Theatre in Ottawa and the region Archives - Page 85 of 92 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

The King and I: A Challenging Musical for a Community Theatre Company

By Iris Winston | May 27, 2012

The title of The King and I is a clear indication of the viewpoint of the 1951 Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein’s musical. After all, it is a first-person account of the experiences of a Victorian widow teaching in Siam.

The story educator Anna Leonowens told in her memoirs is still regarded as unfair and distasteful in Thailand (previously known as Siam). The characterization of the king — a Buddhist monk before he ascended to the throne — as presented in Margaret Landon’s 1944 book, Anna and the King of Siam, the fictionalized account of Leonowens’ The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the Harem (1872) is also disputed.

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Circle Mirror Transformation: A Well-Crafted Crowd pleaser

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 27, 2012

Reviewed by Alvina Ruprecht.
The Circle Mirror Transformation is one of those plays that is very deceptive. Until the intermission, you wonder where it is all going because it appears to be nothing but a series of funny moments in an adult drama class taking place in a Community Centre in Shirley (Vermont) where five adults have come for different reasons. The exercises and games which are supposed to be related to a form of theatrical training that acts upon the mind by first acting on the body- a psychophysiological approach according to Richard Schechner – can be amusing, or boring, or silly or whatever you want to think, depending on your relationship with the material. Of course it is a parody of those counter culture encounter groups that became so important in the 1960s and 70s. It takes us back to the “communitas” of the peace and love era where the characters here are caricatures of those for whom theatre is a pretext, because individual therapy is the real motive behind all these gyrations, these exercises, these touchy feeling encounters that came out of the anti-psychiatry movement of the hippy period. “When are we going to do some real acting?” yells the sullen young Lauren ( Catherine Rainville) who never really gets into the spirit of the class as it unfolds in a series of short sketches separated by Marc Désormeaux playful but disquieting music, and by quick blackouts, or interrupted by the arrival of various class members during delicate moments of intense conversation.

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La petite poule d’eau (The Little Water Hen). Strong Community Theatre Adaptation of the Novel by Gabrielle Roy .

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 11, 2012

This adaptation for the stage by Irène Mahé and Claude Dorge, from the novel by Gabrielle Roy, was first performed by the Circle Molière in Saint Boniface in 1992. It was then mounted at the Théâtre du Nouvel Ontario in Sudbury. The story of the poor Tousignant family living on an isolated island on the Petite Poule d’Eau River takes place in 1937. Gabrielle Roy who then went on to write The Tin Flute (Bonheur d’occasion) became one of the important Francophone writers of her era. Here, her novel has captured many apsects of the life of the French Canadians living in the Manitoba wilderness and it is clear that this stage version has retained much of the legendary perhaps even stereotypical quality of that life.

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Death and the Maiden,a study of Trauma Left by Torture

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 9, 2012

First produced in England in 1991, Death and the Maiden (named after the piece by Schubert that the doctor used to listen to as he was torturing his victims) feeds off personal testimonies and well published newspaper reports of the horrors perpetrated by the Chilean secret police (DINA) and the military after the takeover in 1973. In 1976, Orlando Letellier an ex-minister in Allende’s cabinet came to Ottawa to lecture at the University of Ottawa about the situation in Chile after the “golpe” and two weeks later he was killed by a bomb in Washington, another victim of the Condor operation that was so highly publicised. The DINA was therefore operating openly in North America hunting for its victims and one had to be willfully indifferent not to have seen those reports and or understood what was happening in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America at that time.

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Extremely Short Play Festival: A unique event

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 7, 2012

John Koensgen at the CCC theatre Awards. Winner of best director for the Extremely Short Play Festival. Photo: David Pasho

This initiative presented by the New Theatre of Ottawa at Arts Court, brings together 11 new texts by local playwrights, all directed by John Koensgen. Each play has its own particularities, poses its own staging problems for the actors and the director, which is what certainly made the audience aware of the staging process as well as the finished product. Thus, this is a night of surprises that is certainly very entertaining. There is no doubt that this Festival should become a yearly event. Let us hope that the NTO can get more funding to allow them to expand the event over the next few years to include more actors, more directors and perhaps even more plays over a longer period of time.

Each play deserves a comment….so here goes.

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Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 17, 2012

Ronnie Burkett and Ms Penny Plain.

Ronnie Burkett’s puppet vision of the world has evolved enormously since it first began 25 years ago. One of his earlier works, Awful Manors (1990), the first of his performances we saw at the NAC, and that shocked a lot of people, revealed a finely crafted, campy, extremely naughty activist puppet family raging against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance of all kinds. Feeding off serious literary and theatrical erudition, his work was, and still is, a completely new phenomenon on the theatrical scene.

Penny Plain shows to what extent the stage vision and puppet manipulation have grown immensely whereas the textual part of the show seems to be having problems. Still focussed on controversial current debates, this marionette theatre, is now tackling the destruction of our planet, suggesting that a new world order is in the making. Burkett has now shown us his own personal cosmogony which is an intriguing step in a new direction.

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Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays: Falling Open Makes a Powerful Impression.

By Rajka Stefanovska | February 18, 2012

Falling Open is a journey into the self, after being sexually abused as a child.

The story is set in the bedroom of the main protagonist from where she takes us to the darkest recesses of her memories. Her only companion and support on this tricky and dangerous road is a doll – the only witness of her childhood drama.

It is an extremely difficult task to tell a story about such a sensitive topic. There would be nothing easier than to fall into a trap of over-acting and over-dramatization in an attempt to make the message stronger. Fortunately, this did not happen. Luna Alison showed a thorough understanding of the issue and found the courage to talk about it honestly. Even though her voice was barely loud enough to be heard and understood, her telling of the story resounded powerfully and made a strong impression on those present.

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Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays. Blue Box: Erotic Dreams More Than a Desire to Blow Things Up!

By Alvina Ruprecht | February 8, 2012

Sounds more like titillation than terrorism” stated a Citizen journalist, speaking about Carmen Aguirre’s book Something Fierce, now on the final list of books being considered for the CBC sponsored Canada Reads contest. Of course the book did not show us the slinky beautiful actress, sauntering out on the stage in her jeans, her t-shirt, black hair and long black boots. But the actress is very much there and her monologue takes us away on a revolutionary fantasy that somehow reflects the erotic dreams of a young girl more than the desire to blow up things.

Actually Blue Box is a well written narrative that delves into the fantasy life of the actress. And I found myself charmed by the text more than by the performance which I think the actress might have taken even further.

Aguirre’s own life becomes the experience of a young woman involved in the Chilean resistance against Pinochet, crossing borders into Argentina, escaping the secret police, all the things we heard about after Pinochet came to power in 1973 after Allende was murdered. At that point Chileans began fleeing to Canada and many of them settled in Ottawa, enrolled in literature courses at Carleton University, began publishing books, poetry, even opened a publishing house (Split Quotations) and became close friends of all of us interested in Latin America. Chile’s loss was our gain. They were a wonderful contribution to the literary and artistic community of Canada. Mme Aguirre was obviously very young at that point and stayed in the country to contribute to the Pinochet resistance . I kept trying to locate her activity in all that madness that followed Allende’s death , all those events that touched us so deeply in Ottawa.

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2 Pianos 4 Hands, A “one-of-a-kind” Theatre Piece That Still Enchants the Audience

By Jamie Portman | January 17, 2012

By traditional definition, 2 Pianos 4 Hands doesn’t qualify as a play — or even as a musical. On the other hand, its lack of pretension rescues it from the category of performance art. Let’s just call it a one-of-a-kind theatre piece — an international success story which came about purely by chance.

Watching Richard Greenblatt and Ted Dykstra — fine actors and impressive musicians — revisiting their 15-year-old triumph, you’re struck again by what an exhilarating, hilarious and truthful entertainment this is.

Many of us can relate personally to this warm and witty odyssey as we accompany two youngsters on their journey from childhood to adolescence when they were studying to be classical pianists. Their travails are marvellously evoked — coping with demanding teachers, parents and examiners, howling with frustrated boredom when confronted with pesky scales and bewildering time signatures, freezing with fear when exposed for the first time to audiences and adjudicators at the local Kiwanis Music Festival.

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2 Pianos 4 Hands, the International Success Story, Returns to Ottawaa.

By Iris Winston | January 17, 2012

The international success story of 2 Pianos 4 Hands began with a casual conversation between Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt about their experiences as classical music students.

They found many similarities in their journey along the way from early music lessons, weird and weirder teachers, competition success and the ultimate failure of their dream to become professional musicians.

And those parallel experiences became a cross-genre theatre piece that has entertained audiences worldwide for 15 years. Now, in their farewell (?)/anniversary tour of the show, Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt revisit their days from musical scales to concert recitals —once more with feeling.

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