I don't speak Italian but the word "sentimento" leaped out at me, and then a moment later came "amore."
These words were dealt like cards in an operatic poker game. They were flipped over for us in a moment of song, and even though the language was foreign, we, the audience, could easily see the hand being dealt.
Opera is out of vogue. It is no longer the fashion of our times. But it still hangs on in our modern world because for all its bigness and wind, it burns and crackles with the raw wires of life. When you grab those exposed currents, you are electrified with epic joy and sadness, disappointment and hope. It carries so many volts it can wake you from a coma of consciousness or break your heart.
The Last Romance is a small-stage miniature opera, all the kings and queens contracted down to everyday people like us.
It is a romantic play that echoes with all the hallmarks of the great operas of old, and just to remind us of this we are treated to flashbacks that come in the form of a shining-faced Italian tenor. The play even begins on this high note.
Music is often the vehicle that drives us back down memory lane to all the possibilities we once felt for life. For some, it sounds bitter and off-key if the song did not work out the way we wished, and it sounds all the more bitter if we sense the song is coming to an end. But if the music matched the life lived, oh how sweet those last, long, fading notes feel to the ear.
Playwright Joe DiPietro confesses these regrets and inspirations in the characters of The Last Romance. He doesn't do so through much plot, there being very little action at all. The biggest flurry of activity is scurrying to find a lost dog.
Instead, we get to know Rose, Ralph and Carol as people and within them are all our sweetest dreams and all our sourest mistakes. They dance and sometimes stumble together as Rose and Ralph come to grips with their family histories, their tragedies, their stumbles and staggers growing up and growing old as traditionalist Italians in New York.
Then in comes Carol who also carries heavy baggage. When Ralph attempts to carry some of it for her, she hisses protectively but also learns to graciously share a little.
For all three, emotions are stirred that had been long buried, and presenting those changes - even when it's just the idea of change - causes reactions from exciting to terrifying.
And none more so than love. Love! Who, at any age, isn't melted and motivated by that most primal of emotions. I can't imagine two better people than William Vickers and Karen Wood to tell the story of The Last Romance. On the Prince George stage, so cozy and concentrated inside ArtSpace, they repel and attract each other like we are eavesdropping on their private moments. We are so close, as the audience, that every dip of a chin or glance of an eye is detected. If the actors don't tell us the absolute truth of Ralph and Carol, we would know it.
These two are nationally renowned for telling theatre audiences these white lies. It is a pleasure and a privilege to see them do it here especially for us. But they are cheating - or rather Miracle Theatre Company director Ted Price is cheating. Vickers and Wood are actually husband and wife, so the chemistry on stage is quite real. But it's not fair to think that they don't have to reach for their characters. Being married a long time might help with the tiny touches and telling smirks of a couple in love, but they have long transcended the courting period. Ever watch a professional figure-skater pretend to be a first-timer on the ice? It takes massive skill for the highly experienced to forget something they know and convey a new beginning. That's when we get to see the most muscle from these two veterans of stage and life. I just hope, as a tiny artists' gift, that the two of them got to re-enjoy some of the splendid feelings we all savour when the sparks of love are new. They were falsely aged by Price, so Vickers and Wood have plenty more song to sing than Ralph and Carol. If a play brings an audience new colours of understanding and enlightenment after a single viewing, may it be dozens more so for these wily pros.
Rose might be almost forgotten on the sidelines of life, but Suzanne Ristic should not suffer for that. Rose might be a third wheel in this love story but indeed Ristic makes the cast a true three-legged stool the audience puts its full weight on. She knows how to milk a laugh but also how to deftly plant the seeds of drama.
But this trio isn't a three, it's a four. There is only one Ralph but he is so big to this story that it takes two to portray him. Vickers is the modern, aged form and Jacques Arsenault is the younger form. In halcyon memories, all he does is sing. Arsenault is the embodiment of those operatic fantasies, always happy and always vibrant. How often in life does full-force opera get sung directly to you less than 20 feet away? It was a pleasure to share such a rare opportunity with Arsenault who has the voice to project to the back corners of La Scala but the sensitivity to sing against opera's type and bring that enormity down to our ArtSpace level.
Like any standard opera, the story is a simple one and the gestures toward theme are obvious and grand. The Last Romance is, in a Netflix and HBO kind of world, a little bit of Disney or All In The Family. That's not an indictment. There is still sharp art inside prime-time drama, even this one that's rated a firm G. It is for the old and the young alike, and those of us meandering around in the middle, remembering the early days and bracing for the latter ones.
The proceeds of this play all go to Spirit Of The North Healthcare Foundation for the fight against cancer. It is on at ArtSpace until March 5.
