"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
~Samuel Beckett
Reviews
TK Fringe brings a strong mélange of summer shows to Kingston (The Fall After Midsummer)
She may have forsworn his bed and company, but Titania’s not done dealing with Oberon just yet. For TK Fringe, Mad River Theatre presents The Fall After Midsummer, a terrifically tense two-hander written and directed by Chloë Whitehorn. With a savvy blend of flowery language and punchy comedic sensibilities, this present-day sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream knocks toxic tropes off their dusty pedestals, conjuring a spellbinding, Shakespearean whodunnit full of twists and turns.
In The Fall After Midsummer, faerie queen Titania is reimagined as modern-day actress Tania (Shannon Donnelly), whose on-again, off-again, ne’er-do-well husband Ron (Michael Donnelly) visits her dressing room with an ill-timed request. Iridescent shades of strength, derision, vulnerability, and sensuality gleam in Shannon Donnelly’s performance as her fairy wings and ethereal makeup scintillate under the stage lights. For his part, Michael Donnelly embodies the snide, jealous Ron with the overconfident swagger of a 500-year-old faerie king and a level of glottal fry that would make any self-respecting radio host quake in their booth. The real-life couple brings intense, almost blush-worthy chemistry to their performance, and the power dynamic between Tania and Ron shifts palpably throughout the play, maintaining an air of suspense until the very last moments.
The show exudes an elevated energy that might come across as over-the-top compared to the hyper-realist acting style that seems to be the more popular choice nowadays, but the dialled-up drama serves this play well — it’s Shakespeare’s world, and Tania and Ron are thriving in it. While Oberon and Titania play an important cosmic role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the arc of their relationship — their fight, his revenge, her humiliation, their reconciliation — leaves several troubling questions for a modern writer to explore. In this adaptation, Whitehorn casts Tania as a member of the mechanicals, the troupe of actors led by Nick Bottom who perform the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In doing so, she weaves The Fall After Midsummer cleverly into the canon, offering the perfect stage for these larger-than-life characters to hash out another argument, and, perhaps, to change the outcome this time.
Whitehorn’s critique of toxic relationships — more specifically, the way that readers and audiences are trained to see toxic love as true love — is made all the more lucid by entangling it in a tale of romantic fantasy. Dressed in the dreamy trappings of its genre, The Fall After Midsummer manages to capture both the guilty pleasure of reading a bodice-ripper and the satisfaction of listening to a smart, funny friend give that same bodice-ripper a brutal feminist takedown.
HALEY SARFELD, INTERMISSION MAGAZINE, AUGUST 10, 2024
https://www.intermissionmagazine.ca/reviews/tk-fringe-2024/
TKFRINGE breaks the fourth wall across the board (The Fall After Midsummer)
Raw, real, in-your-face performances define the festival’s content
by Skylar Soroka
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From Shakespeare-inspired plays and children’s shows to full-blown musicals and stand-up storytelling, the Theatre Kingston (TK) FRINGE Festival sent shivers down my spine—not just because of the powerful subject matter, but the up-close and personal formats of the performances themselves.
Much like the festival’s whimsical lottery drawing for its 18 shows, I rolled my own dice when it came to choosing which shows to attend, picking performances based on my schedule. No grand strategy, just honest spontaneity.
I’m happy to report, out of the three shows I did catch, not even one left me with a hint of regret.
Each of the three shows I attended skillfully broke the fourth wall, not just due to the audience’s close enough to make you squirm proximity to the stage, but because the performers did so with a seamless charm. Their interactions consistently drew reactions from the audience—laughter, gasps, and sighs—without a hint of awkwardness.
These artful interactions are the essence of theatre: it allows the audience to leave feeling a spectrum of emotions—joy, shame, excitement, or trauma—mirroring the performers’ own experiences.
Written and directed by Chloë Whitehorn and featuring Shannon and Michael Donnelly, The Fall After Midsummer, presented by the Mad River Theatre Company, is a modern sequel bound to enchant Shakespeare aficionados, sweeping them into 45 minutes of lucid dreaming.
While many modern Shakespeare adaptations feature actors in contemporary clothing, clutching iPhones or lattes, this show takes a refreshingly different approach by breathing new life into A Midsummer Night’s Dream by breaking the fourth wall of Shakespeare’s original story.
In this version, Fairy Queen Titania, cleverly called “Tania,” and Fairy King Oberon, or “Ron,” find that their once-dreamlike marriage becoming a reality through a murderous plot.
The show’s unique twist is that the characters insinuate they’ve just finished a live performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This layered narrative has them embodying Titania and Oberon from the play, while also being those same characters “off stage” within The Fall After Midsummer.
Tania, a shimmering vision in ethereal green with matching wings, takes center stage to open the show. She gazes at the audience and muses, “I’m on a stage, so I must have lines.” Her musings on whether the world is a stage and if she’s always performing set the tone for the evening and define her character.
Ron, in a three-piece-suit, bursts through the curtains upstage where an argument between the on- and off-stage couple immediately ensues and lasts the duration of the performance.
Throughout the whole dialogue, Tania and Ron gradually shed their stage attire—Tania slipping into a satin robe and Ron removing his suit jacket. This transition invites the audience into the intimate sanctuary of their now-broken home.
The couples argue over Tania’s time with Nick Bottom, leaving the nature of their encounter unclear. What’s evident is Ron’s rage, using the double entendre “that ass” to refer both to Nick and his beloved Tania physique.
In using innuendos, one thing was apparent throughout the show—the Donnelly’s had an electrifying chemistry which was further heightened by their portrayed characters’ toxicity.
When Ron finds himself entangled in a criminal mess, turning to Tania for help, he’s unsure of his actions—only that Nick is dead in the back of his car. Meanwhile, Tania is nearly done with Ron and his toxic behavior, reminiscent of the discord between Titania and Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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By modernizing Shakespearean language and metaphors, the show prompted me to consider a deeper question. As an audience members, and honestly just a human, do we often play roles to appear more perfect and untroubled, while our inner selves ache?
Tania vividly embodies this theme, demonstrating the wounds inflicted by Ron’s words don’t need to be visible on the outside to cause deep pain.
The Fall After Midsummer still has performances to see at the Baby Grand on Aug. 10 and 11.
SKYLAR SOROKA, KINGSTON WHIG STANDARD, AUGUST 9, 2024
https://www.thewhig.com/entertainment/review-tkfringe-breaks-the-fourth-wall-across-the-board
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Toronto Fringe: Drowning in a small town in the haunting, lyrical Mourning After the Night Before
Mad River Theatre takes us to a small town by the water as a family struggles to overcome tragedy in Chloë Whitehorn’s haunting, lyrical Mourning After the Night Before; directed by Heather Keith and running at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse.
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Lucy (Mary Wall), Drew (Dave Martin) and their teenage daughter Pippa (Brianna Richer) have just arrived in a small town by the water to start a new life, their move assisted by local residents Everett (Jack Morton) and his guardian Fenwick (Loriel Medynski). Pippa is a troubled poet, surrendering the dark contents of her creative, intelligent mind onto paper. Lucy is feeling out of place in her own skin; and Drew, who feels so far away, just wants everyone to be okay. Everett is smitten with Pippa—and Lucy—and the attractions are mutual; and Fenwick’s just trying to keep it together as her adopted son, a reminder of the friend she loved, is on his way to manhood.
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Nice work from the cast in this quiet, intimate, ethereal piece where everyday moments float by like leaves on water. Richer’s restless, introspective wild child is nicely balanced by a playful, creative spirit. Wall’s Lucy is part caged animal, part cougar on the hunt as she grapples with her identity as wife and mother and finds herself lacking. Martin’s Drew avoids the stereotypical frustrated, estranged husband; Drew is a hurt, gentle soul who genuinely cares and wants to help, but finds himself at a loss to do so. Morton’s Everett is an endearing combination of lusty youth, optimism and kindness as he navigates his way through the early stages of manhood. And Medynski brings a gentle wisdom to the frank, no-nonsense Fenwick, who’s dealing with both a past loss (Everett’s mother) and an impending loss of her own (Everett growing up).
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I first saw an early, shorter version of the play at Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival in 2018; and was happy to see its evolution. It combines everyday, intimate moments with poetry, and word play and introspection; woven with images and perspectives of water, the characters float around, dive into and drown in their lives as they grasp and gasp for connection, identity and meaning. The water almost becomes a sixth character here. And the minimalist set, incorporating black cubes to denote separate spaces in the story, places a focus on the words and characters as they glide in and out of moments, memories and musings. The result is a heightened realism that is both atmospheric and lyrical.
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It is ironic that the family’s retreat to the peace and quiet of a small town forces a level of discomfiting introspection as each tries to anchor themselves within themselves and the world—a not so peaceful or quiet endeavour.
CATE MCKIM, LIFE WITH MORE COWBELL , JULY 6, 2019
http://lifewithmorecowbell.com/2019/07/06/toronto-fringe-drowning-in-a-small-town-in-the-haunting-lyrical-mourning-after-the-night-before/
Mourning After the Night Before
Chloë Whitehorn. Gah! Her writing is so damn good. I fell in love with her talent when I saw her play Love, Virtually at the 2011 Fringe (OMG, has it been that long?) I love how she uses language and how she paints the struggles we have to communicate. So I was absolutely thrilled to get to see this show after missing it in New Ideas last year.
I find myself wrestling with what to say because they play unfolds beautifully with surprises and secrets revealed that I want people who see it to discover it on their own terms. I'd love to see it again now knowing how it ends to follow the bread crumbs. What I can talk about is the use of water as the theme, as both a physical place and as representing emotions. Drowning is the key here - drowning in loss, drowning in confusion, drowning in questions of value, drowning in the roles of parenting and growing up. The play has a lyrical quality to it, much like bobbing on a tranquil lake while everything happens underneath where you can't see. The image is referred to frequently but it never feels like you're beaten over the head with it. Well done, Chloë!
Mad River Theatre does the script justice. The cast is strong and handle the shifts beautifully. The play is built on brief moments and the staging (especially the lighting) starkly show the disconnection. I did find it a little disconcerting as one of the actors is a voice actor and his voice was so familiar to me that every time he spoke it pulled me out but that's on me, not him. I also appreciate how the company has a list of resources on their site about mental health for anyone who finds themselves triggered by the show, and that they made a point to mention it at the curtain call.
Overall, this is just a beautiful play wonderfully done. It's definitely worth seeing.
MK PIATOWSKI, ONE BIG UMBRELLA, JULY 6, 2019
MOURNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE (MAD RIVER THEATRE) 2019 TORONTO FRINGE REVIEW
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Mourning After the Night Before, produced by Mad River Theatre, was one of my top picks for the Toronto Fringe Festival. I was intrigued by its use of drowning as a metaphor in all the characters’ lives.
The production wholeheartedly delivers on its theme. Each character is drowning in some kind of grief. Everyone is suffering a loss. But on this stage, drowning means something different for everyone.
The script’s lexicon is saturated with water metaphors: a drop in the ocean, just on the surface, dive in. There are a few too many water puns for me, and I feel that this halts the flow of natural speech, but I appreciate the thematic consistency.
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The lighting is minimalistic in the best way (lighting design by Brandon Gonçalves). The audience sits in almost total darkness while the only lights in the theatre shine directly onto the speakers.
Scenes float in the spotlight surrounded by murky blackness. Characters walk on and off stage like ghosts, delivering their lines to each other, to the audience, or sometimes to no one at all. The characters talk and talk to each other and about each other, but ultimately this is a play about their relationships to themselves.
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The frequent monologues enforce the idea that the characters are more concerned with understanding their own lives than the lives of the people around them. Conversations between characters feel like a means to an end as everyone onstage turns inward.
Like the title suggests, time is difficult to keep track of. While the overall storyline is delivered chronologically, some scenes seem to be displaced in time. This is a deliberate choice. The audience is not meant to understand everything at once.
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I really like how this keeps the audience feeling lost, but I wish it was a bit more polished. With no easily defined timeline and a lot of withheld information, some of the play was a little hard to follow.
As the plot goes on, the characters become more frantic and less coherent; lost in their mourning. Lucy (Mary Wall) and Drew (Dave Martin) really help steer the production into more cohesive waters with their passionate and steadfast performances.
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I really appreciate that the actors directed the audience to websites for help and support at the end of the play, but a trigger warning at the beginning might have been more appropriate. The play ends quite abruptly, and I was left with too many questions, but overall I found the whole performance original, insightful, and moving.
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This review is based on the Wednesday July 3rd preview performance of the production.
RACHEL FAGAN, MOONEY ON THEATRE, JULY 3, 2019
https://www.mooneyontheatre.com/2019/07/04/mourning-after-the-night-before-mad-river-theatre-2019-toronto-fringe-review/