Photo. Maria Vartanova

There is a very thin line between characterization and caricature and between stereotype and individual character.

In Come Blow Your Horn, playwright Neil Simon periodically steps over the line. So do director Sarah Hearn and her cast in the current Ottawa Little Theatre production. Even so, Simon’s 1961 debut play — semi-autobiographical as are several of the comedy/dramas that came later — holds up well, in part because Hearn wisely chooses to present it as a period piece and focus on character.

A number of Simon’s works offer examples of the ambivalence he felt for his older brother and this is particularly clearly demonstrated in Come Blow Your Horn when 21-year-old Buddy leaves the parental home to move in with 33-year-old Alan and emulate his playboy lifestyle. In addition, the sense of responsibility Alan feels for Buddy comes through loud and clear, which is why a number of his actions and words in Act II are a carbon copy of their father’s words and gestures.

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Photo: Andrew Alexander

Why do Shakespeare straight if you can spoof it? That’s the approach director Eleanor Crowder has taken with her all-male production of this early Shakespeare comedy.  Problem is, while the show is often entertaining, it ultimately can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be a spoof, a comedic love story, a post-feminist broadside or some combination of all three.

Scott Florence, well-versed in playing fast and loose with Shakespeare thanks to his years of experience with the irreverent A Company of Fools, sets the performance bar high as Petruchio, the wily, self-assured gentleman from Verona who tames  (or does he?) and marries the snarly, fiercely independent Kate. Sardonic, self-interested, a natural student of behavioural psychology, this Petruchio plays those whom he meets like yoyos. Florence is a delight to watch, especially when he channels Pommes Frites, the preening character he created for Fools shows like Shakespeare’s Danish Play.

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Akiko Aizawa, Ellen Lauren, Makela Spielman

Photo: Craig Schwerz

On the afternoon of April 15, the Siti Company was en route to Boston to enact The Trojan Women (After Euripides) when they heard the news of the bombing at the finishing line of the Marathon. Despite their horror and ambivalence about playing under the circumstances, they decided that as actors, their responsibility was to perform. And indeed, the convergence between the devastation of the city of Troy onstage and the explosions at Copley Square in the city of Boston brought a deeper and more personal meaning to the play, certainly to this member of the audience.

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Photo: Élisabeth Carecchio. 

Texte de Philippe du Vignal , theatredublog.unblog.fr

Les Marchands, Je tremble, Cercles/ Fictions, Au Monde, Le petit Chaperon rouge, Cendrillon, Ma Chambre froide (voir Le Théâtre du Blog)…. Joël Pommerat  a su en quelque vingt ans construire une œuvre théâtrale des plus singulières et des plus poétiques. C’est sans doute l’auteur français vivant avec Novarina le plus connu à l’étranger. Et, fait assez rare dans le théâtre actuel, il a aussi mis en scène ses pièces, et l’on on y  reconnaît tout de suite sa signature: texte à l’écriture exigeante sur des thèmes comme la vie économique de la société française observée au quotidien, la famille et les relations entre gens d’en-haut et gens d’en-bas, mais comme approchés dans une vision aussi étrange que poétique, conception d’un espace scénographique frontal ou en rond où les éléments de décor d’Eric Soyer-qui signe aussi les lumières, tout aussi exigeantes et  d’une intelligence et d’une beauté exceptionnelle-apparaissent comme par magie, mise en scène  et direction d’acteurs d’une rigueur absolue .

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