The Forsyth Report: Three Tall Women

I had not read Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women”. I did read the reviews on the Internet of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play and they all used superlatives to describe both Albee’s work and the actors who performed it. It was difficult though to imagine how it worked. Three actors playing A, B and C, the same woman at different stages of her life, and usually all three on stage at the same time. And then there was an actor who plays her son who doesn’t have a name either.

You’ll have to trust me that it all comes together very quickly. It’s one of those cases of “you had to be there”. And if you weren’t you missed yet another stunning production from First Stages Theatre Company and its fearless leader Robert Latimer. The actors – Corinne Conley, Jillian Cook, Godric Latimer-Kim (Robert’s daughter) and Sean Tasson as the son – were to have been directed by Maria Heidler who fell ill and Robert had to take over at noon on the day of the performance. The results of his nerve-racking, 11th - hour experience were spellbinding.

A is a very old woman in her 90s. She is thin, autocratic, proud, and wealthy. She also has a mild case of Alzheimer's disease.

B is A's 52 year-old version, to whom she is the hired caretaker. She is markedly cynical about life. Although she doesn't enjoy working for A, she learns much from her.

C is B's 26 year-old version. She is present on behalf of A's law firm because A has neglected paperwork, payment, and such. She has all of youth's common self-assurance.

The son comes to see his dying mother after many years of rarely visiting. His character speaks not one word but doesn’t need to.

Albee has admitted in interviews that the play was directly inspired by his mother, a ‘domineering, Amazonian woman’. He was raised by conservative New England foster parents who disapproved of his homosexuality; like the son in his play, he left home at eighteen. Albee admitted to the Economist that the play ‘‘was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started it.’’ He has described the writing of the play as "an exorcism."

Major treat at the Capitol Theatre. It was yet another First Stages afternoon to remember.

Robert’s next – and last of the season – play is Neil Simon’s “The Dinner Party”. And what a cast: Founder of First Stages Diana Reis, Jo-Anne Kirwin Cark, Amy Sellors, Thom Currie, Robert Latimer and his Artistic Associate Costin Manu who will also direct.

It’s on Sunday May 10th, at 3:00. Call the Capitol Theatre at 905.885.1071 for tickets. This is one dinner party invitation you will be glad you accepted.

Selena Forsyth

IKEA Plagiarism Gets Respect At the Pinakothek Der Moderne

Swedish retailer Ikea's approach to design not only revolutionized the way many Canadians live, it earned its own exhibition at Die Neue Sammlung - The International Design Museum in Munich.
With around 70.000 objects in its collections of industrial design, graphic design and the arts and crafts the Neue Sammlung is today one of the world's leading museums of 20th century applied art, and indeed the largest of industrial design. It is now the first museum to devote a major exhibition of Ikea objects.
Walking through the display is a bit like browsing through the Ikea Toronto store. But at the museum, the focus is not on kitchens, beds or children's furniture, but on design classics: chairs by Gerrit Rietveld and Michael Thonet, the famous String shelves and Bauhaus pieces by Marcel Breuer.
While other design exhibitions tout big names, this one - under the title "Democratic Design" - has a different claim to fame, summed up in a quote from a 1979 Ikea catalogue: "The aesthetic form is here for all. And not just for the museum!"
Corinna Roesner, one of the curators of the exhibition, has been quoted as saying that the combination of the museum's permanent design exhibition and Ikea pieces was particularly interesting, because visitors could recognize where many of the ideas came from for furniture pieces they are familiar with.
Since the end of the 1980s, the museum collected pieces from Ikea. The International Design Museum Munich, which presented the show in collaboration with Ikea. Half of the items in the exhibition come from the Neue Sammlung collection and the other half from the Ikea museum or private lenders."
It is one of the few design shows where a large number of visitors can say that they, too, own a design original. For most, it's the "Billy" shelves in white. They have been sold 28 million times since Ikea opened in 1948.
What came across to me, who has never owned a piece of Ikea, was that for many it was the realization of the age-old dream that beautiful things should be for everyone. This was goal of the German Bauhaus and the British Arts and Crafts designers. But it remained elusive; ‘design’ was always expensive.
But also, when the original design and the Ikea version stand side by side, it is obvious how boldly the blue-yellow furniture makers stole, cloned, and developed further the most beautiful concepts in the history of design. “Billy”, the shelf, is almost an exact copy of a prototype by Bruno Paul from 1908.
At any rate there could be no better advertising for Ikea and for the power of early 20th century European design carried around the world in this age of globalization.
For more information, click on http://www.die-neue-sammlung.de.

The Orphic Navel Of the World

I was going to try it, but I saw the huge line-up in front of the “Berghain” nightclub in Berlin. And then of course I am 70 years old and the bouncers would not have let me in.
I really wanted to try it, because Berghain is the doyen of Berlin’s famous/notorious techno clubs.
This is how the experience was described to me: when one enters the cavernous hall that was formerly the power plant of Berlin’s Ostbahnhof railway station, it is always a shock and the techno music is cataclysmic. This cathedral of ecstasy, lit by blinding search and strobe lights, is transfigured into something vague and vast. There is a warren of bars, darkened alcoves for rest and lust, and in the middle from a lofty pulpit the charismatic DJ commands the writhing masses below.
One author has written, “Berghain opens its own space/time continuum”. One comes and goes to other discos, but here one stays. The rest of the world vanishes. In Berghain one is ‘out of area’.
Reading and writing these sentences, I am reminded of bacchic/orphic cults of antiquity, but this is modern about art and lust. It is about the arousal current crop of the children of our own civilization, the skillful manipulation of the reflexes of the brain stem with sound and light. And it is said to work magic.
But recently, the aesthetes and ‘Schoengeister’ have fastened on Berlin nightlife. Books are being written and the rusty industrial structures and symbol-laden no-man’s-lands are now the stuff of cultural and cultured discourse. The message sent by the cultural establishment is that techno is the glue cementing the weekly celebrations of Berlin’s idle and susceptible youth, offering the miraculous experiences of inclusiveness on and of the shedding of social roles, even a complete change of identities.
Now the more daring of the older hip professionals and the rasher cadres of the older bourgeoisie are advancing on the on what was used to a dirty and lust-driven refuge of the ‘others’. Ecstasy becomes art and the caves of forbidden or at least risky gratification are becoming a theme park of milder thrills. But globalization is unstoppable and soon bus tours will visit ‘the best club in the world’. Berghain is on the way of becoming another Moulin Rouge.
At least, that’s what I was told.

The “Off Theatre” Scene

Germany is famous for lush subsidies for its civic and state theatres and opera companies, but in Berlin, the “off” or free theatres flourish.

“We are free in our courage and our risks, but not free in our responsibility in our art,” said the young lady on the other side of the Maxim Gorki Theatre. According to her, the free theatre scene has become ever more professional, international and short-lived.

Many artists who work here, have left the relatively secure, subsidized “official” theatres to be free of hierarchical structures, to pursue favourite projects and to work in a collective of like-minded, committed professionals. For that they will face insecurity and no small financial hardships. “I’d rather live on pogey than to be artistically unhappy. Freedom has its price!” declared the young lady.

Actually, the “off” scene started with a bit of seed money from the Feds and the city in the late 90s – since dried up. The money brought many ‘free” artists to Berlin from other centres and the ‘Off’ scene functions “on a miserable, but possible level”.

It turned out, that we could not see the scheduled show about the closing of a mine in former East Germany, with its shattering of the lives of its workers, - a typical sample of Maxim Gorki’s socialist realism. The reason was a Russian bomb buried since World War II – apparently there are still 3,000 of these relics – near Berlin’s most prestigious museums.

The police cordoned off all of the entire ‘Mitte’ district and I was able to parade down the centre of Unter Den Linden all by myself without any traffic.

However, the bomb was defused and I returned during the “Long Night” for a wildly unconventional staging of Kleist’s classic ‘Amphitryon’, outrageous by Soulpepper standards.

A Three Opera House Metropolis.

I also attended the “Staatsoper Unter Den Linden” during the ‘Long Night of Opera and Theatre’. As was to be expected there was a good deal of good-natured pushing and shoving to get to the seats. Nothing very regal about any of it, although the house was built by King Frederick The Great in 1742, only few steps from his palace, the Stadtschloss. It was one of the must-haves of royalty to own an opera company at court.

The Staatsoper is a picture book house: much stucco and gilding, a splendid chandelier, red velvet seats and and elegantly curved balconies. I am told that the audience prizes a special evening out, not least to “see and be seen” during the intermission. When I at last had my glass of bubbly and had a moment to look about the lobby, the ‘crème’ of Berlin society was not in evidence, but rather surprisingly young and lively and opera sprouts, who opted for coke and lager.

I forewent the chance to visit the “Komische Oper”, also Unter den Linden. The original building fell victim to the bombs. It was also rebuilt by the Communists. The house reflects the splendour and tastes of its Berlin’s version of the “belle epoche’ in the 1890s. The Komische Oper attracts a younger public with its daring stagings of opera classics. In fact, I experienced one such version of Don Giovanni, where the cast spent more time lying about the stage than on their feet. Chacun a son gout!

The Deutsche Oper in the city’s West End was conceived in 1912 as the bourgeois riposte to the aristo Staatsoper – lots of Wagner being the antidote. It also fell victim to the bombs and was rebuilt in 1962 with conscious democrat intent. Whereas in the Staatsoper and the Komische Oper only the expensive seats see all of the stage (I never have!), all 1,800 seats in the Deutsche Oper have.

Actually, there is a fourth house, the Neukoellner Oper, located on the third floor above a movie theatre and a bowling alley on –appropriately – Karl Marxstrasse. There seriously underpaid artists offer programs considered by insiders to be more exciting than those of the operatic ‘supertankers’.

The Berlin Entertainment Scene – Beyond The Golden ‘20s

>

I started the ‘Long Night’ in the Admiralspalast only one of the countless venues in the formerly Communist “Mitte” district of Berlin, offering musicals, ‘revues’, variety shows and cabarets, satire and music. Somebody counted and came up with 1,500 events each day. Although the “Golden Years’ of the ‘20s, captured in the musical “Cabaret” are long gone, I have to take the word of my informant that entertainment is alive and well and that the events are comparatively cheaper than in Paris, London or New York.

Flashing my WATERSHED magazine card, I wangled a few words with a harried assistant to the manager of the Admiralspalast. He told me that, “artists of all kinds flock to Berlin. I want to play Berlin. That’s what I hear over and over again.” As far as the public goes, “they want something daring.”

The Admiralspalast goes back to the fabled 20s, languished under the Nazis and the Communists and was re-opened in2006 with a notable ‘Three Penny Opera’. The term “palace” is taking things a little far, but there are three theatres with 3,400 seats, offering everything from high culture, to techno clubs and musicals. “Shrill, disrespectful and anarchic that’s what we want to be,” said the assistant.

The Master of Ceremonies for the evening was a piano virtuoso-cum-comedian who introduced an Icelandic operate tenor, an outrageous improve group worked their sketches around hints from the audience and the stars of the revival of the Broadway hit “the Producers”.

On the same street is the Friedrichstadtpalast, Europe’s largest variety show venue and next door is "Distel” – The Thistle – Germany’s most famous political cabaret. Founded in 1953, it survived the Communists and the fall of the wall. With a complement of 20 it is the country’s premier cabaret ensemble. Typically, the current show is called ‘Beyond Angela” – Merkel, that is, Germany’s Chancellor. It is supposed to be bitingly hilarious.

I did not find not find out, because it I was standing at the rear of a huge crush; it was 11:00 pm; it had been a long night and I missed it. Just as I missed another dozen shrill and naughty shows that make up Germany’s cabaret scene.