Against Gravity

The Story: That’s where the problem starts: the story. There isn’t enough of one to support the 45 minutes it takes for this aimless piece of shadow puppetry to wander to its uncertain end. During that time, one of the company’s performers plays guitar and makes electronically enhanced noises (the audience is also encouraged to makes noises) while the other operates an overhead projector that throws the shadows on a screen. Together, they create a wafer-thin narrative about a man who encounters a bunch of gravity-related experiences, from falling down stairs to meeting a group of Monty Pythonesque anti-gravity protestors. The show appears to be making a point about breaking free of restraints and concludes, unaccountably, with one of the performers taking centre stage for a portrayal of envy and other emotions.

Pros: Some fairly cool sound effects.

Cons: Self-indulgent and arid.

Verdict: Unlike the shadow-puppet bird that occasionally appears, the show never achieves ignition let alone lift-off.

Mind of a Snail Theatre Co., Vancouver

Plays in Academic Hall

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Photo Jesse Ashton

Einstein returns from the dead as it were in a blaze of swirling lights and classical music.Mozart mainly. Projected on a screen are the necessary titles and illustrations of Einstein’s explanations how he perfected his theory of relativity.. It moves from solar eclipse to solar eclipse beginning before the great war and continuing on for 20 years. Those are  the important moments  of the founding his theory because he needed perfect photos of the eclipse  to prove his theory about the movement of light. Technically, the show is impeccable and it holds our interest most of the time. Fry tries to create a total portrait of an excentric  genius  whose personal life fell apart because it interfered with his inner world of scientific thought and he brought in that part of his world very effectively. The nagging voice of his wife on the phone, the evolution of his relationship with his son Hans.

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Six actors invade a private space where Dick and Paco live. Thus begins a whole network of disconnected dialogues and monologues that bring us right back to Ionesco’s abrupt and broken logic.  His use of clichés, inappropriate and disrupted language, indicating a breakdown in rational behaviour. The situation gets worse. Tim Oberholzer as Ricky t-bone is the  character supposedly  showing an exacerbated sense of connection with this world while the others rattle on as though they were wound up and set off like clocks  in their own little network of stereotypical responses. No one appears to hear anyone else. What a terrible world. And yet it all works beautifully thanks to Martin Dockery who introduces all these creatures within a script that never falters. There is also Dave Dawson’s meticulous direction of actors, his excellent sense of acting style that he sustains throughout and a pace that keeps the excitement high. Note Tim Oberholzer as the tortured ice cream salesman and Mrs. Dick, Céline Filion who glows in her state of absurdity. Great fun and very good theatre!!!

Paco V Put to Sleep

By Martin Dockery,

Directed by Dave Dawson

With Mike Kosowan as the Son

Marissa Caldwell as Jane `

Will Lafrance as Paco V

Céline Filion as Mrs Dick

Jeff Lefebvre as Mr. Dick

Tim Oberholzer as Ricky T –bone

Plays at the Arts Court Theatre….Good theatre!!!! and lots of fun.

This Murder Mystery with puppets is a world premiere that probably should have waited a bit before going public. The set is fine, the lighting sets up the right atmosphere, the choice of music is exciting but the actor who manipulates all the puppets (9 or 10 of them) all by herself, is not quite at home with her script which has masses of movement, and individuals coming and going and just creating a complicated scenario. It is in fact one of Agatha Christie’s earlier plays that was never published, the puppeteer tells us –but maybe that is a way of getting our undivided attention.  As well, this puppeteer tends to forground herself instead of her puppets so we don’t pay too much attention to them.  Normally, there has to be some sense of illusion that the puppets come from their own world but we are caught in the world of Tara Travis the puppeteer who keeps asking us what we think and explaining everything. This constantly breaks the magic- certainly not  the best strategy,.aside from the fact that these  puppets are not very interesting creatures.

We are used to an excellent puppet tradition from the western part of Canada with Ronny Burkett, Old Trout, One Yellow Rabbit…and this company (Ryan Gladstone Productions) certainly does not cut it- yet.  The fact some of the puppets fell apart during the show can happen I suppose but that can be fixed, as can forgotten lines and a sense of exhaustion that emanated from the actress. Nevertheless. there is still lots of work  to be done on this show . But perhaps  that is what the Fringe is all about  .. testing one’s ideas.

Who Killed Gertrude Crump plays at Arts Court Theatre.

 

Roving critics from the CCC… Maja Stefanovska, Barb Gray, Alvina Ruprecht, Rajka Stefanowska, Jamie Portman  will be out and about and our newest colleague  Kat Fournier. 

photos from the Fringe!

Reviewed by Kat Fournier.

Jusque dans les os   Collectif (dif)FRACTION

Written by Stéphanie Pelletier, Directed by Stéphanie Pelletier and Kathleen Aubert

Inspired by a real moment in the playwright’s life, Jusque dans les os recounts a night wherein a man tried to force his way into her home. The trajectory of this play is deliberately narrow: It is a reflection on fear, imagination and the earth-shattering moment wherein the playwright’s fear turned to terror. The staging is very still, and yet, the production is effective. The strength lies in the strength of the acting, bolstered through the the use of some simple props. This straight-forward play lures the audience back into a moment; the subtlety is quite evocative.

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Reviewed by Kat Fournier

The Devil’s Circus

The Wishes Mystical Puppet Company    Directed by Daniel Wishes

A “reimagined” comedic version of Orpheus and Eurydice’s tragic love story. Here, Orpheus is a vain circus performer and Eurydice is his sidekick. After falling to her death from the high wire, Eurydice winds up in hell where Satan holds his own circus. This variety show is tied together by a loose narrative of Eurydice’s and Satan’s own love story and features a number of puppetry traditions from Shadow to Bunraku to tricked-out 19th century marionettes. The craftsmanship is quite remarkable though malfunctions with a number of the puppets hamper the overall quality of this production, as did the unsubtle manipulation of the Bunraku puppets. Look forward to the introduction of the multi-headed dog Cerberus; who knew a hell-hound could be so lovable.

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Photo: Emily Cooper

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — The chief reason for seeing the Shaw Festival’s revival of The Philadelphia Story is the presence of the incandescent Moya O’Connell in the role of Tracy Lord, the captivating self-absorbed heiress who finally learns to be a human being on the eve of her second marriage.

Philip Barry’s comedies can be hazardous undertakings, requiring a particular tone and cadence in delivery, and rippling with the kind of nuance and subtlety that helps flesh out a particular social strata. Barry was writing about the rich — indeed, some would say he was in love with the rich in plays like The Philadelphia Story and Holiday — but that didn’t stop him from gently mocking the pretensions of the very world he embraced.

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Touch and Go.  Photo by MAria Vartanova

Those who see the sexual humor in references to coq au vin or dishes of nuts are likely to be amused by Derek Benfield’s 1982 bedroom farce about two adulterous couples busily swapping partners.

The arrangement at the centre of Touch and Go is that George lends his apartment to his friend Brian once a week for a sexual encounter with his current amour, Wendy. While Brian is safely otherwise engaged, George has his own amorous adventure with Brian’s wife, Hilary. Only when George’s wife, Jessica, returns early from a trip to the U.S. and the five meet for dinner does the “perfect” arrangement threaten to unravel.

The Ottawa Little Theatre production, directed by Geoff Gruson, is extremely well choreographed. Entrances and exits are carefully timed to allow characters to miss each other on the two-part set, designed by Tom Pidgeon, as the lighting, designed by John Solman, rises and falls precisely as required.

Despite the predictability of the intentionally silly script, there are some very funny moments, thanks to the careful work of cast and crew. For example, at one point, Jarrod Chambers as the slightly compulsive/obsessive George, outfitted in a dressing gown with a leopard-skin motif, hides by spread-eagling against a leopard-skin wall hanging. In a fine piece of stage business, his second attempt at repeating the hiding-in-full-view is even funnier.

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A magical performance by Martin Dockery and Vanessa Quesnelle which captures the essence of theatre, the essence of performativity , perhaps captured better than any other writing for the stage  I have ever seen. This text and the way it is produced shows us that theatre is a point in time, a moment in space that only exists because it is repeated but that has no substance. When the performance is over, the character, the world represented, is gone, like the comet that streaks across the sky in the show which becomes the model for Dockery’s vision of performance. Theatre is that kind of ephemeral art form where “characters” are liquid, unstable, based on nothing but the space they occupy on stage during the performance. time.  These figments of someone’s imagination, constantly adapt to whatever meaning one wants to give them and when the play is over, they no longer exist, except in the memory of the audience. Dockery has used the beautiful voice of Quesnelle and a situation that plays out in various ways as successive mise en abyme, a chance encounter that moves forward in time.  Each encounter uses the same references (we are in a room, we meet for the first time, there is party next door etc etc) but each time the meanings of those references change and those changes transform the relationship between the two figures.

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