All the world's a stage Archives - Page 24 of 30 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Des doutes et des errances»… de la théâtralité ? Gerty Dambury en Martinique

By Capital Critics Circle | November 9, 2015

8 novembre 2015. Paru dans Madinin-art, Fort-de-France

— Par Roland Sabra —

des_doutes_&_des_errances-3 « La théâtralité, c’est le théâtre moins le texte ». On connaît la formule, approximative et qui dans ce raccourci déforme la pensée de son auteur plus attaché qu’il n’y paraît à l’équilibre entre scène, texte et présence du spectateur. Qu’un de ces trois pôles disparaisse, s’effondre ou simplement faiblisse et il n’y a plus de représentation théâtrale. C’est qui est arrivé à « Des doutes et des errances » la pièce de Gerty Dambury, mise en scène par Jalil Leclaire et présentée au public martiniquais le 07/11/2015.
Peu après la grande grève de 2009 en Guadeloupe Gerty Dambury écrit une pièce de théâtre « Les Atlantiques amers » dans laquelle sept personnages échangent, s’interrogent s’affrontent, de part et d’autre de l’océan, à propos de ce mouvement qui dans son antienne « « La Gwadloup sé tan nou, la Gwadloup a pa ta yo, yo péké fè sa yo vlé an péyi an nou » pose clairement faute de pouvoir y répondre la question de l’identité. Qui est ce « nou » ? et par conséquence qui est ce « yo » Quelles en sont les composantes ? Dans quel camp sont les Békés ou leurs descendants ? Et les « métros » ? Faut-il tenir compte de la durée de leur installation ? Et ceux péjorativement dénommés « négropolitains » ou « nègxagonaux » ou que l’on désigne d’un autre terme plus neutre celui-ci de diaspora ? A quel titre sont-ils encore et toujours guadeloupéens -ou martiniquais- celles et ceux qui ne viennent « au pays » que pour les vacances, une année sur deux si ce n’est moins ? Droit du sol ou droit du sang ?

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Casa Valentina: Transvestites in the Catskills circa 1960

By Jane Baldwin | November 2, 2015

Photo: Glenn Perry

Casa Valentina, now playing at Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage, is based on a little known world of the mid-20^th century in which supposedly heterosexual men partied together cross-dressed in order to release their “inner woman.” It is written by Harvey Fierstein, who is most celebrated for his semi-autobiographical play, Torch Song Trilogy, about a drag queen, a role he created on Broadway. In Casa Valentina, Fierstein, in tune with the times, attempts to explore the spectrum of sexuality.

Casa Valentina is modelled after Casa Susanna, a bona fide post-World War II guest house in the Catskills, where men who led heterosexual lives – some were married and fathers – escaped to live as their idea of women for a brief time. In the play, this mainly involves stereotypical behavior: ladies consumed by clothing, makeup, body shape, and “feminine” gesticulating. Yet despite this overriding similarity, each actor creates a distinct personality.

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Saturday Night/Sunday Morning: The Second World War as Experienced by Southern African-American Women.

By Jane Baldwin | October 26, 2015

Photo: Glenn Perry.

Boston’s Lyric Stage is presenting Saturday Night/Sunday Morning which takes place in a Black neighborhood in Memphis during the final days of World War II. More specifically, the plot unfolds in a combination beauty parlor/boarding house for women owned by Miss Mary (Jasmine Rush), the play’s matriarch.

Men, with the exception of the postman (Keith Mascoll) and Bobby, a fantasy lover (Omar Robinson), are absent from the play, but not from the women’s minds. They await husbands and boyfriends whom they have not heard from in four years. The dramatist gives illiteracy as the reason. However, it is more a plot device than a sociological fact, since illiteracy among African Americans in the 1940s was roughly 10%, not the 90% found in Saturday/Night Sunday Morning.

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Waitress: A Feminist Fable in Cambridge, MA

By Jane Baldwin | August 25, 2015

Audiences at Waitress, the American Repertory Theatre’s brand new musical, are put in the mood for what is to come by the charming scalloped pie-shaped proscenium and cherry filling represented by the curtain. The show opens with Jenna (Jessie Mueller) in the midst of – yes, you guessed it – making a pie.

Contemporized by a somewhat feminist approach and spicy sex, the vintage plot revolves around Jenna, a waitress in a small-town diner somewhere in the south. Her peerless and ever-changing pies keep the customers coming, and please Old Joe (Dakin Matthews), her curmudgeonly boss. The pies, each given a name, also serve as an outlet for her inner feelings. …

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Crossing:Wunderkind Matthew Aucoin’s Civil War Opera

By Jane Baldwin | June 10, 2015

Photo: Gretien Helene. The actors are Rod Gilfry and Alexander Lewis.

Crossing, twenty-five year old Matthew Aucoin’s third opera, was commissioned by Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the US Civil War. Aucoin’s opera is part of the Civil War Project, a multiple year partnership between professional theatres and universities whose purpose is to produce art works and support historical research. Crossing marks the A.R.T.’s fourth undertaking related to the project. Included were a sci-fi musical about a Union soldier, a devised piece dealing with a fugitive slave created by and for the A.R.T. Institute, and a new play by Suzan-Lorie Parks featuring a slave who fought for the Confederacy.

The multi-talented Aucoin, who has already made a reputation for himself as a composer, lyricist, and conductor, based his opera on Walt Whitman’s poetry and experience ministering to wounded Union soldiers. However, the work is more imaginative than factual, the story both sequential and disjointed.

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Tartuffe de Molière de Wolfgang Wiens, adaptation et mise en scene egrave;ne de Michael Thalheimer

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 9, 2015

Texte français, posté sur le site theatredublog.unblog.fr

Le spectacle le plus attendu du Festival Transamérique ne nous a pas déçu. Michael Thalheimer qui travaille habituellement au Deutsches Theater de Berlin, est au diapason de Thomas Ostermeier, le directeur de la Schaubühne et de Marius von Mayenburg, les prêtres de la nouvelle dramaturgie allemande, qui ont pour habitude d’adapter les textes classiques.
Ils en gardent la structure, dépouillent la langue de ce qui leur parait excessif et surtout mettent en valeur, tout ce qui est au plus profond de l’inconscient des interlocuteurs.
Michael Thalheimer coupe des passages de Tartuffe, ajoute des extraits de la Bible au début de la pièce qu’il transforme ainsi en théâtre liturgique macabre. Sa mise en scène est soutenue par une orchestration rythmée de la parole biblique, et les vibrations d’un orgue qui nous rappelle l’ouverture du Fantôme de l’Opéra qui serait jouée comme une musique lyrico-religieuse. Cléante, le mécréant diabolique, chuchote à l’oreille de son beau-frère Orgon, disciple cadavérique de Tartuffe, nouveau prophète du mal.

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Tartuffe: Evil incarnate unleashes a chilling message to the world.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 1, 2015

Photo: Courtesy of the Schaubuhne Berlin.

One of the most hated creations of the Classical French stage is the impostor Tartuffe, the false confessor, the spiritual guide, presented to us by the image of a gesticulating fanatic in a long black swirling dress and huge white collar, evoking Mme Pernelle, a Jansenist priest and a roaring Goebbels-like creature haranguing the audience about the qualities of this saintly man but using the vocal tones and gestures of a creature leading a Hitler rally . Exploding on Olaf Altman’s set like a fiery fanatic in bristling punky hair, this creature sets up the past life of Tartuffe and prepares us for the seduction and Christian martyr scenario that follows. Tartuffe arrives, dragging himself into the world like a tortured soul, seeking the most horrible vengeance , spouting hate and destruction from all his orifices. The die is cast, and the worst is yet to come. In this version, all is played out in waves of highly charged physicality. Director Michael Thalheimer , by transforming the family confessor into a sincere fanatic who never tries to disguise his tendencies, has created a creature that is more cruel, more relentless and certainly more dangerous than he ever was in the traditional version of the play. True power is played out within rituals that highlight sexuality, as Jean Genet has always shown us and this German production emphasizes that fact. The urgency of this political message is very clear. Molière has finally entered into the 21^st Century, much to the delight of the younger members of the audience.

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Updating Tartuffe at the FTA

By Jane Baldwin | June 1, 2015

Photo: Katrin Ribbe. Lars Eidinger as Tartuffe

Tartuffe was one of the most anticipated productions of the 2015 Festival TransAmériques in Montréal. Produced by Berlin’s cutting-edge Schaubüne Theatre under the direction of Tomas Ostermeier, known for his revisions of classical works, it is safe to say that (in most respects) this is a Tartuffe unlike any other. Knowledge of Molière’s play is needed to follow this often confusing adaptation. The confusion stems more from the director’s realization of his concept than the translated script whose few changes are congruous with the ideas presented.

Although Olaf Altmann’s high and box-like set is a modernist version of the picture frame stage, the production is not ruled by time. A contemporary black leather armchair, center stage, is the only furniture used; the walls are of mottled gold (filthy lucre?). A small black crucifix is centered on the back wall. …

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Un obus dans le coeur » : mort et renaissance dans le silence de la mère

By Capital Critics Circle | April 21, 2015

Commentaire de Roland Sabra, paru dans Madinin-art.net

obus_ds_le_coeur

C’est un Unmoment d’émotions d’une rare intensité que nous a offert Hassane K. Kouyaté en programmant Un obus dans le coeur, le magnifique texte de Wadji Mouawad interprété par Julien Bleitrach qui signe la mise en scène avec Jean-Baptiste Epiard. C’était une nuit. Une nuit de rage. Une tempête sur la ville et dans la tête. Il neigeait et elle agonisait sur un lit d’hôpital. …

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The Hard Problem: Challenging, Amusing and Intelligent but not Stoppard at his best.

By Alvina Ruprecht | April 17, 2015

Photo by John Persson . Olivia Vinall as Hilary.

As patrons shuffled out of the Cineplex theatre in Ottawa Thursday evening, after th NTL showing of The Hard Problem, the new play by Tom Stoppard, his first play since 2006 (Rock’n Roll) and the first for the National Theatre since his Trilogy The Coast of Utopia in 2002, the general impression seemed to be exactly what was mentioned in the title of Michael Billington’s review , published in “the Guardian” January 29: “the work occasionally suffers from information overload”, something which would not be difficult to document, especially if one had the text on hand . Clearly without the text, most of the details of the arguments are difficult to retain.

As well, the vocabulary is always taken from areas of specialisation as they are bantered back and forth by these scientists who are all specialists in their own fields: cognitive science which is questioned as a science, evolutionary or behavioural biology; genetics, analysis of the brain are linked to science as opposed to the study of the mind. The study of the mind is not a science whereas the study of the brain is linked to human biology and is a science. If this is so, how does one experiment on human consciousness? How does one analyse the “mind”.which has no material substance? Later the question arises related to the fact that materialsm is a philosophy, does that mean it can be put in the same category as the belief in God? Is that scientific? And the ideas roll round in the laboratory and board rooms of the KROHL institute of Brain Science where all these nine characters find themselves, employees or students in this research institute, where they are trying to define human consciousness.

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