The interplay between guilt and mercy is at the centre of Kate Cayley’s The Bakelite Masterpiece. Its lesson is that forgiveness, both for oneself and another, is difficult to obtain.

Though its narrative is simple, the play is eloquent, subtly shaped and offers a formidable confrontation between its two characters, a painter and an army officer.

More specifically, the painter, Han van Meegeren (Geordie Johnson), is a forger and the officer, Geert Piller (Irene Poole), an art historian investigating appropriated artworks. It’s postwar Amsterdam, and van Meegeren is charged with selling a previously lost Vermeer painting to Hermann Goering. Piller accuses him of being a Nazi collaborator.

In his defence, van Meegeren says the work was his own, created using the modern plastic Bakelite to give the painting the look of age. The canvas was an artistic means of humiliating the gullible Nazis, making them look like fools in the eyes of the world. He’s not a traitor, he argues sardonically, but a patriot.

The play is a series of interviews between the two antagonists, linked by the painter’s monologues in which he expounds his philosophy of art and life. How can he prove that he painted the Vermeer, he asks? He’ll paint another in the 17th century painter’s style, using Piller as his model.

Director Richard Rose’s production has a focused power that allows the characters to reveal themselves in carefully modulated scenes.

Johnson’s reprobate blends sarcasm and cynicism with his philosophical worldliness and pride in having tricked the world. He may fear death – he could be shot or hanged, depending on Piller’s judgment – but has no problem comparing himself to Lucifer, whose arrogance he sees as one of curiosity: can the Supreme Authority be deceived?

Poole’s Piller is the more layered figure, revealing more and more about her background and needs as the contest with van Meegeren heats up. Watch the flash of emotions across her face as she studies van Meegeren’s new painting.

Piller’s explosive outbursts are the more effective for their rarity. We come to realize that this Dutch resistance worker hopes for a new Holland, a new world, now that the war is over. Van Meegeren tries to convince her that, given human nature, perfection is unobtainable.

The painting that van Meegeren sells Goering depicts the Biblical tale of Christ and the woman taken in adultery, which ends with her exoneration when none of those around her will cast the first stone. Over the course of the play, both historian and painter stand in the position of the accused woman, looking for some kind of forgiveness and understanding of what they’ve done.

There’s an element of grace in the play’s open-ended conclusion, but it’s granted with an awareness that our shared humanity and doubt about our actions and motives can make life difficult to bear.

Charlotte Dean’s bare-bones set of table, chairs and painting implements is placed against a canvas-like backdrop, and André du Toit lights the action with an awareness of Vermeer’s soft shafts of horizontal illumination.

In Spoon River, the dead teach the living a few lessons about life.

Adapted by composer Mike Ross and director Albert Schultz from Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems by American writer Edgar Lee Masters in which the residents of a small-town graveyard recount their lives and passions, the Soulpepper show blends poetry and music.

The cast is a combination of Soulpepper senior artists and members of the current Academy, young theatre practitioners thrilled to be sharing the stage with people they’ve admired for years. The Academy people were part of a workshop version of Spoon River at the Global Cabaret a year ago and have been involved in creating as well as performing the current script.

“We first tackled it about four months into our Academy training,” says Hailey Gillis, “and since then we’ve done lots of devised work with Leah Cherniak, which has given us a sense of power in the rehearsal hall. We believe in and argue the ideas we put forward, and it’s wonderful when actors like Diego Matamoros and Nancy Palk listen to us.”

“We were encouraged to look at all the poems in the anthology,” continues Peter Fernandes, “to bring in the poems and find the themes that interested us and then convince others of what we find valuable in the material.”

Once the material was chosen, the 19 actors started working with Schultz and assistant director Erin Brandenburg (another Academy member), shaping the speakers of the short poems and finding through-lines for sections of the production.

Fernandes plays several characters, including the man who carves the gravestone epitaphs and a widow who urges the living not to assume that they can change their time here. Gillis’s single role provides a framework for the narrative.

“What holds it all together is the idea that those who are no longer here have a different insight into the world,” she offers. “They want to be remembered, but it’s necessary to remember not just the best parts of these characters but also the rough edges of their lives. Albert is rigorous about the fact that we can’t be precious with these stories.”

The idea for the show began when Schultz threw composer Ross a copy of Masters’s poems, suggesting they might be a fruitful source for a production. The composer was apparently so inspired that he had a chunk of it written the next day.

“Mike, who’s performing with us, says he could hear the songs the first time he read the text,” smiles Fernandes. “What we’re presenting gives audiences the poems as well as his interpretations of the verse. He’s tapped into the original so well that I can’t imagine presenting the poetry without the music.”

Most of the performers also play instruments during the show; Gillis, for instance, tackles ukulele, guitar, tambourine and drum.

“Mike’s an amazing leader,” agrees Gillis. “Some of us told him we didn’t know, despite a musical background, how to play this or that instrument. He encouraged everyone, told us we’d figure it out, and we did.

“That’s the kind of positive attitude everyone has around here. We can’t help but be inspired and grow.”

jonkap@nowtoronto.com

Over the past few years, Eric Woolfe’s cute and spooky puppet and magic shows have become a Toronto Halloween tradition. This year’s instalment is a zany sequel of sorts to Mary Shelley’s famous monster parable. Following Viktor Frankenstein’s death, his alchemy-obsessed hunchbacked assistant Fry winds up a homeless drifter in a dystopian police state, where he falls hopelessly in love with a greasy spoon server after she offers him some leftover home fries.

The large cast of comedic characters (some human but most puppets) are all performed by Woolfe and Kimwun Perehinec, who work so well together that they can seamlessly trade puppet characters mid-scene without missing a beat.

Many of the show’s plot points showcase Woolfe’s signature use of magic – elaborate trick props or deft sleight of hand developed in consultation with “Magic” Mike Segal – in awesome gross-out moments that are more campy and funny than horrific, including a scene where the server severs her hand only to have it surgically replaced with a new one with a mind of its own (à la 1991 horror flick Body Parts).

It takes a while for Fry to emerge from the puppet menagerie as the show’s central character, but the disfigured puppet with a creepy accent eventually becomes a lovable wild-card misfit whose story parallels many elements of Shelley’s original. 

Like Viktor Frankenstein, Fry amasses a deep knowledge of medical science and technology, but only “sort of” masters the technique of re-animation, with humorous results. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Fry is relegated to the margins of society due to his strange appearance and behaviour. He survives on food scraps while dodging menacing gangs of alley-dwelling hobo puppets.

The colourful set and props designed by Melanie McNeill comprise a Halloween treat bag of eye candy. The focus is a large upright trick crate at centre stage that Fry uses as his re-animation machine but can also makes characters appear and disappear. Another unique feature is that certain scenes are suddenly scaled down and played out with miniature diorama-sized versions of the puppets and sets.

The cozy east-end DIY Red Sandcastle Theatre storefront space only seats 25, so you can bet this weirdo Halloween puppet show will sell out.

We caught several of the two dozen or so performances that were part of last weekend’s Global Cabaret and liked a lot of what we saw, including the Toronto Masque Theatre’s The Soldier’s Tale, a work by Igor Stravinsky conducted by Larry Beckwith, narrated by Derek Boyes and danced by Stéphanie Brochard and Sébastien Ventura.

Boyes, a member of both the Toronto Masque Theatre and Soulpepper, Global Cabaret’s hosting company, did double duty, not only bringing to life the dozen or so characters in the Stravinsky, but also keeping Soulpepper founding member William Webster on track for Webster’s Opera Corner.

Webster, a long-time opera fan, is a regular in the Soulpepper weekly cabarets and often gets so excited about what he’s discussing that he goes on a bit too long. Here, with Boyes helping him focus, Webster had an hour to fill us in on why he loves opera and also to showcase the work of a quintet of singers (sopranos Miriam Khalil and Teiya Kasahara, mezzo Jean Stilwell, tenor Ryan Harper and baritone Diego Catala) and music director Nicole Bellamy.

They performed excerpts from six shows, including a run-through of Bizet’s Carmen in about 10 minutes. Standouts here were Khalil, who always reveals the melodic and emotional core of her characters, Kasahara’s note-perfect Queen of the Night and Catala, an engaging performer who moved the audience with a heartfelt Some Enchanted Evening.

The most unusual show we saw was Dido And Aeneas: 21st Century Remix, in which music director Gregory Oh took Purcell’s short 1680s opera and blended the original orchestrations with more contemporary musical styles.

The period sections stood quite comfortably alongside the modern percussion, bluegrass, Irish reels, Cape Breton fiddling and more, with Andrea Ludwig a poignant Dido (her lament at the end was mesmerizing), jazz singer Alex Samaras a firm Aeneas and Suba Sankaran a nastily wicked sorceress, singing her melodies with classic South Asian musical intonations. Hailey Gillis shone in a bluesy solo composed by John Millard, who also added some mean banjo playing to the show.

Like previous Global Cabaret workshops such as (re)Birth: E.E. Cummings In Song and Spoon River, which were then developed into full-length productions, Dido And Aeneas is the kind of bracing, entertaining work that deserves a larger audience and a longer run.

Playwrights Canada Press turns 30

Playwrights Canada Press, which has for decades been serving Canada’s stage writers by making their scripts available for reading and performing, turns 30 this year.

To celebrate the occasion, they’re holding Thirtybash!, a cocktail party on Monday (November 3) at Hotel Ocho. The evening includes a cash bar and playwrights’ reading from their newly published works.

The writers include Sky Gilbert, David S. Craig, Judith Thompson, Kristen Thomson and David Yee. NOW’s Susan G. Cole and Jon Kaplan host.

See listing.

Hendry winners

The Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC) presented its annual Tom Hendry Awards Monday (October 27), with prizes given in three categories.

The Carol Bold Award for the best work by a PGC member went to Colleen Murphy for Pig Girl; the short list included Sean Dixon’s A God In Need Of Help and Matthew Heiti’s Mucking In The Drift.

The Stage West Pechet Family Musical Award, presented to a PGC member whose work is in development, was taken by Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille’s Evgeni Onegin Project, an immersive show in which the performers share the space with the audience.

Also in the running were Sara Farb’s Bremen Rock City and The Remarkable Journey Of Prince Jen, by Lezlie Wade and Daniel Green.

Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes’s Something Fishy picked up the Stage West Pechet Family Comedy Award, beating out Jordan Hall’s How To Survive An Apocalypse and Lea Daniel and Gary Kirkham’s Pocket Rocket.

Three’s good company

Like a mixed program for your evening of dance?

Toronto Dance Theatre offers a triple bill of works for its performance as part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps series.

The show includes two remounts, Thomas Hauert’s Pond Skaters (a Dora nominee in 2013) and the 1991 Early Departures, one of artistic director Christopher House’s first works for the company. A new piece by House, Martingales, has live music performed by electronic indie composer Thom Gill.

See listing.