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 Gladstone unveils a fine new play with Finishing The Suit
Lawrence Aronovitch’s new play, Finishing The Suit, comes to us simply, without pretension. But this tender drama about a lonely gay tailor coming to terms with a crushing personal loss deserves attention from anyone who cares about good theatre.
This Bear @ Co. Production is at the Gladstone until March 11, and it may be recommended not only for a beautifully written 70-minute script, a piece both psychologically and culturally observant, but also for a trio of strong performances from Matt Pilipiak, Isaac Giles and David Whiteley. …
In terms of production quality, Infinity is probably as good as anything we’ve seen on an NAC stage in a while.
There’s Ross Manson’s excellent direction — responsive to the dramatic demands of Hannah Moscovitch’s script, adroitly managing its fluctuating rhythms and moods, seeking to give it substance and fluidity despite the authorial ambushes lying along the way.
In this, Manson is beautifully complemented by designer Teresa Przybylski’s deceptively simple cycloramic setting, which at times seems to be dissolving into destinations unknown. And she is supported here by lighting designer Rebecca Picherack who is making her own valuable contribution to a world of shifting shades and textures. …
It doesn’t take long to realize that there’s something terribly wrong with Ottawa Little Theatre’s misbegotten production of To Kill A Mocking Bird.
It’s there in the forced, stilted acting, in the lack of fluidity in the staging, in the clumsy handling of the expository passages in Christopher Sergel’s adaptation of the classic Harper Lee novel about a black man’s trial for rape in the small-town Alabama of more than 80 years ago.
John Collins’s direction is so flaccid and the performances so perfunctory that it takes a while even to be conscious of the hothouse emotional climate that is supposed to be taking hold of this racially-scarred community. Yet you keep hoping that matters will improve. Surely, you think, they won’t botch that first big dramatic moment when Atticus Finch, the accused’s gentle defence attorney, stations himself in front of the jail to stave off an attempted lynching by a blustering mob of rednecks.
But they do botch the scene, which is so badly executed that it becomes almost laughable in its unintentional parody.
To be sure, there are moments when the production does yank itself into some semblance of credibility.…
Photo: Colin Furlong as Joey Smallwood. Credit: Paul Daly
One suspects that the National Arts Centre’s production of The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams will have its greatest success with those playgoers who haven’t read the Wayne Johnston novel that inspired it.
Playwright Robert Chafe’s earnest, well-intentioned adaptation frequently manages to engage the viewer — although on a somewhat brittle level. But it lacks the epic sweep and emotional resonance of Johnston’s fictional recreation of the early life of legendary Newfoundland Premier Joseph Smallwood and his campaign to bring a proud but troubled island nation into Canada in 1949. Indeed, Jillian Keiley’s production, although revelling in fancy visuals and clever bits of business, never really communicates the high stakes involved in the countdown to Confederation. Given that the turbulent referendum vote required a second run-off, such lack of tension is astonishing …
It was Tolstoy who famously observed that all happy families resemble one another — but that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
So keeping this in mind, what are we to make of the dysfunctional household on view in Ottawa Little Theatre’s sterling production of Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 play, Other Desert Cities?
On the surface, things might seem okay when we’re first exposed to the Palm Springs home of Lyman and Polly Wyeth, with characters arriving through the French doors, cheerful and tired after tennis, and engaging in the kind of easy banter that you might expect with a Christmas family gathering. But there’s something not quite right about this Yuletide bonhomie. It’s a virtue of Geoff Gruson’s discerning production that you sense a forced artificiality in the things being said and you’re also aware of an underlying tension because of things left unsaid.
This is tricky to bring off, particularly with a script burdened with exposition challenges in its first section. But Gruson has a cast capable of facing these pitfalls as it proceeds to define characters who will increase in complexity as their worlds begin to unravel.
There’s no doubt that the National Arts Centre has unleashed an intriguing production of something this Yuletide season. And yes, it purports to be A Christmas Carol — indeed the printed program tells us that the Dickens classic has been adapted and directed by Jillian Keiley, the NAC’s restlessly inventive head of English theatre.
The annual Radio Show at the Gladstone is comfort food for the holidays, and the people at Plosive Productions realize that part of its appeal is the easy, unpretentious familiarity of the entertainment that greets us every December.
The current show, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, continues the happy tradition. There is the row of microphones lining the front of the stage. There is a suave announcer recalling for the oldest among us the glory days of the Lux Radio Theatre and host Cecil B. De Mille. There are the seated actors waiting their turn before the microphone. And there are the singing Gladstone Sisters, an important and indispensable fixture of this Ottawa Yuletide event.
The Sisters — Robin Guy, Robin Hodge and Nicola Milne — are in exuberant form this year as they not only disinter such forgotten oldies from the past as Pistol Packin’ Mama but also give a nod to the old advertising jingles that used to entice listeners into buying Lux Soap Flakes and other products of the Forties. Robin Guy is responsible for their vocal arrangements, and the dazzling harmonics are an ongoing delight.
Ottawa Little Theatre’s production of The Three Musketeers begins on a burst of energy — a sword battle that pursues its merry way both on and off stage. It’s an engaging beginning, and a nifty way of introducing us to D’Artagnan, the aspiring Musketeer who’s getting a final tutoring in swordplay from his swashbuckling dad before leaving for Paris to fulfill his ambition. These moments also provide a sound demonstration of the production’s strengths. Director Stavros Sakiadis’s robust, slightly tongue-in-cheek approach reflects the sensibility of Ken Ludwig’s cheeky dramatization of the Alexandre Dumas novel. We’re also getting our first glimpse of Graham Price’s splendid multi-level set, which evokes enough of the past to take us back to 17th Century France while also having enough flexibility to keep rearranging itself into new and different venues during the show’s adroitly managed scene breaks. Price is also responsible for the atmospheric lighting, while Glynis Ellens provides outstanding period costuming which perhaps reaches its zenith during the masked costume ball that is an undoubted highlight of the evening.
Equivocation by Bill Cain Kanata Theatre Directed by Alain Chamsi
Kanata Theatre’s production of Equivocation contains so many fine moments that you’re left saddened by the fact that it ultimately doesn’t work.
Director Alain Chamsi and his colleagues have worked with diligence and discernment to bring shape and substance to a play that uses an imagined crisis in Shakespeare’s life as a platform for an examination of the fragility of truth in a hothouse political climate.
But ultimately the centre does not hold. Playwright Bill Cain, a Jesuit priest whose moonlighting activities including scripting an episode of House of Cards, has solid credentials, and this 2009 play has been acclaimed in many quarters. But it’s overly ambitious in scope, thematically cluttered, structurally uncertain and at times painfully glib and facile.
Furthermore, when it comes to tone, it attempts to have it both ways — expecting the audience to go along with moments of serious drama, which include a pair of gruesome public hangings, while also expecting them to revel in episodes of comic buffoonery as well as bits of more subtle satire. It’s an uneasy fusion.…
The premise of Reggie Oliver’s comedy, Imaginary Lines sounds promising. It proposes to explore the often turbulent waters of personal relationships by examiningtwo layers of communication. The first exposes us to what people are saying out loud to each other. The second lets us in on what they’re actually thinking — or, more specifically what they wish they had said in attempting to find empathy with a member of the opposite sex.
Unfortunately, the Linden House Theatre Company’s production fails to find justification for the play’s surprising popularity among community theatre groups. Despite a strong cast and an excellent set design from Rachel Hauraney, Imaginary Lines seems no more than a feeble attempt on this playwright’s part to emulate the audacious structuralmind games for which hismentor, Alan Ayckbourn, is renowned.
Indeed, the script is not even consistent in allowing us into the repressed thoughts of every character. This may partially explain why director Robin Bowditch has difficulty in establishing a sustained comic rhythm for this play. It keeps disconnecting.…
