Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 76 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Enron: Flashy gimmicks fail to hide weak script

By Maja Stefanovska | February 23, 2014

Lucy Prebble has taken on a lot in her play Enron, about the energy giant whose name has become synonymous with systematic, paneed out corporate fraud. The play tries to cover the rise of the corporation, the characters involved in it, as well as the impact its demise had on the workers. There are raptors representing the shadow companies Enron used to unload its losses onto and there are musical numbers. Add to this bobble-head president stand-ins and you have a meandering mess of elements that fail to come together in a script that not only takes too much, but doesn’t know what it actually wants to say about its chosen theme. Director Ron Jenkins creates a slick production with some interesting elements, but he was ultimately fighting a losing battle with material that lacked substance. …

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Enron: a flashy theatrical kaleidoscope that is highly entertaining.

By Iris Winston | February 23, 2014

Photo: Metro News Fils.

In Enron (the play) the smoke and mirrors of Enron (the company) have been transformed into a highly entertaining and flashy theatrical kaleidoscope.

The energy company went from stock market darling to massive bankruptcy disaster — the largest in American corporate history — in 2001. CEO Jeffrey Skilling may even have believed that his “powerhouse of ideas” and the possibility of trading energy as well as supplying it could keep the company afloat. He may have trusted his CFO Andy Fastow, as they developed shadow companies to absorb and hide Enron’s debt in a system likened to small and smaller Russian dolls, nested inside each other.

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Enron: the rise and fall of “Enron” takes on too much.

By Patrick Langston | February 21, 2014

OTTAWA CITIZEN February 20, 2014 12:10 AM

Theatre review: Story of rise and fall of Enron takes on too much

Dmitry Chepovetsky who plays Jeffrey Skilling

Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington , Ottawa Citizen

The show: British playwright Lucy Prebble’s uber-theatrical revisiting of the Enron scandal which saw the U.S. energy giant vanish in a cloud of bankruptcy dust in 2001 after the corporation’s senior executives played fast and loose with the financial truth. Music, movement and mask – including corporate types sporting raptor dinosaur heads – are part of Prebble’s semi-fantastical look at Enron’s rise and fall, old-fashioned hubris, and moral sleight of hand.

Pros: A shrewd and sometimes very funny look at endemic greed, the illusion of personal invincibility, and individual and collective moral bankruptcy. Eric Davis is especially good as Andy Fastow, Enron’s deluded and vulnerable Chief Financial Officer.

Cons: Arcane details of business operations and federal regulations don’t always make for scintillating theatre. An overly small acting area hems in the enormity of the Enron story as well as this production’s commitment to it.

Verdict: A play that takes on too much and ends up delivering less than it could; a production that doesn’t have enough faith in itself to ever really stretch its wings.

Written by Lucy Prebble

National Arts Centre English Theatre

At the NAC Studio, February 17 to March 1. 2014.

Continues until March 1. Tickets: NAC box office, 1-888-991-2787, nac-cna.ca

Undercurrents: The Tashme Project – Living archives from Tashme Productions (Ottawa/Montreal)

By Patrick Langston | February 19, 2014

If you shake your head in dismay at the universally dismal experience of Japanese Canadians consigned to internment camps during World War Two, you’re making the same mistake as those who consigned them to the camps in the first place.
To wit: painting individuals with a collective brush.
That’s one of the messages of this subtle and affecting piece of verbatim theatre by two performers whose families were interned.
Seeking to unlock that part of their heritage, Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa interviewed dozens of Nisei or second-generation Japanese Canadians who, now in their 70s and 80s, were children when interned at Tashme, the largest camp in British Columbia. They then used the Nisei’s own words to fashion a picture of life in the camps and afterward.
That picture is as diverse as human nature itself.
Taking on the voices and gestures of those interviewed, Miwa and Manning – both of them robust actors – show us children delightedly playing marbles, living in freezing shacks with no running water, marvelling at the gorgeous mountain setting, losing parents and siblings to death……..(read more)

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Theatre+review+Thoughtful+moving+portrayal+depicts+lives+interned/9506311/story.html

Published in the Ottawa Citizen by Patrick Langston

Undercurrents – A Quiet Sip of Coffee. An Animal Parts Production from Toronto/New York.

By Patrick Langston | February 18, 2014

Published in the Ottawa Citizen, February 14.

Anthony Johnston, Nathan Schwartz

Photo by Lili Jamali

OTTAWA — Be careful what you wish for: it may lead you into territory where your reality splinters, and you face questions more complicated than you’d ever anticipated.

That was the experience of best buddies Anthony Johnston and Nathan Schwartz — or at least it seems to have been the experience, reality being a moving target in this rambunctious and sometimes very brave play. A decade ago the two, one gay and one straight, were fresh graduates from theatre school wanting work. They wrote a prank letter to a fundamentalist organization in rural British Columbia that had as its mission the reformation of gays. In the letter they asked for funds to develop a new play Never Cry Wolfman.

To their surprise, they were invited to workshop the show, which didn’t actually exist, as long as they participated in gay conversion therapy.

They agreed, and A Quiet Sip of Coffee is the play that resulted from a lark about a play.

Under the direction of Annie Tippe, the two use video, music, improvisation and storytelling to root around weighty issues like authenticity, self-delusion and friendship, mostly staying on this side of the earnestness such topics invite……

GCTC’s This is War is bleak, troubling and resonant

By Patrick Langston | February 12, 2014

Left to right, Sarah Finng and Brad Long in the Great Canadian Theatre Company production of “This is War.” Photograph by: Chris Mikula , The Ottawa Citizen — Left to right, Sarah Finng and Brad Long in the Great Canadian Theatre Company production of “This is War.”
Photograph by: Chris Mikula , The Ottawa Citizen

This is War
Great Canadian Theatre Company/Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre
Reviewed Thursday, Jan. 6 by Patrick Langston for the Ottawa Citizen

Why do I do anything?” asks Tanya Young, one of the characters in Hannah Moscovitch’s bleak and troubling This is War. “To distract myself for two minutes,” she answers herself, the words —like a line from a Samuel Beckett play — telescoping the futility, the confusion, the emotional disconnection that is her situation: that of a Canadian soldier in the volatile region of Panjwaii, Afghanistan circa 2008.

Master Corporal Young (Sarah Finn) is one of a Canadian Forces quartet stationed there. Also present is the young, wide-eyed recruit from Red Deer, Alt. Jonny Henderson (Drew Moore). He’s got a thing for Tanya. …

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Seeds: A play with a Haunting Challenge

By Laurie Fyffe | February 7, 2014

Liisa Repo-Martell and Eric Peterson, in Seeds. Photo: Guntar Kravis — Liisa Repo-Martell and Eric Peterson, in Seeds.
Photo: Guntar Kravis

Seeds
By Annabel Soutar
A production of Porte Parole Theatre
Presented at the Frederick Wood Theatre, Vancouver, as part of the PuSh Performing Arts Festival, January 2014.

Seeds plays at the National Arts Centre, English Theatre from March 6 to April 12, 2014.

In the world of documentary theatre Seeds may reign supreme as one of the most complex topics ever incubated for the stage. The story is one well suited for the headlines-as-dialogue, taunt teaching moments, and characters-as-points of view form of theatrical presentation docudrama uses to construct its world. The little guy – and they don’t get much smaller than the individual farmer – is suddenly and it would appear unjustly targeted by a multi-national corporation because their genetically modified seeds have capriciously settled on his land producing a crop resistant to the weed blasting properties of Round Up herbicide. That’s the simple plot. …

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Twelfth Night Celebration. The Company of Fools inaugurates its 25th Season

By Alvina Ruprecht | January 6, 2014

Restes and Pommes frites…emblematic characters of the Cie of Fools.

Presented by Scott Florence, Catriona Leg, Al Connor and Geoff Mcbride confirmed the “Fools” reputation as one of the most unique Shakespearean companies in Canada and the third oldest professional theatre company in Ottawa.

Raff, The Little Prince. latest member of the Company of Fools. Photo. Caroline Phillips.

Catriona Leger now with the Company of Fools.

Entering into its 25^th season as a creator of playful parodies of Shakespeare’s plays, the Company seems to be investigating new theatrical techniques to respond to a slight shift in its audiences. The first part of the evening was an illustration of a work in progress process hosted by Scott Florence. The challenge they had given themselves was to show us how they are trying to develop interest in those plays on the part of young people, who, in spite of Shakespeare’s cultural cachet, are turned off by that convoluted language and those characters to whom they cannot relate at all.

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Be a Friend, the Musical: Orpheus Musical Theatre Society has produced a playful packaging of serious content that works for young children.

By Alvina Ruprecht | December 22, 2013

Photo: Barbara Boston. Sammy Skunk (Fabian Santos) and Mommy skunk (Donna St.Jean).

Iris Winston’s award winning play for children, based on the trials and tribulations of Sammy Skunk whose physical difference turns him into a pariah of the Squirrel community, takes on some very serious issues about bullying, racism, prejudice and all the things that young people confront in schools and on the streets of our urban society. The audience of 3 to 10 years olds seemed to be listening intently to this musical adaptation as poor Sammy, (an excellent Fabian Santos who had all our sympathy with his fluffy white tail and oily black nose) sung about wanting so much to fit in after he and his mom (an upbeat and wise momma skunk, played with much warmth by Donna St. Jean) had to move to a new neighbourhood.

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Be a Friend: A Charming Family Musical

By Jamie Portman | December 22, 2013

Photo. Andrew Simon . Squirrel with Thompson.

Be A Friend, the delightful children’s mini-musical that is Orpheus Theatre’s Yuletide gift to the community, knows how to communicate with its young audiences. It doesn’t talk down to them as it tells the story of a lonely skunk named Sammy and his search for a friend. Without being the least bit preachy, it delivers an effective message against prejudice and for accepting people who are “different.” The opportunity for audience participation is built into Iris Winston’s lively and imaginative book, which is based on her award-winning play, Let’s Be Friends. And a further trump card comes from the songs with their nifty lyrics by Gord Carruth and engaging melodies from Carruth and Bart Nameth.

Same little fellow discovers the set..Photo: Andrew Simon

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