Blind date is a particularly unique type of theatre. It is a world premier every evening in that the circumstances and the cast change. An improvisational adventure that involves a somewhat randomly selected cast member for each individual performance insures that no one knows exactly how the play is going to unfold.
Peter Pan and Wendy
By Doug Rand, directed by Riley Stewart
Based on the novel by J.M. Barrie
American playwright Doug Rand’s recent adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s 1911 novel gives Wendy equal time with Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.
The script maintains most of the well-known elements of the story of how Peter Pan enticed the Darling children to fly away with him to Neverland. Captain Hook, the crocodile, the fairy Tinker Bell, the lost boys and the pirates all make appearances as the story moves slowly to its unlikely fairytale ending.
By Robert Schenkkan
Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre
Directed by Sean Devine
People laughed at Adolf Hitler before he gained power and his evil intentions became reality.
Donald Trump was also a source of amusement to many until he became President of the United States. But when his support base took his election as permission for the overt expression of the violence, racism and exploitation that had been kept just below the surface, we all stopped laughing. Evil had been invited in again as it was through the Nazi regime.
Building the Wall By Robert Schenkkan
Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre
Directed by Sean Devine
It was historian Hannah Arendt who famously advanced the concept of the banality of evil.
This viewpoint threaded its way through her book, Eichmann In Jerusalem, a riveting account of the trial of an infamous Nazi war criminal.
But you’ll also understand what she was getting at if you venture out to the Gladstone this weekend to see American dramatist Robert Schenkkan’s quietly lacerating new play, Building The Wall, and take in Brad Long’s unsettling portrayal of a redneck prison officer who has been complicit in unspeakable crimes against humanity. …
Building The Wall, written by Robert Shenkkan.
The swift march of folly can be the enemy of political theatre; by the time a playwright responds to events and a play reaches the stage, the world has moved on. Not so with Building The Wall by Robert Schenkkan. If you’ve had more than your dose of Trump inspired hilarity as served up by late night television, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre has the antidote. Lights up on grave misgivings. Walls actually come tumbling down in this production. …
Kellie MacDonald. Criticism class of Patrick Langston. November 18, 2017
From Israel-based dance company L-E-V, co-Artistic Directors Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar present OCD Love at the National Arts Centre’s Babs Asper Theatre. At roughly 55 minutes without intermission, the performance is an exploration of love and obsessive compulsive disorder set to the metronomic ticking of DJ Ori Lichtik’s soundscape. OCD Love keeps audiences on the edge with writhing choreography and repetitive bass-thumping house music. …
Emily Blake, November 26th 2017
In Patrick Langston’s criticism class.
Silence speaks louder than words, and in that silence is all the meaning in the world. LEV’s OCD Love is a powerful commentary on what it like to be plagued by OCD, shedding light on the realities of those who are faced with this disorder every day. LEV is an Israeli dance company founded by choreographer Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar. They are joined by techno musician Ori Lichtik, working together to create this hypnotic masterpiece. …
Office Hours By Norm Foster. Directed by Jo-Ann McCabe. Phoenix Players
It’s Friday afternoon at the office, or, more accurately, at six offices, and a regular day of preparing for the weekend away from the city.
The busy week included firing a couple of employees, having a sycophantic encounter with an alcoholic film director out of original ideas, dealing with a couple of potential suicides, a pushy salesman, a self-centred psychiatrist, a domineering mother who believes herself responsible for her son’s sexual orientation, an overweight jockey, a steamy novelist and a dead racehorse. …
Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire.Music by Jeanine Tesori. Based on the Dreamworks animation motion picture and the book by William Steig. Orpheus Musical Theatre Society, directed by Jenn Donnelly.
Shrek: The Musical will never win a place in the annals of great Broadway shows, but the production it receives from Orpheus is nevertheless an ongoing delight.
Forget the fact that the prime reason for its arrival on the Great White Way was somewhat cynical and opportunistic — to capitalize further on the enormous success of the Dreamworks animated movie about a misanthropic swamp-dwelling ogre named Shrek and his rescue of a princess from a tower. Ignore, if you can, the readiness of the stage adaptation to remain faithful to a marketing dictum pursued by the filmmakers — that young audiences find flatulence funny. Accept the reality that Jeanine Tesori’s score can be pretty underwhelming. …
There have been some remarkable musicals already this early in Ottawa’s theatre season. We had the remarkable Jonathan Larson biographical musical Tick Tick Boom kicking off for Orpheus in the studio theatre at Centrepointe and the clever, innovative Ordinary Days at GCTC. We are now into the Christmas season and the more traditional musical formula is upon us.
Shrek, the classic story of ogre gets girl, ogre loses girl, ogre gets girl wrapped up in a message of inclusion and be true to yourself comes to the Centrepointe theatre from the dedicated and talented community of Orpheus. Oops, I forgot the spoiler alert. Oh well, I doubt that there would be more than two percent of the public that isn’t already familiar with the original DreamWorks animated film of the same name. …