Death In Venice – Haunting Delicacy.

by Walter Luedtke

It has been argued that all you need for drama is one actor and four walls and Robert Latimer’s one-man turn as von Aschenbach at the Capitol delivered the proof. Latimer had already given a stellar impersonation of David Hare in Via Dolorosa three years ago and this performance was every bit its equal.

Death In Venice, Thomas Mann's 1911 novella about an elderly man's obsession with a boy, is a work of exquisite craftsmanship – ‘a tale of gentle sorrow and violent emotions, tortured intellectual rigor and guilty homo-erotic rapture’. Latimer’s subtle and achingly restrained performance, managed to do justice to the haunting delicacy of Mann’s language.

Latimer’ s craft was equal to the versatility demanded by a solo turn playing a fastidious German aesthete as well as assorted porters, tourists, and gondoliers. He produced the appropriate accents and gestures – sometimes violent, but mostly controlled with a slightly hunched back and arms tightly pressed to his sides.

And then came the heart-stopping “theatrical moment”, when Aschenbach is driven to burst out "I love you." and brings his hand to his lips as if to stop the words that have already escaped. Theatre pure!

One of the many things to be admired in Latimer’s work as an actor and director is the infinite care he brings to his task. On this occasion it was sleuthing and many trans-Atlantic phone calls to locate the play in manuscript form – it has not been published yet. The result is yet another Canadian premiere of an internationally acclaimed play in Port Hope.

Equally painstaking is his selection of the evocative music – this time resurrecting the voice of Joseph Schmidt, the famed German lyric tenor.

As with all First Stages presentations, Death in Venice was a staged “concert reading without the benefit of lengthy rehearsals and with a minimum of costumes or props, in this case two tables, two chairs, a coat rack.

A play reading experience has been compared to watching a radio play unfold, with the emphasis on the spoken word, that provides the spark to ignite the imagination of the audience.

Serious, professional world theatre, painstakingly presented to a devoted, yet still too small, audience - that is First Stages.