Carmen, Hammered | You’ve never heard the “Habañera” performed quite the way Leona Brausen does it in Glorious!
DETAILS
GLORIOUS!
Directed by Wayne Paquette. Written by Peter Quilter. Starring Leona Brausen, Darrin Hagen, Coralie Cairns. Varscona Theatre (10329-83 Ave). To June 14. Tickets available through TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca) or Shadow Theatre (434-5564).
***1/2
Tears flooded my eyes as soon as Leona Brausen opened her mouth in Glorious!, releasing a near-perfect imitation of Florence Foster Jenkins, the worst opera singer who ever filled Carnegie Hall. It was, therefore, intensely dreadful. She yelped, gasped, trilled, and adeptly avoided hitting every note. Yes, tears of laughter (and tears of pain), but more so tears of joy. Joy at watching someone embrace what makes them so completely happy, letting everything else — including tone, pitch, and critics — be damned.
But before Brausen gets a chance to assault our ears, her piano player, Cosmé McMoon (Darrin Hagen), sets off the action appearing on the staircase at the rear of the theatre. The entrance isn’t particularly grand. On the contrary, with a spotlight and a beige overcoat, Hagen simply greets the crowd offering no warning of the excess to come. He does take the time to remind everyone that what we were about to see is a true story, no matter how unbelievable the details may seem. He even assures us his name is real, saying that if he were going to make up an alias, why would he choose something like “Cosmé McMoon”?
However, upon auditioning for the position as her accompanist, McMoon can barely believe it himself when Jenkins first lets loose one of her shrill top notes. It is rather shocking. He almost refuses the job, but the money she offers, being a rich philanthropist and lover of all young struggling artists, is too good. McMoon signs on and proceeds to spend the rest of the play trying simultaneously to avoid insulting and lying to his employer, often resorting to speechlessness to avoid saying anything at all. Hagen’s understated delivery of McMoon’s backhanded compliments have just enough salt to be funny, without ever feeling malicious. It’s an important balance to strike, as by the time Brausen wails through her second number, your heart opens up completely to this kindhearted free spirit no matter how bad she is at singing.
And egads! is she awesome at being awful. As if her shredding of the musical scale weren’t horrific enough, Brausen also mugs as she tries to hit those high notes, making it impossible not to be seized by fits of laughter. Thank gosh there’s intermission to catch your breath.
There are a few quieter moments that don’t exactly hit the right note — where Peter Quilter’s script seems to brush off McMoon’s sneering disbelief when he is needed to defend Jenkins’ ambition to her naysayers. When he consoles her after a rare moment of self-doubt, induced by the criticisms of a hoity busybody intent on saving the sanctity of opera (Coralie Cairns), you feel like there’s something missing regarding our understanding of this odd-couple relationship ... probably because there is.
Glorious! is at its best when it has people whooping with laughter. The costumes, designed by Brain Bast, are perfectly ridiculous. Cairns, who portrays all the other women in the show besides Jenkins, wins the scene when she drudges on as a Frankensteinian maid (though the yelling in Spanish goes on a wee bit long). Hagen’s piano playing deserves an honourable mention, as he holds it steady in the face of a complete musical onslaught. And, of course, there’s Brausen, who, as I said before, is ... well, glorious!
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