Reviewed by Kat Fournier

Trinity Pit Stop Theatre Co.’s Othello is a Shakespeare re-mix, set in a steampunk wasteland where vanity and exposure are celebrated. It’s a perfect setting for Iago’s greedy manipulation of his master. This production is both spectacle and substance: The set is amazing, the staging is incredibly dynamic, and the young actors showed great proficiency of Shakespeare’s text. What’s more: This “modernization” works. The atmosphere – lighting, sound, set, and costuming – form an excellent playground for an interpretation of Othello that emphasizes the role of vanity and ego in his undoing. The script intends the blur the lines of villain and hero, and unfortunately Iago tends to be one-sided in this regard (his more sympathetic qualities lost, perhaps due to annotation). Still: The actor who plays Iago wields incredible power on-stage. You can look forward to the final stand-off between Iago and Othello. This production is total sensory overload, fast paced, and a good deal of fun. Theatre at its most entertaining.

at Arts Court theatre on Saturdays

Trinity Pit Stop Theatre Co

Written by William Shakespeare, Directed by Stavros Stakiadis

Wasteland Radio

By S. Dietrich, S. Doherty, and A Plangio

Shaken Theatre

Wasteland Radio is a story about a man who survived the extinction of the human race after a volcano eruption and the carnage that followed it. He finds an abandoned radio station and brings it back to working order, using it to call out to others, as well as keep himself sane. However, even more than this, Wasteland Radio is a show about loneliness, hope, and SOMETHING. It’s about losing hope because of the rashness of human emotion. These are some heavy topics and, while very well written, the show’s cast and directing didn’t quite rise to the challenge of the script. The blocking had the main character talking to one of his long-dead friends or enemies off-stage too often. Since it went on too long, it broke the connection with the audience and therefore our empathy for the character. Another distracting element was the music. Although the choice of song was great and really did a lot to create an almost Pirate Radio-like atmosphere to moment of the show, there were times it also drowned out the acting. Things picked up a bit by the end of the show and the cast managed to go out with a bang, providing us with a powerful ending steeped in meaning.

Plays in Arts Court Theatre

Wasteland Radio 

By S. Dietrich, S. Doherty, and A Plangio

Shaken Theatre

A snapshot on the fringe !

A Universal Guide to Loving Your Shadow written & performed by Sylvia Kindl

When Sylvia Kindl came to Ottawa a strange thing happened, she found herself followed, stalked, and well shadowed by an alter ego, an unexpected interloper who was a lot more aggressive and – imagine the audacity – attractive to young, skinny men than her corporeal self. Teetering between a stand-up comedy routine, sprinkled with highly amusing observations, and a story telling monologue that peels away a curiously dark side of Ottawa, Kindl addresses her audience in an intimate and personable way. But she sometimes loses the thread, and we don’t hear enough from ‘the shadow’. When her shadow launches into a rant, Kindl shuts her down too soon. Sylvia’s shadow is an altered personality complex with something to say and, I suspect, deeper and darker Ottawa secrets to reveal.  A play that will tell you “you’re not alone” if you think Ottawa, in addition to having a lovely canal and a thing about tulips, is sometimes a weird city to live in! 

PLays in Arts Court Library

Is it a spoof of a horror show? Is it a tribute to Edgard Allan Poe’s writing  and the general atmosphere of his literary world?  Is it a field day for the sound effects person? It’s a bit of all of that but mostly this is an experiment in staging one of the most important English language short story writers of the 19^th Century. What shines is Poe’s prose  that is taken directly from his short stories,- chopped down a bit with the juicy parts remaining. It’s all  narrated by the actors and it is all from Poe except for the ending where the characters eventually take things into their own hands….  A bit of Pirandello’s revenge perhaps. Since it  all appears to be coming from Poe’s nightmares  things  are not straighforward , that is clear. However, much of the physical movements  as well as the repetitive sound effects (muffled screams and weak screetching ) appear to work against the text because if they seem to be  spoofing the text, the spoof is not well done. .  The spoof has to be clear and come from a heightened form of performance… Even the choking and strangling were not melodramatic enough to be intentionally phony. They looked like a limp form of  realism  or amatures fooling around and that is certainly not the effect they wanted to create.  And then, just to clarify things, why not bring up a little poster/screen on the side announcing the title of each story just as the TROIS COUPs from French theatre resound in the background, announcing the next text.

As for the actors. they  make their way through it with reasonable skill. A good fringe experiment that highlights all the problems that confront a director when he takes on a literary work such as this one and then tries to give it a personal touch and a new spin.

The Poe Show  Plays at the Studio Leonard Beaulne

Written by David Beecroft, directed by Stewart Mathews

With Jeremy Piamonte, Sarah Duplancic, Hannah Gibson Fraser, Anna Lewis

A Vanity Project production (Tim Oberholzer)

bring it up to the 21st century.

Reviewed by Patrick Langston

A Mind Full of Dopamine written & performed by Rory Ledbetter

Rory Ledbetter, a masterful storyteller with a big stage presence, rockets us down the dark side of the gambling highway by recounting a gambling addiction that consumed him and left him shockingly deep in debt. He blames no one, not even himself, for the addiction – it is, he explains, the thrilling rush of dopamine, that trigger in the brain over which we have no control, that hooks the gambler. Ledbetter intersperses his narrative with harmonica riffs that give us a chance to catch our collective breath during his pell-mell performance. One problem in an otherwise gripping show: Ledbetter is an enthusiastic guy, but that translates into shouting his lines – inappropriate for a small venue like the Arts Court Library.

Plays at Arts Court Library

Getting Through is the story of two people trying to stay together, even though they are both influenced and informed by rough upbringings full of unsettling changes. It’s an idea that has been thoroughly explored and, unfortunately, this production doesn’t bring much new material to the conversation. Although their hearts seemed in the right place, the emotion and acting were too overwrought for the audience to feel any real connection with the story or characters. This performance felt like a lot of telling instead of showing, though some of the directing and blocking was admirably done. The acting could have been toned down a bit – not every sad or frustrating situation deserves a heaving sigh. However, this is not to say the show doesn’t have potential; it just needs more development and a more honest approach to the subject matter, with more raw (not over the top) emotion by the actors.

Getting Through

By Aidan Dewhirst

Loose Cannons Collective

Venue 5. ODD

Don’t Tell My Dad is a fun, informative and, at times, quite dirty performance by folk singer Chelsea Manders. Its tongue-in-cheek, just self deprecating enough take on the world is refreshing and Manders really knows how to make use of comedic timing as she explores her harrowing upbringing in an upper-middle class, supportive, loving family. Sounds great, right? Sure, unless you want to be a tortured artist. Instead of getting too grumbly, Manders takes her experiences and makes them into a cute, funny show. She’s a peppy kindergarden teacher who sings (quite beautifully, by the way) some of the dirtiest songs at the Fringe. I hope you like poop and penis jokes, because this show is littered with them. Being a fan of the sophisticated comedy stylings myself, the show mostly had me laughing out loud. Some parts veered on the side of a bit too crass (did we really need to see up her skirt?), but overall an enjoyable show reminding us to laugh at and with life and that anything can and should be made into art.

Don’t Tell My Dad

By Chelsea Manders

Plays at Academic Hall