Category: Theatre in Ottawa and the region

The Clean House. A play that is far beyond the capacity of this company!!

The Clean House. A play that is far beyond the capacity of this company!!

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The Clean House       Photo: Poster thanks to  Three Sisters Theatre Company

 

The Clean House by  Sarah Ruhl

I have become suspicious of local productions that advertise a version  of the same play that has been a  big hit in New York!! This assumes that the audience cannot distinguish between a production  in one city and a production in another city .  In the case of the Three Sisters production of  The Clean House,  that New York reference created enormous expectations that were soundly trounced by this show at the Gladstone. …

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The Clean House: as a Pulitzer Prize finalist the play falls flat.

The Clean House: as a Pulitzer Prize finalist the play falls flat.

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The clean House
Photo. poster courtesy of The Gladstone theatre

The Clean house by Susan Ruhl, Three Sisters Theatre Company, Directed by Mary Ellis

The most striking aspect of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House is that the sum of the parts is far less than the play as a whole. The most amazing view of this 2004 play’s history is that it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. (2005 must have been a dry year for playwriting in the U.S.)

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Dead Accounts: a good production of a mildly entertaining script

Dead Accounts: a good production of a mildly entertaining script

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Dead Accounts.   Photo: Maria Vartanova

Dead Accounts By Theresa Rebeck, an Ottawa Little Theatre production, directed by Geoff Gruson

From the outset, there’s little doubt that Dead Accounts is the work of a playwright used to writing for television. And Theresa Rebeck, a writer for such TV series as NYPD Blue, Law & Order and Criminal Intent, regularly resorts to short scenes, detailed visuals and blackouts TV-style in Dead Accounts. This is not necessarily a problem, though the choppy format does become somewhat repetitive. Rather, it is an indication that this dark comedy, premiered in 2012, is more concerned with immediate response than resolution (as clearly shown in the open-ended conclusion). …

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Les Misérables: A resounding artistic success that rips at your heart!

Les Misérables: A resounding artistic success that rips at your heart!

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Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean in the prologue
les Miserables

It was the opening night in Ottawa of this newest 2017 version of Les Misérables. The original  French text  of the stage presentation   first  appeared in  1987  ( Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel). Later  adapted   for the  English language stage by James Fenton , Trevor Nunn and John Caird,)  both musical versions have been seen at the NAC. The production is under the  general direction of Laurence Connor and James Powell. …

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Undercurrents: The Pipeline Project – more polemics than understanding

Undercurrents: The Pipeline Project – more polemics than understanding

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The Pipeline Project

 

 

Reviewed on Saturday, February 10 by Natasha Lomonossoff

As political plays go, Savage Society and ITSAZOO Productions’ show The Pipeline Project, directed by Chelsea Haberlin, is one that doesn’t hide where its sympathies lie. The play, which just finished its run at the undercurrents festival held at Arts Court Theatre, comes out overtly against the building of new pipelines (including the currently controversial Trans Mountain line proposed in BC). In this way, The Pipeline Project is a play which seeks more to advocate and convince viewers of its own perspective rather than simply host a debate on pipelines which involves all parties. In this regard, the play is only partly successful. …

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Undercurrents: the Twilight Parade-an Imaginative lens for contemporary issues?

Undercurrents: the Twilight Parade-an Imaginative lens for contemporary issues?

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Undercurrents from the Twilight Parade

 

Reviewed on Saturday, February 10 by Natasha Lomonossoff

The use of puppets to tell stories which involve mature themes is one that is both risky and innovative; with an artistic object like a puppet, one would expect that such a story would be told in a way which makes the viewer think about these issues much differently. The Twilight Parade, a mixed media and puppet show that is part of the undercurrents theatre festival at Arts Court, is moderately successful in this regard. Created and directed by Nadia Ross of STO Union, the show takes on contemporary political and social issues in an uncommon fashion. The play begins with an introduction to a group of otherworldly creatures who maintain the threads of human love which hold society together. As these creatures discover, however, all in not well in the human world, as very real issues of racism, corporate greed and economic inequality are present. …

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Undercurrents: “The Pipeline Project” , Forstner & Fillister present: Forstner & Fillister in: “Forstner & Fillister” and” Little Boxes”

Undercurrents: “The Pipeline Project” , Forstner & Fillister present: Forstner & Fillister in: “Forstner & Fillister” and” Little Boxes”

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The Pipeline Project.

White, urban eco-warrior or First Nations rez dweller with a hankering for the good life, you don’t get off easy in The Pipeline Project.

The show, performed as a series of vignettes, centres on the political and cultural battles over pipelines in B.C.

That could make for a dry 75 minutes. But writers/performers Sebastien Archibald, Quelemia Sparrow and Kevin Loring (artistic director of the new Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre) make the matter intensely personal, and in doing so, render it both universal and absorbing. …

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Kanata Theatre comes up trumps with Sleuth

Kanata Theatre comes up trumps with Sleuth

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Sleuth, Poster of the Kanata Theatre production.

 

By Anthony Shaffer, a Kanata Theatre production,   directed by Beverley Brooks

There’s more than one reason for seeing Kanata Theatre’s revival of Sleuth.

The first is Dale MacEachern’s robust performance as the scheming Andrew Wyke, a flamboyant crime novelist with a deadly penchant for game playing.

The second is provided by Jarrod Chambers as the hapless victim of this gamesmanship, a guy named Milo Tindle who’s been messing about with Andrew’s wife and ends up being drawn into an infernal web as a result. …

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at Kanata Theatre: A Fine Production of an Outdated Play

at Kanata Theatre: A Fine Production of an Outdated Play

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Sleuth, Poster of the Kanata Theatre production.

By Anthony Shaffer

Kanata Theatre

Directed by Beverley Brooks

Often called the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth was a smash hit when it premiered in London’s West End in 1970 and won a Tony and other awards on Broadway the following year. It was also made into a movie — in 1972, 2007 and 2014  — the most effective version the first of the three, which starred Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.

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Theatre Kraken delivers some blazing moments in Othello

Theatre Kraken delivers some blazing moments in Othello

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Othello Theatre Kraken

There’s an undeniably powerful moment in Theatre Kraken’s production of Othello when the tormented Venetian general of the title unleashes his savagery on Iago, the diabolical ensign who has been slowly and subtly driving Othello to his doom.

By this point in the play, Iago has already planted the canker of suspicion in the man he hates —  the suspicion that Othello’s wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. So this sudden explosion of wrath comes as Iago is stepping up his insinuations. Othello abruptly loses it — grabbing the man he considered a friend, locking his head in the stocks, and proceeding to beat him mercilessly. …

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