Tag: community theatre

Ottawa Fringe 2013 – In The First PLace by Insight Theatre.

Ottawa Fringe 2013 – In The First PLace by Insight Theatre.

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In the First Place’ is a series of personal monologues performed individually by seven courageous youths about their first experience with love and sex, including identity issues surrounding these age old topics.  At a sensitive time during their teen years, the orators emotionally express their ups and downs with raw honesty.  Well done, considering it is a first time for a few of the young actors to appear in front of an audience.
The stories told, deal with abuse, awkwardness, and growing up too fast.  They also tell of many firsts such as love, a kiss, sex, dates, fantasies, coming out, and what do people say when under the covers.  Simple props are used effortlessly by the performers.  On the sparse staging area, a chair, a blanket, a  glass and a pair of high heeled shoes add to the drama.

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Carousel. Orpheus production of this musical theatre classic misses the boat.

Carousel. Orpheus production of this musical theatre classic misses the boat.

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Photo of Agnes de Mille (1940) who choreographed the original production of Carousel. 

Such an unlikely subject for an American musical; in Carousel, Ferenc Molnar’s tough guy character Liliom from the Hungarian carnival becomes a seductive but violent carnie working around a fair on the New England coast, first presesnted on the American stage in  1945.  Drawn to crime, attracting ladies, especially his jealous, voluptuous boss with the flaming red hair Mrs. Mullin, (sung by the excellently swaggering Barb Seabright), he exploits them all and then finally seeks redemption for his cruelty towards Julie who sacrifices everything for him to become his wife. Richard Rogers (Music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) have chosen a dramatic subject of unusual depth for musical theatre but given its passage from drama to tragedy, to pathos and to comedy, it offers rich stage material for the creators, providing the cast can handle the show.

The complex score is often close to light opera with the beautiful solos and the stirring music that reflects powerful emotions expressed by the haunting melodies. The presence of evil haunts the show, as lyrical moments slide into minor keys. Then there are the lyrics about eating clams and tearing the lobsters apart as the chorus gets ready for the huge clam bake.

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Deathtrap: A production that remains entertaining despite assorted weak moments

Deathtrap: A production that remains entertaining despite assorted weak moments

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Diana Franz. Photo: Maria Vartanova

Deathtrap has a powerful ending. The problem is that it dribbles on for one scene too many after that.

Ira Levin’s 1978 comedy/thriller was a hit that ran for four years on Broadway, a further hit as a movie starring Michael Caine, and it continues to be an effective send-up of the whodunit genre, with its many twists and layers.

A play about a playwright trying to overcome a writer’s block and write a hit thriller, the audience is set up to believe he is ready to kill for an idea. Just then, the perfect commercially viable play, written by one of his students, falls into his lap.

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The Drowsy Chaperone : this cleverly contrived Canadian musical is a two-headed beast.

The Drowsy Chaperone : this cleverly contrived Canadian musical is a two-headed beast.

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Photo:  Alan Dean

The Drowsy Chaperone, with its story about the trials, tribulations and ultimate triumph of young love, its song lyrics that are at times ridiculous but acutely aware of their own silliness, and its big, bright dance numbers, the show is at once a smart example of musical theatre and a good-natured jab at the genre.
That can be a tricky balance for a production to maintain, but Orpheus does it with panache and good humour.
Andrea Black, a strong singer and frisky performer, plays Janet Van De Graaff, an applause-loving actor and one-half of the show’s main love story.

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Rabbit Hole : Kanata theatre at its best.

Rabbit Hole : Kanata theatre at its best.

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David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole, offers a carefully-textured examination of how individuals, in their various ways, deal with grief and loss. It’s tricky material, a drama in which a moment of silence can be as powerful as a cascade of words and in which locked-in sorrow can be more palpable than an unfettered outpouring of emotion.

There is a cathartic process underway as bereaved parents Becca and Howie attempt to resume living following the accidental death of their four-year-old son. But as the play gently but firmly makes clear, their journey out of darkness is not an easy one — indeed, as is so frequent in such situations, their own relationship is in jeopardy.

It’s a measure of Brooke Keneford’s thoughtful, measured production for Kanata Theatre that the play’s final memorable moments do not slide into an easy, comfortable glibness. They are touching, but they don’t evoke closure: what they offer is hope and a continuation of the healing process.

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Dianna Renee Yorke carries Hay Fever to its theatrical heights.

Dianna Renee Yorke carries Hay Fever to its theatrical heights.

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exhbiit11  View of the exhibition of OLT history in the  Foyer of the Little Theatre.

In this 100th anniversary year of the OLT, and the oldest community theatre in Canada, the Canadian premiere of Hay Fever is clearly the perfect choice to start the season.  Performed by “home grown” Canadian Actors in 1926, one year after it premiered on the London stage (so the programme tells us),  it took place in the theatre of the Victoria Memorial Museum on Argyle St. (Now the Museum of Nature) and of course it was mounted by the Ottawa Drama League, which later became the Ottawa Little Theatre. Hay Fever is linked to more  Ottawa Little Theatre history because it was restaged in 1970, as part of the fundraiser for the new building (after fire  destroyed the original site of the OLT) and that performance featured the gracious and most talented Florence Fancott (who always reminded me of the French actress Delphine Seyrig). David Bliss was played by Roy Hayden-Hinsley, the eternally handsome leading man in OLT productions of that period who always left the teenagers, myself included, sitting awe struck in the green room during rehearsals. The programme notes brought back all that forgotten history  and it was quite a delight.

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Fringe 2011: The Interview

Fringe 2011: The Interview

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Reviewed by Rajka Stefanovska, Ottawa, June 23, 2011

Ken Wilson’s play “The Interview” is a witty, funny, entertaining comedy that also explores the complete alienation and lack of real communication in the modern world. The actors, well suited to their roles, take us successfully on a journey through the mind’s maze, showing how it functions, person-to-person, moment-to-moment. This is a very well executed comedy. The simple set underlines the excellent acting by the three protagonists, especially that of Dan Baran in the very demanding role of Mr. Anderson.

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Dangerous Liaisons: joyous audience reaction from this spicy period piece.

Dangerous Liaisons: joyous audience reaction from this spicy period piece.

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Les Liaisons dangereuses is the first epistolary novel ever written in France. It dates from the end of the 18th Century, several years before the taking of the Bastille in 1789 which marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Apart from announcing the moral disintegration of a society soon to be  physically removed  by the classes that suffered under the aristocracy, which is the milieu the author shows us.  Choderlos de Laclos’ work also illustrates, in a certain way, a critique of the theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century philosopher who prefigured the French romantic movement by teaching that one should follow one’s own nature.

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The King and I: A Challenging Musical for a Community Theatre Company

The King and I: A Challenging Musical for a Community Theatre Company

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The title of The King and I is a clear indication of the viewpoint of the 1951 Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein’s musical. After all, it is a first-person account of the experiences of a Victorian widow teaching in Siam.

The story educator Anna Leonowens told in her memoirs is still regarded as unfair and distasteful in Thailand (previously known as Siam). The characterization of the king — a Buddhist monk before he ascended to the throne — as presented in Margaret Landon’s 1944 book, Anna and the King of Siam, the fictionalized account of Leonowens’ The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the Harem (1872) is also disputed.

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Balanced Direction by Chantale Plante, makes Lost in Yonkers Both Comic and Genuinely Moving.

Balanced Direction by Chantale Plante, makes Lost in Yonkers Both Comic and Genuinely Moving.

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Elements of Neil Simon’s life often appear in his plays. While his 1991 drama Lost in Yonkers is not as closely autobiographical as the earlier written Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound trilogy, his family is clearly a good part of the source material for this memory play.

Yonkers, which won the Pulitzer, several Tony awards and a Drama Desk award, ran for 780 performances on Broadway and became a successful movie in 1993, has been revived on a number of stages across North America recently. Once declared Simon’s best play, current responses have not been universally positive.

Perhaps this is in part because it is set in the early 1940s and fewer members of today’s audiences have as clear an understanding of the era and the hardships it presented for so many. The play itself, in combining serious issues of family dysfunctionality, mental health and poverty with comedy and Simon’s signature one-liners, is harder to categorize.

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