Busy, Busy Days

It's not a huge surprise that I rate days in terms of how much I managed to get done/achieve vs. how badly my plans fell apart.  Last Sat. and Sun. were pretty frustrating in that my brand new work laptop was acting up like crazy (literally giving me the blue screen of death* every 30 seconds).  I also was completely blocked from going to the Power Plant museum at Harbourfront because on Saturday I found out that they had closed the tunnel to the Harbourfront streetcar (with no or essentially no warning) and on Sunday I biked over and found that due to construction and general stupidity on the part of the city and Waterfront TO, they had removed all the bike racks down by the water and the museum.  I still need to write to complain officially.  

Tearing out the skating rink at Harbourfront

To make matters worse, because I had ridden my bike, I hadn't remembered to switch my glasses from my briefcases to my pannier, so I didn't have my glasses, and I was due to see King Lear over at the Theatre Centre.  I tried to call to see if I could switch my tickets, and just ended up playing phone tag with the box office.  It probably wouldn't have mattered, as I believe the following weekend was sold out.  I decided to head over anyway on the chance that the play was being staged in the downstairs studio.  I stopped by Osgoode Hall to switch to the streetcar and saw the trees that Metrolinx are cutting down, stirring up quite a controversy.  They certainly seem pretty scraggly now and no longer worth saving.  There may not have been a better alternative in the end, but it still seems rushed and premature not to have truly seriously considered the alternative of moving the station entrance further west and narrowing down University Avenue.  

I just barely caught the Queen streetcar and began reading Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.  (And while it pains me to admit it, I only made it with 10 minutes or so to spare, and I probably would have been late if I had visited the Power Plant.)   I was fortunate that Lear was playing in the downstairs studio theatre where they only have two rows of seats and everyone is right on top of the action. This is a quite similar set up to the very first Lear I ever saw -- in Vancouver, put on in a tiny space by a troupe called The Honest Fishmongers.**

I've said before that I don't really care much for Lear, as the old king is so foolishly vain and will not listen to the sage advice that Gloucester gives him.  It's also a bit too convenient how quickly his daughters turn on him.  Given that I went mostly just to support the return of Shakespeare Bash'd, this would be a good capstone performance, and maybe I will forswear seeing any more performances of Lear.  After all, I have seen it four times in Toronto now!  At Theatre Passe Muraille, at Harbourfront, at Soulpepper and now over at the Theatre Centre.  Hard to believe, but Stratford is also putting it on this summer, but I shall pass.  Speaking of Stratford, there is a local actor, Jordin Hall, who has established himself over at Stratford.  I saw him in Driftwood's Othello and then a production of Three Sisters in Kensington Market.  He was in the audience, and I chatted briefly during the intermission.  It turns out, he is going to be in Grand Magic over at Stratford this season, which I'll be seeing in August.  While I would have preferred to have my glasses, I made it through Lear ok (without any headaches) and made it back to work afterwards.  

This may have been the turning point for the week.  Monday went much better.  I biked again, though this time I locked up my bike near the street and walked over to the Power Plant (which is still ridiculous).  I thought one of the artists, Brenda Draney, was ok, but the others didn't grab me.  That's pretty typical of my visits there.  

Brenda Draney, Sleep, 2008

Brenda Draney, Vanity, 2019

I got a fair bit of stuff done on Monday at the office, despite it being Family Day.  I pulled together the rest of the package to apply for my daughter's passport.  I was able to mail that off on Tuesday.  It barely snowed at all on Tuesday, and I probably didn't really need to wear my boots on the way in.

Wed. it did snow a lot, though by the time I left work there still wasn't a lot of snow.  I left a bit later than I wanted, but I still made it up to Robarts to drop off a book and pick up two others.  I ran over to the Hart House Museum.  One of the exhibits was essentially about the social and political construction of whiteness.  One thing that I learned was that Canada passed the Dominion Elections Act in 1920 which allowed women, but white women only, to run for election to serve in the national Parliament.  An interesting and of course shameful stain on Canada's legacy.  Then I ran over to the Music Library and borrowed a few CDs, including Joe Sealy's Africville Suite, which I had heard most of last Friday at a concert (which was actually headlined by Christian McBride performing his The Movement Revisited Suite).  On the way back to Pape, I managed to finish up The Windup Girl, and fortunately there were no significant delays and/or unpleasant/uncomfortable incidents on the TTC.

I got home at 7:05, and had to turn right around to get over to Crow's Theatre to see Prodigal by the Howland Company.  Given that I saw this in such proximity to Lear, it seems pretty clear that the playwright Paolo Santalucia wants to make a number of parallels with Shakespeare, starting with the disgraced son, Edmund.  The other son, Henry, is not the dissolute Hal of Henry IV but a somewhat bland, dutiful son.  The angry daughter is named Violet (which is probably supposed to be an echo of Viola from Twelfth Night).  I've seen the actor playing Violet, Hallie Seline, in most of the Howland productions, most recently Three Sisters.  (That production featured Ben Yoganathan, who was Albany in Shakespeare Bash'd's Lear.)  The mother, Marilyn, was played by Nancy Palk, who most recently played the Fool in Soulpepper's Lear!  I knew I'd seen Jeff Yung before, and he was in Portia's Julius Caesar and Outside the March's Trojan Girls, which was such a highlight of 2022 theatre.  Another actor that is starting to pop up here and there is Shauna Thompson.  She was recently in Orphans for the Czar, also at Crowsnest.  One could imagine the caterers standing in for the underlings that usually provide commentary in a Shakespearean play.  It was an interesting piece, about family secrets and children (largely blaming their parents for their traumas and failures) and redemption and failed attempts at reconciliation.  It probably could still be trimmed back a bit, but it was overall pretty interesting.

We made it back just after 10, and I did one round of shoveling, since the snow had really piled up while we were at the theatre.  I've decided that there really is no reason to go in to work today, so will work from home.  I do need to go in on Friday, however, as I plan on swinging by The Rex right after work.  So back into the saddle again...

* It seems to have stabilized and IT says they can't do a general scan, which seems strange, and that if it happens again, they will replace it (again).  This doesn't give me a lot of confidence in my tools, as you might imagine.

** I'm not sure The Honest Fishmongers survived the pandemic.  Their Facebook page seems pretty defunct.  Here in Toronto, Wolf Manor also seems to have gone dark.  Seven Siblings is still in lockdown mode, but I suspect they'll start putting out green shoots in 2023.  Here's hoping anyway.  I'm not sure it is irony precisely, but back in 2006 or so, I was visiting Vancouver but didn't have time to see Bard on the Beach's production of King Lear, which haunted me for a while, until I caught the Honest Fishmonger's production, which likely was better.  I had sort of assumed this really was outdoor theatre on the beach, which is sort of an incredible if risky venture for Vancouver where it rains so much, though much less so in the summer.  However, Bard on the Beach plays are performed in huge tents and are not outdoor theatre.  I enjoyed most of their productions a lot, though right after the pandemic, their offerings have seemed pretty dumbed down.