Category: Theatre in Ottawa and the region.

Needles and Opium: a wondrous, magical mystery ride

Needles and Opium: a wondrous, magical mystery ride

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Photo. Courtesy NAC

It’s tempting to think it was inspired by, if not something even stronger, one of those LSD-laced sugar cubes.

The huge cube in which Quebec playwright Robert Lepage’s fascinating Needles and Opium takes place is for sure laced with the phantasmagorical. Elevated a few feet above the stage with three of its sides walled and three open, it slowly rotates, walls becoming ceilings becoming floors and both time and place proving elastic as three interconnected stories flow into each other.

In one story, American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis visits Paris for a music festival in 1949 and falls in love with French chanteuse Juliette Greco. Unwilling to bring the white Greco back to a segregated U.S, he returns to New York City without her and, despairing, falls into heroin addiction.

In another strand, French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, hooked on opium, visits New York City, also in 1949.

The third, which takes place in 1989, finds an unconfident Quebec actor named Robert, in withdrawal from a love affair, in Paris to do the voiceover for a film about Davis’s visit to that city four decades earlier.

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The School for Lies at Algonquin College: Catriona Leger saves the evening!

The School for Lies at Algonquin College: Catriona Leger saves the evening!

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Photo: Andrew Alexander   Trevor Osbourne and Ryan Young.

Translating Molière is often a risky undertaking as David Whitely has shown us. His translations have usually been very good because they have captured the spirit of the original in multiple ways and he was lucky to have a professional cast directed by John P. Kelly. David Ives an award winning translator of Classical French theatre speaks of his translation of Corneille this way: “it is neither a translation nor an adaptation; it’s what I call a translaptation” (Playbill). He clearly tells us his intentions concerning Le Misanthrope in his prologue: “Screw Molière….we will do our own version”. Director Catriona Leger tells us this is a “liberal” and “lively” adaptation of the original which is a bit of an understatement but still, we recognize some of the original in the text.

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Les Misérables: An energetic show with solid performances

Les Misérables: An energetic show with solid performances

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Poster: ASNY Productions
Poster: ASNY Productions

Les Misérables is a massive undertaking that offers both principals and ensemble members the opportunity to demonstrate their special talents — often one at a time.

Based on the 1862 historical novel by Victor Hugo, the sing-through musical tells the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean — imprisoned for almost two decades for stealing a loaf of bread — tracing his transformation and redemption between 1815 and the June Rebellion in Paris in 1832.

(Hugo based Valjean’s character on the life of Eugène François Vidocq, an ex-convict who became a successful businessman and philanthropist.)

The original French version was first staged in 1980 with the English-language production of Les Misérables appearing in London’s West End three years later to mixed reviews. More than 30 years later, it still plays to full houses and still receives some negative comments because of its melodramatic content and the perfunctory way it deals with certain aspects of the storyline. It is also a show that thrills s as many as it disappoints.

And there is no question that it is a huge challenge for any company. In a fine ensemble production, with first-class musical direction by John McGovern, the ASNY Les Miz, which involves close to 100 performers, musicians and crew demonstrates energy, commitment and some fine performances. …

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Phèdre de Jérémie Niel: Une lecture jeune et fiévreuse qui remonte au passé pour cerner le présent.

Phèdre de Jérémie Niel: Une lecture jeune et fiévreuse qui remonte au passé pour cerner le présent.

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Marie Brassard, Benoît Lachambre, Emmanuel Schwartz

Photo. Alexandre de Bellefeuille

Cette interprétation de Phèdre, sombre et inquiétante, évoque un monde de dieux cruels qui interviennent directement contre les trois protagonistes qui incarnent les pulsions pures, manifestations des forces d’origine de l’humanité. L’œuvre s’inspire de Sénèque (Hippolyte) et surtout de Racine (Phèdre). Cette version commence par Thésée (Benoit Lachambre) qui pleure la mort de son fils Hippolyte et de sa femme Phèdre, dont les cadavres gisent à ses pieds. La suite devient un retour en arrière cauchemardesque, orchestré par le Coryphée (Mani Soleymanlou). Assis dans la salle, il remonte à la scène, regarde l’espace du jeu un peu perplexe, consulte les textes jonchant le sol pour organiser la sélection des extraits et donne des indications d’éclairage aux techniciens. Cette impression de mise en abyme donne au personnage du coryphée une fonction peu habituelle. Il est celui qui gère le spectacle, parlant à peine mais il est aussi celui qui invite les protagonistes mythiques sur scène, des figures à mi-chemin entre le visible et l’invisible, propulsées par des sonorités vrombissantes et la respiration terrifiante des dieux qui surveillent chacun de leurs gestes. Le concepteur et metteur en scène Jérémie Niel a éliminé les confidents ainsi que la princesse Aricie pour ne garder que les trois figures essentielles de la catharsis, celles qui doivent toucher les spectateurs et les transformer par la pitié et la frayeur. Le jeu commence bien!

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La Cage aux Folles`: A single Sterling Performance Can’t Rescue Suzart’s Show

La Cage aux Folles`: A single Sterling Performance Can’t Rescue Suzart’s Show

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Photo: Patricia Curtis.   Kraig Paul Proulx on the piano.

The trouble with Suzart’s new production of La Cage Aux Folles is that it contains only one performance of genuine dimension, commitment and conviction.

It comes from Kraig Paul Proulx, excellent in the role of Albin, the aging St. Tropez drag queen whose long-term relationship with Georges, long-time manager of the venerable La Cage nightclub, is thrown into crisis when the son they have raised together falls in love with the daughter of an ultra-conservative household.

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Viol( Schändung) : a magnificently choreographed production of Bothos Strauss’ reworking of Titus Andronicus

Viol( Schändung) : a magnificently choreographed production of Bothos Strauss’ reworking of Titus Andronicus

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Sixteen tableaux performed by a huge cast of students including a chorus that not only speaks but also transforms itself into parts of the set and integrated symbolic forms, reveals the enormous talents of Miriam Cusson, candidate for the Masters in directing in the theatre department of Ottawa U. She actually choreographs as much as directs this string of sado masochistic rituals of martyrization, and frenzied physical desire set off by the site of the sacrificial victim – violated, slashed and mutilated. A playful mise en abyme of a contemporary horror show where the director brings in the voyeuristic faces of the chorus peering out from the back of the set as they gaze on a whole society coming to pieces. There is the lust, the exhibitionism, the penitence…some of the most violent human instincts come crashing down on the spectator in this captivating parade of ceremonies that holds our attention every second of the evening. . The thread that runs through the performance is inherited from the Elizabethan (or Jacobean) Vengeance tragedies of Thomas Kyd a contemporary of Shakespeare; however, it owes even more to the ultimate vengeance tragedy Thyeste by the roman playwright Seneca that so intrigued Artaud

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Perth Classic Theatre’s Dial M for Murder is an absorbing and well paced drama.

Perth Classic Theatre’s Dial M for Murder is an absorbing and well paced drama.

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Photo. Jean-Denis Labelle  with Greg Campbell and Richard Gélinas

The key assumptions in Dial M for Murder are that planning the perfect murder takes time and that something is almost certain to go awry, no matter how meticulous and detailed the plan.

Frederick Knott’s 1952 murder mystery — more a will-he-get-away-with-it than a whodunit — is most familiar as the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland.

As directed by Laurel Smith, the Classic Theatre Festival production of Dial M for Murder now playing in Perth, is absorbing and well paced and David Magladry’s well-appointed set is both workable and in tune with the period.

Knott’s carefully crafted thriller is part straightforward storytelling (so somewhat heavy on exposition) and part study of a psychopath. Former tennis pro Tony Wendice, played with style by Greg Campbell, is all surface charm and the ability to talk his way out of tight corners, while being devoid of conscience and secure in his sense of entitlement.

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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!!

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

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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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Ottawa Fringe 2014. Iredea Techno dance/theatre!!! See this

Ottawa Fringe 2014. Iredea Techno dance/theatre!!! See this

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Photo thanks to Woo Me Myth.

Iredea Techno-dance/theatre performance.

First of all one can see this as one wants but to my mind this is not a Rock Opera or anything of the sort!!! The trouble is that we don’t have vocabulary to define this it is so far out. One could speak of techno-dance/theatre but whatever you think it might be, the performers are mainly dancers with theatre experience, and a musician. No matter, because whatever name one uses to describe this show be prepared for a fascinating experience that brought together contemporary technology fused with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s world of dance and Marie Chouinard’s earlier anthropological vision of dance, whose characters are at times, creatures crawling out of the Uhrschleim of a new world . Iredea recreates the Apocalypse with images projected on a screen, powerful lighting effects, sound effects that are bits of electronically generated vibrating rhythm, guitar music, a human voice that growls and pants and makes unidentifiable sounds for which we don’t yet have the words in our language to describe.

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