July 2015 - Page 2 of 2 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

The heavy breathing that is a key feature of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with trudging up many flights of stairs to a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in New York. And that minor inconvenience is just one of the many problems with the nest that enchanted the impulsive and newly-wed Corie Bratter. Perhaps, if her lawyer husband had seen the cramped apartment before she rented it, he might have noticed the hole in the skylight, the minute bedroom, the faulty radiator or the excessive rent.

When it premiered on Broadway in 1963, Barefoot in the Park was an instant hit, running for more than 1,500 performances — a record run for a non-musical play. Later a successful movie starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, the comedy — written as a tribute to Simon’s first wife — focuses on the attractions between opposites and the steep learning curve in the early days of any marriage—50 years ago or today.

…

Read More Read More

Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin Wins Over Boston Audience

By Jane Baldwin | July 13, 2015

Photo Credit: Eighty Eight Entertainment.

Montreal’s Hershey Felder has built an unusual and successful career performing the lives of composers as an actor and musician in his own creations. Previous subjects George Gershwin, Frederick Chopin, Leonard Bernstein, and Franz Liszt were all classical composers, although Gershwin and Bernstein crossed over into musicals. Irving Berlin, who composed more than a thousand songs – many of them standards, but not all published – was celebrated as a tunesmith. Nonetheless, in addition to his single numbers, he wrote scores and lyrics for movies and Broadway. Several of his movies, such as The Jazz Singer, had a significant role in the development of film musicals. Of his seventeen Broadway shows, the seventy year old Annie Get Your Gun is still relevant and widely played.

…

Read More Read More

Viol( Schändung) : a magnificently choreographed production of Bothos Strauss’ reworking of Titus Andronicus. A reminder of a great evening of student theatre.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 13, 2015

Sixteen tableaux performed by a huge cast of students including a chorus that not only speaks but also transforms itself into parts of the set and integrated symbolic forms, reveals the enormous talents of Miriam Cusson who actually choreographs as much as directs this violent ritual of human degradation, pain, cruelty and ambition. The irony emerges through a string of sado masochistic rituals of martyrization, and frenzied physical desire set off by the site of the sacrificial victim – violated, slashed and mutilated. A contemporary playful mise en abyme of a contemporary horror show where the director brings in the voyeuristic faces of the chorus peering out from the back of the set. There is the lust, the exhibitionism, the penitence…some of the most violent human instincts come crashing down on the spectator in this captivating parade of ceremonies that holds our attention every second of the evening. . The thread that runs through the performance is inherited from the Elizabethan (or Jacobean) Vengeance tragedies of Thomas Kyd a contemporary of Shakespeare; however, it owes even more to the ultimate vengeance tragedy Thyeste by the roman playwright Seneca that so intrigued Artaud

…

Read More Read More

Shadows: Margo Macdonald reviewed at an earlier Fringe in Ottawa

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 13, 2015

Shadows at the Fringe

Shadows at the Ottawa Fringe Written and acted by Margo MacDonald, Shadows is a glimpse into the life of Eva Le Gallienne, the famous British actress producer and director who made her professional life in United States. We see the important periods of her life in rapid flashbacks: her work with her repertory company, her roles in Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland as well as Hamlet and Hedda Gabler, Mainly we have an intimate look at her stormy lesbian relationship with Jo, another actress who was dedicated to Eva but Eva’s own demons get the better of both of them. . Two excellent performances by Sarah Finn as the beautiful Joe and Margo MacDonald as the tortured Eva. The play pinpoints the fact that living as a lesbian, even as a famous actress, was not easy during the first half of the 20th Century.. . MacDonald is captivating and utterly convincing as we watch her live her passion for her work and for Joe and we see her slow degeneration into alcoholism and depression. A plum role for an actress which Ms MacDonald played most beautifully.
Director Diana Fajrajsl created flashsbacks that made the shifts in time very clear, transforming a gas explosion into what looked like a theatrical stage effect so the whole play became a performance within a performance, pinpointing the very nature of Le Gallienne’s life. This is very intelligent and sensitive directing on Fajrajsl’s part. Good set by Lynn Cox and a haunting musical background.
Shadows is the best show Ive seen yet in the Fringe. Be warned. This is not a comedy. Its serious theatre..Plays at the Leonard Beaulne Studio
Alvina Ruprecht Ottawa, June 2010

THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE LOWERS THE FLAG IN HONOUR OF OPERA SINGER JON VICKERS

By Capital Critics Circle | July 13, 2015

NEWS RELEASE from the NAC. OTTAWA (Canada) – The National Arts Centre, Canada’s home of the performing arts, lowered its flag in honour of Canadian opera great Jon Vickers today. Vickers was the winner of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts, and performed at the NAC on numerous occasions over the years. His portrait is in the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards hallway of the NAC in Ottawa.

“He was one of Canada’s greatest gifts to the world of opera,” said Peter Herrndorf the President and CEO of the NAC. “We were honoured to have Jon perform with the National Arts Centre Orchestra on many occasions over the years, his performances were always memorable.”

Photo from the collection of Sandy Steiglitz.Vickers with Maria Callas.

Vickers was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and made his Royal Opera debut in London in 1957. From 1960 onwards he performed regularly with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Over his lengthy career critics described Vickers’ voice as “towering” and “achingly beautiful.”

The National Arts Centre extends its condolences to Vickers’ family and friend

Remembering renowned Canadian tenor Jon Vickers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Ottawa, ON – July 13, 2015

Opera Lyra joins the operatic world in mourning the passing of renowned Canadian heldentenor Jon Vickers. Mr. Vickers was leading artist of his generation, singing major roles in the great opera houses of Europe and North America. He blazed an artistic path for subsequent generations of Canadian artists to follow.

…

Read More Read More

The Comedy of Errors in the park: wigs, costumes and mayhem steal the show.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 7, 2015

Photo. Andrew Alexander

Our raging Company of Fools is back for another summer of theatrical mayhem, turning the Bard’s work into the most unexpected of romps in the park. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s earliest play, according to many historians although the existence of the Folio does not necessarily indicate the original existence of the play itself, since performances were not always recorded in the 16^th Century . Shakespearean scholars tell us that two plots taken very likely from the original Latin version of Plautus’ most popular plays Menaechmi and Amphitruo are at the origin of this romantic tale of separation and reconciliation of Shakespeare’s Greek family.

As well, a 1938 version of the story became a Musical comedy , The Boys from Syracus.. However the Company of Fools, in their wisdom, shows us that in fact, the coloured and madcap visual world of Dr Seuss as well as the story of “Where’s Wally”, are essential sources of their performance.

…

Read More Read More

Instantanes d’infini d’Annick Justin-Joseph au théâtre Aimé Césaire, . Festival de la Ville de Fort-de-France

By Capital Critics Circle | July 7, 2015

Ruddy Sylaire -Le Photographe et Audrey Pamphile

Photo: Marie-Claire DELBE-CILLA

INSTANTANES D’INFINI d’ Annick JUSTIN JOSEPH : en création originale au 44° Festival de la Ville de Fort de France, Martinique Les 11 et 12 Juillet 2015 – 19H30 THEATRE AIME CESAIRE

…

Read More Read More

Odyssey Theatre Under the Stars. The Things We Do For Love

By Capital Critics Circle | July 6, 2015

Odyssey-ThingsWeDoForLove-Poster-web

Director Peter Hinton’s Contemporary Take On Pygmalion is a Bundle of Delights

By Jamie Portman | July 2, 2015

Photo. David Cooper. Jeff Meadows as Colonel Pickering, Harveen Sandhu as Eliza Doolittle and Patrick McManus as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. Photo by David Cooper.

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Linguistics genius Henry Higgins is lurking behind a pillar in London’s Covent Garden working madly away at his I-Pad.

Flower seller Eliza Doolittle is a feisty street urchin whose form-fitting blue jeans are so full of holes that you wonder whether they will last out the scene, not to mention the complete run of the Shaw Festival’s bold but exhilarating revival of Pygmalion.

This is definitely not Edwardian England we’re experiencing — not with a soundscape that includes Kanye West’s Runaway and Janet Jackson’s Got ‘Til It’s Gone, not with Henry Higgins’s female housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, sporting a red tee shirt telling us all to “keep calm.”

…

Read More Read More