A Campus Connoisseuse

A common phenomenon facing Theatre UBC subscribers is that of “oh shit, I have tickets to a play tonight.” Getting all our tickets at once, it can often be a shock to remember just in time that you’ll be attending a play later that night. And so when my Google calendar decided to tell me that the Jade in the Coal was in five hours, it had entirely snuck up on me. I came into this play expecting little. I knew nothing about it, and the most recent plays I’ve seen have been a string of failures.

So it was a shockingly pleasant surprise that the play was actually good. First off, it was more than a play. For the most part, it was Cantonese Opera. My first Cantonese Opera, too. I really liked it. The impressive acrobatics done in the performance left me wishing that Western Opera were so visually dramatic. There were a lot of shouts of praise along the way, entirely deserved.

What also took me surprise was the story. I expected something pretty basic since it was opera. I instead got a stimulating exploration of the immigrant experience, set around Chinese coal miners come to Vancouver Island in 1900. The protagonist, Sally, is a first-generation Chinese-Canadian: too loudmouthed and headstrong to be accepted as a Chinese woman, but not accepted by the white Canadians as one of their own. Stuck between both cultures, Sally’s interactions with the other characters paints an environment of hope and disappointment. Around her are Chinese immigrants who had come to buy into the Canadian dream, only to be segregated off and to be overrun with requests to send money home.

Sally’s story, particularly the romantic subplot, is reinforced by the opera. A Cantonese opera troupe comes to town to perform, and their performance is dispersed throughout the play. It was well done and highly enjoyable. Worth your time to check it out.

So, I’m behind on my posts. I’ve actually seen a number of plays (and one opera) since my last review. A quick summary:

The Madwoman of Challiot – this play was fun. Well, it always is. Read it if you aren’t familiar with the story: it’s a good one. You actually have to try to make this one flop. Madwomen, oil companies, saving the world – this stuff apparently never gets outdated. The acting was excellent. The blocking was a problem, however: many scenes left speaking actors completely obscured while on stage. Nevertheless, an excellent time, and excellent play entirely deserving of its status as a theatrical classic.

Rum and Vodka – easily the worst one-actor play I’ve ever seen. Its biggest failure was the protagonist. He’s a total coward and an idiot, and it’s entirely impossible to empathize with him. The entire performance is a downhill experience: he just keeps getting worse and worse, from raping his wife to running off leaving her and their child without any money. Never are we convinced to root for him, yet the play is not set up for us to see it as a case study of “this is what happens to the poor, depressed alcoholic.” No, this play leaves one wondering what, exactly, the point of the story is.

Don Giovanni – marking the reopening of the renovated Old Auditorium, Don Giovanni was a great experience. Highly amusing, and wonderfully melodic, this opera taught me that opera can actually be effective and interesting. The classical set and costumes were a wonderful treat. My only complaint was the scene transitions: total blackout, often with no music. Not that the music always helped: the fist seven minutes of the opera was music with the curtain down, so all one had to look at was the conductor’s head. Considering how well they did everything else in the performance, the amateur scene transitions stood out as a confusing and disappointing mistake. Overall, though? Still a great performance anyway.

The Flu Season – this play was awful. Simply, and truly, awful. Don’t see it. Don’t go anywhere near it. And don’t pay for it. This play epitomizes the stereotype of ineffective, over-the-top storytelling accompanied by bad acting and questionable directing. It wasn’t even bad in a good way. I will say one positive thing, however: the actor playing the Doctor was actually funny. Did it make up for the awful, unneccessary double-narration? Not even partly.

The Madonna Painter – take Unity (1918) and The Lark and combine them. The result? The Madonna Painter. Another not-worth-seeing play, it tells the tale of a young pastor commissioning the painting of a Madonna in the hopes of staving off the Spanish Flu. The play is unsuccessful in a lot of ways: the flu isn’t stopped before loads of people die, the painter ultimately fails to use his love interest for the model, and by the end of the performance I was in disbelief that I’d ever payed money to see it happen. Worse than The Lark, this play simply overdoes it on the monologues. They’re excessive, preachy, and completely unbelievable.

I’ve gone to The Vagina Monologues every year since I got to UBC — and this term, with the new play A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer I decided I’d change it up and go to that instead. With the deadline to WCCCE looming and my coauthors still sending me revisions, I figured only one of the two would be enough for this weekend.

And so this afternoon I was off to the play. I was told it had male actors, and would be about gendered violence. I got my hopes up — finally, we would see a more complete picture of gendered violence than the women-are-victims-of-men depiction of The Vagina Monologues. And naturally, I was disappointed. The male-led monologues didn’t deal with violence against men, nor did the women-led ones. The male-led monologues showed how violence against women hurts them. And it does. And I don’t want to demean the very brave message of protesting violence against women. But wasn’t it supposed to be about gendered violence?

If violence against women is swept under the rug, where is violence against men swep to? Bolted under the hardwood floors?

The play started off being fairly crappy, with an irritating duo about a single mother and her son. But it eventually did move to some powerful, meaningful stuff: the Maurice monologue about a date rape, the Blueberry Hill monologue about fighting back against a gang rape, and a monologue written by NY Times journalist Nicholas D Kristof about prostitutes in Cambodia. This was good theatre. It got you feeling, it got you thinking.

And then, after getting me engaged, getting me impressed — the ending sucked. It ended without a catharsis like Reclaiming Cunt from The Vagina Monologues. Worse, it ended with cliches: the actors standing in a line saying words in the most painfully stereotypically avant garde way possible. Instead of coming out of the play wanting to do better in the world, I came out feeling like I’d been subjected to Full Moon from Sex and the City.

And so, as I left, I couldn’t help but buy a ticket for The Vagina Monologues on my way out. My day won’t be done until Cunt is Reclaimed.

***

A better ending I saw recently was that in the opera Louis Riel last weekend. It was epically done and wonderfully foreshadowed by the death of Scott earlier in the performance.

I found the performance of John A. McDonald and his cronies to be quite engaging. The aria in Cree done by Marguerite was also impressive. I found the solo bits and the chorus parts to be both well done, but whenever a handful of people were singing as conversation, it was horribly cacophonic. It seemed not to be well synchronised, which was disappointing.

Also disappointing were the subtitles: the number of typos in them was embarrassing, as was the French translations during some parts. Nevertheless, the story was solid and the acting well-done. It was worth my time, if not only to learn the lesson to see operas at the Chan centre from the balcony rather than the lower parterre; I began the performance down below trapped in between fidgety people who clearly didn’t like opera. Moving to an empty seat in the balcony during intermission was probably the largest enhancement of my experience of the performance.