Category: Theatre in Canada

Terminus: Shakespearean feel for verse grapples with bloody images inspired by Catholic mythology in this brilliant production of Mark O’Rowe’s play.

Terminus: Shakespearean feel for verse grapples with bloody images inspired by Catholic mythology in this brilliant production of Mark O’Rowe’s play.

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Maev Beaty as A. Photo Mirvish Productions.

Since Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus made its debut in 2007 at the Abbey theatre in Dublin, it has turned into a theatrical tsunami, leaving audiences wondering what hit them

This is exactly the feeling I had leaving the Royal Alexandra where Terminus has just begun its run in the Second Stage Series, several months after its Canadian premiere at the SummerWorks Festival in August where it played at the Factory theatre. Not having seen that first production I can’t compare the two performance sites but there is no doubt that the larger space of the Royal Alex could only have enhanced this amazing piece while, at the same time, removing the intimacy of that smaller theatre.

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Sophocles and Christopher Plummer celebrate the power of language.

Sophocles and Christopher Plummer celebrate the power of language.

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plummer7096719.bin  Postmedia News, The Ottawa Citizen. Photo: David Hou

STRATFORD, Ont. • In one theatre, we have Christopher Plummer reminiscing about the writings that have nurtured and inspired him through 82 years of life.

A few blocks away, in another venue, we have the 2,400-year-old Sophocles tragedy Elektra, reasserting its timelessness in a production with astonishing fusion of sight and sound that should even convert those who profess to hate classical Greek theatre.

It’s an interesting pairing for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s August openings — two offerings that may seem poles apart in sensibility. But there is a link between Plummer’s elegantly witty one-man show and Sophocles’s blood-soaked saga of family carnage.

Both events celebrate the power of language.

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This uncanny one-man show is as strikingly insightful production of Hirsch

This uncanny one-man show is as strikingly insightful production of Hirsch

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STRATFORD, Ont. – The Stratford Festival has boldly premiered three new works for its July round of openings _ but with mixed results.One, a potentially exciting musical about Klondike poet Robert W. Service, is a damp disappointment. Another reveals a fine Canadian playwright merely marking time.  The third offering, a one-man show called Hirsch, is a triumph.

Yet, how many theatergoers will even recognize the name of Canadian theatre icon John Hirsch? Well, even if they don`t they`ll quickly realize they`re in the presence of an arresting personality _ the sort of man who will demolish an enemy with the lofty declaration that “your intellect is nothing compared to my intellect .

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The Stratford Festival 2012: 42nd Street is Gaudy good fun

The Stratford Festival 2012: 42nd Street is Gaudy good fun

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dale88fc48d94231b65549111ee2ebfe Photo: David Hou

Ok, it’s a corny show. But it’s gaudy good fun. This ultimate Broadway showbiz story, 42nd Street came back from a 1933 blockbuster film starring Ruby Keeler in Busby Berkeley’s elaborate dance routines and became a megahit musical, recreating its nostalgia and melodrama onstage. Still about becoming a star and creating a hit show, it also re-established tap dancing as a creative Broadway show element after tap had been dropped from new shows for decades.  42nd Street ran for nine years on Broadway and re-introduced that kitschy line, “You’re going out there a youngster. But you’ve got to come back a star!” It also became a tragic Broadway legend on opening night when producer David Merrick had to stop the raucous final applause to announce that its legendary director/choreographer Gower Champion had succumbed to cancer in his hotel room just a few hours before.

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Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds

Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds

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Ronnie - Penny Plain 131033  Ronnie Burkett and Ms Penny Plain.

Ronnie Burkett’s puppet vision of the world has evolved enormously since it first began 25 years ago. One of his earlier works,  Awful Manors (1990),  the first of his performances we saw at the NAC, and that shocked a lot of people, revealed a finely crafted,  campy, extremely naughty activist puppet family raging against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance of all kinds. Feeding off  serious literary and theatrical erudition, his work was, and still is, a completely new phenomenon on the theatrical scene.  

Penny Plain shows to what extent the stage vision and puppet manipulation have grown immensely whereas the textual part of the show seems to be having problems. Still focussed on controversial current debates, this marionette theatre, is now tackling the  destruction of our planet, suggesting that  a new world order is in the making.  Burkett has now shown us his own personal cosmogony which is an intriguing step in a new direction.

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2 Piano 4 Hands- a visual and musical treat that has been held over at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto.

2 Piano 4 Hands- a visual and musical treat that has been held over at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto.

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I’ve always looked on Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt’s marvellous love affair with the piano as a valentine to everyone who ever studied those 88 keys, to everyone who ever endured the same fusty commands to  "curve your fingers," "lower your wrists, " and especially to everyone who had to live through a piano recital with a churning stomach and an audience full of beady eyes just waiting for you to slip on a flat when it should have been sharp.
Back again and better than ever, 2 Pianos 4 Hands with Dykstra and Greenblatt is right on key, a visual and musical treat that’s so popular it’s been held over at the Panasonic Theatre until  Dec. 4. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. It’s played all over the world since its premiere in 1996 at the Tarragon Theatre, the brainchild of two childhood would-be prodigies who started comparing notes about their experiences studying piano while appearing at Chamber Concerts Canada’s So You Think You’re Mozart.

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When the Rain Stops Falling at the Shaw Festival : This investigation of complex family secrets is Peter Hinton’s best work yet…

When the Rain Stops Falling at the Shaw Festival : This investigation of complex family secrets is Peter Hinton’s best work yet…

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Photo Emily Cooper

Peter Hinton, artistic director of the English theatre at the National Arts Centre had his work cut out for him at the  Shaw Festival with the staging of Andrew Bovell’s play When the Rain Stops Falling.  The work is a complex investigation of family secrets, intimate tragedies, experiences of shame, despair and confused identities.
Gabriel Law (Jeff Meadows) sets out on a mysterious quest, trying to reconstitute the life of Henry, his father, played by Graeme Somerville with a sense of great tragic presence. Since his father disappeared when he was only seven years old,  Gabriel knows nothing about him, and his mother (Donna Belleville as the older Elizabeth) refuses to speak of her husband. It quickly becomes clear that the family history, which crosses through several generations, moving back and forth from London England to Australia, is set out almost like a series of fragmented dreams, suggesting troubling secrets that the young man must bring to light and resolve, in order to come to terms with his own life.

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When the Rain Stops Falling (Lorsque la pluie s’arrête) d’Andrew Bovell, mise en scène de Peter Hinton

When the Rain Stops Falling (Lorsque la pluie s’arrête) d’Andrew Bovell, mise en scène de Peter Hinton

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when.jpgLe Festival Shaw qui  se déroule chaque année à Niagara on the Lake, au bord du Lac Ontario près de la frontière américaine,  est le seul festival au monde consacré à l’œuvre de  George Bernard Shaw et aux  auteurs dramatiques qui ont émergé pendant son vivant (entre 1856 et 1950).  Cette année, dans le cadre du  Festival Shaw, Peter Hinton, directeur  artistique du théâtre anglais au Centre national des Arts  à Ottawa, a monté  When the Rain Stops Falling (Lorsque la pluie s’arrête), par l’Australien Andrew Bovell.  Cette  première canadienne d’un auteur mieux connu chez nous pour ses scénarios cinématographiques (Strictly Ballroom) que pour ses pièces de théâtre, était une  véritable découverte  et surtout un défi que  Peter Hinton a relevé avec brio.
L’objet de notre regard est la trajectoire mystérieuse de plusieurs générations d’une famille originaire d’Angleterre et d’Australie. Un jeune homme, Gabriel Law (Jeff Meadows) tente de reconstituer la vie de son père Henry (joué par Graeme Somerville avec une puissance tragique remarquable)  qui a disparu quand il avait sept ans. Il ne sait rien de ce père puisque sa mère n’a jamais voulu en parler. Il y a donc des secrets de famille très troublants que le jeune homme voudrait élucider.  Sa quête nous entraîne dans une trajectoire mystérieuse à travers le monde,  alors que le  lien australien marque cette écriture scénique d’une manière inusitée.

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Stratford 2011: What have you done with the scissors? The Homecomings’opening speach gives the audience “frissons”.

Stratford 2011: What have you done with the scissors? The Homecomings’opening speach gives the audience “frissons”.

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Harold Pinter’s unspoken menace: Stratford’s The Homecoming the only hit among August openings

Postmedia News August 17, 2011

STRATFORD, Ont. – “What have you done with the scissors?”

Why should this opening speech from Nobel laureate Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming set off a frisson of unease in an Avon Theatre audience?

Consider it an early signal that the Stratford Festival is firmly on course with its splendid revival of a landmark play.

Indeed, The Homecoming is the one triumph among a trio of August openings that also include a decorative but dull revival of Moliere’s The Misanthrope, and a bungled reading of Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna.

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Shaw Festival 2011. When the Rain Stops Falling. Peter Hinton’s Masterpiece.

Shaw Festival 2011. When the Rain Stops Falling. Peter Hinton’s Masterpiece.

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Peter Hinton, artistic director of the English theatre at the National Arts Centre had his work cut out for him at the  Shaw Festival with the staging of Andrew Bovell’s play When the Rain Stops Falling.  The work is a complex investigation of family secrets, intimate tragedies, experiences of shame, despair and confused identities.
Photo: by David Cooper. Jeff Meadows as Gabriel Law in When the Rain Stops Falling

Gabriel Law (Jeff Meadows) sets out on a mysterious quest, trying to reconstitute the life of Henry, his father, played by Graeme Somerville with a sense of great tragic presence. Since his father disappeared when he was only seven years old,  Gabriel knows nothing about him, and his mother (Donna Belleville as the older Elizabeth) refuses to speak of her husband. It quickly becomes clear that the family history, which crosses through several generations, moving back and forth from London England to Australia, is set out almost like a series of fragmented dreams, suggesting troubling secrets that the young man must bring to light and resolve, in order to come to terms with his own life.

…

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