Jamie Portman has distinguished himself as one of the finest theatre critics in the country. He is presently a free lance critic , periodically writing reviews for theatre in Canada and in England for the Capitalcriticscircle and Postmedia-News (formerly CanWest). Jamie makes his home in Kanata.
The Hockey Sweater at the NAC is a Yuletide delight
You can’t deny the warmth and love that infuse the exhilarating production of The Hockey Sweater now at the National Arts Centre.
Indeed, one of the strongest features of this new musical, based on a beloved Roch Carrier story, is the affection that underlies it. It’s reflected in the insightful approach of Stratford Festival stalwart Donna Feore whose lively direction and choreography keep events in engaging over drive while also honouring the beating heart of Carrier’s evergreen memory piece about a young Quebecois boy (and devout Habs fan) whose world is shattered when the Eaton’s Catalogue people send him a Maple Leafs hockey sweater by mistake. …
Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story By Jacob Sampson
A Ship’s Company (Parrsboro, NS) production in association with Eastern Front Theatre (Halifax) at the NAC Azrieli Studio
Directed by Ron Jenkins
He’s blind and impoverished, a forgotten figure in a Harlem care home. Yet there’s something resilient about him. An element of ruefulness may underly his stoicism, yet there’s an almost jaunty suggestion that he remains one of the undefeated — in his own mind anyway. …
Ambiguity is a driving force of Quebec dramatist Carole Frechette’s gripping play, The Small Room At The Top Of The Stairs. More specifically it’s about the terrors that can lurk within that ambiguity — an element pursued by director Milena Buziak in her new production for the University of Ottawa Drama Department.
Uncertainty can wreak havoc on a fragile psyche, and newly married Grace is a prize specimen for a playwright whose cunning stage piece may present the outward trappings of a horror story but which is really concerned with the monsters that can rage within us. …
Cliffhanger by James Yaffe. Directed by Joe O’Brien. Playing at the Ottawa Little Theatre to Nov. 3
Cliffhanger is at best an indifferent play, and whatever strengths it does possess are not well-served by Ottawa Little Theatre’s current production.
Playwright James Yaffe’s apparent intention was to write a dark comedy-thriller about the world of academia while also attempting to bolster it with the more serious intent of examining the true meaning of ethical conduct. …
Fierce by George F. Walker. A Black Sheep productions
Gladstone Theatre to Oct. 13
You have to be careful with George F. Walker. The outward trappings of his plays can be so dramatically enticing that they can fool you into thinking you’re watching something good.
This prolific Torontonian knows how to set up a situation bristling with potential. And in the case of his recent play, Fierce, now at the Gladstone, it has to do with a psychiatric session that is driven off the rails by the patient. So yes, the idea is promising.
Walker also has an engaging ear for language, and his writing crackles with the kind of naturalistic dialogue that can seduce us into the world of his plays. It can be argued that playgoers aren’t getting a real world here; rather they are being ushered into Walker’s own restless landscape of the imagination. But no matter — major Walker successes like Zastrozzi, Theatre Of The Film Noir and Nothing Sacred show that it can be a weirdly credible landscape, albeit anchored to its own skewed reality.
But what of the credibility factor when it comes to Fierce? Let it be said immediately that this Black Sheep two-hander features outstanding performances from Pandora Topp, as an uptight psychiatrist named Maggie, and Emmelia Gordon as the patient who turns the tables on her. These two are compelling, but they are nonetheless attempting a salvage operation on problematic dramatic material. …
The thing to remember about the late A.R. Gurney’s charming comedy, Sylvia, is that it’s a love story — admittedly an unorthodox one, but a love story nonetheless.
On the one hand we have Greg, a Wall Street financier heading for a mid-life crisis. On the other hand hand we have Sylvia, the irrepressible pooch he has encountered in the park. In rescuing her from the threatening embrace of the Animal Control brigade and bringing her back to his apartment, he earns Sylvia’s unconditional love. …
I decided to post this review as well because of the background detail that could interest the public. A.R.
STRATFORD, Ont. — Tudor England in all its drama and turbulence continues to attract a huge following in today’s popular culture. From the reign of King Henry Vlll through to the Gloriana days of Elizabeth 1, we’ve had an unending cycle of popular and academic history, best-selling fiction, movies, television series and stage plays. …
Cloudburst. Photo Maria Vartanova. Stella, Dotty and Prentice: Maureen Quinn McGovern, Arlene Watson and Jason Hopkins
Cloudburst, Toto Too Theatre’s latest offering is a funny, profane, warm-hearted play about the enduring love between two elderly women in the dimming twilight of their lives.
An award-winning play from Nova Scotia dramatist Thom Fitzgerald, it is a touching but clear-eyed character study that focuses on a seldom-visited aspect of the gay culture — old age — and the very real crisis looming over the future of the feisty, uninhibited Stella (Maureen Quinn McGovern) and Dot, the sightless love of her life, played by Arlene Watson. …
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Nearly a century ago, Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne wrote a now-forgotten one-act play called The Man In The Bowler Hat. It dealt with the disruption of a conventional middle-class household by a sequence of melodramatic events that in performance could be done for real or, more commonly, take on the texture of a Monty Python spoof. …
Amelia Sargisson as Eve and Qasim Khan as Adam. Photo Cylla Von Tiedemann.
STRATFORD, Ont. — That could well be a white lab coat that Lucy Peacock is wearing when she first seizes our attention in Paradise Lost. To be sure, there are glimpses beneath of a clinging black outfit that makes its own insinuating statement, but the laboratory touch seems particularly appropriate given that this is someone who delights in treating human beings like specimens to be played with and driven into the abyss. …
