Photo: Trudi Lee

This production based on an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel is essentially a crowd pleaser.  Judging from  the thunderous applause and the standing ovation it generated from the public of all ages when I saw it the other night, this version of the novel certainly did everything to be “audience friendly”.  The set showed us very clearly that  the play comes from a real book with  pages flying  around the stage, apparently ripped out of the manuscript as they were repossessed by the stage.  The production even had moments of broad almost vulgar comedy , especially with the overblown caricatures by a giggly Mrs Bennet (M. Elizabeth Stepkowski Tarham) and Pierre Brault as Clergyman William Collins.
I must admit that Patrick Clark’s costumes were stunning and Jock Munro’s lighting captured the atmosphere beautifully, especially in the bath scene, perhaps a nod to the work of Ingres, an Austen contemporary, and in the final scene where Elizabeth Bennet (Shannon Taylor) and Mr Darcy (Tyrell Crews) at last bring themselves to admit their feelings for each other.

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Compressing a wonderfully written classic novel into a two-act drama is always a major challenge. As it is virtually impossible to present a similar depth of character or intricacy of storyline, an adaptor is forced to make choices on what to omit.

In her adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Janet Munsil has chosen to concentrate on the story of the rocky romance between Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. Admittedly, this is the central theme of Austen’s rich novel, but it is only one aspect of her picture of the social scene in 19^th century England. For example, when Lydia, the youngest of the Bennetts’ five daughters, returns after her elopement, she pushes ahead of her sisters to point out that, as a married woman, she takes precedence over the unmarried four. This key scene has vanished from Munsil’s episodic adaptation, although she retains Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s shock that all five daughters are “out” in society at once. The two, to my mind, belong together and are much more effective if both are included.

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Sometimes we only discover ourselves by discovering someone else. That at least is the case for Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, the main characters in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s classic early 19th-century novel about love, identity and social structure. Each is hobbled by pride and prejudice, and each, over the course of the story, learns to see the other and themselves with a clearer eye. Good thing: without the transformation, they would never have fallen in love, and we wouldn’t have had Austen’s wonderful tale.

Janet Munsil’s new stage adaptation captures all this in vivid, eloquent and frequently very funny fashion. Some devotees of Austen may prefer the author wearing a quiet, ironic smile to laughing out loud, but this period drama is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and, despite sometimes swapping Austen’s subtlety for obviousness, remains in the important ways true to the spirit of the original….read more on the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Theatre+Review+Pride+Prejudice/7603843/story.html.

Shannon Taylor & Alix Sideris  

Photo: Trudie Lee

Fans of Jane Austin in general and of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in particular will probably have one of two reactions to the stage version currently running at the NAC. They’ll either bemoan the fact that so much of the book is left out or they’ll relax and enjoy yet another version of a favorite classic. For me there’s a basic problem with Janet Munsil’s adaptation, as there would be with any adaptation of this book for the stage. In condensing a complex book of this length many subtleties must be omitted. You’re left with largely two-dimensional characters. It takes some pretty nifty acting to bring these characters to believable life. That said, there are some nifty actors in the large cast who manage it.

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Bomont , U.S.A., the fictional setting for Footloose, is no place to live if you’re a teenager. The small town has banned dancing and rock music, which bothers new arrival Ren McCormack (Mathieu-Philippe Perras, a fine dancer with a good if undisciplined voice) so much that he corrals his fellow teens into challenging the municipal edict.

This is an upbeat musical, so it’s hardly a spoiler to say that Ren and company are successful. Besides, it’s the getting there that’s the focus of this pretty derivative musical as the teens conspire, cuddle, have showdowns with teachers and parents, fight, dance at an out-of-town country music joint, and generally carry on exactly as teenagers are supposed to do.

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  Annik Léger . Photo Mathieu Girard 

Two people in an old school situated somewhere in Northern Ontario start a game of alphabet. One says a word and the other spells it. She is a teacher; he is a demolition worker. His job is to demolish the old school building and her intention is to save it, even at the cost of her own life. Because she is a teacher who used to teach in this school and whose life revolved around generations of kids for so long that it became the essence of her life, she can’t allow others to destroy it. So now, she stands inside the school armed with dynamite stuck to her belt, ready to push the button and blow everything up, including herself. It soon becomes apparent that these two have known each other for a long time and that they share a history of love, denial and secrets. The situation gets more and more complicated with each word spelt, reaching its culmination with the last letter.   

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Paul Rainville. Photo Mathieu Girard.

Michel Ouellette, la voix incontournable de la dramaturgie franco-ontarienne (Le Testament du couturier entre autres), est de retour avec un texte qui nous mène sur les sentiers complexes de la psychologie humaine à partir d’une situation presque banale.

Nous sommes à l’intérieur d’une école abandonnée destinée à être démolie. Dans l’obscurité nous apercevons les meubles renversés où seule, dans les décombres d’une salle de classe, une enseignante, une ceinture de dynamite attachée à la taille, barricadée à l’intérieur de l’édifice, se déclare prête à se faire sauter avec l’école. Par ce geste d’auto-immolation, elle veut attirer l’attention sur la déshumanisation du monde, la souffrance qui laisse les gens indifférents, les financiers qui profitent du mal que les êtres humains se font entre eux. Elle est dégoûtée de son existence.

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photo: Andrew Alexandre

The best reason for the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society’s choice of Footloose as its season opener is that the large-cast musical offers numerous opportunities for young performers to display their talents. The worst reason is that the storyline is painfully thin and the premise is highly implausible.

Based on the 1984 musical, the stage version opened on Broadway 14 years later and hung on for over 700 performances. In a similar category to Rent, Grease and other teenage-angst style of shows, it is simply not of the same quality as the other two (this from someone who is not enamoured of either Rent or Grease). In addition to the weakness of the Footloose script, most of the music is forgettable and the conclusion is obvious from the outset.

Set in Bomont, a bible-thumping small town in the backwaters of the U.S., the local minister, Rev. Moore, has convinced local lawmakers to outlaw dancing, which, like alcohol and drugs, he claims, was in part responsible for a car crash that killed four of the town’s teenagers (including his son).

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Joel Colodner, Zachary Eisenstadt, Luke Murtha

 

The Chosen, the Lyric Stage’s latest production, is based on Chaim Potok’s well-known novel. Written in 1967, and adapted for the stage by Potok in collaboration with Aaron Posner in 1999, the play is an exercise in nostalgia. It takes us back to an insular Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn during the 1940s. The play is naturalistic with overtones of symbolist theatre, its style somewhat reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It too has a narrator who, like Our Town’s Stage Manager, plays several roles, the most significant the adult Reuven (Charles Linshaw). However, this character is more a device to fill in the exposition than Wilder’s omniscient Stage Manager. Rather than enriching the drama, the awkward presence of the narrator points up its lack, while emphasizing the paltry number of characters.

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Photo: Wendy Wagner

Wendy Wagner, the director responsible for Kanata Theatre’s splendid production of Mary’s Wedding, is right when she terms the play a challenge for all concerned.

Stephen Massicotte’s award-winning drama about young love and the trauma of the First World War is a lyrical mood piece, essentially non-linear as it guides us through the past, the present and — yes — the imaginary. And the delicate touch it requires is honoured in this beautifully realized, atmospheric production.

It’s a familiar plot line — in this instance the love between Mary, newly arrived from Britain, and humble Saskatchewan farm boy Charlie, and what happens when they’re separated by war — but it’s one which can still carry emotional resonance, particularly when the characters are as well defined as they are in this play. However, there’s also a rarer quality at work here. Mary’s Wedding occupies a different plane of truth, with its events and emotions filtered through the sensitive prism of Mary herself.

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