Beans of Furyis a hilarious comedy about the last coffeeshop after the apocalypseBeans of Furyis a comedy built on an interesting premise—what it’s like to work for a coffeeshop in a post-apocalyptic world. On a planet ravaged by floods and fires, one of the last remaining coffeeshops is actually a pretty hilarious place. Show creator Matt Hertendy plays a robot barista alongside Sheldon Parathundyil and human barista Robin Star Breiche, a new employee (with a big secret). A lot of the comedy comes from Hertendy and Parathundyil’s deadpan robotic delivery—think the classic trope of robots attempting humour extended through a whole show. Hertendy and Parathundyil never drop the gimmick, and it’s a credit to their acting that they don’t laugh at their own jokes. …
Fringe Fest welcomes risk taking and testing the audience, but Pinter Stew by Third Wall Theatre might ask just a bit too much background knowledge of British playwright Harold Pinter’s oeuvre from its audience. Without it, the play leaves you confused. The show is presented as a series of mostly-unconnected scenes that are almost impossible to piece together, and that probably don’t piece together. The extended centre part about a family being interrogated is the longest connected scene in the play, but just as you begin to piece it together the play moves on to an overly long taxi cab scene. The viewer unaware of Pinter’s works is left in the dark as to what’s supposed to be going on. …
Sketch comedy is a Fringe mainstay, and the charmingly funny Pack Animals proves why. Created and acted by Holly Brinkman and S. E. Grummett, the sketch show combines cheeky Canadiana, cutesy singing, and frank yet funny discussions on queer identity and sexuality all within the premise of a Scouts-like summer camp with some serious feminist leanings.
Pack Animals is definitely geared towards a twenty- and thirty-something audience, and if you fall into that Millennial age range you’ll find a lot to enjoy. Their recurring bit where they recreate the iconic Hinterland Who’s Who—special shout-out to the virtuosic recorder playing—but profile the various types of men you probably don’t want to bring home somehow evokes both childhood nostalgia and unsavoury memories from the club. The accuracy is part of what makes it so funny—we all know men like that. The animal puppets add a lot. …
Orpheus Musical Theatre Society have brought to the stage another light-hearted musical, doing what they do best to a very receptive audience. The Meridian Theatres-based Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a piece of light fare that captures the cult status of the original film, but with its sometimes-dicey sexual and racial politics, the show seems like a bit of an odd choice in 2019.
The campy show directed by Derek Eyamie and Shaun Toohey is a fun romp, but a bit shallow. The lead actors Andy Allen-McCarthy, Toohey, and Eyamie know how to please the crowd with their extravagant pop song numbers as the larger-than-life drag queens with attitudes and costumes to match. The chemistry between the three and with other central characters, like actor Lawrence Evenchick’s delightful Bob, is also solid. In a show leaning heavily into campiness, the costuming stood in a league of its own. Colourful and over-the-top, co-costume designers Guylaine Roy and Mélanie Evans created a vibrant and hilarious series of costumes that had the audience laughing in their seats.
The large ensemble kept the party atmosphere going with their humorous song-and-dance numbers and were a particular hit in their gaudy costumes. It’s hard not to love a bunch of dancing pink paintbrushes, though there were several scenes where the choreography could have been tighter. The pit orchestra was tight and had obviously worked hard to put on a solid performance. The set, co-designed by Jenn Donnelly and Steve Jones, is also a show-stealer, particularly the detail put into Priscilla the camper van, complete with seating space, and which opens up in the final scene to reveal a beautifully-painted Ayers Rock. …
Photo Riche Perez. Steve O’Connell and Berni Stapleton with musicians in the background
The NAC’s Between Breaths from St. John’s Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland theatre captures the life of animal behaviourist Jon Lien, who moved to Newfoundland to study storm petrels and ended up becoming known around the world for his ability to rescue whales from fishing nets. Before Lien, whales tangled in nets were routinely shot and took the fishing nets with them, which would cause financial ruin for the fisherman. Lien worked tirelessly to save both whales and fishermen’s livelihoods. …
The Pigeon King at the NAC is a perfect country musical about pigeon scams, the modern family farm, hope and loss and that reality is stranger than fiction
The National Arts Centre’s latest acquisition, The Pigeon King originally from Blyth Festival and starring the Blyth Festival cast, is an outstanding southwestern Ontario country musical comedy built around one of the most outrageous pyramid schemes Canada’s ever seen, the Pigeon King International scam of the early-to-mid-2000s that saw hundreds of farmers switch over to raising pigeons with disastrous results. This is a case of fact being stranger than fiction, and the Blyth Festival crew have turned the facts into a play that makes a worthy addition to the Canadian canon. …
The latest play in the TACTICS Mainstage Series of local independent theatre, Swedish Furniture by Ottawa playwright Matt Hertendy is a realistic look at the stresses that a hard job market, aimlessness, and lack of sense of self put on a young relationship.
The premise of the play is simple but sets up the disastrous result from the beginning—building an IKEA bed. The moment you find out that this play is about a young couple trying to find work with arts degrees and build IKEA furniture, you know the play isn’t going to end well.
Hertendy and director Katie MacNeill don’t delay the inevitable for long—the play has several flashbacks and flash-forwards, including one in which the unnamed female character, played wonderfully by Megan Carty, is trying to return the bed. We know the relationship isn’t going to survive the bed-building process. Knowing what’s coming doesn’t take the punch out of it though. …
It isn’t easy to review a play like Behaviour, written by Ottawa playwright Darrah Teitel and directed by Michael Wheeler. All the usual things a reviewer discusses, the lighting, the sound, the acting, seem unimportant. They’re all excellent, it’s a top-notch performance in every way, but Behaviour is a play so inextricably about its message that everything else can seem marginal.
Behaviour is traumatizing, cathartic, and of the utmost importance. Ostensibly about sexual assault on Parliament Hill, it is an impossibly powerful play about rape. Divided into three parts, the middle soliloquy engulfs the rest of the play. The curtain closed, a single light harshly illuminating her, Zoë Sweet’s Mara lists the seven types of rape that she has identified, that she has experienced. That every woman has experienced. It is not an easy scene, but it’s a perfect one. It would be hard to find a more powerful scene in theatre history. …
Photo Bronwen Sharp. The National Arts Centre’s Prince Hamlet from Toronto’s Why Not Theatre is a daring production that turns the classic play on its head and proves that a postmodern spin on the classics can pay off big.
The play is directed by Toronto-based Ravi Jain, whose bold vision demonstrates that a 400-year-old play can always be mined for captivating new details. …
Conversing with an angel in his Lorraine Motel room, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, a Black Theatre Workshop and Neptune Theatre Production, attempts to explore what might have been going through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s head during his last on Earth.
The production, directed by Toronto-based ahdri zhina mandiela, stars Letitia Brookes as motel maid-turned-angel Camae, and Tristan D. Lalla as Dr. King. Set in a realistically designed motel room created by set designer Eo Sharp, the play’s small cast and unobtrusive design help to highlight King and Camae as the sole focus of the show. …
