Alvina Ruprecht

Be a Friend, the Musical: Orpheus Musical Theatre Society has produced a playful packaging of serious content that works for young children.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 22, 2013

Photo: Barbara Boston. Sammy Skunk (Fabian Santos) and Mommy skunk (Donna St.Jean).

Iris Winston’s award winning play for children, based on the trials and tribulations of Sammy Skunk whose physical difference turns him into a pariah of the Squirrel community, takes on some very serious issues about bullying, racism, prejudice and all the things that young people confront in schools and on the streets of our urban society. The audience of 3 to 10 years olds seemed to be listening intently to this musical adaptation as poor Sammy, (an excellent Fabian Santos who had all our sympathy with his fluffy white tail and oily black nose) sung about wanting so much to fit in after he and his mom (an upbeat and wise momma skunk, played with much warmth by Donna St. Jean) had to move to a new neighbourhood.

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Ta Douleur au théâtre français du CNA. Un troublant exercice de style qui assimile la danse à une manière de confronter les névroses

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 14, 2013

Photo: Ruel. Artistes Anne Le Beau et Francis Ducharme

La Compagnie Sibyllines, basée à Montréal, explore les rapports entre l’expression corporelle et le théâtre depuis un bon moment. Il suffit de regarder les créations telles que de l’Opéra de quat’ sous, Woyzek, Elles et bien d’autres où le mouvement synchronisé des comédiens devient un langage parallèle à celui de la parole, une tentative d’incarner l’essence même de la création scénique.

Ta douleur est une nouvelle incursion dans la mise en scène du corps qui évacue la parole, ou presque, puisque les quelques citations chuchotées paraissent quasi banales, malgré les références à Pétrarque, au cinéaste algérien Azzedine Meddour et au groupe hip hop indépendantiste québécois Loco Locass. Ce combat entre deux danseurs issus des formations solides, classiques ou contemporaines, se transforme en une rencontre passionnante entre un homme et une femme qui exhibent l’expression de toutes les douleurs possibles.

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Jesus My Boy at Saint Albin’s. The Christ Story Becomes a Family Narrative.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 9, 2013

Photo from St Lawrence Shakespeare Company

This monologue, created in 1998 in England by author/actor (John Dowie) and then performed by Tom Conti at the Haymarket theatre the same year, is now appearing in the Ottawa area thanks to Ian Farthing, better known to us as the director of the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott. Yes Mr. Farthing is an actor, who has worked and trained in the UK, has done musical theatre in Toronto and London. Now Farthing has taken on the fairly demanding role of the carpenter Joseph, the father of Jesus, as he tells the story of the nativity and the life of Christ from the point of view of a working class fellow, who happens to be the father of Jesus, as well as a poor Jew living under Roman occupation. That obviously changes his perspective of things. He has a very tolerant and unmacho vision of the Virgin birth which was surprising; he has a decidedly good knowledge of the Torah, of the squabbles between the different Jewish movements cohabiting in Judea at that period, and a pretty good political intuition about the way colonising Romans knew how to manipulate their own colonized, making it fairly easy to get rid of this trouble maker whom they eventually crucified.

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Ethan Claymore : a warm feel-good family show that is just right for the Christmas Season

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 6, 2013

Tim Oberholzer as Ethan Claymore. Photo: Andrew Alexander

A feel good story of complicated family relations, headed by the shy, retiring, slightly recluse Ethan Claymore who has withdrawn from social life for five years because of his wife’s death. Thanks to a well-intentioned interfering neighbour, a caring school teacher and a ghost seeking redemption, he is dragged out of his state of mourning and brought back to life. Paul Rainville plays the volatile, hilarious neighbour Douglas Mclaren, , bristling with energy, excitement and with just as much chili pepper as they put into that hot chocolate that was served after the show. Rainville stole the show hands down. No matter however, because we know that when Paul Rainville makes his moves on stage, he overflows with so much temperament and stage magic that no one can overcome his presence. This time was no exception.

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Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliette): Lively, bright and lots of fun.

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 29, 2013

Photo: GCTC Zach Cousil and Geoff McBride

Thanks to Ann-Marie Macdonald’s witty, and intelligent script, director Ann Hodges and her cast have shown us what a well written play this really is. When the Queen of Academe, Assistant professor Constance Ledbelly is projected into the world of her Shakespearean research, she finds herself interfering with the important moments of the plots of Othello and Romeo and Juliet as she searches for a more transgressive i.e. Feminist reading of the plays where the women refuse to be victims. Thus, the true author of these narratives, and even her own identity, must be revealed…and all this on the eve of Ledbelly’s birthday.

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Sylvia : OTS manages this New York doggy spoof with a certain class.

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 23, 2013

Photo: Origin unknown. Jerushah Wright, Madeliene Hall, and Jeremie Cyr-Cook.

Greg and Kate live in a fashionable condo in New York. Greg is in the process of a mid-life crisis and bringing home a stray dog is one of the symptoms. A. Gurney’s play takes the man dog relationship, uses it to spoof all sorts of contemporary identity issues by having “Sylvia” the dog, played by an attractive young girl (a petulant and talented Madeleine Hall) who talks like a human but who thinks and moves like a dog. The dog becomes a fetish object replacing all that is missing in the husband’s life, the incarnation of a submissive woman which all men dream to possess.

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La Loi de Tibi: L’éveil des damnés de la terre par la Cie parisienne l’Autre Souffle

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 21, 2013

La Loi de Tibi, de Jean Verdun, traduit en anglais en 2003. Adaptation, interprétation et mise en scène de Jean-Michel Martial avec Karine Pédurand, collaboration artistique de Sophie Bouillot. Une production de la Cie l’Autre Souffle, Paris.

Depuis Avignon, sur la scène de la Chapelle du Verbe incarné (2013), on parle de l’excellent jeu de Jean-Michel Martial. Cet espace à Avignon, intime et chaleureux, convenait parfaitement à l’œuvre de Jean Verdun (Mieux que nos pères, 2001) devenue Tibi’s Law dans la traduction de Robert Cohen , jouée en 2003 aux États-Unis. La troupe française (la Cie l’Autre Souffle), a gardé la version américaine du titre car il recèle quelque chose de biblique qui rehausse les propos du personnage quasi shamanique de « Tibi »

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Tartuffe : a near slapstick version of the original that reveals the emergence of a popular theatrical language of literary status.

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 22, 2013

Andy Jones and Christine Brubaker. Photo Micaela Morey.

Actor/writer Andy Jones is extremely modest when he calls this version of Tartuffe, a loosely adapted and even more loosely translated version of Molière’s 17^th century satire of religious hypocrites . Molière’s Le Tartuffe, targeted the spiritual guides obsessed with sin, originating within Jansenism, a religious movement of the period. There is much vicious anger in Molière’s satire that goes for the jugular in no uncertain terms. Jones’ magnificent text is pure comedy while keeping the original narrative, and more to his credit, by maintaining the rhyming form. He has not maintained the 12 syllabic verse form of the French alexandrine but his rhymes work very well and that is not an easy task. The result is a dialogue that is savoury, luscious, popular, vulgar, poetic, earthy, metaphorical, and a most exciting mixture of images and language levels.

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Sparks: Fires Flicker at the Avalon Studio performance space as NORT opens the new Studio-Theatre on Bank Street.

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 12, 2013

Poster courtesy of the New Ottawa Repertory Theatre. Sparks, a new play for a brand new theatre space seems like a fitting choice as the New Ottawa Repertory Theatre opened its 2013-14 season with the work by Doug Phillips, Sparks. NORT performances are usually seen at the Ottawa Theatre School on Picton Avenue in Westboro Village but this time they are one flight up at 738 Bank Street which has been transformed into a modern space for theatre classes as well as an acting space for small theatre productions.

Clearly, the whole evening was in a discovery mode. Sparks takes place in a fireworks factory in Smith Falls, where six workers are re-packing fireworks to be sent around the world. Each worker, two women and four men, has his/her own obsessions, personal problems and they all pour out during that hour long show as they stand behind the packing table putting fireworks in the boxes. Moments with Jennifer Vallence as the provocative Cindy are excellent and the withdrawn Charlie Ebbs, who never eats lunch, creates a sense of pathos that might have gone even further. Tensions build, tempers fly as all the frustrations of this microcosm of the Canadian working class, are thrown back at the “ruling classes”, represented by the owner of the plant, Julie (Annette Cole). Director Paul Dervis fittingly placed her in an office on the upper level of the stage to represent the power that dominates them all and controls their lives.

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Salves, Compagnie Maguy Marin: A Contemporary Gaze on the Ultimate Destruction of Humanity.

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 4, 2013

A glowing last supper that explodes in a burst of colour, announces the end of humanity. A reversal of all the Christian symbolism that has penetrated western society as the performers emerge from a fragmented darkness, punctuated by flashes of light, by shadowy moments where dark figures scurry by like rats, where humans are lit as though struck by lightning or bathed in ominous rumblings of machines, and sound bites extracted from a dying culture. Salves by Maguy Marin is a powerful gaze projected on our contemporary world that captures the way we are defiling and ultimately destroying ourselves. This visual sound poem is dominated by Antoine Garry’s sound design, by Alexandre Béneteaud’s lighting design, by the collected efforts of Louis Gros and Pierre Treille with their magnificent props, and ultimately by Maguy Marin’s deeply layered choreography and visual design – a great global retelling of human history.

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