This is my weekend? (Worried emoji)
I usually start the month with an arts roundup, but there is so much in my planner for the next three days that I’ve given up on the month and decided to confine myself to the coming weekend for the moment.
LAST CHANCE to see The Seagull at Soulpepper in Simon Stephens’ adaptation. The extended run ends this Sunday, so this is the very last call. I saw it a few days ago. As far as the text goes, it was surprisingly faithful to actual Chekhov; the “adaptation” bit mostly concerns 1) peppering everybody’s lines with swear words, 2) giving the young people the uptalk, turning their crying into howling, 3) making any hints of sexual subtext extremely explicit, 4) replacing snuff snorting with cigarette smoking. The sets are also the barest of bare. In other words, adaptation as crude-ification. And still, the goodness that is Chekhov comes through undimmed. Acting is generally fine, but Irina looks too close in age to her son and is a tiny, uncharismatic, mousy presence. The explicit scene that shows that her power over Boris Trigorin involves both flattery and sexual control, however, works (and is one hell of a bleak, almost depressing HJ). The weird horniness added to Paulina, though, diminishes her. Way to destroy a character. After you see that, see the David Hare adaptation in the National Theatre archives which you can access for free with your TPL card. It’s a fairly trad production that hits all the wistfulness spots. Anglo-adaptors of course keep going at Chekhov. Take a gander at this most recent NT take on The Seagull in which people just… sit on chairs and say the lines. Whenever I see “for the 21st century” after the name of a classic, I expect the worst.
Jane’s Walks are back. Things I’ve put on my shortlist:
Friday, May 5
10:30 a.m. Toronto’s Old Town. Is there anything left to learn about this 1 km square, through which I walk or bike almost every day? Hope to be introduced to something new.
We interrupt JW’s to add: The TSO is performing Turangalila with Marc Andre Hamelin tonight and tomorrow. Therefore, potentially:
7:30 p.m. Turangalila at Roy Thomson Hall. Gimeno conducts, Nathalie Forget @ ondes Martenot.
Saturday, May 6
11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Jane’s Walk: Little Portugal in Transition: Life on the Porch
1 - 2 p.m. Jane’s Walk: Revitalizing Canada Malting, led by someone from the City of Toronto who’s directly involved in the project. Very curious about this one.
5 p.m. at the Aperture Room, a spiffy new thing: Celebration of Small Ensembles or COSE, starting the first of the three weekend concerts that combine classical song, contemporary art music and more popular genres like jazz and American songbook. I am particularly looking forward to the Phonating Pianist.
Sunday, May 7
2 p.m. Jane’s Walk: Fables and Friends on Brunswick Avenue. The guides will be novelist Katherine Govier and Paul Kennedy of the CBC’s IDEAS. (I distinctly remember “Hi. I’m Paul Kennedy. Welcome to IDEAS” though I haven’t listened to the CBC radio in a long time.) I asked Govier to tell me a bit more about what they’re planning, and if it’s possible that Annex was once affordable to live in. She emailed back:
I lived at 398, 409 and 411 Brunswick between 1972 and 1978. Paul Kennedy and his wife Patricia Bradbury moved in to the 3rd floor above me at 411. We have been friends ever since. We were all renting from a fascinating character called Myrtle Chow who owned a few houses there above the Loretto Abbey.
I will talk about some of the other writers who lived there, both before they became known, and after - Joy Kogawa (who moved in with me as she began to write Obasan), Elizabeth Smart (about whom there is a story in my short collection, Fables of Brunswick Avenue), Ian Adams, the spy and novelist, well, we thought he was a spy, still unclear. Sylvia Fraser, Dennis Lee (though I didn’t know him) and others.
Paul was searching around for a role in media after his MA in politics failed to excite him. When he became the host of Ideas he interviewed Jane Jacobs, and apparently has 20 hours of tape. So he will talk about her ideas and how they reflected our lives or our lives reflected them. We called the Bloor strip “Goulash Alley” because of the numerous Hungarian restaurants on it. There were other great shops, like Weiner’s Hardware (still there!).
From there I’ll be rushing to Heliconian Club in Yorkville, for the
3 p.m. start of the latest thing by the excellent lads of the Canadian Art Song Project, pianist Steven Philcox and tenor Lawrence Wiliford. The Art of the Art Song sounds like an intriguing combination of talk about literature and poetry, and actual music-making. Linda and Michael Hutcheon, who have commissioned a new song cycle by Cecilia Livingston that will be performed, provide the talk part, and Wiliford and Philcox the music.
8 p.m. The naughty people of Opera Revue, whose goal is to bring opera to all the disreputable drinking venues in town (joking!), will be converging in the Balkan-themed Drom Taverna on Queen West this time. I have yet to get to one of their events but it’s commendable that they are multiplying in numbers and frequency. Will this Sunday be the night? If I’m still standing.
There are several other JW’s I would have liked to go to this weekend, if it were easier to get to them. This one, for example, on Kingston Road which ends in one of my favourite places in this city, Rosetta McClain Gardens overlooking the Bluffs. Or how’s this: walk the Hydro corridor from Willesden to Seneca College. Maybe some of these walks re-emerge in the course of the year.
In any case, I will be thankful for the existence of the bicycle this weekend - and the weather’s supposed to be better than this Blade Runner business of last week.