Winter Solstice – Review of 2025 Necessary Angel’s Production at Berkeley St. Theatre

Winter Solstice is a captivating play by Germen playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig and is now playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto. The play is fascinating on two levels. First is the structure of the play and second is its slowly unfolding theme. The program lists five characters but there are in fact six (perhaps seven, if we count the little girl). There is a narrator who stands on the side much of the time and describes the action for us and comments on it. He is played by Frank Cox-O’Connell who also plays the artist Konrad. The narrator tells us that we are in the booklined and well-appointed house of a wealthy couple in Europe. It is Christmas Eve.

We see none of that because the production is done on an empty stage and we will imagine seamlessly that we are in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom and other places in the house. The narrator will continue with his commentary on what is being said and give us precise information about the music being played on the unseen piano. For example, Chopin’s Nocturn no. 2 in E minor and other pieces. He gives us the precise time of the action.

The couple are Albert (Cyrus Lane), a maker of avant-garde films and his wife Betina (Kira Guloien), a sharp-tongued writer that thinks that nobody watches her husband’s movies. Betina’s mother Corinna (Nancy Palk) has just arrived for a visit, and we learn that their relationship is strained. A stranger, Rudolph (Diego Matamoros), rings the doorbell and we learn that he met Corinna on the train, and she invited him over.

Rudolph is a gentleman of the old school, well-dressed, impeccably mannered and an accomplished pianist. He is from Paraguay but not Paraguayan and the catalyst that will reveal the slowly emerging but shocking plot of the play. He calls Corinna: Gudrun, a name from German mythology and evokes Richard Wagner. Albert realizes that there is something peculiar about Rudolph. The climax of the play is reached when Rudolph realizes what Albert is.  I will not disclose it.

The fifth character is the artist Konrad and Cox-O’Connell morphs into that role seamlessly. We also hear from the couple’s daughter, but she does not appear.

I found the variation of the Brechtian epic theatre structure fascinating, and it worked well, both removing us from the action and involving us more intimately in it. We move from one scene to another quickly and sometimes repetitively as if we may have missed something or for reasons of style that were not always clear to me on a first viewing.

There are scenes that are simply described by the narrator instead of acted. Again, this is an attractive approach because we get more information about what is happening than if we had seen the action. We are better informed and forced to know more than if we had witnessed the action.

Albert has issues with alcohol and drugs, and he is planning a movie titled “Christmas at Auschwitz”. There are strong suggestions of sexual liaisons. Rudolph coming from Paraguay but emphasizing that he is not Paraguayan, and racial references alert us to the underlying theme of the play: neo-Nazism. It is a disease that is violently on the rise in Germany and the rest of Europe in different degrees. Schimmelpfennig wrote Winter Solstice in 2017 and must be credited with some prescience.

The highly experienced cast was expertly directed by Alan Dilworth and deliver strong performances in a fascinating play.

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Winter Solstice by Roland Schimmelpfennig, translated by David Tushingham, in a production by Necessary Angel Theatre Company in collaboration with Birdland Theatre and Canadian Stage, opened on January 19, 2025, and continues until February 2, 2025, at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto, Ontario.

https://www.necessaryangel.com/

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Kira-Guloien, Frank-Cox-Oconnell, Nancy-Palk. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

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