Tag: Fringe 2012

The Walk: a complex issue put together as a good one-hour show.

The Walk: a complex issue put together as a good one-hour show.

The Walk explores the omnipresent problem tied to the trafficking of women sold into sex slavery. It is the story about the destiny of millions of young women, some of them mere children who are caught in the chains of lucrative business – an organized crime that involves all structures of society worldwide. Although a story that has been told numerous times (but then – which one is not!), it takes a different turn in playwright Catherine Cunningham-Huston and director Nathalie Fraser-Purdy’s vision. During the Fringe festival, I belive, we witness the connection of art and real life, the attempt to merge theatre and action.

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The Ottawa Fringe 2012. The Open Couple. Dario Fo meets Pirandello

The Ottawa Fringe 2012. The Open Couple. Dario Fo meets Pirandello

Couples go into battle on the stage in some of the most unforgettable plays. Who’se Afraid of Virginia Wolf haunted us for months. The Open Couple is another viciously angry event  that disguises itself as a comedy but whose humour is meant to inflict pain and suffering.

Antonia hates the “Open Couple “ scenario that her husband has imposed on her and the result is a game of  attack and defense- like a classical sword fight, as they both try to get the upper hand in this situation that Antonia finds unbearable but that the husband rather enjoys. After all, he gets the young chicks and she is having a nervous breakdown.

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Ottawa Fringe 2012, Kafka’s nod to Darwin: A fascinating show

Ottawa Fringe 2012, Kafka’s nod to Darwin: A fascinating show

Kafka’s work is all about fears, obsessions, and nightmarish images of a man trying to navigate and understand a world that overpowers him, a world he cannot explain.  If his hero (anti-hero?)  of The Metamorphosis awakes one morning transformed into a giant bug, the “hero” of A Report to an Academy begins as an Ape and is slowly transformed into a semblance of a human being. A reversal of the first text?  Possibly but the man reporting to the Academy has not made a completely successful transformation, and therein lies the rub. What interests Kafka here, is also the process of change. How does it take place and what does it show?

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