Photo: Andrew Alexander

Besieged by their eager avowals of commitment to the public weal in the federal election campaign, you might wonder what motivates politicians. Altruism? Guilt? Thirst for power?

Michael Healey’s comedy Generous, the resonant season opener at the Great Canadian Theatre Company, asks many of the same questions about not just politicians but about those who wield power in any form.

Asymmetric structure and story are one in Healey’s 2006 show. We bounce between events past and present as we watch the first acts of four apparently different plays and then, post-intermission, three concluding acts. Similarly, the lives and motivations of the characters are fractured. The plays, of course, ultimately prove to be no more unconnected than do the events of anyone’s life, which is not to say that either is a neatly completed jigsaw puzzle.

Generous – and congratulations if you spot any character wholeheartedly embodying that adjective – opens with a frantic, cartoonish scene in the prime minister’s office where we learn an overly loyal junior minister has taken to heart the PM’s words to stab a backbencher (Brian Mulroney once said of a cabinet minister, “Slit her throat”). Meanwhile, the PM’s chief of staff Eric (Drew Moore) reveals that he entered public service to do good, thereby setting up the exploration of altruism that percolates through the rest of the show.

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Watching Michael Healey’s play Generous reminds me of a saying about Branko Radičeviċ, a Serbian poet whose premature death gave rise to a saying in the Former Yugoslav Republics: “He wanted a lot, he started a lot, but…” Well, the idea is that he did not deliver exactly what he wanted. Healey wants his play to be a political comedy; he intends it to be complex and he tries to stir our minds. Generous deals mainly with politics and it is funny – I will give it that. As for the structure – it is more complicated (even if so) than complex; to provoke our minds, one should be more subtle and avoid “spoon-feeding” the message at the end, as Healey does.

The play seemingly tackles numerous issues in our society: political manipulations, greed and abuse of power. In addition to that, it touches on human weaknesses, emotional instabilities and repressed personalities. In the first act, we follow four separate stories taking place either 15 years ago or in the present. Three of those events are connected in the second act.

It starts 15 years ago in Ottawa, where a minority government franticly discusses its political fiasco, a potential vote of no confidence. In the heat of discussion, a wounded junior minister appears at the door and admits that she has killed a rival MP, following the instructions of her leader to “slit her throat.” No one in the room cares about the junior minister’s wounds and eventual death, as they are too preoccupied with the more pressing issue of avoiding a vote of non-confidence. …

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The war room is abuzz. The government may have just lost their majority and heads are going to roll. A power-hungry Prime Minister is surrounded by a bumbling group of cabinet ministers in the PMO, each obviously too stupid, too self-involved, or too guileless to be real, though the verisimilitude didn’t always escape me. Amidst the senseless commotion, a women has lurched her way into the middle of the room, her hands clutching her bleeding abdomen.

This, the first scene of Michael Healey’s Generous, playing at the GCTC and directed by Eric Coates, is the perfectly grotesque entry-point to a darkly comedic play. The government, corporate oil, media, and the Supreme Court are the objects of Healey’s play, but the subject is the virtue of generosity in the public service; and it’s not cleanly palatable when it’s found. From murder, to the spotless opinion of a naïve reporter, or the unsolicited attention that we’d rather not have, generosity takes many forms. Healey portrays a complicated kind of generosity as it plays out in the most powerful influencers in Canadian society.

Healey’s script is twisted, and dark, and its structure is deliberately disjointed. The three scenes that span the two acts of this play present three distinct storylines and flank a fifteen year gap, leaving the audience off balance. This theatrical device helps to pull the audience away from their expectation of a typical narrative structure. Though the scenes seem to mimic reality, they aren’t grounded in naturalism. Michael Healey’s script is intensely wordy, for example. The characters sink into extensive, heady, monologues that feel meta-theatrical and self-aware. …

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Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit weaves a serious thread into his ghostly comedy. In a less happy balance, the current Ottawa Little Theatre production is a mix of careful attention to detail and some unfortunate sloppiness and occasional missteps.

Blithe Spirit, in part the comic account of the unforeseen consequences of a séance undertaken for an insincere purpose, also depicts the two unsuccessful marriages of a heartless man to the flirtatious, ethereal Elvira (even before she was a ghost) and the pragmatic and socially proper Ruth.

 

The marital spats between socialite, novelist Charles Condomine and his two wives and the tug-of-war between the two women are among the strongest scenes in the script, while the colourful medium Madame Arcati is the most memorable character.

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Tess McManus : Donkey Derby. Photo Allan Mackey

Sometimes when one has no expectations at all, an evening can turn out to be a most gratifying event. This is what happened last night at the Avalon Theatre where two monologues are currently on stage. Donkey Derby with Tess McManus is nothing less than a jewel of a performance. The actress transformed herself into a troubled Irish lass, hiding in a barn alone with Percy her donkey, just before the “donkey derby” begins. The young lady has panicked and locked herself in with her dear animal. She has to talk to him (to the audience in fact) through her state of nerves because she is paralysed and unable to face the competition.

Megan Carty. Photo Allan Mackey.

The rest of the 45 minutes explains it all. Closed in that barn alone with her dear donkey she pours out all her fears, her troubling memories, the traumatic moments that marked her for life. A mass of unanswered questions well up and she finds herself, seeking answers to the many disturbing reactions that have always sent electrical charges of emotion racing through her mind, that have challenged her life choices,. The text is beautifully constructed. Little by little the psychic obstacles are unveiled: the deep seated encounters that haunt her bring her back to violent family relations, the tense political situation in Ireland that left its stain on her own relations with the world as the race becomes an image that takes over her life. .. McManus has cleverly woven multiple levels of human relations into the memories and experiences of this girl and they all come pouring out as she stands there in front of her Percy who luckily, never says a word.

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“Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher based on Mitch Albom’s book is currently running at the 1000 Islands Playhouse. It’s such a good production of such a good play that this is an easy review to write. All I really want to say is don’t miss it, but I guess that’s a little too brief.

The play is the story of Mitch, a career-obsessed sports journalist, who reunites after many years with Morrie, his undergraduate mentor at Brandies. Morrie is battling ALS and Mitch is consumed by his job. The initial visit becomes weekly as Morrie teaches his former student a final lesson – how to live.

The two actors are exceptional. Mitch is played by Geoffrey Pounsett, making his 1000 Islands Playhouse debut. He gives us a Mitch who is a complex character. He grows and changes as he searches for the answer to Morrie’s question, “Are you at peace with yourself?” He’s also a first-rate pianist. …

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The world premiere of “Bed and Breakfast” currently running in the Firehall is, for my money, the hit of the season so far at the 1000 Islands Playhouse.  It’s billed as a comedy and certainly has many funny moments, but is basically the very human and sometimes touching story of Brett (Andrew Kushnir) who inherits the family home and his partner Drew (Paul Dunn), who move from Toronto to a small Ontario town to set up a B&B.  These two terrific actors also play a number of peripheral characters.

When the play began I did an internal eye-roll and thought we were in for a cutesy string of stereotypes.  After a few minutes, though, something clicked and I realized the story and relationship of Brett and Drew is the core of the play, while the peripheral characters deepen and support the central duo.

This is a true ensemble piece in that the playwright Mark Crawford, director Ashlie Corcoran and the two excellent actors, along with a great creative team, have come up with a performance style that enables us to see all the characters as three dimensional.  The staging, actually complex choreography, with its spins and jumps to signal character changes is wonderfully creative and the pace never lags.  We become genuinely involved with this “out” couple and root for them to succeed. …

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The city may be an indifferent, sometimes cruel place. But it can still harbour grace and love even if you’re an almost-obsolete robot infatuated with an office worker who’s as much a misfit as you. That’s the ultimately hopeful upshot of Nufonia Must Fall Live!, the gentle puppet-show-with-a-difference by Eric San, a.k.a. Montreal-based scratch DJ and music producer Kid Koala, that’s been making a splash at home and abroad since it debuted last year.

Based on his own 2003 graphic novel and soundtrack Nufonia Must Fall, San’s multidisciplinary show employs real-time filming of more than a dozen miniature stages and a cast of white puppets, with the video projected on a screen at the rear of the stage.

The audience can make out the puppeteers and camera people as they go about their business on stage. Koala and the Afiara Quartet provide live — and alternately sad, lush and disquieting — music on piano, strings and turntables at stage rear. …

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It’s the final half hour of Wait Until Dark that makes Frederick Knott’s 1966 thriller worth reviving. That’s when the play’s blind heroine, Susy Hendrix, must use her wits and ingenuity to thwart the trio of criminals who threaten her life.

Perth’s Classic Theatre Festival delivers in spades in the production that opened over the weekend. Laurel Smith’s direction is taut and decisive in screwing up the suspense and in orchestrating the final confrontation between Alison Smyth, who plays Susy, and Greg Campbell, who plays the most frightening of the three crooks. And she receives vital assistance from Wesley McKenzie’s lighting and Matthew Behrens’s sound design.

The play’s reputation rests on the genuine tension of those closing scenes in the darkness and of the central situation of a young blind woman in jeopardy. But this does not diminish the fact that, despite its enduring popularity, Wait Until Dark is probably Knott’s weakest play. Its premise is preposterous and contrived: a child’s doll containing heroin has managed to find its way into the Greenwich Village apartment of Sam Hendrix and his sightless wife, Susy, and the bad guys are ready to commit murder to get it back. …

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A very good production of “Romeo and Juliet” is playing at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott.  Director Janet Irwin has set the play in the 1950s, perhaps the last decade in which marriage decisions were primarily made by parents, often in conflict with teen-agers’ raging hormones.  This decision allows designer Alex Amini to costume the actors so they can move easily through the athletic staging.  By the way, the various knife fights staged by Jonathan Purvis are remarkably effective.  Her costumes for the Capulets, particularly Juliet, are especially good.

The simple set of two sheer white panels with a circular sheer panel center designed by Julie Bourbonnais is very atmospheric.  The transformation to the tomb and the gradual lighting of the single paper lantern work very well. The a cappella dirges by Melissa Morris are good, but Lady Capulet’s snippet of “Blue Moon” seems out of place.

The cast is generally good, with just a couple of uneven performances.  Jonathan Gould is excellent as the Prince and also in his subtle guitar work.  Unfortunately Kathleen Veinotte gives an inconsistent performance as the Nurse, characterized off and on by a flat-footed caricature of a walk.  As Paris, Benjamin Sutherland gives us a realistically believable death scene.   …

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