Author: Natasha Lomonossoff

Student preparing her Ph.D In English at Queens University.She will be covering the 1000 islands Playhouse in Gananoque, and all theatre in the Kingston Area as well as some local Ottawa performances.
Ottawa Fringe : Not: A Bev ODa Memoir is a creative political parody with depth

Ottawa Fringe : Not: A Bev ODa Memoir is a creative political parody with depth

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Not: A Bev Oda Memoir  Photo  thanks to the Ottawa Fringe Festival

Clara Madrenas’s one-woman production of Not: A Bev Oda Memoir is easily one of the most inventive and genuinely funny parody skits on offer at the Fringe this season. The London, ON-based performer duly entertains at singing, guitar playing and acting, making for a thoroughly enjoyable performance. The focus is not simply on humour, however, as the land acknowledgment and encouragement to the audience to think about what they can do to further Indigenous reconciliation by Madrenas at the beginning provides a serious undertone to the show. Such an acknowledgement is important, Madrenas says, since “this play is about Canada.” That it certainly is, and much more too, in its insightful remarks on contemporary political culture in North America. …

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Ottawa Fringe : Get Well Soon: a heavy subject that deserves more time!

Ottawa Fringe : Get Well Soon: a heavy subject that deserves more time!

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Mental health is a topic much discussed in contemporary media and culture, and as such, is an appropriate one to explore in the theatre. While Hamda Elmi’s self-created play Get Well Soon cracks open the door to an important conversation, it does not go far enough in detailing the implications of the scenario that it presents regarding this issue. Featuring three female university students who have all gathered together in the school psychologist’s office for a therapy session, the play makes an overt comment on the quality of mental health resources in an academic context. The women initially wait awkwardly in silence before the psychologist arrives, only to break the ice among themselves and informally start their session. …

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Ottawa fringe: Sherlock Holmes Adventures bring fun and nostalgia to detective drama

Ottawa fringe: Sherlock Holmes Adventures bring fun and nostalgia to detective drama

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Good detective stories are always entertaining, perhaps none more so than Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes stories. The rendition of two specific stories, “The Red-Headed League” and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, by seasoned performers John D. Huston and Kenneth Brown, in association with Winnipeg Thespian Fellowship  Productions, is both engaging and impressive from a performance standpoint. As a two-actor production, Huston and Brown seamlessly take on the roles of different characters as they appear throughout the stories. The voice of Holmes however, is always identifiable by the actor who wears his characteristic deerstalker cap. …

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Boom X: a formidable spectacle but a bit rushed…..

Boom X: a formidable spectacle but a bit rushed…..

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Photo  Craig  Francis.   Rick Miller, BoumX

A production of the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON

Boom X, a show written, directed and performed solely by well-known theatre artist Rick Miller, is certainly a tour de force production-wise. Large projection screens, a central podium and duly bright illumination, not to mention the energetic acting of Miller himself, each contribute to a non-stop spectacle which easily commands one’s attention. All of the technical intricacies involved are also reflective of the fact that this is a multi-company effort, presented by Miller’s own companies Kidoons and WYRD in association with Theatre Calgary and the 20K Collective. While the show impresses on both a technical and performance level, its emotional impact is less pronounced. Meant to provide a broad survey of the period (1969-1995) in which the roughly defined “Generation X” came of age, Boom X succeeds more in music and cultural documentation than it does in digging deep into the impact that the events of the era had on those growing up within it. …

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What a Young Wife Ought to Know: Affecting period piece which gets to the heart of the matter

What a Young Wife Ought to Know: Affecting period piece which gets to the heart of the matter

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Photo: Tim Fort

Reviewed at the Grand Theatre in Kingston, ON

Though an exploration of women’s lives in 1920s Ottawa, Hannah Moscovitch’s What a Young Wife Ought to Know is not a play for the idle history buff. Rather this exploration is a visceral and sometimes discomforting one, as Moscovitch exposes the struggles many working-class women faced without control of their reproduction. The production of the play by Theatre Kingston, directed by the company’s own artistic director Rosemary Doyle, to its credit does not shy away from depicting this reality, hard as some moments may be to watch. The power of this production not only comes from its honest portrayal of the events in the script, but also the fully-realized character portrayals by the actors which make the struggles of the play’s protagonist, Sophie, and her conflicts with her husband and deceased sister thoroughly compelling. …

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The Hockey Sweater: A Musical. An enjoyable and heart-felt celebration of Canada’s sport

The Hockey Sweater: A Musical. An enjoyable and heart-felt celebration of Canada’s sport

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Photo Leslie Schachter

Few sports are as definitively associated with Canada as hockey is, and fittingly, no other one comes close to the significance of the former in the lives of both big and small-town Canadians. While the Montreal-based Segal Centre’s production of The Hockey Sweater: A Musical, in turn adapted from the well-known short story by Roch Carrier, takes place in the small community of Sainte-Justine, Quebec, the passion for hockey displayed in this setting is, I suspect, eminently relatable for many viewers. It is particularly interesting that this production is the first in the NAC’s line-up of English theatre for the 2018-19 season. The announcement by artistic director Jillian Keiley noting how rare it is to have fully-produced homegrown musicals before the play began did much to situate the importance of the Segal Centre’s work in the Canadian theatre landscape. …

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Butcher at the Baby Grand Theatre Kingston: a darkly theatrical experience

Butcher at the Baby Grand Theatre Kingston: a darkly theatrical experience

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA..Old Man, Greg Wanless.  Photo Tim Fort

Butcher at the Grand Theatre, Kingston On,  Greg Wanless as the old man.

Any play that’s able to keep its audience fully captivated from start to finish is an exceptional one. Nicolas Billon’s mystery thriller Butcher is unreservedly such a play, and its effectiveness is further heightened by the smart staging and design choices of Theatre Kingston’s production. Directed by Kathryn MacKay, this production provides a special sense of immediacy being staged in the black box space of the Baby Grand within the Grand Theatre. The stage, set up with three rows of seating on either side of it, allows each audience member to constantly be privy to what’s happening in the play. This configuration makes the play’s impact all the more visceral. …

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Shirley Valentine: a double-toned comedy about finding oneself

Shirley Valentine: a double-toned comedy about finding oneself

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Shirley Valentine, with Deborah Drakeford. Photo Randy deKleine-Stimpson

At the  1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON.  As the final play of the  season, British playwright Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine is a thoughtful choice. Telling the story of a discontented housewife in Liverpool, England, who seeks more for herself, it leaves comparatively deeper things to ponder than a good-natured musical or comedy does. Like the play Midsummer which was put on at the playhouse earlier in August, Shirley Valentine asks questions about how we find true self-fulfillment and how we can end up being caught in a rut of dissatisfaction. …

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Prairie Nurse: Funny moments but a problematic plot.

Prairie Nurse: Funny moments but a problematic plot.

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Prairie Nurse, photo Joseph Michael Photography

1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON.  Prairie Nurse, the latest show in TIP’s summer 2018 lineup produced in association with Toronto’s Factory Theatre, is billed as a “culture-clashing comedy” centering around the arrival of two Filipina nurses in a small Saskatchewan community in the 1960s. The play, written by Filipina-Canadian playwright Marie Beath Badian, certainly has its moments of humour and clever poking at Western assumptions of Asians; and this production, directed by Sue Miner, succeeds in effectively playing up these moments for audience reaction. …

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Midsummer: this seemingly light-hearted material is more than one imagines.

Midsummer: this seemingly light-hearted material is more than one imagines.

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Midsummer. Photo Randy deKleine-Stimpson

 

Viewed at the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON

Performed in the more intimate space of the Firehall Theatre, Midsummer (A Play with Songs) by Scottish playwright David Greig is perhaps the most thematically unique offering in TIP’s summer 2018 season. In contrast to the easy-going comedies and fun musicals, Greig’s work is one which engages with deep questions of finding happiness in life and whether one can truly live past their ‘prime.’ …

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