Frédérique Thérien et Simon Bradshaw. Photo. Sylvain Sabatier.

L’effervescence dans l’École de La Salle a vite débordé les couloirs de la section « théâtre » pour remplir la salle de spectacles de cette institution où la troupe  La Catapulte nous a offert sa dernière création, La Fille d’Argile. En attendant la reconstruction de son espace, le centre culturel franco-ontarien La Nouvelle scène, le tandem Michel Ouellette (auteur dramatique) et Joël Bedows (metteur en scène) qui nous ont déjà donné d’excellents moments de théâtre  (Le Testament du couturier, Frères d’hiver  etc ), nous retrouvent dans la belle salle de cet espace scolaire avec ce drame d’ados qui capte l’impuissance, la frustration, la rage des jeunes piégés à tous les coups.

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John Mighton’s award-winning play, Half Life, is a delicate piece — a meditation on memory in all its potency and uncertainty and unreliability. We never really know whether Patrick and Clara, these two aging residents in a nursing home, actually knew and loved each other in an earlier time. They themselves may think so, even though their grasp of the past seems problematic. But Mighton’s script suggests that this doesn’t really matter. What counts is that a relationship is now happening; it may seem precarious because Clara’s mind in particular is clouded; it may — as Patrick especially insists — be a renewal of an old love, or it may well be a late-flowering attraction between two people who have in fact never met before.

Director Daniel Brooks, who staged the premiere production of Half Life at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, suggested in 2005 that the play is as much about forgetting as it is about memory — that it is driven by the thesis that we are ultimately defined as much by what we forget as what we can remember, and that time as we normally understand it can be capricious, even irrelevant when it comes to understanding our identity.

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Half Life isn’t a play that provides easy answers. Indeed, it’s a play that distinctly provides very few answers to the large, often philosophical questions it poses. On the surface, it’s the tale of a burgeoning love between two nursing home residents. Scratch below the surface, though and you realize that writer John Mighton has created a work that transcends its immediate topic to deal with larger themes. It’s a play about ageing and the way our society treats its older members; it’s about memory and the bittersweet process of remembering and forgetting;  and it’s about the way our own psyches and events impact our treatment of those around us. It’s a multi-layered play that requires an understanding of and empathy for not only its themes, but the human spirit. Director Jim McNabb shows he has both in his wonderfully sensitive, thoughtful adaptation for the Ottawa Little Theatre.

Half Life opens with two middle-aged divorcees meeting in the waiting room of a nursing home. Donald (played by Bryan Morris), a scientist specializing in neural research, is there to visit his frail mother, Clara (Marjory Bryce) a ritual he performs almost every day. Anna (Linda Webster) is there to sign in her father, Patrick (Dan Baran), who has of late become depressive and is an increasing danger to himself. When Clara and Patrick meet, the two are drawn to each other and both seem to remember a brief, but meaningful affair between them during the Second World War. The two become increasingly close and fall deliciously, madly in love. However, Patrick, worried about his increasingly frail mother and still reeling from the recent death of his father, is full of trepidation and refuses to consent to their marriage, which has a great effect on both involved parties. …

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Red-Eye to Havre de Grace resembles a story that might have been written by Edgar Allen Poe, dealing as it does with his mental degeneration and mysterious demise on October 7, 1849. It is particularly ironic that the death of the author considered the inventor of the detective tale has remained unsolved.

The creators of Red-Eye to Havre de Grace archly describe it as an “action opera.” While an interesting show, there is little action – at least in the usual meaning – and comparatively
little singing. It is more dialogue based with Ean Sheehy, as Edgar Allen Poe, speaking most of the lines, assisted by Jeremy Wilhelm in a variety of roles. Sheehy’s remarkable resemblance to Poe brings an element of realism to an unrealistic play. …

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Photo. Maria Vartanova

The pattern of daily living changes as we grow older. At the core of Half Life are aging and the alterations within and around us.In his 2005, award-winning drama, playwright/mathematician John Mighton draws and reshapes the lives of two generations of protagonists. Anna, an artist, and Donald, a scientist — both divorcees — approach the difficulties of caring for their aging parents from opposite ends of the emotion/logic spectrum, pitting happiness against safety in a seniors’ home environment.

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9 février 2014

—Vu par José Alpha, metteur en scène et comédien.
La Carte blanche donnée à Jean-Claude Duverger, vendredi soir dernier, par la direction de l’Atrium, a permis de révéler aux nombreux spectateurs de la salle Frantz Fanon, un beau récital « Des mots pour le dire ». Des mots justes, sans emphase, sans détour, ciselés à la pointure des histoires et des contes considérés comme sociaux, et initiatiques, que le comédien, poète conteur et acteur Jean Claude Duverger, transporte avec lui comme des porte-bonheurs depuis les premiers sourires de sa mère, dit-il.
Un pinceau lumineux blafard qui rappelle ces ambiances insolites des histoires en demi-teintes, révèle un personnage attablé, dos au public. Il a en fait la tête posée sur les avant bras, et on comprend qu’il s’est assoupi sur un paquet de feuilles certainement dactylographiées d’où émergera le récit d’une adolescence espiègle façonnée pour partie, par une dame Paulette appréciée pour « ses gros tétés et ses formes généreuses à énerver les messieurs. »

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What a treat! An unbelievable experience such as this, a journey as much painful as it is beautiful, happens only once in a while on the stage. And it happened during the world premiere of Ciseaux, the inaugural project by The THÉÂTRE ROUGE ÉCARLATE, the first out of – I hope – many to come!

The play follows the lives of two schoolgirls during a civil war. Two seemingly completely different destinies become intertwined in a time of chaos by the violent actions taking place around them. The harsh fate brings them together to fight for survival and to bond into an inseparable unity.

Lisa L’Heureux wrote an incredibly moving story about a very turbulent time seen through the eyes of two young girl victims. One was forced to be a child-fighter, an unwilling murderer who goes on pretending that she is a boy in order to protect herself. The other’s life, a casualty of the same madness, is changed from the moment her parents are killed and she is taken prisoner to be made into a sex slave. Events that follow one another logically are set in a perfect frame and told at a perfect pace. …

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When William discovers a box of his late grandfather’s memorabilia, his childhood spent in the loving surroundings of home unrolls before his eyes.  He shares his fond memories of that time with the audience, using “the puppetry of objects” technique to help him depict the time. This wise use of technology, coupled with the meaningful use of light, proved to be essential to Fidler’s play, Broken. It added a sense of reality and life to the grandfather who came off as a very creative and wise character.

True, I wanted to learn more about him, his life and how he has influenced William’s growing-up. However, Fidler’s focus was somewhere else. He wanted to tell us about the devastating impacts of Alzheimer’s disease. So, somewhere among many things mentioned – his life with the grandfather, the adventure of being lost in the unknown forest, and the tragedy of dementia – he lost his focus and failed to add a few layers to the story telling. The connection, love, and warmth were not quite there. Parts of the story even felt disconnected, flat, and the performer seems to be unengaged from time to time. Involving the audience and explaining some scenes did not help either – on the contrary – it killed the magic of what was supposed to be very personal and emotional performance. …

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Age of Arousal
By Linda Griffiths
Bear & Co.

It is difficult to think of the typewriter as a symbol of liberation. Yet, such apparently was the case in late 19th century England for many single women. And, because women heavily outnumbered men at the time, many were destined to remain single.

So, these women, classed as odd, in both senses of the word, reached for a new place in society.

Their struggle towards a different norm is demonstrated through the five women in Linda Griffiths’ 2007 drama, Age of Arousal. Mary, the aging and cynical ex-suffragette and Rhoda, her young lover run a typing school, where the three impoverished Madden sisters try to type their way to independence. The three are presented as depicting sexual discovery, gender uncertainty and retreat into spinsterhood. …

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THIS IS WAR by Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch takes a bleak and uncompromising look at individual soldiers under the pressure of combat.  Framed by interviews with an unseen journalist, the four Canadian soldiers look back at an incident that occurred in a remote corner of Afghanistan involving them, Afghan forces and the Taliban. The brief interviews are interspersed with scenes that re-live portions of the incident, some re-running two or even three times from different points of view a la SEVEN SAMURAI.

The cast is uniformly strong.  All four characters are disconnected from both themselves and reality, even the innocent and naïve Jonny, well-played by Drew Moore.  Brad Young gives a subtle performance as the medic Chris, who tries to keep everyone together and ultimately fails.  As the damaged Tanya, Sarah Finn is a strong example of how they have become morally unmoored.  For her, sex serves only as a momentary distraction, as it also does for the Sergeant.  John Ng gives a powerful performance as the complex Sergeant.  His scene with the wounded Jonny shows us another side of this fierce veteran. …

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