Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
David Hirson’s boisterous play La Bête (1991) is only at Harbourfront for one week, so buy your tickets as soon as you can, because when word gets out about this dazzling production, they will be as rare as hen’s teeth.
Talk Is Free Theatre, under artistic director Arkady Spivak, resides in Barrie. Occasionally, as they say in the program notes, they come down the 400, to south of the 401, bearing gifts, like La Bête.
On one hand, the play is downright hilarious, filled as it is with slap-stick humour. Now I’m not usually one for low brow shenanigans, but I was totally beguiled by director Dylan Trowbridge’s go-for-the-jugular, very clever physicality.
On the other hand, the play is very provocative because of what it has to say about the role of theatre in general and the playwright in particular. Is theatre art for art’s sake, or is it art for entertainment?
Another show-stopper element about La Bête is that it is written entirely in rhyming couplets. I assumed they were alexandrines, but I found references to iambic pentameter, so who knows for sure. More to the point, that La Bête is an originally written play is astonishing, because you would think it is a clever translation of Molière.
Set in France in 1654, we meet Elomire (Cyrus Lane), a playwright who runs a theatre troupe, and Bejart (Richard Lam), one of his actors. The company used to be poverty-stricken itinerant players until a Princess (Amelia Sargisson) became their patron, and they were able to move permanently to court.
Unfortunately for Elomire, the Princess has become enthralled with a street clown (Mike Nadajewski) whom she saw perform in a public square, and she wants this Valere to become a member of Elomire’s company. (Elomire is an anagram of Molière.)
Elomire and Bejart have left a dinner party set up by the Princess so Elomire and company could meet Valere. Bejart begs Elomire to compromise, but the latter (who has been called the New Corneille) is adamant. The foolish, idiotic Valere will never join his theatre. And so we are now set up for the conflict between so-called high and low art.
Then Valere comes in search of them, and all hell breaks loose. By that, I mean, Elomire and Bejart are forced to listen to a mind-boggling, 25-minute monologue by Valere that is a pure genius torrent of words that is a wild combination of shallow stupidity, wrapped in delusional egoism, interpolated by utterly ridiculous life observations, and if Nadajewski is not nominated for a Dora for this performance, it will be highway robbery.
I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice it to say that in the second act, the Princess arrives, and we see a performance of Valere’s play, The Parable of the Two Boys From Cadiz. At Elomire’s insistence, his players join Valere on stage, and they should be cited for their spirited acting — Justan Myers, Amy Keating, Courtenay Stevens and Madelyn Kriese.
There is another character in the play, the maid Dorine (Katarina Fiallos), and the schtick here is that the 17-year-old is going through an adolescent phase. She will only say words that rhyme with blue, so everyone has to guess what message she brings, through her monosyllabic vocabulary and the miming charades that go with it. It’s a game that is quite amusing, and adds to the hilarity of the play.
What Nadajewski does with his voice and body defies description. His antics are simply astonishing, and he gives an unforgettable performance. In contrast, Lane’s impressive Elomire is imperially majestic and dignified, while Lam, on the other hand, presents a thoroughly realistic human being in relation to the other two. There is one puzzling element, however. Bejart is supposed to be a hunchback, but his costume does not show that.
Sargisson’s Princess is interesting, because in the original play, the part was written for a man. The 2010 West End revival transposed the role to a woman, which this La Bête copies. At first you think the Princess is a simpering dilettante, but she later shows both fire and command. The lady is a powerful steel magnolia indeed.
Joe Pagnan’s set is beautiful, with its backdrop of swagged velvet drapes, augmented by period furniture, while Laura Delchiaro’s period costumes are drop-dead gorgeous. Everything about this production is a class act.
As for Trowbridge’s marvellously detailed direction, nothing is left to chance. Nadajewski may be running amok, but it is always with a purpose. While Valere was in his flood of words during his monologue, I would occasionally glance at Elomire and Bejart, and director Trowbridge, has made sure that they are listening and reacting. No one in this production ever tunes out.
Before we leave, a little history about the play is worth a mention. As impossible as it is to believe, the superb La Bête, (one of the producers being Andrew Lloyd Webber), didn’t just flop on Broadway in 1991, it also flopped in a revival in 2010. Yet it had a wild success in London, after the first Broadway fiasco, winning the 1992 Olivier Award for Best Comedy. As well, prior to coming to Broadway in 2010, it had another hit run in the West End. So, London 2, New York 0.
Frank Rich, theatre critic for The New York Times, was so scathing in his 1991 review of La Bête that 28 notable theatre artists, including Hal Prince, Jerome Robbins, Kevin Kline, and yes, the great Katharine Hepburn herself, wrote a letter to the paper in protest. The good news is that La Bête has found a shelf life in colleges and regional theatres — and happily, in this Talk Is Free production.
Here’s another tidbit: in 2000, Hirson wrote a second play, Wrong Mountain, which was a response to the savaging of La Bête, and the fact that mediocrity triumphs over excellence. To all intents and purposes, Wrong Mountain is a satiric send-up of contemporary theatre, and it flopped on Broadway as well.
In a big surprise, after the opening night performance, Trowbridge announced that playwright Hirson was in the audience, and he was given a thunderous ovation. Hirson, in turn, made a moving speech. What an ending to a fabulous evening of theatre.
