community theatre Archives - Page 9 of 12 - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

The Dixie Swim Club: A show with heart and humour

By Iris Winston | November 9, 2014

Photo for Phoenix Players — Poster for Phoenix Players

Swim together and stay close for the rest of your lives. This is the theme of The Dixie Swim Club by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, an ode to lifelong friendship in the vein of Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling and Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. And the many comic one-liners through the script give a nod to television’s Golden Girls (not surprisingly, as Wooten was one of the screenwriters for the show).

In The Dixie Swim Club, five Southern U.S. women, members of the same college swimming team, meet each year at the same beach cottage in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Through their annual two-week vacation each August, they recharge their friendship and support each other through assorted life crises. …

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Driving Miss Daisy: OLT’s version of this Pulizter prize winning play.

By Iris Winston | July 9, 2014

Charlotte Stewart as Daisy. Photo.Maria Vartanova

Wheels are life changing for young and old. For teens, who have just earned driving licences, the right to drive signals freedom. For seniors, who may no longer drive, loss of their wheels means the end of independence.

So it was for 72-year-old Daisy Werthan of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1948. After she crashes her car, her son, Boolie, forces his fiercely independent mother to accept that her driving days are over. The first task for the chauffeur he hires to ferry her around is to convince her to ride with him. (That takes six days — the same length of time that it took God to create the world, he muses.)

The 1987 drama — a Pulitzer prizewinner and successful 1989 movie starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman — traces the developing trust and deepening friendship between the wealthy Jewish widow and her black chauffeur over 25 years (1948 to 1973) — a quarter century that changed the face of the U.S. It also touches (lightly) on the civil rights movement and desegregation in the south. At the same time, playwright Alfred Uhry makes it clear that Daisy and Hoke are not only bonded by religious and racial prejudice, but also by aging and growing infirmity.

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9 to 5 : An Orpheus production of a musical that is sadly passé.

By Iris Winston | May 31, 2014

Photo: Valleywind Productions

9 to 5, The Musical is a reminder of the social restrictions of a past era, but sadly, much about this musical, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and book by Patricia Resnick, is passé too.

In its first incarnation as a 1980 movie starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, it worked better than it does as a stage show full of short sequences and abrupt scene changes that recall the style of film. Little wonder that the recycled musical had only a very short run on Broadway in 2009.

While Parton’s autobiographical Backwoods Barbie and the title song are catchy, most of the rest of the music fades from memory as quickly as does the weak book by Resnick (who also wrote the movie screenplay).

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The Projet Turandot by Marc LeMyre: Théâtre du Tremplin’s production raises a lot of questions.

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 8, 2014

Photo. Martin Cadieux.

The play, written by the Toronto based author Marc LeMyre and directed by Benoit Roy who is the current director of the Théâtre Tremplin in Ottawa, was loosely inspired by Carlo Gozzi’s fable (Turandotte – 1762). Puccini’s opera was adapted from Gozzi’s version about the cruel Chinese princess, who beheads her suitors to avenge herself on men for killing an ancestor but actually the legend of Turandot has nothing to do with China. It was originally Persian. As for the Théâtre Tremplin, it is one of the rare Francophone community theatres in the Ottawa area, based in Ottawa east. It is a training ground for francophones who later move on to become involved in the established professional franco-ontarian companies in the area. They usually invite a well-known director from outside the company and their work has been extremely good in the past.

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Mauritius : A musical chairs of con artists is fast moving and absorbing.

By Iris Winston | May 4, 2014

Photo. Maria Vartanova

You don’t have to be an avid philatelist to be entertained by this drama about stamp collecting.

Essentially, Mauritius is a caper story with two legendary error-laden stamps as the treasure at the end of the rainbow. Conceived as musical chairs of con artists and propelled by the greed of all the participants, Mauritius is fast moving and absorbing. However, in focusing on the well-researched, main theme of a grab for rare stamps, playwright Theresa Rebeck chooses to allude to dark secrets and previous conflicts among the characters, without giving more than a hint of the back stories, a ploy that works only some of the time. Why, for instance, are the half-sisters who claim ownership of the family’s stamp collection so hostile to each other? What happened eight years earlier between the knowledgeable owner of the store and the psychopathic philatelist who craves the stamps? And did the third crooked philatelist have a connection with the younger sister before the con game began or did they simply come together because of the similarity of their goal?

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Spamalot: A lot to enjoy in this Orpheus Musical Theatre Society production

By Iris Winston | March 13, 2014

Photos found on Tumblr.com Dancing Knights

You will laugh a lot at Spamalot and smile a lot for long after you move out of the Monty Python lens on Camelot.

Orpheus Musical Theatre Society hams it up (a lot) perfectly attuned to playwright/lyricist Eric Idle’s quirky humour and political incorrectness. (The principle is: insult everybody and nobody can be offended.)

Under the skillful direction of Bob Lackey, the baton of musical director Terry Duncan and the bright, witty choreography of Christa Cullain, the musical “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a delight from silly opening scene to the final reprise of looking on the bright side of life.

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Spamalot: A Musical that glows with silliness, lovingly produced by the immense talent of the Orpheus Company.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 13, 2014

Photo. Kichissipi Times On the French Ramparts!

IT seems that the talents coming from the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society are particularly well suited to outrageous musical comedy because not since their side splitting production of Mel Brooks’ The Producers , have we seen such a perfectly orchestrated show. Artistic director Bob Lackey, musical director John Terry Duncan and their whole team have done wonders with the show based on Eric Idle’s book and the music by John Du Prez. From the moment Thomas Franzky as the mission-driven King of the Britons appears on stage with his faithful, bumbling Patsy a very sympathetic Rejean Mayer (we can’t help but feel this is a Python twist on Don Quixote and his not always appreciated servant Panza – I’m not chopped liver he snorts which is the first hint of his ethnic background) Spamalot was an absolute delight from beginning to end. Adapted from the Monty Python motion picture “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, the story essentially involves King Arthur going out trying to recruit new knights for his Round table, as he begins his quest for the Holy Grail.

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Legally Blond, The Musical:Think pink, but see beyond the fluffy overlay

By Iris Winston | November 26, 2013

Photo. Valleywind productions

Expecting fluff? Then your first surprise is that the script of Legally Blonde, The Musical is equipped with a few skewers and incisive comments alongside the heroine’s signature colour of pink and her dream of love and marriage to a dream guy/jerk.

Among the sideswipes at stereotypes, projecting the appropriate image, social climbing and social niceties in general are a couple of shots at lawyers and the style of musical theatre. Along the way, Legally Blonde, The Musical, book by Heather Hach, music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin, laughs at itself, too. And that is why the show is so much fun.

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Peggy Laverty explains her choice of costumes after Alvina Ruprecht’s review of the Confessions of a Drag Queen.

By Capital Critics Circle | August 29, 2013

Hello
Regarding Toto Too’s recent Production , I would like to make a few comments.
It is always easy and satisfying to make a character look good. It is harder to allow oneself to make a character look relatively unattractive.

Barry’s clothing was not meant to be modern. The dresses, according to the script, had been in storage for 25 years while he was in jail. They are from the 80’s, and, as most were at that time, are somewhat frumpy and overdone. These are referred to by John as being “shit ugly frocks”.

Neither the Director or the Production people wanted blatantly flamboyant outfits for Miranda’s character. He was to be involved in a meeting with a serious straight man who would affect his life, not dressing for a night at a Drag Queen competition. I filled the two racks on stage with the more dramatic outfits which would have been used earlier in their stage shows. He is living in an altered reality, delusional and living in the past, and he thinks he looks wonderful in his old clothes and overdone makeup.

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The Drawer Boy. An OLT Production For The Top Drawer

By Iris Winston | August 8, 2013

Photo by Maria Vartanova. Left to right: Brian Cana and Mike McSheffrey

The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey has been likened to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. A one-set, small-cast show, set in 1972 rural Canada, it has won numerous awards as it expands on themes that explore the value of friendship, the line between fact and fiction and the part that the stage plays in uncovering the truth.

This quiet drama has been performed many times — and therein lies a problem. Not with the script itself, but with the fact that it has become somewhat stale after popping up so often since its premiere in 1999.

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