Tag: 2018

Bear & Company’s Cymbeline in the park is an hilarious, fully enjoyable show for a nice summer night

Bear & Company’s Cymbeline in the park is an hilarious, fully enjoyable show for a nice summer night

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Poster, courtesy of the Bear and Co.

While Shakespeare’s company probably never performed his plays in a park, Jacobean theatres were open-air, lit only by sunlight, and had no fancy lighting, sound, and set designs like modern theatre. Bear and Company’s performance of Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s later plays, does a lot to recreate that original Jacobean feel by staging an open-air show in various parks across the city. .

Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare’s crazier plays, with a convoluted plot that’s hard to follow, and hard to believe could ever happen in real life. The plot is a grab-bag of earlier Shakespeare tropes. Kooky king a la King Lear? Check. Star-crossed lovers? Of course. Running off into the forest disguised as a boy? Yep. A conniving queen? Uh-huh. A lecherous womanizer? Certainly. The Roman army invades and are defeated a scene later. The plot is so absurd, in fact, that Cymbeline fell out of favour for centuries, and many critics still think that Shakespeare had just gotten bored. It is one of his final plays, after all. …

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Fine ensemble work gives Miss Shakespeare its punch

Fine ensemble work gives Miss Shakespeare its punch

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Photo Andrew Alexander Miss Shakespeare

Book and lyrics by Tracey Power

Music co-written with Steve Charles

Three Sisters Theatre Company

Directed by Bronwyn Steinberg

It is more than 350 years since women were forbidden to perform on English stages. The ban was finally lifted after the Restoration in 1660 when King Charles II issued a patent announcing:

forasmuch as many plays formerly acted do conteine severall prophane, obscene and scurrilous passages, and the women’s parts therein have been acted by men in the habit of women, at which some have taken offense…we doe likewise permit and give leave that all the women’s parts to be acted in either of the said two companies may be performed by women… …

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Streetcar Named Desire, a highly creditable production of a difficult drama.

Streetcar Named Desire, a highly creditable production of a difficult drama.

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Streetcar Poster OLT

A Streetcar Named Desiare by Tennessee Williams. Ottawa Little Theatre. Directed by Sarah Hearn

A Streetcar Named Desire, generally regarded as one of the major plays of the 20th century, is also one of the most disturbing. Playwright Tennessee Williams’ portrait of aging southern belle Blanche Dubois, surrounded by self-delusion and fantasy as she crumbles into mental collapse was the primary focus of the drama when it premiered in 1947.

When Marlon Brando recreated his stage performance in the 1951 movie version as her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, the balance of the drama seemed to shift to make Streetcar his story, highlighting the explosive relationship with his wife, Stella — Blanche’s younger sister — and the constant tension with Blanche. …

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What a Young Wife Ought to Know,: a play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, dried your eyes, and found your voice again.

What a Young Wife Ought to Know,: a play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, dried your eyes, and found your voice again.

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Photo Timothy Patrick

Hannah Moscovitch’s play What a Young Wife Ought to Know, which is based on a compilation of letters women sent to famous birth control advocate Dr. Marie Stopes in the 1920s, tackles an uncomfortably difficult theme.    It is  particularly hard to watch nowadays  when  crimes, attempted against women, are coming to light every day;

The subject matter of Moscovitch’s play, which is so  deeply sad and disturbing,  does not allow the spectator to relax for one minutes from the  overwhelming horror.   Nevertheless,  the playwright, with the director, technical crew, and actors, create an intimate, haunting story and infuse it with so much warmth and humour that it seduces its audience  in spite of the uncomfortable truths it speaks. The result is an overwhelming empathy and understanding for the characters and a play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theatre, dried your eyes.
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