Best Picture
RibbitRePublic (Jersey City, N.J.), Studio Léonard-Beaulne
It’s a near-breathless sprint, but they get it done: Jon Paterson, Kurt Fitzpatrick and Rachel Kent lampoon every Best Picture Oscar winner ever (80, if you’re counting) by enacting a mashed up excerpt or at least injecting a title into the show’s brisk dialogue. Part of the fun is guessing the name of the movie, say, How Green Was My Valley (1941) or Ordinary People (1980), before it’s spoken. Equally entertaining is how the trio segues from one film to the next or chucks a couple of movies into the verbal Mixmaster so that The Hunchback of Notre Dame suddenly appears aboard the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty (you do know the connection between the two films, don’t you?). The show sometimes bogs down under its own cleverness, but it still manages to emerge as the kind of bright-eyed performance with zero social value that you’d find only at a fringe festival.

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Raw footage is comprised of three dance pieces performed by Cathy Kyle-Fenton, Mary Catherine Jack and Nicola Henry. It is a real treat for dance lovers who like to immerse themselves in a beauty of dance moves and to be carried away by the imaginative narrative. Artists dance beautifully, showcasing their talent, strength and creativity while portraying women who struggle with their personal perception of loss, beauty and life defining light.

Cathy Kyle-Fenton is dancing partly to the faint sound of guitar and partly to the complete silence – at the beginning the only sound heard is tapping of her own feet accompanied by the rhythmic sound of her breathing. Silence adds to the drama of the story about woman who recently suffered a loss of someone close and beloved. Pain is clearly written on her face. Every move tells about battle to accept the reality in hope that they will meet again.

Mary Catherine Jack is a true comedian in a role of a woman who is not a youngster any more, and has hard time to accept the plain facts: sagging skin, wrinkled face and not so firm body. She portrays the wont-to-be sexy seductress in a naturally humorous way while preserving control and gracefulness of dance.

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Best Picture is a cheeky romp through more than 80 years of Academy
Award winners. The script emanates from the nimble brain of Kurt
Patrick who also shares the stage with the versatile Rachel Kent and
the hilarious Jon Paterson in zipping entertainingly through decades
of Oscar history in only 60 minutes.
A warning, however: this show will work best for film buffs, Without
some knowledge of the movies themselves, you'll miss a lot of the
witty allusions. But this show from Vancouver's RibbitRePublic is
smartly conceived: it knows that even the most savvy filmgoer is
likely to know nothing about such forgotten winners as Wings or
Cavalcade, yet it's still creative enough to find ways to get them
into the mix.
With Jeff Culbert directing, the  tone is one of witty irreverence —
but these people do have the good sense to show respect for
Schindler's List and they also tip-toe cautiously when it comes to
Gentlemen's Agreement. Some of the spoofing does fizzle, but in a show
like this there's always the promise of redemption seconds later —
that's how quickly it moves. So its pleasures are substantial, and
include hilarious send-ups of The Silence Of  The Lambs and The King's
Speech, a mischievous pairing of the Oscar-winning Going My Way with
the horrors of The Exorcist, and a caustically funny reminder that
Marlon Brando was frequently incomprehensible in his Oscar-winning
performance The Godfather.
 
(Best Picture: Studio Leonard-Beaulne to June 25) 
 

Lovely Lady Lump,
Lana Schwarcz (Melbourne, Australia)
Arts Court Theatre
Lana Schwarcz is a stand-up comic, so it’s not surprising that her solo, autobiographical show about breast cancer is a comedy. She tells jokes to an unseen radiation technologist during treatments. A flakey art therapist for cancer patients gets spoofed. Cancer itself is pilloried when Schwarcz, reversing roles by embodying the disease, depicts it as a second-rate performer in a comedy club who tells jokes like, “When I was a kid, I was really good at hide-and-seek. Sometimes people didn’t find me for years.” Schwacrz is open about herself, revisiting the terrible moment when she got her diagnosis, exploring how disease can threaten your self-identity by turning you into a body part, and then putting that part in the context of a whole person by baring her breasts on stage as she re-enacts the endless radiation sessions. Many have found the show at once hilarious and tear-provoking. Finding it neither, your reviewer mostly hoped it would end soon. You decide for yourself.

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Small Creatures Such as We
Created by Meagan McDonald & Vishesh Abeyratne
Produced by Angel in the Rafters Theatre

Joanna and Kit meet in their teens. He is a tough boy and she is a modest, religious girl. As opposites attract, Joanna and Kit fall in love.  It is an unsteady, adolescent relationship, but it is exciting and pure. The Romance finishes with an unexpected pregnancy and stillborn child. They part, each going a different direction. Still, they often think of each other, and finally meet again after 10 years. Now as adults, they talk about how their lives have been changed as a result of their past. By revealing sequences of their youth, they face their inner demons and expose their tortured minds.

Small Creatures Such as We is a well-written story in which Meagan McDonald and Vishesh Abeyratne explore the dark side of growing up. They probe such issues as violence among teenagers, fear of and confusion with circumstances they find themselves in, as well as unprotected sexual relationships and its consequences. Although the general tone of the play is tragic, the creators leave hope for the future. Does love conquer it all? The end seems to be rushed, and therefore lacks the conviction of the rest of the narrative. …

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Miss Bruce’s War
Created by Jean Duce Palmer
Produced by Elmwood School_Elmwood Theatre

Playwright Jean Duce Palmer wrote Miss Bruce’s War based on her own experience as a young schoolteacher in ruralAlberta during World War II. This semi-biographical work brings back a different era – a time where people sang patriotic song and helped the war effort any way they could.

Miss Bruce gets a three month job teaching a small group of children who happen to be of a German origin. Her assignment starts in January – the worst and the coldest part of year. The journey is long and tiring, she is cold and hungry, and her only wish is to reach her destination as soon as possible and get a chance to rest. As the story unfolds, Miss Bruce undergoes changes. She matures a little after every single event during her short stay in the area. Prejudice and insensitivity towards her neighbours disappear and she learns a lot about love and friendship. …

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Fugee
Production: Third Wall Academy
Created by Abi Morgan
Directed by James Richardson

Kojo is a refugee fron Ivory Cost. He is only 14, but has already lived a very adult life. When he was only 11, soldiers kidnapped him, took to a training camp and made a solder out of him. He watched soldiers kill his parents and younger brother, suffered unkindness of all kinds and was made to kill. Finely, he escaped, and with a fake visa, came to England, where he was put in a safe place for unaccompanied minors. There he lives with other children, none of whom speaks English. The only thing common to all is the horror they once lived through and managed to escape.

Kojo’s styory is not told  in chronological order. On the contrary, Fugee starts with the last scene of the story – the moment when Kojo kills a young man on the street. From that first scene untill the last one, the play is constructed through a numbe of snapshots: children bonding, falling in love, telling their war experience, Kojo remembering his parents, and finally, the moment when, due to miscommunication, the system in England accuses him of a false identity and kicks him out of the safe place. Scene by scene, Kojo’s story unfolds, and by the end, all snapshots fall in place and make a perfect unity. …

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