Transposée dans l’Afrique du Sud post-apartheid, Mademoiselle Julie de Strindberg prend un incroyable coup de jeune.
Ce qu’ont dit les critiques :
Photo. Veooz.com
Kate Hurman is one of Ottawa’s theatre treasures who is not on stage as much as she should be. Here, Director John P. Kelly has given her Geraldine Aron’s juicy monologue where she can show us the great variety of her talents. The play is written in the form of a diary, where a certain Angela Kennedy Lipsky, an Amercian living in the UK, tells us the whole trajectory of her post-marriage life. It begins at the beginning, with the sudden announcement by her ex-husband that he wants to leave. “Round Head” as she so affectionately calls him, quickly packs his bag and clumps down the stairs of their London flat, making a quick getaway to join his “Rosy” from Argentina, leaving Angela more than stunned.
Photo:Telegraph.co.uk Bongile Mantsai and Hilda Cronje.
Yael Farber is an extraordinary artist of the stage! Recognizing how Strindberg’s Miss Julie has established a brilliant framework for all forms of power relations, Farber transforms the play into a metaphor of contemporary post-apartheid South Africa where class, land rights, sexual tension, ethnic, social, political and cultural differences clash head on in a context of raging anger and lust, setting the background for a drama of tragic self-destruction.
The site of Farber’s version of the play, is the kitchen of a Boer homestead, located in the desert region of Karoo, where generations of racial and class struggle have not yet come to an end , in spite of the new political situation in the country. On this farm, where Julie (Hilda Cronje) lives with her father, the master of this land, she and John (Bongile Mantsai) the son of the master’s housekeeper, perform an intense and sexually charged death ritual which tears apart any form of “truth and reconciliation” that one might hope for.
Photo Sam Garcia. Cio-Cio-San(Shuying Li) and Pinkerton (Antoine Bélanger).
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, one of the three most popular operas in the Italian repertoire, was inspired by the true story of John Luther Long which Puccini discovered during a trip to London and which David Belasco turned into a play. The opera opened in Milan in 1904 where it was a resounding failure. However, after some changes, it successfully reopened three months later in Brescia, under the direction of maestro Arturo Toscanini. This story of a marriage between the American Navy lieutenant Benjamin Pinkerton based in Nagasaki and fifteen year Old Cio-Cio-San, foregrounds the romantic longings of the young girl caught in the grip of an underlying colonial relationship set up by Goro, the slippery marriage broker (tenor Joseph Hu)who had some good moments, and American naval lieutenant Pinkerton, seeking to spend his time with a local girl until he goes back to America to have a “real” marriage.
This is not a finished review because I was off to a theatre conference in Trois Rivières but this is a play that deserves a comment. Oil and Water is an important narrative that brings much to Canadian contemporary history but the play and especially the staging of the performance are terrible disappointments. How can one find a parallel between the oppression of miners in Newfoundland the poverty created by the end of the fishing industry, with racism in the United States?. …
A toi pour toujours ta MarieLou
Richard Bénard en gros plan.
À toi pour toujours ta Marie-Lou de Michel Tremblay, actuellement au Théâtre de l’île à Gatineau (Québec) est un petit chef-d’œuvre de mise en scène. Ce quatuor de voix, les deux filles (Carmen et Manon) et les parents (Léopold et Marie-Louise), mènent simultanément deux dialogues parallèles, dans deux espaces/temps différents où le décor symbolise le drame qui a déchiré cette famille par le passé, et continue à la ruiner. Marquée par les éclairages ingénieux et un paysage sonore puissant qui nous transporte bien bien au-delà de la réalité québécoise, cette représentation cerne un paysage cauchemardesque où tous les personnages arrivent sur le plateau comme des revenants, baignés d’une lumière bleuâtre d’outre-tombe, avant de s’installer dans leurs fauteuils où ils seront relégués pendant tout le spectacle.
Photo. Caroline Laberge, Evelyne de la Chenelière, Jean-François Casabonne, Violette Chauveau
Une œuvre troublante dont la trame s’inspire du roman de Marie Cardinal (Une vie pour deux), mais dont le style théâtral semble nous renvoyer à l’univers langagier et dramatique de Marguerite Duras. Un couple, Simone et Jean, passe leurs vacances en Irlande, pays des brumes, des fantômes, des revenants. Ils découvrent le cadavre d’une inconnue sur la plage, encastrée dans le sable, comme un fossile qui cache des secrets. De beaux effets de lumière aquatique transforment le sable en tombeau liquide et installe une étrange magie sur ce monde d’obsessions. . Tout d’un coup, nous voilà en pleine relation triangulaire tâchée de transgressions qui hantent le couple « durassien » (le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, L’amante anglaise).
Photo. Andrew Alexander . Tim Oberholzer as Hedwig and Rebecca Noelle in the background as Yitzak .
The Vanity project’s version of this glizty transvestite gender bender musical inspired much by David BowIe’s feminine Ziggy Stardust personality and her (his) tranformation to the male Bowie, shows us Hedwig , accompanied by her East German colleagues, frantically searching for the other half of her being. The epitome of Post-Wall divided culture, she takes us through her beginnings in post war torn East Germany in the aftermath of the destruction..bringing together all the music of the period including that of the biggest German and international stars of the time. With her ragingly campy non stop poetic banter , Mr. Hansel Schmidt (alias Hedwig) tells us the story of her personal evolution, her need to leave East Germany and her mother, and find freedom. Her escape, thanks to a throaty voiced male American, her tortuous gender shifting, closely linked to the symbolic of a split postwar Germany emasculated and divided by the wall. Identified to other splits such as its destructive German Jewish past. She speaks of ethnic cleansing, of post-wall European and American politics. Her alter ego Tommy Gnossis taunts her and shines across the way and brings us into the world of the "Who” bathed in parodies of the later Beatles, Nina Hagen and all the music of the period. Rebecca Noelle (a Johnny Depp look alike) but the lead singer of the local PepTides group and a magnificent voice that rivals Whitney Houston’s ( I will always love youuuuuu! ) is Hedwig’s sidekick. There are four back-up musicians including Stewart Matthews playing lead guitar!! Who would have believed that!! It’s one big surprise after the other.
Photo: Marianne Duval
Cette production remarquable de l’œuvre d’Ionesco, mise en scène par Sariana Monette-Saillant, sous la supervision de Tibor Egervari, révèle les talents de cette jeune femme ainsi que ceux de l’ensemble des étudiants qui suivent le programme de mise en scène à l’Université d’Ottawa. Monette-Saillant a saisi l’importance d’une vision stylistique intégrée dans l’écriture dramatique et surtout, elle a fait en sorte que cette vision domine l’ensemble de son travail.
Jeux de massacre, œuvre créée en 1970, est un clin d’œil à Artaud, au théâtre en général et à des scénarios apocalyptiques revus et corrigés par un désir de situer la fin du monde dans un grand carnaval scénique.
The passionate and troubled love story between Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel has a become a near legendary tale that has attracted artists, feminists, art historians, theatre specialists, psychiatrists and all manner of people interested in the functioning of the artistic genius. 
(Photos: André Tremblay)
Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal has brought in choreographer Peter Quanz’s version of this relationship which highlights Camille Claudel’s links to her family, her famous brother who was about to become a poet, diplomat and playwright (l’Annonce faite à Marie, le Soulier de Satin, Partage de midi et many more), her ongoing affair with the sculptor, the jealousy of Rodin’s wife, Camille’s plunge into the depths of depression, the fact that she destroyed most of her sculpture and the fact that her devoutly Catholic family, conscious of its good place in society, refused to support her. They would not recognize her genius and kept her interned for over 30 years. Brother Paul Claudel apparently did not make any attempt to help her either, something which strengthens my dislike of his theatre even more.