by AMY BARRATT

Nobody pinch me. If I’m dreaming I don’t want to wake up.

Last week I was lucky enough to see two really well-built plays, one a contemporary British work, the other a modern American classic.

Kindertransport, by Diane Samuels, was first performed in London in 1993. The story of a young Jewish girl sent out of Germany to a family in Manchester just before the outbreak of World War II, it is being produced here by Persephone Productions at the Calixa-Lavallée theatre.

Persephone’s official mandate is to produce plays with “literary and social significance,” all the while providing work opportunities for young theatre professionals. These goals are met with this production. Of a cast of six, four are graduates of John Abbott College’s professional theatre program, where the company’s founder, Gabrielle Soskin, teaches.

In the past, Soskin has cast young people as older characters, however here she brings in two mature actresses to round out the cast of five women and one man. That’s a constant in all of Persephone’s shows so far: lots of good roles for women.

Given the theme—children separated from their parents—Kindertransport could easily have been a multi-hankie weeper. It is to Samuels’ credit that she never reaches for our heartstrings, but simply creates believable characters and presents them to us without judgement. The production, on the other hand, often seems too restrained.

The performance I attended was the first preview, which perhaps partially accounts for a tentativeness in the acting. The strongest performances came from Karen Cromar, who plays Lil, the adoptive English mum, and Jennifer Wade, as Helga, the German mum who sends her nine year old away to safety not knowing if they will ever meet again.

Where British accents are required, the actors do a passable job, though they sound more mid-Atlantic than Manchester. The German accents, however, are exaggerated to the point of caricature. Especially in the first scene between young Eva and her mother—a scene in which we understand that they are meant to be speaking German—I wondered why not let the actresses just use their normal accents.

This season, Persephone is doubly ambitious: they will follow up Kindertransport with a January production of Steven Berkoff’s West, which, incidentally, will help right the company’s gender imbalance with its mostly-male cast.

The powers-that-be at the Saidye ought to be kicking themselves that they didn’t get to this play first.

Glass symphony

The second opening last week was, of course, The Glass Menagerie at the Saidye. Most of us know the play well enough to have pre-conceived ideas about the characters. That makes it a challenge for the director (Chris Abraham, still batting 1.000) and the actors, particularly the ones playing Laura and Amanda.

Rosemary Dunsmore, as the domineering mother, is just as over the top as Amanda needs to be, her sing-songy voice rising to a shriek or lowering to a growl during moments of great stress. The sense that this character could lose it at any moment keeps us fascinated.

Michelle Monteith, baby-voiced and appropriately mousy as Laura in the first act, manages the transformation in the second with great believability. Her candle-lit scene with the Gentleman Caller (Sean Gallagher) shimmers within the framework of the play like a delicate piece of glass that a puff of breath could shatter. Gallagher strikes exactly the right note of charm without artificiality, giving the sense that he too is caught up in the magic of a moment that seems to exist outside time and space.

Tom (Damien Atkins), who narrates the piece, is beautifully integrated into the action while still remaining sufficiently outside it to remind us that this is, as he tells us at the beginning, “a memory play.”

Set designers Guido Tondino and Victoria Zimski address the problem of the extra-wide Saidye stage by filling it up with furniture, simultaneously evoking the clutter of memory. Luc Prairie’s lighting, true to the script, is dim, but not so much so that we are squinting to follow the action.

In short, there is not a false note in the whole show. I abandoned my notebook early on and settled in to just enjoy the play. Whether you’ve seen Glass Menagerie 50 times or never, don’t miss this production. :

Kindertransport, to Oct. 12 at Théâtre
Calixa-Lavallée (Parc Lafontaine).
$15, students $10, 774-6189

The Glass Menagerie, to Oct. 20 at
the Saidye Bronfman Centre (5170 Côte Ste-Catherine),
$24–$38, students $16, 739-7944

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