Extremely Short New Play Festival: 2013
An event like Ottawa’s Extremely Short Play Festival can often be variable in its pickings, and you must be prepared for the possibility of disappointment with some entries. On the plus side, the very nature of this event carries the promise that the disappointment will be short-lived as one 10-minute play gives way to another which may prove more compelling
A further plus factor — and the more important one — is the simple pleasure of discovery, which in the current edition of the festival can be applied even to those pieces which don’t quite make it. But, of course, the greatest pleasure lies in an encounter with an item like Pierre Brault’s Coach Of The Year, a beautifully realized play which zeroes in on an issue of growing concern — sexual abuse of young athletes by their coaches. Brault provides further evidence here that his mastery extends beyond the creation of one-man shows for himself. With this play, his fresh and unsettling insight into a sadly familiar theme is further bolstered by sterling performances from Brian K. Stewart as the coach whose appalling past is catching up with him, and from an anguished Eric Craig as a former victim now consumed by a pathetic need.
A play like this makes the Extremely Short Play Festival worthwhile. So does a dark comedy like Keith Davidson’s Out Of Gas, which features uproarious performances from Craig and Colleen Sutton as a pair of incompetent trailer-trash criminals. It’s rather like meshing a grisly Martin Scorsese scene with the Coen Brothers at their most outrageous. You also get quirky humour, albeit of a more benign kind, in Jessica Anderson’s Terminal Journey, an amusing vignette about impatient passengers, airport bureaucracy and a deceased wife’s ashes, and featuring good work from Stewart, Craig and Maureen Smith.
Some plays leave you wishing for more. There are metaphysical elements lurking in Lawrence Aronovitch’s The Book of Daniel, which focuses in on an encounter between a comic-book loving Jewish boy and a street-smart rabbi and is boosted by the performances of Stewart, Craig and the excellent Maureen Smith. But there are also hints of a longer and potentially more interesting and cerebral play waiting to break out. Similarly, Laurie Fyffe’s Seeing, worthwhile though it is, seems too much of a snapshot despite the fine work of Stewart as a traumatized veteran of the Afghanistan war and Sutton as his wife.
In total there are 10 plays, attentively directed by John Koensgen. But despite the efforts of Koensgen and an excellent cast of four, which runs through an impressive gamut of character changes, some of these miniatures emerge as inconsequential, incapable of defining themselves effectively within their brief compass. The writing of a short play demands its own particular discipline and sometimes the need is not met here. That’s why Koensgen and a talented actress like Maureen Smith can’t really make an item like Karen Balcome’s Alice work. It’s something about a life crisis — but so what? Similarly Smith and Sutton find themselvesss hopelessly mired (and saddled with grotesque wigs) in Caitlin Corbett’s Loyal Opposition: it starts with a potentially intriguing situation — an encounter between Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s wife and mistress — and then has no idea where to take it. It’s a relief after this to turn a playlet that doesn’t take itself at all seriously — to the unrestrained lunacy of Wynn Quon’s The Top and Eric Craig’s scratching, gibbering portrayal of an ape who has applied for the job of governor of the Bank of Canada.
New Theatre of Ottawa’s Extremely Short Play Festival
Arts Court Theatre, 8 p.m. to Nov. 9, Matinees Nov. 9 and 10.
Tickets can be purchased online by visiting newtheatreottawa.com or in person
at the Arts Court Theatre office, 2 Daly Avenue, suite 240, Ottawa, ON, between
9:00 am and 5:00 pm.
Alice by Karen Balcome
Seeing by Laurie Fyffe
Terminal Journey by Jessica Anderson
Loyal Opposition by Caitlin Corbett
The Top Job by Wynn Quon
Coach Of The Year by Pierre Brault
Denial by Stephanie Turple
There’s More To The Picture by Tim Ginley
The Book Of Daniel by Lawrence Aronovitch
Out Of Gas by Keith Davidson
Cast: Eric Craig, Maureen Smith, Brian K. Stewart, Colleen Sutton
Producer-director: John Koensgen
Costumes: Vanessa Imeson
Lighting: Sean Green, Martin Conboy
Sound: Jon Carter
Set: John Doucet