Home of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association

Webplay

Cross-Canada Theatre Reviews

Special Feature: Is Theatre a Rich Man's Game?

The following is an online selection of recent reviews of English-language theatre from across Canada. In
scanning the country, the Canadian Theatre Critics Association has sought out specifically reviews of new Canadian work, Canadian premieres of international work and noteworthy revivals of older work. We make no pretense that this is a comprehensive summary of professional theatrical activity in Canada. Rather, look at it as a smorgasbord offering a taste of theatre – and theatre criticism – from coast to coast.

VANCOUVER

Atomic Vaudeville: Ride the Cyclone by Jacob Richmond. Music and lyrics by Brooke Maxwell and Richmond.

Reviewed by Colin Thomas, Georgia Straight, Sept. 30, 2011.

"I’ve never been to an opening that’s generated so much excitement. A female friend that I talked to afterwards said, 'They’re so good I just want to fuck them all.' Another pal kept dissolving into tears of joy. Ride the Cyclone deserves this kind of response."

* * * * * * * * * *

Arts Club Theatre: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. Directed by Vanessa Porteous.

Reviewed by Jerry Wasserman, Vancouver Plays, November 2011.

"Directed by Alberta Theatre Projects’ Vanessa Porteous and starring Meg Roe as Penelope, the Arts Club production of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is a triumph. Atwood’s stage adaptation of her own fascinating feminist herstory of Odysseus’ wife, Roe’s eloquently straightforward performance, and Porteous’ superb staging add up to a delicious evening of theatre."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

The Cultch Historic Theatre: Penny Plain by Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes.

Reviewed by Jerry Wasserman, Vancouver Plays, November 2011.

"Early in Ronnie Burkett’s Penny Plain, the elderly, blind Ms. Plain and her dog Geoffrey sit side by side in armchairs, discussing the comparative virtues of civilized behaviour versus the habit of sniffing each other’s bums. After Geoffrey departs, determined to experience the rapidly disintegrating world on his own, Penny drops to her knees, raises one arm, and in the subtlest of gestures slowly strokes the empty space where her beloved pet would once have lain. It’s a sweet, poignant, profoundly human moment. And of course, it’s all done with marionettes."

” * * * * * * * * *

Firehall Theatre: Vimy by Vern Thiessen. Directed by Donna Spencer.

Reviewed by Peter Birnie, Vancouver Sun, Nov. 3, 2011.

"Director Donna Spencer works well with a strong cast in Vimy, and their collective attention to all the fine details in Vern Thiessen’s script helps tremendously to energize an otherwise uninspired drama. Vimy is a pageant of history, accurate down to the last brass button on costume designer Sabrina Evertt’s First World War uniforms, but it is not really theatre."

” * * * * * * * * *

Battery Opera: M/Hotel by David McIntosh.

Reviewed by Colin Thomas, Georgia Straight, Nov. 25, 2011.

"Entering a hotel room with people you don’t know for an experience you can’t predict is challenging. Go for it, I say. I’m glad I did. David McIntosh’s newest site-specific work, M/Hotel, unfolds mostly in a second-floor room at the Holiday Inn on Howe Street. There are five shows a night—on the hour between 6 and 10 p.m.—and each performance features one of a dozen monologues that McIntosh wrote while staying in hotel and motel rooms. I’ve seen two of them. Maximum audience size is five and there are two performers in each piece. Expect awkwardness and intimacy."

Return to Top ▲

VICTORIA

Belfry Theatre/National Arts Centre: And Slowly Beauty... by Michel Nadeau, translated by Maureen Labonté. Directed by Michael Shamata.

Reviewed by John Threlfall, CultureVultureVictoria.com, Sept. 24, 2011.

"'A man gets ready to go to work...' So begins what appears to be a typical day in the life of the ubiquitously named Mr. Mann, a 48-year-old middle-management type as buttoned down as his pinstriped grey suit. Yet, like a loose thread at which he can’t help but tug, Mr. Mann is becoming increasingly aware that he’s drifting out of touch with his job, his wife, his children and the urban life that swirls around him like a detritus-filled tide. All that changes, however, when he wins tickets to a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters and realizes the mid-life cocoon he has spun around himself is beginning to crack. But what in another writer’s hands could well develop into a full-blown existential crisis instead blossoms into an affirmation of the random joys of life in Quebec playwright Michel Nadeau’s And Slowly Beauty... which is as much a paean to the transformative power of theatre as it is an uplifting awareness of crisis averted."

* * * * * * * * * *

Theatre Inconnu/University of Victoria: Love Kills by Kyle Jarrow.

Reviewed by Adrian Chamberlain, Victoria Times Colonist, Oct. 15, 2011.

"In the musical Love Kills, Charlie Starkweather is asked why he murdered all those people. 'Because,' says Charlie, 'that's the only thing that's as big as our love.' He's talking about his 14-yearold girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. In 1958, the pair went on a bloody spree, leaving behind 11 victims—some family members, some strangers. In his provocative 2009 musical, now staged at the University of Victoria, American playwright Kyle Jarrow delves into the motivations [for] the Starkweather/Fugate killings. What floats to the surface is Starkweather's twisted, nihilistic philosophy of life."

* * * * * * * * * *

Pacific Opera Victoria: Mary's Wedding. Music by Andrew Paul MacDonald, text by Stephen Massicotte. Directed by Michael Shamata.

Reviewed by John Threlfall, CultureVultureVictoria.com, Nov. 12, 2011.

"Is there anything riskier than commissioning and mounting a brand new opera? Getting married pops to mind, as does heading off to war. Pacific Opera Victoria tackles all three at once with the world premiere of the ambitious Mary’s Wedding, an opera based on the universally acclaimed play of the same name, adapted here by original playwright Stephen Massicotte—who also provides the libretto.... Dynamic, compelling, exciting and dramatic, only one thing kept me from joining in opening night’s partial standing-O—and it wasn’t the cramped space at the McPherson Playhouse."

Return to Top ▲

CALGARY

Alberta Theatre Projects: The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop.

Reviewed by Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald, April 6, 2011.

"The Old Trout Puppet Workshop's comic take on the legend of Don Juan is back for a return engagement at Alberta Theatre Projects, two years after its last visit to town. Even though it's two years later, he hasn't aged a minute. More like the opposite. In the 2011 revival, [Duval] Lang takes over for Old Trout Pete Balkwill in the lead role, and gives him a real jolt of adrenalin."

* * * * * * * * *

Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre: i-ROBOT Theatre by Natalee Caple, AJ Demers, Mark Hopkins and Charles Netto.

Reviewed by Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald, June 24, 2011.

"For many guys, it’s a revelation to discover that women have feelings. Imagine discovering robots have ‘em too! That’s the whimsical, engaging and entertaining premise behind i-ROBOT Theatre, Swallow-a-Bicycle's very own Terrence Malick-like project, which they set about to create in 2009 and which finally had its debut this week, in the intimate Birds and Stone Theatre."

Return to Top ▲

EDMONTON

Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival

Reviewed by Liz Nicholls, Edmonton Journal, Aug. 19, 2011.

Edmonton Journal critic Liz Nicholls looks back at this year's 30th anniversary edition of North America's oldest and largest fringe theatre festival.

Return to Top ▲

WINNIPEG

Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival

Reviewed by the critics of the Winnipeg Free Press, July 13-22, 2011.

A round-up of reviews of the 24th annual festival.

Return to Top ▲

TORONTO

Acting Up Stage/Obsidian Theatre: Caroline, or Change, book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori.

Reviewed by Robert Cushman, National Post, Feb. 2, 2012

"I have lost count of the American shows that someone or other has hailed as 'the first great musical of the 21st century.' They include — and please don’t laugh — Spring Awakening, The Producers, Avenue Q, American Idiot, Next to Normal and Caroline, or Change. The last — book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori — is the one with a serious claim: the most exciting, the most moving, simply the most."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Factory Theatre/Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes: Penny Plain, created and performed by Ronnie Burkett.

Reviewed by Carly Maga, Torontoist, Jan. 30, 2012.

"Canadian theatre magician Ronnie Burkett has spent the last 25 years creating stunningly lifelike marionettes with his company, Theatre of Marionettes, while honing techniques that transform the puppets from inanimate objects to emotive beings right before our eyes. But beware assumptions that Burkett’s puppets spend their time singing folk songs and dancing in kick lines — these marionettes have far more sinister desires."

* * * * * * * * * *

Canadian Stage: Cruel and Tender by Martin Crimp, directed by Atom Egoyan.

Reviewed by J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail, Jan. 27, 2012.

"Egoyan's return to working in Toronto theatre is a cause for celebration; with only a few false steps involving focus, he has put together a visually striking piece that wouldn't be out of place on any European festival stage. His memorable images include a hand crushing a wine glass and then dripping with blood, while his use of video projections are, unsurprisingly, virtuosic, showing us agony in disconcerting close-up. But alas, both the Crimp play he's chosen to direct and [Arsinée] Khanjian's central performance in it are puzzling and unsatisfying."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Soulpepper Theatre: Kim's Convenience by Ins Choi.

Reviewed by Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine, Jan. 26, 2012.

"Ins Choi’s Kim Convenience deserves to be open for business a long time. It sells a specific story with universal appeal, and it’s as stomach-hurtingly funny as it is dramatic and moving."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Nightwood Theatre: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, starring Megan Follows, directed by Kelly Thornton.

Reviewed by Jeniva Berger, Scene Changes, January 2012.

"As the rush of billowing clouds roll menacingly toward the audience, Megan Follows as Queen Penelope, a new resident in Hades, says solemnly from centre stage, "Now that I'm dead, I know everything." Then, immediately, she strikes a tongue-in-cheek pose, Madonna style (the singer, not the Virgin Mary), that sets the tone for Nightwood Theatre's incomparable version of The Penelopiad."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Canadian Stage/Vancouver Playhouse/Citadel Theatre: Red by John Logan, starring Jim Mezon, directed by Kim Collier.

Reviewed by John Coulbourn, Toronto Sun, Nov. 25, 2011.

"If you’ve got 90 minutes to spare and want to spend them engrossed in a thrilling and passionate discussion on art and artists, here’s some advice: Get down to the Bluma Appel Theatre, buy a ticket for Red and then — and I mean this in the nicest possible way — just shut up and listen. Because when it comes to thrilling and passionate discussions about art and artists, it simply doesn’t get much better than John Logan’s Tony Award-winning play."

Read more…

Return to Top ▲

OTTAWA

National Arts Centre and Canadian Stage: Saint Carmen of the Main by Michel Tremblay, translated by Linda Gaboriau.

Reviewed by Patrick Langston, Ottawa Citizen, March 19, 2011.

"Make no mistake: giving voice to your own song is as crucial and dangerous today as it was 35 or even 2,500 years ago. That’s the urgent message, encased in a highly stylized production, that director Peter Hinton signals in his vital presentation of Michel Tremblay’s Saint Carmen of the Main at the National Arts Centre."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Great Canadian Theatre Company and Sleeping Dog Theatre: The Shadow Cutter by Pierre Brault.

Reviewed by Alvina Ruprecht and Iris Winston, Capital Critics Circle, March 2011.

Ruprecht: "Pierre Brault has become a legendary writer/performer of theatrical monologues.... It is not surprising then that this world première of the life of Canadian magician Dai Vernon produced great expectations among the theatre-going public in Ottawa. We were, however, sadly disappointed."

Winston: “A note in the program explaining that The Shadow Cutter is a fictionalized rendering of magician Dai Vernon’s life and that it is not authorized by his estate or biographers red flags the contents before the show begins. But the suggestion of real-life drama or intrigue is never realized in this story of obsession."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Necessary Angel Theatre Company at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival: This is What Happens Next, written and performed by Daniel MacIvor.

Reviewed by Patrick Langston, Ottawa Citizen, May 28, 2011.

"Control freak alert: Don’t go to this one-man show written and performed by Daniel MacIvor. Deep psychic damage could result when the play proves to you that our expectations are frequently unrealizable and that life comes with no guarantee of fairy-tale endings. On the other hand, maybe you should go. A dose of reality, especially when it’s wrapped in the charming, often very funny package that is MacIvor’s métier, might loosen you up a bit."

Read more…

Return to Top ▲

MONTREAL

Festival TransAmériques: Mille anonymes: Homage aux sociétés disparus (1,000 Unknown) by Daniel Danis.

Reviewed by Jeff Heinrich, Montreal Gazette, June 1, 2011.

"There's a sense of humour in Daniel Danis's new play. It begins with the cast having a sneezing fit and ends with them yawning. Who knows? Maybe the joke is on us, meant to mimic what a bad crowd sounds like. Perplexed was more like it on opening night Monday. After sitting through 85 minutes without an intermission, and applauding rather politely, the audience left the theatre a bit stunned."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Montreal Fringe Festival.

Reviewed by Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette, June 15, 2011.

“The Montreal Fringe Festival has always attracted a variety of mavericks and eccentrics, all vying for attention, hoping to make a buck. Now some of the playwrights are trying a new ploy that’s really as old as the Gutenberg press: selling themselves in print."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Théâtre du Rideau Vert/Juste pour rire: Les Fourberies de Scapin by Molière.

Reviewed by Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette, June 24, 2011.

“Is it a Molière play or is it a circus? Denise Filiatrault has placed her version of Les Fourberies de Scapin within a carnivalesque world where physical comedy speaks louder than words, creating an ongoing narrative of its own."

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Hudson Village Theatre (Hudson, Quebec): The Fly Fisher's Companion by Michael Melski.

Reviewed by Neil Boyce, Montreal Mirror, June 30, 2011.

"Hudson Village Theatre have put the electrodes to a 2005 work by Nova Scotia playwright Michael Melski, The Fly Fisher’s Companion, reviving it to kick start their busy summer season.... Set in Cape Breton’s Margaree River in the spring of 1985, it follows old buddies Wes and Don, embarking on what could be their last fishing trip together."

Read more…

Return to Top ▲

HALIFAX

Neptune Theatre and WYRD Productions: MacHomer by William Shakespeare and Rick Miller.

Reviewed by Trevor J. Adams, Halifax Magazine, Feb. 7, 2011.

“By putting such a celebrated moron [Homer Simpson] at the centre of the play, Miller allows us the rare chance to not be ashamed by getting lost in Shakespeare. It’s the classic fish-out-of-water plot device – insert an outsider into a strange world and let the audience discover it through him.”

Return to Top ▲

SHAW FESTIVAL

Heartbreak House by Bernard Shaw, directed by Christopher Newton.

Reviewed by Robert Cushman, National Post, May 28, 2011.

“Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House was written in, and set during, the First World War, though there’s no mention of this in the play until the last 10 minutes, when the English country home in which it’s set is visited by an air raid. Two of the houseguests, a burglar and an industrialist, run for cover and get blown up. The others, residents and visitors alike, stand their ground and even turn up the lights to make things easier for the bombers. They survive this time, but the play ends with them fervently hoping for another raid tomorrow. There is, of course, a certain grandeur to their defiance; and this, coupled with the fact that they are by and large the most charming and amusing people in the play, usually means that we end up in their corner. Not so in the revival with which the Shaw Festival begins its 50th season. This time we see the ending as Shaw seems to have meant it: as an image of a useless, used-up ruling class embracing its own merited destruction. So, one up to Christopher Newton’s production….”

* * * * * * * * * *

My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, directed by Molly Smith.

Reviewed by Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star, May 29, 2011.

“The Shaw Festival’s opening week concluded on Saturday night with the opening of My Fair Lady at the Festival Theatre and although not the hats-in-the-air, unqualified hit that would have been welcome, it’s still a solid production, especially on the dramatic front….”

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Drama at Inish by Lennox Robinson, directed by Jackie Maxwell, and Candida by Bernard Shaw, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki.

Reviewed by Jeniva Berger, Scene Changes, June 2011.

"While there is more drama and less comedy in Candida, Bernard Shaw's play about love, marriage and idealism, the little-known 1930 comic gem, Drama at Inish, rediscovered for the Shaw Festival's 50th anniversary by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, manages a nice helping of both, though author Lennox Robinson was more on target when he subtitled it 'an exaggeration in three acts.'"

Read more…

* * * * * * * * * *

Maria Severa by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli, directed by Jackie Maxwell.

Reviewed by Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star, Aug. 6, 2011.

"The new musical by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli that opened at the Shaw Festival on Friday night is a clear indication that these men are continually advancing in the art of writing music and lyrics for the theatre. Their story of the poor Portuguese prostitute who invented the art song form known as fado demands a score of passionate depth and they provide it."

Reviewed by J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail, Aug. 8, 2011.

"Turvey and Sportelli’s score is, at times, quite enchanting, fusing the heart of fado into a headier form of composition associated with post-Sondheim musicals. But the words are another matter... At times the lyrics are so literal, they seem like stage directions – or perhaps a description lifted from a tourist guide."

Return to Top ▲

SPECIAL FEATURE:

MONEY, MONEY: IS THEATRE A RICH MAN'S GAME?

By Robin Breon

(The following article appears in the Spring 2011 issue of the Canadian Theatre Review. It has been reprinted with the author's permission.)

Back then it seemed like such a huge swindle
But now the whole thing just seems to have dwindled.
Perhaps it was all just a misunderstanding
As creditors die off and become less demanding.

—The Phantom Librettist

“Garth (Howard) Drabinsky was described as a creative genius.” Thus begins the eighty-six page document submitted by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Judge Mary Lou Benotto presiding) detailing the dispute between Her Majesty the Queen and Garth Drabinsky along with his business partner Myron Gottlieb who, from 1993 to 1998, owned and operated Livent, the world’s first publicly traded live entertainment conglomerate producing mostly (but not exclusively) musical theatre projects with three theatres in North America (Toronto, New York, and Chicago) as well as productions in England and Australia. In 1993, Livent became the first musical theatre producing company in North America to “go public,” that is, to solicit funds from the public by way of stock offerings that could be purchased on the Toronto Stock Exchange through an initial public offering.

On 25 March 2009, nearly seven years after the RCMP brought charges against the management of Livent, Benotto found the pair guilty on two counts of fraud and one count of forgery involving the operation of a kick-back scheme that resulted in manipulated financial statements; statements which portrayed a financially robust and profitable company in documents filed with the Ontario Securities Commission and in the Livent prospectus (used to solicit potential investors from the public at large) when, in fact, the two men knew the corporation was incurring substantial losses and accumulating growing debt. In the end, Drabinsky and Gottlieb were revealed to have cooked the books to the tune of about half a billion dollars (a modest sum by comparison to Wall Street’s recent meltdown in the private sector) but nevertheless a huge fortune for those of us who labour on the not-for-profit side of the ledger in Canadian theatre. Drabinsky was sentenced to serve seven years in prison and Gottlieb got six years. Both are currently free on bail pending an appeal.

In a recent CTR edition with the theme “Theatre, the Law, and the Courts”, Guillermo Verdecchia produced a cogent interview with playwright/actor/director Liza Balkan that posed the (rhetorical) question: “Can the Theatre be a Courtroom?” Indeed, Judge Benotto inverts the proposition and describes a courtroom that produced theatre worthy of grand opera. In the court proceedings, Livent appears as a seething, venomous cauldron of activity involving the quest for wealth and power by whatever means necessary including corruption and malfeasance. Rumours of conspiracies against the founders of the company were coupled with a subplot of sexual desire and unrequited love. In the confines of the corporate boardroom, the protagonists acted out with raw emotion, arrogance, and personal egoism that were so far beyond the pale that one would expect to find such behaviour only on the stage.

But within this courtroom drama lies a cautionary tale that goes straight to the heart of the discussion around the commodification of art. American playwright John Logan’s award winning play Red depicts the paradoxical life of abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko in his struggle to reconcile his own feelings about art with his growing commercial success by way of important commissions. At one point, he rails against his friend Jackson Pollock’s greatest tragedy: “He became famous,” says Rothko. In David French’s classic backstage comedy Jitters, one of the characters inveighs against the parochial Canadian mentality that puts down anyone who is able to achieve success in show business. In comparing Canadians to Americans the actor says: “Down there they embrace success, up here it’s like you stepped out of line”.

Indeed, to read the popular press the day after the theatre mogul was convicted on fraud and forgery charges, one could see Drabinsky as either devil or angel. In her guilty verdict, Judge Benotto cited rave notices about “spectacular” theatrical successes that “reflected favourably on all of us in Canada.” Toronto Star columnist David Olive and theatre critic Richard Ouzounian lauded Drabinsky’s work in the American theatre: nineteen Tony awards (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Showboat, Ragtime, Barrymore),building and refurbishing theatres in NYC as well as Chicago, and generally reinventing a notion of the theatre impresario not seen since the days of Florenz Ziegfeld. Columnist Rick Salutin observed in the Globe and Mail that Drabinsky’s chief success was in securing the Canadian franchise for The Phantom of the Opera while at the same time leveraging his company, Livent Incorporated, in an effort to attract greater amounts of operating capital: “They [Livent] used Canada as a resource base for funding theatres, testing product and schlepping” (Salutin).

The lights on the marquee burned bright for a while and the onstage talent was well paid for their services, but lesser creditors and service contract employees went unpaid. One of the saddest constructions of Drabinsky’s courtroom defence was predicated on the preposterous claim that his employees had manufactured the whole nefarious scheme unbeknownst to their boss. Still the popular myth persists: Mr. Drabinsky was a huge success in both Canada and the United States. He created great theatre art and he did so with the intent of making a profit for himself, his employees, and his shareholders within an entirely private-sector funding model. Except for the criminality (and that is a big except), is this free enterprise, meritocratic approach a worthy goal for artists?

From the earliest appearance of the actor with a lute or a jongleur in a tavern (often accompanied with an inverted cap inviting donations from listeners) to the present, some element of cash exchange has always been present to sustain the artists’ performance including patronage, advertising, corporate sponsorship, government subsidy, and box office revenue. The numbers and the players may vary, but the gig has remained pretty much the same throughout the ages.

Canada does not have as strong a tradition in producing commercial theatre as the U.S. does. Although historically there have been a number of worthy pioneers in this area who believe that profit and commercial success is not a bad idea: Marlene Smith, Jim Betts, Ed and David Mirvish, David Warrack and Aubrey Dan to name just a few. Today, art, in its general sense, is something that society views favourably by placing in the category of a social good worthy of financial support that comes from government (i.e. taxdollar revenue). Canada’s timidity in providing public funding for the arts was signalled as early as 1951, in that benchmark cri de coeur calling for Canadian public tax dollars to fund artistic endeavours. The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (the Massey Report) expressed apprehension that government funding could turn art into a political football game supported by one government and repressed by another. Everybody wants to be a critic in Parliament, especially during question period.

What the Massey Report did set into irrevocable motion was the creation of the Canada Council that was mandated to establish its own mechanisms whereby government funds for the arts could be distributed to individual artists and to arts organizations. The resulting establishment of a national arts council along with the provincial arts councils that mirror the infrastructure of their national counterpart (adjudicating awards within various artistic disciplines) is the economic framework that today enables thousands of Canadian artists in the not-for-profit sector to undertake their daily activities. The argument can and should be made that the due diligence and professional stewardship of these funds, along with the checks and balances placed on their use (i.e. annual audited financial statements, etc.), should shame the regulators at the Ontario Securities Commission with regard to the Livent debacle.

Jerzy Grotowski, in his book Towards a Poor Theatre, has a section entitled “Exploitation of errors” in which he explains that it is important for an actor to have the presence of mind to insert into the structure of the role any mistakes that have been made in performance. Grotowski insists that the actor, instead of stopping, beginning again, and correcting the error, must be able to improvise and continue, thus “exploiting the error as an effect” for the rest of the play. There are many theories circulating as to why the actors in this drama continued to err as they did at Livent, rather than instituting any corrective measures that might forestall the mounting tide of evidence that would eventually bring about the downfall of the company. One explanation is the golden handcuffs theory that implies (even as the inside joke at Livent had all the employees being measured for tailor-made “prison suits”) the money was just so good that people stayed on in the foolish belief that some remedy would be just around the corner. If remedy in the commercial world of the theatre means the ability to leverage limitless amounts of operating capital in the belief that money can create art that will turn enormously profitable, then everyone with the access to capital would do just that. The truth is that there has never been a copyright or patented formula on the creative process that leads automatically to success.

Public subsidy of the arts has always emphasized democracy over meritocracy. In a recent issue of the New Yorker the director of the Public Theatre, Oscar Eustis, ruminates on the nature of arts subsidies and proposes launching an endowment campaign with the goal of raising a hundred million dollars that would enable his aspiration to offer free tickets for every Public Theatre production. In accepting the Barbara Hamilton Memorial Award at the 2010 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, actor R. H. Thomson decried the physical infrastructure of many small to mid-size theatre venues in Toronto as “dumps” that haven’t received substantial upgrading “from what you found in 1970. I can’t believe we do this as a nation”. And Des McAnuff, artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, noted in an op-ed piece in the Toronto Star “that universal and affordable access to art should be a public priority” while asking “why does Canada lag so far behind Britain and Europe in its public funding of major arts institutions?” The relationship between the public and the private sector in the arts is one that should be mutually inclusive. The conservative argument that juxtaposes roads, education, hospital beds, and the needs of the Department of National Defence as priorities that will always trump the arts is as short-sighted as it is divisive.

In the private sector there are increasing numbers of entrepreneurs and good corporate citizens who have engaged in many productive partnerships that have generated great Canadian theatre. In 1985, producer Marlene Smith mounted Cats with an all-Canadian cast and technical crew that was second to none. Cats played for two years at the newly refurbished (with public funds) Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto, then toured across Canada and landed back in Toronto for an additional nine-month run.

Consider the record of Mirvish Productions with shows like Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Two Pianos Four Hands, The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, Da Kink in My Hair, The Drowsy Chaperone, and My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish-Wiccan Wedding (to name a few); all were successful Canadian plays that came out of not-for-profit venues and received wide, well-deserved recognition by being elevated to larger mainstream theatres (not all of them profitable runs, incidentally). In addition, David Mirvish recently announced that he is offering a home to Theatre Museum Canada in one of his properties on King Street that will allow TMC to expand its activities and continue to mount exhibitions highlighting the material culture of Canada’s theatre history.

Theatre artists working on the non-profit side of the ledger can learn valuable lessons from the private sector. Today, when an arts jury deliberates on whether or not to support a proposal for a new work, the word “commercial” (meaning the play might have popular appeal) is no longer considered a dirty word. Juries rightly continue to fund new plays that are edgy and avant-garde but also recognize that actors like to play for full houses born of a popular success and that this does not necessarily represent a diminution of artistic standards.

Tragic heroes (as Aristotle noted) are compelling dramatic characters because they normally are represented as deeply flawed individuals who fall from very high places. Much has been written about the second act curtain coming down on Garth Drabinsky, but the tragic hero also comes out of an earlier tradition of dramatic literature in which there was often a third act—one that sees the protagonist expressing remorse, contrition, and atonement for his actions. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out after the intermission.

(Note: Full disclosure: the author of this essay, who appears here under the pseudonym “The Phantom Librettist,” currently has several musical theatre projects in various stages of development.)

(Robin Breon is an arts journalist and member of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association/ Association International des Critiques de Théâtre.)