A Lunkamud (Toronto) production

Photo. National Arts Centre

OTTAWA — If you passed 15-year-old Peggy Ann Douglas on the street, you likely wouldn’t even notice her. Wearing jeans and a nondescript shirt, she’d look like any other teenager: slump-shouldered, a bit confused, wholly focused on her own struggle to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world.

But let Melody A. Johnson inhabit that young woman, and you can’t take your eyes off Peggy Ann as she travels her funny, bumpy and occasionally poignant journey from hemmed-in farm girl to singing, baton-twirling beauty contest contender who’s convinced that becoming Miss Caledonia will springboard her to her true destination: Hollywood stardom. After all, she reasons, if it happened to Singin’ in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds, why not to Peggy Ann Douglas?

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Photo. NAC English Theatre

The NAC English Theatre is closing out its season with a production in the Studio of MISS CALEDONIA, written and performed by Melody A. Johnson. Directed by Rich Roberts and Aaron Willis with musical direction and subtle violin accompaniment by Alison Porter, MISS CALEDONIA is based on the true story of Miss Johnson’s mother, Peggy Douglas. Set in the mid-50s, it chronicles Peggy’s effort to escape the drudgery of life on the farm by becoming a movie star. The first step on the journey is her attempt to win the local beauty pageant.

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Georges Feydeau’s 1907 farce, La Puce à l’oreille — A Flea in her Ear — has frequently been cited as one of the best examples of the genre and the model for many later comedies, incorporating sexual innuendo, mistaken identity, frantic ction, doors and more doors.

The style requires precise timing, fast movements and character changes and must never slow down enough to allow an audience to consider how ridiculous the plot is.

For the most part, under the meticulous direction of Jim Holmes, the fast-paced Kanata Theatre production meets the criteria in its whirlwind presentation of A Flea in Her Ear.

Only the necessary but lengthy and laboured set change in Act II brings the action to a grinding halt for too long. (Lighter set pieces that do not require an army of stagehands might have helped here.) The other visual distraction in generally effective sets is the odd colouring of the double doors in the centre of the stage, which gives the impression that designers ran out of paint. …

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Felaki theatre in Cairo, Performed in Arabic by Khaled Abol Naga in April, 2013.

I saw it Wednesday evening with Peter Froehlich but a different actor takes to the stage every evening, The reason will soon become evident as you watch the play.  The stage is almost bare. There is a chair, a ladder, a table. Two  glasses of water are placed on the table. There is some  simple lighting and  65 places for the audience placed in the front half of the Arts Court Library that has been slightly raked. Thank goodness.  Catriona Leger comes on stage to thank us for coming and to invite  Peter Froehlich to appear. He walks on stage,  she hands  him a sealed envelope and then exits, leaving Peter standing there with the envelope. He opens it..and starts reading………And thus begins the play.

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Photo. Bruce Barrett

Reviewed Thursday, May 2 for the Ottawa Citizen.

OTTAWA — Leonard Linklater has written a play about a very important issue: the collision of two radically different systems of justice — that of native North Americans and that of European colonizers who imposed a foreign system on First Nation peoples.

It’s an issue that, at heart, is about the collision of cultures and the failure to communicate which still characterize so much of native/white relations to the obvious detriment of First Nation peoples.

Unfortunately, neither the play nor this production, directed by Yvette Nolan, does a good job of communicating that tragedy.Linklater tells the true story of the four Nantuck brothers, members of the Tagish Kwan First Nation who, during the Klondike gold rush, were sentenced to death for the shooting of two white prospectors, one of whom died.

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Ninety minutes in the company of Canadian singing icon Jackie Richardson is an experience to be cherished. And her current show, Big Mama/The Willie Mae Thornton Story, offers a seamless procession of memorable high points. You come away from the National Arts Centre still mesmerized by her rendition of George Gershwin’s Summertime, so intense in its yearning, or exhilarated by the jaunty good humour of Hound Dog, a song that Elvis Presley was to claim as his own even though it had been preceded by an earlier groundbreaking recording by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, the fabled blues singer whom Richardson is celebrating in this memorable evening of entertainment.

Supported by Audrei-Kairen’s script and sustained by her own formidable stage authority, Richardson is able to transport us back into a culture of racism and violence, of artistic struggle and achievement against tremendous odds. She is not only telling the story of Willie Mae Thornton, she is also re-connecting us to the origins of the blues, which means the institution of slavery, while also awakening us to the ironies of an Elvis or Janis Joplin getting rich on the ill-paid creative labours of non-whites.

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Photo.  Tim Matheson

The most powerful moment of a powerful show is also one of its quietest moments. In the persona of the late blues/jazz singer Willie Mae Thornton, Jackie Richardson delivers a heartrending version of Summertime from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

In an instant, she changes the mood from the poignancy of this black anthem to upbeat to raucous as she tells the story of Big Mama Thornton’s hard-knocks life in a beautifully nuanced performance that captures the style, appearance, attitude and, most of all, the music and punch of the American singer.

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Photo: Tim Matheson

Jackie Richardson as Willie Mae Thornton

This show is several things! First it’s a fabulous blues concert with drums, keyboard, guitar and the wondrous  Jackie Richardson, an internationally acclaimed jazz, gospel and blues singer in her own right. The sounds, the musical accompaniment by the three excellent musicians that fuse with Richardson’s voice, backing up her performance as a singer will send you out into musical heaven because such a powerful concert of this calibre is rare in Ottawa

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Reviewed Friday, April 26 for the Ottawa Citizen

Photo:Tim Matheson

Jackie Richardson on stage.

There’s never any doubt in this blockbuster of a show about the late American blues dynamo Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton that the lady could handle herself. From slugging an abusive man when she was 14 to mopping the floor with another jerk when performing in a juke joint later in life, Thornton — played with conviction, grace and one mighty big voice by Canadian jazz icon Jackie Richardson — took guff from no one.

At the same time, she had great emotional generosity. That combination of taking no prisoners and a big heart, coupled with her instinctive artistic honesty, made Thornton that rare performer who connects almost physically with her audience……..

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Review+Mama+Willie+Thornton+Story+with+video/8303108/story.html#ixzz2RgkPq6yl

Lissa Léger dans Ciseaux

Carte blanche, une suite de rencontres entre artistes et public qui se déroulent à l’Espace René-Provost. Les auteurs dramatiques nous livrent des extraits, des synthèses, des ébauches, ou des fragments d’une œuvre en cours de développement.

Un concept intéressant!

25-27 avril, 2013

Ciseaux

Une création de Lisa L’Heureux, interprétation de Lissa Léger et Marie-`Ève Fontaine, mise en scène de Lisa L’Heureux avec l’appui de Catriona Leger.

Il s’agit d’un condensé d’une œuvre en voie de création. La forme raccourcie n’était pas trop réussie parce que l’absence des transitions brouillait les pistes mais la première scène entre les deux femmes a révélé une écriture qui repose sur une poésie urbaine d’une cruauté toute particulière. On a hâte de voir la suite de cette voix scénique émergeante…Nous avons aussi remarqué l’excellent travail des deux comédiennes

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