this is the only slice of ham served by an actor who's been prone to far more generous helpings. For the remaining three hours, Bedford remains utterly disciplined, etching a portrait of a petulant, increasingly decrepit patriarch who realizes rather earlier than the average Lear, and with lacerating self-awareness, the depth and breadth of his folly.

But the production is never merely a setting for a star turn, whatever the local critics said. Bedford has surrounded himself with talent, and there are penetrating, spirited interpretations from Dion Johnstone (Edmund), Wayne Best (Cornwall), Wenna Shaw (Goneril), Wendy Robie (Regan), Scott Wentworth (Gloucester) and Gareth Potter (Edgar). I found myself particularly moved by Wentworth and Potter - in this Lear, more tears were shed during their encounters on the blasted heath than were spent at the finale. One last mention - at the performance I attended, Keith Dinicol had to step in for Bernard Hopkins as the Fool, and acquitted himself admirably.

I'd urge any Bardolator like myself to make the trek to catch this version - but of course it's a long way to go for a single show; what else should you see at the Festival if you do decide to book that flight? What my friends and I found worthiest were Richard Monette's intelligent (if, again, traditional) An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde (at left), and a worthy attempt to put over Albee's A Delicate Balance (featuring a Tony-worthy performance from Fiona Reid), which rewardingly scaled the first two acts, but lost ground in the inferior third. Elsewhere, Richard Rose directed a Merchant of Venice that was studded with intriguing ideas, but hobbled by a listless Antonio and a lackluster Shylock (and some of the worst costume designs to ever traverse the Stratford stage). Of the musicals, we found My One and Only far superior to Oklahoma, and can recommend the reliable Seana McKenna's solo rumination on Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's Will. Shows not seen by my merry band, but enjoying a positive (i.e., often sold-out) response, include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead and Of Mice and Men - but we feel compelled to dissuade all comers from either The Comedy of Errors or Othello. Now get thee to Canada - if only for a sample of what a real theatrical culture feels like.