Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 83 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Rag’n Bone Puppet Theatre Launches its Season.

By Capital Critics Circle | October 2, 2012

Rag & Bone launches
The Family Series, season 3
Let’s Pretend…
We’re excited about this year’s line-up: 28 performances of 7 different shows at 3 venues over 9 months = lots of fun for kids and families!
Buy or reserve tickets now. Our online box office is standing by. . .
From October to June, seven different shows.
Presented at the Shenkman Arts Centre, the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre and Centrepointe Theatre.
Zoom at Sea
Shenkman: Oct. 21, 1:30 & 3:30
The Nightingale
Shenkman: Nov 4, 1:30 & 3:30
Irving Greenberg: Nov. 18, 1:30

The Story of Holly & Ivy
Centrepointe: Nov. 23, 7:00, Nov. 24 & 25, 1:30 & 3:30
Shenkman: Dec. 7, 7:00, Dec. 8 & 9, 1:30 & 3:30
Felicity Falls
Shenkman: Jan. 13, 1:30 & 3:30
Irving Greenberg: Jan. 27, 1:30
The Flying Canoe
Shenkman: Feb. 9, 11:30 & 1:30

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Dianna Renee Yorke carries Hay Fever to its theatrical heights.

By Alvina Ruprecht | September 20, 2012

View of the exhibition of OLT history in the Foyer of the Little Theatre.

In this 100^th anniversary year of the OLT, and the oldest community theatre in Canada, the Canadian premiere of Hay Fever is clearly the perfect choice to start the season. Performed by “home grown” Canadian Actors in 1926, one year after it premiered on the London stage (so the programme tells us), it took place in the theatre of the Victoria Memorial Museum on Argyle St. (Now the Museum of Nature) and of course it was mounted by the Ottawa Drama League, which later became the Ottawa Little Theatre. Hay Fever is linked to more Ottawa Little Theatre history because it was restaged in 1970, as part of the fundraiser for the new building (after fire destroyed the original site of the OLT) and that performance featured the gracious and most talented Florence Fancott (who always reminded me of the French actress Delphine Seyrig). David Bliss was played by Roy Hayden-Hinsley, the eternally handsome leading man in OLT productions of that period who always left the teenagers, myself included, sitting awe struck in the green room during rehearsals. The programme notes brought back all that forgotten history and it was quite a delight.

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Programmation théâtrale (2012-13) de la Nouvelle scène: Paul Rainville sur la scène francophone!!

By Capital Critics Circle | September 12, 2012

La Nouvelle scène vient d’annoncer sa saison théâtrale avec, plusieurs spectacles qui nous reviennent de la saison dernière:

une excellente production de Zone et l’Implorante que nous avons vue également l’année dernière à Ottawa. (voir ci-contre la sculpture L’implorante de Camille Claudel qui a inspiré les créateurs de ce spectacle.) Les comptes rendus ce ces deux oeuvres se retrouve déjà sur notre site. Il faut signaler également la prestation de Paul Rainville (en français!) dans l’oeuvre de Michelle Ouellette, ABC Démolition, présentée par le Théâtre de la Vieille 17. Nous sommes très heureuse de constater cette collaboration entre les deux communautées théâtrales. Les metteurs en scène Esther Beauchemin et Roch Catonguay, et l’excellente comédienne Annick Léger feront équipe avec Rainville pour nous offrir une représentation qui sera surement le moment culminant de la saison.

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Engaging Evening of Stones in His Pockets But the Play’s Serious Intent is Not Quite Captured.

By Jamie Portman | September 11, 2012

Dynamic duo of Gélinas and Counsil. Photo Andrew Alexander

There’s no denying that actors Richard Gélinas and Zach Counsil are an engaging double act in this new production of playwright Marie Jones’s international stage hit about the impact of a Hollywood film crew on a rural Irish community. They’re capable of working together as smoothly as a pair of fingers on the same hand, they have a deft way with comedy, and they serve the needs of the play with their ability to define a character with a few broad strokes.

That latter gift is essential here. These able performers are not just being called upon to portray the droll and jaundiced Jake Quinn (Gélinas) and the bouncily optimistic Charlie Conlon (Counsil), two locals who have been hired as extras on the film. They’re required to work much harder than that and also serve up an additional gallery of characters which include Irish labourers, neurotic filmmakers and a seductive Hollywood diva named Caroline Giovanni.

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The Clockmaker: Accumulated fragments of a troubling past that is never really there. A tall order for Stephen Massicotte and for the audience.

By Alvina Ruprecht | August 20, 2012

Jenny Young (Frieda) and Jonathan Wilson (Heinrich Mann). Photo: Kaufmann Photography.

The first thing one notices in this perfectly equipped theatre are the seats, placed on opposing sides of the performance space. They lengthen the long rectangular area in the middle, creating a back and forth movement of the eye. This is well suited to Stephen Massicotte’s interpretation of the nature of memory and its intricate relationship with the passage of time, all woven through a complex theatrical narrative involving a Clockmaker (Jonathan Wilson), a married woman Frieda (Jenny Young), a violent husband Adolphus (Brett Christopher) and a sinister interrogator (Gordon Bolan).

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My Name is Asher Lev. A beautiful and demanding play.

By Rajka Stefanovska | August 17, 2012

Photos by 9th Hour Theatre company

My Name is Asher Lev is a story about growing up in a strict and religious surrounding while searching for an individual identity. Set in in the 1950s in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, it explores the conflict between orthodox Jewish tradition and art, as well as between the individual and the group.

It is not easy to be different and Asher Levy, a child with a prodigious artistic ability, knows it only too well. Although everybody admires his gift for painting, it seems that, as he grows older, the adults are less and less capable of understanding him, and more and more prone to angrily censor his work.

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The Clockmaker: Romantic Mystery with Kafkaesque overtones makes for powerful summer theatre.

By Capital Critics Circle | August 11, 2012

Photo: Kaufmann Photography

Stephen Massicotte, author of the award-winning play THE CLOCKMAKER, has become one of my favorite contemporary playwrights. If you’ve seen either of his earlier plays, MARY’S WEDDING or THE OXFORD ROOF CLIMBER’S REBELLION, you can understand why. This time THE CLOCKMAKER tackles some heavy questions with both insight and humor.

This romantic mystery begins with the Kafkaesque interrogation of clockmaker Heinrich Mann by the rather threatening Pierre, whose function remains obscure till near the end of the play. Heinrich is then asked to repair a smashed clock by the mysterious Frieda and we begin to learn of her abusive husband Adolphus. Threaded through the complex unraveling of the story is the pervasive way smells trigger memory and the idea that what we remember is a choice.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the Saint Lawrence: a production highly charged with youthful playfulness.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 22, 2012

Tatiana (Alix Sideris), Bottom and the band of mischievous fairies. Photo: St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival.

It all began at dusk. The leaves on the trees around the waterfront amphitheatre near the Prescott Marina started rustling in a strange way. Out popped a band of green creatures with shining eyes and plants growing out of their ears, with ragged clothing and a nervous stance. Flutes, drums and harps accompanied what resembled chanting, calling up the spirits of the forest who were hiding somewhere in John Doucet’s chaotic setting of hanging vines and shredded greenery. Thus began director Catriona Leger’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream presented at the St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, the first play of the Festival’s 1oth season, and a delightful production that was definitely something to celebrate.

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Mary, Mary: Good Cast and Director Grapple with an Outdated Show

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 11, 2012

Photo: T.H. Wall

If one looks at lists of theatrical hits of the 1950s and 1960’s in New York , one finds plays by Tennessee Williams (Baby Doll, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Eugene O’Neil (Long Day’s Journey into night), Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s dramatization of The Diary of Anne Frank, one of the most successful works of the season, not to mention Lorraine Hansberry’s ground breaking drama A Raisin in the Sun, and the Leonard Bernstein Musical West Side Story (1957), all productions that made theatre history. In the 1960’s, the big hits of the Broadway stage were musicals: Hair, Mame, Man of the Mancha, Fiddler on the Roof and the list goes on. It would seem then rather strange to speak of Broadway hits when locating Jean Kerr’s work Mary, Mary among the plays that defined the “Golden Age of the American Stage “ (New York ) of the 1950s or 1960’s.

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The Walk elicits differing views on this difficult subjet of women in the sex trade.

By Alvina Ruprecht | July 7, 2012

A subject matter that has attracted social workers and social scientists of all disciplines from around the world: research into the world of the sex trade, the sexual slavery of women and the trafficking of women. The subject matter, which is not new, has been the object of plays, films and many studies. Yet, in spite of all the interest and the outrage, the practice continues.

Since that is the case, what is the aim of another play about the same subject? What does this team want to capture. What do they want us to feel or see or understand? That is the real question here. Why this play?

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