Worse than bad: Mediocre
October 11 2009

How could they?

Tom Stoppard towers over English language playwrights. I call him the third 'S' (after Shakespeare and Shaw.) I mean it. Soul, depth, intellect, humour- his plays deliver it all. Consistently. Dazzling, deep, deliriously thoughtful, delighting, enlightening, light of the Lord, Hallelujah!.

The Pianobabbler, you may infer, drops to his worshipful knees at the mention of Stoppard.

So:

Recently the Pianobabbler caught a CanStage production of Stoppard's typically spectroscopic take on existence: Rock n'Roll. The 2006 play blends ideology, sex, dissident politics, Communism, and the ancient Greek poet Sappho into an intoxicating potion that nourishes the mind and the viscera.

But:

Zzzzz. Ho & hum. Yaaawwwwn.

How could they?

How could a theatre company turn a masterpiece into a minor piece? how do shining jewel apothegms, and phosphorescent dialogue become flat obnubilated phonemes? which art doctor administered a severe bleeding to the play?

Who sucked out the play's living passion? Who breathed in the moribund fecklessness? Bring back the feck!

Worse than bad- to paraphrase Oscar Wilde -the production attained the mediocre.

Worse than worse, the production benefited from government funding.

What about the production made the Pianobabbler unhappy? Unimaginative set design. Clunky staging. Listless pacing. Most grievously- too much and too little direction, surfacing as weak acting and over-acting.

I am sure the individual actors were skilled. Light shafts of their ability broke through the dark veil of misdirection every so often.

It can only be the director who had them drain the nuance from their performances. Who had them substitute screaming for speaking. Gesture for emotion. Surface for substance.

The buck stops with the director. As did the play's zaza.

And the poor audience. Composed for the most part by an over 65 crowd, they came out for a night of new theatre. They worked to stay engaged. Just as one works to eat their spinach, and down their broccoli. I don't think they really knew though how droopy a dish the production was serving up.

Every production of Stoppard should add names to his fan list. This one did not.

Nothing worth having carries no risk. In the arts especially. The Pianobabbler takes risks all the time. Some do not pay. Result: ouch. Never mediocrity, though. Mediocrity represents the absence of risk-taking. And whatever our misjudgments, let us take the risk of never taking a risk. It could only result in mediocracy.

Here ends the babble.

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