Tag: community theatre

OLT Scores With Other Desert Cities

OLT Scores With Other Desert Cities

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Photo: Maria Vartanova

It was Tolstoy who famously observed that all happy families resemble one another — but that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

So keeping this in mind, what are we to make of the dysfunctional household on view in Ottawa Little Theatre’s sterling production of Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 play, Other Desert Cities?

On the surface, things might seem okay when we’re first exposed to the Palm Springs home of Lyman and Polly Wyeth, with characters arriving through the French doors, cheerful and tired after tennis, and engaging in the kind of easy banter that you might expect with a Christmas family gathering. But there’s something not quite right about this Yuletide bonhomie. It’s a virtue of Geoff Gruson’s discerning production that you sense a forced artificiality in the things being said and you’re also aware of an underlying tension because of things left unsaid.

This is tricky to bring off, particularly with a script burdened with exposition challenges in its first section. But Gruson has a cast capable of facing these pitfalls as it proceeds to define characters who will increase in complexity as their worlds begin to unravel.

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Cinderella: A child’s delight with a musical montage that brings joy to all hearts.

Cinderella: A child’s delight with a musical montage that brings joy to all hearts.

Cinderella

This lighthearted version of Cinderella is a  delightful evening  of classical ballet  for young people. Les Petits Ballets has included  two very proficient professional dancers.  Prince Charming (Evgeni Dokoukine,) whose leaps and acting talent brought much excitement to his performance as the Prince. The ball room in the palace that fateful night when little Cinderella appears in her dazzling blue magic robe (Haruka Kyoguch) with the stars twinkling on the top of her head, gave the prince the chance to show his acting talents as he tries to avoid the  terrible two sisters who  were so cruel to Cinderella. But the Prince and Mlle Kyoguch also a professional dancer kept the tension high and the pas de deux breathtaking as they whirled around the floor together dancing the night away in the prince’s palace.  Also excellent was the step mother (Jasmine van Schouwen ) who  brought strong acting  as well as very good dancing to her character role as the pushy mother.

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The Three Musketeers: exciting visuals in this swashbuckling performance of the Dumas novel

The Three Musketeers: exciting visuals in this swashbuckling performance of the Dumas novel

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Photo. Maria Vartanova

The Three Musketeers by Ken Ludwig. Adapted from the novel by  Alexandre Dumas, an OLT Production

The visuals in the latest Ottawa Little Theatre production are spectacular. The many sword fights in this athletic show are well executed. Even the flow of the set changes is very watchable.

Sadly, the script by Ken Ludwig (best known for his comedy Lend Me a Tenor) is of less interest than the production values. Yes, the play was a hit when it premiered at the Bristol Old Vic in 2006, but that does not lessen the annoying quality of the playwright’s uncertainty about whether to deliver a facetious send-up of the 19th-century novel or to stay true to Alexandre Dumas’ adventure story — a classic that has appeared in more than 100 languages.

The basic storyline remains, following the journey of country bumpkin D’Artagnan in his quest to serve his king as a musketeer. En route, he faces duels with Athos, Porthos and Aramis — the three musketeers of the title — falls in love with Queen Anne’s favourite lady-in-waiting, Constance, saves the Queen’s honour and incurs the wrath of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu and his lieutenant Rochefort.

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The Addams Family: Orpheus Stars Shine Under a Supermoon

The Addams Family: Orpheus Stars Shine Under a Supermoon

Guest critic Jim Murchison

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Photo, courtesy of Orpheus Musical Theatre

The original creator of The Addams Family, Charles Addams could likely not have imagined the long lasting effect he would have on popular culture when he inked his first drawing for the New Yorker in 1938. Countless reincarnations in TV, animation and film have allowed these characters to endure into the 21st century.

The musical version written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa is a well crafted tale of love discovered, love lost and love regained that has been a favourite theme since civilization first picked up a pen, a quill or a rock and started writing. This isn’t heavy stuff. It is quintessential entertainment, the perfect antidote for the post election blues and although the play is about an eccentric, wealthy American family living in New York there are no other frightening similarities to the first family elect. They’re a little macabre to be sure, but generally loving.

The front curtain for this production is a drop of portraits of the Addams’ framed by cobwebs. When it lifts, it reveals a gnarly old tree stage right stretching its craggy limbs over a dark gated cemetery as if ready to pluck someone up and toss them towards the gorgeous full moon.

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The Addams Family: Orpheus Musical Theatre makes the most of a mediocre story.

The Addams Family: Orpheus Musical Theatre makes the most of a mediocre story.

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Photo, courtesy of Orpheus Musical Theatre

Charles Addams has a lot to answer for. He was the cartoonist who created the one-panel cartoons about the ghoulish Addams Family that appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1938.

He could not know that his creation would become an American institution. Stories of the family morphed into a television sitcom in the 1960s, followed by a cartoon version in the next decade, two movies in 1991 (starring Anjelica Houston) and 1993 (The Addams Family Values) and even a video game and a very popular pinball machine later in the decade. Finally, in 2010, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (the pair who wrote the script of The Jersey Boys) developed a Broadway musical version with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa.

Does the musical work? As much as any one-gag repeater with a wafer-thin storyline and constant reminders of one-panel cartoons can. Does Orpheus Musical Theatre Society make the most of a mediocre product? Unquestionably.

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Equivocation: Solid production of a problematic play

Equivocation: Solid production of a problematic play

Image courtesy of Kanata Theatre
Image courtesy of Kanata Theatre

Equivocation by Bill Cain
Kanata Theatre
Directed by Alain Chamsi

Kanata Theatre’s production of Equivocation contains so many fine moments that you’re left saddened by the fact that it ultimately doesn’t work.

Director Alain Chamsi and his colleagues have worked with diligence and discernment to bring shape and substance to a play that uses an imagined crisis in Shakespeare’s life as a platform for an examination of the fragility of truth in a hothouse political climate.

But ultimately the centre does not hold. Playwright Bill Cain, a Jesuit priest whose moonlighting activities including scripting an episode of House of Cards, has solid credentials, and this 2009 play has been acclaimed in many quarters. But it’s overly ambitious in scope, thematically cluttered, structurally uncertain and at times painfully glib and facile.

Furthermore, when it comes to tone, it attempts to have it both ways — expecting the audience to go along with moments of serious drama, which include a pair of gruesome public hangings, while also expecting them to revel in episodes of comic buffoonery as well as bits of more subtle satire. It’s an uneasy fusion.

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Imaginary Lines isn’t as clever as it thinks

Imaginary Lines isn’t as clever as it thinks

Photo courtesy of Linden House Theatre Company
Photo courtesy of Linden House Theatre Company

Imaginary Lines by Reggie Oliver

A Linden House Theatre production

Directed by Robin Bowditch

The premise of Reggie Oliver’s comedy, Imaginary Lines sounds promising. It proposes to explore the often turbulent waters of personal relationships by examining  two layers of communication. The first exposes us to what people are saying out loud to each other. The second lets us in on what they’re actually thinking — or, more specifically what they wish they had said in attempting to find empathy with a member of the opposite sex.

Unfortunately, the Linden House Theatre Company’s production fails to find justification for the play’s surprising popularity among community theatre groups. Despite a strong cast and an excellent set design from Rachel Hauraney, Imaginary Lines seems no more than a feeble attempt on this playwright’s part to emulate the audacious structural  mind games for which his  mentor, Alan Ayckbourn, is renowned.

Indeed, the script is not even consistent in allowing us into the repressed thoughts of every character. This may partially explain why director Robin Bowditch has difficulty in establishing a sustained comic rhythm for this play. It keeps disconnecting.

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Southern Dis-Comfort: An evening of fun

Southern Dis-Comfort: An evening of fun

Image courtesy of Eddie May Mysteries
Image courtesy of Eddie May Mysteries

Southern Dis-Comfort

By Dan Lalande and Noel Counsil

Eddie May Murder Mysteries

Directed by Thea Nikolic

Murder mystery dinner theatre is not intended to be taken seriously. Neither should it be viewed in the same light as regular theatre.

Rather, the mystery is the frame for a variety of clichés about characters and plot, bookended by a meal and a miniscule amount of suspense as the audience solves whodunit. Audience members must also be prepared to interact with cast members in character while they are eating. In addition, they should be ready to laugh a lot between mouthfuls.

For two decades or more, Eddie May Mysteries have proved conclusively that the formula works. Now, the company has expanded to a second venue — the Velvet Room attached to Fat Tuesdays restaurant in Kanata Centrum.

Southern Dis-Comfort by Dan Lalande and Eddie May founder Noel Counsil is the first show to play at both the downtown and the west end location. The storyline not only speaks of murder and mayhem at the Caj-Inn hunting lodge in Louisiana, but also provides a vehicle for banter about Canada versus the U.S. and even a few moments of song. There are also some slow-down film-like segments that work very well.

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Spring Awakening: The Musical – Authenticity Permeates the Show

Spring Awakening: The Musical – Authenticity Permeates the Show

Spring Awakening: The Musical, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 German play, is about many things: coming of age amid sexual and other late 19th century bourgeois repressions; the chasm between generations; the sometimes dire consequences of challenging the prevailing social ethos.

As well – and this seems especially important in light of our own era’s cynicism and our confused sense of what’s real and what’s merely artifice (our digital lives, for example) – the show is about trust and authenticity. It’s about discovering and trusting who one really is, finding the determination to live authentically in the face of a social order deeply opposed to the individual’s need for self-expression, love, sexual connection.

You may know the storyline already. In a nutshell, a group of young people find themselves severely constrained by their society, their church, their families. Hypocrisy, cruelty and power call the shots, causing some of the young people to crumble but others to assert their individuality and pursue what they perceive as right. The narrative, with its rock/pop score, is fundamentally dark despite the unfortunate Hollywood ending tacked on in keeping with the tradition of musicals.

Orpheus’ rendering of this story is rewarding on many levels, but it is the sense of trust and authenticity permeating the show that shines most brightly. For that, choreographer Lola Ryan deserves special applause.

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Torch Song Trilogy:A major piece of theatre and a production not to be missed!

Torch Song Trilogy:A major piece of theatre and a production not to be missed!

Harvey Fierstein’s landmark drama Torch Song Trilogy shocked many when it premiered in 1982. Now, almost 35 years later, this autobiographical tale is primarily seen as a portrait of the lead character’s rocky journey towards a stable family life and some type of resolution of his relationship with his mother.

Simply put, the TotoToo Theatre production, directed by Sarah Hearn, is powerful and moving. The play — actually three one-act plays depicting three different stages in drag queen Arnold’s life — belies its immense length both because of the quality of the performances and the well-maintained rhythm throughout.

There are appropriately ugly moments, such as the simulated sex in the dimly lit back room. There are many gentle connections, between lovers and between parents and children. There are flashes of humour, anger, sorrow and yearning. This is a rounded picture of a life by the man who also wrote the books for the stage musicals La Cage Aux Folles and Kinky Boots.

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