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Sunday July 14th, 2002
By JON KAPLAN
THE FRINGE FESTIVAL'S WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Part Two
So it's the last day of the Fringe, and you still want your fix of the Bard. Not a traditional production, but one that plays around a bit with the text and still scores some points with storytelling and iambic pentameter.
Your best bet – of the shows I've seen – is still Shakespeare's World Cup (5 pm at the Trinity College playing field, just east of the George Ignatieff Theatre), a zany, clever weaving together of Will's four most famous tragedies, with an amazing body count and lots of goofy jokes.
BARDIC LOVE
If you want to stay indoors, though, head up to the Tarragon Mainspace (5 pm) and check out Shakespeare For Breakfast, featuring a quartet of British and Scottish performers (Ewan Downie, Jon Ferguson, Skye Lonergan and Kate Lush) who really know how to work their audience. The high-energy piece uses bits of the Bard to show viewers how to fall in love or capture someone else's love and keep it, Elizabethan-style. Drawing on sonnets as well as plays, the group covers such topics as playing hard to get (As You Like It), being persistent and sweeping them off their feet (the show's best use of text, a strong reading of the wooing scene from The Taming Of The Shrew), being an animal (A Midsummer Night's Dream with Bottom – since it's a Canadian production – transformed not into an ass but rather a moose) and serenading the beloved (a song from Twelfth Night).
Don't look for textual purity or depth of reading here. The four use a lot of physical comedy to engage the audience, soliciting audience requests for improv suggestions and asking individual viewers to take part in the sketches. And their energy works – they win over even those who don't know a bodkin from a belly laugh.
HAMLET HOBBLED
If you missed two other Shakespeare-inspired plays that have already closed, don't worry about it. There wasn't much to appreciate in the use that either made of Hamlet.
Old Castle's production of Hamlet crammed as much as possible into 90 minutes. Turned out to be more a race against the clock than a thoughtful reading of the play. Nothing wrong with setting the play in 20s gangster Chicago, with Hamlet senior a mob leader who was killed on the North Side, which subs for Denmark. But the cuts mean that too much motivation is left out, and few in the cast can even hint at why characters act as they do.
Director Michael Ferguson's Hamlet is neither an agonizing prince, nor is he seemingly interested in taking over his father's business. Emotionally and vocally he's wan, never rising to the challenge of the verse. Well, at least his work is a break from the singsong presentation by most of the other performers. The only actors taking control of the verse and the emotions within it are John Cleland, whose Claudius is clearly in control, and Christopher Sawchyn, doubling as a dangerous Polonius and a clownish gravedigger.
But the setting is never explained nor – worse – made use of. The duel at the end starts with axe handles and ends with a meat hook. And that's because…?
Change the context if you want, but provide a reason for it. And make it work.
Count yourself lucky if you didn't get to Cobra: The Musical. It's based on the 80s cartoon series about a ruthless terrorist group aiming at world domination, the guys who were always taking on G.I. Joe and losing. Maybe writers Aaron George and Ace Lopes caught the flavour of the two-dimensional figures, but they've not translated them into anything stageworthy, except for anyone who'd drool at the sound of the snake-headed Serpentor proclaiming resonantly with every statement, arms raised, "This I command."
Short of funds, the Cobra gang decides to put on a production of Hamlet. Along the way there are songs (badly sung), comedy (unfunny) and shouted, raspy-voiced performances (by many of the performers). With this much bad vocal work and gigs at three different Fringe festivals, they must keep the cough drop companies in business. An hour of numbing inanity.
TRUMPETING THE ELEPHANT
And then there's the production of the recently discovered Shakespeare play about Hannibal crossing the Alps with his elephants.
Well, not really, but I needed a segue to talk about one of the best shows of the festival, The Elephant Club.
The simple tale of Rhoda Brown, a mousy telephone worker in a big insurance company – she's the drab voice that informs you that all lines are busy and you'll be connected as soon as possible – is in fact far from elementary in execution.
Playing all the characters in the story – Rhoda's mother, office associates, people she meets on the street and those in her rich fantasy life – Australian performer Nicola Gunn is a marvel. Her piece includes a great deal of perfectly executed mime – the fast-forward section of her day at work is amazingly detailed – with the dialogue restricted to everyone around Rhoda. She herself only speaks in a professional context; otherwise, we learn about her through hesitant movements and wide-eyed shyness.
Rhoda comes alive in her romantic daydreams, and it's those dreams that inspire her final act of rebellion against a world that has no sense of who's inside this drab little woman.
The Elephant Game is the final show of the festival at the Poor Alex, tonight at 9 pm. It finishes this year's Fringe on a glorious high.
THAT'S ALL, FOLKS
And that wraps up NOW's daily coverage of the 2002 Fringe Of Toronto Festival.
If you still crave the frenzy of a theatre fest, you won't have to wait long for another. The 12th annual SummerWorks Festival begins August 1 and runs for 11 days. We'll be back to provide daily Web updates for SummerWorks, too. And of course NOW will feature advance previews and festival reviews in print as well.
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