Bowing out

It was a first and final sort of evening.

I hadn't seen the National Arts Centre since before the completion of the extensive renovations in honour of the Canadian sesquicentennial, so I was eager to see it, especially after months of hiking around the outside of the building, entering the back down a temporary wooden staircase, and making our way back through the corridors and stairs - to say nothing of long trudges to the sole ladies' washroom on the main floor to join line-ups comprised of three different audiences from the Studio, the Theatre, and Southam Hall during intermission.

Well, they were trying to improve on a Brutalist building from the mid-1960s, so the new and improved NAC looks like a 1960's airport lounge. Even the washrooms - very efficient, although a challenge to find the towel dispensers - are like airport washrooms, long double rows.

We were determined to see this concert, because it was Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, followed by Appalachian Spring, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: in short, a dream concert, and likely my final NAC show.

We were in the second row of the amphitheatre, due to not renewing our subscriptions, after years of being in the orchestra section near the front. The biggest difference was being able to see beyond the first row of the actual orchestra.

As the Fanfare started up with the crashing drums and cymbals knocking us back in our seats, I noticed, with a thrill of joy, how many women were in the orchestra. Out of three trumpets, two were women; three out of four French horns were female musicians. I remembered a girl in my junior high band playing baritone horn, and getting featured in a local paper because this was so unusual.

The percussionists were all male, of course; that never seems to change. I saw the man in charge of the gong backing into it to mute it, before reaching behind to strike it again.

Then, Appalachian Spring, with the single mellow clarinet. So beautiful.
I focused my binoculars on individual musicians and, toward the end, found the face of a lovely young woman listening, her cheek against the frets of her viola.

It took me a moment or so to realize who she was.

At the interval, I checked my programme. It was the Russian Prodigy, on an internship to the NACO. She must be beginning her Third Year of her degree.

This left me struggling with ungracious feelings throughout Beethoven's paean to the human spirit.

Oh gawd. Do mothers ever forget or forgive those who have been less than kind to their offspring?

I forced myself back to the music.

The second movement of the Ninth has always reminded me of a bustling Victoria (as in 19th century, not the city) household in the morning, with a bossy paterfamilias. Actively avoiding looking at the RP, I trained my binoculars on the kettle drummer, who is required to provide odd accents and rumbling. I could see his lips move as he counted and counted, poised to spring.

During the third movement - which, ever since I was a little girl, I've envisioned as a forest stream in the moonlight - I watched the grimly grey chorus waiting in stillness on their risers and the woodwind section, willing myself not to look below where the Russian Prodigy plucked and bowed, front and centre. As my imprisonment in Hades glided to an end, the past seventeen years kept cycling back to haunt me.
During the final movement, the chorus blossomed from shadowy sullenness into individuals, coming alive behind the youthful, smiling, and flashily-dressed soloists. I noticed two women in tuxedos amongst the tenors, saw passion and concentration.

When the bows came, the audience whooped extra loud for the chorus. I don't think it was just because of numerous friends and family attending.

Kind hearts and coronados

I'd worked out the bus I needed, but I misplaced my glasses and left the house late. The bus that eventually trundled along had the correct number on it, and it practically wafted to a halt. The fellow wasn't driving particularly slow, but we stopped at all the stops, and each time, he carefully docked at the curb like a ferry boat.

By the time we reached the Rideau Centre, I was getting a little antsy and groaned inwardly when I realized it was a change-over, because the departing driver needs to pack up his stuff, and have a chat with the arriving driver, who then has to adjust his seat several times and recheck the mirror.

While this ritual was going on, a woman boarded the bus with her toddler, and loudly inquired, "CORONADO??" Both drivers regarded her with mild incomprehension. She began talking rapidly, both to them and to her cell-phone, repeating, "Coronado? CORONADO???" Meanwhile, the long line-up of would-be passengers began squeezing past her and stepping over the waiting toddler.

A young family ahead of me conferred across the aisle, and the mum headed up to the front, while the dad sternly indicated to the little boy sharing her seat that he must stay put. Another woman grinned at me; I must have been looking perplexed. "She's on the wrong side of the street," she explained. "She needs to go on the other #7."

And as the young mum returned to her seat, the Coronado lady disembarked, toddler in tow, and we could finally leave -- hitting every single stop light.

By the time I ran into the National Arts Centre from the Elgin Street entrance, I had less than ten minutes to make it through the whole complex to the Studio theatre on the far side, and this year, the complex is more complex than usual, due to renovations. Finding my usual way blocked, I hurried back upstairs and slipped through the lounges of Southam Hall, race-walking past the main theatre, and joining the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter waiting for the matinée performance of Concord Floral.

Younger daughter was methodically reading through the cast list. I should have done the same; it might have helped.

The title itself is a bit of a riddle. I gathered through the course of the play that it was the name of the abandoned greenhouse that is a clandestine meeting place for suburban teens. Although we're told that the teenaged characters live in a neighbourhood bounded on one side by the Queensway (27-year-old playwright Jordan Tannahill grew up in Orleans, the eastern Ottawa neighbourhood bisected by the Queensway highway), Concord is a neighbourhood in the southern end of the township of Vaughn, just north of York University in Greater Toronto. On the Google Maps Satellite view, there is a huge rectangle of discoloured and patchy grass just north of where Highway 7 and Highway 407 wind by, which, I suppose, is where the greenhouse used to be, and will soon be the site of - no surprises here - condominiums. The production we were seeing had been re-set in Ottawa.

What followed was part supernatural chiller, part urban myth, part extended metaphor, and apparently, loosely based on the Decameron. Directors' notes and reviews all stressed the vital importance of having real teenagers perform, and the cast consisted of ten 16-to-19-year-olds, all local high school students except for two, who are studying drama at the University of Ottawa.

The trouble with young performers is that few of them have the skills to project and enunciate. These young actors were all miked, and performing in the Studio Theatre, which is a relatively small space, yet the only performers I could hear consistently were the two now studying theatre at U. of O. I'm all for authenticity, and certainly, these budding actors were convincing, but the authenticity also involved the rapid speech and dropped voices of adolescence -- which meant I sometimes missed key remarks.

I did manage to follow the story -- sort of. It consists of small scenes and narrations - including the viewpoints of a fox, a bird, a couch, and the greenhouse. Fortunately for me, the "greenhouse" narrator was one of the clear speakers. One of the most confusing elements is a lengthy stare-down when the cast lines up at the edge of the performance area and eyeballs the audience for what seems like an eternity. At the performance we attended, an audience member eventually started clapping in the apparent belief the show had ended. Maybe this happens every time; maybe it's the signal to continue. I found it a bit precious and baffling.



At the very end, the "greenhouse" quotes Susan Sontag, saying that ten percent of the population will embrace cruelty, ten percent of the population will embrace mercy, and the other eighty percent could go either way, and that this was a cause for hope. Commendable, but oddly unconnected with what had just gone on. I left the theatre feeling mildly irritated, but not sorry that I'd come.

The trip home on the #7 was so uneventful that I forgot to look out to see if I could see where Corona Street was.

First world problems

I have discovered that, nine times out of ten, if I don't want to go out in the evening, I'll usually have a good time if I do.

This was certainly the case last night.  We'd been out Friday night and I longed to stay home and watch telly Saturday night.  First world problem, I know.

I dragged myself out to see Nathalie McMaster perform a Christmas concert with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.  I was so glad we went.

The NACO, for one thing, performed a number of lovely Christmas medleys and carol settings.  Among these was James M Stephenson's Holiday Fanfare Medley #1 which featured, wonder of wonders, a carol I've never heard before:  "Come, All Ye Shepherds" which originates from Czechoslovakia. 

They also played Appalachian Carol, arranged by Dan Goeller, which sounds for all the world like a mini-version of Copland's Appalachian Spring.  The following video features liturgical dancing - not my favourite thing, but it gets the women up to the front of the church to light two candles for the Second Sunday in Advent. 

To be clear, there was no liturgical dancing at our concert.  There was a lot of spectacular step-dancing and fiddling.

Nathalie McMaster is a world-class fiddler from Cape Breton who is raising six world-class fiddlers and step-dancers with her husband Donnell Leahy (another world-class fiddler) at Douru, Ontario, which is about a four-hour drive from Hades.  Two of her small daughters joined her on stage to perform - last spring we saw a gaggle of Leahy kids, cousins and what-have-you perform with the NACO, it's very much a family thing.

This video will give you an idea of what much of the evening was like.  Just imagine it cranked up a notch or three; our concert was McMaster's last performance before Christmas and she pulled out all the stops, all evening.  Tip:  things really kick off at about the five-minute mark.

We had been disappointed when Stuart Mclean cancelled his annual Vinyl Cafe Christmas concert to begin treatment for melanoma, another first world problem.  (The disappointment over the missed concert, not the melanoma.) Last night just might tide us over.

'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word

So, CBC Music posted a link on my Facebook wall from their "archives", because I've "liked" them. (Because I do.)

This is an a cappella group from Finland called Rajaton and while I listened to this simply magnificent version of "Under Pressure", I had to find out whose these people were, and when Googling, the National Arts Centre came up. That's when I decided to check our tickets for this season.


We get to see Rajaton performing a concert of songs by Queen in the new year!

Things are looking up.

And Christmas is definitely coming. Talk about "under pressure"...

A kind of December

Kate Hennig and Paul Rainville
Photo: Andrew Alexander

At the end of the first scene of The December Man, I thought to myself: Oh gawd. I read the review. I forgot that it's backwards. We had just seen a tableau of quiet despair, and lost all hope of anything getting better.

In the late 1970s, Harold Pinter wrote a very famous play called Betrayal, which follows the course of a doomed love affair, but in reverse chronology. The effect is devastating. With each scene, the narrative takes a step back in time and audience knows what's coming. As a result, the last scene, which begins with the seduction, lacks any thrill or eroticism because we've just witnessed the resulting heartbreak.

However, The December Man cranks up the agony several more notches, because it is about the aftermath of a mass murder.

Six years ago, I wrote a post about the École Polytechnique de Montréal massacre, a watershed moment in Canadian history when a man with a rifle entered an engineering class on an early December evening in 1989, told the men to leave and shot the nine remaining women, killing six of them. By the time he shot himself, he had murdered eight more women, and wounded ten women and four men. I was frantic because wounded people are never named in news reports and several of my male Québecois ESL summer students were studying at L'École Polytechnique in the winter. There were no emails, text, or web sites in 1989, so I had to fire off letters. It turned out all my former students were safe and none had been present at the shootings. It was clear though, that nothing would ever be the same, not for those who never dreamed of such a thing happening in Canada, not for the families of the slain women, not for the wounded students, nor for the men who were forced to leave the classroom, and heard the shots and screams.

The "December Man" is a fictional student named Jean, an only child who lives with his working class parents and is their pride, joy, and hope. He is one of the male engineering students in that classroom, and in inexorable reverse order, his breakdown, and those of his parents is played out. The story would have been difficult to watch from start to finish. From finish to start, it's almost unbearable.

Ottawa audiences, it seems, will give standing ovations for any competent performance. Maybe it's a desire to be fair, or to be liked, or to justify the money spent on the tickets. This time, the performances of the three actors (Kayvon Kelly as Jean; Kate Hennig and Paul Rainville as his parents) achieving a portrayal of decent people doing their best and falling short - and managing to do this in reverse order, no less - warranted everyone rising to their feet, applauding while struggling with a 26-year-old tragedy that many of us still remember, and the fresher impressions of recent horrors.

Over the pop

I've never been much of a fan of epic movies. I find them a bit overblown, lacking in levity, and too damn long.

However, younger daughter loves movies and music, and especially movie-music, so we had tickets for a National Arts Centre Orchestra pop concert celebrating the theme music of about fifteen larger-than-life films. I'd seen about five of them, including Titanic, which isn't my favourite movie - there are too many moments when I want to hurl things at the screen - but which had wonderful art direction and, let's face it, a beautiful score by James Horner. This isn't quite what we heard. We didn't have a soprano soloist, got some other incidental music as well, and, alas, were subjected to a full-throated choral rendering of "My Heart Will Go On".

The rest of the concert was just as beautifully performed, but epic movie themes, much like the movies they accompany, are a much of a muchness. As the woman behind me in the line-up for the ladies' room put it at intermission, lots of ooohing and ahhhing from the choir.

The same couldn't be said of the concert's opening.

We have a subscription to Pops, again, due to younger daughter's love of jazz, pop, and movies, so we're familiar with the Pops Principal Conductor Jack Everly and knew something was different the moment he walked onstage. Usually spritely and jovial, he now said a few quiet words about Paris, then turned to the orchestra and combined choirs behind him.

"Here we go; I've been expecting this," said the Resident Fan Boy, quickly rising. I hurriedly joined him because if it's one thing I know, it's that you get to your feet if you can when a national anthem is playing. I don't have a video of the NACO playing the Marseillaise, nor of the Ottawa Choral Society and the Ottawa Festival chorus singing it, but it sounded pretty splendid. Almost epic.

Through a glass (with liquorice)

We've had an autumn chockfull of theatre this year - mainly because most of the plays we wanted to see this season at the National Arts Centre and the Great Canadian Theatre Company were on between October and December.

Winter starts next week (all evidence to the contrary - as usual, we've had an early start in Hades) and will be full of concerts, thank heavens, but we're finishing our own theatre season with NAC English Theatre production of Alice Through the Looking Glass which has been imported from the Stratford (as in Ontario) Festival, and performed by this year's repertory players of the National Arts Centre English Theatre.  We had already seen some of these delightful actors in an October production of The Importance of Being Earnest (and there were a few returns from last year's company).

I had an inkling we were in for an intriguing afternoon when the Resident Fan Boy explained to younger daughter that the backwards writing on the curtain was on a backdrop showing a hazy reflection of the NAC Theatre.  This made me look, and I noticed that the real table with chess pieces and the real armchair positioned at the edge of the stage were also reflected - in paint, on the drop curtain - like in an uneven mirror, a trompe-lœl.

Now, such attention to detail doesn't guarantee a good show. Consider the lacklustre live television version of Peter Pan which aired on NBC last week -- beautiful design, odd choices in casting and direction.  However, as this show began, I was immediately beguiled by the looking glass in the drawing room, before realizing that the props held up to it were not reflections. I didn't catch on to this until Alice climbed up on to the mantelpiece and another Alice climbed up in perfect replication.

In fact, it was a stage full of Alices who didn't hold hold still long enough to be counted until the second act.  There were at least thirteen "anti-Alices" who had brown wigs and blue frocks with white prints to create a photo-negative image of Alice - no matter their build, complexion or sex.  Whenever a cast member wasn't being a character in Through the Looking Glass, she or he became a looking-glass Alice masquerading as a soldier cleaning up after the extremely messy demise of Humpty Dumpty, or a shelf in the sheep's shop.  (Look, if you don't know the story you'll have to read the book or go see the play -- if you can get tickets.)

I was particularly charmed by being periodically showered by bubbles, streamers, and jelly beans (some of them were liquorice!), and by the poignant and strange song from the White Knight played by long-legged Alex McCooeye who resembled every cartoon of Don Quixote you've ever seen.
   
After the actors had taken their bow - backs to the audience, of course - the show seemed to follow me out into the lobby where the world briefly appeared strange and lovely, as if seen through rippled glass.

Rain every day

Last Friday, we took youngest daughter to the Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre to see a show entitled "Swinging the Bard".

Shakespeare.

Jazz.

How could we possibly pass it up?

It had been an exhausting day, the kind when I'm really resenting evening performances.  (I've always preferred matinées, which are a relative rarity in Hades.)  I was even more resentful when we became embroiled in the general admission politics which bring out the competitive killer instincts in Ottawa concert-goers.

However,  when Diane Nalini took the stage and began singing settings of Shakespeare songs -- and a couple of the sonnets --- which she had written some years ago, all negativity drained away.  The music    ranged from swing to blues to a folksy sort of jazz which reminded me strongly of Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs.  The Resident Fan Boy bought both CDs for younger daughter during the break (naturally, she loved the performance).  Couldn't find a video, but there's a link at the Canadian Adaptions of Shakespeare Project website to three of the songs she sang and I rather like her version of "When that I was and a little tiny boy" from Twelfth Night.

While I was looking all this up, I discovered that Dr (yes! Doctor!) Nalini is a -- wait for it -- physics professor who was a Rhodes Scholar.  She's also married to Adrian Cho, who played the bass and directed the Ontario Jazz Orchestra through Duke Ellington's Shakepearean jazz work "Such Sweet Thunder" after intermission.  These are seasoned jazz musicians, so they'd only really had one rehearsal. This backfired, but only slightly, when Mr Cho introduced one segment as featuring "a chorus of coronets", then played through on his own. Evidently, a cue was missed.

"We'll try that again some other time," he said calmly, before proceeding to the next bit.

That's jazz.

Straining at Nats

I was sitting at the table eating pancakes when I saw the low-heeled black pump appear around the corner.  It was several feet above the ground because younger daughter was attempting to see her feet in her dress shoes in the small mirror at face height in the hall, so she was balancing precariously on one foot halfway up the stairs, her knee drawn up at a sharp right angle.

This was the first indication I'd had that younger daughter planned to wear pumps for the singing competition that afternoon.

Low-heel pumps used to mean two-inch heels; three inches was considered quite "high".  These days,"high heels" mean six inches or more -- I tried on elder daughter's high school graduation shoes for all of two seconds before my arches screamed bloody murder -- and anything under four inches seem to count as low heels.

Anyway, younger daughter wore the pumps (about three inches for the heels, I'd say) for the first time at the Christmas recital with wearing practice and we haven't seen them since.

She had chosen the dress elder daughter had given her for Christmas -- a silky burgundy print from Forever 21, and looked charming with sparkly black stockings, so I held my peace.

NATS, (the National Association of Teachers of Singing) is the first voice competition of the season.  This was younger daughter's third time and this year she was in the "17 and under" category.  She was the last of nine singers.  As we waited out in the hall, I quietly scoped what other singers were wearing.  I did see quite a few pumps, usually with long dresses.

Each entrant had prepared three songs, to be sung in under eight minutes.  So we listened to twenty-four songs by the previous eight singers.  All of them in ballet flats, with the exception of the other girl who takes lessons with younger daughter's voice teacher, who was wearing rather old-fashioned black patent-leather sandals with a bit of heel to them.

Younger daughter finally took the stage, clumping to the piano rather like a little girl playing dress-up, but she found her place and stood confidently, without a wobble.

Unlike walking in her footwear, younger daughter has been preparing her song selections for the past couple of months, although she started learning "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" last summer.

"Sorge il sol! Che fai tu?" is a spring song, a bit premature in Hades, but cheerful at least:  Younger daughter's rendition was quite urgent, the gist of the lyric being "The sun's up; get out and enjoy the flowers!"

I've been hearing "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" pretty well every day all this month.  Much as I love listening to younger daughter sing, February and "Motherless Child" are a pretty lethal combination.  She sang with appropriate soul and sorrow.

The third song was "Jazz Man" by Benjamin Britten which is usually sung by children's choirs ("twenty children couldn't make as much noise"):  It's not an easy song, especially sung at breakneck speed.

The other singers, for the most part, had a more operatic sound, but I was pleased with the range of younger daughter's selections.  The adjudication notes were constructive and kind, praising the loveliness of her voice (it is, you know) and the expressiveness of her performance, and suggesting she not touch her hair and face so much.  (Bit of a tall order for someone on the autistic spectrum, but heck, if she can sing in French, German, or Italian…)

We recovered with a concert at the National Arts Centre with award-winning singer Denzal Sinclaire doing quite a bit of Nat King Cole material with other things he's known for thrown in for good measure, accompanied by the National Arts Centre Orchestra.  I wasn't familiar with Denzal Sinclaire, even though he has won all sorts of awards for his singing -- apparently Diana Krall and Michael Bublé are fans --and is an actor as well.

Younger daughter had a simply gorgeous time; he sang standards like "Mona Lisa" and jazzy numbers like "Route 66" and best of all, "When I Fall in Love", the song she chose when she was asked to be the soloist at a wedding a year and a half ago.  I was delighted to see one of my favourites on the play-list:  "Straighten Up and Fly Right".  I know it from a recording by Lyall Lovett, but had no idea that Nat King Cole wrote it and recorded it in 1943.  Here he is, singing it: 

There isn't much of Denzal Sinclaire singing Nat King Cole on YouTube, just a rather shaky video of "Nature Boy" (which I've always thought was one weird song), but he did sing "You and the Night and the Music" which gives you a good idea of his calibre:  

Oh, and younger daughter wore her snowboots to the concert.  Kiwanis season is in April.  I wonder if I can get her to practise walking in those heels before then.

We sing once more

When elder daughter was about nine or ten, I took her to a Singalong Sound of Music at the Bytowne Cinema. (I was careful to take her to a matinée -- the gay community brought a party atmosphere to the evening shows which wasn't necessarily kid-stuff.) It was quite an afternoon. There was a costume parade and contest and everyone received little kits which contained props such as a kind of confetti-cracker to shoot off during the first kiss between Maria and the Captain. (Rather orgasmic!) We were also instructed to gesture and call out for certain characters, kind of like a drinking game: barking whenever Rolf appeared, hissing the Baroness, etc.

Yet, with all the satirical fun-making, I was astonished as gradually, the gestures and sound effects were forgotten as the audience got involved in the story. It's a hokey and sentimental story, and as younger daughter has been discovering this term in a history project based on the movie, a tale that has remarkably little to do with what happened to the real Von Trapp family.

Younger daughter was given the assignment largely because her teacher knew we planned to take her to another Singalong Sound of Music -- this one with a live cast at the National Arts Centre. It was a little confusing at first. I thought there might be surtitles as at some operas, but we were evidently expected to sing along from memory -- and only at certain points, supposedly signaled by bringing up the lights on the audience, but it was a subtle difference, particularly for us. We were seated in the back row of a little island of seats directly in front of the stage.

However, this production was based more on the original 1959 Broadway production rather than the 1965 movie, although "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good", originally written for the movie, were inserted and "No Way to Stop It" and "An Ordinary Couple" from the original stage musical were omitted. We also had a very good and cohesive cast, most of them seen in the delightful Tartuffe set in Newfoundland last autumn. (I believe they're planning on keeping the company for the 2013-2014 season, which I think is an idea brought in by the latest artistic director.) In addition, there were a couple of familiar faces: Pierre Brault, a busy Ottawa-based actor who has produced successful one-man shows, including Blood on the Moon, and Katie Ryerson, whom we've seen four times in different Company of Fools productions.

Much of the saccharine of the movie was eliminated by a liberal helpings of sly humour, and the use of adult actors to play all but the two youngest of the Von Trapp children. The company doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled up on roles and the audience chortled in delight when we realized that the nuns chorusing "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" included at least three men!

The cast was universally strong (most having impressive CVs - I was particularly taken with the performance of Christine Brubaker who played Sister Bertha, Frau Schmidt and a glamourous and totally in control Baroness - and Maria was played by Eliza Jane Scott with all the passion, impulsiveness, and energy that the part requires, which Carrie Underwood, playing in a recent live broadcast of the musical on American television, didn't quite convey.

And once again, I found myself being moved by the dramatic (albeit improbable) climax of the story, feeling oddly choked up as the Captain (Dimitri Chepovetsky) implored us to join in "Edelweiss" while a Nazi in a long leather coat sat stonily right next to me. I knew damn well he was actor Eric Davis, but I felt utterly unnerved.

Need I say that younger daughter was completely enchanted?

Dancing in the dark

On the longest day of the year, the sun was moving to the north-west in Hades, and Beechwood Avenue had a carnival atmosphere due to the Solstice Stroll. The Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I made our way to the bus stop amid arts and crafts displays, musicians, and wandering families. Several residents of the seniors home had their walkers and wheelchairs set up at the entrance, soaking up the atmosphere. We boarded our bus and watched the proprietor of The SconeWitch emerge from her shop with a small pyramid of scones. I was rather sorry not to have the time to explore, but we had rush tickets for the National Arts Centre.

The downtown streets were teeming with people out for the first Friday evening of summer: shoppers clutching bags, line-ups for the crowded patios, and young girls decked out in tunics with leggings, shorts and layered tank-tops, the little black dress that still denotes someone on her way for some clubbing. As we crossed Elgin, we could hear music floating from Confederation Park as the annual JazzFest got rolling.

We elected to end our longest day with Hollywood film music, complete with a chorus (actually two combined choral societies), a full orchestra, and five not-quite-famous Broadway performers. It says something about Broadway that people you never heard of still have impressive CVs and a frightening amount of talent. All these singers and musicians were performing movie scores painstakingly recreated by Principal Pops Conductor Jack Everly (who has a pretty stunning CV himself) and others, by watching and listening to these classic films repeatedly to work out the original instrumentation. This was necessary because MGM destroyed the original scores in the 1970s as an economic measure.

The show could have been especially designed for younger daughter. It featured all her very favourites: The Wizard of Oz (overture, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", and the chorus doing an impressive impression of Munchkins and citizens of Oz); Meet Me in St Louis (overture, a snippet from "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and the whole of the "The Trolley Song"); and Easter Parade. She glowed with pleasure throughout the concert. The Resident Fan Boy, who had had an exhausting and hot day, didn't fall asleep once.

There were a lot of my favourites too, but I realized, as the music washed over me with comforting familiarity, that the memories that came floating back were't necessarily of the movies, although I had seen the original films several times. Take "Singing in the Rain" and "Stormy Weather", for example. Sure, I can see Gene Kelly or Lena Horne in my mind's eye, if I want to, but I'm more likely to remember rainy evenings at the University of Victoria, splashing from the library to the Student Union Building for a dinner break with a friend, whirling Gene-like with our umbrellas, leaping up on lamp-posts (and damn near crippling ourselves), or warbling like Lena.

The orchestra also played "Dancing in the Dark" from The Band Wagon. Did I imagine Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire? I could have. Instead I remembered May 20th, 1989, the day Gilda Radner died. (If you follow the link, you're probably going to have to turn on the video, then put it on pause and allow several minutes for it to load -- it will be worth it.) It was a Saturday and the last live show of the season for Saturday Night Live where Gilda had been a star during the late seventies. It so happened that Steve Martin was guest-hosting, so the opening monologue was scrapped to show a classic clip from a 1978 show. Behind the 1989 Steve, you might be able to spot G.E.Smith who had been the lead guitarist for Hall and Oates and was then the music director for SNL. He had also been Gilda's first husband. What this clip doesn't show is his gentle lyrical guitar solo that took the show to the first commercial break, but if you can spot him, you'll see he's wearing a black arm-band. (Gilda was married to actor Gene Wilder when she died.)

Back in 2013, we applauded enthusiastically and grabbed a cab home, whisked through Byward Market and the jay-walking strollers on their way to dance in the brief dark of the shortest night of the year.

Real cool

It was beginning to seem like a dangerous way to skip the first Hockey Night in Canada in many months. The Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I penguin-walked and skidded down the icy sidewalks between walls of snow. Fifteen centimetres of snow in one morning had given away to rain by evening, freezing into silver chutes. However, we had purchased rush tickets earlier in the day for a screening of West Side Story, with the instrumental soundtrack provided live by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and for the sake of younger daughter, who adores this musical, we were going - come Hades or high water (or frozen sidewalk).

Our rush seats, a wonderful bargain courtesy of younger daughter's student status, were in the mezzanine this time, almost dead centre. We had a beautiful view of most of the NACO, although the horn section was obscured by the movie screen because of our height above the stage. The conductor, who normally opens with a humourous banter, took the stage, bowed and immediately sat in front of what appeared to be a screen the size of a large laptop. We've been to Pops concerts where the musicians played live soundtracks before -- an evening of selections from films based on Rogers and Hammerstein musicals and a showing of Bugs Bunny cartoons years ago. I'd never seen how the conductor synchronized the live musicians with the soundtrack either of those times and now rather wished I'd brought my binoculars.

As the MGM lion roared and the three eerie whistles signalled the beginning of the film, I was astonished to feel my chest constrict with excitement. I mean, I've seen this movie dozens, if not scores of times. However, I don't think I've ever seen it on a big screen in a packed auditorium -- and Southam Hall in the NAC complex is a large venue. Three large green vertical columns moved from left to right across the monitor in front of the conductor who raised his baton and brought the musicians in.

The images and music were almost as familiar as the back of my hand, but I found myself concentrating in a way I'd never done before, marvelling at the beauty of the dancing, even in the fight scenes, noticing tiny things for the first time: how Riff controls his gang with a wordless jerk of the head; the playground where Tony begins singing "Maria" is the place where he will die at the end; the foreshadowing hint of "There's a Place For Us" at the end of the rapturous lovers' duet "Tonight".

Something else I'd never noted properly - the fabulous dancing of the Jets' girlfriends, both at the fateful gymnasium dance where Tony and Maria first meet and later in the edge-of-hysteria dance number "Cool" where the remaining Jets try to come to grips with the deaths of the rival gang-leaders Riff and Bernardo.
Watch those girls dance! They're doing most of the same moves the male dancers are, and they're doing it in skirts and heels. ('Twas ever thus.) Most of the dancers you see here were in the original Broadway production, although not necessarily in the same roles. The blonde girl is Carole Andreas, the original "Velma" on Broadway and also the wife (now ex) of Robert Morse who created the role a J. Pierpont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying.

More than fifty years later, some of the lingo is dated, but the dancing isn't. I was a bit taken aback when at intermission, an acquaintance of the RFB told me that she wasn't prepared for how skinny the dancers were. She meant she didn't think they looked substantial enough to be in a street gang, perhaps being more used to the six-packed footballish image of the present-day tough guy. We had just watched this men scramble over fences, hurdle horizontal bars, dance with girl on one shoulder. I told this woman that I wouldn't want to pick a fight with a Shark or a Jet: "They could dance circles around me."

For a great deal of the film, I simply forgot to watch the musicians as they played along, which is probably a testament to how good they were. The NACO, after all, is a world-class orchestra. I watched as younger daughter sat forward in her seat for the entire three hours, rapt. The Resident Fan Boy and I felt the same. It was almost like seeing the film for the first time.

One more thing: I never felt this way for one second during my first and only viewing of Les Miserables. West Side Story has heart-break and passion, but it's also got dancing and humour, all conveyed through the varied (let's emphasize this - varied), intricate music of Leonard Bernstein, the clever lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, and the fluid choreography of Jerome Robbins, to say nothing of the performances by the cast.

West Side Story dances circles around Les Miz. Simple as that. It was worth the skid.

This way sadness lies

The Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I came in from the brilliant and warm last Saturday of the Tulip Festival to the dark glowing interior of the Theatre in the National Arts Centre complex. We took our seats in the front row of the right side of the thrust stage (thanks to rush tickets), listening to crickets.  Soon, from somewhere below, we heard a few thumps building into a steady rhythm and the voices chanting the drum blessing.  Some minutes later, a handsome young man appeared at one of the vomitoria, gazing around the stage and occasionally toward the gathering audience.  He was dressed in what resembled an early 17th century gentleman's oufit, but with a feather adorning the back of his black hair and round gold discs hanging from his ears.  Finally, another young man with waist-length black hair swept past him, mounted the stage and approached the fire at the centre, banging a salute to each point of the compass, then the ground and the heavens.  You can see him to the left in the picture above.  Through the palisade gates at the back of the stage came two men wrapped in fur capes.  The elder of the two pointed out the young man waiting at the foot of the stage and introduced him as his bastard son Edmund.  So King Lear began with a cast of some of the finest First Nation actors in Canada.

Does it work?  On the whole, yes.  Director Peter Hinton and his cast kept it simple and stripped down.  Three powerful female actors stole most of the fire as the three daughters of Lear:  Tantoo Cardinal as a mocking, confident, terrifying Regan, Monique Mojica as a regal and dissatisfied Goneril, and Jani Lauzon as wronged Cordelia, then almost unrecognizably as the daring yet helpless Fool, which gave a whole new meaning to the line "My poor fool is hanged".

Lear was August Schellenberg whose impressive CV is pretty august in itself, but he didn't seem to hit his stride as Lear until his scene with the blinded Gloucester which is very late in the play.   He obviously had the physical stamina to tackle this, but I felt he was reciting most of his lines, more than acting them.  The final "Howl, howl, howl" carrying in the hanged Cordelia was very affecting, though.  I was touched to see him discreetly smooth her skirt down as he wept over the body.

We had prepared younger daughter for the blinding scene which always traumatizes me -- instead of fleeing up the aisle as I have been known to do in the past, I covered my eyes and plugged my ears.  Younger daughter seemed more distressed by Gloucester's later entrance in his bloody blindfold, but she assured us afterward that although she was scared, she knew it wasn't real.

We're glad we went, and are sorry to see Peter Hinton go as artistic director of the NAC English Theatre division.  It's certainly been an interesting seven years.

Birth and death

So I'd noticed there was a Tuesday matinée for nativity at the National Arts Centre this week, and the Resident Fan and I took gross advantage of younger daughter's student status and between that and my subscription discount, got three tickets for the price of one. In the front row.

Browsing through his programme, RFB asked me what a "production dramaturg" was. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Peter Hinton, the artistic director of the NAC, wandering through the aisles, clutching his coffee mug and making small talk which seems to have been his habit since taking over the position. I hopped up and waylaid him and he said she was a person that kinda drew every aspect of the production together. I guess it's something like one step out from being the director. He said it was an interesting question, but I bet he says that to all the theatre patrons.

Back in my seat, I glanced over to the seats rising to our right and noticed a really pregnant lady. I didn't want to stare, so quickly averted my eyes. Peter Hinton did his usual quick intro to the play, asked the audience to turn off cell phones and unwrap their candy now and got a huge round of applause for forbidding texting and blogging during the show. He then strolled out a side door, mug in hand, and I briefly wondered where he'd go before I heard raised voices a few feet to my right.

Two ushers were loudly questioning the really really pregnant lady and her husband about their tickets, and they said the box office had lost them and the ushers said that was shame but there was no room in the theatre. And the play had begun.

It was exactly what I'd hoped it would be, for younger daughter's sake: a musical, animals, about Christmas. We launched into a modern slant on a medieval mystery play with shepherds complaining in verse, a trio of angels doo-wopping in the background, and songs ranging in style from bossa nova to Stephenish Sondheimish, pulled off by a rather frighteningly talented cast. One of the shepherds, just for an example, was Diane D'Aquila who, among other things, created the role of Elizabeth I in Elizabeth Rex. Many of the other actors in a sizeable cast (even when doubling and tripling up on roles) had CVs that resembled encyclopedia entries, and, oh look... there was Peter Hinton. I learned later that for the final week of the run, he'd taken over the roles for Marcel Jeannin (another fabulous actor, by the way) who'd had to bow out for personal reasons.

The guy who seemed to be having the most fun was Réjean Cournoyer (one of the lengthier CVs) who was playing Herod as something like a cross between Captain Hook and J. Pierpont Finch. And then. And then the play veers from slapstick and camp into medieval mystery territory again with the slaughter of the innocents. The Angel of Death stalks the stage, and Herod turns into that most terrifying thing of all, the pragmatic politician, sending those who did his dirty work from the banquet to the place of execution. The heart-broken mothers sing the dissonant harmonies of the Coventry Carol. Because Christmas has myrrh in it. Christmas also has loss.With the enraged Herod sprawled dead beside the banquet table, we were back into the spirit slapstick and pantomime with the "Coyote Christmas, which I suspect was a separate play at some point. Three starving coyotes invaded the audience, looking for something to chomp. They debated over the five-year-old sitting next to the Resident Fan Boy (a modern kid who didn't seem the least bit frightened by the prospect of being eaten by coyotes), before figuring out the audience was comprised of humans and not sheep. So, as you can imagine, when the angel told them about the Lamb of God, they got the completely wrong idea. In the mayhem that followed, younger daughter, the RFB and I had to keep pulling our feet in to avoid tripping up the Holy Family in hot pursuit of three coyotes tossing Baby Jesus like a football.

It turns out for the best though. (How else could you conclude a Christmas play?) When the Roman soldier (Peter Hinton again) comes looking for a baby to impale, the coyotes continue to insist they've got a lamb, and Jesus is saved. The joyful musical finale was complete when the lady who'd been about to be tossed out the theatre in the beginning announced: "It's a girl!"

Back at home, still glowing from the show, I posted a link to the review in the Ottawa Citizen at Facebook, but couldn't get an appropriate photo to come up. (The pictures in this post were taken by Andree Lanthier.) Instead, I kept getting a thumbnail of a group of men in orange jumpsuits kneeling by what appeared to be the Rideau Canal. I later learned they were at the Rideau River. About the same time that younger daughter, the Resident Fan Boy and I were settling in to enjoy the play, a nine-year-old boy slipped into the Rideau River not far from where we live. Because Christmas has myrrh in it. Christmas also has loss.

Oh sisters two, how may we do
To preserve this day?
This poor Youngling for whom we sing
Bye-bye, lulle, lullay.

A mid-autumn week's dream

When the Resident Fan Boy was still in hospital, one of the things he was most worried about was the prospect of missing Spamalot and A Midsummer Night's Dream at the National Art Centre this week. It would have been a great pity if he had missed the glorious silliness of the former, but, oh dear, thank goodness we didn't miss the latter!

This MSND is the Dash Arts production featuring an Indian and Sri Lankan cast, most of whom are quadruple threats: they can sing, dance, act, and do acrobatics. No, wait...quintuple threats. They do all this in several languages, and this was the cause of a minor controversy here in Ottawa. An enterprising co-worker of the Resident Fan Boy set up a group-rate for the office, then sent out a warning e-mail with an offer to cancel the tickets when it was reported that some people were walking out. Apparently the issue was that this Dream is performed in eight languages including (Shakespearean) English, Tamil, Sanskrit, and Hindi among others. Actually, this was only a problem if you are unfamiliar with the play and you could probably work out much of what was going on from the eloquent body language, although I was silently grateful I had shown some tapes of MSND to younger daughter beforehand, both for my sake and hers. I had a quiet giggle listening to a couple behind me in line for the washrooms at the interval. She knew the play and, although he was claiming some knowledge, he muttered something about Coles Notes.

Anyway, I was enchanted, entranced, mesmerized. The actors seemed to switch seamlessly between languages (rather like a lot of Ottawans flip from French to English and back again within the same sentence), so all of a sudden, you'd realize that the words you were hearing were Shakespeare's original lines. The three female leads, Hermia, Helena, and Titania (who doubled as Hippolyta), were the only actors to speak in English exclusively, and what stunned and charmed me was how natural Shakespeare sounds flowing off an Indian/Sri Lankan tongue. What also struck me was the female strength in these characters: Hermia had the confidence of a pretty girl who has always had her way; Helena had the drive that comes from the desperate conviction that Demetrius is the man for her; and Titania had the power of a queen not bound by earthly restrictions and morals -- there was never any doubt that she was not Oberon's equal in every way.

Then there was the physicality of this production. The performers climbed the structures, balanced on platforms, tumbled and twirled in the dirt that made up the stage floor. Titania spent a good portion of the end of the second act and beginning of the third act folded up in a hammock like a beautiful crimson chrysalis, a testament to her endurance and flexibility. Much has been made of the sexiness of this production (elder daughter predicted, correctly, that this would fly over younger daughter's head), but it's not a leering sexuality; it's frank, funny, and urgent. When Bottom is transformed, he not only sports woven ears, but a wooden phallus hanging from his belt. Given the gentle, innocent fallibility of the character, we only hope that he will enjoy his erotic adventure -- which he does.

The cast were uniformly wonderful, but I particularly enjoyed Vivek Mishra, a Delhi actor who captured Peter Quince's exasperation, but also danced with expressive fluidity. When the cast brought the play to an end in a joyous and contagious song and dance, the audience clapped along spontaneously. I only wish we could have hung around for the impromptu cast discussion afterward, but younger daughter was slipping into a mid-autumn dream of her own. Her outstanding Grade Four teacher (who also taught elder daughter in Grade Five) had been somewhere behind us in the balcony, and caught us before we left in search of a taxi and younger daughter managed a sleepy greeting.

While madly putting holds on various MSND performances prior to the play, I had a chance to re-discover my two very favourite recorded productions, both done within a year of each other. The first is Jonathan Miller's interpretation, done as part of the BBC's Complete Plays of William Shakepeare for television in the late seventies and early eighties. It featured Helen Mirren as Titania, Peter McEnery as Oberon and Nigel Davenport as Theseus, but to my mind, the best thing of all about it was the "eternal quadrangle" of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena as performed by Pippa Guard, Robert Lindsay, Nicky Henson, and Cherith Mellor, respectively. Overlapping each others' lines, struggling in muddy water, and bewildered by fairy forces, these are the funniest and most likeable versions of the lovers you're likely to find. I don't think this is available in DVD format outside of Region Two. The other is a 1982 Joseph Papp production for Shakespeare in the Park (Central Park, that is) with William Hurt as Oberon, a very young Christine Baranski as Helena and bizarrely, Emmanuel Lewis as the changeling boy that Titania is protecting. The lovers are very funny here too (their costumes scream "Eighties!!"), and William Hurt is very much William Hurt ("Ill...met...by...moonlight..." -- I always said he must have attended the William Shatner School of Acting), but the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play is, hands down, the most hilarious rendition you'll see anywhere. Doubt this is available on DVD either. Sigh. See them if you can get your mitts on them, and if the Dash production comes your way (although it seems to have been around the world already), for heaven's sake, go.

Broadway Across Canada - Putnam County Spelling Bee

The Resident Fan Boy and I decided to splurge and purchase season tickets for the whole family this year for Broadway Across Canada (evidently the Canadian subsidiary of Broadway Across America). This has been the first year I've even been remotely interested in the offerings. I'm particularly looking forward to Spamalot in the fall, and Wicked may be just the ticket to ease the heartbreak of having to return to Ottawa after six weeks in Victoria this summer. The first show was The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and in a way, this was the kicker. Younger daughter loves spelling bees. There was a spelling bee in the Peanuts movie A Boy Named Charlie Brown, and she astonished her godmother by insisting on coming along to Spellbound at the University of Victoria's Cinecenta when she was seven.

In preparation for the show, I ordered the original cast soundtrack, and played it during dinner. It sounded pretty pedestrian to me, so when we headed off yesterday in the rain to catch the bus, my expectations weren't high. We have a loge for the matinée showing, another splurge, but the privacy is easier on us and second daughter who then has a totally unobstructed view of the stage. We were uneasy when the National Arts Centre ushers tried to encourage us to take seats in the orchestra section, saying there were "sound problems". The Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter were all for heading down, but I said, dammit, we have loge seating, far forward --- how bad could the sound be?

The answer turned out to be: not a problem at all. We could see from our vantage point that the Southam Hall theatre was disappointingly sparse, presumably because this show hasn't had quite the same buzz as the really big Broadway productions. But you know, what the soundtrack CD didn't convey was how very funny this show is. Part of the hilarity comes from the inclusion of four ringers amongst the spellers. I'm not sure if they were chosen from the audience beforehand, but they didn't appear to be actors, although all of them were reasonably attractive, seemed quite comfortable on the stage, and took the jokes at their expense ("She won her local bee by spelling her own name.") without a boggle.

The actors themselves were your usual frightingly talented musical performers, able to sing, dance, act, and improvise. And we heard everything quite clearly. I saw elder daughter laughing easily throughout and younger daughter held up her two favourite puppets so they could see, and told me afterwards, "My favourite bit was the stars." Not quite sure what she meant by that. I'll have to ask her.