Tonight's performance is the first night of the annual Theatre Ontario Festival, presenting the best community theatre productions from four community theatre regions of the province. The four shows have each been selected from among the entrants in their respective regional festivals.
This year's Festival is hosted by the Oshawa Little Theatre.
A Festival like this is certainly a competition, but it's also a symposium of theatre people watching, listening and learning. As well, and by no means a small benefit, it's a family reunion of like-minded friends who gather every year at the same time to enjoy and to grow as theatre audiences, as theatre practitioners, and as human beings.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
The Odd Couple -- Neil Simon
Representing ACT-CO (Central Ontario region)
Presented by Oshawa Little Theatre
This first play of the Festival is an interesting choice. It's a very famous comedy, has been staged uncounted times, was made into an equally famous movie and TV series, has been updated and gender-reversed by the author in the "Female Version" in 1985, spun off the "New Look at the Odd Couple" in 2002, and the original just keeps right on going. Not hard to see why -- it's as near to a guaranteed vehicle for putting bums on seats as you can find in the theatre.
All the same, I have to confess that for me The Odd Couple is starting to wear a bit thin. The premise is funny enough, but the cultural assumptions of the characters and the dynamics of the story as it unfolds are now seriously dated. It has become a definite "period piece" And I have my doubts as to whether this play has enough "legs" to keep it running into genuine "classic" status.
However, no matter how creaky or rickety the material, if you're going to stage it you just have to go for the gusto and give it your best shot. And that's unquestionably what the Oshawa Little Theatre has done in this production.
The opening curtains revealed a set whose most notable feature was a huge cloud of smoke hovering over the dining table where the weekly poker game was in progress. That cloud of smoke was a great way to bring us immediately into the "boys-card-night" atmosphere of the opening scene. The apartment as a whole certainly looked lived-in, with "stuff" strewn everywhere, but there were no details anywhere to tell us about Oscar's career as a sportswriter and the typewriter sat neatly on an upstage table like a decorative element, not a work tool. On the whole, the look of the room was certainly period-appropriate as were the costumes and colour choices. Props, too, were for the most part period-appropriate, although the phone appeared to me more Seventies than Sixties.
The assorted characters of the men at the card table were better differentiated than in some productions, each man developing a very unique voice/face/physical style to suit his character. Steve Maddiss as Speed and Stephen Suepaul as Roy effectively acted as a pair -- "Angry" and "Angrier" -- to rile things up, while the imposing presence of Tom Lynch as Murray and the quieter Vinnie of John Green gave depth and interest to the group.
The key dynamics of this play develop, of course, with the arrival of Felix (Will van der Zyl), and the impact his strange personality has in the apartment of Oscar (James Burrell). Burrell struck me as the angriest Oscar I've ever seen, and his anger took the play in the end into an uncommonly dark final scene. Right from the moment he pulled the cord of the vacuum cleaner, Burrell had murder in his eyes -- the look and manner of a human leopard stalking its prey. Although I know it won't happen, I felt during that final scene that Felix's life was in genuine danger -- a powerful choice to heighten the dramatic intensity. The Felix of van der Zyl was uncommonly sad. He was surrounded by the aura of the classic sad clown. Facial expressions were a whole roster of unhappy looks, the mouth twisted in a grimace of sorrow as often as all other facial expressions put together. His voice, too, came across as always tinged with sadness, even under all his other vocal tones -- and they were many.
The best aspect of this production was its physicality. This play has become so standardized as a comedy of manners in so many productions that it was a relief to see a company up the stakes and take certain key scenes into the realm of farce. The hilarious Keystone Kops chase sequence around the apartment plainly took advantage of the two doors of the bathroom -- the "seen" one into the living room and the "unseen" one to the bedrooms. Other slapstick moments were played with excellent timing and precision. The director then made excellent use of silences, sometimes even of extended silent action sequences, to balance the show and keep it multi-dimensional. On another, and again more clown-like level, Felix's clumsiness during the arrival of the Pigeon sisters from upstairs was also excellently played -- as was his moment of smiles, half pleased, and half smug as he sat down between them on the sofa.
As for the sisters themselves, here we hit a problem. Both Shari Thorne as Gwendolyn and Tracy McCarten as Cecily had the right look -- but it was the same look. Of all the characters in the play, these two were totally interchangeable. Both flighty, both giggly, and both loud, loud, loud. And there lay the rub -- the girls began their scene at about a level 9 and had nowhere left to grow their characters as the scene progressed. Considering how well the highs and lows of the play were orchestrated elsewhere by the director, the failure to build more into this scene was surprising -- and, sadly, somewhat tedious.
Aside from that difficulty involving the Pigeon sisters, director Geoffrey Coulter led his company in a strong, clear production of a play that's actually much more difficult to stage well and with some originality than many people would believe.
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Extra Note:
Although it's not impossible, it's also not very common for the hosting theatre to end up becoming the region's selected entrant for Theatre Ontario (the last time was in 2006). In a situation like this, they have a natural advantage in not having to adapt their production or their performance to an unfamiliar space. However, they still have to abide by the same rules as every other entrant -- that is, they have to start their set-up for their Festival performance at 8:00 in the morning on a bare stage.
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