Photo:Maria Vartanova. Susan Monagham and Shaun Toohey

Computer pioneer and code breaker Alan Turing was a man of extraordinary ability. He was also a social misfit, as a genius often is. In addition, his sexual orientation, combined with his outspokenness and naiveté in an era when homosexuality was illegal in his native Great Britain, led to his downfall.

Turing is credited with shortening the Second World War by being able to break Nazi Germany’s Enigma code. His punishment for “gross indecency”— the same charge that was brought against Oscar Wilde — was chemical castration, which ultimately, if indirectly, led to his death. (He was awarded an OBE for his wartime work and was posthumously pardoned by the Queen in 2013.)

Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 play Breaking the Code — like the 2014 movie The Imitation Game — is based on mathematician Andrew Hodges’ 1983 book, Alan Turing: The Enigma. The drama tells Turing’s story through 17 short scenes, moving between past and present, with cracking Enigma as the backdrop. In the foreground is the tortured presence of a brilliant eccentric, possibly with Asperger’s Syndrome, who broke the social code of his time.

…

Read More Read More

If you saw the 1987 movie, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, then you know exactly how Dirty Dancing will play out on stage.

In many respects, the aim of the touring production currently at the National Arts Centre’s Southam Hall, seems to be to reproduce the movie — hence the many scene changes and the use of video effects to deliver fields of waving grass, watery playgrounds and, of course, projections of dancers.

Despite the note in the program that the stage show contains a number of songs that were not included in the movie version, the film trumps the stage show, primarily because on stage the flimsy nature of the dated book is more evident.

But, as long as you understand that a show whose most famous line is “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” is unlikely to have a complex and meaningful script or message and that there will be only passing references to major events of historical importance, you can just sit back and enjoy a blast of high energy, some good dancing and a couple of fine singers. Soloists Doug Carpenter and Jennlee Shallow do a particularly fine job.

…

Read More Read More

Hillbillies and commedia d’ell arte are an unlikely combination, but this is the style delivered in Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s Take Me Back to Jefferson.

In adapting William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying, Michele Smith and Dean Gilmour rely primarily on physical theatre and the imagination of their audiences rather than on elaborate sets or lengthy speeches.

The dying matriarch of the family wants to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson. Therefore, her poverty-stricken family attempts to comply, meeting the extreme challenges of flood, fire and impassable roads along the way — not to mention one of their number losing his mind, a second breaking his leg (stupidly cast in concrete) — while their selfish patriarch bullies them all, the pregnant, teenage daughter of the house tries to arrange for an abortion and a little cruelty to animals is thrown in for good measure. …

Read More Read More

Photo: Wendy Wagner

The Lion in Winter began with a whimper rather than a bang, lasting for fewer than 100 performances on Broadway. Its future looked up when it headed for the silver screen with Katherine Hepburn in the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

But a recent West End revival was described as “Broadway hokum” by Michael Billington of The Guardian. Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph was a little more positive in talking of it as “historical hokum but high class hokum much funnier on stage than in the overblown film.”

Set up to portray the ultimate dysfunctional family, James Goldman’s script throws in the odd tender moment in his portrayal of the love/hate relationships between King Henry II, his wife, Eleanor, their three sons, Richard, Geoffrey and John and Alais, the sister of Philip, King of France. She was betrothed to Richard as a child, raised by Eleanor and is now Henry’s mistress.

…

Read More Read More

Photo: Maria Vartanova

The familiarity of the songs Vera Lynn made famous during World War II settles an audience into a comfort zone as the show begins.

Attractively presented by Arlene Watson in the Ottawa Little Theatre production of Goodbye Piccadilly by Douglas Bowie, all is well with the world through such numbers as We’ll Meet Again until the pianist runs off mid-song — a situation that is not explained until late in the show.

A family drama/comedy/borderline farce about the awkward connection between two families, Goodbye Piccadilly is styled in short sequences that are a constant reminder of the playwright’s background in screenwriting.

Strong direction by Sarah Hearn and some good performances from the five-member cast do much to overcome the slowness of scene changes and the difficulty of suspending belief long enough to accept the premise or the unlikely resolution of the play. Such moments as the angry hymn sing-off between Bobbie and young Cecil are very funny and Watson’s beautiful singing throughout the show would give any script a lift, but can’t rescue it completely.

…

Read More Read More

Sabrina Fair is a Cinderella story that makes wealth the key to overcoming class differences.

In the 1964 movie adaptation of Samuel A. Taylor’s romantic comedy, which premiered on Broadway in 1953, Audrey Hepburn played Sabrina. As the daughter of the long-time chauffeur of a rich Long Island family returning after five years in Paris, her combination of innocence and sophistication was so memorable that her performance continues to cast a long shadow more than half a century later.

In the Ottawa Little Theatre production, directed by Venetia Lawless, the slim, dark-haired Jane Chambers plays Sabrina somewhat in the style and image of Hepburn. She even sounds a little like the movie star, particularly in the exposition-heavy Act I. Despite her lively characterization, Chambers — and Lawless — might have been wiser to present a slightly different take on Sabrina. (In fact, the playwright’s son, David Taylor, has been quoted as saying “My father said — I think quite rightly —  that to do the exact same movie that had been made in the 1950s was wrong, because the story didn’t make sense any more. [His] recommendation was: ‘At least cast a black actress!’”)

This aside, the OLT production is true to the time period (great costuming from Susan MacKinlay) and cast members have a clear understanding of their roles and social standing. …

Read More Read More

Welcome to a very dysfunctional family brought together by imminent death. Three sisters, Agnes, Theresa and Louise, assembled to care for their dying mother, reveal their insecurities, variances in memories of events and, most of all, hostility to each other.

Each of the three is deeply flawed, filled with resentment and hiding from the world in her own way. Agnes had escaped from the Cape Breton home by going west to begin an unsuccessful acting career in Toronto, drinking her way into oblivion — as her mother had done while the girls were growing up. Theresa, the “good” middle sister, is literally cloistered from the world since she became a nun, but is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. Meanwhile, the youngest sibling, Louise — officially regarded as the strange one — stayed at home. Her safety net is daytime television and a love of automobiles.

To add to the strain of the renewed togetherness among the three, their father wants to see them. Divorced from their mother long ago, he is now aphasic and living with a very young partner (and, as the girls find out, another man who is assumed to be her lover). …

Read More Read More

A documentary, enhanced by imagined conversations and dramatic licence, David Hare’s Stuff Happens follows the path that led to the Iraq war in 2003.

The play premiered in 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. Hare’s analysis focuses on the theory that “Iraq was essentially a war of opportunism.” The official rationale for the attack was that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction (not proven) that posed an immediate threat to the western world. The collateral damage/more likely reason for the attack was to overthrow and execute the dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Stuff Happens presents much of the story of the negotiations and lead-up to the war by quoting President George W. Bush and members of his administration. Hare also includes such imagined, but likely, private conversations between U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and between U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Punctuated with constant reminders that the justification for going to war was flimsy, Stuff Happens is a discomforting — though often amusing — account that aims to put the main players and events in perspective. …

Read More Read More

When words are the primary currency, a play about the protagonist’s loss of words is destined to be a major challenge.

Add to this the continuing parallelism between black holes in the cosmos and the jumble in the brain of an aphasic patient and the problems associated with Susan Yankowitz’s 1991 play Night Sky are multiplied.

She apparently wrote the script as a tribute to her mentor (and the director of the premiere in New York) Joseph Chaikin, who suffered aphasia following a stroke during open-heart surgery. He imposed three conditions on her script: that the heroine should be a woman; the aphasia should be the result of a car accident [big bang?] and that Night Sky should focus on astronomy.

Yankowitz complied and the result is almost a how-to manual for family and friends responding to someone with aphasia. Worthy as this may be, it is somewhat low in entertainment value, even if the brain and the cosmos are the last two remaining mysteries in the universe, as scientist Stephen Hawking claimed.

The Kanata Theatre production, directed by Alain Chamsi, appropriately sets the scene with a series of shots of the night sky. The return to earth is less successful. It begins at the tail end of a lecture by astronomy professor, Anna (Tania Carrière) — standing behind a lectern that looks as though it could stand a coat of paint. …

Read More Read More