Tag: NAC English theatre 2012
The Glace Bay Miners’s Museum: Subdued Moral Passion Avoids the Perils of Melodramatic Excess

The Glace Bay Miners’s Museum: Subdued Moral Passion Avoids the Perils of Melodramatic Excess

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How well has Wendy Lill’s 1996 play about a now-vanished mining culture worn? Well, that depends on how you perceive it.
> It’s easy to dismiss it as no more than a period piece with little relevance to the present. Or to protest the lack of epic dimension to this examination of a company-controlled mining community in 1940s Cape Breton. Or to attack it for failing to be in a more experimental post-realist mode. …

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The Glace Bay Miners’Museum. A Theatre Steeped in Too Much Realism

The Glace Bay Miners’Museum. A Theatre Steeped in Too Much Realism

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Photo: Chris Mikula

There is something sad about a play that has turned into a Museum piece! That means it once had a vibrant life of its own because it echoed a particular cultural setting but as time passed, the play died a bit because other forms of performance have become more interesting, more meaningful, other forms of playwriting have become more relevant. It also could mean that the direction has not evolved with the new possibilities of the contemporary stage, especially when such a reading could have infused more life into the cinders of a work that still holds some flickering sparks. This is the feeling I had watching the Neptune Theatre/NAC English Theatre coproduction of Wendy Lill’s play which opened at the National Arts Centre last night.

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Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds

Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds

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Ronnie - Penny Plain 131033  Ronnie Burkett and Ms Penny Plain.

Ronnie Burkett’s puppet vision of the world has evolved enormously since it first began 25 years ago. One of his earlier works,  Awful Manors (1990),  the first of his performances we saw at the NAC, and that shocked a lot of people, revealed a finely crafted,  campy, extremely naughty activist puppet family raging against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance of all kinds. Feeding off  serious literary and theatrical erudition, his work was, and still is, a completely new phenomenon on the theatrical scene.  

Penny Plain shows to what extent the stage vision and puppet manipulation have grown immensely whereas the textual part of the show seems to be having problems. Still focussed on controversial current debates, this marionette theatre, is now tackling the  destruction of our planet, suggesting that  a new world order is in the making.  Burkett has now shown us his own personal cosmogony which is an intriguing step in a new direction.

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2 Pianos 4 Hands, the International Success Story, Returns to Ottawaa.

2 Pianos 4 Hands, the International Success Story, Returns to Ottawaa.

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The international success story of 2 Pianos 4 Hands began with a casual conversation between Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt about their experiences as classical music students.

They found many similarities in their journey along the way from early music lessons, weird and weirder teachers, competition success and the ultimate failure of their dream to become professional musicians.

And those parallel experiences became a cross-genre theatre piece that has entertained audiences worldwide for 15 years. Now, in their farewell (?)/anniversary tour of the show, Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt revisit their days from musical scales to concert recitals —once more with feeling.

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