You Were There: A Shadow Play, by Noel Coward at the MAP Studio, through Feb. 18, 2015
Reviewed by Michelle Palansky
I was primed for this performance. Could not have planned it better. Opening night, right before I headed to CowardFest, I had a really stupid argument with my partner. Fortunately, this put me in the perfect mindset for a show about former lovers revisiting the gory details of their romance and subsequent break up.
A part of RMTC’s 2015 Master Playwright Festival, Cowardfest, You Were There: A Shadow Play is a modern reimagining of Noel Coward’s 1935 one act play, Shadow Play.
The original piece featured a married couple in crisis, re-enacting their romantic beginnings through shadow play. Yup, Noel Coward did multimedia. Who knew?
Director Tatiana Carnevale takes hold of the multimedia format, milking it for all it’s worth, with shadow sex scenes and skinny-dipping puppets. But my small heart grew three sizes that eve, when the shadow moon rose behind the scrim, followed closely by a matching shadow heart. It sounds cheesy, dammit it is cheesy, but for me that was the turning point when I threw up my hands and gave in to the romantic angst of it all.
Up to that point, there were a couple of crucial sticking points.
You Were There lacks the glittery, brittle, surface glamour and sophistication that audiences anticipate in a Coward play. Watching this play, in the context of Cowardfest, requires a recalibration of expectations.
Photo Credit: Matt Duboff
The female lead, played with strength and confidence by Dorothy Carroll, is irritating. No way around it. She’s a nitpicking know-it-all with a penchant for correcting grammar. The playwright, Logan Stefanson, makes it very hard to understand her appeal.
The space itself is challenging. Performed in the Manitoba Association of Playwrights’ Studio, the sight lines are not good, especially if you happen to be a moderately short lady seated behind an extravagantly tall gentleman. (Wouldn’t it be great if you were seated in the theatre based on your size? It could be like the height requirements at amusement parks.) The production was originally intended for performance at 125 Pacific Avenue and it is likely that the last minute change in venue did damage to the original blocking. Do yourself a favour and get to this show early for your choice of seats. With a maximum capacity of 50 patrons, the nightly show is sure to sell out quickly.
But like I said, the shadow heart rose in the evening (scrim) sky and I fell in like. And there is a lot to like in this production.
There are a million moving parts in this hour long performance and the undeniable skill of director Carnevale is plainly evident in the brisk pace at which she sets the show. The score, thanks to music director Paul De Gurse, is beautifully arranged, with many nods to the original Coward pieces. Aaron Pridham is almost too vulnerable as the heartbroken male lead. He flays himself wide open to expose the sensibilities and idiocies of his twenty-something character.
There is seemingly nothing Emily King and Elliot Lazar can’t do. As the secondary actors, they flesh out the fine details of the scenes, using every single crayon in the box. They sing beautifully, manipulate puppets, change sets, and re-enact shadow scenes. Keep an eye on these two — they are ridiculously talented.
But wait, there’s more. Although the playwright’s take on young love relies heavily on stock romcom tropes, Stefanson does home in on a fascinating aspect of Coward’s legacy as a possible precursor to Pinter and modern absurdist theatre. Say that three times fast.
It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. Bear with me. Dr. Margaret Groome, associate professor of theatre at the University of Manitoba, in her January 28 Cowardfest lecture, explained that some scholars have uncovered some very interesting links between Noel Coward and Harold Pinter. Yup, that Pinter: The Birthday Party, Homecoming. Coward praised many of Pinter’s works and referred to him as his successor in language for the British stage, and in 1976 Pinter directed a production of Blythe Spirits.
One of the direct lines between Coward and Pinter is the way that they use subtext, not as a motivation for an actor’s portrayal, but as a way to continually undercut what characters are saying — saying one thing and meaning something entirely different. For Coward, that means using the trivial and superficial to expose darker and more complex undercurrents. Indeed, the most famous line from Coward’s Shadow Play is, “Small talk, a lot of small talk, with other thoughts going on behind.” Playwright Stefanson exposes Coward’s absurdism, takes his giant icebergs of subtext and brings it all above water.
In the characters’ present tense, they appear to be in some sort of undefined state, surrounded by strange beeping sounds and unidentifiable voices, where they are determined to continually play out various scenes from their past. They seem to have some agency and re-stage these bits and pieces of their history in a variety of different ways: straight historical reads, he said/she said versions, and wish fulfillment fantasies. But they don’t have total control. When they balk at playing out particularly painful or embarrassing episodes, the secondary characters come out and puppet master them back into their prescribed roles. A classic theme in theatre of the absurd — exposing the internal workings of the play itself.
Masks and the unmasking of characters is another prominent absurdist theme that Stefanson plays with. The nameless female lead points to the male’s inability to see her as she is but rather as he wants her to be, as one of the primary reasons for the failure of their relationship. He cannot see beyond the mask that he insists that she wear. Ironically the characters themselves remain forever without names, fighting for the right to be viewed as individuals while doomed to remain stereotypes.
This is Noel Coward like you’ve never seen him before — existential, absurdist, and oddly romantic. It ain’t perfect, but it is fascinating.
You Were There: A Shadow Play, by Noel Coward, as part of CowardFest, runs through February 14, 2015 , at the MAP Studio, 100 Arthur St., Suite 504, Winnipeg MB. Tickets are $15 and are available at the door or in advance at pocketfrock.com.
Ain’t it Grand to be Young and in Hate?
Columns
You Were There: A Shadow Play, by Noel Coward at the MAP Studio, through Feb. 18, 2015
Reviewed by Michelle Palansky
I was primed for this performance. Could not have planned it better. Opening night, right before I headed to CowardFest, I had a really stupid argument with my partner. Fortunately, this put me in the perfect mindset for a show about former lovers revisiting the gory details of their romance and subsequent break up.
A part of RMTC’s 2015 Master Playwright Festival, Cowardfest, You Were There: A Shadow Play is a modern reimagining of Noel Coward’s 1935 one act play, Shadow Play.
The original piece featured a married couple in crisis, re-enacting their romantic beginnings through shadow play. Yup, Noel Coward did multimedia. Who knew?
Director Tatiana Carnevale takes hold of the multimedia format, milking it for all it’s worth, with shadow sex scenes and skinny-dipping puppets. But my small heart grew three sizes that eve, when the shadow moon rose behind the scrim, followed closely by a matching shadow heart. It sounds cheesy, dammit it is cheesy, but for me that was the turning point when I threw up my hands and gave in to the romantic angst of it all.
Up to that point, there were a couple of crucial sticking points.
You Were There lacks the glittery, brittle, surface glamour and sophistication that audiences anticipate in a Coward play. Watching this play, in the context of Cowardfest, requires a recalibration of expectations.
Photo Credit: Matt Duboff
The female lead, played with strength and confidence by Dorothy Carroll, is irritating. No way around it. She’s a nitpicking know-it-all with a penchant for correcting grammar. The playwright, Logan Stefanson, makes it very hard to understand her appeal.
The space itself is challenging. Performed in the Manitoba Association of Playwrights’ Studio, the sight lines are not good, especially if you happen to be a moderately short lady seated behind an extravagantly tall gentleman. (Wouldn’t it be great if you were seated in the theatre based on your size? It could be like the height requirements at amusement parks.) The production was originally intended for performance at 125 Pacific Avenue and it is likely that the last minute change in venue did damage to the original blocking. Do yourself a favour and get to this show early for your choice of seats. With a maximum capacity of 50 patrons, the nightly show is sure to sell out quickly.
But like I said, the shadow heart rose in the evening (scrim) sky and I fell in like. And there is a lot to like in this production.
There are a million moving parts in this hour long performance and the undeniable skill of director Carnevale is plainly evident in the brisk pace at which she sets the show. The score, thanks to music director Paul De Gurse, is beautifully arranged, with many nods to the original Coward pieces. Aaron Pridham is almost too vulnerable as the heartbroken male lead. He flays himself wide open to expose the sensibilities and idiocies of his twenty-something character.
There is seemingly nothing Emily King and Elliot Lazar can’t do. As the secondary actors, they flesh out the fine details of the scenes, using every single crayon in the box. They sing beautifully, manipulate puppets, change sets, and re-enact shadow scenes. Keep an eye on these two — they are ridiculously talented.
But wait, there’s more. Although the playwright’s take on young love relies heavily on stock romcom tropes, Stefanson does home in on a fascinating aspect of Coward’s legacy as a possible precursor to Pinter and modern absurdist theatre. Say that three times fast.
It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. Bear with me. Dr. Margaret Groome, associate professor of theatre at the University of Manitoba, in her January 28 Cowardfest lecture, explained that some scholars have uncovered some very interesting links between Noel Coward and Harold Pinter. Yup, that Pinter: The Birthday Party, Homecoming. Coward praised many of Pinter’s works and referred to him as his successor in language for the British stage, and in 1976 Pinter directed a production of Blythe Spirits.
One of the direct lines between Coward and Pinter is the way that they use subtext, not as a motivation for an actor’s portrayal, but as a way to continually undercut what characters are saying — saying one thing and meaning something entirely different. For Coward, that means using the trivial and superficial to expose darker and more complex undercurrents. Indeed, the most famous line from Coward’s Shadow Play is, “Small talk, a lot of small talk, with other thoughts going on behind.” Playwright Stefanson exposes Coward’s absurdism, takes his giant icebergs of subtext and brings it all above water.
In the characters’ present tense, they appear to be in some sort of undefined state, surrounded by strange beeping sounds and unidentifiable voices, where they are determined to continually play out various scenes from their past. They seem to have some agency and re-stage these bits and pieces of their history in a variety of different ways: straight historical reads, he said/she said versions, and wish fulfillment fantasies. But they don’t have total control. When they balk at playing out particularly painful or embarrassing episodes, the secondary characters come out and puppet master them back into their prescribed roles. A classic theme in theatre of the absurd — exposing the internal workings of the play itself.
Masks and the unmasking of characters is another prominent absurdist theme that Stefanson plays with. The nameless female lead points to the male’s inability to see her as she is but rather as he wants her to be, as one of the primary reasons for the failure of their relationship. He cannot see beyond the mask that he insists that she wear. Ironically the characters themselves remain forever without names, fighting for the right to be viewed as individuals while doomed to remain stereotypes.
This is Noel Coward like you’ve never seen him before — existential, absurdist, and oddly romantic. It ain’t perfect, but it is fascinating.
You Were There: A Shadow Play, by Noel Coward, as part of CowardFest, runs through February 14, 2015 , at the MAP Studio, 100 Arthur St., Suite 504, Winnipeg MB. Tickets are $15 and are available at the door or in advance at pocketfrock.com.