Jamie Portman, Author at Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Rabbit Hole : Kanata theatre at its best.

By Jamie Portman | February 14, 2013

David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole, offers a carefully-textured examination of how individuals, in their various ways, deal with grief and loss. It’s tricky material, a drama in which a moment of silence can be as powerful as a cascade of words and in which locked-in sorrow can be more palpable than an unfettered outpouring of emotion.

There is a cathartic process underway as bereaved parents Becca and Howie attempt to resume living following the accidental death of their four-year-old son. But as the play gently but firmly makes clear, their journey out of darkness is not an easy one — indeed, as is so frequent in such situations, their own relationship is in jeopardy.

It’s a measure of Brooke Keneford’s thoughtful, measured production for Kanata Theatre that the play’s final memorable moments do not slide into an easy, comfortable glibness. They are touching, but they don’t evoke closure: what they offer is hope and a continuation of the healing process.

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Bat Boy The Musical: Gladstone Production Enhances the Material

By Jamie Portman | January 25, 2013

The cult status of some shows can often be mystifying. Take the 1997 off-Broadway musical Batboy which has romped onto the Gladstone Theatre stage in a spirited production far more worthy than the material itself.

With its unapologetic excess of camp, its determination to send up the conventions of both the horror movie and the Broadway musical, its cheeky disregard of the need for psychological plausibility or characters which go beyond the stereotype, Batboy (which was inspired by a spoof news item in the satiric publication, Weekly World News) may strike purists as a mess. However, rather like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, it’s a mess that insists we like it — but to serve that purpose, you need ensemble playing which goes beyond the call of duty. We get that thanks to director Dave Dawson, obviously an adroit ringmaster when it comes to this sort of thing. Even so, what we’re left with is the tritely familiar story of the loner kid who wants to belong; that the musical is also seeking to send up this cliché plot merely adds to the thematic confusion, given that despite the show’s anarchic disposition, we actually feel sorry for the title character. …

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The Number 14: What seems to be entertainment for the Jackass crowd is a actually a brilliantly executed performance of popular theatre.

By Jamie Portman | December 3, 2012

Photo: courtesy Axis Theatre Company

On one level, The Number 14 represents a brand of populist entertainment that finds humour in demented street people, fart jokes, picking your nose in public, peeing your pants, randy clerics, mooning and the use of a Cheesy as a phallic symbol.

So notwithstanding the hyperbole surrounding this 20^th anniversary production from Vancouver’s celebrated Axis Theatre Company — including the “classic” label applied to it by Eric Coates, artistic director of GCTC, which under whose umbrella the Ottawa engagement is happening — it seems sensible to keep things in perspective.

Under normal circumstances, much of the material in this zany catalogue of happenings on an imaginary Vancouver bus route could be dismissed as painfully sophomoric, dominated by the sort of calculated, nose-thumbing bad taste associated with mindless adolescents who refuse to grow up. In brief: entertainment for the Jackass crowd.

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November: One of the season’s best productions!

By Jamie Portman | December 2, 2012

Director John P.Kelly. Photo: David Pasho

Anyone who cares about about good theatre should keep an eye on what’s happening at the Gladstone, a venue with a growing track record for eclectic, adventurous programming and generally high production values. Unfortunately, it tends to be overshadowed by the more prominent presences of the National Arts Centre and GCTC — and this could be dangerous to the Gladstone’s long-term financial health. It’s a place that merits our support.
> All of which is a preamble to saying that this Gladstone Avenue venue is currently housing SevenThirty Productions’ outrageously funny take on David Mamet’s scathing political satire, November, and that it deserves to be playing to sell-out houses. It’s highlighted by Todd Duckworth’s hilarious performance as the dim-witted president of the United States — and if this bumbling narcissist reminds you of George W. Bush, it’s not likely that either Duckworth or director John P. Kelly will quarrel with you.
> Mamet’s play unashamedly embraces cartoonry and blunt-edged caricature in the course of his zany account of one chaotic day in an Oval Office neatly re-imagined for the Gladstone stage by set designer David Magladry. It’s a day which sees the foul-mouthed and self-absorbed President Charles Smith working himself into a lather over the probability of being ousted from office by the electorate. He’s further obsessed over the probability of not having the money to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors by setting up a presidential library in his name. Smith revealingly keeps mispronouncing this institution of his dreams, referring to it as his “libary” — and that’s scarcely surprising given that this whining cretin doesn’t appear to have ever read a book in his life.

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Mr. Pim Passes By : Getting there is all the fun, something the artists dont always remember

By Jamie Portman | November 28, 2012

It’s easy to dismiss Mr. Pim Passes by as a mere trifle, a 93-year-old relic of British theatre as it once was. But to do so would be to undervalue both the material and A.A. Milne’s cunning and craftsmanship as a popular playwright. Indeed, it’s should be noted that for much of Milne’s long writing career, his immense reputation was not defined by the world of Winnie The Pooh and Christopher Robin but by his success in live theatre.

Plays like The Dover Road, Mr. Pim Passes by and The Man In The Bowler Hat (a deft confidence trick which used to be a staple of one-act play festivals) remain worthy of attention. So does the engaging production of Mr. Pim Passes By now on view at the Ottawa Little Theatre.

Still, one feels that the OLT revival, directed by Joe O’Brien, could have been even more of a romp. The production certainly aims for the right note of whimsy, beginning with a playful set design from Robin Riddihough. And it does feature some solid performances. However, it also seems stylistically uncertain, and this occasionally reduces the laughter quotient.

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Mary’s Wedding: A beautifully realized, atmospheric production.

By Jamie Portman | November 12, 2012

Photo: Wendy Wagner

Wendy Wagner, the director responsible for Kanata Theatre’s splendid production of Mary’s Wedding, is right when she terms the play a challenge for all concerned.

Stephen Massicotte’s award-winning drama about young love and the trauma of the First World War is a lyrical mood piece, essentially non-linear as it guides us through the past, the present and — yes — the imaginary. And the delicate touch it requires is honoured in this beautifully realized, atmospheric production.

It’s a familiar plot line — in this instance the love between Mary, newly arrived from Britain, and humble Saskatchewan farm boy Charlie, and what happens when they’re separated by war — but it’s one which can still carry emotional resonance, particularly when the characters are as well defined as they are in this play. However, there’s also a rarer quality at work here. Mary’s Wedding occupies a different plane of truth, with its events and emotions filtered through the sensitive prism of Mary herself.

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Fly Me To The Moon: John P.Kelly’s Production at the GCTC is a Winner

By Jamie Portman | November 6, 2012

Whatever degree of success Marie Jones achieves from her dark but undeniably funny comedy, Fly Me To The Moon, is dependent on her dexterity in continuing to weave continuing variations on one central situation. And any stage production’s degree of success is dependent on how well it responds to both the opportunities and challenges presented by the script. On that basis, John P. Kelly’s production for the Great Canadian Theatre Company is a winner.
The central dramatic situation, essentially, is this: Frances (Mary Ellis) and Loretta (Margo MacDonald) are two Belfast care-workers who take advantage of the potential windfall that confronts them when Old Davy, the elderly pensioner they look after, dies in the bathroom.

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The Death of Dracula: A Deftly Structured Play Whose Virtues are Often Evident in Phoenix Players’ Production

By Jamie Portman | November 1, 2012

The best known stage version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the one originally written in 1924 by Irish actor and playwright Hamilton Deane and later revised by John Balderston. It has enjoyed a long and productive life and, as recently as 1977, received a successful New York revival starring Frank Langella as Western culture’s most famous vampire.

Even so, one can still make a case for a made-in-Canada version. The Death of Dracula, by the late Edmonton playwright, Warren Graves, is a deftly structured piece of theatre and in some ways more lively and less creaky than the Deane-Balderston adaptation. And its considerable virtues are often evident in Jo-Ann McCabe’s production for Ottawa’s Phoenix Players.

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The Glace Bay Miners’s Museum: Subdued Moral Passion Avoids the Perils of Melodramatic Excess

By Jamie Portman | October 23, 2012

How well has Wendy Lill’s 1996 play about a now-vanished mining culture worn? Well, that depends on how you perceive it.
> It’s easy to dismiss it as no more than a period piece with little relevance to the present. Or to protest the lack of epic dimension to this examination of a company-controlled mining community in 1940s Cape Breton. Or to attack it for failing to be in a more experimental post-realist mode. …

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Neighbours The Musical! A Dismaying Waste of Time

By Jamie Portman | October 15, 2012

There was a moment in Goya Theatre’s production of Neighbours The Musical when it all came together. It happened when a group of neighbourhood kids, whose lives are purportedly being examined in this show, break into a tuneful and amusing ditty called What Will I Be. The song dealt with that most familiar of childhood preoccupations — what do I want to be when I grow up — but here it was enlivened by clever lyrics, lively music and performances which survived the dire staging and which showed genuine sparkle and spontaneity.

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