Anne-Marie White est un talent dramaturgique très spécial dans le paysage franco-ontarien! Son œuvre Écume (voir le compte rendu ici) nous a déjà révélé la particularité de son écriture, à la fois dramatique, poétique et surtout prête à rompre les contraintes habituelles d’un texte destiné à la scène.

Ce quasi-monologue, interrompu de temps à autre, par les voix qui viennent du voisinage ou par des figures fantasmatiques de la famille, nous fait entendre la réaction d’une femme, appelée Solange, plongée dans un trauma profond, provoqué par la mort d’un enfant. Les obsessions proférées par une voix qui est à peine la sienne, mais qui semble émerger des profondeurs d’une psyché blessée, prennent possession de ce corps de femme « ordure », « déchet » « pourriture », un corps réduit à

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Peter Froehlich and Kate Smith in Snapshot. Photo: Andrew Alexander

To celebrate its 10^th anniversary, Gruppo Rubato has chosen a play that tells us the company is moving into much more sophisticated territory.

Sitting on two sides of the small upstairs space in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, the audience focusses on the lone figure of Dalton. As played by Peter Froehlich, his reaction is intense, unsentimental, but entirely engulfed in his enormous grief that almost paralyses him. Dalton is talking to his wife who has just died, he seems to be calling her up, saying they will soon be together again. The ultimate gesture is already very clear in the opening monologue as Froehlich slowly picks up the brown case where Dalton has stored his revolver. He sits down and puts the gun to his head! Suddenly his grand-daughter Charlie (Teddy Ivanova) arrives. But does she really?

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Very overrated, honeymoons — especially if you run into your ex-spouse on the adjoining balcony of the honeymoon hotel. Even more so when your stormy first marriage ended with an acrimonious divorce and the intensity of emotion is still simmering.

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Zoe Tupling  and Penu Chalykoff. Photo: Alan Dean

Being part of the melodramatically inclined Bliss family may be alternately divine or tragic. Being a guest in the Bliss country house is simply a nightmare.

The stark contrast between the Bliss family’s theatricality and the more normal approach to social interaction of the guests is at the heart of Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy of manners/verging on farce.

Coward was inspired to write Hay Fever — it took him just three days in 1924 — after visiting the home of U.S. stage and silent movie queen Laurette Taylor. (The script apparently marked the end of their friendship.)

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Photo: Alan Dean. A play that, in the author’s own words, has “no plot at all and remarkably little action,” Noel Coward’s Hay Fever is notoriously difficult to get right. While the playwright provides a sinfully witty script, the onus is on the actors to give meaning. Every phrase must be accompanied with a movement and a glance that is just so in this comedy of manners about a bohemian, slightly unhinged family who torment their unsuspecting weekend guests. The end result should be a comedy that resides in the half pauses and affected looks to be fund in between the words, rather than strictly the script itself. Tim Ginley’s production for the Ottawa Little Theatre is a valiant effort with some solid performances, but ultimately doesn’t quite live up to the script’s promise.

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Voilà la musique de « mon pays » explique Claude Naubert alors que la scène s’allume et les interprètes investissent le petit espace du Théâtre de l’ile devant la salle de 119 places plein à craquer. Rendre hommage à Félix Leclerc, la voix exquise de la chanson populaire québécoise, n’est pas une mince affaire et l’équipe de Sylvie Dufour  y a presque réussi.

Bien sûr, il n’était pas question d’imiter le chanteur . Il n’était pas non plus question d’en  faire une grande production bien léchée, bien au-delà des moyens du Théâtre de l’île.  Il s’agissait surtout de cerner l’ambiance intime, parfois poétique ce cette musique qui chante Le petit  bonheur, la vie de tous les jours des petits gens de « chez nous », ceux qui inspiraient  la vie créatrice de Leclerc qui allait des années 1950 jusqu’à la fin des années 1970.

La soirée s’est divisée en deux mouvements, dont chacun avait une orientation très différente.

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Rekindling memories and relearning language after a stroke are the paths to rebuilding a father/son relationship that has lain dormant for four decades. Ernie stepped out of his son’s life when his marriage failed, as his father did and as it now seems his son, George, is about to step out of his son’s life.

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