Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 32 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Theatre Kraken: Can Uniforms and a Couple of Songs Count as an Adaptation?

By Rajka Stefanovska | February 5, 2018

Kraken Theatre Production: Othello: A Civil War Tale

Shakespeare has always been a challenge for artists, but giving his plays a modern twist proves to be unachievable task for many. Theatre Kraken is not the first that failed to rise to the occasion. The reason for that is simple: while Shakespeare is timeless in his ideas, he is very much a man of his own time when it comes to the events he describes. That is to say, he recognizes that all people are led by the same instincts in their actions, which makes him relevant to any place or time. On the other hand, events and relationships that take place in his plays might have been natural in 16th century, while in our time they may look ridiculous. …

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Othello, a story worth telling again!

By Capital Critics Circle | February 4, 2018

I arrived two or three minutes late to the Gladstone due to the parking issues and bad time management after my day of drudgery, so I was looking forward to an evening of interesting theatre. I slid into the back seats of the theatre while Iago was professing his hatred of the Moor to the audience. He is dressed as a Union Army soldier in the American Civil War. …

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Little Women – the Broadway musical; some difficulty bringing substance to Alcott’s family.

By Iris Winston | February 3, 2018

Book by Allan Knee, Music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott. ASNY Productions. Directed b Jennifer Fontaine and Jacqueline Armstrongy

Louisa May Alcott’s semi-autobiographical novel, Little Women, tells the story of Jo March (Alcott’s alter ego) and her three sisters Meg, Beth and Amy. Originally published in 1868, the tale has been retold in numerous formats — as a silent film, more recent movie versions, a television series, a stage play and a musical. …

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Heavy Bell band and Kristina Watt: Feb 3 In Ottawa

By Capital Critics Circle | January 31, 2018

This Saturday the 3rd of February at Pressed Cafe, 8pm, I’ll be performing with a band called HEAVY BELL, led by Matt Peters and Tom Keenan of Winnipeg. The 8-piece musical ensemble are on tour with an album of songs based on the poetic novel by Elizabeth Smart (born in Ottawa), By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. I will be performing sections of the novel, set to music.

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Grounded ; Death by Remote Control….at the Gladstone

By Capital Critics Circle | January 22, 2018

The play Grounded by George Brant is an interesting concept. It poses questions about the modern military and the role of women in the traditional male roles of service. It also examines the depersonalization of combat through robotics and in particular drone warfare. When we first meet the pilot played by Alexis Scott she is still a hands on pilot, flying a plane in a real life eternally blue sky. She revels in the the Air Force fraternity and knowing that she is an isolated sister in the testosterone infused world of the flight officer.

After having gone through pregnancy and motherhood, the pilot returns to work only to find that technology has dramatically altered the life she knew. Through the use of drone, the blue experience of actual flying has been replaced by grey humdrum of monitors and remote control. She finds herself travelling from one screen at work to another one at home. I don’t believe that the author’s point is that war is less horrible or more glorious in real life. I think his intent is more about the numbing effect of technology that might actually be an impediment to diagnosing the prevalence of PTSD and other stress related side effects of war.

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What a Young Wife Ought to Know is a lesson in clear-eyed compassion

By Patrick Langston | January 21, 2018

What a young Wife ought to Know. Photo Timothy Patrick

At first sight, the two knitting needles stuck into an inconspicuous basket of wool seem a simple touch of domesticity. They are implements you’d expect any working class mother in the 1920s to wield with some skill and love if she wanted to keep her family decently clothed.

But as Hannah Moscovitch’s trenchant What a Young Wife Ought to Know (at the Great Canadian Theatre Company) proceeds, those needles, part of the set and never removed from the wool, take on a terrible potentiality. For this is a play concerned with women’s reproductive rights – or, more precisely, the absence of them — and we all know the horrifying use to which knitting needles have sometimes been put in the service of birth control. …

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What a Young Wife Ought to Know,: a play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, dried your eyes, and found your voice again.

By Maja Stefanovska | January 20, 2018

Photo Timothy Patrick

Hannah Moscovitch’s play What a Young Wife Ought to Know, which is based on a compilation of letters women sent to famous birth control advocate Dr. Marie Stopes in the 1920s, tackles an uncomfortably difficult theme. It is particularly hard to watch nowadays when crimes, attempted against women, are coming to light every day;

The subject matter of Moscovitch’s play, which is so deeply sad and disturbing, does not allow the spectator to relax for one minutes from the overwhelming horror. Nevertheless, the playwright, with the director, technical crew, and actors, create an intimate, haunting story and infuse it with so much warmth and humour that it seduces its audience in spite of the uncomfortable truths it speaks. The result is an overwhelming empathy and understanding for the characters and a play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, dried your eyes.
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Lepage’s 887: An Innovative Exploration into the World of Memory

By Capital Critics Circle | January 20, 2018

Reviewed by Natasha Lomonossoff

Ex Machina’s production of Robert Lepage’s recent play 887, showing at the National Arts Centre’s Babs Asper theatre, is a true triumph in innovative storytelling. The technologies of video and image projection work to complement the events and interactions that are recounted onstage in a way that is meaningful rather than cheesy. The program for the show states that “Ex Machina’s creative team believes that the performing arts-dance, opera, music-should be mixed with recorded arts-filmmaking, video art and multimedia.” Upon seeing a performance of 887, one is inclined to agree. …

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887 lepage at the NAC: technology masterfully used to support storytelling

By Maja Stefanovska | January 16, 2018

Robert Lepage’s 887, named after his childhood home address, deals with the unstable, vague nature of personal and collective memory. It’s an autobiographical show, in which he recalls his childhood in Québec City during the turbulent 1960s.

Details about his father and his immediate surroundings, as well as the Quiet Revolution and its consequences, frame his childhood and shape his identity, to an extent that surprises even Lepage. The snippets of story are nestled within the frame of the artist’s struggle to remember the words to “Speak White” By Michèle Lalonde, a poem dealing with the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the English-speaking world. …

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An Inspector Calls: A classic thriller struggles to survive OLT’s treatment.

By Jamie Portman | January 16, 2018

Photo Maria Vartanova

An Inspector Calls By J.B. Priestley , directed by Jim McNabb

J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls is such a well-crafted play that it can even survive the ill-conceived treatment meted out to it by Ottawa Little Theatre.

So even though OLT’s current production rarely meets the script’s full potential, there are still some effective moments as a mysterious police inspector named Goole descends on a well-to-do upper-middle-class household and proceeds to tear its complacencies asunder with his questions about the suicide of a young woman in this North Midlands town.

And there is no denying that the play’s climax, and the eerie conundrum it poses, can administer a satisfying jolt, even in a hit-and-miss offering like this one. At its best, An Inspector Calls displays its credentials as a classic 20^th Century stage thriller by a master dramatist. But J.B. Priestley was also a dramatist with a conscience. It’s no accident that he sets this play in 1912, two years before the outbreak of war, a time when the smug certainties of Edwardian England were yielding to the first signs of fracture in the social order. …

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