The venue is not the most comfortable but this play is a well constructed and  pleasant little encounter which  feels like a  modern fairy tale bolstered up by arguments that suggest  strong moral fibre. Not that one looks for moral lessons at the theatre, even less so at the Fringe. Thus the subject matter of Five Lies is rather  a surprise.

Mark is standing on the edge of a roof, looking down at the city below. At first it’s  not obvious what he has in mind but as soon as a slightly motherly “guardian” angel, known as Phyllis, appears , asking him, in a very matter of fact way..what are you thinking!!  It becomes obvious.

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To base a theatre play on a comic (and a popular one) is a brave move. Often, what works on paper does not work in a live show. Comic characters are very hard to translate into reality because of their exaggerated traits and freedom of physical movement, which is possible only in a space not encumbered by gravity. The Ottawa-based company “Troupe de la Lune” chose to do just that. Their production of the play “Subnormality” is inspired by a web-comics series of the same name by the cartoonist Winston Rowntree which is published bi-weekly on Rowntree’s webcomic-site. Its main characteristics are satire, absurdity, weird, often unearthly characters and very long monologues and dialogues presented in “thought balloons.”

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This appears to be a performance that takes the form of a folktale of the North, with audience directed monologues, replacing the story teller and of course music.

Ginny has come home to the North (Sioux Look Out) where her mother Daphne lives alone. Ginny has just ended a relationship and is seeking a nice quiet place to finish her thesis. She is enrolled in a programme at the U of Toronto.  Her mother is happy to see her daughter home and spends her time obsessively shifting coffee cups, like checkers, on a table in the middle of the stage.

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A bit of Fringe fluff written only with the audience in mind. But isn’t all Fringe theatre written to please an audience you might ask?  Of course it is, but in this case  the desire to please  is masked by a pretext of investigating the idea of non-monogomous marriage, whereas the real play is aimed at titillating a rather gullible audience. And the guffaws around me at the strategic moments in the conversation proved my point.

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Reviewed by Maja Stefanovska

Ottawa, June 20, 2011

My Mother’s Daughter explores the way our identities in the present are shaped by our interactions – or lack of interactions – with those in our pasts. It is not an easy matter to tackle but complex and, as the play shows, sometimes painful. The stories are told from the perspectives of four very different women who lay their personalities- both the aspects they show to outsiders and the ones they struggle with internally- and histories for us to see.

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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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Ryan Gladstone is quite  amazing because he doesn’t seem to fit into any accepted categories.   Part  stand up comic, part mime, part professor of comparative literature, popular culture and   theories of Narratologie,  and he is also a very  smooth actor. You cant beat that.

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