Photo:Ottawa Life blog.

GCTC is closing out their season with the world premiere of LIKE WOLVES by Canadian playwright Rosa Laborde. To celebrate their 44^th wedding anniversary Sam surprises Vera by bringing her back to the spot of their rural honeymoon. No longer a charming B&B, it’s now a residence complex surrounded by high rises. When Sam has an unexpected heart attack, their two squabbling daughters arrive, one with a Chechen doctor in tow. Add a slick salesman to the mix and you have the ingredients for a black comedy about marriage, dreams and life choices.

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Photo.  The Ottawa Sun.  Rosa Laborde. Playwright.

The opening scene depicting 80-year-old Sam taking 70-year-old Vera to a retirement home to celebrate their golden anniversary and then trying to jump her (unsuccessfully) strikes the first false note in a long list of unlikely happenings through Like Wolves by Rosa LaBorde.

The fraud that takes place at the critical moment appears to be built around a false premise. (It denies the cooling-off period built into most real estate contracts, and barely pays attention to the possibility of a legal challenge.)

It is highly unlikely that a marriage of 50 years would be devoid of any meaningful discussion about a life-changing decision and move.

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Photo: Festival Magnetic North.

Seeing this play after so many years I realized just what a beautiful and important plays it is in relation to the body of Tremblay’s work. It is not only about his mother, whom he conjures up in this part autobiography, part auto fictional memory of a son trying to rectify a certain feeling of guilt.  It is also a manifesto of Tremblay’s theatre poetics, a document that gives us, in an oblique way, all the strategies that Tremblay uses to construct his plays.
Through the voice of this woman who barely has any education, who spends her time cleaning and baking and caring for neighbours and family, we learn all about his plays. She is the voice of the “people” who have an essential role in Tremblay’s theatrical world, and who have always been the focus of his work. In the prologue he makes a collage of references to all the great works of French theatre, even bringing Shakespeare and Lorca into the mix.

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Photo. Michael Cooper.

Gasbags, drunks, popinjays and cowards: that pretty much describes the leaders, political and military, who cooked up and commanded — if you’ll excuse the term — The War of 1812 according to this deeply cynical, intensely theatrical and ultimately enervating show. Writer/director Michael Hollingsworth spares no one in his recounting of the war that’s commonly said to have defined Canada.

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Photo. Magnetic North Festival

How can you not automatically like a mother and son who welcome you to their show by passing out tasty samosas?

The offering is an intimate gesture, appropriate to a show in which Asha and Ravi Jain tell, with varied success, a true family story about cultural and generational conflict. The show, in which the two mostly address the audience directly while seated at a dining room table, recounts Ravi’s battle against the attempts of his parents – both immigrants from India – to shanghai him into an arranged marriage when he wants a career in theatre.

Ravi, a trained actor with a flair for likeable stand-up comedy, tells the bulk of the story. It includes accounts of endless meals in India with prospective brides and their families.

Asha, who had never been on stage prior to this show but has charm, wit and a keen sense of audience, takes over the story from time to time. Her measured, implacable tones and physical stillness contrast with her son’s high-energy presentation.

At other times, the two argue the finer points of arranged versus non-arranged marriages and other issues……..

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Photo: Michael Cooper

Never has a lesson in Canadian history been such an exciting theatrical experience of laughter and horror. Brent Snyder’s overture ushers us into this Phantasmagoria dream world of Michael Hollingsworth, writer and director of the show. The writer even tells us this is a “Comedy of Manners, an historical epic, [showing] the goons of history in their own Goon show, a Canadian book of the dead, a merry tale told by ghosts and demons.”

That last little bit is the part I like. That is essentially what I saw: a tale told by theatrical ghosts and demons that brings us back to French Theatre of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. A performance in the French tradition the theatre of the “ Grand Gignol”.

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The deus ex machina ending of Michel Tremblay’s memory play about his mother is an irritating copout. The series of vignettes and memory flashes that make up For the Pleasure of Seeing her Again are not dramatically compelling. They do, however, avoid syrupy sentimentality because memories of Nana generally recall hyperbole and humour. And it is to Tremblay’s credit that even the episode showing her close to death from the cancer that killed her when he was 20 does not wallow in being maudlin.

Having indicated that another encounter with the script of For the Pleasure of Seeing her Again is not a great pleasure for me, it must also be said that director Glynis Leyshon delivers a smooth production that was very well received by the opening night audience. And the good news about the aforesaid difficult ending is the use of an idealized birch bark canoe as a tribute to the heritage of the cast and Nana. …

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Photo: Barb Gray   Left to right:   Kimwun Perehinec and Nancy Beatty

Like Wolves  by Rosa Laborde is a comedy, and no doubt about it! All elements are there: It is funny, it is entertaining and, of course, it is easy to relate to. What separates it from most entertaining comedies is the author’s ability to be funny without losing a connection with life. Some may be confused by the tragic end (what an inappropriate end for the comedy!), but it is precisely that extra value that comedies rarely deliver. Laborde does not play on sentimentality, but instead of offering an expected happy ending, she stays away from clichés and goes for a harsh reality.

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Photo: Magnetic North handout.

Hard to say when Margo Kane shines brightest in Michel Tremblay’s warm memory play about his mother Nana.

Maybe it’s when, wearing Nana’s perennial outfit of kerchief, apron and sensible shoes, she imitates an ill-coordinated 15-year old ballet dancer to accompany one of the endless and endlessly funny stories Nana tells to her affectionately long-suffering son, played by Lorne Cardinal.

Perhaps it’s when Nana imagines disguising herself in a gas mask to avoid embarrassment at church after her son has, in her overactive mind, committed a heinous crime.

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From left, Alix Sideris as Nina, Kimwun Perehinec as Mia, John Koensgen as Yuri and Nancy Beatty as Vera in Like Wolves.

Photo  by Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen

Like Wolves, the world premiere at the GCTC by playwright  Rosa Laborde, is a lot like a TV sitcom, with shallow characters that it’s hard to care much about. Sam just wants to watch television and crab about the sandwiches his wife Vera has made. Vera buys Sam a present that is really a gift for herself. The couple’s daughters Mia and Nina worship at the altar of self-involvement. Retirement home staffer Tom is a seducer and worse. Only Yuri, Nina’s vodka-swilling boyfriend from Chechnya, seems aware that there’s a life outside his own skin.

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