The title suggests that hiding from reality is one way to cope in the face of tragedy. And one of the greatest tragedies that can strike parents is the death of a child.

Too often, mainly because a couple attempt to assuage their grief in different ways, the terrible loss tears them apart. They do not have the inner resources to give or seek comfort from each other and often lose their marriage as well as their child. This is the premise behind David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007.

The drama opens eight months after Becca and Howie Corbett’s four-year-old son was killed in a car crash outside their home. He ran across the street after Howie’s dog just as a car, driven by a teenager, came round the corner. Becca had just run inside to answer a phone call from her sister, Izzy. Everyone involved feels a degree of guilt for the fatal accident. …

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A play set in and around water is bound to make something of a splash. But, apart from providing a handy opening sentence, just what is the purpose of setting most of the action in and around water?

Supposedly, the aim is to demonstrate the transformative nature and power of water, underlined by the opening sequence and the initial reference to creation and the development of order from chaos. But, the symbolism creaks a bit.

Playwright (and original director) Mary Zimmerman based Metamorphoses on David Slavitt’s translation of Ovid’s narrative poem relating a number of Roman myths. Ovid’s work, written in 8 A.D.— the same year that the Roman Emperor Augustus banished him for the immorality of his writings — is sometimes called a mock epic. …

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Photo de Maria Vartanova

Family or country? Money or morality? These are the choices at the core of Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons.Sparked by the case of an Ohio manufacturer, whose daughter reported him to the authorities for supplying the military with faulty machinery, All My Sons was Miller’s first award-winning drama.

Like Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955), All My Sons offers a portrait of a society, firmly rooted in its time and place, as well as focusing on human flaws and individuals at a pivotal point in their lives.

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Great dancing, plenty of glitz but little heart and no subtlety.

It seems virtually impossible that the brilliant 2000 movie Billy Elliot, adapted into a highly acclaimed award-winning musical could become such an unmoving show.

But, despite some strong performances and the occasional – very occasional – touching moment, this touring production does little more than go through the motions.

The story of the motherless Geordie kid from a poor mining town, who dreams of being a ballet dancer, should tug at the heartstrings, particularly set against the backdrop of a bitter strike in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s.

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Coming to the Gladstone, Dec. 27-28-29

 Vernus says Surprise!    Technology can speed communication. Ask all the folks who cannot bear to be separated from their BlackBerrys, iPads, cellphones etc. But, for the generations that are more familiar with the horse-and-buggy era of face-to-face communication, it often results in isolation and confusion.

This is the key message of Ken Godmere’s Vernus Says Surprise, in which he presents a beautifully textured, almost wordless presentation of an 89-year-old man trying to navigate an electronically dominated world to buy a special birthday gift for his granddaughter.

The perfectly timed coordination of movement and soundscape, together with the visual of a shuffling, stooped-back old man with his pants up to his armpits and his too-short tie, create an extremely well conceived, well-executed and moving portrait with – as the title says – a surprise ending.

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Photo: Alan Dean

The popularity of the Jim Jacobs/Warren Casey 1972 musical Grease has always surprised me. The storyline is weak. The subliminal message is immoral (Put out if you want to get the guy) and most of the characters are one-dimensional.The positive aspect of the show is that it is a good vehicle for a display of high energy dancing and strong singing voices.While the Suzart production does feature some good voices and occasional bouts of lively dancing, the main impression is of a lack of energy. Verbal exchanges are stilted and punctuated with long pauses as the show drags along painfully slowly. The attractive but over-ambitious set causes further delays. For example, while it may seem a neat idea to have a car on stage, the action would move faster without all the movements required to bring it on and take it off.

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“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton 1887

In playwright David Mamet’s view, as presented in his 2008 political satire November, Lord Acton’s dictum definitely still applies.

A week before election time, the polls show that current U.S. president Charles Smith is going to be a one-term failure. In a desperate attempt to hang on for a second term, he tries every legitimate and illegitimate way he can find to squeeze funds for a last-minute advertising campaign to boost his ratings.

In the SevenThirty Productions presentation of November, slickly directed by John P. Kelly, Todd Duckworth is simply terrific as the sinking president. Maintaining a knife-edge balance between humour and pathos, he is always believable, despite the excesses that Mamet has injected into his character.

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Photo: Alan Dean

Playful, fanciful, unpredictable — all synonyms for whimsical, the adjective that crops up frequently in reference to A.A. Milne’s comedy of manners, Mr. Pim Passes By.

Written in 1919 and first performed by Ottawa Little Theatre in 1922, it is a fitting representative of the decade during the 100^th anniversary season.

It is also a remarkable example of how views on morality and proper behaviour have changed in the intervening 90 years. The crisis created by Pim (or his faulty memory) causes the Marden family much distress in the context of the times. Today, it would probably be shrugged off or, at best, shoved under the carpet. How worried would a 21^st-century couple be to find that their marriage might be invalid and that they have been living in sin (gasp) even if they were the local justice of the peace and his spouse?

Appropriately presented as a period piece, the OLT production, directed by Joe O’Brien and costumed by Glynis Ellens, gives the sense of the early 20^th century, although occasionally performances are a little too campy for my taste.

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