Reporting breeches in aisle two
The wurst is yet to come
Trouser or “breeches” role is a beloved and well-exercised tradition in opera and theatre, around since at least the Restoration comedy: actress playing a male role, either en travesti, with a female character pretending to be a man until the denouement, or straight up, with actresses cast as young male characters. Tom Stoppard’s rewrite of an 1842 Viennese boulevard theatre farce which he titled On the Razzle also, true to the original play, has a prominent trouser role in the young shop assistant Christopher, in this new Shaw Festival production played with requisite goofiness by Kristi Frank. Stoppard might have described his farce as “a lark” but Razzle resonates with so much operatic and theatrical history, notably Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier (in which a mezzo soprano plays the title lad Octavian torn between an older noblewoman and a younger nouveau riche beauty) and Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (in which servants and masters secretly end up in the same masked ball and flirt across boundaries of social class and propriety). As in Mozart/Da Ponte’s Marriage of Figaro, the trouser role youth finds him/herself courting another woman - in the Razzle the patriarch’s fiancée, in Figaro, the Count’s long-suffering wife. Sorry, I didn’t mean to over-egg this review with intertextuality from the get-go, but this is what Stoppard does to one.
So there will be tropes and inside jokes for opera-heads to identify, and the Rosenkavalier fans will particularly enjoy Christopher, a man played by a woman, having to cross-dress as a woman in a longer scene in the second half. (There’s a similar scene in Rosenkavalier in which the mezzo, performing a blokey man pretending to be a maid, is being hit on by a ribald count.) But Razzle can be enjoyed without any of this, though you have to stay tuned in at all times because the puns, spoonerisms and malapropisms will be coming at you thick and fast. “Have you seen the prices in this restaurant?!”, “Yes... and the wurst is yet to come”, etc.
It’s the olden story of a diverse group of people ending up in the same place where – temporarily – social hierarchies and norms don’t matter, with farce tricks of mistaken identities, over-elaborate uniforms, revolving doors, locked rooms, moving ladders, bad disguises and (inevitably) French maids cranked up to the max. The place that allows for this licence? Vienna itself, and its cafes and salons. Where both the wealthy merchant Herr Zangler (Ric Reid), and his two shop employees Weinberl (Mike Nadajewski) and Christopher, decide to go on the same night, the patriarch to take part in a parade and then propose to his fiancée, the employees to “live a little”. Zangler is accompanied by his brand new and ever so slightly impertinent manservant (Jonathan Tan), but his plan is derailed by his niece eloping with her unsuitable-because-indebted beau. They too end up in Vienna. Cancelling his dinner plans with fiancée in favour of monitoring the two lovebirds’ movement, Zangler ends up at a table next to a rowdy party consisting of (take a breath here) his two employees, his fiancée and her best lady friend, looking to order the best items on the menu.
Namely, a few scenes back, trying to avoid meeting Zangler on the street, Weinberl and Christopher run into a fashion shop which turns out to be owned by none other than Madam Knorr, Zangler’s hopeful widow girlfriend (played with understatement by Claire Jullien). Upon being asked for his name by the shop assistant, Weinberl flips the label on the closest coat and declares he is there to pick up the “Fischer” coat. “Fischer” of course turns out to be a woman, and Weinberl gets out of that particular one by declaring that he is her husband, Herr Fischer. (There’s some extra to-do about who took whose last name that also needed clearing up.) Frau Fischer (Elodie Gillett) soon enough comes through the door herself, and Madam Knorr chastises her for not letting her best friend know about her new husband. The party of four, including Herr Fischer’s buddy Christopher, winds up at the Imperial Gardens to celebrate the newly minted hitching. Frau Fischer plays along, bemused, trying to find out more about this odd stranger claiming to have wed her. Christopher orders everything on the menu, explaining to the worried Weinberl that once out of sight of the Italian waiters, they can simply clear off.
I’ll skip over a few adventures so I can get us to the home of the old Viennese spinster (Tara Rosling) who was supposed to guard Zangler’s niece once her father tracks her down and disentangles her from her suitor, but the policemen are not the sharpest knives in the drawer that is the farce Vienna and one of them delivers the wrong couple to her: Weinberl and Christopher disguised as a girl in Frau Fischer’s new hooded coat. The niece and her beau too get delivered eventually, Zangler as well, having finally reconnected with the ever patient Frau Knorr, at which point the action moves to the many rooms and the gated garden of the old lady’s house. But there’s still room for more characters: the perennially horny coachman arrives on the scene (who originally called him? I can’t keep track), and proceeds to communicate in double-entendres and run after the French maid.
They all, not having slept a wink, return to the shop before the next day’s opening time, Weinberl and Christopher, who kept their disguises till the end, a few minutes before everyone else so they can quickly put on the work clothes and grab the grooms. The intrigues get resolved with just some of the masks falling, and first two, then three couples form in time for the happy ending. Christopher gets a promotion.
Farce is a musical genre, even if it doesn’t have any singing, because the ticking of the action and the immense amount of traffic needs to be well choreographed to be funny. You spot this when someone flubs their line (it happened once or twice) and they have to repeat it, because you just feel the sudden, momentary slowing down of pace. Overall, however, the Craig Hall-directed ensemble machine was fabulously well oiled and roaring, with Nadajewksi and Frank particularly good as the two blithe and slapstick spirits carrying the production. A wonderful night of schlag and silliness.
To October 8, 2023 at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake. All photos by Emily Cooper.
