Rachel Eugster and Sarah W aisvisz.  Photo:

This production of The Glass Menagerie , one of Tennessee Williams most important works for the stage, is not a “striking revival” , nor is it “stunning”, “elusive” or even “heart-breaking” but it is certainly surprising. Tim Oberholzer’s performance as Tom the brother/ narrator, and figure closest to Williams own character, was so powerful and so charged with authentic feeling that it shifted the focus away from the women who are at the very heart of this memory play and set it squarely on the near tragic struggle raging within the young narrator. I have never seen such a thing happen with this play and yet it is true. Oberholzer gives  Tom a depth that is very unusual.

The production generally had moments that were quite good especially in the second part when the gentleman caller ( Cory Thibert) comes to visit the timid and terrified Laura (Sarah Waisvisz) but there are also many details that kept interfering with the smooth-running of the show. Why was the little table with all the glass figures hidden off to one side where we could barely see the glass figures or that little unicorn that becomes a powerful symbol in the play? Laura is supposed to have hurt her foot  so that she normally limps. Here the director has chosen to show us Laura the way her mother sees her, with no limp. That removes a certain degree of pathos that is necessary to make us feel that Laura is someone special. Strange choices by the director.

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An impressive set by Patrice-Ann Forbes immediately arouses our curiosity; it exposes levels of an old house in Berlin with  a photo lab, dark room, sleeping areas and a rooftop space where one can watch the world go by.  The place is “haunted” by a living negative, a young girl, played by a perky, passionate and strong Catriona Leger, whose picture was taken by an anonymous photographer in 1932 at a resort on the Baltic Sea.  The subject of the picture returned to England but her photo was never developed…and so the living negative wanders through the house like a ghost, visible only to the audience. Thus begins her story which she performs  with her  white hair and  black dress,  waiting for someone to come along, reverse her negative appearance,  develop her , bring her back to her paper reality, so she can become herself in that  beautiful white dress she was wearing when the photo was taken. The enigma of the photographer, the quest for a developer, the memories of that girl who sees the world passing, from 1932 to the present, create layer  upon layer of narrative levels that  build up this monologue.   Catriona Leger  is a strong presence, shifting her tone, her rhythms, moving about the stage with much ease, capturing all the nuances entrenched in that text .  Yes it is a captivating performance because of the difficulty of the monologue and the complexity with relation to her gaze on history.  Projected images move across the back to illustrate what she captures through her seeing eye window as she peers into the street. watching history roll by.

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Photo, Pire Espece, Olivier Ducas..le magicien!

La Nouvelle scène is  still a hole in the ground but it is on the way to being built, said Anne Marie White , playwright, director and artistic director of the Théâtre Trillium as she introduced le Théâtre de la Pire Espèce….For the moment , all the Franco-ontarian theatres are performing at the LaSalle School on Saint Patrick street.

This time, Trillium has us sitting with the artists/technicians on the stage, as Wajdi Mouawad loves to have us do..and we were close to the inventions and magic moments, the machines, the sound equipment, the props and everthing that Olivier  Ducas  brought to life during this highly original spectacle..

A most original production that creates a whole universe of imaginary spaces and forms, linked to the conscience of Olivier Ducas who has reimagined the world, and set it up using contemporary forms and images taken from film, from computer images, from graphic design, from web cams, from spy cameras, from animated film techniques; a great mass of textures, colours, styles that meet and melt and explode…as the narrator who wields the camera tells us the story of his collection of towns, their different temperments, their forms, the way their elements are integrated..it is theatre with no characters, no narrative, no psychological types, no action, no elements that come from novels…but this is PURE cinema—and abstraction as seen by Kandinsky_ pure form, pure colour, ..space, texture, sound, light the essence of modern art..quite a magnificent creation ..and we are the "flâneur " in his little collection of cities.  Baudrillard is in the wings, so is Baudelaire , watching, wondering, taking it easy, enjoying the surfaces, the graffiti, the sounds , the new urban space devoid of living creatures..DONT miss this…Le théâtre de la pire espèce is a marvellous bundle of youthful creative energy from Montréal,  that we hope to see again in Ottawa.

Anglophones and Francophones…will enjoy this…

Set by David Magladry . Photo: David Whitely.

The five actors in 17^th Century dress come tripping out on stage , dancing and bowing and acknowledging the audience with great glee and fun just before Chrysalde, a friend of Arnolphe bangs out the Three “coups” which signals the beginning of the show, on the French stage. The lighting suddenly suggests the gas lights of that period, the actors bow, move off stage and the performance begins. Director John P. Kelly proves from the first moments that he understands the stage conventions of French comedy of the 17^th century where the extremely playful rhythms, gestures and lighting effects make one almost expect the actors to begin speaking French! “Vous venez , dîtes –vous , pour lui donner la main? “ but then out comes “You’re saying you’ve come here to offer her your hand in marriage ?” and off it goes in English.

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Photo. Andrew Alexanderé.  On stage-  Manon St-Jules and Peter James Haworth

The acting space is nearly empty except for some carpets spread out in the middle of the floor. A series of beautifully lit rectangles suspended from the ceiling hang upstage, like fragmented screens where fractured drawings and rapid sketches of Walker, born with Cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome, appear and disappear at various moments. Downstage, actors perform the inner and outer journey of the parents, Ian Brown (Peter James Haworth) and Johanna Schneller (Manon St-Jules), telling their story of a severely handicapped son who has dominated their lives and given rise to Emil Sher’s play, adapted from the book by Ian Brown The Boy in the Moon. The story is moving, the dialogue is amazingly frank and honest. The question of abortion is raised at the moment of his birth while the most difficult moments of their early life with the son who has “deprived us of our privacy” and has exhausted them emotionally and physically, are portrayed with great precision and courage. The result is an extremely intimate portrait of a couple confronting a whole life of struggle with a child they love but whose needs devour their very existence.

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