Where: Young Centre in the Distillery District
When: See the season calendar. Glass Menagerie plays until September 6th. Kreutzer Sonata ends August 11th.
How to get cheap tickets: See the Top 5 Summer Theatre Festivals blog post.

Ted Dykstra directs two plays for the Soulpepper Theatre company this summer: the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, and the one-act, one man show, The Kreutzer Sonata. The first has a great cast and very solid direction, while the second is reasonably well acted by Dykstra but is terribly directed.

The Glass Menagerie is the story of the Wingfield family in the South, struggling to make ends meet after being abandoned by the patriarch: the father to Tom and Laura, husband to Amanda. The children are grown now and so the role of breadwinner falls to Tom, who feels shackled by his family responsibilities, stuck in a low-paying job he hates, wanting desperately to escape, to have adventures, and to write. Laura is a shy cripple, who spends her days wandering the city and caring for her glass menagerie – a collection of small glass animal figurines – rather than learning a trade so that she can support herself. All of this worries their mother, Amanda, who lives in constant fear that Tom will abandon them just like his father, and that, left to fend for herself, Laura will fail, and remain always hopelessly dependent on others. The characters all speak in a Southern drawl, flawless enough that it helps give the language the right sound adding to the performances.

Dysktra’s rendition of The Glass Menagerie is done with a surprising amount of levity for a Tennessee Williams play, which is not to say it lacks Williams’s trademark bleakness. Amanda (Nancy Palk) is the real star of the play, delivering her nostalgic dialogue and complaints in a light and over-the-top fashion which is incontrovertibly funny. Palk often talks about the gentleman callers of her youth with such vanity that the tone is humourous rather than full of loss. And it works.

In the beginning of the play, Tom speaks to the audience to explain that “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.’” And yet Dykstra’s production feels very immediate. The dialogue flows impeccably to the point that I remained so utterly engaged that I would forget that this was a memory play, Tom’s memory. The only reminder that the events were supposed to be memories was the fact that the actor playing Tom, Stuart Hughes, is too old to be the Tom in the unfolding action. Part of the realism comes from the fantastic set which gives us both the interior and exterior of the apartment the family inhabits. The interior is especially good and the characters move comfortably in it, which kept me completely convinced that this was a real home. But the fact that the play feels so realistic – despite its being a memory play – is hardly something I can complain about in the production, though I worry that some of the nuance of the text may be lost because of it.

What most impressed me about the production was how radically and masterfully the tone and pacing changed through the three parts of the play. It begins with despair and little hope. The characters talk slowly and keep their distance from each other in the physical space; the action moves slowly, too. As soon as a gentleman caller for Laura becomes a real possibility – Tom asks a friend from work to dinner – the characters light up, the energy on-stage increases, the lines delivered more quickly and excitedly, and the physical distance between these unhappy characters decreases. The pacing of the action and the hopefulness in the tone wonderfully tells us just what an important symbol of hope the gentleman caller really is. And when everything blows up as it must – this is a Tennessee Williams play – the tension and the bleakness of the situation seem audible and can be physically felt: everything slows down and becomes pregnant with pauses.

While Dykstra’s direction was a triumph in The Glass Menagerie, it is a trainwreck in his one-act show, The Kreutzer Sonata. The Kreutzer Sonata is a play adapted from the short story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, which, itself, is inspired by the Beethoven duet for piano and violin, the “Kreutzer Sonata”. It tells the story of a husband who becomes consumed with jealousy and rage when his wife plays Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” with another man that he murders her. The wife and other man play with whom she plays Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata”. Ted Dykstra plays the enraged husband, who tells us the story of the events leading up to and including the murder of his wife, of which he is ultimately acquitted, since it was provoked, supposedly, by adultery.

It’s a one-hour show during which Dykstra sits in a red armchair, sipping a glass of water throughout the entire performance. Dykstra is convincing as the husband and successfully takes us on his journey of emotional turmoil, engaging throughout. The trouble with the play is that it lacks context. In fact, it’s staged in such a way that he looks just like the host of Masterpiece Theatre. To whom is he talking to? Is this a monologue to himself, as he works through his issues? It can’t be since he seems to be talking to someone? Does he think he is in front of an audience, addressing us directly, like Richard III would do? Is he confiding in a friend from the comfort of his armchair at home? This seems unlikely given the frequency of private intimate moments that he experiences throughout the telling. The reason why he is telling his story and to whom are completely unclear, which means the production ultimately fails. And the fact that it’s full of misogyny – an insane and enraged husband gets away with murder because he is right to think that women should be assumed adulterous and evil and deserve to be beaten and die for it – only fuels my distaste for the play.

Live theatre is a wonderful thing, but without knowing how to find student ticket prices, it can be an incredibly daunting endeavour for your already empty wallet. Finding your way to the theatre (especially out of town) and around the complicated student discounts can be exhausting, so we at blogUT have put together a short list of some of the best theatre in the city and how to access it at reasonable prices. Stay tuned on blogUT for reviews of many of the shows from these festivals. (more…)

Michael Cera has made a career out of playing the same darn character: the goofy geek  that somehow always gets the girl. In Juno, we see his character, Bleeker, through the eyes of the wise-cracking Juno, and so we grow to love him for the sweet, albeit awkward, boy that he is. Even in Superbad we get to see his character’s heart and so we care for him. And in both cases, he is either in school or looking ahead to university, or he has at least something motivating him and propelling him through life.

In Scott Pilgrim vs The World it seems as though we are supposed to remember how much we liked Michael Cera’s character in previous movies and thus the film assumes we will like his similarly geeky and awkward character here. But in Scott Pilgrim he is a 22-year-old loser: he is not in school, he does not have a job, he is in a terrible band, and he lives in a tiny basement apartment with his gay roommate (with whom he shares a bed) across the street from his parents’ house. Oh yeah, and he’s dating a 17-year-old high school student who conveniently wears a Catholic school uniform, presumably to help him fulfill, through this completely hands-off relationship, any related fantasies. He could not be more pathetic. And when he starts up a relationship with his dream girl without breaking it off with the high schooler, he becomes a jerk.

At least his life is populated by colourful characters, which would have made for a far more interesting film if they were more in the foreground and less in the background. There is his gay wise-cracking roommate, Wallace, who is a master at the sarcastic and dry wit, played by the very talented Kieran Culkin in a 2-dimensional reprise of his role from Igby Goes Down. There is also his gossipy sister (Anna Kendrick from Up In The Air) who is often in league with Wallace for ridiculing Scott and attempting to get him to stop screwing up his life. And the wonderful Canadian actress, Allison Pill, plays Scott’s ex-girlfriend and the drummer – with attitude – in his terrible band. I pretty much enjoyed every minute that any one of these three were on screen. (more…)

If any of you have classes over at the Bahen Center or have friends in CS/ECE, you will know what I mean about the laundry part.  So we’ve constructed a simple guide for you Computer Science/Electrical-Computer Engineers.  The GPL lifestyle consist of gym in the mornings, to help straighten up that posture.  Programming during the day, because those open source projects won’t write themselves.  And finally laundry at night, so you can stay fresh for the next day.

*This post is in reference to “Gym, Tanning and Laundry” from the TV series Jersey Shore.

Danny

Try not to take on too many projects, it can become a real headache.

It’s important to have a good school/life balance, or else you might end up like Eugine.

Both the Dave Holland Quintet and the Branford Marsalis Quartet could have easily sold out the MainStage space at the Toronto Jazz Festival had they each been the headliner act of their own show, so it’s a little strange that they should be shoved together in a double bill on Friday, July 3rd. Nevertheless, it’s hard to complain when you get to see that much talent and good music on display for the affordable price of $40 at the Toronto Jazz Festival, all in one night, even if the acoustics leave something to be desired.

The Dave Holland Quintet – Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone, Chris Potter on alto/soprano sax, Nate Smith on drums, and Dave Holland on bass – opened the evening with a wonderful, energetic 75-minute set of original compositions from Holland’s albums. The set list included: “Step to It”, “Last Minute Man”, “Full Circle”, and “Lucky Seven”. The Dave Holland Quintet has a very eclectic sound, and at times, dissonant. Generally, this means there’s a lot going on at once, with Potter and Eubanks each carrying a bit of the melody – at the same time – and Nelson, Smith, and Holland sharing the rhythm sections. This tends to lead to a lot of complexity, and because of all the different instruments, each with what could be a standalone part, all together, gives you a rich variety of things to listen to. You can tune in and tune out of various different instruments, take your pick, and never be bored. Sometimes all this action leads to really rewarding and interesting dissonance and other times it ends up as just too busy. Sometimes I had trouble differentiating between the parts that Potter and Eubanks were playing, sometimes they blended together, and it felt like a bit too much mushiness. But the band really shone when its three stars took the stage with their solos: drummer Nate Smith, saxophonist Chris Potter, and bassist Dave Holland.

Drummer Nate Smith also played with Chris Potter in his “Underground” group at the Pilot on Monday, but it was in this concert with Holland where he really impressed me. Generally, when drummers take solos, they are so excited to finally be allowed to stray from just beat-keeping that they try to hit and bang as many drums and cymbals as possible in the smallest amount of time: this is their chance to make a lot of noise. But this approach lacks musicality; it’s just an unpleasant racket, the kind I usually can’t wait to stop. But Nate Smith, much like drumming greats Jack DeJohnette and Tony Williams, understands that less is more with drum solos. He hits a beat, he finds a rhythm to play with, and he lets the audience in on what he is doing. We can keep up, we can enjoy, and while it’s not “simple” it’s not overdone either: there’s music and clarity here. He also finds different pitches and tones to play with so that when his drum solo comes to an end, we can’t help but want more, or look forward to his next one. Smith is a great drummer and these are very, very few and far between.
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