Winter review roundup #1: Kimberly Akimbo, Company, Pu Songling, A Question of Character
The theatre scene heats up with two Tony Award-winning musicals, an adaptation of a 17th-century Chinese writer’s stories and a tense historical two-hander
This post is sponsored by CBC podcast PlayME. The podcast version of Ins Choi’s classic Kim’s Convenience is now available for streaming, and co-host/producer Laura Mullin’s interview with Choi is now up as well. See more at the end of this post.
After a quiet first couple of weeks of the new year, the Toronto theatre scene is heating up. Last weekend saw four big openings, with another three this week, as well as the launch of a new festival. Look for my second roundup early next week.
The four recent openings illustrate the range of activity happening here: a revival of a Stephen Sondheim musical; an adaptation of a 17th-century Chinese writer’s paranormal stories; a Canadian production of a recent Tony Award-winning musical; and a two-hander about a fictional meeting between a Black film journalist and Triumph of the Will director Leni Riefenstahl.
Let’s start with Company (Rating: ✭✭✭), which I believe hasn’t been produced here since the Theatre 20/Canadian Stage co-production way back in 2014. This production is being produced by Barrie’s excellent Talk is Free Theatre.
One of the very first concept musicals, the 1970 Stephen Sondheim/George Furth show chronicles, through vignettes and songs, the life of perennial bachelor Bobby (Aidan deSalaiz) as he hangs out with his married friends as well as three single women he’s currently dating.
The show is set firmly, and proudly, in the 1970s; there are references to telephone answering services, “optical art,” Life Magazine. To paraphrase a lyric from one of its best-known songs, “Does anyone still read a magazine?”
Never mind. The setting might be the cellphone-less, internet free 1970s, but its themes — relationships, love, marriage, freedom — remain pretty universal.
One of the main problems with the show, which has been revived several times since its premiere, is that Bobby remains a largely passive presence. He witnesses things, such as his married friends Sarah (Krystin Pellerin) and Harry (Shane Carty) taking up karate to spice up their relationship, or seeing friend Amy’s (Sydney Cochrane) meltdown on the day she’s set to marry Paul (Noah Beemer). But it’s not always clear what he’s thinking.
Even when he’s out on dates with single women, his inaction often results in things happening around him; flight attendant April (Maggie Walters), for instance, mistakes his non-verbal communication after a one-night stand for despondency, and so decides to ditch work to stay with him.
As someone sings to him in the show’s climactic number, “Want something. Want something.” Couldn’t agree more.