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Name of Reviewer: Dr. Len Falkenstein

Reviewer’s Credentials: Director of Drama, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton),

Artistic Director of NotaBle Acts Theatre Company.

Primary instructor for UNB Drama program and director of over 40 productions for Theatre UNB since 1999.

Name of Reviewed Applicant: Dr. Robin C. Whittaker

Title of Production Reviewed: The Trickster of Seville and His Stone Guest (production of Theatre St. Thomas)

Date(s) Viewed: November 19, 2016

Location: The Black Box Theatre, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick

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Statement Regarding Conflict of Interest: Robin Whittaker is a friend and colleague in a city with a small and mutually supportive theatre community, where companies frequently collaborate and share resources. We have collaborated and worked together previously in the sense that as Artistic Director of the NotaBle Acts Theatre Company I have engaged Whittaker to direct productions for our annual theatre festival, and a play that he has written has also performed at the festival. 

 

Reviewers are asked to submit a written assessment that addresses the following questions:

 

Is the intended outcome of the production clearly stated in the applicant’s proposal? Are the Production Participants and relevant conditions adequately described? Does the peer review proposal state how this production is valuable to its context on campus, locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, academically, and/or artistically? Does the pedagogical/artistic/research activity involved add to existing knowledge at the local, regional, national, or international levels?

 

The applicant’s proposal clearly states the intended outcome of the production and how the production is valuable to its context academically and artistically, and the participants and conditions are well described. The pedagogical and artistic activity described would have added to existing knowledge at the local level.

 

In your view, does the production satisfy the values stated in 1? In other words, does this production meet, exceed, or fall short of these stated outcomes?

 

To the best of my knowledge, yes, it would have. My observation of the project was limited to viewing one performance of the production. I was not present for any rehearsals, nor did I talk with students involved in the production about the rehearsal and learning process. Therefore I cannot speak to what degree the experiential learning goals of the project were met as regards such things as whether discussions surrounding the political, historical, and geographical aspects of the play took place in rehearsals and what students might have taken away from those. The success of the production in capturing the style and spirit of the particular genre of Spanish Golden Age theatre was evident, and therefore it is clear that students gained the desired outcome of acquiring training and experience in the conventions and techniques hoped for.

 

If this is a research-oriented production, does the work add to what is already in the published literature? If so, what does it add? Please cite relevant references to support your comments on originality. Is the research question adequately described and addressed? Are the methods/processes adequately described? Does the proposed research raise questions about the work?

 

As stated in the proposal, “the production is less an answer to a research or artistic question as it is an experiential learning environment in which students explore a variety of goals and intentions with one another, guided by myself and our creative team.”

 

What is the importance of this work to the students involved? And what is the importance of the work to the following (comment on any that may be applicable): educators, practitioners, researchers, policymakers)?

 

This work was of importance primarily to the students involved and to audience members who saw the production. Students involved would have benefitted from insights into the styles and conventions of the piece and gained knowledge about the history and politics surrounding the work. The work is demanding for actors in terms of requiring them to master a style of text uncommon in modern plays, and a form of physical presentation and unique combination of comedy and drama that is also outside the bounds most would be familiar with. The discipline required and experience gained in acquiring facility in these areas will have benefitted their growth as actors, particularly for those playing demanding lead roles. For crew members and designers, the play presents challenges in terms of its length, number of locations, and style, and solving these challenges will have benefitted them in terms of both creative and practical problem-solving.

 

For audience members the production offered a valuable chance to see a work from a period and genre that is unfamiliar to most. I am not aware of a work from the Spanish Golden Age having been staged in Fredericton since I have been a resident of the city (1999) and even other plays that have been performed that resemble it in style (such as Shakespeare comedies or Restoration and18th century works that I have staged at UNB—George Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem and Aphra Behn’s The Rover) are still in many respects distant from The Trickster of Seville in time, place, and conventions.  

 

Aesthetics (if applicable):

• What aspects of the viewing/assessment experience caught your attention? (consider experiences both inside and outside of the performance space)

• What about the play mattered? What was important?

• How did the performers, playwright, designers, director engage you as an audience member? How did they fail to engage you?

 

As Whittaker states in the proposal, “This production is giving our students the opportunity to discussion the nexus of politics and sexual power in both historical and, as you can well imagine, contemporary contexts. Mainstream and social media alike maintain this conversation.” Indeed, it was hard to view the production and not make connections to contemporary issues and events surrounding matters of consent, rape culture, sexual violence, the justice system, and misogyny, with the Jian Ghomeshi scandal just one prominent example. As such, the production was timely and relevant.

 

Rather in the manner of many medieval morality plays in which sin is staged and ultimately punished, The Trickster of Seville seems to take most delight in the staging of sin part, with the punishment part a less interesting coda. Don Juan Tenorio is certainly a charismatic and compelling dramatic creation, and in him we see a prototype for the type of male character seen in countless works since whose sexual exploits are celebrated and winked at, even as we are also made aware that, yes, his actions are reprehensible. Somehow, though, the denunciation and the punishment never quite equal the severity of the crimes, and it is arguable that while the production made us aware of this troubling double standard it could have done more to underline this inherent problematic or link it more explicitly to contemporary discussions of these issues. However, it is equally arguable that doing so would have been contrary to the spirit, style, and mechanics of the play and that it is more effective to let the work speak for itself, however it may trouble contemporary sensibilities.  

 

I thought that the work was successful at engaging on many levels. The production was bright, spirited, and colorful, as befits the style of the play. The pacing was energetic and lively, especially in the first act, and there were many strong performances among the cast members, especially Duchess Isabel (Kira Chisholm), Don Juan Tenorio (Robbie Lynn), Duke Octavio (Ben Smith), Don Diego Tenorio (Miguel Roy), and Don Gonzalo de Ulloa (Alexander Rioux). The design of the production was visually strong and arresting, with the actors and director making excellent use of the space, with an X shaped raised playing area laid out particularly well to allow effective blocking and sightlines for audiences members seated on all three sides of the black box space. The design also struck a nice balance between the minimalism of the set and staging (with only a bare minimum of set pieces being used to establish locales) and some extravagant touches such as the quite colorful and somewhat eccentric costuming and the set’s most striking feature: the tall red drapes that framed the main entrance to the space, which effectively imparted a feeling of period luxury to the setting. I found the play’s final scenes, involving the confrontation between Don Juan Tenorio and his “stone guest” Don Gonzalo especially compelling, even if the outcome of that conflict strikes a modern viewer as somewhat anti-climactic.

 

There were some respects in which the production was less successful at engaging me as an audience member. Not all the actors were equally adept at speaking the play’s text. The Black Box Theatre is an acoustically challenging space, and I found myself unable to hear or understand more lines that I might have liked from certain actors, a problem given the complexity of the play’s plot, the number of characters, and the amount of exposition and detail the audience needs to comprehend to fully follow the narrative. I also thought the pacing dragged somewhat in the second half of the play, which is to a certain degree probably unavoidable due to the length of the play and the mechanics of the script, but I also found myself noticing the length of scene changes in the second act and wondering if there could have been ways to expedite them (the red draperies, while striking, presented a challenge in moving some large set pieces on and off stage). I also found myself questioning some artistic and design choices around the use of anachronisms. Introducing contemporary touches into period pieces is a bit of a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, especially in comedies, but it is always challenging in considering the consistency of the overall artistic vision of the work. In particular, I wondered about the choice to use contemporary handguns instead of swords, which had a mainly comic effect that I thought was perhaps not the best for some more dramatic moments and also robbed scenes of the dramatic spectacle inherent to sword duels—it seemed like a way to make the staging of fights easier and more “hip” that did not necessarily best serve the play. I felt the production was primarily aesthetically located in the period past, and therefore found the guns, fist bumps, and few other modern touches somewhat incongruous to the world of the play.

 

Overall, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the play and appreciated the opportunity to see this relatively obscure and seldom staged (at least in our parts) work. I am also quite confident that the production was an excellent learning experience for all involved, and that it achieved the outcomes hoped for as expressed in Dr. Whittaker’s proposal.