A few years into the future in North America, the ethics of assisted suicide are no longer under discussion because helping the terminally ill to end life has been legalized. Therefore, the procedure is now just a matter of routine, or is it?

In 2020, playwright J.P. Chartier (who also plays a husband almost involved in a love triangle) apparently sees no need to rerun the pros and cons of euthanasia. Rather, he points to the more enduring questions of love, greed and emotional involvement impairing scientific calculation.

The dichotomy limits the impact of the show. The degree to which it succeeds is due to the slick production qualities, careful direction and good performances.

The biggest negative is the way that Chartier leads the audience astray in suggesting who the next subject on the deathbed might be.

Artbeat Theatre Group

Directed by Sarah Hearn

Written by J.P. Chartier

Cast: J.P. Chartier, John Collins, Alexa Higgins, Mike Kennedy, Thea Nikolic, Jennifer Vallance

John Muggleton (Valmont) and Venetia Lawless (la Merteuil)  Photo: Alan Dean

What do British singers Adele and David Bowie have in common with pre-French Revolution society?

Very little, it seems. Yet, recordings by the 24-year-old Adele and occasional pieces by 65-year-old Bowie are director Geoff Gruson’s choice of background (and too often intrusively foreground) music for the Ottawa Little Theatre production of Christopher Hampton’s Dangerous Liaisons.

Based on the 1752 epistolatory novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the drama is about the evil games of rivals and former lovers, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who use sexual connections to humiliate and destroy their victims.

Perhaps, Gruson intends the jagged disconnection between musical style and setting to raise awareness of the decadence of the French aristocracy and/or to point out that sexual degradation is timeless. However, the effect is more often jolting and starkly inappropriate for a period piece, particularly when a violinist in 18^th-century costume follows the opening of 21^st-century pop music.

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The maiden voyage of the Titanic — fueled by greed, incompetence, indifference and a rigid class structure — was a recipe for disaster. By contrast, the 1997 Peter Stone/Maury Yeston award-winning musical — firmly rooted in historical fact, music that recalls the period and (thankfully) devoid of sentimentality — is a recipe for success.

So is the beautifully sung Orpheus Musical Theatre Society production of Titanic the Musical — a work that is as much opera as it is traditional musical theatre.

The well-researched vignettes about a small selection of crew members and passengers from each of the three classes on board, gives a human face to the massive maritime disaster that is far more powerful than the horrendous statistics: 1,514 people drowned after the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg on April 15, 1912; just 710, most of them first-class passengers, survived. Many more of the 2,224 on board would have lived, if the ship had carried the requisite 54 lifeboats instead of just 20, but the ship’s owner, the White Star Line, and the designer opted for additional space on the luxurious first-class decks and cabins instead of safety. After all, the huge ship was touted as unsinkable, wasn’t it?

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Even the rare person who has never seen a production of Romeo and Juliet knows the fate of the young lovers from the outset. In the first place, William Shakespeare tells all in the prologue. Then, the young lovers’ names are frequently used as a metaphor for love and for a tragic ending to a love story.

In addition, it is one of the Bard’s most frequently performed plays. Not surprisingly, directors often try to insert a fresh take, offering a different time, place or even linguistic view. For example, in one of the most memorable versions that I have seen, Romeo stood on the back of a truck in the famous balcony scene, members of the warring families spoke either French or English and the rumbles (rather than token fights) between Montague and Capulet supporters were really intense.

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Talk about the willing suspension of disbelief. Derek Benfield’s Beyond a Joke requires acceptance of a concept stretched to the limit of credibility and beyond.

Six people have died suddenly while working at Jane and Andrew’s country house in England. Unfortunate accidents, it seems, but little wonder their daughter’s fiancé suspects murderous intent. And when the body count goes up, his suspicion seems justified.

It is extremely challenging for actors trying to maintain a semblance of normality in such a setup, even with a realistic and workable indoor/outdoor set, designed by Paul Gardner. All but one of the cast of the Ottawa Little Theatre production directed by Dorothy Ann Gardner rise to the challenge to some degree, but only one is entirely believable throughout and completely at ease with the Oscar Wilde comedic style of making the insignificant important and vice versa.

Sarah Hearn plays Andrew’s sister with total assurance as a pragmatic, no-nonsense woman, ready to roll up her sleeves to dispose of dead bodies or sit in an oasis of calm reading the newspaper.

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How much does cultural identity depend on language? No, this question is not sparked by Justin Trudeau’s recent musings about Quebec separation. It is about the theme at the heart of Brian Friel’s 1980 play Translations.

Set in the fictional village of Baile Beag, Ireland, in 1833, this ensemble drama can be taken at many levels — as a social history of hedge schools, the recounting of historical events shortly before the potato famine when British soldiers did create an ordnance survey map bearing anglicized place names, a description of Ireland’s transformation from rural Gaelic society to colonial nation, an attack on colonialism, a love story or a murder mystery (without a definitive answer), or a metaphor for communication..

Take it as you will, but Friel has said that Translations is “a play about language and only about language.”

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