Category: Arts & Culture

A sentimental journey

Stephen Aberle as Dan and Annabel Kershaw as Sue reflect on their life together in Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook, at Presentation House Theatre Oct. 28-Nov. 8. (photo by Megan Verhey, Megan Verhey Photography)

Theatre often allows us, the audience, a safe place in which to experience feelings that we are more guarded about showing in daily life. It can offer a way in which to reflect on our own lives and actions without the vulnerability that such introspection usually entails in “real life.” We can learn from what we witness on stage, whether a comedy, a drama or something in between. At the least, we can escape from our own cares for a time, immersing ourselves in someone else’s joys and pains. A perfect example? Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook.

So popular was last year’s Canadian première of the show in Vancouver at Studio 1398, that WRS Productions – Ron and Wendy Stuart – is bringing it back for 12-day run at North Vancouver’s Presentation House Theatre, Oct. 28-Nov. 8.

“The response was amazing,” Wendy Bross Stuart told the Independent about last year’s production. “People laughed. People wept. Tissues were in short supply. The actors were very moved by the content and the music of Snapshots. The last five shows were completely sold out; people were turned away at the door. It was at that point that Ron and I decided we would seek the opportunity to remount the show.”

In Snapshots, Sue is set to leave her husband Dan after 30 years of marriage. While she is going through the attic, Dan comes home. A box of photographs (snapshots) falls open, leading the couple to reflect on their life together.

Conceived by Michael Scheman and David Stern, composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz adapted music from his stage shows, feature films and original CDs to mesh with the book by Stern, which takes the audience back to Dan and Sue’s earlier days.

In the WRS Productions’ show, Dan and Sue are portrayed by Stephen Aberle and Annabel Kershaw; Daniel and Susan, by Steve Maddock and Jocelyn Gauthier; Danny and Susie, by Daniel Johnston and Georgia Swinton.

About the ways in which he personally related – or not – to Dan throughout the character’s life, Aberle said, “Hmm, well, younger Danny/Daniel has a winning way with women. Many, many women. I was definitely not like that growing up; I was shy and repressed and a bit of a goob, I guess.

“On the other hand, when Dan truly falls in love, he falls hard and he stays fallen. I identify with that. While he has this playboy past, he’s careful about where he really gives his heart, and he finds it hard to put the truth of his love into words. I think that’s the central struggle in the play for him. Casual physical intimacy comes easily to him (unlike me!), but he’s scared by commitment and emotional intimacy. He’s experienced deep hurt in the past, and he fears opening up too far because he doesn’t want to get hurt like that again. I get that.

“Details from the past – talismans, little triggers for powerful memories – really get to him. I guess they get to all of us one way or another, so it’s not necessarily a specific character thing, but it resonates for me.”

Like Aberle, most of the actors are reprising their roles, but there have been changes, and not only in casting.

“Last year’s Snapshots was in a ‘black box’ theatre,” explained Stuart. “This gave us the opportunity to configure the show ‘in the round.’ The set design was done by Jessica Oostergo.

“This year, we are working in partnership with Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver. We are in a traditional theatre space. This meant the show needed to be completely reconfigured. With the experienced hand of Pam Johnson, we have a brilliant set – full of secret entrances and exits. This design is in conjunction with our new director and choreographer, one of Canada’s most sought-after and experienced, Max Reimer, former artistic director at the Vancouver Playhouse. The show will look very different.

“In addition, we have two new cast members: Daniel is played by Steve Maddock and Susie is played by Georgia Swinton. The rehearsals are very exciting; we have a chance, now, to add new interpretation and shape to the music. The sound of the ensemble is thrilling!”

Aberle spoke about the ensemble and what it feels like to have different actors “all playing aspects of the same role.”

“The other performers playing Danny and Daniel – my character’s younger selves – give me ideas about Dan that I wouldn’t necessarily have come up with on my own,” he explained. “There’s a lot of give and take. We have an opportunity to develop a shared physical vocabulary, for example: postural or gestural or vocal details that stay with the character as he grows older. That’s a lot of fun to explore.

“We’re all, all six of us – along with the band and the creative team – sharing the task of bringing this decades-long, deep relationship to life. One intriguing consequence is that I get to fall in love on stage with not just one woman but three. I have a lot of interplay with all three of Sue, Susan and Susie. When I’m watching them, the younger selves of the love of my life, remembering how we met as kids and how much we meant and gave to each other, it’s profoundly moving.

“It’s interesting,” he continued, “to relate on stage to my character’s younger selves. We don’t get a lot of direct connection but there are important moments, of both frustration and understanding. In real life, we don’t get to say to our younger self, ‘You idiot! Not that way, this way!’ It’s refreshing. It’s also illuminating to see how patterns set in youth change, or don’t change, in later life.”

And what is it about Schwartz’s music that touches people so much?

“I will speak more specifically about the music in Snapshots,” said Stuart, who also wears the music director and pianist hats in this production. “Here, we have examples of Stephen Schwartz’s music from as early as 1971 (Godspell) and as recently as Wicked (2003)…. Schwartz chose the songs to move the new story (book by David Stern) forward in the most compelling way. About 85% of the story is told in music.

“This plot line allows two characters to each communicate with themselves at different stages of their lives. Stated differently, we have a story that takes place 1) in the present, 2) in the past and 3) in one’s interior life. The music is not simply one song after another, it is multi-layered, with (formerly unrelated) songs performed simultaneously in gorgeous counterpoint with one another.

“I truly feel that the music and lyrics (often changed by Schwartz himself to fit the arc of the new story) can simply be enjoyed for their depth of meaning, their melodic interest and their beautiful harmonies. However, for those who know Stephen Schwartz’s music, the complexity and brilliance of the multi-layered nature of this work are simply breathtaking.”

Stuart added, “Yesterday at rehearsal, we had many moments when we simply had to stop. The actors were so ferklempt (choked up with emotion), they were unable to continue. I feel the same way.”

For tickets to Snapshots, visit phtheatre.org, call 604-990-3474 or drop by Presentation House Theatre, at 333 Chesterfield Ave.

Ullmann’s last work

Viktor Ullmann, 1924. (photo from Arnold Schoenberg Centre Los Angeles)

The memories of City Opera Vancouver’s production of The Emperor of Atlantis in 2009 still resonate. Written by Viktor Ullmann (composer) and Petr Kien (librettist) in 1943-44 at Theresienstadt concentration camp, its stirring score and lyrics, both of which, remarkably, reflect hope for a positive future, stay with you. No doubt, Project Elysium’s Cornet: Viktor Ullmann’s Legacy from Theresienstadt will have a similar effect.

In two public performances (and one private), the group Elysium will present Cornet, the last work that Ullmann finished before he was deported to Auschwitz on Oct. 16, 1944, and killed there two days later. Set to excerpts from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, it tells the “tale of a young soldier who experiences love and death in a single night.”

Combining recitation and piano, the piece will be performed by pianist Dan Franklin Smith, who is also music director of Elysium, with Gregorij H. von Leïtis, who is the group’s founder (in 1993) and artistic director, among other things. The evening will include Ullmann’s Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 49, written in Theresienstadt in 1943, and a lecture by Michael Lahr, Elysium program director and executive director of the Lahr von Leïtis Academy and Archive. Project Elysium was created by Vancouver performer and producer Catherine Laub to bring Elysium to Canada.

“In honor of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Elysium – an organization focused on performing music of composers persecuted during the Nazi regime – is coming to Canada for the first time to present a concert of Viktor Ullmann’s music. One of the concert dates will be the actual date 71 years ago that Ullmann arrived in Auschwitz from Theresienstadt and was immediately put to death,” Laub told the Independent. “The focus of the endeavor is not to dwell on the suffering and death of this artist but to celebrate a man who created beauty during an intensely painful time, and be uplifted by artistry that justly survives his shortened lifespan. In Michael Lahr’s words, ‘The adamant will to live, the unshakable hope that good will prevail no matter how horrible the attempt to crush it – this is the message of Ullmann’s music from Theresienstadt. Elysium offers Ullmann’s music as a powerful symbol of hope.’”

In addition to being a performer, composer and teacher, Laub has been a concert producer since she moved to Canada from the United States in 2006. She founded the Erato Ensemble, with William George, and has been involved on the production side with various other ensembles. Since the creation of the monthly Sunday concert series at Roedde House Museum in 2012, of which she is artistic director, she said, “I have started to focus more energy on being aware of which artists and which projects are poised to bring important gifts to audiences and communities in Vancouver. Project Elysium is the largest-scale project I’ve been involved with from an organizational standpoint, and it’s unique in that I’m not wearing my performance hat at all.”

The Project Elysium concerts, she said, “have been in the works since December 2013, when I reconnected with Gregorij von Leïtis and Michael Lahr on a trip to Munich. I first worked with them when I was fresh out of graduate school and participating in their young artist program. In the years since, I had become more familiar with the second part of their mission statement: ‘… fighting against discrimination, racism and antisemitism by means of art.’ It inspired me that here were people with a clear artistic mission as well as a humanitarian focus. In today’s world, where we all expect quick sound bites and instant gratification, it has to be clear why live performance and the arts – beyond big-budget Hollywood – are relevant and important. This seems like a clear answer to me, and it’s never been more important to be reminded of what happens to the world when we don’t listen to such messages.”

image - Drawing of composer Viktor Ullmann by Petr Kien, graphic artist, Theresienstadt inmate and librettist of The Emperor of Atlantis
Drawing of composer Viktor Ullmann by Petr Kien, graphic artist, Theresienstadt inmate and librettist of The Emperor of Atlantis. (image from project-elysium.org)

“Never forget.” This was one of the reasons that City Opera Vancouver decided to produce The Emperor of Atlantis.

Artistic director Dr. Charles Barber first encountered Ullmann’s music when he was in graduate school at Stanford. “I had made friends with Lotte Klemperer, daughter of the great conductor Otto Klemperer,” Barber told the Independent. “She and her father knew his work, and she introduced me to Ullmann’s broken life and unbroken promise. We listened to recordings together, and Lotte told me about his music and its time.”

Barber also knew Ullmann’s work through violin teacher Paul Kling. “He had played Ullmann’s music, knew it intimately, and was imprisoned with him at Theresienstadt. Prof. Kling considered Ullmann one of his teachers, and strongly believed in his genius.”

While Ullmann and Kien did not survive the Holocaust, Kling did, and, said Barber. “I felt an obligation to help maintain, in his name, the music that might have been.”

The choice of Atlantis, said Barber, had to do with “its unique story, its historical context and its relevance today.” City Opera presented it “in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and they were wonderful collaborators in bringing this British Columbia première to the Rothstein Theatre.

“City Opera specializes in chamber opera: the small forms, the intimate eloquence, the affordable advantage. Atlantis met all of these criteria, and more. The music is wonderful, the libretto is bold and vivid, the voice is favored and the audience was moved. It’s what we hoped to achieve, and it’s what we tried to honor.” (For more on the 2009 production, visit jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/feb09/archives09feb06-01.html.)

While Barber, unfortunately, won’t be able to attend Elysium’s Cornet concert – he will be in Quebec City with COV, conducting its opera Pauline – he put the program into context. He said, “It highlights Ullmann’s gifts: concision, wit, superlative technical accomplishment, daring, and a strong foundation in European musical traditions.

“Ullmann’s significance in musical history is, alas, limited. He was one of the great lights in a musical generation destroyed by the Nazis. We will never know what his place would have been; we only know what it might have been. In his 46 years, he seems to have composed as many works. Only 13 survived him after he was killed at Auschwitz.

“His music works for me, and I think will for the audience coming up, because of its eclecticism. Ullmann was an authority on many sources, he drew widely upon them, but found a voice that was unlike others of his day. He was not an academicist. He wrote for real people, and presumed in them a shared awareness of musical and cultural traditions, and a desire to advance them – playfully, skilfully and imaginatively.”

“While it isn’t possible to rewrite history,” said Laub, “this project functions as a kind of musical ‘rescue mission,’ bringing recognition to a brilliant composer whose work was nearly lost to us. His story and his music allow us to make a more personal connection to a time that is almost too overwhelming to contemplate. This connection is essential as it helps us not only mourn but learn.”

Echoing these comments, Barber said, “These concerts will not be a funeral procession. Ears will be challenged, knowledge will be deepened, and awareness will be empowered.

“According to my teacher Paul Kling, the real Ullmann was a witty and profoundly learned man who delighted in sharing knowledge and in jolting listeners. What an irresistible combination.”

Cornet will take place Oct. 16, 8 p.m., at the Cultch’s Historic Theatre, and Oct. 17, 8 p.m., at Pyatt Hall. Tickets ($30/$20) are available from the Cultch box office, 604-251-1363, and tickets.thecultch.com/peo.

Help save us from zombies

Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome tasks audiences with finding a downed UFO that has crashed on earth. Virtual Stage’s interactive adventure runs to Nov. 1. (photo from Virtual Stage)

For anyone who has dreamed of saving the world, now’s your chance. All you have to do is take part in Virtual Stage’s Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome, which runs until Nov. 1.

Several shows have already sold out, with people keen to take on their mission. “This year, audiences are tasked to respond to a highly confidential NASA report about a downed unidentified flying object that has crashed on earth. The exact location is unknown,” reads the promotional material. “To add to the mystery, the alien pilot is reportedly injured, has escaped and is hiding in Vancouver. Furthermore, every NASA official sent to locate the UFO has returned in a zombie-like state … brave and adventurous audience members must find the downed spacecraft, quell the nearby zombie uprising and, ultimately, save the human race from the brink of extinction.”

This is the fourth annual interactive, smartphone-enabled theatre experience produced for the Halloween season by Virtual Stage.

photo - Zombie Syndrome series creator Andy Thompson
Zombie Syndrome series creator Andy Thompson. (photo by Rob Gilbert)

“The idea originated four or five years ago after I went to the West End in London, England, to see a bunch of theatre,” creator Andy Thompson told the Independent. “I saw all sorts of plays in many different styles of venues. I went to very fancy theatres. I went to small, edgy, Fringe-type theatres. I was even lucky to witness rare performances including Kevin Spacey playing Richard III, as well as the ‘real-life’ theatrical event of Rupert Murdoch getting pied in the face in the British House of Commons.

“The most engaged I felt as an audience member, however, was during an interactive play called The Accomplice. It took place on the streets of London and involved the audience being endowed as key figures in an adventure to recover stolen loot. It was so much fun! The piece was basically a crime drama, but I wondered how a horror-genre show could use a similar format. Add to the mix my interest in technology and smartphones and I quickly developed an idea for a smartphone-enabled, site-specific, roving, zombie-themed theatre adventure with audience members tasked with saving the world.”

Thompson said the series, which premièred in 2012, wasn’t meant be an annual event. “It was a huge creative risk ‘one-off’ event and I thought it could easily flop,” he said. “Needless to say, it came as quite a pleasant surprise when the show was so well received, selling out almost shortly after we opened. People just loved it. After I realized the popular appeal, I looked at how it could be designed as an annual series that is completely new each year.”

This is not Thompson’s first foray into science fiction. The Jewish community member’s credits include – but are in no way limited to – the three previous Zombie Syndromes, SPANK!, 1984 (an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel) and the sex-comedy musical Broken Sex Doll, which featured original music by fellow Jewish community member Anton Lipovetsky, as well as episodes of TV’s Fringe.

“It is so much fun to imagine the seemingly endless possibilities in the universe,” said Thompson about his interest in science fiction. “I often contemplate our reality on planet earth, which often feels like a far-fetched science fiction story idea. Consider: we are on a small planet, whipping through space, revolving around a star. Our star is merely one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And, if that’s not all, there are billions of galaxies in the universe. So, by my rough math, that means there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Earth and our existence seem extremely small when put into this perspective. And that’s just when we look at ‘third-dimensional’ reality. I am convinced that there are tangible, intelligent realities on other vibrational frequencies that we are unaware of. Like the sound of a dog whistle, humans are just not currently attuned to be aware of them. Without a doubt, what Shakespeare said in Hamlet is certainly true: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

“Life is pretty mind-blowing when you really think about it. Science fiction allows us to imagine the possibilities. And, half the time, because our existence is so vast, we get to explore far-fetched ideas that cannot be definitively refuted. To me, it’s a great deal of fun.”

And a great deal of work. Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome features “about 45 performers this year, as well as about a dozen crew and designers,” said Thompson. “The logistics are mind-numbing, but we have a great team and a lot of experience under our belts. We generally start planning the show a year in advance. Things progressively kick into higher gears over the spring and summer. The storylines are often collaborative. This year, my stepson Finn [Ghosh-Leudke] co-authored the story with Tyler Clarke and myself. I then wrote the script based on that story.”

The show is fully wheelchair accessible. However, it is rated PG-13 because of the subject matter, and children under 13 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. For tickets and more information, visit thevirtualstage.org/tickets.

Adaptation beneficial

Camille Legg as Romeo, left, and Adelleh Furseth as Juliet share an intimate moment in Studio 58’s Romeo and Juliet. (photo by David Cooper)

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is such a well-known play, done so many times on stage and on screen, it’s hard to imagine an original interpretation, but Studio 58 of Langara College manages to shine new light on this ageless tale.

This production marks the beginning of the studio’s 50th season and director Anita Rochon has incorporated that into her vision of the play, setting it in 1965, the year Studio 58 was born. Music from the 1960s – the catchy tunes of Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Turtles and others – permeates the show. Older audience members will recognize their youth in these songs, as well as in the clothing, but these are only frills. The core of the play remains unaltered – the immortal and tragic love story between Romeo and Juliet.

However, there is one profound adjustment to the classical version: Romeo is a girl. Accordingly, the pronouns are switched in the text, and a son becomes a daughter. Other than that, the text is more or less authentic, albeit abridged, for the student performance, and the young actors handle the 500-year-old verses with professional panache.

The change benefits the show. For most people in 21st-century North America, family feuds – to the death, anyway – are the stuff of legend, while parental resistance to their kids’ gay or lesbian inclinations is still all too real. Some experience it firsthand or have friends who did; others are on the parents’ side of the equation or know someone who was. But everyone in the audience could relate to this aspect of Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love.

Everyone could also feel the wonder, the breathtaking discovery of their first encounter. Highlighted by the expressive and inventive choreography of Jewish community member Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, the first meeting of the lovers felt almost like a ballet, a lyrical and beautiful duet, with the corps providing a counterpoint. The visual echoes from such classical ballets as Giselle or Swan Lake were unmistakable.

On the other hand, the fight scenes by David Bloom, who also happens to be a Jewish community member, were ferocious, with some really scary moments, especially when Mercutio swings a broken bottle at Tybalt. Both young actors, Conor Stinson-O’Gorman (Mercutio) and Kamyar Pazandeh (Tybalt), infuse their stage duel with energy, but all I could think about was, What if someone missteps and hurts his friend? Fortunately, no accidents occurred, and both combatants expired safely.

Of course, the two female stars of the show deserve mention – both acted brilliantly.

Camille Legg, who played Romeo, excelled in her part. Her Romeo was young and naive, a girl on the brink of adulthood, and her wide-eyed innocence made her character’s belief in the power of love plausible. Romeo’s love is radiant and boundless; her grief, all-encompassing.

Adelleh Furseth as Juliet, while strong overall, lacked enough of the child-like nature that I attribute to the character. She portrayed a more mature, more sexy Juliet, more a woman than a girl. At times, she struck me as a character actor or comedian, funny rather than naively exuberant.

The humming chorus during the play’s last scene, the young lovers’ double suicide, was inspired and poignant.

In the director’s notes, Rochon writes: “… there are real people all over the real world who are falling in love as you read this, in spite of all kinds of opposition arising because of their gender, nationality, political affiliation or otherwise. Familiar stories, but each with its own beating heart.”

Romeo and Juliet runs at Studio 58 until Oct. 18. For tickets, visit langara.ca/studio-58.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Healing after trauma

A screenshot of Dr. Gabor Maté and Rita Bozi in The Damage is Done, from video by Patrick McLaughlin.

The Cultch often presents non-traditional shows that confront uncomfortable questions. This year, one such show, The Damage is Done by Rita Bozi, brings to the stage an examination of trauma and its psychological impact on individuals and families.

The Damage is Done combines theatre, dialogue, essay, video, music and dance. It features two performers: Bozi, and physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté, who has written on various psychological issues, including addiction. Bozi plays several characters in the show, while Maté plays himself.

photo - Gabor Maté plays himself in Rita Bozi’s The Damage is Done
Gabor Maté plays himself in Rita Bozi’s The Damage is Done. (photo by Farah Nosh)

“I comment on Rita’s actions on stage, like a Greek chorus,” Maté said in an interview with the Independent. “We are trying to find some meaning to the trauma endured in the past, the traumas our families went through, and to learn from it. If we don’t process trauma, it will control our lives. The after-effects of trauma influence how we see ourselves: either as victims, or it makes us overcompensate, try to appear more powerful than we are. Sometimes, people try to get away from the pain with drugs – that’s where addiction comes from.”

Maté explained that deep trauma is often transmitted through generations. It affects social units and families as well as individuals. “The children of Holocaust survivors often have elevated stress hormone levels. When a young mother is depressed, her baby suffers, even though everyone loves the baby and nobody wants it hurt…. The play is an exploration of how trauma works and how we can find liberation from it. Before we heal, we must find the problem, acknowledge it.”

He accepted this project despite a busy schedule and multiple speaking engagements because it touches on issues about which he has been advocating for years. “Medical schools don’t teach students about trauma and its psychological impact. When the young doctors start working, they feel the lack of that knowledge. They want a guidance of how to connect physical and emotional healing, and not many people talk about the subject.”

So, many professionals turn to Maté. His seminars are in such demand across North America that sometimes he spends days on the road. “In the last week, I had eight speaking engagements,” he said. In various American and Canadian cities, addiction workers, trauma specialists, therapists and educators, as well as family members and others, comprise Maté’s audience.

“I’m trying to answer the question, ‘Why?,’ the same question Rita asks in her play, so I provide the framework for her story. I think it’s very important. So many people suffer from trauma, physical and psychological. It’s impossible to separate the two. I’m not going to launch a second career as an actor, of course,” he added with a smile, “but it was an interesting challenge, something different. Besides, I like Rita.”

Bozi also spoke with the Independent. She explained that the show was years in development. Its most recent version premièred in Yukon last year. “This show is ultimately about compassions for ourselves and others,” she said.

Maté’s involvement in the project was paramount to her. “I attended several workshops with Gabor and I read his books. He once said, ‘We need to be asking not why the addiction but why the pain?’ As a therapist and a child of immigrant Hungarian parents who lived through the war, the Soviet occupation and the revolution, I have long been concerned with inherited historical trauma and its effect on families and offspring.”

She continued, “I wanted Gabor a part of it. Why mention him if I could have him? I had already been making a connection with Gabor through email over our shared Hungarian backgrounds…. He felt like kin. We were speaking the same language (apart from Hungarian) and we both felt the power of the mind-body connection affecting our lives.”

It took Bozi 12 years from the seed of the idea to the show itself. “I play out my family drama, and Gabor plays the poetic counterpoint. He helps my character come back to ‘self.’ He helps her understand her own experience of the family situation, her part in it and how to begin to transform the inherited pain. He brings his razor-sharp insights to the show and his ability to be concise about what is happening. He sees what is hidden, cuts to the chase and helps guide one to the pieces of self that were lost when trauma occurred.”

According to Bozi and Maté, healing comes from the ability to look at traumatic events from infancy and early childhood with humor and compassion – even though the damage is done, we can defuse its impact.

The Damage is Done will be performed at the Cultch from Oct. 20-24. Before that, Bozi and Maté are taking the show to Banff, where both their evening shows are already sold out. For more information about the local production, visit thecultch.com/events/the-damage-is-done-a-true-story.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

A dinner to remember

Kyra Zagorsky as Emily and Patrick Sabongui as Amir in Arts Club’s Disgraced. (photo by David Cooper)

Politics and religion generally are considered taboo topics for discussion. But, sometimes, they can’t be avoided. This is the case in Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, now playing at the Stanley.

Akhtar puts four Manhattan 30-somethings – secular Muslim corporate lawyer Amir, his upwardly mobile artist Caucasian wife Emily, his African American female colleague Jory and her Jewish art gallery curator husband Isaac – together for what is intended as a celebratory meal with cocktails, fennel and anchovy salad, and designer dessert.

The progression to the fateful dinner starts rather innocently. The curtain rises on a very well- but half-dressed Amir (Patrick Sabongui) posing for Emily (Kyra Zagorsky, Sabongui’s real-life spouse) as she paints his portrait based on her inspirations from Middle Eastern art. The cozy domestic scene is interrupted by Amir’s nephew, Abe (Conor Wylie), previously known as Hussein Malik – he ditched his name to make life easier.

Abe entreats his uncle to assist a local imam who has been jailed, accused of helping finance Hamas. Amir, a self-declared apostate and proud of his apparent assimilation into Western society, wants no part of it, avowing his disdain for Islam and its culture. However, Emily and Abe pressure him into attending the court hearing, where his presence is noted by the media. Amir’s reported connection to an accused terrorist does not bode well for his partnership track at his firm of Leibowitz, Bernstein and Harris. Strike one.

As well, his law partners discover that he has misrepresented himself by saying that he was born in India instead of Pakistan and by giving his name as Kapoor instead of Abdullah. Strike two.

photo - Marci T. House as Jory and Robert Moloney as Isaac in Disgraced
Marci T. House as Jory and Robert Moloney as Isaac in Disgraced. (photo by David Cooper)

The fading chance of a partnership for Amir provides the background for the dinner party. The conversation starts with discussions about Emily’s new works that will be exhibited in Isaac’s gallery, the Whitney, but soon disintegrates into heated arguments over Islam. Emily defends the religion and culture while Amir declares it to be tribal, violent and totalitarian. He calls the Koran, “one long hate mail letter to humanity” and yet, in the next breath, he admits he felt some pride during the 9/11 attacks because it showed that, “we were finally winning.” Oh, oh, shades of an identity crisis … and strike three soon follows.

The play is very much a Greek tragedy with the hero’s downfall and the destruction of his “American dream.” Director Janet Wright noted in a media release that it “really hits you in the gut emotionally and leaves you questioning your own ideas and how you fit into our complicated society.”

All of the actors are very good. Sabongui is a standout as the suave, initially confident protagonist. Zagorsky develops her character from one of naivety to understanding with ease. Marci T. House and Robert Moloney provide some comic relief – and other food for thought – as Jory and Isaac, and Wylie competently portrays the confusion of a conflicted teen. The set is a swanky Upper East Side apartment with a view of the New York skyline – the mood lighting and easy music complete the effect. All in all, Disgraced is 80 uninterrupted minutes of intelligent, thought-provoking theatre that literally packs a mean punch.

Akhtar was brave to have written this critical piece, which appears to be somewhat autobiographical, and his courage and tough-minded approach have been rewarded with the play enjoying successful Broadway and West End runs and garnering the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Now, it is here for us to see, ponder and discuss – maybe over Shabbat dinner.

Disgraced runs until Oct. 18. For tickets and more information, visit artsclub.com or call 604-687-1644.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Forest can transform

Beyond the Edge by Lori Goldberg , part of the exhibit Urban Forest, which opens at the Zack Gallery on Oct. 15. (photo from Lori Goldberg)

“Urban Forest is a body of work exploring the relationship between urban dwellers and the natural world of the B.C. forest, and tying it into Jewish thought,” artist Lori Goldberg told the Independent about her new exhibit at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, which opens Oct. 15.

photo - Reconstructing Nature, acrylic on canvas, by Lori Goldberg
Reconstructing Nature, acrylic on canvas, by Lori Goldberg. (photo from Lori Goldberg)

The forest affords multiple experiences, which are often dichotomous, she explained, “freedom and fear spotlight fragments of light and cavernous darks, convoluted winds and soft silences. Trees collide with the sky, providing a protective umbrella that obscures the skyline of the cityscape. Those entering the forest shed layers of urban living as the drone of the city dims, senses awaken to the natural world, the forest breathes and comes to life.

“The paintings are narrative in style and explore the arena of the personal and the collective. Ordinary views and everyday objects come together in discordant co-existence and question the multiple, often contradictory, issues we face as members of a fragmented society disconnected from nature and from self.” In this way, the exhibit evokes the notion of tikkun olam (repairing the world), “which suggests humanity’s shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world.”

Goldberg will be in attendance at the Oct. 15 opening, which starts at 7:30 p.m. The exhibit is at the gallery until Nov. 8. To see more of her work, visit lorigoldberg.ca.

Chess master’s decline

Tobey Maguire stars as Bobby Fischer in Edward Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice. (photo by Takashi Seida)

If there is any lingering goodwill in the world toward the late Bobby Fischer – the once-in-a-century chess whiz who achieved fame as an unlikely “Cold Warrior” – Pawn Sacrifice pretty much snuffs it out.

Veteran director Edward Zwick’s fast-paced, bleakly entertaining film builds relentlessly from Fischer’s Brooklyn childhood to his internationally celebrated 1972 showdown with Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in Iceland.

A jittery retelling of the rise and zenith of a man with undiagnosed mental illness that manifested itself in paranoid (and frequently antisemitic) delusions, Pawn Sacrifice presents Fischer as a deeply unlikable and unsympathetic protagonist. He is not, to use the vernacular, someone with whom you’d like to have a beer.

Some of that can be attributed to the unfortunate casting of the eternally boyish Tobey Maguire, who plays Fischer as a petulant child rather than a calculating genius.

Maguire’s tics and tantrums do serve the film, ultimately. In a singularly subversive strategy for a mainstream movie, Steven Knight’s shrewd screenplay forces viewers to confront the fact that the social misfit and erstwhile American underdog we are rooting for is, in reality, a lunatic and a mamzer.

Pawn Sacrifice, which opened recently in Vancouver, is worth seeing for that reason, as well as to revisit a period when the Soviet Union was the United States’ great rival and – before the Miracle on Ice, before Reagan moved into the White House – a skinny, 29-year-old New York Jew emerged as the locus of national pride.

Another incentive is the always-terrific Liev Schreiber, whose delicious performance as the taciturn Spassky conveys imperiousness or bemusement with a raised eyebrow or barely perceptible head tilt. The Jewish actor, who played a Jewish Belarusian resistance leader in Zwick’s Defiance, likewise delivers his few Russian lines with a wonderful clipped accent.

While Spassky is a shades-wearing nonconformist, to the degree he could be, disdaining white shirts and ties in favor of his signature black turtleneck and blazer, Fischer is a rebel without a cause beyond his own single-minded drive to win. Actually, “destroy” is a more accurate word.

In flashbacks to his adolescence, we see the seeds of paranoia planted by his Jewish mother (played by Robin Weigert), whose communist beliefs and friends attracted FBI surveillance. The young Fischer’s trust was further eroded by her refusal to tell him who his father was.

By his teens, Fischer wouldn’t listen or take advice from anyone. Paradoxically, just a few years later, he embraced audiotapes that pinned the ills of the world on the Zionist conspiracy (among other villains).

As its title promises, Pawn Sacrifice poses the question, “What does it avail a man to win the world and lose his mind?” To its credit, the film doesn’t try to explain Fischer’s illness, nor put too much diagnostic or symbolic weight on the episodes it depicts from his youth. Consequently, it isn’t a cautionary fable except in the sense that Fischer didn’t have the tools and help to stop himself from slipping down the rabbit hole.

Fischer’s erratic behavior during the 1972 World Chess Championship led the media to portray him merely as an enigmatic, mercurial iconoclast. In one of the movie’s occasional forays into black comedy, Nixon and Kissinger telephone their support. (Apparently, among paranoids, it takes one to know one.)

That series of matches between Fischer and Spassky provides the dramatic crux of the film, and it is undeniably riveting and unpredictable.

To counter the fundamental unhappiness at Fischer’s core, as well as the static nature of chess games, Pawn Sacrifice employs rapid-fire editing and a double-LP’s worth of 1960s rock hits. The strategy effectively mitigates the main character’s depressing aspects without obscuring his legacy: Fischer was neither a hero nor an anti-hero, but an irredeemable narcissist with a mean streak.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Men take centre screen

In Love, Theft and Other Entanglements, Sami Metwasi plays Mousa, a likable but unlucky car thief. (photo from Vancouver International Film Festival)

Men in turmoil. If there were a common theme between the films the Jewish Independent reviewed in anticipation of this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, which opens Sept. 24, it would be that. It also seems to apply to the other few movies in the festival with Jewish- and/or Israel-related content.

Of the films reviewed, Love, Theft and Other Entanglements (Palestine Territories) was the most engaging, though it was slow in its pacing. This was likely done purposefully to reflect aspects of the main character and his milieu, but the movie – which is described by director Muayad Alayan as “a drama, a thriller and a fairytale” – would have been more intense if several lengthy shots had been trimmed even by a few seconds. We don’t have to see a car drive from Point A to Point B to know that it went from A to B, for example.

That being said, Love’s Mousa, is a likable “hero,” and this makes viewers want to stick with him to the end. The choice to film the movie in black and white was made, says Alayan on the film’s website, to minimize “the visual noise that detracts from the story” and reduce “the temptation to examine the setting of the film against the hyper-realistic images of Palestine common in TV reports and documentary films. I wanted the place to be a context that serves the story and not a point of interest in and of itself.” In this, he succeeds. While the film includes evident commentary about Israeli and Palestinian societies, as well as the conflict between them, it is Mousa – representing anyone who has made some bad choices in life – who is at the centre of the narrative; and the desert landscape accents his scarce hope.

Walking out on a job that his father arranged for him with some effort, Mousa steals a car – not his first. Unfortunately, this one has valuable cargo in the trunk and Mousa becomes a man of interest – and use – to both Israeli intelligence and Palestinian militia. Adding to his self-made burden is an affair with a married woman.

Mousa desperately wants to flee from it all. When he tells his father he is leaving, his father responds, “A man who doesn’t solve his problems in his own country, won’t be any different in another country. You’re just running away.” By the end of the film, Mousa is no longer running.

***

Hockney is a flattering documentary by Randall Wright (United Kingdom/United States) of British artist David Hockney. It portrays a creative, innovative man who lived his life publicly, not only explicitly wrestling with his homosexuality in his artwork, but filming many moments of his life, some of which are very intimate and, one would think, private.

By turns flippant (deciding to become a blond after seeing a Clairol commercial that claimed blonds have more fun), sad (mourning with every aspect of his being the end of his relationship with Peter Schlesinger) and serious (continually pushing artistic boundaries and learning new techniques), Hockney is a fascinating person.

Wright’s documentary features interviews with Hockney, 77, as well as Hockney’s family and friends, fellow artists, subjects of his paintings and others. For the film, Hockey – who still works in the studio every day – provided Wright with access to his photographs and “home” movies. Hockney was a documenter not just of what he saw around him in people and nature, but of himself. “I always wanted to see more,” he says about why he always wanted to sit on the top level of the bus on the way home from the pictures – he describes himself as almost being raised with Hollywood, though he was born and raised in Bradford, England. After several stints in Los Angeles, he moved there in 1978.

The documentary serves as an interesting and visually stimulating, if uncritical, introduction to Hockney and his work. The VIFF screenings mark its Canadian première.

photo - Quentin Dolmaire et Lou Roy-Lecollinet in My Golden Days. Dolmaire is scheduled to attend the film’s première at the Vancouver International Film Festival
Quentin Dolmaire et Lou Roy-Lecollinet in My Golden Days. Dolmaire is scheduled to attend the film’s première at the Vancouver International Film Festival. (photo from VIFF)

Another national première is My Golden Days, directed by Arnaud Desplechin (France). Actor Quentin Dolmaire, who plays the young adult Paul Dédalus, is scheduled to attend the screening.

Called Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse in its original French, the film begins with the adult Paul in bed with a lover, saying goodbye, set to return to France to take a position with the foreign ministry. His first souvenir (memory) is of his childhood: to understate matters, he doesn’t get along with his mother, who is ill, and, after she dies, his father never recovers and fades into the background of his children’s lives.

Paul’s second memory – and the most interesting part of the entire film – is triggered when he is stopped at customs. Apparently, another Paul Dédalus exists in Australia, with Paul’s same birth date, etc. How can that be?

It goes back to the 1980s and a high school trip to Minsk. Not Jewish himself, Paul helps his friend Marc Zylberberg smuggle documents and money to refuseniks. He is asked, not pressured, to “lose” his passport when he meets with them, which he does.

The strength of character Paul displays at 16 in Russia escapes him upon his return. The third and final memory of his youth takes up more than half of the two-hour film. Despite including some violence, lots of emotional chaos and a few sex scenes, the romance between Paul and Esther is, not to mince words, boring. Though well-acted, the characters are not compelling or sympathetic, and it is hard to care what happens to them and their relationship.

***

The Jewish Independent is sponsoring the Canadian première of Tikkun, directed by Avishai Sivan (Israel). Among other awards, it won top honors at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

When Haim-Aaron, an ultra-Orthodox scholar, collapses and is resuscitated by his father after being declared dead by paramedics, he completely changes personality. While he struggles with that and his new lack of faith, his father is fearful that God is angry for having His will (that Haim-Aaron die) denied.

Among the other films of Jewish interest is Son of Saul, directed by László Nemes (Hungary), which takes place in Auschwitz, where Saul is forced to help the Nazis kill his fellow Jews. In doing so, he sees the corpse of a boy he believes to be his son. He decides to save the body, intent on giving the boy a proper burial.

And there is A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did, a documentary by David Evans (United Kingdom). Another Canadian première at VIFF, the film follows Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter, both the sons of Nazis responsible for thousands of deaths, on a trip to Poland and Ukraine. The men have completely different opinions about their fathers’ actions during the war, and “human rights lawyer Philippe Sands investigates the complicated connection between the two men, and even delves into the story of his own grandfather who escaped the same town where their fathers carried out mass killings.”

VIFF runs from Sept. 24-Oct. 9. The full program can be found at viff.org.

Memorials to millions

Ian Penn’s exhibit at the Zack Gallery, Pole, “isn’t happy but it’s genuine.” (photo by Olga Livshin)

The poignant tale behind Pole, Ian Penn’s new multimedia exhibit at the Zack Gallery, is a bleak travelogue detailing his recent journey to Poland.

Although Penn’s family came from Poland – his parents were lucky to have escaped the Holocaust and settled in Australia – he never wanted to visit the country of his ancestors. “My mother said she would never set a toe in Poland,” he told the Independent.

Growing up in Australia, Penn moved to Vancouver, where he worked as a cardiologist for many years. He is mainly retired now but still teaches at the University of British Columbia and works as a medic with the emergency-response ski patrol in Whistler.

“When I retired, I enrolled in Emily Carr,” he said. “I graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s in fine arts but I’ve always kept a visual diary, since university. I have hundreds of little albums at home. Wherever I am, wherever I go, I draw and write in them. It’s how I explore the world.”

He paints regularly, landscapes and figurative images. “For me, painting is a way of telling a story, one of many. There are other ways, too: words, sculpture, video, photography. I used the multimedia approach for this show because I wanted to bring all those ways together, see how they fit. The show is a story of Jewish soul.”

Penn found his subject in Poland. He had resisted making the trip for a long time, until a couple years ago. “My daughter said to me then, ‘It’s time to visit your history,’ so I made the decision to go,” Penn explained. “I have a friend in Australia. We have known each other for a long time. He is a Pole, he speaks Polish, and he wanted to take me. He said we should both read a few books first to prepare ourselves, books about the plight of Jews in Poland during the war, but written by Poles, not Jews. We didn’t want to go as tourists. We wanted to understand.”

Nonetheless, Poland shocked him. “There are almost no Jews left there, and the ones who remain don’t know anything about Jewish culture. I went to a synagogue and I had to say Kiddush because nobody there could speak Hebrew. But the Poles – they exploit Jewish history. They charge 23 euros for a trip to Auschwitz. They have those happy golf carts all around Krakow and they take you to the Schindler’s factory and to the ghetto. They sell Jewish souvenirs, but who made them? Not Jews. This is not how you engage in history. They made a commodity out of our tragedy, of the Jews killed by the millions. It’s like Horror Disneyland. I couldn’t stay there more than one week.”

Penn found most of the Jews of Poland in the cemetery. “There, every stone has a name written on the tombstones, remembered, while those who died in Auschwitz are just dust. I learned that Nazis burnt 1,000 people an hour in the ovens in Auschwitz. I tried to wrap my head about the number. That’s why I did this show. It’s about those thousands of souls.”

All of the works displayed in the show bear the same name, “1000 Marks.” By creating the paintings, Penn wanted to visualize his non-memories, remember something he had never witnessed. Five paintings are similar: dead trees, brown and dreary, wooden poles striving to reach the sky, one pole for every Jewish soul that didn’t have their name written somewhere. Together, they form a memorial.

A couple other paintings have a subtitle: “From the Village to the Ramp.” They are painful to view, powerfully evoking the horrors of the Holocaust. So does the entrance to the gallery, decorated with two real wooden poles, with bark still on in some places, unpolished and branchless. The “Welcome Back” mat underneath them doesn’t look particularly welcoming either. There was a sign at the entrance to Auschwitz, too, and the correlations reverberate in the air.

“This show isn’t happy but it’s genuine,” said Penn. “It’s my response to the entertainment industry they made of the catastrophe. Their tourist trips have nothing to do with our dead families.”

The show also includes a few short videos, two of them filmed at the Jewish cemetery. The screens are mounted to the walls like paintings, continually running loops of footage. “I shot them myself,” said Penn. “There is serenity at the cemetery. And lots of greenery, living trees. I saw a man restoring the text on one of the tombstones and filmed him. I didn’t talk to him, didn’t ask him anything. He was doing a holy job. That was enough.”

A few more wooden poles, also part of the exhibition, are placed outside of the Zack Gallery. They are suspended above the atrium, where the stairs lead down to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

“They are uprooted, like all of us whose parents left Europe,” said Penn. “The poles come from the UBC Endowment Lands and from the Whistler area. They remind me of the trees in the Jewish cemetery but they are also my connection to this place, to Canada.”

The show Pole opened on Sept. 10 and continues until Oct. 11.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.