The key to life in the big city? Ignore the big and celebrate the everyday.
It sounds trite, but Ordinary Days – Adam Gwon’s thoughtfully empathetic chamber musical about four young people adrift in New York City – is just the opposite of pedestrian, as the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s winning production of his show proves.
Directed by Eric Coates, the sung-through piece tracks the lives of two women and two men as they grapple with loneliness in the city and struggle for everything from artistic recognition to freedom from a past that warps the present. …
Reviewed by Kellie MacDonald in the theatre criticism class of Patrick Langston
Rope, razor blades, a bottle of pills — they’re not your typical punchlines, but this isn’t your typical comedy, either. Originally written in French by Rébecca Déraspe and translated in English by Leanna Brodie, You Are Happy leaves you with a sinking feeling in your gut that, as perfect as things seem, we, individually and collectively, are hurtling towards ruin. This absurd
dark comedy, directed by CBC alumnus Adrienne Wong, opens the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s 2017-2018 season.
Reviewed by Eden Patterson in the Critcism class of P. Langston
A hairdresser walks, not into a bar, but into a university office. It’s the 80’s in Northern England. Rita (26), the hairdresser, is disappointed with her life. She longs for an education but feels the net of society’s expectations drowning her into a sea of an unhappy marriage and into the deep depths of ignorance. Frank, an old, pessimistic, student-loathing alcoholic professor finds the quick-witted and relentless Rita in his office. Over the course of many weeks, Frank guides Rita on her path to higher education and towards a final exam. However, as it is put in the show, “if you wanna change, you gotta do it from the inside.” …
Some times we think our lives are pretty ordinary. Maybe they are but this insightful play reminds us that is no reason not to celebrate them. Ordinary Days playing at the GCTC focuses on 4 people in New York, but it captures the spirit of everyone that feels alone or trapped while surrounded by people. It is minimalist theatre at its best. It needs so little to create atmosphere: some stairs to create levels a few benches, chairs and you have a set. Add some light applied in just the correct way and any landscape you need is created to move a story along. In Ordinary Days at the GCTC, Seth Gerry’s set and lighting design embody this principle of creating simple perfect landscapes out of almost nothing at all. …
Enchanted April By Matthew Barber Based on the novel The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Linden House Directed by George Stonyk
Would that a month’s vacation in a foreign land, surrounded by flowers, sunshine and ocean, could solve the problems of daily life.
Maybe it did for author Elizabeth von Arnim, whose 1922 novel The Enchanted April was inspired by the month she spent at Castello Brown in Portofino on the Italian Riviera. It certainly spawned two stage plays (1925 and 2003), two movies (1935 and 1992) and even a musical (2010) and is credited with having made Portofino popular as a vacation destination.…
The line from the world premiere of Gord Carruth’s latest work, Sir John A. Macdonald, the Musical, is the core of the show that recounts key points in the life of Canada’s first prime minister in words and music.
The man — consistently ranked as one of the most successful prime ministers in Canadian history — is an ideal subject to mark the 150th anniversary of the country he was instrumental in founding, particularly given some recent negative comments about Macdonald’s policies. In his carefully researched and historically accurate musical, Carruth has chosen to present the man, his demons and some of his speeches, as recorded in Hansard, without judgment or analysis. …
What is good about 9th Hour Theatre Company is their unflinching courage to tackle bold and often sensitive subjects. What is great about them is their consistently challenging and artistic story telling that manages to hold up a mirror to its audience, no matter the topic. Their new production, Prodigal Son by Shawn MacDonald, is inspired by the suffering of LGBTQ people of faith, but in director Jonathan Harris’ interpretation, the story becomes universal – it is about our imperfect world where individuals struggle with preconceived notions, embedded deeply through their upbringing. Unable to fight society’s rigid rules, carved in stone by prejudice and a blind faith in authority, they lash out on those close to them and end up losing themselves. …
TotoToo Theatre’s production of Bent at the Gladstone was a laudable effort, despite a few inconsistencies that detracted from its overall impact. Director Josh Kemp’s take on Martin Sherman’s historically significant play was most successful in establishing the dark events and atmosphere that foreground it: that is, the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany. Bringing this lesser known evil to light, the play focuses on an openly gay Berliner named Max who, along with his partner Rudy, are forced to flee the city after two Nazi guards come to their apartment with an arrest warrant for a companion they picked up at a club just the previous night. The pair embark on a fruitless journey all throughout the country to escape, as they are eventually caught and placed on a train heading towards Dachau. Unimaginable brutality and suffering only follows from there. …
Ismène courtesy of the University of OttawaTheatre Department
A finely tuned production that shows off a talented ensemble and describes an enduring mystery, Michael Geither’sIsmene, directed by Daniel Mroz, takes us into the complex and precarious world of siblings Antigone and Ismene. As portrayed in Sophocles’ Antigone, Ismene is the saner sister who, while sympathetic to Antigone’s desire to do the right thing in burying their bother, is not prepared to endure the wrath of Uncle and King Creon for the sake of a corpse. Indeed, in both the original play, and in Geither’s text, Ismene is the one most anxious to cast off the mantle of the family tragedy for the pleasures of an ordinary life. But growing up under the shadow of incest and death places the normal out of reach. In this less than one-hour exploration of girlhood lived on the fringes of tragedy, the actors use singing, poetic encounters, movement, and a constantly shifting landscape of coffin-like boxes (courtesy of Paul Auclair) to express the isolation their parent’s fate has inflicted on their offspring. The poignant admission that it is Jocasta, their mother, who hanged herself, that they miss the most, rings particularly true. This chorus of actors, dancers and singers all deserve congratulations for excellent work. The uniform costumes of tank tops and shorts designed by Margaret Coderre-Williams contribute to a light and playful feel. While Mroz tells us that we really don’t know what Greek theatre might have looked like, one feels this play with its daring cast and well-balanced creative team has come awfully close.
Reviewed by laurie Fyffe. Photo courtesy of the University of Ottawa theatre department.
Ismène , written by Michael Geither , directed by Daniel Mroz
Cast: With: Emily Bertrand, Emma Hickey, Jasmine Massé, Montana Adams, Zaakirah Chubb, Sophie McIntosh, Stefanie Velichkin, Kiara Lynn Neï.
What starts off as a booze and drug filled night turns into hell for Max as he brings home a man wanted by the Nazis, which upends his life. The opening performance of Bent by TotoToo Theatre at the Gladstone Theatre was a harrowing experience, but that says more about the content rather than the production. After being caught by the Gestapo in 1934 Berlin for being a gay man, Max is sent to the Dachau concentration camp where the only ray of sunshine is his developing secret relationship with fellow prisoner, Horst. The men try their hardest to survive under the most trying of conditions and find ways to subvert the prying eyes of the guards.
