Tag: musical theatre

Avenue Q: A joyous session of collective psychotherapy that works!

Avenue Q: A joyous session of collective psychotherapy that works!

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Photo: Courtesy of Allan Mackey.

Inspired by the TV show Sesame street, the award winning team of Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty has created a witty, satirical and joyous celebration of difference, with music, puppets, singing and dancing, that all fit together under the extremely skilful direction of Michael Gareau. Toto Too’s first rate production of Avenue Q created a wave of excitement and laughter in the theatre that I have not seen in years.

The set by Sally McIntyre, was a closed New York neighbourhood, Avenue Q, made up of individuals who are black and white, yellow and blue, Japanese and Jewish, recent immigrants and less recent immigrants, puppets and humans, young and old, poor and less poor, gay and straight, monsters and non-monsters, the scale of diversity is non ending but the parody lay in the authors’ attempts to unite this community of differences in a great bond of human sympathy by subverting all the stereotypes, ridiculing taboos, saying what people think but don’t dare say, and creating a human landscape of total liberation that is absolutely wondrous. After the show you feel you have just experienced a breakthrough session of collective psychotherapy that has actually worked.

Of course it’s an adult show and in this context it transgresses the biggest taboo of adult life: sex, turning the subject into great explosions of fun, gales of laughter and by dealing with such things in such an open and unembarrassed way. Everything becomes “normalized”.  How exotic! 

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Avenue Q: Raunchy, subversive and funny as all get-out.

Avenue Q: Raunchy, subversive and funny as all get-out.

Raunchy, subversive, funny as all get-out, Avenue Q by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty is a gem of contemporary musical theatre, one that takes the iconic children’s television show Sesame Street and turns it on its head with sex, obscenities and the very realistic notions that life frequently sucks, that none of us is really all that special, and that while the dispossessed might band together they will, for the most part, remain dispossessed.

TotoToo takes all this and wraps it into one excellent production. An ensemble piece, the show nails pretty much everything from voices and puppetry to Aileen Szkwarek’s well-oiled choreography and the live musical accompaniment directed by John McGovern . Artistic director Michael Gareau keeps the show moving at the requisite smartly staged clip while inspiring all the performers to have so much fun that the audience is swept along by the same joyous spirit.

Of particular note among performers: the wonderfully expressive Pascal Viens (Rod) who is making his debut in musical theatre, Alianne Rozon whose Kate Monster is a lonely lady to whom we can all relate, and Andrew Galligan as Princeton, a character in search of self-authorship. 

The Kailish Mital Theatre’s sound system is lacking, and distortion at the show we attended occasionally made lyrics impossible to understand. It was a small price to pay for a crackerjack show.

    Avenue Q : Naughty but nice, this is Sesame Street for adults stripped of political correctness.

    Avenue Q : Naughty but nice, this is Sesame Street for adults stripped of political correctness.

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    Photo: Allan Mackey/Valley Wind Productions

    Gently racy and naughty but nice, Avenue Q is Sesame Street for adults stripped of politically correct sugar coating (thankfully).

    The 2003 award-winning musical satire by Robert Lopez, Jeff Mark and Jeff Whitty wafts a skewer over a broad spectrum with such numbers as Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist or What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?

    The show is set in a rundown neighbourhood, populated by people and puppets of the Bert and Ernie and Cookie Monster muppet variety. The style and camaraderie of the long-running children’s television show are evident, despite a disclaimer in the program noting that the Jim Henson Company or Sesame Street Workshop are not responsible for the content of Avenue Q.

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    Up to Low: A Magical Oratorio of Popular History !

    Up to Low: A Magical Oratorio of Popular History !

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    Photo. Sarah Hoy

    The Arts Court Studio was miraculously transformed by designer Brian Smith, into a semi-country space , part barn, part lakeside cottage country, part bar in a pub somewhere up in the bush of Gatineau, Pontiac County and beyond. The story is narrated by young Tommy (Lewis Wynne-Jones) who takes us from Ottawa, back to his past and all the memories of his parents, and the Irish immigrant community that existed in the early 1950s. We go on a long ride up to Low Quebec in Uncle Frank’s beautiful new Buick that moves about 6 miles an hour, depending on the state of the road.The event is recreated by Attila Clemann the slightly strange uncle with the slick hat and cigarette falling from his lips and the expressive body language. He has whipped the group into physical shape so they can perform the trip that passes along the Gatineau River up to Wakefield and into Low Quebec. Janet Irwin has transformed Doyle’s story telling into an oratorio of voices that take turns telling the stories of Mean Hughie, Crazy Will, Aunt Dottie, Baby Bridget and a whole community of extraordinary individuals who inhabited Tommy’s world and left so many precious memories. They also defined the country, and left traces of their dreams and visions in the area, traces that Doyle has picked up and given an eternal life in his book. The result is a form of popular history that tells the tales of the region, just as Donnie Laflamme has captured the French community in Mechanicsville and Hintonburg with his skits involving the outstanding characters that he puts on stage in his own Hintonburg Tales.

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    Reviews from Stratford 2015: Stratford Delivers a Richly Involving Carousel

    Reviews from Stratford 2015: Stratford Delivers a Richly Involving Carousel

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    Photo: David Hou

    STRATFORD, Ont. — In the 70 years since its lustrous Broadway premiere, Carousel has come to be regarded as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘problem’ musical, a show now tarnished by controversy over its attitude towards domestic abuse.

    The indictment isn’t really fair, arising as it does from the dark-textured nature of the romance between swaggering carnival barker Billy Bigelow and the sweet and devoted Julie Jordan. To be sure, Billy’s hot temper is at the core of the story, and with it the revelation that he has struck Julie — only once, she insists — after only two months of marriage.

    Inflammatory stuff in our 2015 culture — the sort of subject matter that, by its very mention, can trigger a knee-jerk condemnation from those who don’t even know this show.

    However, Carousel’s integrity is convincingly reaffirmed in the production that opened last weekend. And in her notes in the printed programme, director Susan Schulman deals forthrightly with charges that the show condones domestic abuse by giving us a Julie whose love is unconditional. There are complex dynamics at work in any personal relationship — complexities certainly present in Carousel, a ground-breaking musical that, through the medium of popular culture, was tackling the problem of spousal abuse decades before it was being taken seriously in the courts.

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    Rocky Horror Show: The Cult Musical Comes to Ottawa

    Rocky Horror Show: The Cult Musical Comes to Ottawa

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    Photo Allan Mackey. Centre stage Tim Oberholzer as Frank’n Furter..

    When Tim Oberholzer leaves Ottawa later this year, we will have lost one of our most versatile actors. No one but Tim could play Dr. Frank’n Furter, the snarling, emoting, transvestite glamrock vampire , the ultimate genderbender body that moves like a sinewy snake, that sings like David Bowie and draws the eye towards his/her person in spite of the overwhelming crowd of girating sexy creatures with flashy wigs, stripped down costumes and timeless lyrics. The music of Richard O’Brien is of course one of the backbones of this show. .

    Very skilfully directed by Stewart Matthews who made it all look painless and so utterly high class in spite of the limited material means which were at times rather obvious, the show bounced along at a fabulous pace, carried by the voices and excellent acting by the main characters:

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    Alice Through the Looking Glass at the National Arts Centre: nonsensical sense and visual wildfire for the contemporary gaze.

    Alice Through the Looking Glass at the National Arts Centre: nonsensical sense and visual wildfire for the contemporary gaze.

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    Photographer: Barb Gray. Karen Robinson as the Red Queen, Natasha Greenblatt as Alice.

    When Jillian Keiley meets Lewis Carroll and James Reaney, I’m tempted to say that the witty story and vastly playful language of Carroll that hinges on all sorts of sly social comments (“words mean what you chose them to mean” says one of the characters) are soon taken over by a bouncy and colourful staging that plays directly to children’s fantasy. There are balloons, flying things , and all sorts of unimaginable props, with Bretta Gerecke’s complexly designed and striking costumes , Kimberly Portell’s magical lighting , John Gzowski’s sound, Jonathan Monro’s orchestrations and especially Dayna Tekatch,s choreography, all taking us in various directions at once . The production team stars in this fantasy that leads to pure visual chaos and muddles the narrative but it certainly holds the audience’s attention because of the visual excitement it generates, almost for its own sake where staging is based on non-stop gags and costumes that take your breath away.

    Obviously the spirit of Carroll has been relocated in the visual which suits a theatrical language for young people because much of the book’s wit has a whole level that is not for children.

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    Cabaret at the Shaw Festival: Director Peter Hinton Goes the Phantasmagoric Route For a World that Emerges From the Dying Embers of the Weimar Republic.

    Cabaret at the Shaw Festival: Director Peter Hinton Goes the Phantasmagoric Route For a World that Emerges From the Dying Embers of the Weimar Republic.

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    Juan Chioran as the Emcee. Photo by David Cooper.

    NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — You can’t be entirely sure what is happening in the final sombre moments of the Shaw Festival’s production of Cabaret. Indeed, there’s the suggestion that Cliff Bradshaw — the expatriate young American who has come to pursue a writing career in Berlin amidst the dying embers of the Weimar Republic and the rising tide of Nazi Germany — won’t make it home safely. After all, we last see him engulfed in the hellish inferno of designer Michael Gianfrancesco’s skeletal set.

    The latter, looking like something lifted out of a Fritz Lang film, is an ominously ambiguous concoction of steps and scaffolding, of blinking lights and yawning voids. It can morph into the infamous Kit-Kat Club — although it’s not really the Kit-Kat Club we have known in previous treatments of this classic musical — or it become Fraulein Schneider’s boarding house — although again it’s doesn’t seem quite right because there’s something fragmented, even intangible, about the way its overlapping worlds are presented to us.

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    Crazy For You: Gershwin musical triumphs at the Festival!

    Crazy For You: Gershwin musical triumphs at the Festival!

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    Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

    STRATFORD, Ont. —  “Who could ask for anything more?”
    Lyricist Ira Gershwin got it right when he was supplying the words for brother George’s irresistible music for I Got Rhythm.
    But you could pretty much apply them to the whole experience of watching the Stratford Festival’s hugely entertaining production of Crazy For You.
    The line comes at the climactic moment of one of the great songs in the Gershwin canon — a number that at Stratford erupts into a rambunctious explosion of song and dance in the gun-slinging Nevada town of Deadrock. It’s a feel-good moment, one of many bestowed on us by director choreographer Donna Feore and her wonderful cast. And it wasn’t the only time that you wanted to stand up and cheer at Tuesday night’s opening performance.

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    The Book of Mormon: Excellent performances but the combination of satire and sappiness is both ridiculous and incongruous.

    The Book of Mormon: Excellent performances but the combination of satire and sappiness is both ridiculous and incongruous.

     

    The Book of Mormon

    Photo. Joan Marcus

    It is commendable, but not surprising that the Mormon Church took the high road when reacting to this satirical musical about their religion. The potty-mouthed satire of The Book of Mormon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (co-creators of South Park) and Robert Lopez (co-creator with Jeff Marx of Avenue Q) is too ridiculous to cause any harm to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

    Often fun, more often obscene, the combination of satire and sappiness is too incongruous to be classed as great. It is loud. It does poke fun at such other musicals and singers as The Lion King and Bono. But it could hardly be called incisive or consistently witty, except for those who find monstrous parodies of erect penises and loud repetition of “I have maggots in my scrotum” knee-slappingly funny.

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