Ottawa’s Jordan Tannahill wins GG literary award for drama
The Colouring of Mind and Memory in Le Dire de Di.
Student review by Hannah Skrypnyk in the theatre criticism class of Janne Cleveland (Carleton University) The play was written and performed in French.
How do we deal with painful memories and intimate stories that beg to be told? In La Nouvelle Scène’s production of Michel Ouellette’s one-woman show, Le Dire de Di, director Joël Beddows crisply weaves together the notions of female sexuality and the threat of land exploitation through a series of memories divulged by a sensitive, expressive sixteen-year-old girl. Throughout the play, Di, which fittingly suggests the word “say” in French, leads us through the intricate and sometimes murky details of her past, the history of her family, and the incidents that have come to shape her world. While both the writing and Marie-Ève Fontaine’s performance maintain a high-calibre throughout, what gives this production its richness is the way in which Beddows portrays the gravity of Di’s memories through a first-class use of design elements. …
Butcher at the Baby Grand Theatre Kingston: a darkly theatrical experience
Butcher at the Grand Theatre, Kingston On, Greg Wanless as the old man.
Any play that’s able to keep its audience fully captivated from start to finish is an exceptional one. Nicolas Billon’s mystery thriller Butcher is unreservedly such a play, and its effectiveness is further heightened by the smart staging and design choices of Theatre Kingston’s production. Directed by Kathryn MacKay, this production provides a special sense of immediacy being staged in the black box space of the Baby Grand within the Grand Theatre. The stage, set up with three rows of seating on either side of it, allows each audience member to constantly be privy to what’s happening in the play. This configuration makes the play’s impact all the more visceral. …
Silence at the NAC: the romantic life of a couple behind the invention of the telephone
Photo: Claus Anderson
Silence brings to the spotlight the romantic life of the husband and wife behind the invention of the telephone. The opening night of the 2018–2019 season found the National Arts Centre turning the spotlight on a Canadian icon and his wife, Alexander Graham and Mabel Hubbard Bell, in the play Silence. This Grand Theatre (London, ON) production, brought to life on the national stage by director and former NAC English Theatre Artistic Director Peter Hinton, eschews simple biography and hagiography to focus on the romance between Alec and Mabel, of their endearing courtship and often difficult, but always loving, marriage. …
Le tigre bleu de l’Euphrate : a beautiful depiction of a conflicted Alexander the Great taking stock of his life at the height of a feverish delirium
Le tigre bleu de l’Euphrate is a solo show capturing the emotional, agonizing final night of Alexander the Great, as he lays dying of a fever.Written by Laurent Gaudé and brought to life in a beautiful performance by Emmanuel Schwartz, the performance is a monologue and meditation as the first man to make a serious effort at conquering the known world faces his own demise. Over the course of the hour and a half–long show, Alexander reflects upon both his mortality and immortality, slipping into despair as disease claims him, but finding solace in his military exploits that will make him as immortal as the soil beneath his feet.
Le tigre bleu isn’t simply a history lesson though. While it does spend some time recounting his campaigns in Persia, his founding of Alexandria, his battles in the Indus River Valley, and his life in Babylon, it is a much more introspective look at Alexander than offered in history books. We can’t know what Alexander was thinking in his final hours, so playwright Gaudé creates an Alexander grappling with guilt over the countless lives lost on his grand campaigns, but also one assured of his everlasting fame from those same battles that haunt him at the end of his life. …
B+ for School of Rock
The great pity is that this high-energy rock musical is largely unintelligible. From flashing lights and the smoke of dry ice to booming sound, all the accoutrements of a rock concert are in place, but only rarely are the song lyrics or even the dialogue distinguishable. …
Shirley Valentine: a double-toned comedy about finding oneself
At the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON. As the final play of the season, British playwright Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine is a thoughtful choice. Telling the story of a discontented housewife in Liverpool, England, who seeks more for herself, it leaves comparatively deeper things to ponder than a good-natured musical or comedy does. Like the play Midsummer which was put on at the playhouse earlier in August, Shirley Valentine asks questions about how we find true self-fulfillment and how we can end up being caught in a rut of dissatisfaction. …
Hennig’s latest Tudor Thriller as staged in Stratford 2017
The Virgin Trial. Photo Cylla von Tiedemann
I decided to post this review as well because of the background detail that could interest the public. A.R.
STRATFORD, Ont. — Tudor England in all its drama and turbulence continues to attract a huge following in today’s popular culture. From the reign of King Henry Vlll through to the Gloriana days of Elizabeth 1, we’ve had an unending cycle of popular and academic history, best-selling fiction, movies, television series and stage plays. …
The Shaw Festivval’s Henry V: Does Shakespeare deserve such treatment?
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Nearly a century ago, Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne wrote a now-forgotten one-act play called The Man In The Bowler Hat. It dealt with the disruption of a conventional middle-class household by a sequence of melodramatic events that in performance could be done for real or, more commonly, take on the texture of a Monty Python spoof. …
The Capitalcriticscircle 2018-19 season begins
The 2018-19 theatre season is now beginning and the Capital Critics Circle hopes to bring you a wide variety of reviews touching all the theatres in Ottawa (professional and community), as well as performances from elsewhere in Canada and around the world.
We will also focus on the dance programme at the National Arts Centre, on French language theatre in Ottawa and the area, on the student theatre at the University of Ottawa theatre programme, we hope to be reviewing work in Montreal, in Toronto, in Paris France and wherever else we might be. …