Kiviuq returns: poetry, story telling, music, performance, the makings of an epic in inuktitut.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 22, 2017

kiviuq Returns: photo national Arts Centre English language theatre

Kiviuq Returns is a collective work produced by Quaggiavuut, a Nunavut-based arts organization that has also worked in Banff with dancers, choreographers and technical staff. Singers, musicians, story tellers, dancers, actors, painters, set and costume designers, and all manner of artists interested in exploring the re-imagined journey of the legendary Kiviuq , the great northern figure who represents all life as he returns through the whole Arctic territory, have come together to share each other’s artistic talents and create an extraordinary event that is danced, spoken and sung, mostly in Inuktikut. …

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Old Stock: A refugee love story. (Artsfile.ca)

By Patrick Langston | July 16, 2017

You may never look at a shipping container the same way after seeing Old Stock. Starring Halifax singer-songwriter-actor Ben Caplan, a luxuriantly bearded lad with a grand voice and a remarkable flair for entertaining, the music-play hybrid opens with a closed shipping container at centre stage.

As blandly anonymous on the exterior as any container, this one swings opens to reveal a four-piece band and the intimate story of two early-20th-century Jewish refugees who fled from Romania to Canada – refugees who are played by a couple of the musicians.

When the show’s over, the container doors close and your own life goes on, richer for what you’ve seen and heard. It’s a wonderful conceit for a set, this shipping container from who knows where. Designed by Louisa Adamson, Christian Barry and Andrew Cull, it suggests everything from foreign shores to life’s transience to the search for a permanent home, all themes in this smartly textured show……..

Read the rest on www.artsfile.ca

Old Stock is a 2b theatre company (Halifax, N.S.) production, co-produced by the NAC. It was reviewed Thursday. In the Azrieli Studio (NAC) until July 15. Tickets: nac-cna.ca

Ottawa Little Theatre: Pardon Me, Prime Minister. Good performances out of weak material.

By Iris Winston | July 14, 2017

Pardon Me, Prime Minister, directed by Josh Kemp. Photo: Maria Vartanova

Should you think about going to see Pardon Me, Prime Minister, currently playing at Ottawa Little Theatre, be warned.

This weak and dated farce by Edward Taylor and John Graham, first performed in 1979, is not connected to the fine television comedy series Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister — except by trying to force a link through its title.

The plot — if that is not too strong a word for the creaking storyline — is transparent and the climax (again too strong a word for something that is more fizzle than sizzle) is discernible well before the end of the first scene.

In the tradition of British farce, cast members rush through assorted doors and females strip to their underwear, on at least one occasion for absolutely no reason. Sadly, the OLT production features some of the ugliest and most unflattering undies that do nothing to enhance the appearance of the three young women who must wear them. And, while considering the costuming, it might also have been a good idea to spring for three similar dresses in three different sizes, instead of making do with one, for the three actresses of different body types, who must wear them. Along the way, this would also set up an amusing replication of outfits for the curtain call.

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Old Stock. A Refugee Love Story. A contemporary Jewish folktale superbly performed!

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 14, 2017

Old Stock. Ben Caplan as the narrator. Photo: National Arts Centre English Theatre

Old Stock : A Refugee Love Story written by Hannah Moscovitch. Songs by Ben Caplan and Christian Barry. Directed by Christian Barry.

An old man emerging from the smoky top of an apparently abandoned train, the suggestion of a painful transportation that took place during WWII, suddenly transforms this structure into the site of a travelling theatre, resounding with music, that has “appeared” out of the past with its lively Klezmer Rumanian Jewish /Gypsy background bringing together a huge audience ready to hear its tales, including a love story that must be told. With music that brings much to the dramatic intensity of the show, this theatrical company of theatre within theatre, is transported into the present with its four musicians/actors and a narrator-superb singer, dancer and actor Ben Caplan- under the direction of Christian Barry.

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Same Time Next Year: A delightful opener for this year’s festival

By Iris Winston | June 26, 2017

Same Time Next Year
By Bernard Slade
Classic Theatre Festival
Directed by Laurel Smith

Adultery has never been more respectable than it is in Same Time Next Year by Bernard Slade.

Written in 1975, the award-winning romantic comedy is as amusing and gently charming in 2017 as it was 42 years ago. Then, it was topical, as well as funny. Today, it is a period piece about social change, as well as being an appealing look at a relationship that begins as a one-night stand and evolves into an enduring connection. …

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Perth Festival delivers a solid revival of Same Time Next Year

By Jamie Portman | June 26, 2017

Bernard Slade’s endearing comedy-drama, Same Time Next Year, is now 42 years old — and yes it is a period piece. Yet, nothing seems dated about it, especially when it gets the kind of superior revival that has just opened at the Classic Theatre Festival in Perth.

It can’t be moved to the present. We must accept it on as own terms, as belonging to a particular passage of time — a quarter century of change and turbulence both in North American society and the wider world. It is a period inextricably linked to the lives of New Jersey accountant George and Oakland housewife Doris, both married with children, who meet in a Northern California Inn in 1951, have a one-night fling that is totally out of character for both of them, but are nevertheless attracted sufficiently to each other that they agree to meet in the same place once a year. …

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OLT does itself proud with Norm Foster’s Old Love

By Jamie Portman | June 13, 2017

Of course there’s comedy in Norm Foster’s 2008 play, Old Love, What else should we expect? After all it is a Norm Foster play. But there’s also wisdom and gentleness here — qualities that are abundantly present in Venetia Lawless’s thoughtful and beautifully modulated production for Ottawa Little Theatre.

It’a not quite right to suggest that Old Love is about a 30-year infatuation or even an obsession. Such words cheapen the emotions that the aging Bud has long nursed for Molly, the inaccessible — but, for him, mysteriously enchanting — wife of his boss. …

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Ottawa Fringe 2017 : Tim Motley as Dirk Darrow the mind-reading private dick.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 13, 2017

Here we are in the ambiance of the film noir, with the smooth, sexy, fast-talking Aussie full of himself in a charming sort of way. With his 30-40’s style hat he suggests Humphrey Bogart or something out of a Dashiel Hammett story but this fellow has a lot more class and a special talent: he is a slight of hand dick, a mind reader and a talented manipulator of each and every member of the audience. AS he solves each crime as though it were a magic show, we get more and more involved in the challenges he presents, always managing to divert our attention so that we dont see the ending before it hits us in the face. The climax: a very funny game of musical chairs where the participants, drawn at random from the audience, became the stars of the show because of their unexpected reactions that even threw Motley himself! His high point! he knows how to use the audence! Not bad at all..but where did his Australian accent go???

Tricky Dirk Darrow the mind-reading detective plays in the Arts Court Theatre.

Patrick Langston reviews the Fringe on Arts File

By Capital Critics Circle | June 13, 2017

Theatre review: Four more from the Ottawa Fringe Festival

Patrick Langston

In Rough Magic, Lindsay Bellaire as Ariel and Phillip Psutka as Caliban embody the limits and possibilities of humanity. Photo: Larry Carroll

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Children of God: An emotionally explosive experience

By Capital Critics Circle | June 11, 2017

Walking into the theatre, one is struck by Marshall McMahen’s two sweeping sheer fabric clouds, one slightly upstage of the other. Downstage left is a shelf of layered rock that can serve as a floor, a step or secluded hiding place. During the play Jeff Harrison’s lighting brings trees and sunsets to life in the clouds and creates windows of light that put you in a church or a secret room. It is a hint to what this play will be: simple but layered, honest, moving and profoundly beautiful. …

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