>>PREVIEW
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM
Workshop Theatre
Runs until May 19
(Pumphouse Theatres)
Woody Allen is a writer renowned, if nothing else, for incarnating his neurotic, nebbish persona for the better part of 50 years. Though best known for both directing and acting in his films, Allen’s 1969 play, Play it Again Sam, is an example of his early theatrical work, when he was still employed as a standup comic and sometime writer for television programs like The Sid Caesar Show.
With their latest production, Play it Again Sam, Workshop Theatre is aiming to give life to Allen’s neuroses once again, if in a slightly less familiar setting.
"The play was written in 1969 and I think this is a slightly different version," says Workshop Theatre’s artistic director, Alan LeBoeuf. "This was the first play, or film script for that matter, that had a central theme, and it wasn’t slapstick. If you look at (Allen’s) other scripts or screenplays, these were madcap, slapstick comedies. This is as close to a conventional comedy as Woody Allen has written. He has a central theme about – surprise, surprise –neurosis, and it had a scripted beginning and end.
"I think this was a coming out for Allen in terms of a script with a central theme and some very funny lines."
Focusing on a film critic named Allan Felix (Rafal Drozdowski), Play it Again follows Felix’s awkward attempts to begin dating again after his wife leaves him. He is aided by a subconscious manifestation of Humphrey Bogart (Ross Hart) – a result of Felix’s filmic obsession – as well as his friends Linda (Alicia Shaw) and Dick (Doug Koroluk).
For many years, Workshop Theatre’s amateur company focused on the British farces favoured by its largely British expatriate membership – LeBoeuf himself is a native of Salford, England. In recent years, however, the company has been producing principally Canadian and American plays, appealing to a more integrated audience. It’s a pragmatic approach, about which LeBoeuf is completely unabashed.
"Bottom line, in any of this – can you sell the tickets," he says.
Asked if his company reflects a community equivalent of Workshop’s cousin, Theatre Calgary – a company that, in addition to drawing large audiences with mainstream fare, represents the other half of local theatre icon Dr. Betty Mitchell’s original Workshop 14 – LeBoeuf agrees.
"We may look at some edgier things, but I think the analogy is a good one. We actually inherit pretty much the same sort of ground they did, by throwing something more divisive into the mix," he says, citing last year’s production of Alan M. Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress.
But while the play represents one of Allen’s few forays onto the stage, it’s still most famously known through its 1972 film adaptation, starring (but not directed by) Allen himself. Despite the near-inseparability of its iconic creator, LeBoeuf denies that the film will impact Workshop’s production.
"You have to develop your own conceptualization of the role," says LeBoeuf. "I think it would be a huge mistake to try and make your leading actor to be a clone of Woody Allen. I think (the actor’s) got to develop his own neurosis, or it becomes a caricature."
More to the point, LeBoeuf points out that, in a film where one of the most iconic figures of 20th century film makes repeated appearances – Bogart, rather than Allen – another (caricature) is simply one too many.
"There is a caricature, which is the Humphrey Bogart character, who doles out advice for dealing with the opposite sex," he says. "So inevitably you’ll have a caricature and you don’t want two in one play."
Of course, Allen’s work will largely be remembered as an ongoing caricature of the man who created it, a writer-director-actor whose "Allan Felix" might as well simply be called "Woody Allen." The work stems from a familiar icon, whose particular take on the world has given him surprising longevity –nervous insecurity continues to sell. And yet, while Allen’s approach has kept his work consistently entertaining, LeBoeuf cautions that time does still march on, even for the neurotic.
"The only problem I had with this play is that, when playing this in 1969, one has to accept that some of the attitudes will not resonate so positively," he says. "You have the Humphrey Bogart character dispensing sage advice like, ‘I never met a dame who didn’t respond to a slug in the face.’ People have to accept that it was written in 1969." |
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