Author: Iris Winston

A writer, editor, reporter and theatre reviewer for more than 40 years, Iris Winston has won national and provincial awards for her fiction, non-fiction and reviews. A retired federal public servant, she has seven books in print and writes regularly for local, regional, national and international newspapers and magazines, including Variety and the Ottawa Citizen. Iris lives in Almonte.
Pride and Prejudice : Lost in Translation

Pride and Prejudice : Lost in Translation

Compressing a wonderfully written classic novel into a two-act drama is always a major challenge. As it is virtually impossible to present a similar depth of character or intricacy of storyline, an adaptor is forced to make choices on what to omit.

In her adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Janet Munsil has chosen to concentrate on the story of the rocky romance between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Admittedly, this is the central theme of Austen’s rich novel, but it is only one aspect of her picture of the social scene in 19th century England. For example, when Lydia, the youngest of the Bennetts’ five daughters, returns after her elopement, she pushes ahead of her sisters to point out that, as a married woman, she takes precedence over the unmarried four. This key scene has vanished from Munsil’s episodic adaptation, although she retains Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s shock that all five daughters are “out” in society at once. The two, to my mind, belong together and are much more effective if both are included.

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Footloose: Orpheus Musical etc etc

Footloose: Orpheus Musical etc etc

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photo: Andrew Alexandre

The best reason for the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society’s choice of Footloose as its season opener is that the large-cast musical offers numerous opportunities for young performers to display their talents. The worst reason is that the storyline is painfully thin and the premise is highly implausible.

Based on the 1984 musical, the stage version opened on Broadway 14 years later and hung on for over 700 performances. In a similar category to Rent, Grease and other teenage-angst style of shows, it is simply not of the same quality as the other two (this from someone who is not enamoured of either Rent or Grease). In addition to the weakness of the Footloose script, most of the music is forgettable and the conclusion is obvious from the outset.

Set in Bomont, a bible-thumping small town in the backwaters of the U.S., the local minister, Rev. Moore, has convinced local lawmakers to outlaw dancing, which, like alcohol and drugs, he claims, was in part responsible for a car crash that killed four of the town’s teenagers (including his son).

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Mary’s Wedding: A popular choice given a production that pulls the play in two different directions

Mary’s Wedding: A popular choice given a production that pulls the play in two different directions

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Photo  Wendy Wagner

You can  never forget your first love, even on the eve of your wedding to someone else. This is the starting point of Stephen Massicotte’s Mary’s Wedding.  Set in 1920, the drama is part love story and part history of one of the lesser-known battles of the First World War.

On the night before her wedding, Mary is dreaming of Charlie, the farmboy who went off to ride into the jaws of death. Still filled with regret that she was too angry at his leaving to join the war effort to say a proper goodbye, she must come to terms with the past before she can embrace her future.

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Fly ME To The Moon: A fine balance between comedy and serious theatre

Fly ME To The Moon: A fine balance between comedy and serious theatre

Poverty has a starring role in Irish playwright Marie Jones’ newest work, Fly Me to the Moon. If two personal care workers, Frances and Loretta, employed at minimum wage to look after Davey, an 84-year-old invalid, had not been so desperately poor, they would probably not even have considered pocketing his last pension cheque after his sudden demise. And when his last bet on a horse race comes in at 100-to-one, they might not have decided to cash in on that too.

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Beauty and the Beast: Glitzy, Brash and Bubbly!

Beauty and the Beast: Glitzy, Brash and Bubbly!

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When a stage musical begins as a movie, it is often a challenge to match audience expectations in the new format. This is even more so when the original version was an award-winning animated feature film. Yet, despite the restrictions that transferring the 1991 movie to the stage imposes, the 1994 stage version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remains popular with audiences.

The touring production now in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre is glitzy, brash and bubbly. Complete with a mass of curlicues and 3-D effects, the set pieces evoke a children’s storybook—appropriately, as Beauty and the Beast began as a fairy tale.

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The Death of Dracula: Vampires and Bats for Hallowe’en.

The Death of Dracula: Vampires and Bats for Hallowe’en.

The myth of various forms of “undead” creatures, who survive by feeding on their victims’ blood, has existed for millennia. The word “vampire” was first used in English literature early in the 18th century. Early in the next century, John Polidori was frequently credited with developing the genre in his 1819 novella, The Vampyre. But it was Bram Stoker’s Gothic horror novel, Dracula, that has left the most enduring mark on tales of the undead since its publication in 1897.

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The Hollow at the OLT: Flamboyance and Heightened Melodrama Make for an Amusing Evening

The Hollow at the OLT: Flamboyance and Heightened Melodrama Make for an Amusing Evening

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Photo by Alan Dean.

Murder can certainly disrupt a quiet weekend in the country and upset the servants. This is the first lady of the Angkatell household’s major worry when one of the houseguests, the philandering Harley Street doctor, John Cristow, is shot dead.

The killing happens after an unusually long and somewhat tedious exposition. In The Hollow, Agatha Christie’s adaptation of the 1946 novel of the same name, the whodunit doyen devotes more time than usual to nuances of character and relationships, so that the murder is close to an also-ran against such issues as estate entailment and love gained, lost and rearranged.

In the Ottawa Little Theatre production of The Hollow, director Jim McNabb has chosen to backdate the play 20 years from its original setting in the 1950s to give a little more leeway for melodrama and the magnification of the flamboyance of some of the characters. This works well with the already flamboyant Lady Angkatell (delightfully and joyfully played by Danielle Silverman) and to a lesser extent with Theresa Knowles as movie star Veronica Craye. (It is a little difficult to understand why she plays the English-born, transplanted to Hollywood actress with a deep south U.S. accent.)

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Louise Pitre in Concert: A Terrific Concert!

Louise Pitre in Concert: A Terrific Concert!

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Take a fine singer with a pleasant personality equally at home in English or French. Add a first-class accompanist at the piano.Present in an intimate setting.This is a recipe for a terrific concert. And that is just what multi-award winner Louise Pitre provided in Perth on Friday, October 19. Whether she performed one of the songs from the hit musical Mamma Mia, in which she starred in Toronto and on Broadway, or an Edith Piaf song such as La Vie en Rose, she took her own advice to contestants in the CBC show Over the Rainbow — she is one of the judges — to feel the song and interpret the emotions in it honestly.

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The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum. Neptune Theatre Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary With a Canadian Classic

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum. Neptune Theatre Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary With a Canadian Classic

                                                                                                                 Inac_museum_0246__large-600x371 n 1940s Cape Breton, the price of coal was frequently death in the mines, overpowering fear, widowhood, chronic physical or emotional illness and unending poverty.

In playwright Wendy Lill’s 1995 stage adaptation of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum (one of the many incarnations of Sheldon Currie’s 1976 short story by the same name — also a novel, a movie — Margaret’s Museum — and a radio play) the equal shadows of crippling poverty and the threat of death underground are ever present

Photo :NAC

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Neighbours: Goya’s Production of a Musical From Manitoba

Neighbours: Goya’s Production of a Musical From Manitoba

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Trying to do too much often results in achieving too little. This is the impression left by Neighbours, a 1991 musical by Manitobans Craig Cassils and Robin Richardson.

The neighbours in questions are a group of kids who meet in the communal yard of what appears to be a subsidized housing complex (judging from the allusions to their backgrounds and problems).

Apart from trying to pack too many social and personality issues into too small a space, the writers maintain a noticeable silence about the supposed ages of the group. Only one child announces her age several times and she seems to be the most precocious five-year-old ever born. In general, all the characters use vocabulary more suited to adults and this diminishes the credibility in the encounters among the children — who are one-dimensional representatives of a single characteristic — as they swing back and forth between friendship and enmity. The aim, according to the writers, is to create a collage. Sadly, the result is more of a tangle of undeveloped storylines.

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