Andy Jones as Tartuffe. Photo: Micaela Morey

The universality of oily evangelists and charlatans comes through loud and clear in the current production of Molière’s Tartuffe, “very loosely adapted and even more loosely translated” by Andy Jones of CODCO fame, who also plays the title role — with great glee and to great effect.

The wealthy Orgon is demonstrably as equally easily duped in 1664 in France and in 1939 in Newfoundland. (The stupidity of his obsession is irritating however it is presented, but without his gullibility, Tartuffe could neither triumph nor be exposed as the charlatan he is.)

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Andy Jones and Christine Brubaker. Photo Micaela Morey.

Actor/writer Andy Jones is extremely modest when he calls this version of Tartuffe, a loosely adapted and even more loosely translated version of Molière’s 17^th century satire of religious hypocrites . Molière’s Le Tartuffe, targeted the spiritual guides obsessed with sin, originating within Jansenism, a religious movement of the period. There is much vicious anger in Molière’s satire that goes for the jugular in no uncertain terms. Jones’ magnificent text is pure comedy while keeping the original narrative, and more to his credit, by maintaining the rhyming form. He has not maintained the 12 syllabic verse form of the French alexandrine but his rhymes work very well and that is not an easy task. The result is a dialogue that is savoury, luscious, popular, vulgar, poetic, earthy, metaphorical, and a most exciting mixture of images and language levels.

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Photo: no attribution. Published in “Ottawa Life”

The chief virtue of Black Sheep Theatre’s frenetic and often irritating production of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Hansom Killer is the presence of an engaging dynamo of a performer named Emily Windler.

She’s so enjoyable in her multi-character contribution that you can almost forgive her for being involved in the creation of this sophomoric, self-admiring attempt to send up the Sherlock Holmes genre.

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Maja Ardal as June McCready. Photo by GCTC

YOU FANCY YOURSELF by Maja Ardal, a Contrary Company production currently running at GCTC, is both poignant and funny. It’s performed by the playwright who, in the course of the play, shows us 11 different characters. The main character is Elsa, based on the childhood experiences of the author. When her family moves from Iceland to Edinburgh, Elsa is faced with finding her way in a new culture and a new school. As the “new kid,” she juggles dealing with bullies, romantic crushes, the desire to fit in and the search for a new friend.

Along the way we meet poor and neglected Adelle, Elsa’s first friend who, as Elsa says, was “sending sadness all down the back of me.” In Act II Adelle has a wonderfully touching moment of triumph. There are also the school mistress Miss Campbell, the fearsome bully Frances Green, the smarmy teacher’s pet June McCready with her exclusive horse club and David MacDonald, the boy with the squashed ear who surprises everyone in the song contest.

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Photo: Maarten Vander Abeele

ArtsEmerson recently hosted Kiss and Cry, an extraordinary intermedial production, which blends dance, puppetry, cinema, poetry, the recorded voice, and music – the whole in miniature. A Belgian collective creation, it is the brain child of dancer/choreographer Michèle Anne de Mey and her husband, cinema director Jaco Van Dormael, and developed in collaboration with the set designer, cameraman, image designer, and dancer Grégory Grosjean. Thomas Gunzig wrote the beautiful French script, here translated into English with the voiceover narration performed by Toby Regbo. His melodious voice suits the nostalgic quality of the fantastical love affair that he recounts.

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Photo courtesy of the NAC.

Dorine (Petrina Bromley) and Tartuffe (Andy Jones0

“Suckin’ on the hind tit” was likely not among Molière’’s catalogue of favoured expressions, but when it’s tossed off in Andy Jones’ hugely funny adaptation of the playwright’s 17th-century satire Tartuffe, which launches the new English theatre season at the NAC, it’s a perfect fit.

That’s because Jones, who also plays the vile religious fraudster Tartuffe for whom the play is named, has set Molière’’s satiric attack on religious hypocrisy in Newfoundland during 1939. It’s a setting that not only captures the vibrancy of Molière’s play with fresh and colorful language (“you’ve got more lip than a coal bucket,” “sweet Jesus in the garden!”), it also brings the play close enough in time and geography to us in Central Canada that we realize again how timeless and universal this attack – and it can be a vicious one – on religious imposters really is.

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Reviewed by Dimitri and Vildana Stanisic-Keller

Photo of Maja Ardal by  Andrew Alexandre 

In this one-person-show by author/actress Maja Ardal, 11 characters are intermingled in the unlimited creativity of a superb storyteller. . You Fancy Yourself is a deft and funny dissection of self-in-the-making and a poem to the daydream we choose to escape to when reality is intolerable and unwelcoming. “You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play… I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. ” This quote from Oscar Wilde (Portrait of Dorian Gray) seems extremely appropriate here.

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Maja Ardal. Photo: Andrew Fox

You have to be tough to survive childhood. If you’ve forgotten that fact, Maja Ardal’s solo show, a finely wrought recreation of childhood life in 1950s Edinburgh, will remind you in a hurry.

Semi-autobiographical, the play opens with four-year-old Elsa arriving in Scotland after immigrating from Iceland with her parents. Gregarious, self-possessed and with an outsized imagination (just one of the meanings of “fancy” revealed during the show), Elsa quickly pals up with a neighbouring child Adele whose perennial uncertainty and impoverished life have thwarted the growth in her of those critical childhood allies, fantasy and hope. “Make a wish,” Elsa tells her at one point. “What for?” responds Adele.

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Photo courtesy of Suzart Productions and Goya Theatre.

A diary, no matter how famous, is bound to focus on personal matters, regardless of its historical context. Therefore, the emphasis of a musical based on that diary follows the personal relationships and the rise and fall of the career of the writer and uses cataclysmic events of the period as a backdrop.

While this is entirely logical, it is a pity that the script of And So To Bed does not (perhaps cannot) devote more time to the political. One of the strongest moments is when Samuel Pepys is torn between expediency and principle — should he support a man he knows to be innocent and risk ruining his career or should he put selfish interest first?

There are other segments through the script that work equally well but none that holds the key to real conflict to the same degree.

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Photo: Maria Vartanova

Deadly Murder feels a lot like a weak rewrite of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap. In fact, playwright David Foley describes his thriller — originally entitled If/Then — as being in the tradition of Sleuth and Deathtrap.

Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth was written in 1970. Ira Levin’s Deathtrap (last performed at Ottawa Little Theatre earlier this year, during its 100^th season) was written in 1978. Both revolve around murderous game playing and shocking audiences when the dead or almost dead come back to life.

The form of Foley’s Deadly Murder, first performed in 2008, is similar. The product is just not as good. So the first question is why Ottawa Little Theatre chose to mount it just six months after its better-version big brother was seen on the OLT stage.

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