Phoenix

A Phoenix Too Frequent

"a breath of fresh air"
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door

Written by Christopher Fry, featuring Michael Spencer-Davis, Shauna Black and Liza Balkan in the cast. The production was directed and designed by Douglas Beattie with lighting by Renée Brode. Lisa Whittaker was the stage manager, assisted by Merin Smith.

A Phoenix Too Frequent ran for 9 performances, February 13 - 21, 2004

Premise
As the play begins we meet the slave Doto who is watching over her sleeping mistress Dynamene, a young widow of Ephesus, who is on day three of a hunger strike in the tomb of her husband Virilius. The two are determined to die and follow Virilius to the Underworld. Dynamene sees their mission as the ultimate act of self-sacrifice; Doto is along for the ride out of curiosity and devotion to her mistress. They are interrupted in their vigil by a young soldier, Tegeus, who is supposed to be guarding the bodies of dead prisoners hanging on trees outside the tomb. He marvels at what he sees as the ladies' noble and selfless gesture. He is also smitten by the widow's beauty.

From Touchmark's Press Release dated January 12, 2004:
The cast... includes three actors familiar to audiences across Canada for their stage, film and television work, two of whom are returning to Touchmark's stage for their second appearance: Liza Balkan appeared in Touchmark's reading of Blessings in Disguise in 2002 (and was the 1997 Dora Award winner - Best Actress - for her Toronto portrayal of Bryna in Still the Night) and Michael Spencer-Davis appeared as Christy in Touchmark's The Playboy of the Western World in 2001... They will be joined by Shaw Festival favourite, Shauna Black... Lisa Whittaker of Hamilton will stage manage, assisted by Guelph resident, Merin Smith.

Playwright
Christopher Fry (b. 1907) was one of the most celebrated playwrights of the mid-twentieth century. After a brief career as a schoolmaster, he helped found the Tunbridge Wells Repertory Players for whom he directed the premiere of Shaw's Village Wooing in 1934. His first play, The Boy with a Cart, was published in 1939. A Quaker and pacifist, Fry spent the Second World War with The Pioneer Corps, fighting fires and dealing with bomb damage on the Liverpool docks. After the war, the hopefulness of his comedies and his gift for writing funny, rich and inspiring dialogue in verse were an immediate hit with war-weary theatre-goers across the English-speaking world. Success followed success with A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946), The Lady's Not for Burning (1948), Venus Observed (1950) and The Dark is Light Enough (1954). By the end of the fifties however Fry's writing had fallen out of fashion. Curtmantle (1961) and A Yard of Sun (1970) caused very little stir, although the latter in particular is a very fine play. In addition to writing plays, composing music and adapting foreign language plays (Ring Round the Moon and The Lark by Anouilh, Tiger at the Gates by Giraudoux), Fry wrote several major film scripts as well as television and radio plays for the BBC. He still lives in Chichester, West Sussex. (Note added: Mr. Fry passed away sixteen months after our production closed, on June 30, 2005, at the age of ninety-seven.)

Director's Notes
"Death is a kind of love," says Tegeus in the play. The opposite is also true: Love is a kind of death - a death to self, a loving surrender, Fry seems to be saying, to the force of Creation Itself. How does Tegeus find it? By a paradox: It was more than coming. I followed my future here, as we all do if we're sufficiently inattentive and don't vex ourselves with questions. Or do I mean attentive? Dynamene clings to fidelity as a means of assuaging her frustration and despair at losing her husband. All her plans, all her ambition have led and will lead (as she observes) to death. In the course of the play however the promptings of her heart and flesh seem to betray her. She becomes subject to two conflicting norths. Does wisdom lie in fighting on or in surrender?

The story of the widow of Ephesus has been told in one form or another since ancient times the world over. In most versions the storyteller says it illustrates the cunning of men and the weakness and fickleness of women. Fry turns the tables on this interpretation; in his play, cunning, either of men or women, begins to look like foolishness, and weakness and fickleness, strength. As Dynamene says, what is madness to those who only observe, is often wisdom to those to whom it happens.

A Phoenix, as Harry Potter fans know, is a fabulous bird who at regular intervals (every five hundred years according to some authorities) is consumed in an act of self-immolation and then rises from its own ashes. The title of the play is taken from a couplet penned by Robert Burton (1577-1640) in The Anatomy of Melancholy. The couplet is his translation of lines by the Roman author Martial who uses it to describe how those who are blindly in love with a single adored object tend to view the rest of the world: To whom confer'd a Peacocks undecent,/ A Squirrels harsh, a Phoenix too frequent.

For me the experience of reading or watching the play is like venturing through one of those gardens described as a riot of bloom. Everywhere at your feet are little jokes exploding into brightly-coloured blossoms - some Silliness here, a little Irony there, whole banks of Striated Human Foibles revealed in passing. And around each turn in the path a single, breath-taking bloom of Truth. It's a garden that isn't walled about but seems to expand in every direction as if the cosmic "Big Bang" were still rippling through it to the very edges of the universe.

A Phoenix Too Frequent was first produced at the Mercury Theatre, London, England, April 25, 1946.

Reviews
The play is very much an ensemble piece and Beattie has cast wisely... Doto is played with comic flare by Liza Balkan. Shauna Black makes a convincing transition from mournful widow to voracious paramour. And Michael Spencer-Davis plays the Roman soldier with a charming vulnerability. Much of the production's charm lies in its simplicity. Beattie's set might best be termed classical minimalism and, as director, he allows nothing to get in the way of Fry's wonderful language... we can thank our lucky stars for Touchmark...
Robert Reid, Kitchener-Waterloo Record
"A Phoenix in Flight" (title) (Touchmark's) current production of Christopher Fry's verse play A Phoenix Too Frequent... reveals the work as a witty, vibrant comedy about human foibles sure to raise anyone's spirits... director and designer Douglas Beattie has configured the seating... into two banks on either side of a runway stage. This brings the audience much closer to the stage and reinforces the intimacy of the play's setting. His design itself is handsome and well-proportioned with the columned tomb entrance upstage and the large altar-like sepulcher at the very end of the runway. Since the three characters share bread and wine with the pretense of honouring Virilius the shape Beattie gives the sepulcher enhances the parody of communion Fry has built into the action. Lighting designer Renée Brode's beautifully mottled lighting accomplishes the difficult task of suggesting murk while still allowing us to see clearly. All three actors make Fry's verse sound both natural and clear, though it is Michael Spencer-Davis who best brings out its sensuous beauty. His performance is also the most nuanced in portraying a man whose love of Dynamene's virtue imperceptibly turns to love. Liza Balkan is hilarious as Doto particularly in her detailing of the servant's increasing level of drunkenness... and the corresponding level of randiness it provokes. Shauna Black well portrays a young wife whose vow to her accountant-like husband may have been more one of duty than of love... All in all it is a delightful evening that tickles the ears and the mind with Fry's scintillating language and insight into human nature. It demonstrates that Fry in the right hands can be as vital as any other great twentieth-century playwright. Beattie has such a natural way with this playwright, we hope Touchmark will explore him further.
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
... a wonderful evening in the theatre... I applaud you for tackling such a clever and challenging piece.
Eric Coates, Artistic Director, Blyth Festival