Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 62 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Radium Girls: a production that qualifies as a treatment for insomniacs

By Iris Winston | November 4, 2015

The mystery behind Radium Girls is how such a fascinating piece of history could be turned into such a boring drama. Yet, according to playwright D.W. Gregory’s website, this is her most performed play and it has received a number of awards.

In recounting how a group of female factory workers were poisoned by the radium-based paint they applied to watch faces to make them luminous—they were forced to lick the paintbrushes into fine points—Gregory replaces dramatic opportunity with short sequences, lack of meaningful characterization and multiple doubling.

The reality is compelling. Five of the radium girls brought suit against their employer, the U.S. Radium Corporation, eventually winning some financial compensation and payment of their medical bills for the remainder of their much-shortened lives.

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Love’s Labour’s Lost: a joyous ensemble piece thanks to director C. Leger.

By Alvina Ruprecht | November 4, 2015

Photos: Marianne Duval.

A joyous romp in the state of Navarre (betweenthe current French and Spanish border) on a glowing autumn set designed by John Doucet where 16 student actors cut their acting teeth with the most difficult playwright of the English language! Not an easy thing to do. Apparently this is the first Shakespeare that the University of Ottawa theatre department has done in the past 15 years. Adaptations of Shakespeare have been produced but this one remained fairly close to the original with some cuts in the enormously long monologues which would exhaust any actor.

The King of Navarre declares that all his lords must sign an oath of chastity for three years! This becomes difficult when the ladies from the French court arrive in all their beautiful dresses (thanks to Vanessa Imeson) and sexy hairdos (thanks to Sydney Miller) and swoop into the midst of these nervous young Spanish lords. Their visit has political reasons but it soon takes another turn. The young men all fall in love, passionate love letters are secretly exchanged, sent to the wrong ladies and they all have to admit to their hypocrisy which becomes exacerbated as they try to woo back their loves by heightening their theatrical concoctions which create wonderful moments of popular comic theatre within theatre. However, the ladies of the French court are even more disappointed.

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Newsies: A Visual Powerhouse.

By Iris Winston | October 29, 2015

Photo: Deen Van Meer

The hottest news about Newsies is the excellent choreography and terrific dancing, closely followed by the striking high-tech design enabling fluid set changes that become part of the action.

The 2011 musical, based on a 1992 Disney movie — and, according to the program, inspired by the book Children of the City by David Nasaw — is a romanticized version of the 1899 newsboys’ strike against the papers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. The poverty-stricken boys were forced to buy the newspapers they then hawked around the streets of New York City. When Pulitzer and Hearst hiked the price to the newsies, they could not make anything approaching a living wage. Their strike, which included forming a human barrier across Brooklyn Bridge, eventually forced the newspaper tycoons to back down and is credited with laying some of the groundwork for future unionization of labour.

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THe Adventures of a Black Girl: an ambitious but unsatisfying struggle

By Patrick Langston | October 24, 2015

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Photo: Black Theatre Workshop

The struggle to find and hold onto that hope, love and faith impels the action and characters of Adventures, an ambitious and, in the production that opens the new NAC English Theatre season, ultimately unsatisfying show that blends drama and comedy with song and movement, the ever-present spectre of death amid the bloom of life, and the story of a family and its community.

The play (its name comes from a George Bernard Shaw short story) premiered in 2002, launching Toronto’s black Obsidian Theatre company. It was then picked up for several months by Mirvish Productions. The current revival, directed by Sears as was the première, played Montreal’s Centaur Theatre before coming to the NAC.

With its cast of 22, the play is set in a 200-year-old black community in southern Ontario. At its heart are Rainey, a young black woman played by Lucinda Davis, and her aging father Abendigo.

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Next to Normal: Indie Women productions triumphs at Centrepoint!!

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 23, 2015

Photo: Mike Heffernan. Skye MacDiarmid, Derek Eyamie, Jeremy Sanders.

Singer-actress Skye MacDiarmid, repeats her amazing portrayal as Diana, a bipolar mother suffering from a combination of affective disorders including depression and PTSD as the result of the early death of her son Gabe. MacDiarmid again takes over the stage this time in the Centrepoint studio, just as she did last year at the Gladstone theatre. Her strong acting skills, her dramatic voice, and her immediate burst of talent carries us off to a realm of theatre that makes the reality of the situation much easier to watch. The script is down to earth, the characters are down to earth, and we find great strength in watching this family drama, as it unfolds around a subject matter that is not easy to watch but that keeps us deeply involved.

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Love, Valor, Compassion – Toto Too Theatre Does Itself Proud

By Jamie Portman | October 14, 2015

Photo:Allan Mackey

There was one unfortunate aspect to TotoToo Theatre’s recent production of Love! Valour! Compassion!

It deserved a longer run. Although focusing on the lives of eight gay men over three holiday weekends at an Eastern seaboard farmhouse, Terrence McNally’s award-winning play touches on universal truths that can resonate with a broad cross-section of theatregoers. That certainly happened on Broadway where it left many audience members in tears. And it was also a virtue of Chantale Plante’s sensitive, discerning production at Academic Hall.

McNally, whose output also includes the book for the hit musical, Ragtime, and Frankie And Johnny In The Clair de Lune, is a seminal figure in late 20^th Century American theatre — a gay playwright who has managed to avoid ghettoization despite dealing with subject matter, that in earlier generations, and in a different cultural climate, deterred dramatists like Tennessee Williams and William Inge from confronting matters of sexuality to the degree that McNally does.

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The Norman Conquests: A Historic Moment of Back to Back Theatre in Ottawa.

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 2, 2015

Photo: Julie Le Gal : Table Manners with David Whiteley, Margo MacDonald, Steve Martin. (Apartment 613)

Robert Lepage’s (Les Sept Branches de la Rivière Ota) in Quebec city lasted six hours; the Belgian production Rwanda 94, at the Festival TransAmérique in Montreal went beyond 6 hours . These were both in French. In English Canada, such an event is almost unheard of and yet such a production has come to the Gladstone Theatre in Ottawa. Director John P. Kelly, is staging British author Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy The Norman Conquests, based on a weekend in a middle class household in the British countryside where a family has come together because their aging mother is ill. Each of the 2 hour episodes which continue through the whole weekend, takes place at the same time but in a different room of the house, so the perspectives change and the audience is privy to different reactions and additional information which add depth and detail to this microcosm of British society that unfolds before our eyes. Thus, a great theatrical moment awaits you. Bring a sandwich and a drink and settle in.

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“Dear Johnny Deere” Bang-up Season Finale at 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque

By Capital Critics Circle | September 30, 2015

The 1000 Islands Playhouse is closing out their season with a foot-stomping production of “Dear Johnny Deere.” The book is by Ken Cameron and is based on the music and lyrics of Fred Eaglesmith, with additional music and arrangements by Music Director David Archibald. If you’re not familiar with Fred Eaglesmith, and I wasn’t, his funny and evocative songs have garnered numerous awards in the US and Canada in the country and bluegrass fields.

Playwright Cameron has woven a plot around 15 Fred Eaglesmith songs. Johnny, well-played by Greg Gale, and his wife Caroline, again well-played by Shannon Currie, are having emotional, financial, and farming problems. Into the mix comes Mike, played by the versatile Bruce Horak, with an offer to buy the farm. Mr. Horak also plays Johnny’s father and a snobbish tractor collector. The whole is narrated by the excellent Jeff Culbert playing Johnny’s neighbor, McAllister. The only cast member who doesn’t speak is the dynamite fiddler Capucine Onn. As you might expect, everything works out. These are all good actors, but the show is really about the music.

Listing a few of the song titles will give you the idea: “White Trash,” “Spookin’ the Horses,” “I Wanna Buy Your Truck,” “Old John Deere,” “Time to Get a Gun,” and “It’s Got a Bench Seat Baby” that includes a snippet of “It’s a Mighty Big Car.” All these actors are terrific singers, including Music Director David Archibald, and they all play multiple instruments. …

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Living Together/ Round and Round the Garden. Two episodes of Ayckbourns Trilogy reaches new heights of flawless gusto!

By Patrick Langston | September 13, 2015

Photo Lois Siegel. John P Kelly director of the NOrman conquests

If you think your personal relationships are sometimes fraught, check out Living Together, the second part of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy The Norman Conquests now in a terrific revival at The Gladstone. Your problems will pale by comparison.

The comic-with-a-bite trilogy consists of three separate but related plays: Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden. Table Manners opened The Gladstone’s season a couple of weeks ago, Round and Round the Garden opens Sept. 25, and all three will play in repertory starting Sept. 29. On Oct. 10, the three plays will be presented in one fell swoop.

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The Norman Conquests (Living Together): Witty interpretation captures characters’ charm

By Rajka Stefanovska | September 13, 2015

AL Connors as Norman and Margo MacDonald as Sarah Photo by David Whiteley — AL Connors as Norman and Margo MacDonald as Sarah
Photo by David Whiteley

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy that takes place in a country house where six people spend a weekend together. Each of the three plays is set in a different part of the house: Table Manners in the dining room, Living Together in the living room and Round and Round the Garden in the garden. The trilogy follows events and relationships between two sisters (Annie and Ruth), their brother Reg, Reg’s wife Sarah, their neighbour Tom (who is in love with Annie), and Norman (Ruth’s husband). While Norman is seducing all three women with more or less success in the span of only two days, events constituting a catastrophic weekend of bickering, adultery and constant frustration unfold. Scene after scene, play after play, all three parts of Alan Ayckbourn’s hilariously comic masterpiece come together and reveal the intertwined relationships between the characters, as well as their hidden secrets and desires.

In The Norman Conquests, Ayckbourn deals with domestic issues, dysfunctional families and misadventures in middle-class marriages. Although on the surface, it seems to be just a witty succession of simple, funny and easily recognizable domestic upheaval; under the surface, it is much more. Just as Ayckbourn said in his interview with The Guardian, “My West End producer used to say to me, ‘we’re in the giggle business, darling.’ And I’d sort of agree with him, but while I’m all for giggles, I’d also hope that some of what we do would be remembered for a little bit more than just that.” …

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