Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 69 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Fish Eyes and Boys with Cars: Marriage of Dance and Acting Wows Audiences

By Rajka Stefanovska | October 24, 2014

Living in a well regulated, multicultural country such as Canada feels about as safe and cozy as it could. This is probably why we rarely stop to think how hard it could be for newcomers, young and old, to adapt to a new environment while still preserving their own culture. The generation gap could not be any deeper than in this kind of reality: while the young want to blend, the older people tend to resist to any, even the smallest change. This is exactly what the multitalented artist, Anita Majumdar, deals with in a fascinating story about the life and struggle of a teenage Indo-Canadian girl who desperately tries to fit into a predominantly white society in Port Moody Senior Secondary in British Columbia.

Fish Eyes is the first part of a trilogy (consisting of Fish Eyes, Boys with Cars and Let Me Borrow That Top). Here, we meet Meena, a high school girl who takes lessons in traditional Indian dance with a teacher she calls Aunty. While preparing for a dance festival in India, Meena shows a very strong resistance to anything that is typical of the country of her origin, culminating in a decision to not participate in the event. The reason: her first love, the not so smart but very popular boy Buddy, is in love with another (blonde) girl. …

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Fresh Meat Festival Offers Variety to Ottawa Theater Scene

By Rajka Stefanovska | October 21, 2014

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Next to Normal; a musical voyage into the depths of a tortured soul!

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 17, 2014

Photo of the Cast, from the Royal Ottawa Hospital site.

Diana, a mother suffering from depression and PTSD, is portrayed by singer/actress Skye MacDiarmid who immersed herself in this difficult role with passion, and total conviction, revealing her strong voice and enormous acting skills from the very first moments. This immediate burst of talent creates a break between the sadness of the content and the uplifting form of the performance and it gives us strength to continue watching, after all the subject matter is not easy. Fifteen years after the death of her 8 month old son, Diana remains traumatized by the event and never seems to have recovered. On the contrary, theC. Lee Bates staging and the music, directed by Paul Legault, fore ground the hallucinatory presence of this “dead” son floating around the stage singing “I’m alive” , taunting the still grieving mother who cannot get the image of this young man out of her head as he clings to her memories and won’t permit her to let go of this past that is tearing her apart. That is the narrative essence of this Tony Award winning performance Next to Normal, now playing at the Gladstone until Saturday the 18^th.

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l’École des femmes : Un joyeuse adaptation hybride, portée par le metteur en scene et le jeu magistral d’Andy Massingham.

By Alvina Ruprecht | October 13, 2014

Version posted on the site theatredublog.unblog.fr

Photo. David Whitely.

Cette traduction/adaptation de L’École des femmes par David Whitely, est une tentative de rendre la langue de Molière accessible à un public anglophone qui connaît mal le théâtre français du dix-septième siècle. Au départ on ressent la présence d’un étrange anachronisme entre une mise en scène (John P. Kelly) presque « classique » et le rythme naturel des répliques anglaises de style populaire au XXIe siècle écrites en alexandrins! En effet le XVIIe (en France) et le XXIe siècle (au Canada) ont réalisé une fusion qui finit par fonctionner assez bien, même si, pour certains puristes, cette rencontre linguistique pourrait paraître indigeste. Malgré tout, l’événement, et le texte semblent avoir respecté la sensibilité de Molière. Cette langue contemporaine peu raffinée, semble faire écho au côté frondeur de l’École… qui a refusé les règles d’Horace et choqué certaines oreilles sensibles de la cour et des Précieux « ridicules » (voir La Critique de l’École des femmes).

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Perils of Persephone: Flashes of brilliance in a production that will grow as the play continues

By Iris Winston | September 17, 2014

There are flashes of the brilliance of his Wingfield series in Perils of Persephone by Dan Needles, but only flashes.

This comedy about the Currie family being “helped” to deal with a possible spill of nuclear waste by an MPP and the media-savvy Premier’s assistant works some of the time, but neither the script nor the Ottawa Little Theatre production sustain the momentum throughout.

For example, one character has to give a long description of how her ancestor found the partial skeleton of a mammoth in the swamp on the family property. Even though Chantal Despatie, who plays the teenage daughter telling the story, does her best to sound enthusiastic and make the tale interesting, she is faced with a daunting task, particularly as she is talking to a pot-zonked truck driver (Andrew Stewart clings to this aspect in his one-note performance.)

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School for Wives at the Gladstone. A text that does not live up to the fine work on stage.

By Iris Winston | September 13, 2014

Photo. Erin Finn

There is good and bad news about the production of Molière’s The School for Wives that opened at the Gladstone Theatre on September 12.

The good news about the SevenThirty/Plosive Productions co-pro is that it is beautifully directed, well choreographed and features some strong performances, particularly from Andy Massingham, all in keeping with the period and form.

The bad news is that the translation by David Whiteley, while generally retaining the rhythm of the Alexandrine style of verse, is vulgar and jarring. Too frequently, modern colloquialisms, minor swear words and out-of-place slang scream irreverence for a classic and the inappropriate wording all but kills John P. Kelly’s fine staging.

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The Ugly One: devastating, cruel and tightly choreographed. Admirable theatre!

By Alvina Ruprecht | August 23, 2014

Photo: Jay Kopinski

German playwright Marius von Mayenburg has written an angry little Hegelian parable which is tightly staged, highly stylized, prone to split second reactions that generate enormous excitement. He shows us that the human being’s awareness of himself /herself comes from the way he sees himself through the gaze of those around him. A certain Lette (Alex Poche-Goldin) working for a corporation where he has just discovered a new technological mechanism, will not be allowed to present his product at an international meeting because his boss Scheffler (Hardee T. Lineham) says Lette is too ugly and he will just turn potential buyers off. Lette is horrified. He was never aware that he was ugly because no one let on, no one told him, and even his wife Fanny was not able to look at him so he never noticed the horror reflected in her gaze. Of course none of this is visible but that just emphasizes the state of mind at the basis of such thinking.

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The Ugly One: Food for thought

By Capital Critics Circle | August 23, 2014

Photo: Jay Kopinski

The Ugly One” by German playwright Marius von Mayenburg and translated by Maja Zade is billed as a black comedy, and rightly so. Lette is a successful engineer who happens to be so ugly that his wife can only look at his left eye. They have what they call an “acoustic relationship.” Lette has his face reconstructed by a plastic surgeon and emerges charismatically handsome. The play deals with image, identity and perception. It also raises questions about today’s celebrity culture, so often based only on image. Exactly who are the Kardashians and why should we care?

Set and Costume designer Camellia Koo has done a splendid job. The spare futuristic set consists largely of a metal rectangular table with the audience seated only on two sides facing each other. The long table functions as a stage, a speaker’s platform and an operating table with the four actors moving from it to the floor and in and out of the front row of the audience. There are also a couple of mirrors and a rectangle of fluorescent tubes over the table. Her costumes are equally simple and allow the actors to switch characters using only body language and voice.

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Landline: ultimately militates against your ability to experience any single experience in much depth

By Patrick Langston | August 23, 2014

Unlike most theatre reviews, this one is going to use the first person singular. That’s because, unlike most theatre pieces, this one wouldn’t have existed unless I’d been present.

Here’s how it worked. At Arts Court I was teamed up, via text, with a counterpart in Dartmouth, NS. We were each issued an iPod and told to spend an hour walking around the city. Where we went was our choice, but prompts from the iPod would tell us what to do during our stroll: observe our surroundings (were there birds overhead? Interesting bits of architecture?), check out fellow walkers (or tag along behind them for a block), occasionally stop and imagine a “scene” (for example, greeting someone from our past whose memory was evoked by a building we spotted). We were to text our counterpart about what we were seeing and experiencing, especially during our “scenes,” and to find out something about each other.

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Two Gentlemen of Verona: Prescott’s Production of Shakespeare sparkles!

By Capital Critics Circle | July 21, 2014

Photo by Andrew Alexander. Perfoming are Warren Bain & Quincy Armorer

A sparkling and witty production of Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is running in rep with “The Tempest” at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott, Ontario. If you’ve never seen what is possibly Shakespeare’s first comedy, this is a good production to start out on. Director Ian Farthing has made judicious cuts and tweaks that clean up some problems with the script, particularly the awkward dénouement. He’s also set the play in the late 1920s, a perfect period for this light-hearted tale of friendship versus passion.

Andrea Robertson Walker has designed a background set of panels painted with soft pastel colors in art deco style. There’s a gauzy curtained entrance up center. The musicians are visible throughout on the center platform. Vanessa Imeson has designed great period costumes in shades of white, cream and beige with deco-like accents of black and brown. She’s even come up with what are often neglected – wonderful period shoes for both the men and women.

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