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| Sitting Luisa Jojic & Emma Slipp - Standing Jenny Wasko-Patterson & Gabrielle Rose - Jan12, 2016 |
For those who have gotten this far and want to read my take
of Blackbird Theatre’s production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals at the Cultch jump
immediately to Part II
Part I
My mother who was a consummate pianist often told me that after Henry Purcell good English composers faded from history. Since then I have come to disagree with her but she is not around for me to state my point. In a similar manner (my ignorance of course) I thought that between Shakespeare's plays and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest there was a long vacuum in the English theatre.
My mother who was a consummate pianist often told me that after Henry Purcell good English composers faded from history. Since then I have come to disagree with her but she is not around for me to state my point. In a similar manner (my ignorance of course) I thought that between Shakespeare's plays and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest there was a long vacuum in the English theatre.
My first glimpse to my errors happened in 1971 when I saw
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s film 'Tis Pity
She’s a Whore with (yes!) Charlotte Rampling. The film was based in a play,
a tragedy, by English playwright John Ford. It seems the play was performed
between 1629 and 1633.
Then in 2006 I went to a performance of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School For Scandal. This was an Arts Club Theatre production at the Stanley and directed splendidly by Dean Paul Gibson.
This amateur then came at the possibly erroneous deduction
that Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish not English - 1751 –1816) was sort of a
low-brow Shakespeare. Besides being a playwright Sheridan was a politician who
served in the British House of Commons for 32 years.
Two events in that show, The School For Scandal, have
remained with me aside from the fact that the play was hilariously funny.
Christopher Gaze played two parts and one of them was of a butler called Humphreys. If you research Sheridan’s play you will find out that the butler is unnamed. Almost hidden in the credits was that one named C.C. Humphreys had been consultant on the interpretation and pronunciation of the Sheridan’s dialogue.
I had photographed UBC sports doctor Dr. Doug Clement. He and his wife were sitting in front of me. I wondered why until I checked the actor credits and found that their daughter Jennifer played the hilariously named Lady Sneerwell. During this play Jennifer Clement performed the most realistic faux-sex act I have ever seen on a Vancouver stage. Suffice to note that my face turned into a very red tomato perhaps in solidarity to the same-named Clement restaurant on Cambie.
Rosemary and I attended a performance of Blackbird Theatre’s The Rivals, a play by Sheridan directed by Johnna Wright at the Cultch on Tuesday. By the opening curtain (there was none) I can assure you that I have some interesting and convoluted knowledge about this play that may explain Christopher Gaze’s role as the butler Humphreys in The School For Scandal.
In 2003 I read a very fine swashbuckler Jack Absolute by C.C. Humphreys. I was so taken by it that when the next two, The Blooding of Jack Absolute and Absolute Honour appeared I read them. By the second novel I found out that Humphreys now lived in Vancouver with his wife. I contacted him and he came to my studio and posed with a sabre. Humphreys, I quickly found out was not only an author, but also a swordsman and an actor. Before 2003 he had performed Hamlet and Sheridan’s The Rivals on the London stage. And you must know that the principal protagonist of The Rivals is a dashing captain called Jack Absolute.
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| C.C. Humphreys as Jack Absolute - 1987 |
Consider then that the actor playing Jack Absolute writes a
novel in which the protagonist is the very man, Jack Absolute and that Absolute
(the protagonist in the novel) goes to the first day performance of The Rivals
and buttonholes Sheridan for writing him into the play.
Captain Jack Absolute
marched forward, his eyes reflecting the flames of a thousand candles.
‘There will be light
enough; there will, as Sir Lucious says, “be very pretty small-sword light,
though it won’t do for long shot.”He raised an imaginary pistol, ‘fired’it with
a loud vocal ‘boom’, then added, “Confound his long shots!’
This last, delivered
in an exaggerated Irish brogue, conjured a huge roar of laughter from the pit
and a smattering of applause from the galleries. The bold Captain had a way
with him!
Or was that the actor playing him?
In the pit the real Jack Absolute had suffered more than enough. He rose and squeezed through the tiny gap between knees and the backs of the benches, trying to obscure as little of the stage as possible, though his kindly efforts were rewarded with cries of, ‘Sit down, sirrah,’and ‘Unmannerly dog! Woodward is speaking! From above, the actors glared down at him before continuing the scene… and when, in a fury, he’d tracked his old friend Sheridan down, the rogue had barely blinked at the his misappropriation of Jack’s name and history.
Jack Absolute – C.C. Humphreys - 2003
Since Chris (to friends) Humphreys is a friend of
Christopher Gaze, Gaze and Dean Paul Gibson decided on that inside joke of
calling the unnamed butler Humphreys in that 2006 production of The School For
Scandal.
Part II
If there has to be a rationalization to attend a play on
a cold and rainy Vancouver evening it is simple. It is about three women, all
who are gems. For one the play is directed by Johnna Wright. Years ago I took
Rosemary to an evening of one act/one actor plays on Granville Island. Between
plays there was a young woman sweeping the theatre floor. The same woman was
selling the wine and sweets during the interval. My wife asked me who she was. “That’s
Johnna Wright, the director!”
Gabrielle Rose, who plays Mrs. Malaprop is a Canadian
national treasure of an actress (I’m old fashioned so I say actress) whose list
of credits is miles long. I remember her best from the Arts Club Theatre
Company’s production of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Directed by Wright’s
father (and Artistic Director of Blackbird Theatre) John Wright. It is amazing
to see a very good and professional actress do her thing which such skill while
obviously having lots of fun.
The third reason is Emma Slipp. For reasons I very well
know she is continuously being described as luscious Emma Slipp. This is obvious the moment the play opens on her
bath in Bath. After having seen her last year in the stage production of Farewell My Lovely directed by Aaron Bushkowsky (an Arts
Club Theatre production) I
can assure you she is more than a pretty face and etc.
After Tuesday’s performance I felt like this play should
have further exposure, sort of like a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror
Picture Show. I felt like shouting at John Emmet Tracy who plays Faulkland the
retentive pessimist, “Shut up and kiss Julia Mellvile (played with sense and
sensibility by Luisa Jojic). Jojic is the kind of woman I imagine at a public
library front desk making us all swoon under her readers.
Jenny Wasko-Patterson plays a man (David) and a woman(Lucy).
As a woman she is devious and I had no idea on whose side she was.
Duncan Fraser plays the English Gentleman of uncertain
parentage (is he a bastard or not?) to the hilt and Scott Bellis’s is the kind
of American (he is not one in real life) that made me glad I live in Canada.
Kirk Smith as Bob Acres is over the top and fits Humphrey’s
Jack Absolute description as in my Part I. And can he dance!
But it was Martin Happer, as Jack Absolute that I scrutinized
in detail. I had seen him before in The
39 Steps and I was aware of his dashing good looks and Bruce Wayne square
jaw. His soto-voce to the audience nicely reminded me of Ian Richardson in
House of Cards. He passed muster for me but I wonder how he would have fared in
a mock duel with that other Jack Absolute.
The play was so satisfying for me that I came to the late
realization that Bill Millerd is not a theatrical God. If he were he would have
mounted this play.
If anybody here wonders what book Gabrielle Rose is
holding it is Humphrey’s Jack Absolute. Humphrey’s wife requested Rose hold the
book as Rose and Humphreys appeared in a play together many years ago.
At the play I noticed people who were mostly my age. For that younger generation that avoids Shakespeare because the language is difficult, The Rivals offers them the pleasure of listening to a sophisticated English, the manipulation of words in a medium that is understandable and that entertains.
At the play I noticed people who were mostly my age. For that younger generation that avoids Shakespeare because the language is difficult, The Rivals offers them the pleasure of listening to a sophisticated English, the manipulation of words in a medium that is understandable and that entertains.