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Venus and Adonis > Masque fit for a lesser king November 11, 2006

Toronto Masque Theatre gets an extra bit of credit for having its head and heart in the right place in a double bill devoted to the ancient Greek story of doomed love between Venus and Adonis.

The first half of the program blends Shakespeare’s raunchy verses with incidental music and dance. The second half presents the 320-year-old one-act opera by English composer John Blow (1649-1708). Not really an opera, it was a “masque for the entertainment of the king”, Charles II. The masque was opera’s predecessor, a night of theatrical revelry that included spoken word, music, dance and singing.

Toronto Masque Theatre tries to recreate this with a modern twist, led by violinist Larry Beckwith and a cadre of period-performance specialists. Masques, created for the royal court and the aristocracy, were lavish affairs, not something a small company can now hope to duplicate on a shoestring budget.

So do you produce a masque in a black box, or do you try to add what little visual ornamentation you can?

Beckwith and company opt for the latter, and this is their best-looking effort to date. But it still feels like a pauper’s parody of what happened last night at the new performance palace down the road.

Fortunately, the forces assembled on the Winchester Street Theatre’s stage last night were pretty good.

Actor Derek Boyes did a masterful job of reading Shakespeare, but the instrumentalists and dancer Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière felt under-used. This left the 40-minute presentation, set against black-and-white drawings projected on a big screen, feeling too static.

The eight-person cast and eight-person Baroque-period orchestra led by Beckwith were well balanced in Blow’s opera. The singers are all young (mostly under 30) local talents with promising futures. Most notable were sopranos Michele DeBoer as Cupid and Rachel Harwood-Jones as Venus. Baritone Andrew Mahon was a suitably sturdy Adonis.

At 50 minutes, the play was over soon enough, but the music dragged much of the time, starting with a less than enthusiastic-sounding Overture. Lacoursière, who also came up with the nicely assembled, colourful costumes, was in her element during the dance sequences. Caroline Guilbault’s projected sets suited the mood nicely, as did Gabriel Cropley’s lighting.

Toronto Masque Theatre is on the right track. We can only hope their future productions will keep getting more polished.

Toronto Masque Theatre. To Saturday at the Winchester Street Theatre, 80 Winchester St. 416-410-4561.

“Medea” incorporates sign language November 11, 2006

Theatre VCU’s bilingual “Medea” incorporates sign language.

Mary Vreeland stresses that she is someone who does not hear, not someone who cannot hear. “I believe there is great power in language,” the actress says through an interpreter. “Saying somebody ‘can’t’ do something automatically puts them at a lower status.”

Issues around status and power are clearly significant to Vreeland, and she will bring all of her passion about them to bear as the title character in the Greek tragedy “Medea” opening at Theatre VCU this weekend.

It is a play already rife with explosive personal and political relationships as the “barbarian” Medea is ultimately driven to kill her own children after being spurned by her husband. In a challenging move designed to intensify these interactions, this production will be bilingual, with American Sign Language (ASL) used concurrently with English. Though Vreeland will be the only deaf actor onstage, the entire cast learned ASL to enable this unique structure.

There is some obvious symbolism here: A Medea who communicates only through sign language reinforces the idea that women do not have a voice in society. But VCU guest director Heather Davies says that the play addresses more general questions about a society’s reaction to outsiders. “Some people are sympathetic to Medea but unskilled,” Davies explains. “Others are skilled but unsympathetic. Working with sign language allowed me to explore all of the variations.”

Davies has also incorporated drumming, original music and movement to make the production a truly eclectic mix. Vreeland, a second-year graduate student, calls her part “the role of a lifetime.” After appearing in several television shows in the 1980s, she taught for more than a dozen years in Rochester, N.Y. “This role has such depth and breadth and width,” Vreeland says. “Medea’s rage is constant, and every night I have to find new ways to work through her pain.”  

“Medea” is playing November 9-11 and 16-18 (Thursday-Saturday) at 7:30 p.m. and November 12 and 19 (Sunday) at 3 p.m. at VCU’s Raymond Hodges Theater on Park Avenue. Tickets are $5-$15. Call 828-6026 for details.