Stage Review: "Mamma Mia!" is silly effervescence, with heart, too

Maybe I'm getting soft, or maybe it was the general euphoria of the day after the election, but I had a lot of fun at Wednesday's opening of a shortened visit by the tour of the ABBA musical, "Mamma Mia!"

It's actually a full week of eight performances, but the Cultural Trust and the tour opted to forego the usual Tuesday night opening, so as not to compete with our larger national drama. Instead they added a Thursday matinee. (As of Wednesday night, that added matinee was the only performance that wasn't selling at the 90 percent level "Mamma Mia" expects, but I'd say it was still the right choice.)

I was hardly alone Wednesday in my happy response to this silly, engaging musical, bedecked as it is with the bubblegum '70s bounce of the ABBA songbook: Even as the show passed the 2½-hour mark, the dominantly-female audience of young and old was on its feet, clapping along and welcoming yet another encore. There wasn't the mass dancing in the aisles "Mamma Mia!" used to get, but this was the Pittsburgh equivalent -- and you don't usually get such an enthusiastic response to a fourth visit.

Even though the tour was previously here in 2002, 2004 and 2006, it doesn't feel at all old, tired or robotic. Mainly, it feels fresh, without which, of course, such silly froth could easily curdle.

The story, as you probably know, finds Sophie about to marry Sky on the Greek island where her single mother, Donna, runs a hotel and taverna. Sophie secretly invites her mother's three lovers from 21 years earlier, determined to find out which is her father. Meanwhile, Donna invites Tanya and Rosie, with whom she once formed an ABBA-like singing group, complete with garish costumes. You probably know all this from the movie, which I haven't seen yet, though I hear the performances vary a good deal.

Throw in a gaggle of Sophie's young friends and Donna's young taverna staff and you have a bright, bouncy company of some 26, filling the simple set with song and dance. There don't actually seem to be any Greeks on this island, or any tourists, either, except for the wedding party, but hey, it's a musical.

The numbers rarely feel starry, except for Donna's. Instead, just about every song builds gradually into an ensemble number, even the solos or duets where the ensemble chimes in from offstage, swelling the sound.

The show is really about the music, wave after wave of cheery, effervescent pop. It's almost dangerously insidious -- "Dancing Queen" has camped out between my ears, with occasional surges by other songs that seem like more of the same -- but it certainly does engender good feeling. Or maybe on this night, the score just sounded better than ever because of the obvious high spirits of the audience.

The printed program doesn't declare it to be an Equity company, so I was surprised (and even worried) at how good it is. But it turns out it is indeed a full Equity tour, as its quality argues it must be.

Susie McMonagle's Donna is sympathetic and then radiant as the worried, resentful mother who recovers her art and her heart, as well. Rose Sezniak's Sophie feels Valley Girl superficial, though she deepens some as the show goes on. Michele Dawson and Kittra Wynn Coomer get the outsize humor of Donna's two friends, and John Hemphill, Michael Aaron Lindner and Martin Kildare are fine as the three emissaries from Donna's past.

OK, OK, I know, it's not Shakespeare.

But in a way, it is. "Mamma Mia" is certainly not as mindless as it pretends.

As I've said before, I don't understand why it's been knocked for having a sappy book. The book's actually very canny, as it would have to be to incorporate all those pre-existing ABBA songs. But more than that, it has a satisfying, archetypal structure, very much like Shakespearean comedy. I'm thinking mainly of "Midsummer Night's Dream," which also takes place at a time and in a place of attitude-changing, topsy-turvy revelry. But it also has the deeper search for true parentage and lasting relationship at the heart of "All's Well" and "As You Like It."

 Mainly, though, it's just fun. 

At Benedum Center, Downtown. Runs Thurs. 1 and 7:30 p.m.; Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $25.50-$66.50; 412-456-6666.

 Post-Gazette theater critic Christopher Rawson can be reached at 412-263-1666 or crawson@post-gazette.com.  

Stage Review: Capitol Steps' 'Electile Dysfunction' rewards healthy irreverence

You might think Pittsburghers have had their fill of battleground state politics the past few months, but not the happy throng that packed the Byham Sunday afternoon for those serenading satirists, Capitol Steps, providing a jam-packed 100 minutes of political humor.

In fact, the vociferous glee with which the audience responded to caricatures of the major players in the presidential race probably does express some exasperation. They've been haranguing us a lot, so it was invigorating to be able to laugh back at them. And of course the seriousness of the underlying issues means we have to let off steam somehow.

Me, I come at this from a slightly different angle. Not of partisanship -- if you can tell from the relative degrees of Sunday's hilarity, I'd say my political preference was in line with a majority of the audience -- but as a long-time teacher of satire at Pitt and a fellow practitioner of the onstage satiric arts.

As native Pittsburgh theatrical guru George S. Kaufman once said, topical satire has a very short shelf life. My own contribution is to produce the annual "Off the Record," which could be described as a Pittsburgh version of Capitol Steps, albeit with a cast of two dozen and a storyline. So for eight years I've seen the Byham bubbling with that same irreverent glee (oddly enough, I was also sitting in my usual seat), and I know just how hard it is to get comedy, caricature, lampoon, spoof and occasionally satire itself to lift off into delight.

These guys are good, starting with the clever title of this edition, "Electile Dysfunction." It did take me longer than much of the audience to get into it, because their revue format -- one discrete number following another briskly -- doesn't have much thematic coherence or cumulative build. A lot of the early stuff seemed pretty predictable. And maybe I had a touch of "show-me" attitude.

But gradually I melted before the skill of the five performers, especially the men (the Sarah Palin wasn't very good, for one -- how can you not do a great Sarah Palin?). The two numbers that really sent me over the edge into helpless laughter were the most tried and true, a clever, gagging-for-air funny adaptation of that dependable old standby, "Who's on First," and a brilliant, tour-de-force essay in Spoonerisms.

If you don't remember, that's the kind of semi-nonsense talk where you transpose elements of adjacent words, usually by switching initial consonants, as in calling McCain "a grittle bit lumpy" or speaking of Palin's "spuzzle on her mouse." Our wonderful language is such that silly transpositions often sound vaguely irreverent or even obscene.

As to the songs, as in "Off the Record" the key to this sort of parodic writing is to find a title or phrase that easily converts. For example, how hard is it to conflate "Barack" and "The Leader of the Pack" into "A Leader Named Barack"?

Once you do that, the rest is easy: "Obamamia" ("Mamma Mia"), "FEMA" ("Fever"), "My 401K" (YMCA), "How You Solve a Problem Like Korea," "Mine every mountain, fill every stream," "The Sunni Side of the Street" and "Keep Us Alive, Keep Us Alive" sung by the four elderly moderates on the Supreme Court.

The Capitol Steps writers have a comforting fondness for Broadway standards. They are generally even-handed in their political jabs, as you'd expect. If the audience felt those in one direction were stronger than in another, well, beauty's not the only thing that resides in the eye of the beholder. In general, those jabs weren't vicious. Jonathan Swift wouldn't call it satire, just lampooning. But such objects of irreverence as Larry Craig ("knock three times on the tile if you want me") might disagree.

I really liked the "American Pie" (that's been outsourced to Shanghai) number, and the downsizing United Airlines sketch certainly brought back Brockett and Barbara doing their immortal Agony Airlines number. I'm sorry not to know which performer was which, but the spoonerism sketch and that charming reprobate Bill Clinton ("wherefore am I Romeo?) took the prize.

Irreverent caricature is a hallowed form of political participation, good for the democratic (small D) soul. Now go vote. 

Review: Elaine Stritch wows with her musical autobiography

Life isn't fair; neither is art. Who knew that "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," her one-time, one-woman show, done as a benefit for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre with a fairly pricey ticket, would be one of the great theater evenings of the year?

You might say that I did know, since I saw the same show six and a half years ago on Broadway and loved it. In fact, it's still so vivid, I was surprised to discover it was that long ago. And in last Wednesday's preview article (read it here), writing with the advantage of hindsight, I did say Pittsburgh was in for a treat.

But I was still blown away.

It has something to do with the intimacy of the Charity Randall Theater at Stephen Foster. And it has something to do with the audience, which was packed in (downstairs, anyway) and primed from the start, an audience that knew Stritch and lapped up every anecdote and devoured every song.

But mainly, it was Stritch herself. Perhaps she's even better now, having done the show not just on Broadway and in London's West End but intermittently on tour. Perhaps six years have added depth and resonance.

No, I don't really believe that. But it sure hasn't lessened her onstage energy. That was a monster sacre that took the stage Saturday, all the more astonishing for coming on so simply, wearing just black tights and a white blouse, lugging her own stool.

I remembered the show's many highlights, but I'd forgotten how packed it is with memories, stories and names. You could almost accuse her of name-dropping, but if so, it's name-dropping raised to a higher power, because every famous name comes with a full-fledged anecdote or triggers remembrance of a whole slice of her eventful life in show biz.

Her favorite device is to use a famous song, like her opening, "There's No Business Like Show Business," as the framework for extensive reminiscence. There are several more of these set pieces -- "A Talent to Amuse," "I'm Still Here," "It's the Little Things You Do Together" and her show-stopping (no, more than that, a show in itself) "The Ladies Who Lunch."

The show is well-written and packed with detail, nothing slapdash or random about it, as the collaboration of writer John Lahr insures. At just over 2½ hours, it gives more than full value. (For fuller detail, you can read my original Broadway review here.)

Stritch was accompanied by music director Rob Bowman on piano with a five-man combo, locally recruited, that I could almost call an orchestra, it had that full a sound. The lighting was especially good.

In person, Stritch is known to be an acerbic, demanding handful. You may remember her pugnacious Tony Award appearance in 2002. (I was there, in the press room: you can read my account here.) And I've been hearing stories about how brusque she was on this visit.

But on stage, she deserves all the adulation she gets. For many years, my rule about standing ovations has been, "only for Laurence Olivier or Ted Williams, and both are dead."

I stood for Stritch.

Review: Peter Reder takes us on a museum tour for PIFOF

The familiar made new -- that's one of the aims of art, right? Of course, it's also an aim of lectures, tours, panel discussions, therapy, newspaper articles (even reviews) or other expressions of fact and opinion.

So what to make of Peter Reder's modest, mild-mannered, gently subversive "Guided Tour," part of PIFOF 2008? (That's the Pittsburgh International Festival Of Firsts.) When is a guided tour really a performance, or even art?

Maybe always, I'd say just now, fresh from the gently dislocating experience that Reder offers in his wry, self-deprecating, counter-donnish way. If you invoke the right perspective, maybe every behavior becomes a form of performance. Maybe it already is, whether you know it or not.

Actually, there's no maybe about it. What Reder does is make a familiar activity (a guided tour, a strolling lecture) freshly self-conscious: "We're starting now," he says. "I'm starting. . . . I've started. . . . I'm pretending to know everything and you'll be pretending to be interested." His compact performance skitters along in the borderland between the thing itself and its parody, setting off small explosions of fresh awareness as we both accept and question what he says and does.

Reder's site is the Carnegie Museum. We gather in the lobby and then follow him through a couple of galleries, including the Hall of Architecture, where he pleasantly destabilizes our concept of "museum" by pointing out its own performative, theme-park function. It's a small leap to Marie Antoinette, no more an exploiter of the work of others than we, as we consume the treasures of such an imperial museum, heedless of their cost.

Reder makes a pleasant, unremarkable appearance -- wry, owlish and balding. He introduces Walter Benjamin's concept of the Angel of History, looking backward as the debris of the immediate past keeps piling higher. It's comic but also melancholy, reminding me of that Wim Wenders film, "Wings of Desire." Reder points out some melancholy angels in both sculpture and image. 

We ascend the grand staircase, hearing about Andrew Carnegie and the banality and power of those World War I-era murals, all sweaty men down below and bare-breasted, inspiring women up above. Reder speculates with apparent diffidence on Carnegie's demons. He brings out some precious photos, supposedly from other museums, but he barely lets us see them, lest our gaze use them up.

We sit down around a table in a conservator's work space and watch slides from Reder's youth, or maybe just versions of that youth, while he insists on turning his memories into story and even archeology. But what's the difference? Some of it's LOL funny; some of it could be, if we were sure what it is; some of it is simply smart commentary, not a bad thing in itself. Maybe we are part of the joke, if we've come for entertainment and get education instead.

We follow Reder onto a freight elevator: being backstage at the Carnegie after hours is a treat in itself, with its own disorienting energy, undermining the authority with which the museum normally presents itself.

Finally, we watch a movie in which Reder's mother says she has become the Angel of History. Or is that just his "mother," whether played by the real thing or an actress? (How could we tell? Yet we want to assume simple transparency rather than ironic distance.) Whatever she is, the debris of the immediate past certainly does pile up, on film as well as all around us in life -- after all, we're in a museum and isn't the world a museum, too?

In just over an hour, we're set free, the doors of our perceptions opened a bit farther than they were to start. No, I don't think it's theater, but it entertains and challenges us as theater should. So I guess it is.

There are just two "Guided Tours" left (note how even the capital letters suggest wry distance), at 7 and 9:30 tonight (Wed.). Doubtless they're already booked to what I was told is the limit of 20, but there were 30 of us on Monday. Maybe you could just lurk in the hallway and slip into Reder's traveling pack.

Kyle Bostian in 'Sex, Drugs and Spiritual Enlightenment'

Woke up late today, somewhat hung-over (emotionally, I mean) from last night's "Off the Record" and the cast party that went on past 2 a.m. -- but to tell the truth, the big fat cigar I smoked probably had more to do with my late morning haze. I always light up one of those big Producer's Stogies right after I make my maudlin mid-party speech of thanks to the cast. Isn't this what they do in all those old movies about Broadway, while they're waiting at Sardi's or somewhere for the reviews? In our case, there wouldn't be any reviews -- I can't review my own show, the other papers aren't interested in a one-night event that has Post-Gazette affiliations . . . and anyway, it's all off the record.

As producer, my judgment is bound to be partial (in both senses), but it seems to me to have been a big success. Anybody who stayed home to watch the Veep Debate missed out on a lot of fun. I'm intending to write a full report on what you missed in the next day or two, complete with pictures, if cast members will send me some.

But right now it's more pressing that I report on Kyle Bostian's one-man confessional monologue that I just saw tonight, because it has just one performance to go, Saturday at 8 p.m. That's at Bricolage, 937 Liberty Ave., Cultural District.

So that's what I'm doing right now: writing that report. I expect to have it up in this space by 2 a.m.

Theater critic is a 24x7 job  

Baker Street, dummie! And 'Off the Record'

It's actually encouraging to find my email full this morning with corrections -- some gleeful, but many mildly supportive, as of some doddering uncle who isn't responsible for what he says -- of my blooper in this morning's review of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," where I gave Sherlock Holmes' address as 221B Wimpole Street. For the record, that's Baker Street.

But what's encouraging is that this shows the theater page has readers. There've been so many dire reports on the parlous state of the American newspaper business, it's good to hear you breathing out there. I could almost pretend that I made the mistake on purpose, to spark response, but that's nonsense, of course.

"What can you have been thinking?," my more supportive minders ask. Well, since you do ask, I've been a bit frazzled the past few weeks, what with a second full-time job to contend with, producing tonight's "Off the Record." That's not an excuse for the error: just a way to give the show one more plug.

It should be a hoot. Last night's tech rehearsal at the Byham had its usual ups and downs, so we know tonight's real performance is going to be good. This is all according to the law propounded most memorably by this exchange between Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson) in Tom Stoppard's great filmscript for "Shakespeare in Love":

HENSLOWE: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
FENNYMAN: So what do we do?
HENSLOWE: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
FENNYMAN: How?
HENSLOWE: I don't know. It's a mystery.

From their lips to Thespis' ear!

No, seriously, "Off the Record VIII: When Robots Rule!," might be just what the doctor ordered -- one thing Pittsburgh always does is offer of plenty of material for satire. And however the production goes, it can't go far wrong with Chuck Aber and David Flick in the leads and the chief supporting female character parts played by Christine Laitta (Hillary, no other name needed), Karen Prunczik (Mary Beth -- Buchanan, in case you haven't been paying attention), Laurie Klatscher (Heather -- Bresh, that WVU MBA business, remember?) and Sheila McKenna (Sophie -- but this time, it's really SOPH-E).

Check it out. The show is at 8 p.m. at the Byham, and there are tickets available at the door. The lobby opens at 6:30 with free munchies and a cash bar, and the party continues there after the show.

What, you think you're better off staying home to watch (a) the debate, (b) the baseball playoffs (go Red Sox!) or (c) Pitt football? Nonsense! If anything, "Off the Record" offers itself up as your good reason NOT to watch the debate, which you're going to hear about endlessly afterward, anyway. And your VCR has a record button, doesn't it? In fact, the debate will be repeated later, on (I think) C-SPAN. Further, we just might have a certain lady governor from up north make an appearance in our show, too.

Mainly, it all raises money for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which has never needed support more than now. If you come, say hi to me and I'll apologize again about the Wimpole/Baker Street mixup.

Shaw Festival finale: Sondheim in Sweden, farewell to NOTL

Saturday morning, Sept, 13, 2008

What a day yesterday was! It may have started with missing a golf game, but it got better and better.

I said I was excited and trepidatious about "A Little Night Music" -- that was because I love it so. You don't think of musicals when you think of the Shaw, and I didn't know how it would be to see "Night Music" in the super intimate Court House Theatre. On the other hand, it's not a dancing show -- it rewards nuanced acting, and it is right in the company's accustomed period.

So I needn't have worried: the Shaw pretty much nails it. Some of the individual performances aren't world class, but most are very good, and the musical showed itself to be as wonderful as ever. Both good acting and nuance benefit from that intimacy. The staging makes very clever use of the liebeslieder quintet as combination narrators and stage managers, with something of the officious attitude of Puck from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The postcard-sized stage even seemed to expand through the use of stylized trees on rollers, continually reshaping the space.

"Night Music" is actually based on Ingmar Bergman's one movie comedy, "Smiles of a Summer Night," which itself owes a debt to Shakespeare. Much of my love of the musical goes back to the movie, which is so tart-sweet romantic and wry. And Sondheim's score is a triumph of varied three-quarter time rhythms, all based on the waltz and other period dances. What a treat.

We followed that with another, when I and a portion of the group set off to Peller Estates, one of the big vineyards just outside town, for a sumptuous dinner. We didn't take full advantage of the vintages -- after all, there was another play ahead at night -- but we sure enjoyed the food.

Then back to Githa Sowerby's "The Stepmother" (1924), one of the Shaw's rediscoveries, a text staged briefly in London when new and apparently never since, anywhere. It's a dour tale of a governess married for her money and then abused financially and emotionally by her husband, all the while she is standing by her two step-daughters, protecting them against the shortcomings of their father. In other words, this is a very different stepmother from the wicked witches of folklore and "Cinderella."

Written and set, as the Shaw's typically useful and informative program points out, in the melancholy aftermath of World War I, the play is most obviously about the subservience of women to their husbands, from whom they then had very little protection legally and even less emotionally. I can't say it's an undiscovered masterpiece, not when measured against Chekhov or Shaw, but it certainly fit into this season's informal Shaw dramatic seminar on money and gender, marriage and social class.

For me, the day ended at Butler's Sports Bar, the company's other, rougher hangout, outside the town's tourist center, to listen to Nicole Underhay's group, The Done Me Wrongs. It's an eclectic five- or six-piece (depending) country-western-folk-art ensemble, with an artful fiddle providing an extra dimension. A boisterous evening ended with some of the company dancing with happy abandon.

Now, it's early Saturday morning. We'll be getting on our bus at 9:30, stopping at Greaves to pick up the boxes of jams and condiments group members have bought, and heading back to Pittsburgh via the duty free shop at the border, where we'll stock up on other comestibles.

I started today with a very early walk down Queen Street, soft in the early mist, with the only company being trash collectors, occasional early shopkeepers and the workers who perpetually water the elaborate flower beds and hanging flower baskets that make NOTL such an Eden. The one shop that was open early was Taylor's, where I stocked up on a variety of muffins and sweets, including Chelsea buns, empire biscuits and English egg custard tarts -- all of them a pretty fair visual, flavorful and anglophilic representation of NOTL itself.

Those calories will fade in time. But the intellectual images of the plays will continue to stir and bubble. And I'll never get that insidious Sondheim score out of my head, not until another one equally insidious comes along.

Shaw Festival 3: Mrs. Warren, Nicole Underhay, Buddy Norden

Friday morning, Sept, 12, 2008

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -

This morning I rolled over in my very comfortable room at the Prince of Wales, looked at the rain pattering down, and went right back to sleep -- which is amazing, because I was missing my tee-time at the NOTL Golf Club. In yesterday's gorgeous weather I'd assured myself it would take more than a little rain to keep me off the nice little 9-hole course along Lake Ontario, but when push came to shove I failed the test.

Of course I was coming off a very long day. The third show yesterday was Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession," on the big Festival Theatre stage, and it was a work-out. I've seen it several times before, but it's never before felt so close to tragedy. One of Shaw's earliest plays in his Ibsensite mode -- one of his "Plays Unpleasant," as he called them -- it couldn't even be produced for many years, because, of course, Mrs. Warren's profession is prostitution. She is manager and part owner of a string of brothels in foreign cities, and the play is all about the revelation of this to her intellectual middle-class daughter, just graduated from university, who has been protected from any knowledge of the source of her mother's money.

In fact, the daughter doesn't know much about her mother in any way, since she's mainly been raised by others. The play turns on two great scenes: first, the revelation, when the daughter comes to understand the struggle her mother has had in the world and to appreciate her for the first time, and then, after the further revelation that Mrs. Warren is still actively involved in the business, when the daughter rejects all her support, setting out on her own.

As you can imagine, the subject gives Shaw plenty of occasion to rail about the inequities faced by women, such that you are almost ready to cheer for Mrs. Warren's success. The hypocrisies of the male world that condemns her entrepreneurship but patronizes her services are made clear enough. But Shaw focuses on the ugly alternatives lower-class women face, leaving the business side of the story abstract, avoiding the cruel exploitation it involves. He doesn't really address prostition itself, at all.

The social/moral content is pungent enough, stirring ambivalent response. But the heart of the play is the mother-daighter relationship. I've seen it several times, but I've always seen the title character played with a confident elegance, which sharpens the shock of her revelation but cushions it, too. At the Shaw, though, Mrs. Warren is played by Mary Haney as a tough survivor of the streets. She comes from an entirely different world than her daughter, making their eventual rupture even more painful. In this production, the personal tragedy overwhelms the bracing debate about societal hypocrisy.

After the play the PG tour group returned to a private dining room at the Prince to share a drink and discuss what we'd seen so far. At these gatherings it's up to me to present my first thoughts about the plays, but what I really look forward to is hearing the responses of the group. Inevitably they cite aspects of the plays I haven't considered or even specific details I didn't notice. Every critic should have the advantage of such a focus group!

It was invigorating enough that when we broke up about midnight I was ready for more, so I went back to the Angel, and there I ran into Nicole Underhay, in town for her band's appearance the next day (tonight). She has plenty of friends here, having been a member of the Shaw company for several seasons. She took off this year to try some other things, which is why she was free to do "Salome" at PICT, and I think she may take off another year, since this one has sped by with plenty of options left unexplored.

Surprisingly, Nicole asked me about Lewis Norden, aka Buddy, the fine novelist who's long taught in the Pitt English Dept. She's been a fan of his for several years, having picked up one of his novels back home in Newfoundland and having sought out his books since. She even found one in an English-laguage bookstore in Korea. Or maybe I've got that backwards. Anyway, it was only after leaving Pittsburgh that she noticed in one of the books that he taught at Pitt. She particularly wants to know if his "Sharpshooter Blues" has been optioned for the movies -- the implication being that movies are one of the areas she wants to explore. So now I need to call Buddy and tell him his fans include a dimpled Canadian actress who feels a spiritual affinity for his work.

Nicole introduced me to a good friend, Nicola Correia-Damude -- Nicole and Nicola, blond and brunette -- who had been in the Stratford company before the Shaw. We talked about last summer's arms race, when Stratford, in its final year under Richard Monette, had appointed a successor triumvirate which began to make plans for 2008, offering actors contracts well ahead of the usual schedule. As a result, a few long-time Shaw actors ended up in Stratford, and the Shaw had to speed up its planning, too.

I gather things have quieted down a bit this year. But the Shaw's Jackie Maxwell has finalized her 2009 season and is negotiating with actors. That season will be announced this week or next. I'm still in this season, though. Today we see "A Little Night Music," which I love, so I'm excited and trepidatious, and "The Stepmother," about which I know nothing.

Shaw Festival 2: two plays, 9/11 and love and money

Thursday, Sept, 11, 2008

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -

As I was just saying, 9/11 had been on my mind, as it has been on this September Shaw Fest trip since 9/11/01. That year, the trip was set to leave on 9/12. (If you've heard this story before, my apologies.) During the uproar of that day at the PG, whenever I had a chance to think, I assumed that we would cancel - for one thing, the Canadian-U.S. border had been closed. But during the course of that afternoon, those who called our travel agency, Gulliver's, said they hoped we'd continue.

So we did -- I think only one person cancelled. The border had reopened. The line up of trucks as endless, but they had a lane just for buses and we had only about an hour wait. In NOTL, we have never been so welcome -- it seemed that every Canadian had a special fondness for Americans that weekend. Between plays, we watched the TV coverage unfold on both U.S. channels (Buffalo) and Canadian. And before a matinee, as I wrote the following week, then artistic director Christopher Newton "spoke eloquently about the essential connection between art and life and then led us in ‘O Canada,' ‘The Star-Spangled Banner' and a communal silence. As the tears flowed, the words of our national anthem have never before felt so right."

That memory returns every year at this time, especially when I'm here on 9/11, as I often am. Unfortunately, I slept late today (that all-nighter took its toll), so I never heard until it was over about an early-morning memorial service at the bell tower.

Instead, I started the day reading Robert Cushman's fine appreciation of Richard Monette in the National Post. I know Robert's work because he's one of the most thoughtful, scholarly Canadian theater critics, and I met him when I engaged him as a panelist on Canadian Shakespeare in 2006 when I organized an American Theatre Critics Association conference at Stratford and the Shaw. His feeling appreciation brought back Monette, whom I'd interviewed a couple of times. I especially enjoyed his casual irony, so lacking in any self-aggrandizement or pretension.

Today was my delight, a three-show day, starting with the Shaw's "lunchtime" special, a one-act play that almost every year turns out to be one of the hits of the season. In the past, I've always made it an optional extra, since not every theater-tripper is as gluttonous for theater as me. But this year I included Ferenc Molnar's "The President" ("The CELO" would be a better title) in the package and instead made the matinee ("The Little Foxes") the option, and the group couldn't have been happier.

I'd heard the previous night it was pee-in-your-pants funny, and when I told that to my wife this morning, she gave me the obvious advice: "pee beforehand." I'm glad I did. This is a slick a 59½-minute comedy as I've seen, in which a masterful business man completely remakes a scruffy young man into an ostentatiously fir husband for a rich young woman who's been in his charge - completely, from underwar to haircut, from employment to club memberships, from name to heritage. What a joy.

About "Little Foxes," I was less ecstatic. It ran into the two casting problems that you sometimes find in rep companies. Since they cast from a limited company pool, even one as large as it is here, they sometimes have to compromise. And since it's a rep company, they sometimes lack the starry individual you need for a great role.

In this case, that meant an actor too young and without the sympathetic gravitas (that faded Southern gothic quality) needed for Horace, the dying husband - when Stratford did it in 1996, Horace was played by Brian Bedford!) -- and another too old for the teenage daughter. And although competent, Laurie Paton never showed the incisive glamour and command that are needed for Regina, famously played over the years by the kind of actress who needs only one name, like Tallulah and Bette, or by Elizabeth Taylor or Martha Henry.

Of course Lillian Hellman's play bears up just fine, a sterling melodrama pitting voracious capitalism against fading southern gentility. As such, it fits right into the general theme of capitalism and morality that unites everything we're seeing -- especially with Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession" ahead of us tonight!

In fact, this morning I ran into a woman who has been on other PG theater trips - we always encounter other Pittsburghers at the Shaw, more than at Stratford - and I asked her if she were seeing "An Inspector Calls." No, she said, she'd seen that famous London production and didn't need another look at "that left-wing propaganda"! If she objects to the Biblical morality of "Inspector Calls," I expect much of the rest of the festival is making her uncomfortable, as well.

By the way, we've made it a rule on our trip not to talk politics, because of course we don't want to come to blows. But you know, it just keeps coming up anyway, indirectly. Art is like that - it just keeps commenting on real life, no matter what we do to stop it.

Northward into the Past: Shaw Festival, Richard Monette, 9/11

Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario --

This is the 27^th or 28^th consecutive September (did I start in 1981 or 1982?) that I've brought a theater tour to the Shaw Festival here in the heart of Canadian wine country, first under the banner of the Pitt Informal Program but for nearly 20 years under that of the Post-Gazette.

So there were a lot of memories this afternoon as our Butler Motor Coach rolled northward up the Niagara River Parkway from the Falls to NOTL, emerging from a last border of woods onto Queen's Parade, with 19^th century Fort George on the right and the brick stage house of the Festival Theatre rising above its trees on the left.

Past that, the road bends and becomes Picton Street, thick with flowers past the Prince of Wales Hotel, right to the start of the town proper where the road turns into Queen Street at the corner of King, just before the memorial bell tower. That Queen is the main street and King secondary is a tip-off that this is primarily a Victorian town. The Prince of Wales, most opulent (and, more to the point for elderly walkers, most centrally located) of the town's three large hotels, is Edwardian, its paneled, wainscoted, fabricked and embossed walls covered with glossy copies of period portraits.

There are 40 theater tourists on this year's 4-day PG Shaw Fest trip, which is a bit more than usual, but it's an easy group to lead, because more than half have been here with me before and the town is so compact no one needs much leading. This year's welcoming dinner was at Queen's Landing, the impressive hotel down by the little harbor where the Niagara River runs into Lake Ontario, just across from the American Fort Niagara.

Then on to the Festival Theatre for our first play, J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls," and there is little praise higher than this: logy as we were from our early morning departure from Pittsburgh, our long bus ride and a very good dinner, it held us firmly as the mysterious Inspector Goole (ghoul?) gradually stripped away the hypocrisies of the comfortably moneyed Birling family to prove that we are indeed all our brothers' keepers.

It held me, at least, which is even higher praise, since I'd pulled an all-nighter to finish the fall theater preview and a couple of other stories for tomorrow's PG. This is a play I know pretty well from previous productions at the Shaw and elsewhere, but mainly from that famous National Theatre production that ran for most of the 1990s in London and came to New York in 1994. I particularly liked the direction of this one, which pitches it between the realistic drawing room interrogation mode in which it was written and the Twilight Zone surrealism of Stephen Daldry's NT version.

So I was pleased to discover it was directed by the same Jim Mezon who was in Pittsburgh this summer to play Herod in Alan Stanford's richly eccentric "Salome" at PICT. I'd seen him perform for many years at the Shaw, but I'd never really spoken to him until he came to Pittsburgh. In hopes that he might be in town, after getting my group back to the sumptuous arms of the Prince, I went to the usual actors' hangout at the Angel.

Mezon is in town, I learned, so I hope to run into him in the next few days. Tonight, I talked with Benedict Campbell and Andrew Bunker, who play the Inspector and Eric Birling in "Inspector Calls." I learned that Nicole Underhay, who played Salome at PICT and performed her memorable dance of half a veil, is also in town, because her band, The Done Me Wrongs (self-described as an old-school country group doing "drinkin' and hurtin' songs, fueled by bourbon") is playing Friday after the evening shows.

Most of all, I learned that Richard Monette had just died. Before retiring at the end of the 2007 season, Monette had been artistic director for 14 years of the Stratford Festival (the Shaw's larger competitor). And before that he'd long been a leading actor at Stratford. Monette was theater royalty, here, like William Hutt who just died last year, but while Hutt was 87, Monette was just 64.

And tomorrow is Sept. 11.