Alvina Ruprecht

Kiviuq returns: poetry, story telling, music, performance, the makings of an epic in inuktitut.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 22, 2017

kiviuq Returns: photo national Arts Centre English language theatre

Kiviuq Returns is a collective work produced by Quaggiavuut, a Nunavut-based arts organization that has also worked in Banff with dancers, choreographers and technical staff. Singers, musicians, story tellers, dancers, actors, painters, set and costume designers, and all manner of artists interested in exploring the re-imagined journey of the legendary Kiviuq , the great northern figure who represents all life as he returns through the whole Arctic territory, have come together to share each other’s artistic talents and create an extraordinary event that is danced, spoken and sung, mostly in Inuktikut. …

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Dance at the NAC. The Jardin Des Délices – Marie Chouinard renews her sources of inspiration and the effect is magic

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 15, 2017

Marie Chouinard admits that this performance represents the “joy of bowing before a masterpiece (NAC program p.3) as she subjects her choreography to the spirit of Bosch’s Triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. The one dimensional language of the painter that spreads out on a flat canvass before us, marked by the visual esthetics of the Northern Renaissance , is given a new spirit on the NAC stage. Contemporary androgynous bodies moving in space with musical accompaniment, subjected to predetermined steps and a form of perfectly orchestrated chaos, reveal the enormous shift in creativity that was required by Chouinard to capture the spirit of Bosch’s three movements that inspired her work: The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hell and Paradise. …

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Old Stock. A Refugee Love Story. A contemporary Jewish folktale superbly performed!

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 14, 2017

Old Stock. Ben Caplan as the narrator. Photo: National Arts Centre English Theatre

Old Stock : A Refugee Love Story written by Hannah Moscovitch. Songs by Ben Caplan and Christian Barry. Directed by Christian Barry.

An old man emerging from the smoky top of an apparently abandoned train, the suggestion of a painful transportation that took place during WWII, suddenly transforms this structure into the site of a travelling theatre, resounding with music, that has “appeared” out of the past with its lively Klezmer Rumanian Jewish /Gypsy background bringing together a huge audience ready to hear its tales, including a love story that must be told. With music that brings much to the dramatic intensity of the show, this theatrical company of theatre within theatre, is transported into the present with its four musicians/actors and a narrator-superb singer, dancer and actor Ben Caplan- under the direction of Christian Barry.

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Recent 50th Anniversary production of louis Riel is a gift to Canadian opera. .

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 16, 2017

1078 – Russell Braun as Louis Riel (centre) in a scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Louis Riel, 2017. Conductor Johannes Debus, director Peter Hinton, set designer Michael Gianfrancesco, costume designer Gillian Gallow, lighting designer Bonnie Beecher, and choreographer Santee Smith. Photo: Michael Cooper

Louis Riel based on the work of composer of Harry Somers and the libretto by Mavor Moore, is directed by Peter Hinton, former head of theatre at the National Arts Centre. It opened at the NAC Thursday with the NAC Orchestra conducted by Alexander Shelley. The audience was treated to an exciting reworking of this “music drama”, as Somers called it when it was first created at the O’Keefe Centre in 1967. We now can witness a new 50th-anniversary production which brings Canada into the global realm of contemporary performance, revising 19^th Century preconceived notions of Opera. …

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Ottawa Fringe 2017 : Tim Motley as Dirk Darrow the mind-reading private dick.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 13, 2017

Here we are in the ambiance of the film noir, with the smooth, sexy, fast-talking Aussie full of himself in a charming sort of way. With his 30-40’s style hat he suggests Humphrey Bogart or something out of a Dashiel Hammett story but this fellow has a lot more class and a special talent: he is a slight of hand dick, a mind reader and a talented manipulator of each and every member of the audience. AS he solves each crime as though it were a magic show, we get more and more involved in the challenges he presents, always managing to divert our attention so that we dont see the ending before it hits us in the face. The climax: a very funny game of musical chairs where the participants, drawn at random from the audience, became the stars of the show because of their unexpected reactions that even threw Motley himself! His high point! he knows how to use the audence! Not bad at all..but where did his Australian accent go???

Tricky Dirk Darrow the mind-reading detective plays in the Arts Court Theatre.

Maestro: un choix de texte douteux

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 11, 2017

Maestro par Claude Montminy
En français, adapté pour l’Outaouais par Claude Montminy.
Mise en scène : Gilles Provost,
Scénographie et éclairages : David Magladry

Géré par Gilles Provost, bien connu dans la région en tant que comédien, professeur et ancien directeur du Théâtre de l’ile, ce spectacle semble cacher une parodie féroce de la classe moyenne québécoise/outaouaise , transformée en frénésie comique par la mécanique héritée de la farce française. En fait, dès le début, on se pose des questions sur la logique dramaturgique de cette œuvre qui mélange les styles de jeu, les thématiques et les stéréotypes de toutes sortes au point où on finit par se laisser bercer par la folle confusion de ce microcosme peuplé d’ambitieux, de misogynes, de mal élevés, de manipulateurs . L’auteur se moque de tout le monde, même du public qui ose rigoler devant cette parade de bouffonneries inouïes. …

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Children of God : A Ritual Theatre event that changes the focus of Canadian theatre.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 10, 2017

Photo: Emily Cooper
Children of God, Urban Ink

An Urban Ink (Vancouver) production in collaboration with NAC English Theatre, in association with Raven Theatre (Vancouver) and presented as part of the NAC’s Canada Scene Festival.
The first impression one has before the event begins, is an all-enveloping living breathing landscape that sweeps horizontally across the front of the newly named Babs Asper theatre space and carries us away into another realm of being. Huge roling clouds, suggestions of a liquid surface, flat rocks that continue far back into a horizon defined by the sky. Ominous mountain shapes rise on either side of Marshall McMahan’s breathtaking set design that is brought to life by Jeff Harrison’s shifting lighting effects , by Kris Boyd’s sound design and Corey Payette’s musical compositions executed by the four musicians tucked away on stage right just behind the landscape. The music dissolves into the surrounding site as the performance space engulfs us , exemplifying the tortured nature of this situation that unfolds on the stage.
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Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Brilliant production of an important play

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 19, 2017

Toto Too never stops outdoing itself and this ultra-energized performance under the direction of Michael Gareau proves it once again. It all glows and glitters with the marvelous costumes of the drag Queen world, (created by designer Lu-Anne Connell ), the stunning singing voices , the excellent acting and Paddy Allen McCarthy’s all-encompassing choreography, take over the original music and lyrics that transgress the established codes of the musical world. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a brilliant monument to a shifting world where every human individual is given a space of one’s own. …

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Minus One. Ohad Naharin’s high powered entertainment unites dance theatre with multiple voices and musical styles!

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 8, 2017

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With its 35 dancers out in full force on the stage of Southam Hall, les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal under the spell of choreographer Ohad Naharin has created a synthesis of some of his past work bringing together the musics and dancers of many origins. Almost the way Peter Brook integrated the Hindu epic with actors from all the continents, Naharin’s company Batsheva Dance, actually founded by Martha Graham, has become a meeting place for dancers from around the world, and now, Naharin’s recent creation sends us into a spiral of hybrid creativity that sets one’s head spinning. …

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Outside Mullingar: Irish family drama with rich operatic undertones!

By Alvina Ruprecht | April 30, 2017

Born and brought up in New York, John Patrick Shanley , author of the screenplay for Moonstruck, directed by Norman Jewison , captured a modern Italian American love story that was told in the style of a Puccini opera. Now he has written a play about Irish families deeply rooted in their ancestral land,This one too has great operatic undertones ! Structured as a series of solos, duos, trios and quartets, the characters have to maintain the music of the accents from Dublin to Mullingar in the northern most areas of the Republic , which is what the cast of Dave Dawson’s production at the Gladstone did very well. We were immediately immersed in a swelling of romantic authenticity and thoughtful intensity that keeps us captivated for the whole evening. …

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