Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 75 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Drama at Inish. Melodrama by the sea.

By Iris Winston | March 31, 2014

Photo: Ottawa Little Theatre

The moral of the story is that too much heavy drama is bad for your health.

Making a joke about the dangers of being influenced by overdoses of Ibsen, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Strindberg might be sustainable for a one-act play, but the central gag of this parody wears a little thin through a full-length comedy.

But, director Sarah Hearn gives it her all in the Ottawa Little Theatre/Tara Players co-production of Lennox Robinson’s 1933 domestic comedy Drama at Inish. (It is rumoured that the playwright’s theatrical birth came after seeing a traveling theatre troupe perform an Ibsen play in his native Dublin, so one can assume he is poking fun at himself.)

In an effort to maximize the humour in the play, Hearn pushes the melodrama button hard, as cast members emote, swoon, beat their heads against mantlepieces and raise trembling hands to fevered brows.

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Seeds: Food for thought in muddied waters.

By Iris Winston | March 31, 2014

Photo. courtesy of the NAC English Theatre. Eric Peterson as Percy Schmeiser

Reality is the seed of any theatrical piece. And when reality is an epic struggle between a corporate Goliath and an individual David, art seems a perfect place to imitate life.

Playwright/journalist Annabel Soutar has developed a fascinating, dense (sometimes too dense) docudrama in Seeds, a powerful piece of verbatim theatre about the landmark court case of Monsanto Canada versus Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser. (The official name of the case was Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd. v. Monsanto Canada Inc. and Monsanto Company, indicating greater breadth of connections. U.S.-based Monsanto is a massive international corporation. Canola oil farmer, plant breeder and local politician Schmeiser owns a 1,000-acre farm.)

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Frankenstein at Algonquin Theatre: Technical virtuosity outshines the performances

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 20, 2014

Photo: Andrew Alexander Early on in this Algonquin production of playwright Aldo Nolan’s version of Frankenstein, first performed in 1974 in collaboration with director Walter Learning, director Zach Counsil, shows us the Creature lying on the floor, bathed in David Magladry’s powerful chiaroscuro lighting effects. Played by Evan Gilmore, the creature trembles, he slowly tries to raise his body, he collapses, tries to stand up, his legs give way as he tries again, ultimately drawing himself up in the semi-darkness, showing us he can limp, then walk. This scene sent me back to the opening moments of the recent National Theatre Live production that we saw via satellite in Ottawa about two years ago. Counsil apparently added this silent development of the creature which was necessary and very effective. It created an appropriate transition between the moment Victor Frankenstein’s creation comes to life and the following scenes where he is running away because people, terrified of this repulsive looking individual are hunting him down to kill him.

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Mary Walsh Dances with Rage: slash and burn comedy the GCTC – Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre.

By Patrick Langston | March 20, 2014

Photo Barbara Gray.

OTTAWA — Her sword is just plastic, but Marg Delahunty, aka the Princess Warrior, has a tongue sharp enough to separate a rhino and its hide without even trying.

Marg, as all fans of slash-and-burn Canadian comedy know, is the alter ego of Newfoundland comedian Mary Walsh. Resplendent in her glittering, red Princess Warrior outfit, the one we’ve all admired as we’ve watched her ambush public figures from Mayor Rob Ford to former prime minister Jean Chrétien on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Marg is front and centre in Walsh’s one-woman show Dancing with Rage.

The show, which seesaws between hilariously pointed moments and arid stretches and ultimately doesn’t hold together particularly well, opens with another Walsh character: the purse-lipped, purse-clasping Miss Eulalie. Tut-tutting about topical issues — bridges and sinkholes in Ottawa, the recent appointment of Joe Oliver, “the minister responsible for the destruction of the environment,” as replacement for the departed minister of finance Jim Flaherty — she totters down the aisle and onto the stage.

Walsh soon sheds that character along with Miss Eulalie’s bulky coat and rummage-sale hat to stand before us in black underwear. She bemoans the state of contemporary feminism as well as her own aging body (she’s 61) — or at least the state of a society that makes a clothes-shopping expedition for an aging woman, whose body now bulges in unforeseen ways and places, a voyage to hell. “It leaks out like some fleshy Exxon Valdez,” she says, gripping some of that fleshy stuff in a way that’s simultaneously self-deprecating, endearing and smartly subversive…….Read more

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Theatre+review+Princess+warrior+sharp+tongue+needed+edit/9647381/story.html

The Magician’s Nephew: Little Magic in this script

By Iris Winston | March 15, 2014

Photo credit: Claude Haché

American playwright Aurand Harris apparently believes that morals rammed down the throats of young audiences will be best remembered if repeated and rammed a little harder the second and third time. (Harris, author of some 36 plays for children is best known for his Androcles and the Lion.)

His 1955 dramatization/adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis must have seemed heavy-handed even 60 years ago. In the 21^st century, it is well beyond its best-before date.

Perhaps this is why the performances in the 9^th Hour Theatre Company production creak more than a little with wooden characterizations and unconvincing accents.

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Spamalot: A lot to enjoy in this Orpheus Musical Theatre Society production

By Iris Winston | March 13, 2014

Photos found on Tumblr.com Dancing Knights

You will laugh a lot at Spamalot and smile a lot for long after you move out of the Monty Python lens on Camelot.

Orpheus Musical Theatre Society hams it up (a lot) perfectly attuned to playwright/lyricist Eric Idle’s quirky humour and political incorrectness. (The principle is: insult everybody and nobody can be offended.)

Under the skillful direction of Bob Lackey, the baton of musical director Terry Duncan and the bright, witty choreography of Christa Cullain, the musical “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a delight from silly opening scene to the final reprise of looking on the bright side of life.

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Spamalot: A Musical that glows with silliness, lovingly produced by the immense talent of the Orpheus Company.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 13, 2014

Photo. Kichissipi Times On the French Ramparts!

IT seems that the talents coming from the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society are particularly well suited to outrageous musical comedy because not since their side splitting production of Mel Brooks’ The Producers , have we seen such a perfectly orchestrated show. Artistic director Bob Lackey, musical director John Terry Duncan and their whole team have done wonders with the show based on Eric Idle’s book and the music by John Du Prez. From the moment Thomas Franzky as the mission-driven King of the Britons appears on stage with his faithful, bumbling Patsy a very sympathetic Rejean Mayer (we can’t help but feel this is a Python twist on Don Quixote and his not always appreciated servant Panza – I’m not chopped liver he snorts which is the first hint of his ethnic background) Spamalot was an absolute delight from beginning to end. Adapted from the Monty Python motion picture “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, the story essentially involves King Arthur going out trying to recruit new knights for his Round table, as he begins his quest for the Holy Grail.

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Spamalot : Orpheus Musical Theatre takes on Monty Python.

By Patrick Langston | March 8, 2014

Photo credits: Valleywind Productions/David Pasho.

Hard to tell who was having more fun on opening night of Orpheus’ hilarious production of Monty Python’s Spamalot: the audience or the cast.For sure, each fed off the other as the unabashedly silly musical about King Arthur and the search for the Holy Grail unrolled, in the process skewering everything from the Arthurian legend itself to political correctness and the tradition of the Broadway musical.

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Enron : A Winner All The Way

By Jamie Portman | February 26, 2014

Photo: Andrée Lanthier

There’s a terrific moment in the National Arts Centre’s production of Enron when we watch a succession of smaller and smaller containers being manipulated in order to demonstrate the art of corporate fraud.

The manipulator is a talented numbers geek named Andy Fastow, played with slicked-down hair and an excess of smarm by Eric Davis. He’s an anxious minion who yearns to be “somebody” in Enron — that’s the notorious Texas energy corporation that came to typify the worst excesses of corporate crime after its 2001 bankruptcy revealed that its purported $100 billion in revenues didn’t really exist.

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Enron: Michael Billington writing for The Guardian.

By Jamie Portman | February 25, 2014

Royal Court, London 5 / 5 stars

Reviewed by Michael Billington, for the Guardian, September 23, 2013.

Enron at Royal Court 2009

Samuel West, Tim Pigott-Smith and Amanda Drew in Enron. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

After the high praise earned in Chichester, there was always the lurking fear the Enron bubble might burst on transfer. But, although it had more room to manoeuvre at the Minerva, Lucy Prebble’s play and Rupert Goold’s production are so strong that they survive the move. What they vividly offer is not a lecture on corporate madness but an ultra-theatrical demonstration of it at work.

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