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Tickle me ivory >> Duelling songwriters and a pair of pianos
by AMY BARRATT Photo by Lydia Pawelak
Sure it's fluff, but after a week of the arty Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, that could be just what the doctor ordered. The production, which opens tonight (Thursday, May 27), stars Toronto's Theresa Tova and L.A.-based Richard Kline. An accomplished playwright herself, Tova comes to the Saidye fresh from her role as Emma Goldman in the touring company of Ragtime. While it's true that Kline played a recurring role on a certain '70s sitcom starring John Ritter, he has also had an impressive stage career, appearing in everything from the New York Shakespeare Festival to the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's By Jeeves. Kline also appears in the new Barry Levinson film Liberty Heights, due out this fall. Perhaps the best reason to check out They're Playing Our Song is the four-member chorus composed of local talents Amanda Strawn and three members of the Sherwood dynasty, Dorian, Kingsley and Toni. The extremely capable John Gilbert, also a Montrealer, is musical director. Director Bryna Wasserman can be counted on not to try anything funny, like making the leads perform in trash cans. So, to summarize: good clean fun for the whole family.
High notes Not exactly a musical comedy, but certainly a comedy with a whack of music: Deux pianos, Quatre mains opens this week at Théâtre du Rideau Vert. It's the French translation, obviously, of Two Pianos, Four Hands, which played The Piggery in '96 and Centaur in '97 as part of a successful Canadian tour. Authors Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt, who also starred in the original version, subsequently took it to Broadway (well, all right, a little bit Off-) where it played to generally favourable reviews. Remounting this piece in any language without Dykstra and Greenblatt would be a daunting task. The play is based entirely on their remarkably similar experiences of studying piano as children, dreaming of concert careers, then falling off that track. In order to pull off the difficult piano repertoire in the piece, any production needs a pair of actors who experienced virtually the same thing. Rideau Vert has filled the bill admirably with Grégory Charles and Jean Marchand. Charles, who is best known as a television actor and host, is a serious enough musician to have been an invited soloist at Carnegie Hall. Marchand is on the music faculties of McGill and UdM and remains an active chamber musician and accompanist. He has a separate career as a stage and film actor. With these two on stage, we're guaranteed some nicely tickled ivories. With any luck, under the direction of Denise Filiatrault, the Rideau Vert production will be touching and funny as well.
They're Playing Our Song, to June 20 at the Saidye, 739-7944. Deux pianos Quatre mains, to June 30 at TRV, 844-1793
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A very good drama teacher I once had insisted that Neil Simon was the greatest playwright of our times. Love him or hate him, in his dozens of plays, Simon has tapped our collective neuroses. They're Playing Our Song, which wraps up the season at the Saidye, is no exception. The show is about an odd-couple songwriting team whose dislike for each other has only one obstacle: love. Or something like that. The music is by schlockmeister Marvin Hamlisch--I think Streisand actually owns stock in him--with lyrics by Carole Bayer-Sager.