Alvina Ruprecht

Tough: George Walker’s battle of the sexes becomes electrifying theatre

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 14, 2015

George Walker’s Tough, presented by the students of the Algonquin College Theatre Arts programme was an impressive evening that allowed three talented young people, under the excellent direction of Mary Ellis, to bring extremely sensitive performances to the stage! Originally produced in Vancouver but written in 1992, Tough involves Tina and her 19 year old boyfriend Bobby, who are in the middle of an energetic confrontation in a playground littered with garbage. The set emphasizes the confusion and material difficulties of these individuals. Tina is accompanied by her tough talking and aggressive girlfriend Jill and together, both women verbally assault Bobby, always controlling their tempers so they won’t go completely overboard and “kill” him. They bully the young man, accuse him of being a coward, a wimp and a cheat, while Bobby, appearing to be in fragile health, tries to defend himself. As we quickly learn , he did have a moment of indiscretion with another girl at a party that set off the fight but the discussion takes on a new urgency when we learn that Tina is pregnant and she is hoping Bobby will react in a kinder more responsible way.

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 13, 2015

Photo. Tristram Kenton/Guardian.

Recent films in Ottawa have shown us radically different perspectives of India and the contrast is astonishing for those of us who do not know the country. The beautiful film The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the sequel to the film The Best exotic Marigold Hotel shows us upwardly mobile Hindu families, property owners who are working with the British Elderly and Beautiful who join the locals in Jaipur to renovate a hotel in ruins while preparing a sumptuous wedding ceremony that ends in lavish fireworks and Bollywood style dancing A feel good movie that shows Indian upper middle classes from a British perspective where everyone goes home happy.
This new live performance Behind the Beautiful Forevers , brought in by satellite, the first ever National Theatre production with an all British-Asian cast says director Rufus Norris proudly, shows us a very different India and it was a lot less pleasant.

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Obaaberima : a corporeal performance that expresses it all!

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 6, 2015

DSC_0027(1) Tawiah M`Carthey. Photo Barb Gray.

Questions of identity have become one of the focal points of recent theatre in Canada. In Ottawa we have seen performances in French by Mani Soleymanlou whose recent plays “Un”, “Deux” et “Trois” have focussed on his Persian identity as a construction produced by the interiorization of the gaze of Quebecers who saw him as the Middle eastern immigrant he never knew he was, given the fact his family was Iranian and he arrived here when he was very young. Other more recent immigrants such as Wajdi Mouawad, have used theatre to reflect on their immigrant condition and their sense of identity within their new Canadian/Quebec surroundings. Recently in Ottawa, we have seen other such performances by artists asking similar questions through performance.

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Marat-Sade: The Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton will go down in the history of the University of Ottawa Theatre department!

By Alvina Ruprecht | February 26, 2015

Photo Marianne Duval. Paul Piekoszewski (Marquis de Sade) and Jérémie Cyr-Cooke (Marat).

This play written in German by Peter Weiss, with the terribly long title, was first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of Peter Brook’s LAMDA experiment , a season of Cruelty, executed under the influence of Artaud’s essay The Theatre of Cruelty . The original version of the essay, first published in French in 1938 , eventually appeared in English in the early 1960s during the neo romantic revolution in the Americas and that is when the English speaking theatre world began working on interpretations of Artaud’s ideas of a “theatre of Cruelty” . Brook worked with a chosen group of actors and writers to show the relationship between theatre and the body, between, theatre and therapy, as well as the use of theatre to transform and renew Western culture by taking a new look at the French Revolution as well as the conventions of the Western stage. One look at this play, shows us to what extent Ariane Mnouchkine’s 1789 was very likely inspired as much by Brecht’ as by Brook’s renewed vision of the stage.

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The School for Lies at Algonquin College: Catriona Leger saves the evening!

By Alvina Ruprecht | February 16, 2015

Photo: Andrew Alexander Trevor Osbourne and Ryan Young.

Translating Molière is often a risky undertaking as David Whitely has shown us. His translations have usually been very good because they have captured the spirit of the original in multiple ways and he was lucky to have a professional cast directed by John P. Kelly. David Ives an award winning translator of Classical French theatre speaks of his translation of Corneille this way: “it is neither a translation nor an adaptation; it’s what I call a translaptation” (Playbill). He clearly tells us his intentions concerning Le Misanthrope in his prologue: “Screw Molière….we will do our own version”. Director Catriona Leger tells us this is a “liberal” and “lively” adaptation of the original which is a bit of an understatement but still, we recognize some of the original in the text.

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Alice Through the Looking Glass at the National Arts Centre: nonsensical sense and visual wildfire for the contemporary gaze.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 15, 2014

Photographer: Barb Gray. Karen Robinson as the Red Queen, Natasha Greenblatt as Alice.

When Jillian Keiley meets Lewis Carroll and James Reaney, I’m tempted to say that the witty story and vastly playful language of Carroll that hinges on all sorts of sly social comments (“words mean what you chose them to mean” says one of the characters) are soon taken over by a bouncy and colourful staging that plays directly to children’s fantasy. There are balloons, flying things , and all sorts of unimaginable props, with Bretta Gerecke’s complexly designed and striking costumes , Kimberly Portell’s magical lighting , John Gzowski’s sound, Jonathan Monro’s orchestrations and especially Dayna Tekatch,s choreography, all taking us in various directions at once . The production team stars in this fantasy that leads to pure visual chaos and muddles the narrative but it certainly holds the audience’s attention because of the visual excitement it generates, almost for its own sake where staging is based on non-stop gags and costumes that take your breath away.

Obviously the spirit of Carroll has been relocated in the visual which suits a theatrical language for young people because much of the book’s wit has a whole level that is not for children.

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Phèdre de Jérémie Niel: Une lecture jeune et fiévreuse qui remonte au passé pour cerner le présent.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 12, 2014

Marie Brassard, Benoît Lachambre, Emmanuel Schwartz

Photo. Alexandre de Bellefeuille

Cette interprétation de Phèdre, sombre et inquiétante, évoque un monde de dieux cruels qui interviennent directement contre les trois protagonistes qui incarnent les pulsions pures, manifestations des forces d’origine de l’humanité. L’œuvre s’inspire de Sénèque (Hippolyte) et surtout de Racine (Phèdre). Cette version commence par Thésée (Benoit Lachambre) qui pleure la mort de son fils Hippolyte et de sa femme Phèdre, dont les cadavres gisent à ses pieds. La suite devient un retour en arrière cauchemardesque, orchestré par le Coryphée (Mani Soleymanlou). Assis dans la salle, il remonte à la scène, regarde l’espace du jeu un peu perplexe, consulte les textes jonchant le sol pour organiser la sélection des extraits et donne des indications d’éclairage aux techniciens. Cette impression de mise en abyme donne au personnage du coryphée une fonction peu habituelle. Il est celui qui gère le spectacle, parlant à peine mais il est aussi celui qui invite les protagonistes mythiques sur scène, des figures à mi-chemin entre le visible et l’invisible, propulsées par des sonorités vrombissantes et la respiration terrifiante des dieux qui surveillent chacun de leurs gestes. Le concepteur et metteur en scène Jérémie Niel a éliminé les confidents ainsi que la princesse Aricie pour ne garder que les trois figures essentielles de la catharsis, celles qui doivent toucher les spectateurs et les transformer par la pitié et la frayeur. Le jeu commence bien!

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The Extremely Short New Play Festival: An event that opens the stage for new writers.

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 30, 2014

Photo. Andrew Alexander. Brad Long and Gabrielle Lazarovitz (Ex Libris by Yohanan Kaldi)

Ten short plays directed by John Koensgen, presented in rapid sequence but set in spaces that are similarly designed so that there is almost no visual distinction among the works. Also the same four actors return in various roles so the performances are not as highlighted as the texts themselves. That is no doubt the reasoning behind this form of staging: It draws our attention to the writing and less to the staging. An important experiment that gives younger playwrights, as well as some seasoned ones, a chance to have their work shown in public.

I liked Pierre Brault’s Quartet because it was a playful meeting of four voices that appeared to be written as a musical score, rather than a dialogue. Very good. He used extra linguistic means (rhythm, pauses, and quality of sound, accent, rhyme, intonation and all such things) as the four voices wove their way around each other and eventually ended in a duo that matched beautifully. Michel Tremblay did this a lot in Les Belles –Soeurs and in other works…it’s a technique that highlights language and Brault with Koensgen directing captured the flow very well.

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Pommes et Restes: Shipwrecked on the Tempestuous Lost Island of Never. Outrageously clever!!

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 28, 2014

Photo: Barbara Gray

Pomme (Scott Florence ) and Restes (Margo Macdonald)

This latest adventure of those intrepid clowns Pomme and Restes , is an outrageously clever collage of reworked material taken from The Tempest , Peter Pan, Treasure Island , Robinson Crusoe and dare I even suggest The Love Boat, Dr. Who, Ann of Green Gables, Gilbert and Sullivan, Gilligan’s Island, Emile Zola, contemporary political theories , 18^th century philosophy, comments on theatre of all sorts, and a whole lot more than what their programme dares to tell you. It is clear that the Fool’s archives are filled to the brim with ideas, the likes of which you would never suspect.

Thus, It becomes a whirlwind adventure that unravels at such a breakneck pace, you don’t even dare blink, for fear of losing a reference, missing a slick remark, or not noticing a clever gesture that carries many connotations! Well written by the Florence, Connors and MacDonald team, (all fine actors as well as writers), it is also beautifully directed by Al Connors who has come into his own as an excellent choreographer of meaningful stage shenanigans.

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Viol( Schändung) : a magnificently choreographed production of Bothos Strauss’ reworking of Titus Andronicus

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 24, 2014

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, candidate for the Masters in directing in the theatre department of Ottawa U. She actually choreographs as much as directs this 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 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 as they gaze on a whole society coming to pieces. 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

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