Don Carlos, by Friedrich Schiller; The Misanthrope

Abstract

The arrival in 1998 of Toronto’s new theatre company Soulpepper was cause for rejoicing if only because of its wonderfully clear, articulate and passionately committed production of Schiller’s Don Carlos. As many reviewers noted, the company made Schiller’s 200-year-old drama feel like a very contemporary play. This contemporary feeling evidently owed much to Robert David MacDonald’s remarkably lucid translation, made in 1995 for the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, but also apparently resulted from rehearsal processes in which clarity of thinking and articulation of ideas were paramount. Don Carlos was staged in the round at the Du Maurier Theatre at Harbourfront Centre, in repertory with Molière’s The Misanthrope, for six weeks in July and August. Both were directed by Robin Phillips, who reportedly worked fifteen-hour days (perhaps nothing new for Robin Phillips) in order to direct both productions while also running the company’s nine-week workshop for young actors. While Soulpepper’s Misanthrope was considerably less ambitious and less distinguished, largely because of a translation that fitted poorly with the production, it signalled the company’s potential for important future work in comedy. Above all, Soulpepper’s inaugural success more than justified the attempt by a group of actors, led by Diana Leblanc, Diego Matamoros, Nancy Palk and Albert Schultz, to hire a guest director, designers, actors and technicians to present a season of “classics” in downtown Toronto, within two hours’ drive of the Shaw and Stratford Festivals. The company raised two-thirds of its $550,000 budget from public and private donations, many of them from the theatre community, and the rest from box-office revenues and finished the season far enough into the black to guarantee its continued activity in 1999–2000.