 |
And with good reason. In painting this refreshingly candid self-portrait of the utter madness that infuses the cult of celebrity, Coward, in 1942, was decades ahead of his time.
Centred around the indulged and indulgent lifestyle of Garry Essendine, West End leading man -- a doppelganger for Coward himself, who first played the role -- Present Laughter offers proof positive that our society was star-struck long before Madonna, Julia and Leonardo were even born.
Unfortunately, in bringing the work to the stage -- it launched Soulpepper's summer season at the Premiere Dance Theatre on Thursday night -- Ziegler and his designer Guido Tondino obviously weren't convinced that their audience was smart enough to draw the proper parallels between Coward's time and our own.
Instead of anchoring the work in the era in which it was created, Ziegler and Tondino have made a half-hearted attempt at setting it in the 21st century.
It's a art deco/pop art kind of world where both rotary and cell phones proliferate -- a world of Bell & Howell movie projectors and computers, of cocktails and ponytails, where the central conceit of a forthcoming African tour, preceded by a long ocean voyage seems utterly bizarre -- as bizarre as Coward's carefully constructed ephemera of wit and ennui in today's slam-bam world.
The pity here is that, with this cast, Ziegler otherwise achieves a level of competency in tackling Coward's script that is all too rare.
As Garry, Juan Chioran -- who couldn't be mistaken for Coward in Braille -- is nonetheless comfortably and believably urbane as he juggles his complicated life and career, with the aid of his long-suffering secretary (played by Nancy Palk, who seems born to play these kind of characters).
There's nice work in character roles from Joyce Campion and Charmion King and promising work from Martha Burns (as Garry's almost-ex-wife) and Brenda Robins (as the predatory wife of his best friend and business partner), too.
As for the rest of the extensive cast, they're victims of time and place. As celebrity-struck civilians, both Patricia Fagan and Rick Miller trip over the dropped decades -- a problem that plagues Allan Hawco in his butlering duties as well. As Garry's business partners, Neil Foster and Michael Hanrahan attempt to mix Hollywood and New York into their West End roles and end up south of nowhere for their efforts.
Despite it all, Ziegler still manages to pull of a pleasant evening of theatre -- one that might have been truly memorable had he trusted his audience as much as he asks us to trust him. (More: Theatre Reviews).