Category: Theatre in Ottawa and the region

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: No-fly Zone for Car and Show

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: No-fly Zone for Car and Show

Photo: Orpheus Musical Theatre

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
Music by special arrangement with Sony/ATV Publishing
Adapted for the stage by Jeremy Sams
Based on the MGM motion picture
Licensed script adapted by Ray Roderick
Directed by Jenn Donnelly

From a child’s perspective, a magical flying/floating car that saves its owners from the villains after a scary adventure into a strange land is a story worth telling.

Author Ian Fleming (creator of the James Bond 007 spy novels) wrote the tale about an old racing car for his son, Caspar, in 1964. In 1968, it was adapted into a movie, starring Dick Van Dyke, with screenplay by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes.

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Carleton’s Sock’n Buskin Theatre Company pull off delightfully funny “Much Ado About Nothing”

Carleton’s Sock’n Buskin Theatre Company pull off delightfully funny “Much Ado About Nothing”

 

The latest play from Carleton University’s Sock ‘n’ Buskin Theatre Company is the Shakespeare comedy Much Ado About Nothing, set not in Renaissance Italy but in 1970s Ontario cottage country in a bid to explore Shakespeare’s more eternal themes and the balance of seriousness with plenty of frivolity and dance parties.

The play captures the 1970s feel in the colourful set, costuming, and music. Updating Shakespeare’s setting was a fine move on the part of director Olivia Botelho, and the choice of decade heightened the goofy comedy while taking little away from the plot (there were a few occasions when the upbeat disco soundtrack didn’t quite match the darker events of the play).

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Chasing Champions brings to life a Black Canadian icon who should have never been forgotten

Chasing Champions brings to life a Black Canadian icon who should have never been forgotten

Photo: Jennifer Harrison

Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story by Nova Scotia playwright Jacob Sampson (who also stars) and directed by Ron Jenkins is very much a “best _____ you’ve never heard of story,” the tale of a young boxer who was never properly given his chance to be the champion of the world. The fact that the story must be viewed through a racial lens only adds to its strength and importance.

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Champion production of powerful drama

Champion production of powerful drama

Photo: Jennifer Harrison

Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story
By Jacob Sampson
A Ship’s Company (Parrsboro, NS) production in association with Eastern Front Theatre (Halifax) at the NAC Azrieli Studio
Directed by Ron Jenkins

Sam Langford was named to the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1955, one year before he died. The ESPN cable television network ranked him as one of the top ten boxers of all time.

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In the Unseen World: Important story in need of polishing

In the Unseen World: Important story in need of polishing

In the Unseen WorldIn the Unseen World, performed at the new LabO “black box” theatre space, is a devised theatre performance directed by University of Ottawa MFA directing student Vivi Sørensen. The piece is a reaction to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the performance moves between a present day Inuk journalist writing a story on the topic and traditional myths.  Sørensen, originally from Nuuk, Greenland, is particularly interested in working with storytelling, influenced by old Inuit stories she heard throughout her childhood. Her love of the form is evident in her mastery of it. The strongest and most beautiful parts of the performance are during the storytelling portions. So much so that the performance, which is full of potential, ends up uneven as a consequence. 

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In the Unseen World: Performing storytelling in the world of indigenous peoples

In the Unseen World: Performing storytelling in the world of indigenous peoples

In the Unseen World

 

In the new theatre research LabO located in the Ottawa Art Gallery, a group of students and friends came to watch the final portion of a research project presented by indigenous artists collaborating with   Vivi Sorensen, free lance artist  who is preparing her directors diploma for the  Masters program in Fine Arts  at the University of Ottawa.  Sorensen, an Inuk  actress from Nuuk , the capital of Groenland, and a  graduate of the Danish School of Performing arts ,  has integrated  Myths from the northern peoples into her storytelling techniques .

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It’s a wonderful life: a show that increases in entertainment level as it progresses.

It’s a wonderful life: a show that increases in entertainment level as it progresses.

It’s a Wonderful Life Adapted by Philip Grecian Based on the Frank Capra movie. Kanata Theatre Directed by Tom Kobolak

The clanging of a large bell has long been Kanata Theatre’s traditional way of signaling that the show is about to begin. The tradition continues during the company’s 50th anniversary season.

The tinkling of the small bells during the current show to announce that an angel has earned his/her wings is part of another tradition — the repeat of a version of It’s a Wonderful Life. The original 1946 movie by director Frank Capra, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, is available on television over the holiday season each year and one of the stage radio show adaptations — three different production are being presented in Ottawa before Christmas — is available for those who enjoy another dose of sentimentality. (For the record, the Capra movie was inspired by the Philip Van Doren Stern story The Greatest Gift.)

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University of Ottawa seeks balance in a challenging play by Carole Frechette

University of Ottawa seeks balance in a challenging play by Carole Frechette

Photo Marie Duval  University d’Ottawa

Ambiguity is a driving force of Quebec dramatist Carole Frechette’s gripping play, The Small Room At The Top Of The Stairs. More specifically it’s about the terrors that can lurk within that ambiguity — an element pursued by director Milena Buziak in her new production for the University of Ottawa Drama Department.

Uncertainty can wreak havoc on  a fragile  psyche, and newly married Grace is a prize specimen for a playwright whose cunning stage piece may present the outward trappings of a horror story but which is really concerned with the monsters that can rage within us.

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Drowning Girls a chilling portrayal of misogyny and murder

Drowning Girls a chilling portrayal of misogyny and murder

Katie Ryerson, Sarah Finn, Jacqui du Toit in The Drowning Girls. Photo: Andrew Alexander

There’s not much on the stage. Three bathtubs, a metal dress form and shower head hanging above each, a backdrop of panelled walls: That’s about it.

Designed by Brian Smith, it’s an apt setting for The Drowning Girls, a ghost story about three British women who, all murdered by the same man in the early years of the last century, were considered – and considered themselves – insubstantial. Insubstantial, that is, until their murderer charmed them into marriage, thereby making them, as one of the trio says, “a useful member of society.”

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The Colouring of Mind and Memory in Le Dire de Di.

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.

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