Toto Too never stops outdoing itself and this ultra-energized performance under the direction of Michael Gareau proves it once again. It all glows and glitters with the marvelous costumes of the drag Queen world, (created by designer Lu-Anne Connell ), the stunning singing voices , the excellent acting and Paddy Allen McCarthy’s all-encompassing choreography, take over the original music and lyrics that transgress the established codes of the musical world. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a brilliant monument to a shifting world where every human individual is given a space of one’s own. …
“I don’t do nuance,” George W. Bush once famously observed. Neither does Kanata Little Theatre when it comes to bringing Treasure Island to the stage. The people involved in this noisy, strident, generally unsubtle offering seem to think it’s being mounted in the cavernous Canadian Tire Centre just down the road rather than in the intimate Ron Maslin Playhouse. Too often, Wendy Wagner’s production seems more of a shouting match rather than a proper performance with both the Robert Louis Stevenson
novel on which it is based, as well as Ken Ludwig’s stage adaptation, often perishing in the din.
To be sure, there are some good things about the production The design factor is spectacularly successful. Karl Wagner’s set works wonderfully both as the Admiral Benbow Inn and as a vessel in search of buried treasure. Wagner is also responsible for the atmospheric lighting, while Maxine Ball deserves credit for the outstanding costumes and Robert Fairbairn scores with the show’s soundscape. Fight choreographer Aaron Lajeunesse has come through with some nimbly executed swordplay. And the scene changes are fluidly managed. …
Treasure Island
By Ken Ludwig
Adapted from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
Kanata Theatre
Directed by Wendy Wagner
The treasure to be found in the Kanata Theatre production of Treasure Island is its design and technical achievement.
But much of the rest of Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure story — written to entertain his stepson, with “no need of psychology of fine writing”— is boring, repetitive and noisy in the KT production, directed by Wendy Wagner. …
Ghost of a Chance By Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus
Rural Root Theatre Company
Directed by Valerie Jorgensen
The three most annoying things about Ghost of a Chance are: its heavy borrowing from the Noel Coward classic Blithe Spirit early on; the unreasonable return of one thieving character, simply to engineer a happy ending; and the misdating of deer hunting season by a character who is supposed to be a hunting/shooting/fishing macho type.
There is also an issue with the 1996 comedy by husband-and-wife writing duo Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus being cluttered with too many complications and silliness. Even so, this ‘spirited’ sit-com includes a number of funny lines. But, unless a production of this type moves at a consistently fast pace, it stands more than a ghost of a chance of falling flat. …
Born and brought up in New York, John Patrick Shanley , author of the screenplay for Moonstruck, directed by Norman Jewison , captured a modern Italian American love story that was told in the style of a Puccini opera. Now he has written a play about Irish families deeply rooted in their ancestral land,This one too has great operatic undertones ! Structured as a series of solos, duos, trios and quartets, the characters have to maintain the music of the accents from Dublin to Mullingar in the northern most areas of the Republic , which is what the cast of Dave Dawson’s production at the Gladstone did very well. We were immediately immersed in a swelling of romantic authenticity and thoughtful intensity that keeps us captivated for the whole evening. …
Towards Zero By Agatha Christie and Gerald Verner
Ottawa Little Theatre
Directed by Sarah Hearn
You know the drill of a classic whodunit: A small group of people, most of them with a grudge or a secret, gathers in an elegant country or seaside house, probably on a dark and stormy night. At least one among them is murdered (usually off stage) and it seems that the killer is an insider. …
Outside Mullingar By John Patrick Shanley Black Sheep Theatre Company Directed by Dave Dawson
It is no surprise that a romantic comedy set in Ireland should focus on a land dispute between neighbours and begin on a rainy night in the aftermath of a funeral. Neither is it unusual for the talk to center on death: Tony, the professional curmudgeon on one side of the fence, predicts that Aoife, the widow next door, will die within the year and adds that he does not expect to live more than two more months.
Both predictions are correct (yes, this is a comedy — Irish style). Before the two months are up, Tony delivers his zinger: he does not intend to leave the family farm to his only son, Anthony, because he fears that the young man will never marry.…
It’s more than 40 years since a young, award-winning Canadian playwright named David Freeman told an interviewer that what he yearned for most in life was a meaningful physical relationship with another human being.
It was a poignant admission, because Freeman had been born with cerebral palsy. And throughout his life he resisted marginalization by a culture unable to get a handle on the notion that his kind were as capable as anyone else of an entire range of human emotions, including sexual need and desire.
These emotions were given caustic, funny utterance in Creeps, his 1971 stage triumph about the plight of disabled youth trapped in the coils of an unfeeling rehab centre. Its premiere at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre was a groundbreaking event — not simply because it broke taboos by bringing subject matter like this to the stage, but because of its importance in legitimatizing Canadian drama at a time when playbills across the country were crammed with imported material from Broadway and London’s West End. …
By Brad Fraser, A Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (Winnipeg) Production coproduced with the NAC English Theatre.
Disability comes in many guises. And each of the character’s in playwright Brad Fraser’s latest play, Kill Me Now, is disabled to a greater of lesser degree, whether through physical or mental challenges or emotional and relationship issues.
But, says Fraser in the program notes, “this is not a play about disability. It is a play about courage and love.”
So it is. At the centre is the love between father and son. In the next circle of love is that of a sister for the older brother who raised her and an aunt’s caring for her nephew. Then the love ripples out to include friends and lovers. …
Coming to the Gladstone in May, 2017 WATCH for it!!
A piece of relentless theatre history rejuvenated by the Gladstone..
Artist, fraud, chameleon, victim. Elmyr de Hory was all of these, and arguably the most notorious, successful and prolific art forger of the twentieth century. Never fully recognized as an artist in his own right, and eternally frustrated by this fact, de Hory turned to painting in the style of his contemporaries, including Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani, and passing off the results as originals with astonishing success. After decades spent toiling in anonymity, Elmyr de Hory, at once the swindler and the swindled, finally reveals his own private truth as told by playwright and actor Pierre Brault.
In his own incomparable style, Brault crafts myriad characters, from Orson Welles and Zsa Zsa Gabor to de Hory himself and the artists whose work he forged, to tell a fascinating story that explores the very nature of art and identity.
Portrait of an Unidentified Man premiered in Ottawa in February, 2005 as part of the National Arts Centre English Theatre subscription season. It was subsequently revived at the NAC in July, 2005 due to popular demand. The following year the production toured to the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, London’s Grand Theatre, the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in St. John’s, NL. and a New Zealand tour in 2009.
Read some of the reviews of that period even if the shows are off the air…
