On stage at the Festival Theatre at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., is "The Coronation Voyage" by noted Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard. It is an example of the festival's expanded mandate to present plays written not only during, but also about, the period of G.B. Shaw's lifetime (1856-1950).
"Coronation Voyage" takes place aboard the first-class deck of a luxury liner crossing from Montreal to London in May of 1953. Most of the passengers are headed to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. There's a cabinet minister with his wife and daughter and three young women who have been lucky enough to win a contest for girls who are named Elizabeth.
There is also a passenger who is a Mafia chief fleeing for his life. With him are his two sons, Etienne from a French mistress, and Sandro, the son of the chief's Italian mistress. Etienne is a gifted pianist, but has had his fingers so mangled by cohorts of his father that he will never be able to play again. Also with the chief is a Canadian diplomat in charge of their new passports, but he has a weakness for adolescent boys and the 13-year-old Sandro appeals to him. He offers the chief the passports for his son. Recording and elaborating on the chief's life is the biographer, who is also along for the ride.
"Coronation Voyage" is directed by Jackie Maxwell. Acting is excellent with some of the Shaw's veteran actors taking important roles. George Dawson is the biographer, Jim Mezon the chief, and David Schurmann is Minister Joseph Gendron.
"The Coronation Voyage" is slow-paced, wordy, even poetic, but never celebratory in feeling as the title might lead you to think. It has a dark side and a violent ending that makes you think that, even though the chief has severed ties with the Mafia, his legacy has gone down to his sons. "The Coronation Voyage" remains on stage at the Festival Theatre until Nov. 1.
At the Court House Theatre is noted Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's "The Plough and the Stars." The third in O'Casey's "Dublin Trilogy," it sparked riots in the midst of its opening week at Ireland's Abbey Theatre in 1926.
Director Neil Munro states that "'The Plough and the Stars' is not a play about politics: It is a play about poverty."
"Plough" takes place in a tenement, in rooms that are home for as many as they will hold. The lives of the characters in the tenement, however, are set against the 1916 Easter Rising, a rebellion led by two paramilitary groups, which began on Easter Monday when Patrick Pearse read a declaration of independence on the steps of the General Post Office. The British declared martial law, brought in heavy artillery, and crushed the rebellion in five days. Its leaders were executed by firing squad and looting broke out. The martyrdom of those executed contributed to the creation of an Irish Free State in 1921.
O'Casey doesn't take his audience into the actual rebellion.
Act I takes place in a flat in a Dublin tenement in November of 1915. Act II is in a public house, and Act III takes place outside the tenement. Gunshots are heard, but they are in the distance. We learn of what is happening from others as well as from the wounded as they return. It is a dismal setting composed of both poverty and war. O'Casey, though, is not without Irish wit. Comedy is juxtaposed with tragedy as if to say that one can't exist without the other.
Acting is good. Mike Shara as Jack and Fiona Byrne as Nora star as a couple caught in a tragic romance. Also featured are Neil Barclay, Simon Bradbury, Kevin Bundy, Benedict Campbell, Ben Carlson, Kelli Fox, Patrick Galligan, Trish Lindstrom, Graeme Somerville, Helen Taylor, Wendy Thatcher, Pete Treadwell, Jay Turvey and Blithe Wilson.
"The Plough and the Stars" (actually the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, a workers' paramilitary group that was formed in the wake of the Dublin General Strike of 1913) is directed by Neil Munro, one of the Shaw's best-known directors. Munro has a slow, thoughtful take on the classic Irish play, perhaps too slow. There are times when the audience waits for an entrance and when there is little activity on stage.
Because "Plough" is written to be performed with heavy Dublin accents, Munro follows suit. Some members of the audience found this troublesome. I did not. "The Plough and the Stars" remains on stage at the Court House Theatre until Sunday, Oct. 5.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |