This is our Yourth: drugs, sex, foul language and self delusion: more than a little dated in 2 011.
Drugs, sex, foul language and self-delusion, combined with a sense of entitlement. These are the underpinnings of the world depicted in This is our Youth.
I thank my lucky stars that it was not my youth. Perhaps this is why Kenneth Lonergan’s 1996 drama — set in New York during the Reagan era in 1982 — does not resonate with me.
Admittedly, the dialogue, heavily padded with the f-word and worse, rings true for this threesome of Upper West Side drifters from wealthy backgrounds living through the dropout generation of the 1980s. And, by the end of the play, there is a sense that they have overcome some of their moral confusion, if not their destructive drug habits.
Tremblay’s caracters weave their tail of booze and drunkenness: a Greek chorus materializes from the troubled mind of Marcel, persued by the Hounds.
Matt Smith and Manon
Dumas in Marcel poursuivi par les chiens.
The Carleton Tavern is the perfect venue for this intense little drama by Michel Tremblay, which opened this weekend in Ottawa’s west end theatre district! Marcel Pursued by the Hounds was first staged in French in 1992 and this translation by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco while not respecting the levels of popular vernacular that are so central to Tremblay,s plays, seems to give directors Lisa Zanyk and Donnie Laflamme, a lot of scope to play with language. This play i another one of his works that completes the geneology of all the characters who make up the extended family of Albertine, living on the Plateau in Montréal .
And Slowly Beauty, a most original tribute to the artist and a performance that captures the depths of the artistic sensibility
This singular interweaving of high art, in the form of Chekhov’s theatre, with the everyday life of a simple human being, is given a most exquisite stage treatment by director Michael Shamata in this coproduction by the Belfry Theatre and the English Theatre company of the National Arts Centre. Michel Nadeau’s dreamlike experience, And Slowly Beauty, translated by Maureen Labonté , takes us on a journey of flowing transformation. Mr. Mann – the Man – (Denis Fitzgerald), a well-established employee of a downtown company leads the empty life of a bureaucrat. The empty chatter of the office employees, the even emptier chatter of his wife are compounded by his helplessness in front of his children whose lives don’t bring him any satisfaction.
And Slowly Beauty: a homage to the transformative power of theatre that does not invite involvement.
The very amusing opening scene, the brilliant set and the beautifully choreographed movements indicate that And Slowly Beauty…is to be a special piece of theatre. And there is much to enjoy about the English-language premiere of Michael Nadeau’s stylized drama, written in collaboration with a French collective in 2003 and now translated by Maureen Labonté.
But the early charm wears a little thin long before the conclusion two hours later — there is no intermission — and the saga of middle-aged crisis interspersed with excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is a little too much in love with itself for too much of the time.
White Christmas – an Orpheus Musical Theatre production of an inferior musical of 1957. “Why do a new production?” asks Jamie Portman.
Orpheus Musical Theatre’s decision to offer the stage version of the 1954 film, White Christmas, prompts one immediate question.
Why?
This was an inferior musical 57 years ago and it remains so today, whether you experience it on stage or the big screen. Yet, it inexplicably has assumed the status of a classic. It arrived in 1954, protected by built-in insurance — its title. Indeed, there’s a widespread misconception today that this was the movie which introduced Irving Berlin’s irresistible Yuletide ballad to the world. Not so: the song had been introduced 12 years earlier in a much better film, the 1942 Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Crosby was smart enough to make it one of his signature songs — a song which attained such potency that Paramount saw rich commercial potential in capitalizing on it with a new movie called White Christmas which would once again star Bing.
White Christmas is less successful as a stage performance.
Crossing from one medium to another works best with first-class material. For example, the novella Gigi by Collette became a delightful movie at the hands of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe in 1958. Despite the high quality of the movie, the stage versions, musical or play, were less successful.
When the original is not top notch, the result is even less likely to be entirely successful. The 1954 Paramount movie, White Christmas, had very mixed reviews (to put it mildly). Therefore, when David Ives and Paul Blake delivered a stage version, they were faced with numerous problems.
Maggie’s Getting Married at Kanata Theatre. Norm Foster has fun with the family!
Are the crashes of thunder in the Kanata Theatre production of Maggie’s Getting Married the director’s way of ensuring that the audience doesn’t miss any verbal bombshells in the dialogue? Maybe such a device could be justified in a drama with an obscure plot line and archaic language. But for a Norm Foster comedy?
Foster, often called Canada’s answer to Neil Simon, generally writes sit-coms, simple in language and often simplistic in plot. His plays offer the comfort of familiarity. Via light comedies, sometimes with serious undercurrents, audiences see themselves, their neighbours, aspects of their lives — exaggerated just a little.
Such is the tone of Maggie’s Getting Married, first performed in 2000. Set in the Duncan family’s kitchen on the night before the wedding, the focus is on sibling rivalry, pre-wedding jitters and family quirks.
Whispering pines : can the past be reconstructed?
Whispering Pines is a story that tries to connect the present and the past. Starting in East Berlin towards the end of the Soviet Era and ending in present day Canada, it tells about two German artists (Bruno, a poet and Renate, a painter) who dream of freedom and a better future for their native country. After Thomas, a Canadian academic, comes into their home and their reality with gifts from across the wall and the promise of a free world, things change and become chaotic. Thomas falls in love with Renate, Bruno turns into an informant, and Renate’s brother is taken a prisoner. Years later, at Renate’s initiative, the three of them meet in Canada and attempt to reconstruct the events of their past.
Whispering Pines. Re-evaluating the past and dealing with the present.
Whispering Pines is a tale of personal and political betrayal — before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A layered mix of poetic language, set against a stark background, realism interspersed with symbolism, time shifts and disparate locations, this drama attempts to pack in a great deal but remains unnecessarily obscure.
In part an attempted justification of espionage and lies, in part the age-old revelation of an eternal triangle, Whispering Pines declaims rather than whispers, and demands rather than touches the emotions. While a number of interesting ideas are on offer in Whispering Pines, their weight drags any passion out of the production, as does Brian Quirt’s direction.
In Act I, set in East Berlin before the fall of the wall, playwright Richard Sanger seems to be trying to draw a picture of innocence through art and music, personified in Renate, a painter, and her lover, Bruno, a singer. The third member of the group is a Canadian academic, Thomas, apparently searching for truth (or love).