Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 13 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Bear & Co’S eneven King Lear deserves applause for ambition

By Patrick Langston | March 24, 2019

Shakespeare’s King Lear is not for the faint of heart.

Cruelty, despair and madness anchor the play. Fond and foolish Lear may bring on his own fate, but the treatment the aging king receives from two of his three daughters and his descent into unreality devastate us. Gloucester, Lear’s faithful supporter, gets his eyes gouged out. And when Cordelia, Lear’s only loving child, dies, it’s as though all that was ever good and sane and hopeful has been extinguished (no wonder Samuel Johnson said he could never read the final scene again). Plus, it’s a really long script.

All that to say that successfully mounting the play demands extraordinary reserves of acting, directing and every other kind of talent. Bear & Co.’s production at The Gladstone deserves applause for its ambition, but falls short in its execution. …

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Angélique suffers from too much exposition and not enough drama

By Patrick Langston | March 24, 2019

Life will be different this time,” says young, hopeful Marie-Joseph Angélique at the beginning of Lorena Gale’s Angélique (NAC). A sinking feeling in your gut signals no, it won’t. Your gut is right.

And really, why should Angélique (Jenny Brizard) look to the future with any optimism? Brought from Portugal, she’s a black, domestic slave in a wealthy, 18^th-century Montreal household, one of many over the two centuries before slavery was abolished across the British Empire in 1833 (Gale’s play is based on the real-life story of Marie-Joseph Angélique). …

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Albumen : a living hotblooded art piece

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 21, 2019

The Arts Court Theatre is the perfect intimate space for this experimental performance piece, produced as part of the TACTIC’s mainstage series . The play, written in English by francophone playwight, Mishka Lavigne, is a reflexion on the relationship between varying artistic gazes and how they apprehend the exterior world.

During these discussions the set becomes an important part of this collective artistic vision as the visual and material substance of the acting space envelope the actors. Thanks to the well thought-out reflection by director Éric Perron working with a fairly abstract text almost lacking in any stage directions, the result of Perron’s work is impressive . He eeks out all the possible meanings from a text that could have remained profoundly hermetic. …

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Behaviour is essential and traumatic-socially conscious theatre at its peak!

By Ryan Pepper | March 16, 2019

It isn’t easy to review a play like Behaviour, written by Ottawa playwright Darrah Teitel and directed by Michael Wheeler. All the usual things a reviewer discusses, the lighting, the sound, the acting, seem unimportant. They’re all excellent, it’s a top-notch performance in every way, but Behaviour is a play so inextricably about its message that everything else can seem marginal.

Behaviour is traumatizing, cathartic, and of the utmost importance. Ostensibly about sexual assault on Parliament Hill, it is an impossibly powerful play about rape. Divided into three parts, the middle soliloquy engulfs the rest of the play. The curtain closed, a single light harshly illuminating her, Zoë Sweet’s Mara lists the seven types of rape that she has identified, that she has experienced. That every woman has experienced. It is not an easy scene, but it’s a perfect one. It would be hard to find a more powerful scene in theatre history. …

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Love and Human Remains: an excellent staging gives life to a dated play.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 15, 2019

The title of the play (Love and Human Remains) by Brad Fraser written in 1989 and currently running at The Gladstone, has the advantage of being brief. However, the original title , Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love seems closer to the themes and content of this work that helped expand the international reputation of this exceptional Canadian playwrite. Thus, one wonders why author Brad Fraser discarded the original title at our present time, a title that brought his own book, part gory mystery thriller, part examination of the underlying violence implicit in the search for ones identity in a constantly fluctuating urban environment, closer to the novel American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis.

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Love and Human Remains: Excellent production explores loneliness in the modern world

By Rajka Stefanovska | March 10, 2019

Love and Human Remains explores the everlasting questions of human existence – who we are, what we want, where we go. Playwright Brad Fraser is searching for answers in the world that surrounds him, and what he finds is chilling.

He follows the life of seven lonely people whose lives intertwine on many levels. Invisible, trapped in loneliness and in search of love, they barely exist in a Canadian metropolis. While they are trying to find themselves, a series of murders also takes place in the city. …

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NAC’s Prince Hamlet gives bold, modern, and captivating twist to classic play

By Ryan Pepper | March 3, 2019

Photo Bronwen Sharp. The National Arts Centre’s Prince Hamlet from Toronto’s Why Not Theatre is a daring production that turns the classic play on its head and proves that a postmodern spin on the classics can pay off big.

The play is directed by Toronto-based Ravi Jain, whose bold vision demonstrates that a 400-year-old play can always be mined for captivating new details. …

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Hamlet: brilliant performances but opposite gender casting adds nothing new to the play

By Maja Stefanovska | March 2, 2019

Photo Bronwen Sharp That Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet is daring and different is undeniable. Adapter and director Ravi Jain has taken the well-known classic and given it a gender-bending, modern, bilingual twist. By approaching the story from a different perspective, the aim is for more people to see themselves in the mirror being held up to nature, in the director and playwright’s words. It is an ambitious undertaking and, while the approach is refreshing and there are some stand-out moments, there are so many elements competing for attention that the production comes off as messy rather than avant-garde. …

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Ravi Jain’s Prince Hamlet breathes new life into the Bard

By Patrick Langston | March 2, 2019

artsfile.ca

February 28, 2019

Christine Horne (Hamlet) . Photo: Bronwen Sharp

Just when you thought no one could possibly find a fresh interpretation of Hamlet, along come adapter/director Ravi Jain and his Why Not Theatre company out of Toronto. Not exactly risk-averse, they’ve sliced and diced the old warhorse, integrated a gender-bending and cross-cultural slant, erected three huge mirrors as part of the set, and made Horatio – played in American Sign Language by the remarkable deaf actor Dawn Jani Birley – the play’s narrator.

The result: Prince Hamlet, as Jain has dubbed it, is a theatrical whirlwind and the best show thus far in an already strong National Arts Centre English Theatre season.

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OF Mice and Men: solid production of an excellent play

By Rajka Stefanovska | February 18, 2019

Of Mice and Men, a story about two migrant workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, is set in California during the Great Depression in the United States. It explores the depths of misery of those whose lives were ruined by poverty, enveloped in loneliness, and whose dreams were not bound to come true.

George and Lennie are as dissimilar as two people can be – George is intelligent and quick witted, whereas Lennie is mentally challenged; George is a protector and leader, while Lennie is a witless follower; George is courageous and determined while Lennie is a big, frightened kid with an enormous physical strength. Still, they are close friends,
connected by the same destiny and a dream that keeps them going despite their harsh reality. …

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