Directed by J.D. Campbell  With Robert Welch

A smashing dialogue by one of Ireland’s foremost playwrights which has a wasted theatre critic  telling  us about his hallucinatory adventures with some strange creatures in London, of the vampire persuasion  who bring him a new lease on life. A heavy load for a single actor who does not happen to be Brendan Behan, Richard Burton or any one of those alcohol soaked geniuses of the Irish/British stage. John Koensgen tried this at the Cube Gallery a few years ago and did a rather good job with it. Robert Welch still has a long way to go before the character sinks in. On opening night, he was not at ease with the role. Welch still appears to be reciting his lines, moving according to his director’s instructions and is not yet really breathing life into this fascinating creature. He should begin by looking straight at the audience and engaging us directly in his tale.  A show that will probably grow.

St Paul’s Eastern United Church-473 Cumberland

Photo: Festival Magnetic North.

Seeing this play after so many years I realized just what a beautiful and important plays it is in relation to the body of Tremblay’s work. It is not only about his mother, whom he conjures up in this part autobiography, part auto fictional memory of a son trying to rectify a certain feeling of guilt.  It is also a manifesto of Tremblay’s theatre poetics, a document that gives us, in an oblique way, all the strategies that Tremblay uses to construct his plays.
Through the voice of this woman who barely has any education, who spends her time cleaning and baking and caring for neighbours and family, we learn all about his plays. She is the voice of the “people” who have an essential role in Tremblay’s theatrical world, and who have always been the focus of his work. In the prologue he makes a collage of references to all the great works of French theatre, even bringing Shakespeare and Lorca into the mix.

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Photo: Michael Cooper

Never has a lesson in Canadian history been such an exciting theatrical experience of laughter and horror. Brent Snyder’s overture ushers us into this Phantasmagoria dream world of Michael Hollingsworth, writer and director of the show. The writer even tells us this is a “Comedy of Manners, an historical epic, [showing] the goons of history in their own Goon show, a Canadian book of the dead, a merry tale told by ghosts and demons.”

That last little bit is the part I like. That is essentially what I saw: a tale told by theatrical ghosts and demons that brings us back to French Theatre of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. A performance in the French tradition the theatre of the “ Grand Gignol”.

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Photo. Andrew Alexander

Eddie May’s recent show is exactly the kind of theatre that its patrons would want to see. Based on Parker Brothers board game with a smithering of Murder by Death logic in the mix, it has seven hyper active characters who are all being blackmailed because of their criminal past. Drawn into a closed space by a mysterious person who will only remain a voice, they are manipulated by the voice and the situation and other things, until the identity of the blackmailer (and possible murderer) is discovered! In the meantime, the audience is asked to make suggestions about the blackmailer’s identity as the past of each of our intruders is brought to light. The text, which was written recently involves characters who do work “up on the hill” which made me wonder why they didn’t put in more topical pot shots at the politicians but as they said, they are not being topical. Still, any writer working in such a comic atmosphere could not have resisted the chance, given all the marvellous material at their disposal in the press recently. This makes me feel that writing is not the main focus of this group. They prefer action and that is what we got.

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Photo Andrew Alexander

From left to right: Michelle LeBlanc, Sarah Finn, David Frisch, Robin Toller, Sascha Cole, Dilys Ayafor. In the foreground, David Whitely as Dr. Givings

Sarah Ruhl’s naughty little contemporary comedy takes place in the early 1890s. It is centred on that highly controversial illness called “hysteria” which eventually became a way of defining sexual dysfunction specifically related to women in the sexually repressed Victorian era. The creation of a new-fangled apparatus called the Vibrator , thanks to the discovery of electricity, was thought to offer the most effective cure by massaging those sensitive female parts to the point of causing the “paroxysm” which was supposed to release all the pent -up fluids that were causing the inner strangling of the body. A bit later. Freud’s research linked hysteria to the subconscious and the way the body somatised the symptoms related to repression, such things as headaches, dizziness, paralysis and all sorts of illnesses , according to the doctors, that could be relieved by using the vibrator.

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Photo: Angelo Barsetti

Sébastien  Ricard.

French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès died at the age of 41, but not before leaving a body of dramatic work that cut deeply into contemporary theatre.  Although La Nuit juste avant les forêts is his first play, (1977), it seems even more relevant to us today than it might have when it was created over 30 years ago.

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Felaki theatre in Cairo, Performed in Arabic by Khaled Abol Naga in April, 2013.

I saw it Wednesday evening with Peter Froehlich but a different actor takes to the stage every evening, The reason will soon become evident as you watch the play.  The stage is almost bare. There is a chair, a ladder, a table. Two  glasses of water are placed on the table. There is some  simple lighting and  65 places for the audience placed in the front half of the Arts Court Library that has been slightly raked. Thank goodness.  Catriona Leger comes on stage to thank us for coming and to invite  Peter Froehlich to appear. He walks on stage,  she hands  him a sealed envelope and then exits, leaving Peter standing there with the envelope. He opens it..and starts reading………And thus begins the play.

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