All the world's a stage Archives - Page 25 of 30 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Lipsynch au Festival TransAmériques : le théâtre de Robert Lepage et l’ouverture vers le monde.

By Alvina Ruprecht | April 12, 2015

Le théâtre québécois s’inscrit désormais dans le réseau des théâtres des Département français des Amériques, depuis que certains artistes ont entrepris des collaborations qui ont fécondé la créativité de part et d’autre. Notons la collaboration exceptionnelle entre Denis Marleau (directeur artistique du Ubu, compagnie théâtrale, Montréal) et José Pliya (Etc Caraïbe, C.D.R. l’Artchipel, Guadeloupe); entre la compagnie de José Exélis (Les Enfants de la mer) et Stéphane Martelly (Départ); entre Diane Pavlovic (de l’école nationale du théâtre à Montréal) et l’Association Textes en Paroles de la Guadeloupe; notons encore plus récemment, la collaboration entre le metteur en scène Sylvain Bélanger (de la troupe québécoise Théâtre du Grand Jour), l’acteur Erwin Wache d’origine haïtienne mais formé au Québec, et le dramaturge martiniquais Bernard Lagier dont la pièce Moi, Chien Créole est déjà programmée pour la rentrée 2007-08 sur les scènes à Montréal et à Ottawa. Et…nous venons d’apprendre que Ruddy Sylaire jouera le rôle principal dans la nouvelle production d’Othello, mise en scène par Denis Marleau. Rien d’étonnant de ces rencontres artistiques entre le Québec et les D.F.A. Plutôt, on se demande pourquoi elles ont mis si longtemps à se réaliser étant donné les affinités linguistiques entre les régions.

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A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller: a tragic ritual of great human proportions.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 28, 2015

Photo from National Theatre Live (A Young Vic production). Michael Gould (lawyer) and Mark Strong (Eddie Carbone) Centre stage.

Written in 1955, this play has had several rewritings where the ending especially has taken on different forms. This London version corresponds to the final published version where Eddie dies in his wife’s arms. Especially after the 1942 film starring Raf Vallone, the play became a classic of cinematic neo realism or even Zola-like naturalism that we always associate Miller’s dramaturgy . Miller’s stark naturalism fore grounds the complex psychology of the characters and here, Ivo Van Hove captures the deeply troubling psychological turmoil of Eddie Carbone the Longshoreman and patriarch of his New York family composed of Beatrice his wife, Catherine his niece , 2 young illeagal Sicilian immigrant cousins Rodolpho and Marco. As a relationship develops between Catherine and Rodolpho, Carbone’s hostility to this young man turns the uncle into a tense, brooding , jealous, angry creature who ultimately gives in to a most hateful gesture that has tragic consequences. The question of Illeagal immigration is dealt with in the play, as the director mentions in a preshow interview, and that is what gives the event a certain immediacy in relation to recent events in the United States.

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 13, 2015

Photo. Tristram Kenton/Guardian.

Recent films in Ottawa have shown us radically different perspectives of India and the contrast is astonishing for those of us who do not know the country. The beautiful film The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the sequel to the film The Best exotic Marigold Hotel shows us upwardly mobile Hindu families, property owners who are working with the British Elderly and Beautiful who join the locals in Jaipur to renovate a hotel in ruins while preparing a sumptuous wedding ceremony that ends in lavish fireworks and Bollywood style dancing A feel good movie that shows Indian upper middle classes from a British perspective where everyone goes home happy.
This new live performance Behind the Beautiful Forevers , brought in by satellite, the first ever National Theatre production with an all British-Asian cast says director Rufus Norris proudly, shows us a very different India and it was a lot less pleasant.

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Grounded: Actress soars in Cambridge Central Square Theatre Production.

By Jane Baldwin | March 8, 2015

Photo: A. R. Sinclair. Celeste Oliva

George Brandt’s Grounded is a highly political one-woman show that tells a direct and complex story of the new role of women in warfare. The character’s symbolic aspect is emphasized by her lack of a name. She is simply The Pilot. The play is expressionistic in style in that the audience viscerally experiences her inner world. No opposing view exists.

The character, wonderfully played by Celeste Oliva, has risen to the rank of Major as a fighter pilot engaged in air to ground warfare, a role in which she takes enormous pride and pleasure. Flying in the “blue,” as she calls it, killing “the guilty,” in this case young male Iraqis, makes her feel righteous, “part of the sky,” administering punishment like a god.

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Necessary Monsters: A Carnivalesque Journey Through the Dark Side of Human Nature

By Jane Baldwin | December 10, 2014

Evelyn Howe as Faye the Fairy. Photo: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo.

John Kuntz’s fantastical Necessary Monsters (whose title is borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges), now at Boston’s Speakeasy Stage, first saw the light of day in 2011 at the Boston Conservatory where Kuntz devised it with his acting class. Impressed with its possibilities, the Speakeasy Company decided to give Necessary Monsters its professional début. Although Kuntz staged it at the Conservatory, directing chores for this production are in the capable hands of David R. Gammons, who has often worked with John Kuntz, a well-known Boston actor. In Necessary Monsters, Kuntz plays the waiter Stephen, a rare kindly character; Theo, a maniacal psychiatrist; and a nameless steward. Necessary Monsters’ fourteen roles are performed by eight talented actors.

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Bad Jews: A Savagely Funny Play About Religion, Family, and Identity

By Jane Baldwin | November 11, 2014

Photo: Craig Bailey. The actors are l. to r. Allison McCartan, Victor Shopov, Gillian Mariner Gordon.

Josh Harmon’s hilarious comedy Bad Jews at Boston’s Speakeasy Theatre deals with a serious, and for many, uncomfortable issue, secularism vs. religiosity. The play pits two extreme adversaries against one other. Formidable and pious Daphna (formerly known as Diana) a senior at Vassar, with plans to move to Israel, join the Israeli army, marry an Israeli boyfriend, and become a rabbi is at odds with her cousin Liam, an aggressive and decidedly non-religious graduate student in Japanese cultural youth studies, who intends to marry his WASP girlfriend. Two other characters, Liam’s brother, Jonah, performed with sensitivity by Alex Marz, who builds his characterization around being unobtrusive, and Liam’s girlfriend Melody, peacemaking and naïve, round out the cast. Through most of the performance, the latter two appear to be the play’s losers.

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The Player’s Advice to Shakespeare. David Warburton highlights the performative nature of his character with great emotion and much nobility!!

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 20, 2014

David Warburton as The Player. Photo by Andrew Alexander

This performance is a unique event in the annals of professional theatre in Ottawa. The original production of Brian K. Stewart’s play, also directed by John Koensgen, was received with such enormous enthusiasm by myself and my colleagues that the New Theatre of Ottawa won the Capital Critics’ Circle 2011-2012 prize for best actor, (Greg Kramer) best director (John Koensgen). Soon the company was making plans to bring the show to the Edinburgh festival, and in spite of the tragic death of Greg Kramer in Montreal, the plans have gone ahead. This is certainly what Kramer would have wanted if his spirit were watching over the New Ottawa Theatre at the moment and I am also sure that David Warburton, the actor who will be performing the role in Edinburgh would have had Kramer’s full support.

We saw a preview the other night of the show, the first time it has been seen by an audience and I was struck by the enormous authority that Warburton brings to the “Player”. Just to refresh your memory, this Shakespearean actor is languishing in prison, waiting for his fate to be sealed because he sympathized with the bloody Midland revolt (which broke out in 1607). This is the period following Queen Elizabeth’s death and the rise of Jacobean vengeance tragedies, traces of which are clearly in Stewart’s script, plus a reference he makes to Coriolanus which Shakespeare was writing at that period. .

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ArtsEmerson does it again: Imaginative Stylish Production of Eugene Onegin

By Jane Baldwin | June 12, 2014

Photo: Valeriy Myasnikov. L to R in image: Eugeniya Kregzhde, Viktor Dobronravov, Alexei Guskov.

ArtsEmerson brought another exceptional international production to Boston for an all too brief run on June 6 and 7. The company was the ninety-year-old Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Moscow, the play, the first dramatic adaptation of Pushkin’s rhyming verse novel, Eugene Onegin. The Vakhtangov maintains a permanent company unlike theatre in the US where such troupes have almost disappeared. An important benefit of this kind of company is the often close-knit ensemble that was certainly a factor in the excellent performances in Eugene Onegin. The most striking example of reciprocal loyalty is the ninety-seven year old actress, Galina Konovalova, who joined the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1938 and plays the Moscow cousin with verve.

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The Door of No Return: Performing Colonial Memory.

By Kat Fournier | May 30, 2014

Reviewed by Kat Fournier

La porte du non-retour (The Door of no return) refers to monuments on the west coast of Africa erected in memory of the millions of slaves deported from Africa to America. Once they passed through the door, they knew that they would never come back. Director and photographer Philippe Ducros presents his life-changing trip to the Congo in the form of a multi-media photo-exhibition that converges with history, storytelling and landscape to become a haunting narrative related to the slave trade.

The event presents the story of a Canadian man who visits the Congo to witness the shattered world left in the wake of its colonial history. Two voices guide the tour: the male voice represents Philippe Ducros, the female voice represents his girlfriend who corresponds with him from Canada. In the scope of this piece, she represents the safety and comfort of home, and ultimately the naivety of the distant observer. While she stays home, reaching out to him through letters or phone calls, he is drawn further into a nightmare from which he cannot wake.

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Mies Julie in the Karoo: a stunning metaphore captures the difficult transformation to Post Apartheid society

By Alvina Ruprecht | April 26, 2014

Photo:Telegraph.co.uk Bongile Mantsai and Hilda Cronje.

Yael Farber is an extraordinary artist of the stage! Recognizing how Strindberg’s Miss Julie has established a brilliant framework for all forms of power relations, Farber transforms the play into a metaphor of contemporary post-apartheid South Africa where class, land rights, sexual tension, ethnic, social, political and cultural differences clash head on in a context of raging anger and lust, setting the background for a drama of tragic self-destruction.

The site of Farber’s version of the play, is the kitchen of a Boer homestead, located in the desert region of Karoo, where generations of racial and class struggle have not yet come to an end , in spite of the new political situation in the country. On this farm, where Julie (Hilda Cronje) lives with her father, the master of this land, she and John (Bongile Mantsai) the son of the master’s housekeeper, perform an intense and sexually charged death ritual which tears apart any form of “truth and reconciliation” that one might hope for.

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