Alvina Ruprecht

I Think My Boyfriend Should Have an Accent.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 21, 2015

I Think My Boyfriend Should Have an Accent, written and performed by Emily Pearlman. Directed and dramaturged by Laurel Green

Emily Pearlman is a storyteller who captures our full attention because we feel she is telling us something special, almost secretive and certainly the truth,at least her truth. We enter into her world of intimate revelations, confessions, frustrations, and a world of trials and tribulations of a very personal sort, trying to develop a process that opens us to the understanding of diversity in our immediate world and in the rest of the world that beckons to her. This is a performance style that establishes its own conventions and avoids creating a “character” in the traditional sense of a theatre performance. The powerpoint images and sentences on the screens suggest a lecture but the tone is always familiar, friendly and at times even light hearted.

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The Elephant Girls.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 21, 2015

Maggie Hale, alone on stage, drinking beer and smoking, stares us straight in the eye(s) and tells us, her invisible interlocutor, about her involvement with that gang of 40 women, who terrorized London in the early 2 0^th century. Lead by the magnificently powerful Diamond Annie, they pulled off the most daring robberies of the biggest department stores in the city, selling their goods, acquiring lots of cash and forming a little community of highly successful women who rose above all the stereotypes of their kind at that period. …

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In On It by Danviel McIvor

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 20, 2015

IN ON IT, a Too Much Sugar Production by Daniel McIvor with four actors, (no names?) directed by Adam Smith

This is an investigation into the nature of writing for the stage or screen that becomes theatre within theatre. A writer is preparing a film scenario which is performed in front of us as he works out the text but in his own personal reality, a car accident that killed someone dear to him, provides the material for his creative inspiration. As the play and the writing evolve, they both reveal a constant lack of communication among the characters, in the scenario as well as between the two friends. It all culminates as the writer (and his friend) as well as the characters in the scenario try to seize the last moments of the victims life in that accident as the fictional world and the writers own world fuse in a last moment of consciousness before they all become equally ephemeral theatrical beings and disappear from the stage, leaving the audience as the only real presence in the theatre. It is quite brilliant piece of dramaturgy because it captures the essence of theatre but several of the actors were not particularly experienced, or so it seemed, and their hesitations did not serve the play very well. A good performance, however , by the actor who played Ray.

In On It plays in the Arts Court Theatre.

Magical Mystery Detour with Jemma Wilcox

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 20, 2015

Press photo courtesy Ottawa Fringe. Gemma Wilcox as The Queen!

Magical Mystery Detour, written and performed by Gemma Wilcox from the UK. Directed by Elizabeth Baron . Wilcox creates a whole fantasy world as she acts out every creature living or otherwise in an adventure that finally has her crossing London and then the countryside, (British no doubt) on her own special form of Tour (or Detour). Accompanied with background clips from Prince, the Beatles, Madonna, Jimmy Hendrix, Adele, and a lot more, she becomes her truck that comments on life on the road, the Queen who pops up waving at her subjects, her lover (or husband?), a perverse tree, an owl, her own dog Sola, a fly that buzzes around in the kitchen, a sort of jelly and a yeast spread that was no doubt something English I didn’t catch, and a whole crowd of unexpected characters and living things that suddenly have their own voices, physical traits, and strange spoken content. It goes on at a dizzy pace for 60 minutes and Wilcox sustains it all very well. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to grasp exactly where she is or what she is doing because I found the transitions absent or the vocabulary was British slang I didn’t know but don’t worry about the logic of this one, Jemma Wilcox is a super performer and will hold your attention like a form of wild poetry and you won’t feel the time go by.

The Magical Mystery Detour plays in the Arts Court Theatre

The GRANDFATHERS.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 19, 2015

THE GRANDFATHERS : A play written for young actors by British writer Rory Mullarkey. Directed by James Richardson. A production by the Third Wall Academy, a training programme for young actors affiliated with the Third Wall Theatre

Reviews are brief so I will get to the point. The production shows serious weaknesses in directing. It is essentially an ensemble piece that gives momentary voice to several individuals respresenting individual problems. We see a group of young recruits being whipped into shape by a Sargent. They go through all the tough rituals that young soldiers are subjected to. We see them exercising on a simulated (or possibly real?) battlefield followed by the training programme which is gruelling. However, none of this is believable and they have chosen a partially grungy realistic performance style which makes it even more difficult because we sense that they are dealing with a situation which they have never experienced. First scene, the group is under fire. The actors are not terrified, not panic stricken not horrified, not fearful, its all external acting in spite of this gut wrenching situation. The direction of actors is terribly weak. The mime is sloppy, the emotions are phony, the sargent should be a sadistic and aggressive terror but the actor does not seem to be involved in the play and she slips over her words. The only authentic realism is the puffing and sweating we see after a lot of physical activity but none of it is internalized….The only exception is a talented young woman named Helen Thai. She is “Val”, going through a bayonet thrusting ritual to learn how to become a killer and it disturbs her to such an extent she cannot stick her weapon into the fleshy target.

Perhaps a work in progress but not ready for the public at the moment.

Bursting into Flames!!!

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 19, 2015

BURSTING INTO FLAMES written and performed by Martin Dockery. photo Bill Kennedy

A monologue by Martin Dockery, the cosmic story teller whose art sends us spinning into superior worlds through his complex and modulated vocal performance, his physical energy, his corporeal creativity, and his narrative art. The story begins in the land of the dead. He takes us on a personal journey, showing what it’s like to live as a “dead” person in Heaven. He even takes us into a terrifying trip to Hell, the antithesis of the other place. IT is soon clear that the Infinite nature of heavenly time, guides his story telling technique so that is spins up and beyond, repeating ad infinitum what has been experienced, adding a special twist each time, sending the story hurtling in another direction. A sense of infinite time (not chronological time nor circular time nor even linear time!!) meets a fleshy narrative to produce a brilliant performance that is, in spite of appearances, highly structured, totally captivating, and the most original mono style of the fringe. I can guarantee that already. Run to see this one before the poor actor exhausts himself and collapses. It is clearly, a performance that literally devours the performer!!

Room 311, third floor of the U of Ottawa Theatre department.

Avenue Q: A joyous session of collective psychotherapy that works!

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 18, 2015

Photo: Courtesy of Allan Mackey.

Inspired by the TV show Sesame street, the award winning team of Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty has created a witty, satirical and joyous celebration of difference, with music, puppets, singing and dancing, that all fit together under the extremely skilful direction of Michael Gareau. Toto Too’s first rate production of Avenue Q created a wave of excitement and laughter in the theatre that I have not seen in years.

The set by Sally McIntyre, was a closed New York neighbourhood, Avenue Q, made up of individuals who are black and white, yellow and blue, Japanese and Jewish, recent immigrants and less recent immigrants, puppets and humans, young and old, poor and less poor, gay and straight, monsters and non-monsters, the scale of diversity is non ending but the parody lay in the authors’ attempts to unite this community of differences in a great bond of human sympathy by subverting all the stereotypes, ridiculing taboos, saying what people think but don’t dare say, and creating a human landscape of total liberation that is absolutely wondrous. After the show you feel you have just experienced a breakthrough session of collective psychotherapy that has actually worked.

Of course it’s an adult show and in this context it transgresses the biggest taboo of adult life: sex, turning the subject into great explosions of fun, gales of laughter and by dealing with such things in such an open and unembarrassed way. Everything becomes “normalized”. How exotic!

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Tartuffe de Molière de Wolfgang Wiens, adaptation et mise en scene egrave;ne de Michael Thalheimer

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 9, 2015

Texte français, posté sur le site theatredublog.unblog.fr

Le spectacle le plus attendu du Festival Transamérique ne nous a pas déçu. Michael Thalheimer qui travaille habituellement au Deutsches Theater de Berlin, est au diapason de Thomas Ostermeier, le directeur de la Schaubühne et de Marius von Mayenburg, les prêtres de la nouvelle dramaturgie allemande, qui ont pour habitude d’adapter les textes classiques.
Ils en gardent la structure, dépouillent la langue de ce qui leur parait excessif et surtout mettent en valeur, tout ce qui est au plus profond de l’inconscient des interlocuteurs.
Michael Thalheimer coupe des passages de Tartuffe, ajoute des extraits de la Bible au début de la pièce qu’il transforme ainsi en théâtre liturgique macabre. Sa mise en scène est soutenue par une orchestration rythmée de la parole biblique, et les vibrations d’un orgue qui nous rappelle l’ouverture du Fantôme de l’Opéra qui serait jouée comme une musique lyrico-religieuse. Cléante, le mécréant diabolique, chuchote à l’oreille de son beau-frère Orgon, disciple cadavérique de Tartuffe, nouveau prophète du mal.

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Up to Low: A Magical Oratorio of Popular History !

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 8, 2015

Photo. Sarah Hoy

The Arts Court Studio was miraculously transformed by designer Brian Smith, into a semi-country space , part barn, part lakeside cottage country, part bar in a pub somewhere up in the bush of Gatineau, Pontiac County and beyond. The story is narrated by young Tommy (Lewis Wynne-Jones) who takes us from Ottawa, back to his past and all the memories of his parents, and the Irish immigrant community that existed in the early 1950s. We go on a long ride up to Low Quebec in Uncle Frank’s beautiful new Buick that moves about 6 miles an hour, depending on the state of the road.The event is recreated by Attila Clemann the slightly strange uncle with the slick hat and cigarette falling from his lips and the expressive body language. He has whipped the group into physical shape so they can perform the trip that passes along the Gatineau River up to Wakefield and into Low Quebec. Janet Irwin has transformed Doyle’s story telling into an oratorio of voices that take turns telling the stories of Mean Hughie, Crazy Will, Aunt Dottie, Baby Bridget and a whole community of extraordinary individuals who inhabited Tommy’s world and left so many precious memories. They also defined the country, and left traces of their dreams and visions in the area, traces that Doyle has picked up and given an eternal life in his book. The result is a form of popular history that tells the tales of the region, just as Donnie Laflamme has captured the French community in Mechanicsville and Hintonburg with his skits involving the outstanding characters that he puts on stage in his own Hintonburg Tales.

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Variations pour une déchéance annoncée, d’après La Cerisaie d’Anton Tchekhov: une recherche qui n’est pas encore aboutie.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 7, 2015

Cette réécriture de la célèbre et dernière pièce d’Anton Tchekhov , réalisée par Angela Konrad, se perd dans les subtilités de niveaux de lecture : La Cerisaie est ici replacée dans le cadre d’un spectacle télévisuel, mené par un animateur-vedette qui reçoit les personnages du drame joués par une troupe de comédiens.
Chacun des niveaux de mise en abyme caractérisent cette adaptation qui nous éloigne de la pièce. Les acteurs de la troupe en évoquent la problématique, lors d’un entretien devant la caméra: un monde s’écroule, la cerisaie va être vendue, et la ruine les menace tous.
On est touché par la présence onirique du petit garçon de Lioubov Andréevna qui pleure la mort de son fils qui erre dans un espace de rêve. La belle Dominique Quesnel, en manteau de fourrure, incarnation d’une vedette mythique de cinéma, se précipite sur le plateau, nous parle du sort de la cerisaie, et évoque la disparition tragique de son fils qui la hante.

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