Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 67 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Young Frankenstein: Silly, smutty script, slick production

By Iris Winston | March 9, 2015

Production trumps content over and over again in the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society production of Young Frankenstein, the crude parody of the horror genre and the 19^th century novel by Mary Shelley.

As quoted in the Orpheus program, Mel Brooks, the primary creator of the script, music and lyrics, says, “Good taste is the enemy of comedy.” His kind of comedy, perhaps, but amusement does not have to be drawn from bathroom humour and gags that take so long to set up that there is time to be bored or disgusted before they are milked dry. Brooks may have demonstrated his talent to amuse more effectively in The Producers — though even here he frequently teetered on the brink of bad taste and periodically toppled over — but Young Frankenstein does not hold a candle to the earlier show. It just makes me long for the wit of Noel Coward over the lumbering attempt at making a monster out of this molehill of silly smut.

However, distasteful as the material is, presumably Orpheus chose to present the 2007 musical in an attempt to attract new audience members. If that was achieved, it should also be noted that there were several walkouts at intermission on opening night. …

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Marat-Sade: The Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton will go down in the history of the University of Ottawa Theatre department!

By Alvina Ruprecht | February 26, 2015

Photo Marianne Duval. Paul Piekoszewski (Marquis de Sade) and Jérémie Cyr-Cooke (Marat).

This play written in German by Peter Weiss, with the terribly long title, was first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of Peter Brook’s LAMDA experiment , a season of Cruelty, executed under the influence of Artaud’s essay The Theatre of Cruelty . The original version of the essay, first published in French in 1938 , eventually appeared in English in the early 1960s during the neo romantic revolution in the Americas and that is when the English speaking theatre world began working on interpretations of Artaud’s ideas of a “theatre of Cruelty” . Brook worked with a chosen group of actors and writers to show the relationship between theatre and the body, between, theatre and therapy, as well as the use of theatre to transform and renew Western culture by taking a new look at the French Revolution as well as the conventions of the Western stage. One look at this play, shows us to what extent Ariane Mnouchkine’s 1789 was very likely inspired as much by Brecht’ as by Brook’s renewed vision of the stage.

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Undercurrents 2015: Marathon offers a surreal aesthetic that leaves a haunting resonance.

By Kat Fournier | February 20, 2015

Marathon is the type of performance that will leave you with more questions than answers. The staging is simple: Three people (self-acknowledged actors) dressed in running gear run around a stage. They have begun even before we have arrived. We are asked to sit on all four sides of the stage, looking in on their Beckettian, goalless task as it unfolds for an hour and a half. A projection is cast onto the stage floor: “42.2 K” – the distance of a marathon.

The narrative of the show is developed in waves – little by little, the three characters reveal themselves to be burdened and bound to their nationality. They are actors in a never-ending race, just as they are actors performing their day to day lives as Israeli citizens. And though their stories are distinct, the show arrives at some deeply revealing commonalities: The role of religion, language, the national service, and a deeply ingrained sense of duty.

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Undercurrents 2015: Spin is a patchwork quilt of ideas.

By Kat Fournier | February 20, 2015

A singer-songwriter and a bicycle-playing percussionist invite audiences to join them on a musical interlude around an object of great social significance: The bicycle. Are you hooked? At its core, Spin show is a love-letter to bicycles, and the women who loved them. What emerges is a performance that is great fun, though it ultimately values substance at the expense of form.

In a series of vignettes, creator/musician/actress/activist evalyn parry boldly strings a narrative that broaches social resistance movements, feminism, and the evolution of bipedal locomotion. All of this and more! The show is thematically tied together through the humble bicycle, and even more so since percussionist Brad Hart compliments the performance by using a bicycle as a musical instrument.

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Undercurrents: theatre below the mainstream: from charming and engaging to a show that deserves a “punch out”. Langston has been to Arts Court.

By Patrick Langston | February 16, 2015

Photo. Andrew Alexander.

Far & Near & Here (THUNK!Theatre, Ottawa)

It sounds too twee for words. Ned (Geoff McBride) is a klutzy ship builder living in Far. Ted (Karen Balcome), who lives in Near, is an earnest illustrator fond of drawing specimens of marine life. The two meet via snail mail then row out to sea in separate boats and get together at a spot called Here. Life-changing travails define their collective journey.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that despite initially choppy seas – the opening scene in which they prepare to ship ahoy needs radical pruning – and a couple of instances of trying too hard, the play, far from being twee, is charming and engaging.

With just a bunch of empty pop and water bottles plus two office chairs for a set, playwrights/performers McBride and Balcome lead you to care about their awkward but gentle characters who weather a near-disaster at sea and break through self-defensiveness to reach an admirable honesty in their relationship.

Emily Pearlman directs.

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Moss Park: George F. Walker’s shining moment

By Jamie Portman | January 27, 2015

It’s not the freshest of dramatic situations — two troubled young people face another moment of crisis in their lives and are on the verge of taking a very wrong turn.

So why — we might ask ourselves — is it worth spending even an hour in their company? Surely, these will be recognizable types pursuing useless, self-destructive lives? Surely, we’ll be able to predict what will happen: either the promise of redemption or else a further descent into the mire. No real surprises there.

So we’re apt to give a sigh of resignation and figure we’re in for another dose of “socially significant” theatre from playwright George F. Walker.

But then Walker confounds us. In the first place, his forthright but captivating play, Moss Park, is devoid of the quirky self-indulgence for which his more devoted admirers must sometimes make excuses: instead he has delivered one of his most disciplined and exhilarating pieces. Secondly, he has created two splendidly alive characters in Tina, the single, near destitute mother who has just discovered she’s pregnant again, and Bobby, her shambling and feckless boyfriend. …

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Two: The Performances Rise Above The Material

By Jamie Portman | January 21, 2015

Mere silence on stage can sometimes be as arresting as an explosion. That’s what happens at the Gladstone Theatre during the most memorable moments of its new production of Lancashire playwright Jim Cartwright’s pub drama, Two. We have a woman sitting quietly at a table. There’s a tentative smile on her face — she’s relaxing into a moment of serenity. In the background there is the noise of other customers, but for the moment she’s occupying her own, private secure world. But only for a moment. Reality intrudes, the smile vanishes. and those brief glimmerings of happiness yield to anguish bordering on despair. There’s also fear.

Michelle LeBlanc is the actress here, her face and body language signalling an unsettling gamut of emotions. We start realizing that this is someone in deep trouble, and when her boyfriend shows up with the drinks, we know why. We have front-row seats for a glimpse into an abusive relationship. Her boyfriend, played with swaggering cruelty by Richard Gelinas, is as much an emotional tyrant as he is a physical menace — toying with her anxieties and fears, threatening her with the jealousies and possessiveness which hide his own insecurities. You know the scene will have a bad ending — and it does.

Director John P. Kelly has staged this sequence with the care and nuance this treacherous material deserves. He and his performers must do their best to disguise the fact that the two characters are stereotypes and that their sad little drama is playing out predictably. Gelinas, truly discomforting here, manages to bring out the awfulness of the boyfriend, getting beyond the elements of caricature in Cartwright’s script. And it is LeBlanc’s brilliantly modulated characterization that conveys the young woman’s ultimate anguish of spirit. …

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Clybourne Park: A worthy production despite a shaky second act

By Iris Winston | January 17, 2015

Racism, economic concerns and human tragedy sound unlikely themes for humour. Yet Bruce Norris’s savage satire, Clybourne Park, frequently prompts laughter — perhaps partly because of audience discomfort with being forced to face uncomfortable truths.

The title is taken from the fictional white neighbourhood in Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 drama A Raisin in the Sun. The address of the house that has just been sold to a black family is the same. Even Karl, the smarmy head of the community association, who tries to block the sale, has the same name and official reason for his attitude. (It will bring the property values down, he says.)

From here, the multi-award-winning Clybourne Park draws back the curtains of any political correctness and goes into attack mode. Before the veil of politeness is ripped away — particularly in the first act — things move slowly. Inane chatter about the origin of the name of a type of ice cream or a discussion about capital cities take a disproportionate amount of time, until the antagonism and fear of “the other” is laid bare. …

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Alice Through the Looking Glass at the National Arts Centre: nonsensical sense and visual wildfire for the contemporary gaze.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 15, 2014

Photographer: Barb Gray. Karen Robinson as the Red Queen, Natasha Greenblatt as Alice.

When Jillian Keiley meets Lewis Carroll and James Reaney, I’m tempted to say that the witty story and vastly playful language of Carroll that hinges on all sorts of sly social comments (“words mean what you chose them to mean” says one of the characters) are soon taken over by a bouncy and colourful staging that plays directly to children’s fantasy. There are balloons, flying things , and all sorts of unimaginable props, with Bretta Gerecke’s complexly designed and striking costumes , Kimberly Portell’s magical lighting , John Gzowski’s sound, Jonathan Monro’s orchestrations and especially Dayna Tekatch,s choreography, all taking us in various directions at once . The production team stars in this fantasy that leads to pure visual chaos and muddles the narrative but it certainly holds the audience’s attention because of the visual excitement it generates, almost for its own sake where staging is based on non-stop gags and costumes that take your breath away.

Obviously the spirit of Carroll has been relocated in the visual which suits a theatrical language for young people because much of the book’s wit has a whole level that is not for children.

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Alice through the Looking Glass : Like Tim Burton on Uppers

By Capital Critics Circle | December 15, 2014

Photo. Barb Gray. Natasha Greenblatt as Alice, Herbie Barnes and Darrell Dennis as TweedleDum and TweedleDee

Jillian Keiley’s production of “Alice Through the Looking-Glass,” adapted by James Reaney from the Lewis Carroll classic, is awash with ingenious and colorful sets and costumes, audience participation and good music. However Carroll’s thoughtful and philosophical parts of the story, even the fact that it’s a coming of age for Alice, are drowned out by all the bells and whistles. I’m afraid Alice purists will be dismayed, but this version is great fun and undoubtedly entertaining.

A co-production with the Stratford Festival where it played last summer, it uses the all the technical aspects of that production, but with different actors. Bretta Gerecke’s chess board floor slopes upward toward the back, perfect for the Red and White Queens to slide down. The squares even light up as Alice makes her moves.

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