An Art of Time Ensemble Presentation
at the Enwave Theatre
March 28-29, 2008

    Shakespeare almost lost in Andrew Burashko’s latest Art of Time Ensemble Presentation. Partly by Burashko’s insistence on a rather academic introduction that informed us that Shakespeare is more produced in Russia than is Chekhov, and that he has inspired sixteen operas based on Hamlet, some twenty-four on Romeo and Juliet, et cetera, and that his art has crossed over into dance and music. All to the good—but for a classroom or study rather than for the theatre because of Burashko’s urge to explain and pontificate. The longer he went on, the greater the tedium of his introduction and the opportunity it gave for him to erringly call the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet a Preface. I was prepared, between yawns, to give him the benefit of the doubt on that score, but then, like the audience, had to submit to Tom McCamus (in fine voice and bearing despite his owlish glasses), Chick Reid, Cara Ricketts, and Marc Bendavid reading quotations (interesting in themselves, to be sure) from literary and other eminences on the many virtues and flaws of Shakespeare. Who needed to be reminded (by Borges) that Shakespeare is everything and nothing, or that even his worst plays are quicker than the quickest of other playwrights’ in terms of wit, or that (as Nathaniel Hawthorn contended) whatever you seek in Shakespeare, you will surely discover if you seek the truth? Of course, bardolatry was countered by criticism from Darwin (who was nauseated by Shakespeare) and Byron (who accused him of having no invention whatsoever).

   To make matters worse, soprano Monica Whicher delivered Ophelia’s song and several other ballads (some directly adapted from Shakespeare’s own words) to Burashko’s piano accompaniment, but she began in woefully laboured fashion, embellishing in her heavy lieder way what certainly didn’t need to be embellished. The pastoral texture of some of the verses was quite overwhelmed, though Ms. Whicher was well suited to “O Mistress Mine,” “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind,” and “Under The Greenwood Tree.” When time finally came for Shakespeare’s text itself, the young performers, Ricketts and Bendavid, proved inadequate to his subtle music and deft psychology. Their rendition of the post-coital scene from Romeo and Juliet had more in the loins than in the mind or heart or throat. McCamus and his real-life wife, Chick Reid, did much better in their Beatrice and Benedict scenes from Much Ado, though Ms. Reid sounded pinched in her top notes and question remained why the pair did not undertake to memorize rather than read their lines.

   After listening to Burashko’s playing of Prokofiev’s stirringly dramatic and ceremonial “March of the Montagues and Capulets” (though, alas, on electric organ alone) and late in the second-half to Marie Berard’s brilliantly virtuoso violin for three of Erich Korngold’s compositions, Shakespeare’s text began to pale in the acting of it. Fortunately, the program was marvelously supported and extended by two dance pieces—one classical, the other modern—the first a Romeo and Juliet pas de deux choreographed by James Kudelka, executed with tremendous flair and passion by the National Ballet’s Piotr Stanczk and Rebekah Rimsay, and the second Peggy Baker’s unforgettable solo “Why The Brook Wept” that imprinted itself on my memory with stunning acuity and lyricism. Where young Ms. Ricketts was all words and no truth in her Ophelia mad scene, Ms. Baker (who is quite ageless in her passion and imagination) was the very mirror of Ophelia’s tormented, suicidal soul, graphically representing the mad eroticism of the shattered maiden and her dissolving mind. Her arms a whir, her hips and groin a provocative gyration, her legs splayed wide open in disturbing yearning, Ms. Baker was every bit Shakespeare’s erratic, compulsive, psychically damaged Ophelia, without benefit of words. This was dance that went beyond dance into areas of riveting spectacle and truth. In one brief dance, she presented an Ophelia that exceeded many actress’ interpretations of the same role in a full-length play, but at the same time remaining steeped in Shakespeare’s psychology and poetic imagination. 

photos:

pic 1: Andrew Burashko

pic 2 : Piotr Stanczyk and Rebekah Rimsay

pic 3: Peggy Baker



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