Iris Winston, Author at Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

9 to 5 : An Orpheus production of a musical that is sadly passé.

By Iris Winston | May 31, 2014

Photo: Valleywind Productions

9 to 5, The Musical is a reminder of the social restrictions of a past era, but sadly, much about this musical, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, is passé too.

In its first incarnation as a 1980 movie starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, it worked better than it does as a stage show full of short sequences and abrupt scene changes that recall the style of film. Little wonder that the recycled musical had only a very short run on Broadway in 2009.

While Parton’s autobiographical Backwoods Barbie and the title song are catchy, most of the rest of the music fades from memory as quickly as does the weak book by Resnick (who also wrote the movie screenplay).

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: This Suzart Production radiates infectious joy.

By Iris Winston | May 24, 2014

Photo: Alan Viau

The joy emanating from the stage is so infectious in the Suzart Productions presentation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that you overlook problem areas.

Never mind that the lighting operator has trouble focusing, periodically leaving Joseph and the Narrator in darkness at the beginning of their numbers. Never mind that several of the performers did not dispense with their spectacles before portraying folks in Ancient Egypt. It is not even a downer that poor enunciation makes some of the lyrics hard to understand or that not all the movement of chorus members is as crisp as it might be.

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Inherit the Wind: this fictionalized account of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” still provides an eloquent defence of tolerance in a sea of bigots.

By Iris Winston | May 18, 2014

Poster from Kanata Theatre.

The central argument of Inherit the Wind should be irrelevant today. Sadly, it is still front and centre.

Last week, a University of Saskatchewan professor was fired following a public disagreement with the university president. That the decision was later reversed after a firestorm of negative reaction does not alter the threat to freedom of speech in academia today.

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote Inherit the Wind in 1955, during the McCarthy era and the U.S. witch hunt to root out any vestiges of communism (real or imagined), thereby adding further texture to a drama that puts the right to think on trial.

Add to this that close to 50 per cent of Americans still say Darwin was wrong and Creationists who take the bible literally are right, little appears to have changed in the Bible belt’s view of the world. The Butler Act, which made it illegal to teach that human beings were descended from a lower order of animals, was not repealed in Tennessee until 1967.

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Nunsense A-Men : Toto Too Theatre is as talented as ever.

By Iris Winston | May 11, 2014

The nonsense of Nunsense has been habit-forming (pun stolen from one of the show’s numbers) since 1985, when it first played off-Broadway. Since then, an estimated 25,000 women around the globe have portrayed the good sisters of Hoboken in the show, which originated as a line of greeting cards, before moving to the stage. Nunsense has also given rise to numerous spin-offs. One of these is Nunsense A-men — the original script, presented by an all-male cast — first performed in 1998.

As delivered by Toto Too Theatre in their most recent production, Nunsense A-Men is as funny as ever. In fact, it is sometimes funnier and certainly even more irreverent than its female counterpart.

The main reason this production is never a drag is that the cast seems to be having such a ball. (Red high-top sneakers go so well with a black and white nun’s habit and a brightly coloured tutu and pink satin ribbons on ballet shoes really enhance a novitiate’s look, don’t you think?) The fun and frolic transmit to the audience immediately.

Even when the occasional number is sung with less than maximum punch, the joy remains front and centre. Spattered with double entendres and puns, the series of cabaret numbers presented by the nuns are a desperate attempt to raise the cash to bury the nuns who died after supping on vichyssoise made by the convent cook, Sister Julia, Child of God. (The last four of the 52 who died are stowed in the convent freezer and the nuns have just been given word that the health inspector is on his way…)

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Mauritius : A musical chairs of con artists is fast moving and absorbing.

By Iris Winston | May 4, 2014

Photo. Maria Vartanova

You don’t have to be an avid philatelist to be entertained by this drama about stamp collecting.

Essentially, Mauritius is a caper story with two legendary error-laden stamps as the treasure at the end of the rainbow. Conceived as musical chairs of con artists and propelled by the greed of all the participants, Mauritius is fast moving and absorbing. However, in focusing on the well-researched, main theme of a grab for rare stamps, playwright Theresa Rebeck chooses to allude to dark secrets and previous conflicts among the characters, without giving more than a hint of the back stories, a ploy that works only some of the time. Why, for instance, are the half-sisters who claim ownership of the family’s stamp collection so hostile to each other? What happened eight years earlier between the knowledgeable owner of the store and the psychopathic philatelist who craves the stamps? And did the third crooked philatelist have a connection with the younger sister before the con game began or did they simply come together because of the similarity of their goal?

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My Brilliant Divorce. A one-hander that works brilliantly

By Iris Winston | April 28, 2014

A one-person show works only if it is rich in content, has a fine dramatic arc, quality production values and, most of all, a first-class performer.

The SevenThirty/Pat Moylan production of My Brilliant Divorce by Geraldine Aron has all of the above.

Early on, it seems that it might be a lightweight comedy shrugging off the sadness of marital failure. But, Aron’s script moves on from the initial dismissal of the errant husband, through the gamut of emotions — anger, depression, loneliness, desperation — and actions ranging from the contemplation of suicide to the emotional suicide of trying to revive the dead marriage. Eventually, acceptance is followed by a new and healthier life after divorce.

Kate Hurman delivers a powerful and beautifully sustained characterization of Angela, the discarded wife who was once half of the world’s happiest couple, as well as throwing in cameos of a number of the people she meets on her journey towards survival with only her dog, Dexter, by her side and voices at the other end of the telephone to break the monotony of her life.

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Oil and Water: Clear the Clutter and You Have a Great Story

By Iris Winston | April 12, 2014

Photo. Barb Gray. Anderson Ryan Allen as the young Lanier.

Clear the clutter and you have a great story. The problem is that the debris is not out of the way until the last section of the show. That is just too long to wait for the many threads introduced in Oil and Water to come together in a meaningful way.

Built around the true story of the rescue of Lanier Phillips, a black sailor whose ship, the USS Truxton, ran aground in a remote Newfoundland community in 1942, Oil and Water moves between past and present. It parallels the experiences of Phillips’ grandmother, a slave, and his teenage daughter, who faces the violent prejudice associated with racial integration in the U.S., with the harsh life faced by Newfoundland coal miners in the1940s.

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Dancing with rage: Chutzpah mingles with rage as Mary Walsh bares her soul on the stage.

By Iris Winston | April 2, 2014

Photos Barb Gray.

It takes a particular kind of chutzpah to ambush political figures and conduct mock interviews. It takes nerve for a woman of a certain age (actually 61) to sport a ridiculous warrior princess outfit, complete with plastic sword. But both are as nothing compared to stripping down to unflattering, expansive and expanded spandex, black underwear and making fun of the aging body squeezed in and flowing out.

As Newfoundland comedienne Mary Walsh a.k.a. Marg Delahunty says, even the nuns who despaired of her through her schooldays never thought she would sink this low. But that is part of her charm for audiences. Her self-deprecating humour in general and this moment in particular (further enhanced by attacking the flesh flow with electrician’s tape) is one of the funniest and most endearing aspects of her one-woman show, Dancing with Rage.

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Drama at Inish. Melodrama by the sea.

By Iris Winston | March 31, 2014

Photo: Ottawa Little Theatre

The moral of the story is that too much heavy drama is bad for your health.

Making a joke about the dangers of being influenced by overdoses of Ibsen, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Strindberg might be sustainable for a one-act play, but the central gag of this parody wears a little thin through a full-length comedy.

But, director Sarah Hearn gives it her all in the Ottawa Little Theatre/Tara Players co-production of Lennox Robinson’s 1933 domestic comedy Drama at Inish. (It is rumoured that the playwright’s theatrical birth came after seeing a traveling theatre troupe perform an Ibsen play in his native Dublin, so one can assume he is poking fun at himself.)

In an effort to maximize the humour in the play, Hearn pushes the melodrama button hard, as cast members emote, swoon, beat their heads against mantlepieces and raise trembling hands to fevered brows.

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Seeds: Food for thought in muddied waters.

By Iris Winston | March 31, 2014

Photo. courtesy of the NAC English Theatre. Eric Peterson as Percy Schmeiser

Reality is the seed of any theatrical piece. And when reality is an epic struggle between a corporate Goliath and an individual David, art seems a perfect place to imitate life.

Playwright/journalist Annabel Soutar has developed a fascinating, dense (sometimes too dense) docudrama in Seeds, a powerful piece of verbatim theatre about the landmark court case of Monsanto Canada versus Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser. (The official name of the case was Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd. v. Monsanto Canada Inc. and Monsanto Company, indicating greater breadth of connections. U.S.-based Monsanto is a massive international corporation. Canola oil farmer, plant breeder and local politician Schmeiser owns a 1,000-acre farm.)

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