Month: April 2016

Actor Paul Rainville Triumphs in Virginia Woolf — But The Production Is Out Of Whack

Actor Paul Rainville Triumphs in Virginia Woolf — But The Production Is Out Of Whack

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Photo Barb Gray

It’s always rewarding to watch a gifted actor like Paul Rainville
exert his effortless authority on stage.It is, to begin with, a matter of presence — and Rainville always has that in spades. But beyond that, there’s the way he will inhabit and define a character — an approach that well goes beyond mere technical expertise.
Currently at the Gladstone, he’s delivering a fascinating portrayal of George — the middle-aged academic failure who provides one half of the marital battleground that comprises Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? There are surprises in what he does here. There are few glimpses of the passive-aggressive husband who often surfaces in productions of Edward Albee’s 1962 play. This George, for all his vulnerabilities, never seems that much of a victim to the vicious verbal taunting of his wife Martha, a booze-soaked harridan whose mainform of recreation amidst the shambles of a disappointing life is to keep tearing the scabs off an increasingly scarred relationship. In the world of 34-year-old Edward Albee, indulging in this kind of domestic warfare fulfilled his vision of how an awful relationship might be sustained: behave abominably enough to force retaliation from the other side and you achieve some manner of real human contact no matter how emotionally bruising the consequences.

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: a legendary play that had trouble at the Gladstone.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: a legendary play that had trouble at the Gladstone.

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Photo: Barb Gray.

One of the most important  plays of the contemporary American repertoire (created in 1962)  has resurfaced at the  Gladstone these days and we should be grateful to the theatre  for daring to programme this work. Luckily  they were able to  bring in a fine director such as Ian Farthing   who during his years as artistic director of the Saint Lawrence Shakespeare Summer Theatre company , put the theatre on the map in Prescott. Even the Globe  Theatre  from London,  with its travelling  version of Hamlet, made its only Canadian stop in Prescott to perform in the festival arena by the river.

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Paul Rainville’s performance elevates “Virginia Woolf”

Paul Rainville’s performance elevates “Virginia Woolf”

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Photo:Andrew Alexander. Paul Rainville (left), Ian Farthing (right)

If you’ve never seen the stage version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Edward Albee’s acerbic portrait of a dysfunctional marriage, here’s your opportunity. Although perhaps not as shocking today as in the early 60s, the relationships between the characters and Albee’s wonderful word-play and cynical humor are not the least bit dated. The difference perhaps, is that today a young couple either witnessing or becoming the brunt of such vicious verbal attacks would excuse themselves, leave and call social services.

The characters of George and Martha have become part of the cultural landscape as symbols of destructive battling spouses. In spite of their fierce sniping, the play is basically a love story – a love story of co-dependents. We can see the seeds of a similar relationship in the young couple as well. The play examines the fundamental question of what is truth and what is illusion; more importantly, what illusions are necessary in order to live.

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VERNISSAGE OF THE MULTIMEDIA EXHIBITION “ÉCHOS – ANDRÉ BRASSARD” AT THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE, APRIL 12, 1h30.

VERNISSAGE OF THE MULTIMEDIA EXHIBITION “ÉCHOS – ANDRÉ BRASSARD” AT THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE, APRIL 12, 1h30.

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Photo. Ivanoh Demers, Mars 2010, La Presse

OTTAWA – Legendary stage director André Brassard will make a rare appearance at the vernissage of the multimedia exhibition Échos –André Brassard, Tuesday, April 12 at 1:30 p.m. at the National Arts Centre (NAC). The former artistic director of NAC French Theatre (1982–90) will be joined by the current artistic director, Brigitte Haentjens, and two other former artistic directors, Robert Lepage (1990–93) and Jean‑Claude Marcus (1993–2000).

The free exhibition will be displayed from April 12 to May 28, 2016, in the NAC Theatre Foyer.

WHAT: Vernissage of the multimedia exhibition Échos – André Brassard

WHEN: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, at 1:30 p.m.

WHERE: Theatre Foyer
National Arts Centre, 53 Elgin, Ottawa

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Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Gladstone: Rainville shines in an unbalanced cast.

Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Gladstone: Rainville shines in an unbalanced cast.

woolf3DSC_0028  Photo: Barb Gray

 

All couples play dangerous emotional games, but most of us are like kids with a ball and jacks compared to George and Martha.

The middle-aged couple at the heart of Edward Albee’s 1962 play, now at The Gladstone in a revival whose reach exceeds its grasp, has honed to an art the pastime of taunting, flaying, almost-but-not-quite-mortally wounding each other with words.

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Pool (no Water): Mark Ravenhill et Pamela Feghali cernent l’horreur du monde artistique!

Pool (no Water): Mark Ravenhill et Pamela Feghali cernent l’horreur du monde artistique!

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Photo: Marianne Duval

Pamela Feghali (MFA-mise en scène ) et son équipe de production nous font découvrir le monde théâtral tourmenté du britannique Mark Ravenhill qui, avec Sarah Kane, avait déjà attiré le regard de Thomas Ostermeier, le directeur du Schaubuhne à Berlin. Maintenant , nous voilà plongés au cœur d’un des auteurs contemporains des plus provocateurs.  Dans un premier temps, quatre comédiens se promènent sur une piste légèrement en pente qui évoque à la fois un bateau de croisière et une piste de mode où les acteurs s’exhibent à la manière des mannequins bohémiens. Nous pensons immédiatement à la scénographie conçue par Margaret Coderre-William à l’occasion de Princess Ivona (Gombrowicz) qu’Ekaterina Shestakova avait présentée en 2013 sur la même scène, avec une équipe d’étudiants différents. Aujourd’hui, la scénographie de Brian Smith est semblable mais la pièce nous mène dans un sens tout à fait différent. Ravenhill présente une critique farouche du milieu artistique en forme de monologue, proféré par « I », « She », « We » et « Us », les pulsions individuelles et collectives qui animent chacune de ces voix parlantes .

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Concord Floral: a youthful ritual of psychic proportions. Spellbinding!!

Concord Floral: a youthful ritual of psychic proportions. Spellbinding!!

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Photo: Courtesy Suburban Beast and NAC’ Ottawa.

Concord Floral was inspired by an existing greenhouse in Vaughan (in the Toronto area ) that was demolished in 2012 but the rotting space somewhere in a mysterious field that emerges from Tanahill’s imagination becomes the site of an encounter among ten young people and their deep-seated obsessions. The actors for this production were all chosen from the Ottawa area.

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Concord Floral presents a disturbing suburban dystopia

Concord Floral presents a disturbing suburban dystopia

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Production shot from the toronto production of Jordan Tannahill’s  “Concord Floral

Those of us long past our teenage years can only breathe a sigh of gratitude to aging after seeing Jordan Tannahill’s disquieting Concord Floral.

Dislocation, loneliness, confusion: these we remember about our younger selves. And while Tannahill and this gripping production depict those horrors of growing up with precision and sensitivity, the show also layers in a creeping sense of dread about contemporary teen life, a feeling that “something in the air has shifted” as one character puts it, that may seem foreign to the adolescent experience of many older audience members.

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Calendar Girls: A warm-hearted and very entertaining production

Calendar Girls: A warm-hearted and very entertaining production

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Photo: Maria Vartanova.

Despite all the nudge-nudge-wink-wink exploitive publicity and jokes, Calendar Girls is not mainly about a group of middle-aged-to-senior women posing nude.

Rather it is a story of friendship and the continuing ripples of successful fundraising that began with an unusual idea.

Based on the true story of a charitable project by a Women’s Institute in the Yorkshire Dales, the fictionalized version of Calendar Girls started as a 2003 movie starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters. Five years later, Tim Firth adapted his movie script into a stage play. (A musical featuring the story debuted in England earlier this year.)

The idea that a creative member presented to the WI was intended to honour the recently deceased husband of another member — her closest friend — by raising money for leukemia research through sales of the annual WI calendar. In place of the usual landscapes, local buildings or recipes, this calendar would feature the WI members tastefully unclad.

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