Month: June 2014

1000 Islands Playhouse. “She Loves Me” sparkles

1000 Islands Playhouse. “She Loves Me” sparkles

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Alison MacDonald.  Photo: Jay Kopinski

The 1000 Islands Playhouse is running a wonderful production of the musical romantic comedy “She Loves Me.” With music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, who also wrote, among other, “Fiddler on the Roof,” and book by Joe Masteroff, it’s always been a favorite of mine. Being a geezer, I saw the original Broadway production in the 60s and, since it’s not often done, was really looking forward to this production. I was not disappointed. “She Loves Me” is just as much fun and as tuneful as I remembered.

The plot revolves around two co-workers in a parfumerie in 1930s Hungary who constantly squabble, unaware of the fact that they are each others’ anonymous pen pals. Your imagination can take it from there.

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Ottawa Fringe 2014. Shows Reviewed and seen

Ottawa Fringe 2014. Shows Reviewed and seen

by Kat Fournier, Laurie Fyffe, Barbara Gray,  Patrick Langston, Maja Stefanowska, Alvina Ruprecht, Iris Winston and Jamie Portman

Scroll down on the web site for the reviews..

As of June 26, 2 014   36 plays reviewed, many more SEEN, several reviewed twice

total reviews 45  and  more coming.

Portable #3  3 reviews J. Portman, I.Winston , A. Ruprecht

Chase and Stacey present Joy Ride  2 reviews J. Portman, I.Winston

Immolation 1 review by A.Ruprecht..

Can’t Argue With Pussy  1 review by Maja Stefanowska

Wunderjammer  1 review A.Ruprecht

Immolation  1 review A. Ruprecht

Kitt and Jane   2 reviews Kat Fournier, A.Ruprecht

Great Battles of History   1 review Alvina Ruprecht

High Tide   1 review Alvina Ruprecht

Never own anything you have to paint or feed  1 review Alvina Ruprecht

Iredea    1 review Alvina Ruprecht

Mr and Mrs Jones   1 review  P. Langston

Othello 1 review Kat Fournier

A Mind Full of Dopamine   2 reviews. Patrick Langston, Laurie Fyffe

The City that Eats You  1 review P.Langston

First Words 1 review Maja Stefanowska

Moonlight after Midnight  1 review Kat Fournier

Burnt at the Steak 3 reviews   P. Langston,  A. Ruprecht, I. Winston

Cupidity 1 review M. Stefanowska

The Surprise  2 reviews  P. Langston  A.Ruprecht

Eclipse  1 review K. Fournier

Wasteland Radio 1 review M.Stefanowska

A Universal Guide to Loving Your Shadow  1 review L. Fyffe

Poe Show 1 review  A. Ruprecht

Getting Through ‘1 review M. Stefanowska

Dont Tell My Dad 1 review M. Stefanowska

First Words 1 review M. Stefanowska

Oceans Apart  2 reviews A Ruprecht, L. Fyffe

Kavaliers Curiosity 1 review K. Fournier

Women Who Shout At Stars 2 reviews L. Fyffe,  P. Langston

Against Gravity 1 Review P. Langston

Stories of Davey Punk P. Langston

Einstein 2 reviews A. Ruprecht, P. Langston

Paco V Put to  Sleep. 4  reviews A. Ruprecht, P. Langston, I.  Winston, J. Portman

Who Killed Gertrude Crump 2  reviews A. Ruprecht,  P.Langston

Glengarry Glen Ross Hits the High Notes

Glengarry Glen Ross Hits the High Notes

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Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo Maria Vartanova.

One wonders whether that born-again conservative, David Mamet, ever feels like disowning Glengarry Glen Ross, the play that won him the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Probably not, given that Mamet’s exploration into the slimier recesses of capitalism continues to earn him hefty royalties.

Still, given Mamet’s current political views, there’s undeniable irony in the continuing power of Glengarry Glen Ross, particularly when it gets a production as good as the one served up by The Acting Company at the Gladstone. The show asserts its credentials immediately with that classic opening scene in a Chinese restaurant and the spectacle of a washed-up real estate salesman, a man whose best days are long gone, desperately trying to get back in the game.

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Glengarry Glen Ross. David Mamet’s play revived at The Gladstone in “classic Mamet Style”.

Glengarry Glen Ross. David Mamet’s play revived at The Gladstone in “classic Mamet Style”.

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Photo. Maria Vartanova

The story It’s enough to make a life-long renter out of anyone. David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, now in an electric revival at The Gladstone, spotlights the desperate, often viciously unethical goings-on at a testosterone-driven real estate office where clients’ cheques, as opposed to their interests, motivate the motley gang of sales agents. With management amping up the pressure to make sales, the office descends into ever-worse lying, cheating, and a plot to steal leads and sell them to another agency: a microcosm, in other words, of human nastiness and spiritual barrenness circa the 1980s, all done up in classic and funny Mamet style.

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Ottawa Fringe 2014. Chase & Stacey Present: Joyride

Ottawa Fringe 2014. Chase & Stacey Present: Joyride

I found so little joy in the first two skits in this joyride that I left for greener pastures and another show- one of the great escapes offered by a Fringe festival.

A great disappointment after Chase Padgett’s fine showing last year in 6 Guitars.

Venue: Arts Court theatre

Chase and Stacey Present Joyride.

Stacey Hallal, Portland, USA

Ottawa Fringe 2014. Portable #3 – Not Just another French Class

Ottawa Fringe 2014. Portable #3 – Not Just another French Class

 

Alexander Gibson’s one-man show about the trials and tribulations of an elementary school French teacher is one of the joys of the 2014 fringe. The script, written by Gibson and Matty Burns, is intelligent, funny and socially aware. And Gibson’s performance, beginning with a breathless monologue (in rhyming couplets, no less) and continuing with a succession of comically illuminating moments, is a tour de force. The guy is a genuine charmer.

Fringe: Portable # 3 — Not Just another French Class.

An SDT Production

Arts Court Sudio

    Ottawa Fringe 2014. Chase and Stacy Present Joyride

    Ottawa Fringe 2014. Chase and Stacy Present Joyride

    Normally, it would be enough to report that Joyride is a car wreck of a show, devoid of a modicum of true inventiveness. Trouble is, one of its co-creators is Oregon’s Chase Padgett whose wonderful Six Guitars was a highlight of the 2014 Fringe. So one expects more from him than this witless piece of sophomoric excess. Padgett’s partner in crime is an irritating bundle of mannerisms named Stacey Hallal. We first encounter her floundering about the stage like a beached whale while Padgett makes electronic sounds on a keyboard. Then she moves into the audience to portray an emotionally unstable pest who keeps disrupting Padgett’s mind-reading session. By this point, we’re discovering that the feebleness of a sketch’s set-up is rendered even more feeble by the banality of the pay-off moment. Among other treats, if you can call them that, are the sounds of copulation — pants, groans and assorted shrieks perfomed in darkness to the accompaniment of further electronic noises — and the spectacle of a slack-jawed hillbilly repeatedly botching up a televised tribute to the wonders of the rutabaga. Oh well, there’s nothing like mocking the lower orders to remind us of our own brilliance and superiority.

    A Stacey Hallal Production

    Arts Court Theatre

    Ottawa Fringe 2014. Paco V Put To Sleep

    Ottawa Fringe 2014. Paco V Put To Sleep

    There’s a possible corpse in Martin Dockery’s absurdist play, Paco V Put To Sleep, along with an ice cream salesman in a state of existential torment, and a pair of parents whose inexplicable emergence in son Dick’s shabby apartment suggests they’re in flight from something unspeakable.

    No one’s really connecting here — starting with the feckless Dick and the zombie-like Paco who are first encountered staring at an empty TV screen because they’re incapable of dealing with the problem of a busted remote. That’s not their only problem. They’re out of food, and there are hints their electricity is about to be cut off. Their conversation goes beyond the random and the pointless and the surreal. Even shared cliches of speech, and there are many of those here, become an ineffectual glue to communication. That’s also true of the other characters who eventually show up, talking over each other and past each other, while continuing to occupy their own malfunctioning limbos.

    There’s Pinter here and Ionesco and Beckett, a smidgeon of N.F. Simpson, even — for anyone who knows A Delicate Balance — a significant touch of Albee. Director Dave Dawson, working with a responsive cast, creates a fine fusion of sound and silence, managing the play’s elusive rhythms and atmospherics with skill and understanding.

    It’s a quirky but rewarding hour of theatre — but why oh why can’t the Fringe and Black Sheep Productions supply playgoers with a proper cast list? It’s a recurring problem with the Fringe and an annoying one.

    A Black Sheep Theatre productions

    Directed by Dave Dawson

    Arts Court Theatre

      Ottawa Fringe 2014. Immolation

      Ottawa Fringe 2014. Immolation

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      Immolation. William Beddoes and Caitlin Corbett. Photo, Ottawa Fringe

      A deeply passionate, romantic music announces  a dramatic encounter between two lovers, that quickly opens the door to the world of Immortals, or vampires or any one of those indestructible mythological creatures who have been together for 5 000 years, who have been constantly reborn in a new shape, have adapted to new life and are still going strong. Their special extra-human status is played out as a long, sinister love story lived as a series of deadly, cruel rituals that cross through the most violent periods of history and give energy to their existence. In this enclosed room, humankinds most deadly moments are remembered as experiences of pure evil, only possible because these individuals are shaped by extraordinary circumstances that nothing can change. Or can it! Or more to the point, why should it? They are accountable to no one; they have no remorse, no guilt. But, is it really loves that binds them, or is it the need for ongoing vengeance, for the heightened pleasure of the sadomasochistic hunt.? The play sets up an interesting state of existence that is extra-human, where the choice of “evil “deeds becomes extremely attractive and opens up a new consciousness.

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      Ottawa Fringe 2014. Kitt and Jane. An interactive survival guide to the near-post-apolyptic future

      Ottawa Fringe 2014. Kitt and Jane. An interactive survival guide to the near-post-apolyptic future

      A show with mixed messages that seemed to be carried away by itself. 2 fourteen year olds in a grade 9 class are giving a talk about the salmon population and it rapidly becomes a training session to help us survive the coming apocalypse ( word not to be spoken!) of an earth that is dying , poisoned by toxic waste, and everything else. The whole list of those who are killing the planet comes down on us as the two children “play” at dying. Natural acting is indicated by mumbling and talking too quickly but there were images to watch if one couldn’t catch all the words. A lot of theatrics, a lot of naïve childish playing, a lot of sophisticated computer work, tv influences, shadow puppets, technological support,  an actress who dominates the stage with her beautiful singing voice and great stage presence, and an ending that completely subverts the message so all of it seems that we were the objects of a not so childish manipulation. It appeared that no one was in charge directing this. That might have helped.

      And an audience that rose for a standing ovation??

      Kitt and Jane by Kathleen Greenfield , Ingrid Hansen and Rod Peter Jr.

      SNAFU productions