Greg Kramer is mesmerizing. John Koensgen’s direction, together with Martin Conboy’s lighting and James Richardson’s sound, and, of course, Brian K. Stewart’s script make this world premiere of The Player’s Advice to Shakespeare all that a theatrical experience should be.

The presentation is suitably simple, with the focus firmly on Kramer, the Player, explaining how an actor in Will Shakespeare’s company happens to be in the Tower of London, waiting to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

The Player, once content as an actor in London, is moved to join the Midland Revolt of 1607 — the peasants’ reaction to the gentry enclosing common land to pasture their sheep. (The Enclosure movement was at its height during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries in Britain, but it had its roots in the earlier uprisings.)

Playwright Stewart is to be congratulated on the historical accuracy of the script, even if Advice occasionally becomes a generalized attack on the moneyed classes, then and now.

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A note in the program explaining that The Shadow Cutter is a fictionalized rendering of magician Dai Vernon’s life and that it is not authorized by his estate or biographers red flags the contents before the show begins.

But the suggestion of real-life drama or intrigue is never realized in this story of obsession. Episodic in nature, this world premiere, as directed and with dramaturgy by Brian Quirt, captures a few interesting moments and encounters — too few — but they do not build into a memorable drama.

The sketchy style of the script leaves a shadowy impression of an unappealing man who patched together a living by cutting out silhouettes, while chasing a pipedream of conquering an elusive card trick — the centre cut — and allowing his marriage and parenting responsibilities to collapse around him. So, while it becomes clear why the estate and biographers have dissociated themselves from The Shadow Cutter, the play does not provide a convincing picture of a whole man. Rather than a warts-and-all portrait, it seems to be little but warts.

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Plosive Theatre certainly knows how to get your attention. Ottawa’s newest theatre company has taken to the Gladstone’s stage with a curiously layered rendering of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest set in British colonial India. This may require pausing a moment to review director David Whiteley’s extensive glossary of terms, time better spent enjoying the view of Andrea Robertson’s set, as lit by John Solman, with its collage of dusty colours, hinting that the streets of Calcutta lie somewhere beyond. Pretty as the set is, however, it doesn’t give the actors much room to move about, and the empty space between stage platform and curtain creates a physical and metaphysical gap that not all the performers are adept at negotiating. {Is this a play within a play? Are the bored colonials staging a performance?} The result is that Wilde’s comedy of manners feels a bit cramped, with both Garret Quirk’s Algernon and Stewart Matthews’ Jack forced to elbow it out on a small bench for almost the whole of Act One. They really do seem to be talking to themselves.

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Playwright Norm Foster describes his Jenny’s House of Joy as a western rather than a comedy. To be sure, this sit-com with a difference still has plenty of comic, sometimes raw, one-liners — as expected in a Foster script. But this tale of five women in a bordello in the 1870s Wild West has a serious undertone as it focuses on the humanity of the occupants rather than on the goods they sell nightly.

Jenny’s House of Joy is apparently not always a joyous place for the staff. Even so, Foster presents the life of the ladies of the night through rose-coloured glasses most of the time. The message is that it is impossible to leave the life, but who would want to anyway, when this is where your true friends are?

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American east coast rugged  realism  becomes, in the eyes of playwright  Israel Horovitz, a family tragedy  laced with raunchy bitter humour in a play  called  Sins of the Mother, which is just as much about the sins of the fathers, the sons, the mothers and all the neighbours. In spite of the almost biblical title, we appear to be much closer to the world of Greek and Latin tragedy, where patricide, matricide, fratricide, adultery lust, hate and cruelty hover over this small American fishing town.

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Based loosely on his childhood experiences, Neil Simon’s play Lost in Yonkers is a story of family dysfunction and the ever-enduring need for love. Simon’s play is simply constructed and beautifully written. At times serious and at times funny, The Ottawa Little Theatre Production, directed by Chantale Plante, strikes a good balance between the two genres and is an overall enjoyable experience.

Set in the early 1940s, the play opens with the teenagers Jay and Arty nervously sitting in their grandmother’s stuffy Yonkers apartment while their father talks to her. To their horror, when he emerges, they are informed that they are to stay with their cold, stern and seemingly heartless grandmother for eight months. However, making their time slightly more bearable are their kooky aunt Bella, crook uncle Louie and strange aunt Gert.

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A poet who mentions in a journal article that one day,  he saw a hunter walking in the woods holding a rifle, receives a letter from that same hunter named Josuke Misugi. The missive contains three letters that could be a source of inspiration for the poet.  What was the content of those letters? What was the hunter’s real reason for sending them?   We soon find out as the three letters become the text of the play, Le Fusil de chasse, (The Hunting Rifle).

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