Author: Maja Stefanovska

Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina to a political journalist father and arts critic mother (Rajka Stevanovska) , Maja has been immersed in the performing arts since she could barely walk and learned very early on to look upon works with a critical eye. She has a Master's degree in communication and currently works for the government in her field, as well as writing theater reviews on the side.
The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum Feels Dated

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum Feels Dated

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Wendy Lill’s play The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum is set on the East Coast of Canada sometime directly following the Second World War. The story, which is about the tragic lives of Glace Bay miners and their fight for more fair working conditions and wages, may not speak directly to many of us in the audience. After all, I can’t say I know too many people in Ottawa starting their work day down a mine shaft with minimal safety precautions only to be paid below minimum wage. It’s what’s at the heart of The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum that makes it universal. Yes, it speaks of a specific time and place, but the struggle to find happiness in life after a tragedy and the fight for one’s place in the world is universal. Unfortunately, the NAC’s production, marking the opening of the 2012-2013 season, fails to capture this universality and instead delivers a play that feels dated and flat.

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Ottawa Little Theatre Makes a Valiant Effort with Hay Fever

Ottawa Little Theatre Makes a Valiant Effort with Hay Fever

Photo: Alan Dean. Hay1 A play that, in the author’s own words, has “no plot at all and remarkably little action,” Noel Coward’s Hay Fever is notoriously difficult to get right. While the playwright provides a sinfully witty script, the onus is on the actors to give meaning. Every phrase must be accompanied with a movement and a glance that is just so in this comedy of manners about a bohemian, slightly unhinged family who torment their unsuspecting weekend guests. The end result should be a comedy that resides in the half pauses and affected looks to be fund in between the words, rather than strictly the script itself. Tim Ginley’s production for the Ottawa Little Theatre is a valiant effort with some solid performances, but ultimately doesn’t quite live up to the script’s promise.

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Ottawa Fringe 2012. White Noise recreates the girl’s story. A touching play.

Ottawa Fringe 2012. White Noise recreates the girl’s story. A touching play.

In a festival with plenty of laughs, a collaborative piece about suicide was bound to stand out. White noise is the story of Nadia Kajouji, a first-year Carleton University student who committed suicide in 2008. Twisted by Design does a beautiful job of telling her story and, perhaps even more importantly, creating a lingeringly haunting atmosphere.

The story is told through Margaret (played by a convincing Margaret Evraire) who is a first year university student suffering from depression much like Nadia was. While searching for people to talk to, she stumbles upon Nadia’s story. From that moment on, their stories intermingle. As Margaret follows the other girl’s story, she decides not to kill herself and to seek help from outside.

The play is gripping, especially the scenes with the Qallupilluit, monsters from Robert Munsch’s book A Promise is a Promise, who come to both girls and spiral them ever-deeper into depression. There’s a dreadful, understated feeling throughout and the actors manage to get the story and atmosphere across without resorting to over-the-top or pathetic performances. A great, touching play!

Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays: And Then It Happens

Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays: And Then It Happens

I confess. I make snap judgments all the time, whether with people or shows. I know it’s not good and we should allow time to make up our minds, but I can’t help it. The truth is, I trust my instinct. Having said that, I love nothing more than being surprised and proven wrong in my judgments. The Two Little Birds’ production of and then it happens, ironically all about the tension between giving the audience what they want while still staying true to oneself, does exactly this.

The piece started with information gathered at last year’s Undercurrents and Wakefest festivals through the group’s interactive installation, The Lab, which asked participants what they liked about theatre and what they wanted to see. and then it happens starts off by choosing an answer for each of the question from The Lab and enacting them. The result is a mess. There are bits of musical theatre, a one woman show, a toy helicopter, and many other unfinished pieces.

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Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays: Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show. Verbatim Theatre Tells Human Stories Behind the Stereotypes of Oil, Drugs and Desolation.

Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays: Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show. Verbatim Theatre Tells Human Stories Behind the Stereotypes of Oil, Drugs and Desolation.

 

Even with the latest census pointing out Canadian’s migration to the West, Alberta can still sometimes seem like a wilderness, especially outside of Edmonton. Images of the adventure-hungry and young pouring to work for its oil companies abound. Yet, there’s much more to the place than meets the eye. This is exactly what Toronto’s Architect Theatre points out in Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show, set in and around For McMurray. Based on interviews with long-term residents and those passing through, Highway 63 show that, behind the stereotypes of oil, drugs, and desolation, lie very human stories.

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Cyrano de Bergerac: Whiteley’s version is modern and funny without sacrificing the elogquence and poignancey of the original script.

Cyrano de Bergerac: Whiteley’s version is modern and funny without sacrificing the elogquence and poignancey of the original script.

When  I first heard that the Gladstone was putting on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac under a new translation, I immediately got flashes to awkward “modern” dialogue, too much emphasis on slapstick and, worst of all, random, misplaced attempts at song. Talk about not judging something before seeing it. David Whiteley’s version of the classic play manages to be modern and funny without sacrificing the eloquence and poignancy of the original script.

Richard Gélinas’ Cyrano is an audacious, nuanced hero. He will fight (and defeat) a hundred men, as much with his sharp tongue and poetry as with his sword. He is energetic and boisterous with his fellow soldiers, but is plagued by insecurity about his goodly-sized nose. Cyrano falls in love with his cousin Roxane, a strong and passionate woman, portrayed by a somewhat flat Élise Gauthier. Roxane, however, falls in love with Christian, a handsome, but dense young man in Cyrano’s company.

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And Slowly Beauty: a script to make the audience ponder the meaning of their own lives. Haunting and inspiring.

And Slowly Beauty: a script to make the audience ponder the meaning of their own lives. Haunting and inspiring.

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Photo of Michael Shamata.

As much a love letter to the power of theatre as an exploration of life’s passing, sometimes mundane and often heartbreaking beauty, director Michael Shamata’s And Slowly Beauty…spins a story at once incredibly complex and devastatingly simple.

The play, originally a collaboration between writer Michel Nadeau and his Quebec collective, Théâtre Niveau Parking, is currently showing as a co-production of Ottawa’s National Arts Centre and the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, B.C. and is emotionally rich and intense. It is the story of the average middle-aged Mr. Mann, played by the brilliantly talented Dennis Fitzgerald, who wins tickets at a work draw to see Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. The play, about sisters living in a provincial Russian town and longing to return to Moscow, is also a story of unfulfilled dreams, the fruitlessness of continually chasing something, and the beauty which is sometimes lost in everyday life. Mr. Mann attends alone and in the process finds himself shaken to his core and suddenly awoken to the dreariness and emotional isolation of his own situation. Cekhov’s play is henceforth intertwined throughout the events happening to Mr. Mann.

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Thirty –Nine Steps At the Gladstone.The production delivers on all fronts despite some technical problems.

Thirty –Nine Steps At the Gladstone.The production delivers on all fronts despite some technical problems.

Secret agents, wily villains, a dapper hero and beautiful love interests. Seventhirty Productions’ staging of The 39 Steps, itself an adaptation of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, promises much in the way of comedy and adventure. Luckily for the John P. Kelly production it delivers on all fronts, despite a few fairly noticeable technical problems.

The play, based on Alfred Hitchock’s 1935 movie which was itself based on a novel by the Canadian John Buchan, follows Richard Hannay, a British ex-pat upon his return from Canada who suddenly finds himself thrown in the middle of a spy game by a preposterously-accented foreign spy. The play stays true to the movie version, but is ingeniously reshaped into a farce of the both the genre and the process of putting on a play. The show is incredibly witty, fast-paced and presents a myriad of characters for the audience to enjoy and keep up with.

Did I mention that the cast of 150-some parts is played by 4 actors? Al Connors, playing a dapper, ironic Hannay, is the only actor to portray a single role, while Kate Smith plays the three female roles – the sensual Anabella Schmidt, beautifully argumentative Pamela and a shy Scottish housewife that Hannay has a brief affair with.

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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Will Have You Bouncing in Your Seat..

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Will Have You Bouncing in Your Seat..

It may not be the best musical you will ever see, but Orpheus Theatre’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, directed by Shaun Toohey and adapted from the Jeffrey Lane book and Frank Oz movie by the same title, will leave you with a skip in your walk and a hum to your talk by the end.

The musical comedy has much going for it. After all, it is set in the ever-glamourous French Riviera and  offers a story rife with drama, comedy and romance centered around the adventures of two mismatched con-men. Add to this an ensemble  of fun-filled, if slightly forgettable songs, and you’ll be bouncing in your seat.

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I Do Not LIke Thee, Dr Fell. Excellent work by Seven Thirty Productions

I Do Not LIke Thee, Dr Fell. Excellent work by Seven Thirty Productions

It seems the majority of people these days are either in the process of getting it, talking about getting it or researching what type they should get. How well does it work and how honestly are we prepared to explore our inner demons? Playwright Bernard Farrell weighs in on the questions with a decidedly pessimistic, though hilarious view in I Do Not Like Thee, Dr. Fell. The play, in a great production by SevenThirty productions, pokes fun at not only the idea of group therapy but participants’ willingness to actually be open with each other on anything other than a superficial level.

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