Rajka Stefanovska, Author at Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike: A weak script and messy directing offer up few laughs

By Rajka Stefanovska | May 23, 2016

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

By Christopher Durang
Plosive Productions
Directed by David Whiteley

Reviewed by Rajka Stefanovska

Christopher Ferdinand Durang is a playwright whose works, written in the style of absurd comedy, deal with issues such as homosexuality, child abuse and Roman Catholic dogma and culture. While his Brodway commercial success Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is still a comedy, his signature element – absurdity – is definitely missing. The story about three middle aged single siblings, whose lives are full of insecurities, futility and unfulfilled dreams, is suppose to tell us about alienation and the meaningless of today’s society. Although the message is an undeniable truth, the way it is told comes off a bit mild, naïve and too obvious. Its combination of superficial comedic elements, too many quotations from Chekov and a long monologue about numerous old American shows (which makes the play rather local – Durang is performed worldwide) gives the audience enough to laugh at, but certainly not a lot to think about. …

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TACTICS – Perfect Pie: A treat for theatre goers

By Rajka Stefanovska | March 12, 2016

Marie, a newcomer to the village, has epilepsy, which makes her different from everybody else. Village children do not understand her problem, so she is an object of ridicule and utmost disrespect. The only friend who accepts her and always stays by her side is Patsy. After a high school dance one night, Marie disappears. After 16 years, they reunite. On her way to Montreal, Marie, now a celebrity who goes under the name Francesca, stops at her friend’s home in the village of their childhood. Talking about those days, they take the audience to an extraordinarily painful journey involving life filled with sickness, poverty, rejection, abuse and rape.

The narrative develops at a perfectly natural pace, gradually adding dramatic elements and building the story about the people on stage and their imperfect world. Every new scene draws the audience deeper into a darkness of ignorance and cruelty that affect the lives of the protagonists. Told in a simple but powerful way, the story has an aura of truth and the power to get emotions boiling over injustices committed in the name of stupidity and prejudice. It knowingly rips apart sensitive issues and slowly analyzes them by adding a building block with each sentence. This beautiful story will not leave anybody indifferent. More likely, after seeing it, you will go to sleep thinking about it, wake up still angry and go through your day with heavy emotions. …

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Butcher: Message gets lost in physicality

By Rajka Stefanovska | March 5, 2016

What is it in us that turns a seemingly normal human being into a monster, capable of unspeakable acts? What triggers a terrifying, unstoppable evil in us? Furthermore, is a perpetrator any more a monster than his victim in search of revenge? What Nicolas Billonn tries to explore in his play Butcher is the violent side of human nature, and its thirst for revenge at any cost. The instinct, as old as humanity (“eye for eye, tooth for tooth”) is forbidden by societies, but in reality still embraced by humans, shows how little it takes to reach the realm of hatred – the kingdom of insane distraction, the dark place in us that leads to perdition, a road with no open ends and no chance of coming back. What is the strength of that horrific path that makes us confuse justice with ravage intentionally? Nicolas Billonn’s play promises exploration of all these.

It is 25 years after a civil war in an imagined Eastern-European country. A former officer who worked in a prisoner’s camp at that time is tracked down and caught by a group of his former enemies, including a woman who was his victim. They bring him in a staged police station where the drama unfolds, and revenge takes place. Unfortunately, though promising a lot, the play does not deliver. …

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Matchstick: A great story with a lot of potential

By Rajka Stefanovska | January 25, 2016

The story of Matchstick starts as a familiar cold war-era propaganda machine in action: An orphan girl lives in a cold, restricted – undesirable – land and dreams about America, a free land of opportunities. She meets a prince charming – Alik – who takes her heart by storm and sends her hopes soaring! But, life is rarely what we hope for. The story leaves the realm of the cliché and enters different, darker waters after they marry and come to the promised land. Little by little, Matchstick realizes that Alik is a paranoid liar, and her life is as far from the freedom and big opportunities she dreamed of as can be. Through her life of misadventures, Matchstick comes to the realization that fairy tales do not happen in a real life. Even more than that, she understands – only too late – that real freedom and opportunities exist where you are loved and where your family and friends are.
The topic of the play is very interesting and worth serious exploration. Digging deeper, going beyond the facts and basic emotions, would make it great theatre. For now, the narrative in Matchstick has some very touching moments and some cleverly constructed dialogues, but the story stays on surface.
Its execution is reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and her Children,” as it uses the elements of storytelling, a simple but effective set with the projection of city in the center, actors who change characters, and a few songs sprinkled throughout the play to accentuate the theme. Only in Matchstick, due to lack of depth, the writer misses an opportunity to boggle our minds. …

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Les Reines: A play worth any stage in Canada!

By Rajka Stefanovska | December 6, 2015

Graphic courtesy of the Department of Theatre at the University of Ottawa

Normand Chaurette’ play Les Reines is one of the best examples of surrealism in literature. Inspired by Shakespeare’s play Richard III, he looks at the political events of the late fifteenth century in England from the women’s perspective.

The play starts at the end of the 15^th century when the king of England, Edward IV, is dying. His death is followed by a succession of tragedies. In his greed for power, the future king, Richard III, is about to kill two sons of the queen Elizabeth. At that time, urged by their own aspiration for the throne, six queens, Queen Elizabeth, the Warick sisters Anne and Isabelle, Queen Margaret, Anne Dexter and the old Duchess of York, come to the castle. There, they live out their nightmares, fight for royal ambitions and struggle with personal terrors. Either as mothers, present or future queens or wives, they wrestle their own demons. Craving power, they are unable to separate the royal from the personal. Therefore, in the atmosphere of inevitable death and in their confusion and powerlessness to change destiny, they throw their fears at each other. …

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The Norman Conquests: Round and Round the Garden an absolute treat packaged in a good laugh

By Rajka Stefanovska | October 2, 2015

AL Connors as Norman and Margo MacDonald as Sarah Photo by David Whiteley — AL Connors as Norman and Margo MacDonald as Sarah
Photo by David Whiteley

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy. It takes place in a family house in the British countryside, where Annie lives with her invalid mother. She plans to spend a weekend with her sister’s (Ruth) husband, Norman, in a hotel. Everything is set. Her admirer and neighbour Tom believes that she is to go alone, but actually wants him to come with her and Annie’s brother Reg and his wife Sara come to stay with their mother for that weekend. However, somehow things come askew, and they all end up spending the weekend together as Annie’s guests.

In the third part of The Norman Conquests, Round and Round the Garden, Ayckbourn still deals with the same domestic issues as in the previous two (Table Manners and Living Together). The characters are the same and it is the same weekend, but while Table Manners takes place in the dining room and Living Together in the living room, Round and Round the Garden is set in the garden. With the last part of the trilogy performed, this outstanding play wraps up in a meaningful way as a combination of a comedy of manners, domestic turmoil and above all, a fantastic character study.

Although comedy might seem to be a lighter genre of drama because of its humorous approach to reality, it is probably the hardest one to pull off. Because it is so easy to go overboard and make it a clownish non-artistic performance, it demands a huge amount of talent and innate sense of balance. …

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The Barber of Seville: Modern take on the classic opera loses on atmosphere

By Rajka Stefanovska | September 29, 2015

The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini, long proclaimed to be the opera buffa of all “opere buffe,” is one of the, if not the greatest masterpieces in its genre. It has been an audience favourite for almost 200 years (it was first premiered on February 20, 1816 in Rome) for a reason. Six years after its debut (in 1822), Ludwig van Beethoven said to Rossini (they were communicating in writing): “Ah, Rossini. So you’re the composer of The Barber of Seville. I congratulate you. It will be played as long as Italian opera exists. Never try to write anything else but opera buffa; any other style would do violence to your nature.”

So, what is so great about this opera? Of course, it is the music (in operatic art it always comes first). Rossini gives the opera his own signature with his bubbling, melodic style, very often compared to champagne. The expression “Rossini crescendo” is coined after his famous musical crescendo, which culminates in a solo vocal cadenza. …

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Generous: Good acting barely holds together a messy script

By Rajka Stefanovska | September 19, 2015

Watching Michael Healey’s play Generous reminds me of a saying about Branko Radičeviċ, a Serbian poet whose premature death gave rise to a saying in the Former Yugoslav Republics: “He wanted a lot, he started a lot, but…” Well, the idea is that he did not deliver exactly what he wanted. Healey wants his play to be a political comedy; he intends it to be complex and he tries to stir our minds. Generous deals mainly with politics and it is funny – I will give it that. As for the structure – it is more complicated (even if so) than complex; to provoke our minds, one should be more subtle and avoid “spoon-feeding” the message at the end, as Healey does.

The play seemingly tackles numerous issues in our society: political manipulations, greed and abuse of power. In addition to that, it touches on human weaknesses, emotional instabilities and repressed personalities. In the first act, we follow four separate stories taking place either 15 years ago or in the present. Three of those events are connected in the second act.

It starts 15 years ago in Ottawa, where a minority government franticly discusses its political fiasco, a potential vote of no confidence. In the heat of discussion, a wounded junior minister appears at the door and admits that she has killed a rival MP, following the instructions of her leader to “slit her throat.” No one in the room cares about the junior minister’s wounds and eventual death, as they are too preoccupied with the more pressing issue of avoiding a vote of non-confidence. …

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The Norman Conquests (Living Together): Witty interpretation captures characters’ charm

By Rajka Stefanovska | September 13, 2015

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy that takes place in a country house where six people spend a weekend together. Each of the three plays is set in a different part of the house: Table Manners in the dining room, Living Together in the living room and Round and Round the Garden in the garden. The trilogy follows events and relationships between two sisters (Annie and Ruth), their brother Reg, Reg’s wife Sarah, their neighbour Tom (who is in love with Annie), and Norman (Ruth’s husband). While Norman is seducing all three women with more or less success in the span of only two days, events constituting a catastrophic weekend of bickering, adultery and constant frustration unfold. Scene after scene, play after play, all three parts of Alan Ayckbourn’s hilariously comic masterpiece come together and reveal the intertwined relationships between the characters, as well as their hidden secrets and desires.

In The Norman Conquests, Ayckbourn deals with domestic issues, dysfunctional families and misadventures in middle-class marriages. Although on the surface, it seems to be just a witty succession of simple, funny and easily recognizable domestic upheaval; under the surface, it is much more. Just as Ayckbourn said in his interview with The Guardian, “My West End producer used to say to me, ‘we’re in the giggle business, darling.’ And I’d sort of agree with him, but while I’m all for giggles, I’d also hope that some of what we do would be remembered for a little bit more than just that.” …

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The Creation of the World and Other Business: 9th Hour Theatre saves Miller’s play

By Rajka Stefanovska | July 25, 2015

Sometimes, a director can ruin a perfectly good literary work. This time around, the opposite happened. Director Jonathan Harris and his stunning team save Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business!

When Arthur Miller wrote the play, he was already past his best creative years. Usually known for his obsession with guilt and responsibility, his characters are conscious to a fault of their social responsibilities. His recurring themes of self-purpose, life and death, choices made, and consequences are always depicted with intellectual bite and sharp, edgy confrontation by characters. Although The Creation of the World and Other Business is also a philosophical exploration of the human race – its morality, its purpose, and justice, Miller’s usual depth and sharpness are missing. His characters are lighter and the dialogue rarely goes below the the surface. Not quite the Miller one would expect. That’s why it was a failure critically and commercially when it debuted in the early 1970s .

In his play The Creation of the World and Other Business, Miller attempts to retell the Bible’s story of Genesis in a humorous way. It is divided into three sections: The first is life in the Garden of Eden, where every creature, from bees and elephants to angels and humans (Adam and Eve), live in a harmony and praise God. The only problem is that God is vain and not too intelligent. He needs the humans to multiply, but has no idea how to make that happen. His bright but fallen angel, Lucifer, has an idea to let humans taste the forbidden fruit (apple) so that they will know what to do. God absolutely forbids that, because he does not want his children to lose their innocence and gain knowledge of evil. In the second act, Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise, though both God and Lucifer watch them and battle to gain their admiration (or power over them). The last part deals with Kane, eaten by jealousy, killing his brother Abel. He has to face his punishment – being condemned to the life of a wanderer. …

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