Photo Riche Perez. Steve O’Connell and Berni Stapleton with musicians in the background
The NAC’s Between Breaths from St. John’s Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland theatre captures the life of animal behaviourist Jon Lien, who moved to Newfoundland to study storm petrels and ended up becoming known around the world for his ability to rescue whales from fishing nets. Before Lien, whales tangled in nets were routinely shot and took the fishing nets with them, which would cause financial ruin for the fisherman. Lien worked tirelessly to save both whales and fishermen’s livelihoods. …
Photo Andrew Alexander Geoff McBride and Erica Anderson
A two-hander by Rose Napoli that has been given a fine production at the GCTC thanks to director Eric Coates’ delicate work with actors Erica Anderson and Geoff McBride. There is also the beautiful scenography constructed by Seth Gerry’s lighting design that speaks to the text in many ways and the clean lines of Brian Smith’s sleek set. Nevertheless the play is troubling and even rather difficult to swallow because of the ethical questions it raises.
Before even seeing the show, I thought immediately of David Mamet’s Oleanna, where the playwright creates a complex relationship between a student and her professor that has dire consequences for the professor. Questions of sexual harassment, involving what appear to be vengeance and anger and much misunderstanding , clearly motivated or not, make Mamet’s work a lot more ambiguous and sophisticated than Napoli’s writing because we are never sure about the motives of the young lady. Has she been manipulated by a group of her peers has the profs apparent lack of sympathy encouraged her anger?. She does not feel attracted to her professor in a sexual way, quite the contrary , so the story is very different, but we are still not sure where Mamet is leading us in spite of all the manipulation- or highly aggressive reactions that escalate to a great degree on the part of the female lead. The play still leaves us with many ethical questions as does Napoli’s play yet Laura’s feelings and her involvement with Alan makes this highly charged drama a lot clearer but difficult to swallow. …
The season will celebrate indigenous women’s resilience, strength and beauty ,with nine productions out of eleven written and created by women. In addition to English and French, more than ten indigenous languages will be spoken in the works presented next year, including Anishinaabermowin , Coast Salish, Cree, Gitxsan, Inuktitut, Kalaallisut , Nlkaka’pamux’stn.and many other languages,
The artistic director of the new indigenous theatre is Kevin Loring , award winning playwrite, director and actor from the Nlaka ‘pamux Nation in British Columbia and by Managing Director Lori Marchand from the Syilx First Nation and former executive director of Western Canada Theatre.
Photo Barb Gray\ Christopher Deacon and Kevin Loring
Kevin Loring speaks of an indigenous renaissance as the work that has been done over the past decade was part of the Centre”s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. This new department of Indigenous theatre, (which will share the NAC with French Theatre and English theatre) is an “ historic and significant milestone in our history “ says Cristopher Deacon , president and CEO of the NAC. This significant initiative builds on the relationship that theNAC has been fostering for decades with exceptional indigenous artists.
AmericanDream.ca est la première mondiale d’une trilogie qui dure trois heures 40 minutes. En passant par des moments d’ennui jusqu’à la fascination la plus totale, le spectateur rencontre quatre générations de la famille Cardinal, un récit à la fois biographique et imaginaire qui accumule des fragments analogiques d’un narratif parfois difficile à suivre mais plein de rebondissements et des situations qui divertissent et qui émeuvent. …
Agatha Christie is a master of murder mystery. Her works include complicated plots, a number of suspects – each one with a well kept secret – and Miss Marple, an amateur sleuth with unparalleled wit. What makes her books so widely loved is that, although events revolve around a murder, the story is rarely about the crime. Leslie Darbon’s stage adaptation of Christie’s novel “A Murder is Announced” is an attempt to reconcile the thrill of a “whodunnit” with the cozy, small-town atmosphere Agatha Christie de-scribes in her novels. While it works well in the first act, the second comes off as rushed and chopped. Still, congratulations are in order to Ottawa Little Theatre for managing to produce an entertaining production out of a somewhat mediocre script. …
The Pigeon King at the NAC is a perfect country musical about pigeon scams, the modern family farm, hope and loss and that reality is stranger than fiction
The National Arts Centre’s latest acquisition, The Pigeon King originally from Blyth Festival and starring the Blyth Festival cast, is an outstanding southwestern Ontario country musical comedy built around one of the most outrageous pyramid schemes Canada’s ever seen, the Pigeon King International scam of the early-to-mid-2000s that saw hundreds of farmers switch over to raising pigeons with disastrous results. This is a case of fact being stranger than fiction, and the Blyth Festival crew have turned the facts into a play that makes a worthy addition to the Canadian canon. …
Did Arlan Galbraith believe his own sales pitch? Others sure did. So many fell under his folksy spell that, between 2001 and 2008, farmers in southern Ontario, as far west as Alberta and in several U.S. states poured millions into Galbraith’s Ponzi scheme involving pigeon breeding.
Watching The Pigeon King — a Blyth Festival production at the NAC that moves with the sure, fleet speed of a bird’s throbbing heart — you understand why those farm families opened their wallets and purses to this round, balding guy from Cochrane, Ontario with the insinuating nasal voice and big ideas.
“We felt like we were drowning,” says one of his victims, referring to the desperate straits so many Canadian farmers – weather-dependent, indebted, pensionless – find themselves in.
The latest play in the TACTICS Mainstage Series of local independent theatre, Swedish Furniture by Ottawa playwright Matt Hertendy is a realistic look at the stresses that a hard job market, aimlessness, and lack of sense of self put on a young relationship.
The premise of the play is simple but sets up the disastrous result from the beginning—building an IKEA bed. The moment you find out that this play is about a young couple trying to find work with arts degrees and build IKEA furniture, you know the play isn’t going to end well.
Hertendy and director Katie MacNeill don’t delay the inevitable for long—the play has several flashbacks and flash-forwards, including one in which the unnamed female character, played wonderfully by Megan Carty, is trying to return the bed. We know the relationship isn’t going to survive the bed-building process. Knowing what’s coming doesn’t take the punch out of it though. …
Love and Information by Caryl Churchill. A production of the MFA directing programme in the The theate Department at the U of Ottawa
A talented young director brings order to Caryl Churchill’s purposely chaotic vision of the nature of contemporary communication in this world of digital reality. Vivi SØrensen whose work we have already seen in the new Lab O at the Ottawa Art Galery, (http://capitalcriticscircle.com/in-the-unseen-world-performing-storytelling-in-the-world-of-indigenous-peoples/) has created an ethereal setting with nine actors, constantly rearranging themselves over rounded forms that take the shape of seats and sofas and places to spread out as the individuals listen to their cell phones, or watch wrinkled and twisted images from tablets and other I- pads or technological means of communication that are projected on floating surfaces that appear to be violet, or red, or green or whatever emotional lighting sources appear in front of them. …
