Dinner With The Duchess At Here For Now Theatre
Playwright Nick Green made quite a splash last season at the Stratford Festival with his powerful and touching Casey and Diana. He has returned to Stratford, not to the Festival stages but to the intimate confines of Here For Now Theatre’s sylvan tent on the western edge of Stratford with the world premiere of Dinner with the Duchess.
Margaret (Jan Alexandra Smith) is a world famous violinist whose career has been brought to an end by arthritis that has made it too painful to play. Or is there another story to be told?
Eager to establish her legacy and then, in her own words, “disappear,” she has agreed to an interview with the young and cocky (“I have a masters”) music journalist Helen (Rosie Simon) who has her own ideas of what her readers want to hear.
Dinner with the Duchess unfolds over dinner in Margaret’s new condo. Her husband Richard (David Keeley) prepares a dinner of gussied-up take-out pasta while the interview progresses and becomes progressively more combative. Richard, a non-musician, has played second fiddle to Margaret over the years and a once intense love story has cooled.
It appears that Margaret has a reputation for being, shall we say, difficult. Helen has done her homework and the world of classical music seems to be crawling with people who have dirt to dish. She wants Margaret to tell her why she is called “The Duchess.” She is after “accountability.”
Arriving at the answer to that question is the meat of Green’s 80-minute chamber piece.
Margaret tries to explain the ironies of being a gifted woman “playing a man’s game,” by citing the story of Wilma Neruda, a nineteenth century Moravian child prodigy on the violin.
At 14 she performed in Moscow to thunderous applause. Henryk Wieniawski, a Polish prodigy only three years her senior, and it seems a right little prick, interrupted her ovation to insist that he was by far the better musician. He caused such a ruckus that he was banned from Moscow. Wieniawski went on to become a composer and ironically Neruda became one of his most acclaimed interpreters.
To Margaret this tale is emblematic of the way women in classical music have always had to suffer humiliation at the hands of men and yet be expected to perform at the highest levels of professionalism.
In a lengthy cri de coeur, beautifully written by Green and magnificently elucidated by Smith, Margaret compares her life story to a chaconne, a musical form in which a simple theme yields to many variations only to return to its initial simplicity.
Her life began simply with the joy of music, became entangled in the passions of carnal love, grew complicated with the unspoken but nonetheless intense rivalry of conductors, invariably men, insistent on demonstrating their superior position over her musicianship.
In Margaret’s case, her life never returned to the simplicity for which she yearned.
Dinner with the Duchess is a heady ride and may not be to everyone’s taste, It demands close attention although a knowledge of music theory is not a prerequisite for understanding and appreciating the piece. That’s one of Green’s singular accomplishments.
Indeed, specific to the world of classical music as Margaret’s story is, it is also universal. I suspect a great many women in any number of different fields will find uncomfortable parallels in Margaret’s life.
It’s very tempting, and probably not too far-fetched, to compare Dinner with the Duchess to a musical piece and one that obviously had a sensitive conductor in director Kelli Fox. Much as there are movements in a symphony there are distinct “beats” or sections in Green’s play. Fox has helped her cast navigate them with aplomb.
Jan Alexandra Smith, possessed of the kind of patrician beauty that used to be fashionable in Hollywood’s golden age, is perfectly cast. Her Margaret is as tightly strung, finely tuned, and lustrous as any Stradivarius. And like the violinist she portrays she is in complete command of her instrument.
Smith is very much the centerpiece of this play, but any gem glistens more impressively in the proper setting. If you can tear your eyes away from Smith, you will see how well Simon and Keely carry off the seemingly simple but devilishly difficult act of listening. Keely has the uncanny ability to tell the story of his tempestuous life with Margaret solely with his face.
If you appreciate fine acting, here’s your chance to experience it at extremely close range. Proximity to the stage will often reveal actorly artifice. Not here. It’s a masterclass.
Darren Burkett has contributed the most elaborate (and quite lovely) set I have ever seen at Here For Now, which typically hews much closer to Molière’s apocryphal dictum that all you need to create great theater is “two planks and a passion.” The costumes by Monique Lund are spot on.
A Great Season
Dinner with the Duchess caps a full season of great theatre at Here For Now that consolidates its status as every bit the equal and in some ways the superior of the august Stratford Festival down the road.
I enjoyed every play I saw at Here For Now this season, something I haven’t been able to say about Stratford or Shaw in a good long while.
Yes, it’s something of an apples to oranges comparison. The Stratford Festival must create large-scale spectacle and contend with the cultural and political storms howling through the world of theater today. Sometimes it seems to be trying to be all things to all people.
Here For Now by contrast is the creation of two gifted theater artists, Fiona Mongillo and Siobhan O’Malley, who have crafted a clear and focused vision of what a “feminist theatre” (their words, not mine) should be.
They are presenting fine new work by female writers, directors, and actors, most often on topics that resonate with the “female gaze” while having something to say to everyone, which I suppose is what all good art does.
They have also chosen, quite wisely I think, to adopt the increasingly popular format of intermissionless plays running for 70 to 80 minutes and present them in an intimate space seating about 50.
Perhaps because I have comfortably exceeded the three score and ten allotted by the Psalmist, I especially appreciate the opportunities they offer senior performers in plays like this season’s The Saviour.
Their programming is not all sturm und drang and searing social commentary either. Shows like Paul and Linda Plan a Threesome and Myth of the Ostrich were wonderfully funny.
Nor are they doctrinaire in their choice of material. Nick Green is one of two male playwrights presented this season. The other was Steve Ross, currently achieving something approaching apotheosis in La Cage Aux Folles at the Avon Theatre. His 12 Dinners was directed by none other than Jan Alexandra Smith.
What’s more, this embarrassment of riches is on offer at extraordinarily reasonable prices, currently $32.50 for adults and $27.50 for those 29 and under and for arts workers. If you managed to get through the season without seeing a show at Here For Now, don’t make the same mistake in 2025.
Dinner with the Duchess continues at the tent behind the Stratford-Perth Museum [https://www.stratfordperthmuseum.ca/] through September 28, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Here For Now Theatre website.
[image: Here For Now Theatre]
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