Ottawa Fringe 2013, The Day We Grew Wings by Victoria Luloff and Stewart Matthews

Directed by Matthews with Zach Counsil, Nick Surgess and Victoria Luloff, a Lonely Egg production.

A flight of fancy as a young girl who imagines and inhabits a whole world of fairy tales, magical tales, and children’s literature of varying depths. Mention is made of Arabian nights, Mother Goose, Grimm’s tales, and all manner of imaginary creatures that haunt the imaginations of young people. She finds herself in her own world of the story of those twin brothers, the winged brother and the non-winged brother who work out their own family problems. Perhaps the underlying preoccupations of a personal nature. Its sometimes pure fantasy, sometimes it appears to be a darker investigation into the way imaginary creatures reveal the troubling depths of fantasy, take that dark dragon-like creature whose voice off booms out over the stage making them all tremble.

The problem with this show is that the text is trying to do too much. It’s an accumulation of all kinds of interesting things that pile up non-stop but are not worked out. The author jumps too quickly from one segment to the next where we have to pick up other pieces of another narrative, before we even realize what is happening. Rather jarring. In this case, less would have been better. It needs some weeding out because there is some very good material here. One also sees the results of that emphasis on corporeal training at the Ottawa Theatre School which works well here but it still feels like a student production. Best thing about the show are actors Zach Counsel and Nick Surgess. Zach is already a seasoned performer and is obviously having fun here, Nick has a good solid voice and lots of presence. Victoria Luloff did not quite make it although she is very attractive on stage . She has to enunciate, she garbles her words too much or she seems to whisper. One feels she has not much experience on stage. The whole thing needs more precision for the blackouts and mass of sound cues but that will come, Opening day is always a bit of a last dress rehearsal. In general though, it’s the play that overwhelms with its mass of material. It needs sorting…

For older children (7 and up) .not small ones. They might be a bit scared – or just plain confused.

Plays at Academic Hall