Theatre New Brunswick Fredericton, November - December 2003
Writing a "Christmas show" -- the sort of play that regional companies
around North America will produce to attract the family audience which
-- at least in theatre tradition -- is searching desperately for a wholesome, child-oriented
bit of fluff for the kids that at the same time will introduce
everybody to the idea of the theatre, and to the unique ways in which
theatre challenges the imagination and the understanding -- is no easy
trick. Playwrights fail at it all the time: the most notable
instance I can remember is Mark Medoff's Kringle's Window,
which defeated
the best efforts of a dedicated and hard-working Theatre New Brunswick
crew seven years ago. And occasionally they succeed, though it's been
some years since we've seen a really good one in Fredericton.
So I was very interested to see what an old pro like Norm Foster would produce for that market. Dear Santa
turns out, in the event, to be almost exactly what you'd expect:
competent, complicated, occasionally witty, dramatically sophisticated,
and not childish at all. Foster drapes a half-dozen plot lines around
the basic situation: Santa's getting ready for the Christmas Eve
mission, and there are obstacles and distractions, all of which (of
course) are solved and defeated just in the nick of time.
The plots, and the characters who inhabit them, are well
conceived. Foster pulls out all the stops here, creating a bevy
of characters who are actually fun to be around, and plots lines which,
if they push all the buttons as systematically as if they were
following a computer program, still avoid the obvious clichés.
Algernon Gladstone is Santa's "chief of staff," a stiff, businesslike,
archly British Malvolio, who needs to be loosened up and brought to see that love is
all around him. Octavia is the Jill-of-all-trades at the North
Pole, smitten with Gladstone, though he doesn't notice it, and somehow
we know the two of them need to be brought together. Bozidar is the
head of the toymaking shop, and boss elf; he needs to solve problems
like the fact that the supply train hasn't brought any wood glue, and
to have his fractured, Mrs. Malaprop / Jose Jimenez / Inspector
Clouseau English repaired or translated. Lou Flapdoodle, the visiting
Detroit-based sleigh salesman, invited by Gladstone to try to get Santa
to upgrade his aging sleigh, needs to make a sale. And Kit, the
requisite alienated adolescent, needs, well, to have her "Christmas
Spirit" upgraded (in spite of the fact that she's got enough to have
stowed away on the North Pole supply train in order to hand-deliver her
brother's letter to Santa).
All this occurs swiftly and unconfusingly on Robert Doyle's brilliant
set -- a densely-crowded workshop, into which, on cue, Santa's
corporate office swings from the side, and under the perfect Chris Saad
lighting we've come to take for granted. Snatches of random Christmas
music punctuate and underline scene and mood changes, and the lame song
which ends the show is arranged by Mike Doherty to conceal its flaws
(though I did find the miking a distraction, and one of the few
failings in a generally fine sound design). To a person, the company
move wonderfully: at times the near-slapstick is neatly coordinated
with the music (at one point, for instance, a do-si-do bodily
contretemps between Bozidar and Octavia became almost a dance to the
Tchaikovsky
background music).
Individually, the company Scott Burke has gathered for the production
is strong, as well. Stan Lesk, whose memorable turn in A Servant of Two Masters more than a decade ago I still remember, is as good a Santa as any I can remember,
even (or especially) when he's in a portly vest and watch chain rather
than his red uniform. Lesk walks right, and even (wonder of wonders)
pulls off the laughter. More remarkably, he's believable as a the
beleagured CEO of a company hurtling toward a deadline and juggling his
obligations and decisions and still somehow remaining a right jolly old
elf.
Equally good is Rejean Cournoyer (why isn't he at center ice for les
Habitants?) as Gladstone, the still, long-suffering, business manager /
personnel director for the North Pole operation. Like Lesk, he walks
perfectly for the part: think 60% Basil Fawlty and 40% Norm Foster and
you've got it, and manages not only to act the Malvolio pompous clown
but also to gain some real sympathy as he discovers Octavia's interest
in him and tries to figure out what responding would consist of.
Stacy Smith's Octavia is sensitive, flighty, overwrought and appealing
by turns; I especially admired the way she modulated from frenetically
setting up the "wrap party" -- up and down and across the stage with
tablecloth and punch bowl, and suddenly sighing and relaxing us all
into the end-of-season party mood.
Wally MacKinnon's Lou Flapdoodle, the sleigh salesman, Sheldon
Davis's Bozidar, and T. J. Tasker's Skiffle (the main workshop elf) all make us forget the extent to which they are
one-note, one-schtick characters, and deliver their
not-always-wonderful one-liners with indefatigable panache. MacKinnon's
Art Carney imitation, complete with porkpie hat, serves the never-say-die salesman well ("my
grandmother's 'holding up rather well'," he says to the reluctant
Santa, "but I'm not about to load her up with toys and drive her around
the world"). Davis' tight, disciplined slapstick-heavy body language, which I
admired in Jasper Station,
minimizes the often mechanical nature of
Bozidar's language difficulties. "The Devil's Avocado" is a line worthy
of Mrs. Malaprop, but many of his mixed bag of misspeakings simply felt
troweled on -- there's nothing particularly funny about "a team of wild
horseflies couldn't drag it out of me" or "you aren't just whistling
Dixie cup." Tasker is even more limited, but he plays out the
limited range of his lines (plays on Gladstone's name, mostly) with a
strong visual elfin presence.
Kit Bishop, a character with the kind of knee-jerk problems you expect
to find in such a play -- difficult family background (but not too
difficult), maybe a little too articulate about her teenage angst,
impetuous and sullen -- is played with convincing warmth and presence
by newcomer Adrienne Fitch, who avoids exaggerating Kit's truculence,
and achieves some real warmth with other characters -- especially her
moment of contact with Octavia, as she promises not to tell Santa who
spilled the beans about her brother's letter, and shows her the
locked-little-finger move that binds them.
The play involves a surprising number of other onstage people --
extras, we might call them -- who were (unfortunately, I thought, not
identified in the program, or at least in an occasional insert). Five
members of a spectacularly inept choir who are converted into competent
backup singers for the closing number by Kit; three elves who have
nothing much to say but lend some ambience to the workshop, and Kit's
non-speaking mother and brother, spirited to the North Pole by Santa
and Lou's supersonic sleigh to hear Kit's choir. All, I assume
will be different in each location, and all are clearly part of a
conscious effort to connect TNB and the communities it tours to.
All of that said, there are still problems that made me occasionally
uncomfortable. Kit's difficult childhood is merely waved at, to
provide us with a motive for what seems an otherwise pretty unmotivated
anger with the world; the opening and closing joke, involving getting
people to put on an oversize Santa hat, is lame, and doesn't earn the
onstage laughter it gets; the song which climaxes Kit's visit is not
only weak, but unnecessary; predictability masquerades as
inevitability.
In spite of all this, though, it's well worth seeing. And (I
don't often say this) take the kids. They'll miss most of the
jokes, and they may miss a lot of the Octavia - Gladstone plot, but
they'll love the attempt to manufacture glue, they'll respond to
the physical comedy, and they won't feel condescended to -- and when
Gladstone and Octavia dance themselves into a relationship at the end,
they may see a little of what can be done to convey a complex and
delicate relationship with just bodies. And they may catch a little of
the play's sardonic take on the whole Santa myth.