Sam Reynolds / McGill Tribune

My mother, like many, used to stress the importance of good manners. But what happens when yours has none to spare? Well, something like Hay Fever, apparently. Set in the bohemian period of the roaring twenties, the play follows the eccentricities of the Bliss family as they drive their guests and each other to the edge of insanity—and then over it. In the hands of Players’ Theatre, the script is as zany as ever and cringingly sharp. No worries about indecent pleasures; here, the pleasure is in the indecency.  

Looking at the set, a country home immaculately decked to bourgeois tastes, one would never intitally guess the bizarre nature of the Bliss family. This, of course, is soon remedied. Siblings Sorel and Simon Bliss are nothing less than spoiled brats with issues of temperament. Played respectively by Alex Borkowski and Spencer Thompson, the pair’s initial banter eased the audience into the oddities of the upper-class. Borkowski managed to find pleasing dimensions in her role, including the semblance of a restraint that few others in the cast adopted. Thompson largely hit a single tone, although one that is uproarious. 

The two appear to regard housemaid Clara (Norah Paton) as just one of the furnishings, despite Paton’s bird-like posturing having given the character plenty of quirk of her own. She was certainly not missed by the audience, who seemed to find delight in all of her cameos.  

 Soon waltzes in retired actress and boisterous matriarch Judith Bliss (Annie Schreck) who wastes no time in attempting to outdo her two children in outlandishness. Schreck fit the role well, although occasionally stretched the character too far. Her husband, David Bliss (Andrew Cameron), is no less strange, having apparently shirked all parental and spousal responsibility.  

Before long, it is revealed that each of the members of the house have invited a guest for the weekend without telling the others. Of course, instead of attempting to resolve any of the problems that this miscommunication may cause, the Blisses carry on, leaving their unsuspecting invitees to brave the chaotic frenzy that ensues. 

Director Zoë Erwin-Longstaff seems to have found an inscrutable internal calculus to the show; the fluidity and acuity of the pacing makes Hay Fever a peculiar exercise in functional dysfunctionality. The frenzy of one-liners are relayed more often by caricatures than by characters. Should the audience ever get the chance for a breath and some introspection, they’d see that much of the show has been over-acted. I don’t believe this chance ever really comes. The force of the pacing negated the force of logic.  

The velocity of the show also meant that actors were not (could not?) hold for laughs, which was a shame, as the Noël Coward script is very funny, and has some remarkable turns of language. Other bits of comic gold were left unmined when an actor simply rushed on over it. This also meant that the occasional tone shift made for a bewildering experience, while the rest was cardiovascularly-taxing.  

That said, the locomotive force of the production allowed for absolutely zero dull moments. The comic lines that the cast do hit are hit exceedingly well. Darcy Drury gave the most disciplined performance as Sandy, with his presence an anchor of sanity in most scenes. Costuming under Logan Williams was very appropriate, and showed considerable care and thought. 

Altogether, Players’ Theatre’s Hay Fever is not your typical show. Few productions could pull off such absurd levels of energy so successfully. An abundance of laughs is practically guaranteed, but be sure to bring your own defibrillator.  

Players’ Theatre’s production of Hay Fever runs from Jan 25 – 28 on the  third floor SSMU building at 8 p.m.

aceshowbiz.com

Coriolanus is not an easy movie to watch. Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut, an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known tragedies, is no popcorn action flick. The plot is complex, the war scenes are more brutal than exhilarating, the dialogue is heavy, and the characters defy empathy. But for those who are willing to endure the onslaught of Coriolanus, the rewards are great.  

Caius Martius Coriolanus (Fiennes) is no hero. Above all, he hates his mortal enemy Aufidius and his own people. He enacts martial law to stave off a food shortage, attacking the neighbouring Volscians, inspired more by revenge than the defence of Rome. When he returns and vies for political office, the Romans reject and banish him.  

Coriolanus is incompatible with his society. All he knows is war. So he does the unthinkable—he teams up with Aufidius and sets his sights on sacking Rome. 

Fiennes enraptures as Caius Martius Coriolanus. He handles scenes of pure rage, chilling egomania, and raw vulnerability with explosive passion. His mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) is a powerful and obstinate woman who might just be responsible for all of Coriolanus’ problems. She is as ambitious as Lady Macbeth, craves danger, and has an odd, reverse-Oedipal fascination with her son. Volumnia is unique and complex, and Redgrave does her character justice. Coriolanus’ wife Virgilia is naive but steadfast like Penelope, and ever-radiant Jessica Chastain plays her with pathos and charm. Gerard Butler as Aufidius is the least adept at making the iambic pentameter his own, but still brings depth to what could have been a mere stock villain. 

Coriolanus makes storytelling decisions that would be, by any other standard, wrong. Jarring cuts take us from the height of action to mundane suburban scenes. The music is excessively loud during fight scenes, racing like an adrenaline-fuelled heartbeat, and deathly quiet during the most dynamic moments. The staging is ugly—teeming with graffiti, battered buildings, and grime. But the risks pay off. What should be wrong is right. The soundtrack, editing, and art direction shock us out of any semblance of comfort, exposing the meanest sides of war, where children and the elderly are casualties. Wisely, Coriolanus follows Alfred Hitchcock’s advice: to shoot murder scenes like love scenes and love scenes like murder scenes. The episodes between Coriolanus and Virgilia are austere and distanced. In utter contrast, the Roman general and his mortal enemy scratch and claw at each other in suffocating embraces. 

The themes of the original play are relevant in the film’s 21st century setting. Coriolanus’ elitism and conflict with his people are reminiscent of the Occupy movement—but our so-called protagonist is on the side of the dreaded one per cent. He refuses to pander to those he sees as below him, and is exiled for it. The gritty fight scenes evoke recent episodes of police brutality and a kill first, ask questions later policy. Above all, the film reminds us how fine the line is between peace and chaos. 

Coriolanus demands a great deal from its audience, and it presents an unsettling view of modern politics, creating a queasy sense of moral ambiguity. Cinema’s latest Shakespeare adaptation is a movie for people who are okay with unanswered questions. What happens to an uncompromising man when he moves out of a world of absolutes? The first time Coriolanus breaks his convictions he gets banished from his country. And the second time? You’ll have to watch to find out. 

New Jersey’s Real Estate and Brooklyn’s the Babies played a sold-out show last Wednesday at La Sala Rossa.

Local trio Reversing Falls opened with their tuneful and distorted pop punk, using a  drum machine so good that it took this reviewer about 30 seconds to realize there wasn’t a live drummer on stage.

The new project of members of Vivian Girls and Woods, the Babies easily won over the audience with a set of solid garage rock. The vocal interplay and boy-girl harmonies between Cassie Ramone and Kevin Morby were particularly impressive.

Real Estate sounded great—their guitars were as warm and sunny as on record—but they didn’t turn in a very compelling live performance.  There was little movement on stage, minimal banter, and requesting technical adjustments between most songs killed the flow of the set. The laid back, hazy nature of their music doesn’t exactly lend itself to urgent playing, but it would’ve been nice to see a bit more life. 

screeninvasion.com

Whether you’ve taken PSYC100 or not, you have heard of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Modern psychology has grown into such a broad field that it’s easy to overlook how it all started: with verbalized thought and a couch. Director David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method is the epic retelling of the birth of psychoanalysis, as told through the fascinating relationship between the great Freud (Viggo Mortensen), his protégé Jung (Michael Fassbender), and patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), arguably the most important character of the story, providing a link between the two men.

The opening scene introduces Spielrein, a chillingly hysterical young Russian woman, which gives the audience a glimpse of the phenomenal performance that Knightly delivers throughout the film. Spielrein goes to Jung with the hope of being cured. Jung decides she would be a good candidate to test his psychoanalysis, a new method recently developed by Freud, who was merely a celebrity to Jung at the time. The strictly conversational sessions between Jung and his patient prove have a major effect on Spielrein. Despite being mentally disturbed, she shows great improvement thanks to the wonders of Jung’s method, and he begins to notice she is highly intelligent and inquisitive, not to mention beautiful. Spielrein readily accepts Jung’s offer to help with his research, and they become colleagues. And so the story unfolds.

During the time Jung and Speilrein become closer as colleagues, Jung finally arranges to meet Freud. Their encounters are long and conversations dense, and the two begin to clash over their ideas and conclusions as they learn from and feed off of each other’s expertise. Jung becomes apprehensive of Freud’s fixation with sexuality, his belief that all mental imbalance is rooted in sexual frustration, and the overwhelming way his innovative hypotheses influence his theory. Although Jung is opposed to some of the ideals behind Freud’s philosophy, he becomes sexually involved with Spielrein. The rest of the film chronicles a journey through the years whereby the relationships of these three historically important people become entangled and complicated.

The actors boast strong performances and their portrayals are convincing. Mortensen takes on Freud with such veracity that it seems difficult to imagine him any different in real life. He maintains an air of calm confidence and authority, while being constantly surrounded by a cloud of smoke. Knightly delivers an incredibly compelling performance which does not seem forced, a difficult task to achieve in playing such a manic character. Finally, Fassbender elegantly takes on the brilliant yet perturbed Jung whose character changes quite drastically between beginning and end.

While slightly unsettling, it’s grounding to know that these prominent people faced similar social problems as we have, and that this helped to pave the way for the development of psychology. It’s quite ironic to realize that the issues these historic figures had to face are rooted in psychology. In addition to his tangled love story with Spielrein and his combative relationship with Freud, Jung suffered his own mental breakdown at age 40. What we can take from the story is that these struggles are human and it is this adversity that helps us define ourselves. The film also says something through Spielrein, in that the character who began as a heavily disturbed mental patient ended up contributing some of the most important intellectual ideas in the development of Freud and Jung’s collective theories. That’s something to think about the next time you’re sitting on a therapist’s couch.