There are pirates, a jungle scene involving a baby elephant and dim-witted hyenas, a woman giving birth to an unexpected offspring. There are nursery rhymes and snatches of I’s the B’y. Fairies flutter about, a dragon intones doom, periodically a door creaks very loudly.Sometimes we’re in Ireland, sometimes we’re not.

In other words, there’s far too much crammed into this physical, 50-minute, three-hander by Victoria Luloff and Stewart Matthews that seems to be about how we construct our lives — often to our detriment — by telling stories about existence.Zach Counsil continues to impress on stage, moving easily through a mix of spoken and singing parts, and enacting everything from that baby elephant to a midwife.Nicholas Surges warms to the job as the show proceeds.

Luloff frequently struggles to be heard above the sound effects and, one suspects, sometimes feels lost in her own unwieldy script. Matthews directs, but should have spent more time taming the story.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Fringe+fest+review+much+going+makes+convoluted+performance/8555884/story.html#ixzz2Ws5UMe2D

Photo. Michael Cooper.

Gasbags, drunks, popinjays and cowards: that pretty much describes the leaders, political and military, who cooked up and commanded — if you’ll excuse the term — The War of 1812 according to this deeply cynical, intensely theatrical and ultimately enervating show. Writer/director Michael Hollingsworth spares no one in his recounting of the war that’s commonly said to have defined Canada.

…

Read More Read More

Photo. Magnetic North Festival

How can you not automatically like a mother and son who welcome you to their show by passing out tasty samosas?

The offering is an intimate gesture, appropriate to a show in which Asha and Ravi Jain tell, with varied success, a true family story about cultural and generational conflict. The show, in which the two mostly address the audience directly while seated at a dining room table, recounts Ravi’s battle against the attempts of his parents – both immigrants from India – to shanghai him into an arranged marriage when he wants a career in theatre.

Ravi, a trained actor with a flair for likeable stand-up comedy, tells the bulk of the story. It includes accounts of endless meals in India with prospective brides and their families.

Asha, who had never been on stage prior to this show but has charm, wit and a keen sense of audience, takes over the story from time to time. Her measured, implacable tones and physical stillness contrast with her son’s high-energy presentation.

At other times, the two argue the finer points of arranged versus non-arranged marriages and other issues……..

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Theatre+review+Brimful+Asha+needs+edit+delightful+premise/8499923/story.html#ixzz2VmadJpA3

Photo: Magnetic North handout.

Hard to say when Margo Kane shines brightest in Michel Tremblay’s warm memory play about his mother Nana.

Maybe it’s when, wearing Nana’s perennial outfit of kerchief, apron and sensible shoes, she imitates an ill-coordinated 15-year old ballet dancer to accompany one of the endless and endlessly funny stories Nana tells to her affectionately long-suffering son, played by Lorne Cardinal.

Perhaps it’s when Nana imagines disguising herself in a gas mask to avoid embarrassment at church after her son has, in her overactive mind, committed a heinous crime.

…

Read More Read More

From left, Alix Sideris as Nina, Kimwun Perehinec as Mia, John Koensgen as Yuri and Nancy Beatty as Vera in Like Wolves.

Photo  by Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen

Like Wolves, the world premiere at the GCTC by playwright  Rosa Laborde, is a lot like a TV sitcom, with shallow characters that it’s hard to care much about. Sam just wants to watch television and crab about the sandwiches his wife Vera has made. Vera buys Sam a present that is really a gift for herself. The couple’s daughters Mia and Nina worship at the altar of self-involvement. Retirement home staffer Tom is a seducer and worse. Only Yuri, Nina’s vodka-swilling boyfriend from Chechnya, seems aware that there’s a life outside his own skin.

…

Read More Read More

Photo. Alan Dean.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel is a dark, sometimes complex, and musically rich show. The lonely story about a bad boy who would prefer to do good, the woman who loves him, and the fishing community surrounding them is not an easy one to stage successfully as this unfocused Orpheus production proves.

Artistic director J. Taylor Morris, and by extension the cast, seems to have no clear vision of what he wants. Is this production meant to be a comedy, a tragedy, a tragic-comedy? Judging from audience laughter at inappropriate moments, the crowd was as confused as the people on stage. Other issues?

Little chemistry between the characters, the inevitable result of a production with no focus. Limp choreography, although Dave Rowan, a precise and engaged dancer, is a pleasure to watch as the criminally inclined Jigger Craigin. Kodi Cannon has a fine singing voice and delivers a solid performance as Enoch Snow, a good guy whose only desire is a sprawling, happy family. Unfortunately, many others struggle with their musical parts.
The company works hard, it’s true. But that’s not enough to make this show much more than a disappointing carnival ride.

Photo. Maria  Vartanova

So many things could go wrong with a production of Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s comedy/drama about the bond between six southern women in the 1980s.
Drama could slip into melodrama. Bad timing could kill Harling’s wonderfully comic lines. Chemistry between the six characters, who represent three generations of southern women, could be frail or non-existent. The entire show  could be overplayed, the characters becoming mere caricatures and the narrative a blunt instrument of stock situations.
None of that happens in OLT’s memorable production. Instead, director Tom Taylor, his cast and the design/technical crew give us a funny, moving and smartly concise ensemble piece that gazes into the lives of these six women and the culture that surrounds them. It’s a gaze that’s steady but compassionate, theatrical but credible, layered but refreshingly direct.
Steel Magnolias continues until June 15. Don’t miss it.

A Lunkamud (Toronto) production

Photo. National Arts Centre

OTTAWA — If you passed 15-year-old Peggy Ann Douglas on the street, you likely wouldn’t even notice her. Wearing jeans and a nondescript shirt, she’d look like any other teenager: slump-shouldered, a bit confused, wholly focused on her own struggle to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world.

But let Melody A. Johnson inhabit that young woman, and you can’t take your eyes off Peggy Ann as she travels her funny, bumpy and occasionally poignant journey from hemmed-in farm girl to singing, baton-twirling beauty contest contender who’s convinced that becoming Miss Caledonia will springboard her to her true destination: Hollywood stardom. After all, she reasons, if it happened to Singin’ in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds, why not to Peggy Ann Douglas?

…

Read More Read More

Photo. Bruce Barrett

Reviewed Thursday, May 2 for the Ottawa Citizen.

OTTAWA — Leonard Linklater has written a play about a very important issue: the collision of two radically different systems of justice — that of native North Americans and that of European colonizers who imposed a foreign system on First Nation peoples.

It’s an issue that, at heart, is about the collision of cultures and the failure to communicate which still characterize so much of native/white relations to the obvious detriment of First Nation peoples.

Unfortunately, neither the play nor this production, directed by Yvette Nolan, does a good job of communicating that tragedy.Linklater tells the true story of the four Nantuck brothers, members of the Tagish Kwan First Nation who, during the Klondike gold rush, were sentenced to death for the shooting of two white prospectors, one of whom died.

…

Read More Read More

Reviewed Friday, April 26 for the Ottawa Citizen

Photo:Tim Matheson

Jackie Richardson on stage.

There’s never any doubt in this blockbuster of a show about the late American blues dynamo Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton that the lady could handle herself. From slugging an abusive man when she was 14 to mopping the floor with another jerk when performing in a juke joint later in life, Thornton — played with conviction, grace and one mighty big voice by Canadian jazz icon Jackie Richardson — took guff from no one.

At the same time, she had great emotional generosity. That combination of taking no prisoners and a big heart, coupled with her instinctive artistic honesty, made Thornton that rare performer who connects almost physically with her audience……..

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Review+Mama+Willie+Thornton+Story+with+video/8303108/story.html#ixzz2RgkPq6yl