Month: May 2016

Final notes from the XVe Prix Europe pour le théâtre à Craiova, Roumanie.

Final notes from the XVe Prix Europe pour le théâtre à Craiova, Roumanie.

See reviews by Yana Meerzon: http://capitalcriticscircle.com/last-dream-on-earth-the-intimacy-of-the-impossible-the-truth-of-the-unimaginable/#more-9239 

http://capitalcriticscircle.com/reikiavik-is-juan-mayorgas-optimistic-answer-to-becketts-game-of-chess/#more-9237

http://capitalcriticscircle.com/thomas-ostermeiers-richard-iii-as-a-loveable-evil-monster/#more-9212

Le XVe Prix Europe pour le Théâtre s’est déroulé du 23 au 26 avril à Craiova, en Roumanie, dans la continuité du prestigieux International Shakespeare Festival, arrivé cette année à sa dixième édition. Cet édition du Prix a été organisée sous le patronage de la ville de Craiova, qui a voulu réunir les deux événements, et organisée en coopération avec la Fondation Shakespeare et avec le Théâtre National Marin Sorescu auxquels s’est ajouté la contribution de l’Institut Roumain de Culture.

Au cours de la première journée, en se joignant idéalement à l’International Shakespeare Festival, le Prix a proposé dans la section « Retours » deux spectacles inspirés par le Poète de Stratford-upon-Avon : Julius Caesar, pièces détachées, de Romeo Castellucci et Richard III dans la mise en scène de Thomas Ostermeier.

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Woyzeck’s Head. Third Wall Returns to Arts Court.

Woyzeck’s Head. Third Wall Returns to Arts Court.

Woyzeck’s Head based on the text by Georg Büchner, adapted by  and directed by James Richardson

A Third Wall Theatre Production.

As the title suggests, this interpretation by Third Wall director James Richardson of Woyzeck, Georg Büchner’s unfinished 1837 masterwork about a man who is going mad, focuses on the protagonist’s head, the seat of memory, emotion and intellect. Gone, or at least relegated to the almost-tangential, are the class and other external social concerns that are usually showcased when the original work is performed.  That focus is a good and a bad thing.

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Belles Soeurs The Musical: Tremblay passes the test of musical theatre with flying colours!!

Belles Soeurs The Musical: Tremblay passes the test of musical theatre with flying colours!!

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Photo: “Ode to Bingo”courtesy of the NAC and the Segal Centre for Performing Arts.

A chorus of unglamorous women of various shapes and sizes files onto the upper level of the proscenium arch that frames the kitchen where Germaine Lauzon (Astrid Van Wieren) and her “soeurs” are about to party, pasting one million trading stamps into those little booklets, making Germaine’s dream of owning all those items in the store catalogue, a reality at last. Little does she know that her dreams will come crashing down before the performance ends.

A band of five talented musicians tucked into either side of the small kitchen space raises the excitement level and carries us beyond a traditional Broadway style of glitzy performance. This new English language production of Tremblay’s Les Belles-soeurs (a reworking of the French musical production presented in 2010), originally staged as a play in 1968, is actually not far from Tremblay’s original conception of the work. True, there is music, there are lyrics in English, and the original joual which was the essence of Tremblay’s statement about Québécois culture, has been replaced by lyrics in standard English. Even the ending has changed radically. Yet it works because director René Richard Cyr, composer Daniel Bélanger, adaptor of the English book Brian Hill as well as the English Lyrics, musical adaptation and additional music by Neil Bartram and the musical direction by Chris Barillaro, have collectively reinvented a stage language that compensates so well for all that has changed.

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