Category: Theatre in Ottawa and the region

The Burden of Self Awareness: George Walker at the GCTC

The Burden of Self Awareness: George Walker at the GCTC

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Paul Rainville and Eric Coates. Photo: Andrew Alexander

Money and sex are the driving forces for the flawed individuals in George F. Walker’s newest dark comedy/farce, currently receiving its world premiere at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.

Then, a close encounter with death flips the self-awareness switch for the wealthy Michael, who aims to find redemption by giving most of his fortune away. Emotional imbalance can be the only motivation for such an action, fears his grasping wife, Judy, who rushes him to a couples’ counseling session with her psychiatrist/lover, Stan. As depicted, both before and after he is stripped down to his underwear, Stan is the most incompetent psychiatrist on the planet.

Meanwhile, the private detective/born-again Christian/hit man that Judy has hired to spy on Michael consults with Michael’s university-educated prostitute friend and occasional sex partner, Lianne. (Along the way, Michael also hires the same detective to spy on Judy, while Lianne employs him to kill her.)

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9 to 5 : An Orpheus production of a musical that is sadly passé.

9 to 5 : An Orpheus production of a musical that is sadly passé.

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Photo: Valleywind Productions

9 to 5, The Musical is a reminder of the social restrictions of a past era, but sadly, much about this musical, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, is passé too.

In its first incarnation as a 1980 movie starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, it worked better than it does as a stage show full of short sequences and abrupt scene changes that recall the style of film. Little wonder that the recycled musical had only a very short run on Broadway in 2009.

While Parton’s autobiographical Backwoods Barbie and the title song are catchy, most of the rest of the music fades from memory as quickly as does the weak book by Resnick (who also wrote the movie screenplay).

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Driving Miss Daisy: A Smooth Ride at the 1000 Islands PLayhouse in Gananoque

Driving Miss Daisy: A Smooth Ride at the 1000 Islands PLayhouse in Gananoque

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Walter Borden as Hoke & Nicola Lipman as Miss Daisy .  Photo: 1000 Islands Playhouse

The 1000 Islands Playhouse has opened its season in the Springer Theatre with a solid production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Driving Miss Daisy” by Alfred Uhry.   “Driving Miss Daisy” begins in 1948 and spans 25 years in the lives of Daisy Werthan, a feisty Jewish widow, her son Boolie, and Hoke, her new African-American chauffeur hired by her son.  It’s a play about ageing, tolerance, understanding, friendship and ultimately love.  Daisy’s relationship with Hoke begins when Boolie has to deal with the universal dilemma of what to do about an elderly relative who shouldn’t drive.  A series of fairly brief scenes, separated by varying lengths of time, follow this evolving relationship over the course of the twenty-five years. “Driving Miss Daisy” balances sadness with humor and Daisy’s anger at ageing with Hoke’s infinite patience and capacity to listen.

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Sontag: Reborn: A History Lesson in Multimedia at ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Theatre

Sontag: Reborn: A History Lesson in Multimedia at ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Theatre

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Moe Angelos as Susan Sontag. Photo James Gibbs

Sontag: Reborn, the second production the Builders Association has brought to ArtsEmerson this season is another intermedial piece. Like its predecessor, Sontag: Reborn relies heavily on video to tell its story. Unlike its predecessor, House Divided, a drama of many characters, complex setting, and numerous incidents that revolve around the Great Depression and the Great Recession, Sontag: Reborn is a dialogue with one character.

Joshua Higgason’s simple setting, consisting of a wide rectangular desk covered with various and changing props, a scrim in front of it and a screen behind with a camera above; Laura Mroczkowski’s varied lighting; Dan Dobson’s sound design; and Austin Switser’s brilliant video work bring vivid life to a piece that had the potential to bore.

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Oil and Water: A long time getting started!

Oil and Water: A long time getting started!

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Reviewed May 16 for the Ottawa Citizen . Photo by Barb Gray.

Clearly, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Take the true story of an African-American sailor named Lanier Phillips, who was shipwrecked on the shore of St. Lawrence, Nfld. in 1942. Blend in the troubled lives of fluorspar miners and their families in that same small, isolated village. Occasionally fast forward three decades to when the now-older Phillips is encouraging his young, scared daughter as she endures the often-terrifying integration of Boston schools in 1974. Add music rooted in spirituals and east coast folk tunes. Then underpin everything with themes of transformation, exploitation and basic human decency.

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Nunsense A-Men : Toto Too Theatre is as talented as ever.

Nunsense A-Men : Toto Too Theatre is as talented as ever.

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The nonsense of Nunsense has been habit-forming (pun stolen from one of the show’s numbers) since 1985, when it first played off-Broadway. Since then, an estimated 25,000 women around the globe have portrayed the good sisters of Hoboken in the show, which originated as a line of greeting cards, before moving to the stage. Nunsense has also given rise to numerous spin-offs. One of these is Nunsense A-men — the original script, presented by an all-male cast — first performed in 1998.

As delivered by Toto Too Theatre in their most recent production, Nunsense A-Men is as funny as ever. In fact, it is sometimes funnier and certainly even more irreverent than its female counterpart.

The main reason this production is never a drag is that the cast seems to be having such a ball. (Red high-top sneakers go so well with a black and white nun’s habit and a brightly coloured tutu and pink satin ribbons on ballet shoes really enhance a novitiate’s look, don’t you think?) The fun and frolic transmit to the audience immediately.

Even when the occasional number is sung with less than maximum punch, the joy remains front and centre. Spattered with double entendres and puns, the series of cabaret numbers presented by the nuns are a desperate attempt to raise the cash to bury the nuns who died after supping on vichyssoise made by the convent cook, Sister Julia, Child of God. (The last four of the 52 who died are stowed in the convent freezer and the nuns have just been given word that the health inspector is on his way…)

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Oil and Water: Its own Shipwreck

Oil and Water: Its own Shipwreck

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Photo by Barb Gray

Oil and Water by Robert Chafe doesn’t really get off the ground until about two-thirds of the way through its hour and twenty-five minutes, (with no intermission), running time. It purports to be the story of Lanier Phillips, a black American sailor who was rescued in 1942 along with 40-some white sailors from a shipwreck off St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. His non-racist and benevolent treatment by the villagers, who had never seen a black man, was a pivotal event in his life. He became an activist for civil rights and also maintained his connection with the people of St. Lawrence.

Sounds like a great story, but most of the details never make it to the stage. The many scenes with Lanier and his daughter 30 years later during the school riots in Boston intercut with those of the miners’ families in the village dealing with mine safety and lung disease, hijack the play and the shipwreck story. The script tries to follow too many characters. When the audience has no idea what’s going on unless they’ve read the program notes, something’s very wrong. With the shipwreck, the play finally gets on track, but by then we don’t much care.

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The Projet Turandot by Marc LeMyre: Théâtre du Tremplin’s production raises a lot of questions.

The Projet Turandot by Marc LeMyre: Théâtre du Tremplin’s production raises a lot of questions.

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The play, written by the Toronto based author Marc LeMyre and directed by Benoit Roy who is the current director of the Théâtre Tremplin in Ottawa, was  loosely inspired by Carlo Gozzi’s fable (Turandotte – 1762). Puccini’s opera was adapted from Gozzi’s version about the cruel Chinese princess, who beheads her suitors to avenge herself on men for killing an ancestor but actually the legend of Turandot has nothing to do with China. It was originally Persian. As for the Théâtre Tremplin, it is one of the rare Francophone community theatres in the Ottawa area, based in Ottawa east. It is a training ground for francophones who later move on to become involved in the established professional franco-ontarian companies in the area. They usually invite a well-known director from outside the company and their work has been extremely good in the past.

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Mauritius: A Double-edged thriller And An Attention-grabbing Experience

Mauritius: A Double-edged thriller And An Attention-grabbing Experience

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Reviewed by Kat Fournier . Photo by Maria Vartanova

Mauritius, presented by the Ottawa Little Theatre and directed by Chantale Plant, is a double-edged experience. While the first act is plodding and weak, the second act more than makes up for it. Overall, audiences can expect a play that lives up to its promise of plot twists, big revelations and of characters with hidden motivations. Mauritius delivers on all these fronts, turning stamp-collecting into a vicious game where the spoils will go to the most cunning.

Writer Therese Rebeck – winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award and known for such writing credits to such TV dramas as Law and Order: Criminal Intent and L.A. Law, among others –crafts a story whose premise sounds rather dull: five characters vie for ownership of two rare stamps. And in fact, Act 1 does not do much to dispel this impression. Initially, the real strength of the play lies in the broken relationship between two step-sisters, Jackie (Laura Hall) and Mary (Cindy Beaton), who have reunited after their mother’s death.

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Corpus: an intriguing play that plunges into the heart of the matter.

Corpus: an intriguing play that plunges into the heart of the matter.

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Photo, Andrew Alexander.

This is an intriguing play that makes a serious effort to work through the complex questions dealing with survivors of WWII death camps and all the associated issues of racism, anti-Semitism, survival guilt, as well as the working of abjection, oppression and domination that are not at all easy to flush out on stage. It is clear that author Darrah Teitel is a talented playwright who plunges headlong into the heart of the matter with much post structuralist theory in her bag. One does have the sense that she might have taken on too many issues at once but she still has succeeded, for the most part, in capturing the contemporary sense of what those past events mean to today’s younger generation.

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