This Murder Mystery with puppets is a world premiere that probably should have waited a bit before going public. The set is fine, the lighting sets up the right atmosphere, the choice of music is exciting but the actor who manipulates all the puppets (9 or 10 of them) all by herself, is not quite at home with her script which has masses of movement, and individuals coming and going and just creating a complicated scenario. It is in fact one of Agatha Christie’s earlier plays that was never published, the puppeteer tells us –but maybe that is a way of getting our undivided attention.  As well, this puppeteer tends to forground herself instead of her puppets so we don’t pay too much attention to them.  Normally, there has to be some sense of illusion that the puppets come from their own world but we are caught in the world of Tara Travis the puppeteer who keeps asking us what we think and explaining everything. This constantly breaks the magic- certainly not  the best strategy,.aside from the fact that these  puppets are not very interesting creatures.

We are used to an excellent puppet tradition from the western part of Canada with Ronny Burkett, Old Trout, One Yellow Rabbit…and this company (Ryan Gladstone Productions) certainly does not cut it- yet.  The fact some of the puppets fell apart during the show can happen I suppose but that can be fixed, as can forgotten lines and a sense of exhaustion that emanated from the actress. Nevertheless. there is still lots of work  to be done on this show . But perhaps  that is what the Fringe is all about  .. testing one’s ideas.

Who Killed Gertrude Crump plays at Arts Court Theatre.

A magical performance by Martin Dockery and Vanessa Quesnelle which captures the essence of theatre, the essence of performativity , perhaps captured better than any other writing for the stage  I have ever seen. This text and the way it is produced shows us that theatre is a point in time, a moment in space that only exists because it is repeated but that has no substance. When the performance is over, the character, the world represented, is gone, like the comet that streaks across the sky in the show which becomes the model for Dockery’s vision of performance. Theatre is that kind of ephemeral art form where “characters” are liquid, unstable, based on nothing but the space they occupy on stage during the performance. time.  These figments of someone’s imagination, constantly adapt to whatever meaning one wants to give them and when the play is over, they no longer exist, except in the memory of the audience. Dockery has used the beautiful voice of Quesnelle and a situation that plays out in various ways as successive mise en abyme, a chance encounter that moves forward in time.  Each encounter uses the same references (we are in a room, we meet for the first time, there is party next door etc etc) but each time the meanings of those references change and those changes transform the relationship between the two figures.

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Robert Marinier, David Frisch, Andy Massingham (on the floor)

Photo: Julie LeGal .

Yasmina Reza loves to torment the Parisian bourgeoisie, so well ensconced in its own particular snobbisms, its cultural traditions and prejudices. However, these people are also her theatrical audience so she does not want to insult them. Thus while teasing her (French) spectators, she shows that her special brand of middle class boulevard theatre also confirms the breadth of her audience’s cultural background. – An excellent strategy to keep the audience in a good mood and keep it laughing at itself. The play Art is such a double edged weapon in her theatrical dialectic and since Mme Reza’s plays are so well constructed, and her dialogue is so sparkling, they still make for an amusing evening of theatre.

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Counterpoint Players’ Corpus launches

a new collaborative theatre series

On May 2^nd, Counterpoint Players launched the innovative new theatre series, TACTICS – Theatre Artists’ Cooperative: the Independent Collective Series. The lineup for the 2014-2015 TACTICS season was announced at the post-show reception on opening night of Darrah Teitel’s award-winning play Corpus. Corpus is the pilot project for the series, which will be in residence at Arts Court Theatre.

TACTICS’ collaborative model of theatre gives local independent artists a chance to showcase their work in an affordable venue, and brings quality stories to the Ottawa stage. TACTICS is a series of independent Ottawa theatre productions that will run from November 2014 to April 2015 at Arts Court Theatre.

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Photo. Yves Renaud.  Scénographie de Michel Goulet

Albertine, un des personnages mémorables de la grande famille montréalaise créée par Michel Tremblay,  refait surface en 2014, après sa création  en 1982,  mise en scène à l’époque par André Brassard.
La pièce est un dialogue entre deux personnages, Albertine et sa sœur Madeleine,  assumé  par six voix dont chacune s’inscrit dans un espace/temps différent.  Chaque discours produit le fragment du récit  concernant la décennie représentée par la comédienne; cinq voix représentent Albertine à  30 ans, à 40 ans, à 50  ans, à 60 ans et à 70 ans.
La somme de ces fragments résonne comme une partition musicale où la superposition des lignes mélodiques distinctes constitue une construction musicale en contre-point comme dans une fugue de Bach.

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Photo of Cliff Cardinal courtesy of NAC English Theatre

An extremely talented young performance artist, Cliff Cardinal, a true theatre warrior, is clearly committed to an art form that makes a difference, an art that builds social relevance and social awareness. In his own words, he is exploring a world that has been neglected by theatre practitioners in Canada, one that addresses “Canada’s most taboo subculture: First Nations youth abusing solvents, at high risk of suicide.”

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