Tag: NAC English Theatre 2019

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story: Form gets in the way of important, heartfelt story

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story: Form gets in the way of important, heartfelt story

By |
Photo: Stoo Metz Photography

Hannah Moscovitch has a rare gift for portraying sincere, nuanced relationships. To watch her characters on stage is to live their moments of pain, joy, and intimacy along with them. In her best works, the connection between characters leads the story, with social commentary powerfully rounding out the edges. In Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, presented by 2b Theatre (Halifax) at the National Arts Centre, she flips the formula and tries to let social commentary take the lead. The result is a messy and overall jarring show made up of various parts that are incongruous with each other, both in style and substance. …

Read More Read More

Between Breaths is a tender play about grief, tragedy and the impact of a life well-lived

Between Breaths is a tender play about grief, tragedy and the impact of a life well-lived

By |
Photo Riche Perez.  Steve O’Connell and Berni Stapleton with musicians in the background

The NAC’s Between Breaths from St. John’s Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland theatre captures the life of animal behaviourist Jon Lien, who moved to Newfoundland to study storm petrels and ended up becoming known around the world for his ability to rescue whales from fishing nets. Before Lien, whales tangled in nets were routinely shot and took the fishing nets with them, which would cause financial ruin for the fisherman. Lien worked tirelessly to save both whales and fishermen’s livelihoods. …

Read More Read More

The Pigeon King: a ripping good story

The Pigeon King: a ripping good story

By |
The Pigeon King .  Photo  Tony Manzo

Did Arlan Galbraith believe his own sales pitch? Others sure did. So many fell under his folksy spell that, between 2001 and 2008, farmers in southern Ontario, as far west as Alberta and in several U.S. states poured millions into Galbraith’s Ponzi scheme involving pigeon breeding.

Watching The Pigeon King — a Blyth Festival production at the NAC that moves with the sure, fleet speed of a bird’s throbbing heart — you understand why those farm families opened their wallets and purses to this round, balding guy from Cochrane, Ontario with the insinuating nasal voice and big ideas.

“We felt like we were drowning,” says one of his victims, referring to the desperate straits so many Canadian farmers – weather-dependent, indebted, pensionless – find themselves in.

…

Read More Read More

Angélique suffers from too much exposition and not enough drama

Angélique suffers from too much exposition and not enough drama

By |
Affiche NAC Ottawa

Life will be different this time,” says young, hopeful Marie-Joseph Angélique at the beginning of Lorena Gale’s Angélique (NAC). A sinking feeling in your gut signals no, it won’t. Your gut is right.

And really, why should Angélique (Jenny Brizard) look to the future with any optimism? Brought from Portugal, she’s a black, domestic slave in a wealthy, 18th-century Montreal household, one of many over the two centuries before slavery was abolished across the British Empire in 1833 (Gale’s play is based on the real-life story of Marie-Joseph Angélique). …

Read More Read More

NAC’s Prince Hamlet gives bold, modern, and captivating twist to classic play

NAC’s Prince Hamlet gives bold, modern, and captivating twist to classic play

By |

 

Photo  Bronwen Sharp.  The National  Arts Centre’s Prince Hamlet from Toronto’s Why Not Theatre is a daring production that turns the classic play on its head and proves that a postmodern spin on the classics can pay off big.

The play is directed by Toronto-based Ravi Jain, whose bold vision demonstrates that a 400-year-old play can always be mined for captivating new details. …

Read More Read More

Hamlet: brilliant performances but opposite gender casting adds nothing new to the play

Hamlet: brilliant performances but opposite gender casting adds nothing new to the play

By |

 

 

 

Photo   Bronwen Sharp                                                                                                                                                                   That Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet is daring and different is undeniable. Adapter and director Ravi Jain has taken the well-known classic and given it a gender-bending, modern, bilingual twist. By approaching the story from a different perspective, the aim is for more people to see themselves in the mirror being held up to nature, in the director and playwright’s words. It is an ambitious undertaking and, while the approach is refreshing and there are some stand-out moments, there are so many elements competing for attention that the production comes off as messy rather than avant-garde. …

Read More Read More

Ravi Jain’s Prince Hamlet breathes new life into the Bard

Ravi Jain’s Prince Hamlet breathes new life into the Bard

By |
artsfile.ca
February 28, 2019

Christine Horne (Hamlet) . Photo: Bronwen Sharp

Just when you thought no one could possibly find a fresh interpretation of Hamlet, along come adapter/director Ravi Jain and his Why Not Theatre company out of Toronto. Not exactly risk-averse, they’ve sliced and diced the old warhorse, integrated a gender-bending and cross-cultural slant, erected three huge mirrors as part of the set, and made Horatio – played in American Sign Language by the remarkable deaf actor Dawn Jani Birley – the play’s narrator.

The result: Prince Hamlet, as Jain has dubbed it, is a theatrical whirlwind and the best show thus far in an already strong National Arts Centre English Theatre season.

…

Read More Read More