Re-visiting Shakespeare is a perennial theatrical exercise, and Richard the Third’s malevolent reign in the play bearing his name supports many such experiments. Particularly as the play features such grandly betrayed and suffering women. Dipping into this territory is playwright Sarah Haley’sAnjou. In a world both Shakespearean and somewhere in the geography of modernity, we begin with the funeral of Anne’s husband. Soon, we know, she will succumb mysteriously to the wooing of a vain and culpable Richard, culpable for no less crime than having murdered Anne’s spouse. Throughout it all, Margaret states her case, grieving for both her husband and son, abandoned utterly and at Richard’s mercy. …
#Faustus Photo Andrew Alexander William Beddoes as Faustus
The first shock that lands from #Faustus is the language. Against the backdrop of a visual barrage of what looks like a WikiLeaks spill of internet data mixed with images and headlines Faust, William Beddoe, plunges into a poetic narrative, courtesy of Christopher Marlow. And herein lies the superior strength and the challenge of this intriguing show. The signal conveyed by all that computer imaging is that we are in modern times. So it takes the ear a few moments to adjust to the poetically packed verse. One asks, where are we? Where is Faust? Aha, he’s in front of the computer screen of the world, contemplating the meaning of life. Human kind is devolving into chaos and Faust wants answers. At any cost.
The best Fringe shows arrive on the heat wave of a summer storm and hit just as hard. The lighting strike of revelation contained in the first three Fringe upon which I binged Thursday night was that the Fringe is thriving as a forum for plays that pack a political punch or grapple with challenging source text and big themes. New artists make their debut, while experienced professionals push boundaries.
The Geography Teacher’s Orders
Marta Singh has been circling the theatre scene via the storytelling circuit for a number of years. I was immersed in an earlier version of The Geography Teacher’s Orders in 2015 when she performed the piece for Ottawa StoryTellers at the National Arts Centre’s Fourth Stage. But the startling relevancy of Singh’s tale of a truly terrifying teacher is even more compelling, funny, and chilling now than it was then. This story is a sword of truth that cuts with a sharp edge. Singh’s flash from her adolescent past, played out in the shadow of post Junta Argentina, is a haunting memory that vividly brings to life the epic struggle between teacher and student. Will the geography teacher succeed in bringing her class to order? More to the point of her twisted, dictatorial understanding of education will she bend their individual and collective will into blind compliance as she assaults the sacred bastions of collective action and solidarity. Or, will the students succeed in staging a counter rebellion of compassion, fighting, in the case of one, with words mightier than her sword of oppression. You really do start to feel the rise of an inner democratic cheering section.
Readings of Being Helen at the Ergo Pink Festival Toronto. Catherine Fergusson (reading stage directions) Ghazal Azarbad (Helen) and Samantha Brown (Theonoe, Princess of Egypt.)
In 2017, I came across the Ergo Arts Pink Festival with a mandate as follows:
“Ergo Pink Fest is a 3-day theatre festival of staged readings in Toronto conceived and hosted by Ergo Arts Theatre. The idea for the festival was formed when Ergo Arts Theatre’s Artistic Director, Anna Pappas, read in the 2015 Equity in Theatre study by the Playwrights Guild of Canada that: The greatest disparity in gender equity happens in the playwright category. While some progress has been made over the past two years in changing the dominant voice in theatre, Ergo Arts is committed to continuing the push forward toward equitable and inclusive art.” …
Cottagers & Indians By Drew Hayden Taylor. Directed by Patti Shaughnessy. Featuring Herbie Barnes and Tracey Hoyt
A cottage on a lake, the lonely call of a loon, a sizzling barbeque, and there she sits, Maureen Poole (Tracey Hoyt), glass of wine in hand, enthroned in her Adirondack chair, soaking up the afternoon sun. A quintessential Canadian setting, for those who can afford it, or for whom a cottage was the principle family residence since the late 19th century. …
Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto, Friday, March 9, 2018
In the end, it’s all about the story. The story you remember, the story you want to tell, and the story you don’t want to admit happened. After surviving a 10-year siege and the final horrific battle for Troy, Idomeneus sails home leading a fleet of eighty ships. A storm arises and every vessel in his fleet but his own goes to the bottom of the Aegean. Why? Why, after all that?
But it’s all about staying alive, so Idomeneus promises the gods that if he and his remaining crew survive, he will sacrifice the first living thing he sees when he sets foot on home soil, the island of Crete. If there is one thing we know about Idomeneus, he is a man of his word; a promise is a promise. …
Like pinpoints of light scattered across the map of shows I have attended over thirty years, a Robert Lepage production always stands out as something special. His reach into the subject matter of any endeavor he conceives, develops, and then as much as embodies as performs, triggers all the receptors in the theatrical brain. …
Building the Wall at the Gladstone Theatre Photo Andrew Alexander
Building The Wall, written by Robert Shenkkan.
The swift march of folly can be the enemy of political theatre; by the time a playwright responds to events and a play reaches the stage, the world has moved on. Not so with Building The Wall by Robert Schenkkan. If you’ve had more than your dose of Trump inspired hilarity as served up by late night television, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre has the antidote. Lights up on grave misgivings. Walls actually come tumbling down in this production. …
Ismène courtesy of the University of OttawaTheatre Department
A finely tuned production that shows off a talented ensemble and describes an enduring mystery, Michael Geither’sIsmene, directed by Daniel Mroz, takes us into the complex and precarious world of siblings Antigone and Ismene. As portrayed in Sophocles’ Antigone, Ismene is the saner sister who, while sympathetic to Antigone’s desire to do the right thing in burying their bother, is not prepared to endure the wrath of Uncle and King Creon for the sake of a corpse. Indeed, in both the original play, and in Geither’s text, Ismene is the one most anxious to cast off the mantle of the family tragedy for the pleasures of an ordinary life. But growing up under the shadow of incest and death places the normal out of reach. In this less than one-hour exploration of girlhood lived on the fringes of tragedy, the actors use singing, poetic encounters, movement, and a constantly shifting landscape of coffin-like boxes (courtesy of Paul Auclair) to express the isolation their parent’s fate has inflicted on their offspring. The poignant admission that it is Jocasta, their mother, who hanged herself, that they miss the most, rings particularly true. This chorus of actors, dancers and singers all deserve congratulations for excellent work. The uniform costumes of tank tops and shorts designed by Margaret Coderre-Williams contribute to a light and playful feel. While Mroz tells us that we really don’t know what Greek theatre might have looked like, one feels this play with its daring cast and well-balanced creative team has come awfully close.
Reviewed by laurie Fyffe. Photo courtesy of the University of Ottawa theatre department.
Ismène , written by Michael Geither , directed by Daniel Mroz
Cast: With: Emily Bertrand, Emma Hickey, Jasmine Massé, Montana Adams, Zaakirah Chubb, Sophie McIntosh, Stefanie Velichkin, Kiara Lynn Neï.
Created by Helen Thai
Performed by Franco Pang and Helen Thai
Directed by Kristina Watt
Siblings, growing up in a family that didn’t talk a lot about the past, come to understand that Ma and Ba fled the war in Vietnam and the Cambodian genocide. As difficult as it is for the parents to speak about their experiences, it is even more difficult for the children to navigate the silences, and expectations, that hang over a family that once faced annihilation. Ghosts haunt the present, and even Ma’s reliable Eagle Balm curative can’t banish fearful memories. The language is poetic, effectively reflecting the difficulty of communication between generations with vastly different experiences. One is sympathetic to a husband and wife who sacrificed everything to escape their tormented homeland now raising their children in a country that has turned these same offspring, to some degree, into strangers. While the emotionally even delivery helps us absorb a narrative that covers a lot of historical territory, a little more exposure of the past would be helpful. During a day on the beach the sister suddenly panics while playfully burying her brother in sand as she realizes that this innocent act mimics a too common ritual of war. More such jarring juxtapositions between past and present would help us enter a story that is still keeping its ghosts hidden. I look forward to seeing more of this compelling play.
