The Talisker Players, Tuesday, October 27 at Trinity-St Paul’s Centre, October 28, 2015
It isn’t easy to present nonsense verse effectively. Its purpose is not to convey gibberish or chaos, but to put us on the fine edge of perception on which we balance between meaning and meaninglessness. There has to be enough reality to ground us but enough distortion to make us appreciate how tenuous our grasp is. Emotional truth is essential to make the effort to stay with the words worthwhile. Performed properly, nonsense verse is liberating and even exhilarating. If it’s overdone, it becomes simply oppressive.
In their program, Renovated Rhymes, a selection of nonsense verse set to contemporary music, the Talisker Players maintained a precarious balance between meaning and absurdity with the deftness of elite gymnasts. Grounded by the confident and robust instrumental support the Talisker ensemble always provides, two high-flying vocalists, tenor James McLennan and baritone Doug MacNaughton, soared from one insouciant perch to another. McLennan launched the evening with a mildly mischievous selection of Verses from Ogden Nash, set to music by American Composer, Robert Jordahl. In these lyrics about love, be it human or gastronomical, the nonsense made the touch of ambivalence of love tolerable. In each of his performances, McLennan sang not only with his beautiful voice but with the twinkle in his eye.
The effervescence of the first selection was dampened by the menacing and macabre Edward Lear verse, The Dong with a Luminous Nose. Doug MacNaughton captured both the gravitas and the triviality contained within these verses, displaying his captivating range of emotional expression as well as his faultless vocal powers, but the dissonance of the music and the darkness of the lyrics made the experience brutal without the leavening that nonsense should deliver. A bitter edge is welcome in a program aimed at adults, but in this case, it was difficult to find the benefit of enduring the somberness.
This was the only section of the evening, however, which tilted towards turgidness. Between musical sections, the wry and cynical perspective of James Thurber was wonderfully conveyed by actor/reader Ross Manson taking on the voices and regional accents of crows, orioles, worms, lemmings and other creatures grappling with the betrayed love, misplaced trust, thwarted ambitions and other challenges they share with humans. The verses and music moved from silly to poignant and on to celebratory. In Flanders and Swann’s Songs from the Bestiary, MacNaughton enacted the role of an ingénue warthog with such endearing coyness it made me wish I were a member of this pig family.
The Talisker Players can be relied on to present the finest expressions of timeless themes through words and music, performed with high artistry. This light-hearted fare allowed us to see a measure of joy that they bring to their performances at the same time as there is a sense of ensemble-wide reflectiveness about the material that has been so thoughtfully selected.
Renovated Rhymes is performed again on October 28, 2015.
#LUDWIGVAN
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