Category: Theatre in Canada

The Illusionists amazes, entertains and dazzles

The Illusionists amazes, entertains and dazzles

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The Illusionists, Broadway Across Canada

The show bursts onto the stage with lights flashing, smoke, mirrors and a large video screen proclaiming that the spectacle of The Illusionists is beginning.

Las Vegas style entertainment, particularly when emcee/comedian/magician Jeff Hobson is on stage, the aim is to dazzle as well as to entertain. Outfitted in Liberace-type costumes, he uses somewhat off-colour humour to maintain the show’s momentum. But he certainly contributes a fair amount of sparkle. …

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Cottagers and Indians For the Love of Manomin

Cottagers and Indians For the Love of Manomin

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Cottagers and Indigens Photo Cyla Von Tiedemann

Cottagers & Indians By Drew Hayden Taylor. Directed by Patti Shaughnessy. Featuring Herbie Barnes and Tracey Hoyt

A cottage on a lake, the lonely call of a loon, a sizzling barbeque, and there she sits, Maureen Poole (Tracey Hoyt), glass of wine in hand, enthroned in her Adirondack chair, soaking up the afternoon sun. A quintessential Canadian setting, for those who can afford it, or for whom a cottage was the principle family residence since the late 19th century. …

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Idomeneus: Digging for truth in myth

Idomeneus: Digging for truth in myth

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Idomeneus.   Photo: Cylla Tiedemann

 

Idomeneus

By Roland Schimmelpfennig

Translated by David Tushingham, Canadian Premiere

Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto, Friday, March 9, 2018

In the end, it’s all about the story. The story you remember, the story you want to tell, and the story you don’t want to admit happened. After surviving a 10-year siege and the final horrific battle for Troy, Idomeneus sails home leading a fleet of eighty ships. A storm arises and every vessel in his fleet but his own goes to the bottom of the Aegean. Why? Why, after all that?

But it’s all about staying alive, so Idomeneus promises the gods that if he and his remaining crew survive, he will sacrifice the first living thing he sees when he sets foot on home soil, the island of Crete. If there is one thing we know about Idomeneus, he is a man of his word; a promise is a promise. …

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Declaration by the Capital Critics Circle

Declaration by the Capital Critics Circle

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Iris Winston, a member of Capital Critics Circle, recently published an opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen titled Why #MeToo is not for me. Ms. Winston wrote the piece as an expression of her own beliefs and not as a representative of Capital Critics Circle. Capital Critics Circle believes that censorship is the antithesis of all art and we support the free expression of opinion.

Les Misérables: A resounding artistic success that rips at your heart!

Les Misérables: A resounding artistic success that rips at your heart!

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Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean in the prologue
les Miserables

It was the opening night in Ottawa of this newest 2017 version of Les Misérables. The original  French text  of the stage presentation   first  appeared in  1987  ( Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel). Later  adapted   for the  English language stage by James Fenton , Trevor Nunn and John Caird,)  both musical versions have been seen at the NAC. The production is under the  general direction of Laurence Connor and James Powell. …

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On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov

On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov

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On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov. Photo: Janis Deinats

In scholarly debates on contemporary theatre, the question about language has primary importance. Critics as well as scholars, interested in diversity on stage, often discuss the advantages and the limitations of using two or more languages, the working of surtitles, and the rules of hospitality when a producing company decides not to translate their productions to the host audience. …

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Lepage’s 887: An Innovative Exploration into the World of Memory

Lepage’s 887: An Innovative Exploration into the World of Memory

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887 Photo Erick Labbé.

Reviewed by Natasha Lomonossoff

Ex Machina’s production of Robert Lepage’s recent play 887, showing at the National Arts Centre’s Babs Asper theatre, is a true triumph in innovative storytelling. The technologies of video and image projection work to complement the events and interactions that are recounted onstage in a way that is meaningful rather than cheesy. The program for the show states that “Ex Machina’s creative team believes that the performing arts-dance, opera, music-should be mixed with recorded arts-filmmaking, video art and multimedia.” Upon seeing a performance of 887, one is inclined to agree. …

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887 lepage at the NAC: technology masterfully used to support storytelling

887 lepage at the NAC: technology masterfully used to support storytelling

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887 Robert Lepage,   Photo  Erick Labbé

Robert Lepage’s 887, named after his childhood home address, deals with the unstable, vague nature of personal and collective memory. It’s an autobiographical show, in which he recalls his childhood in Québec City during the turbulent 1960s.

Details about his father and his immediate surroundings, as well as the Quiet Revolution and its consequences, frame his childhood and shape his identity, to an extent that surprises even Lepage. The snippets of story are nestled within the frame of the artist’s struggle to remember the words to “Speak White” By Michèle Lalonde, a poem dealing with the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the English-speaking world. …

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887: a shared collective history about the nature of memory itself.

887: a shared collective history about the nature of memory itself.

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887   Robert Lepage,   Photo. Erick Labbé

 

 

887 Playwright, Designer & Director Robert Lepage

Like pinpoints of light scattered across the map of shows I have attended over thirty years, a Robert Lepage production always stands out as something special. His reach into the subject matter of any endeavor he conceives, develops, and then as much as embodies as performs, triggers all the receptors in the theatrical brain. …

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Mr. Shi and His Lover: a tautly executed superlative piece of musical theatre

Mr. Shi and His Lover: a tautly executed superlative piece of musical theatre

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Mr Shi and His Lover: Jordan Cheng and Derek Kwan, Photo Erik Kuong
 First published on Artsfile. Jan, 5 2018

A word of advice: If you’re going to see this superlative chamber musical, take the time to read the introductory notes from Macau Experimental Theatre that accompany the National Arts Centre’s program as well as the program itself.

That material will give you not just the show’s background – for instance, it’s based on a two-decades long, real-life love affair between two men: a French diplomat and a Peking opera singer who presented himself as a woman – but also provide invaluable explanatory musical and storyline anchors for a show that, like its concerns with love, deceit, identity and the nature of performance, eludes easy categorization and slyly resists our natural hunger for definitive answers in the face of ambiguity. …

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