I've gone to so many shows in the last few years (thanks to my girlfriend),
that I can't keep track of them all. There isn't enough time to always write a
review or summary, but at least I want to keep a record of what I've been
doing. Spoiler alert - I'll often describe the ending of the play. But then I
think that the definition of a really good play is one which is worth seeing
twice.
- 20111231 20:00 Oliver! at the National Arts Centre theatre.
$43 show, $19 dinner at Moni Mahal.
A decent enough version of the musical. Adults instead of children. Live
small orchestra. Interestingly complex set of platforms, ladders, iron
railings. Nice use of small speakers on the railings for characters singing
near the railing. Kris Joseph disappeared into his characters, so you didn't
notice him as being exceptional except when singing.
- 20111222 20:00 Shen Yun at the National Arts Centre opera hall.
$80 show.
Interesting difference in dance styles, lots of tumbling and jumping, good
use of fans, video backdrop, round fabric mats for snowflakes, live
orchestra. New stage curtain got stuck so the old NAC original curtain made
a rare appearance. Strong political message in some of the sets. Heavy
advertising as well as the novelty of ancient Chinese dancing draws in the
crowds. Lacks much of a story line (mostly short pieces showcasing some
region or time of China), Monkey King was longest.
- 20111216 20:00 The Shadow: A Christmas Mysteries Radio Show at The Gladstone Theatre.
$31 show (subscription price), $33 dinner at Lindenhof.
Pleasant. Interesting how the stories from that time were about life in
the tenements, often from a child's point of view, with mean landlords or
corrupt business partners as the villains.
- 20111207 20:00 A Midwinter's DREAM Tale by A Company of Fools at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre.
$36 show, home dinner.
A very good and entertaining show, improved in many ways over the 2009
production, with Pom Frites (Scott Florence) and 'Restes (Margo MacDonald) as
the constant core of the production. We also had a lively Puck (Jesse Buck
reprising his role) and new actors for Titania (Kelly Rigole) and Oberon
(Adrian Proszowski), plus the chorus of fairies (who are good at coordinated
movement).
The story is similar to the 2009 production - the two clowns in search of
ice cream get lost in a forest and are captured by the fairies as
entertainment. Then after a bad performance, they are sent off to dispose of
the royal baby (the King believes the child isn't his). The baby represents
the coming of spring, without it Winter will continue for another year.
There are quite a few new things, such as 'Restes texting his followers about
being lost in a forest. Fortunately the plot isn't destroyed by that (he
could call for help or use GPS location services) since his cell phone is
actually a TV remote, with a mute button that works on actors.
The king's capricious magic adds a twist or two to the story, such as Puck
being turned into a monster who can't speak (there's a charades session with
'Restes) or the Queen being turned into a lover of Pom while still wanting to
kill him whenever the missing baby is mentioned. The King is evil (though I
think Kris Joseph did a better job in 2009 with his deeper professionally
trained voice and flamboyant scene stealing acting), locking up his wife in a
laser beam prison, getting rid of the baby, and otherwise not being nice.
Everyone else has to work around the trouble he causes, indeed there wouldn't
be a story if he was nice.
Half the fun is due to the self inflicted problems of the clowns, mostly
'Restes. 'Restes gets his tongue stuck on a metal pole after being warned
several times not to do it. 'Restes uses up his three questions at the
Oracle (Pom does too, but in a superior manner). 'Restes is scared in the
forest, seeing eyes in the dark. Pom has to come and rescue 'Restes many
times, and never misses an opportunity to tell him "I told you so". Just the
interaction between the two clowns is a large part of what makes this show
fun.
The quest for ice cream also shows up at intermission, where for $2.50 you
can get a wooden spoon and a cup filled with Neapolitan ice cream, reminding
me of the British theatre tradition. After the intermission came a wonderful
fantasy ice cream ballet and matching whimsical music - with Restes chasing
after 1950s style drive-in waiters and waitresses carrying ice cream cones
and moving in flowing patterns while tempting 'Restes with cones of ever
increasing size, until he got to one whose costume was entirely a giant ice
cream cone. This flowed naturally into Restes waking up shivering on the
frozen forest floor - we had just seen what he was dreaming about. There was
also ice cream for the audience at the conclusion of the play.
The set was made of flat snow flake shapes, arranged in tetrahedrons and
other space filling geometries, extending into the audience area, a design
which is supposedly good for a travelling show. It provided plenty of paths
for chases through the set as well as a throne room and laser beam prison.
The open arrangement gives lots of space for acting, and visibility through
the flakes make it seem bigger than usual. The prison was done with small
mirrors hidden in the snow flakes, a laser, and the often present
environmental fog.
On the negative side, besides the attenuated Oberon, I felt a gap in the
performance when Titania sings about the baby being lost. It sounded like
she was singing out of character, just singing; it did not have the emotion
of a mother who recently lost her child. Right after that the emotions came
on strongly in the next bit of dialog, which makes me think the neutral
singing was a director's choice or a singing training limitation.
Some other observations I don't have time to rewrite into seamless text:
- One audience section really enjoyed the play, laughing a lot. I
suspect it was their golden moment of seeing the show for the first time.
- Good choreography in all the dancing, like the hoop dance of the
fairies - in general it was above average. Accompanied by decent music.
- Again there were lots of pole puns by Pom, when he's mocking Restes
getting stuck to a metal pole. After some blood and pole removal, Restes
counters with some post puns. Punny.
- There was lots of improvisation, referring to the way the audience was
responding to the play. The big piece was about the first time Pom and
'Restes met, as suggested by the audience at intermission. It was in a
barber shop, where Pom feed towers of shaving cream foam (nicely stacked
up a couple of metres tall with just a few gestures of an imaginary can
of shaving cream) to Restes, who was asking for something like ice cream.
The texture was good, but not the taste, not even after switching brands.
- Ice berg acting - Pom shows you an imaginary ice berg by balancing on
top of the floor, and explains how he does it by acting. They had a more
realistic one earlier that was glided off stage with Pom on top,
separating the clowns in the scary forest.
- The night in the forest scene with a flash light to see things was
ingenious. Since you couldn't see what was happening, they could play
tricks, including having the monster gaining control of the light and
reversing the roles.
A very entertaining play, though I prefer the 2009 version (my favourite
play ever) due to Kris Joseph's over the top performance and the novelty of
seeing the show for the first time. I'd be happy to see 'Dream again, or
whatever the Fools create next.
- 20111206 20:00 I Hate Hamlet at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$17 show (subscription price), $20 dinner at Lone Star, $5 parking.
A very entertaining show; way above average. Good writing for the dialog
(Paul Rudnick) combined with good characterisations by the actors are the
main factors. The density of throw-away funny bits is decently high - like
the old woman / former one night stand desiring but being hesitant about
dancing with the ghost of John Barrymore, saying that she's old; he answers
that he's dead. Jokes about tights, TV and more keep the audience laughing.
Besides the well played flamboyant, confident Barrymore character (Eric
Ladd), the light weight TV actor Andrew (Michael McSheffrey) has a good
portrayal with a bit of depth in his worries and Hamlet decision (impress
girl with Hamlet, easy money with TV, Hollywood disdain for theatrical
actors, embarrassing TV ads with puppets). There's a lot of good character
interaction, which I can't really put into concise words. The TV producer
reminds me a lot of Speed the Plow and comes from the same
glad-handing Hollywood executive culture that drives the plot tension between
art and making money.
There's a decent sword fight where the ghost of John Barrymore tries to
get the lightweight young actor Andrew Rally involved in the thrill of acting
(good fight choreography, including running atop the mantle piece to get the
drop on the other guy). The set is nicely fantastic - on purpose looking
like someone turned an apartment into a set. Andrew eventually gets into the
fight and decoys Barrymore by pretending to be wounded, then grabs his sword
and cracks Barrymore across the cheek with the hilt - I hope that was a sound
effect.
Speaking of sound, Barrymore was made more magical or heroic or maybe just
dramatic by having his own sound track - swashbuckling music when he sword
fights, and other music as appropriate. Yes, lots of good stuff, right to
the final bows. The next time it comes up, I'll definitely be looking
forward to seeing it again.
- 20111118 20:00 I do not like thee, Dr. Fell at The Gladstone Theatre.
$31 show (subscription price).
Psycho-therapy in a locked in discussion group goes bad when the attendees
are indeed insane, rather than the normal client class. Quite the cast of
characters, from American therapy leader, to old woman who misses her false
memory husband, to the crazy guy who lies all the time and may blow up the
place.
- 20111111 19:30 White Christmas at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$31 show (subscription), $20 dinner at Swiss Chalet.
Soldiers back in civilian life as singers and dancers are the excuse to
have a show with lots of song and dance. The story is about putting on a
show at the General's struggling country inn, with a side order of romance
between two different dance teams. Good singing. And of course, tap
dancing. The General's granddaughter steals the show when she starts a bit
of dancing of her own.
- 20111102 20:00 Whispering Pines at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre.
$36 show.
East German couple who live with honesty and truth impress a visiting
American researcher. Years later, one finds out that the other was an
informer. Mostly a character study, though lacking the emotional side of the
real deadly menace of the environment (even though their son is killed by the
police).
- 20111025 20:00 Doctor Cook's Garden at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$17 show (subscription price).
A good ethical point about small town doctors with powers of life and
death over everyone in town. What happens if the doctor hastens the death of
undesirable people? The town kid, who's now a newly minted doctor himself,
visits and discovers that dark secret. The town seems better off without
cruel people and criminals. Including the kid's abusive father. But the
doctor has gone further than too far by killing people who suspected him.
Nice ending where the new 'doc faces the same ethical question himself.
- 20111014 20:00 Speed the Plow at The Gladstone Theatre.
$31 show (subscription price), $42 dinner at Trattoria Caffe Italia.
Great set - forced perspective angles of the walls of the modern Hollywood
executive office make you feel as if you're standing on the edge of a cliff
when you come out of the lobby corridor. The play flaunts the shallow
affectations put on by people in that movie production subculture (well acted
movement and rapid fire Hollywoodese dialog) and reveals the money bones
behind the friendly faces and fake love. The crux is the seduction of a
script that seems to have deep meaning vs a sure thing sequel. The desire
for meaning surprisingly outweighs normal sensibilities of the executive and
his temporary assistant, making them see meaning where there is none. The
old friend with the sequel opportunity has to fight to bring back normal
money grubbing sensibilities. Nice twist there.
- 20110928 19:30 James Randi lecture presented by The Center for Inquiry at the National Archives and Library auditorium in Ottawa.
A good debunking talk by James Randi
about various scams and tricks that fake paranormal powers. He pulled a few
misleading tricks on the audience too (fake glasses, fake microphone), and
one amazing card trick, somehow knowing which cards were in the envelope.
Enjoyable, educational and entertaining.
- 20110927 20:00 Inherit the Wind at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$17 show (subscription price), $4 snack at Second Cup, $5 parking near OLT.
A trial about a teacher teaching evolution in the southern USA of the
1920s. Good acting from the defence attourney and journalist, offense was
good except for a voice that wasn't quite deep enough (sounds like he had a
cold recently). Huge cast. Ends with a loss, just like the real Scopes trial which
inspired this play.
- 20110920 20:00 Amelia: The Girl who wants to Fly at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by Festival Players of Prince Edward County.
$36 show.
Makes me want to check out the real myth of Amelia, though hidden under
her publicist's stories, we may never know. With songs and live piano on
stage. Told from stay at home sister's point of view, publicist's point of
view, Amelia's point of view. Animation festival coming up so no time to
write more.
- 20110909 23:00 Spotlight On: John P. Kelly at The Gladstone Theatre.
$10 show.
Later in the evening, after The 39 Steps, Crush
Improv put on a one night show featuring the 39 Steps director John P.
Kelly as their guest. Not coincidentally, Al Conners was in both shows.
Much like the Spotlight on... Emily Pearlman
show we saw at the Fringe festival, the troupe riffed on stories from the
guest. Kelly's problems with Irish/Swiss drivers licenses being accepted
differently in Ontario and Quebec led to a good driver's test scene, complete
with burning pedestrians.
His next story was about getting lost in a forest for a night. The GPS
told him to turn right at a fork in the road and he did, going on the road
less taken, then getting stuck in the last patch of snow (spring time) in the
middle of a forest. Of course, he was dressed for that first warm spring
day, which turned into a cool night. Additionally there were lots of bear
tracks in the snow. First off was a story of a GPS prototype program, where
a wimpy GPS was modified to talk and behave more like a guy. Then we got
many diary entries from different characters about day #27, centering about
being stuck in the woods, everyone's dead except me. The bear had a diary
entry too. Then there were snow cones and fear of lips touching when the two
young girls had only enough soda pop for one shared cone.
Another series was about how Kelly met his French wife (sitting in the
audience and looking extremely embarrassed) and tried to be romantic. That
led to stories of kissing on the cheek not being the desired thing, watching
Hugh Grant films only making her talk about Huge Grant so the ideal trick was
to pick something unromantic so that Kelly would look romantic in comparison.
It ended up at a South Korean karate class (real life was a karate class at
his future wife's request). That blurred into a deaf karate master trying to
understand his students who didn't know sign language. Kelly and the
audience had a good laugh at some of the resulting misunderstandings.
- 20110909 20:00 The 39 Steps at The Gladstone Theatre.
$31 show, $18 dinner at Spring Roll House.
A fun play, mostly because of the amazing scene changes. There are just
four actors and assorted props they can move around, and a sound effects
person hidden somewhere. The main props are a door on wheels, a window on
wheels, furniture on wheels, ladders which become fences and other odds and
ends. For example, the hero escapes from the murder scene (he didn't do it,
it was foreign spies) on a train made from an armchair as the locomotive and
steamer trunks as the individual carriages as well as serving as seats in a
compartment and as compartment walls. Al Conners just plays the hero and
Kate Smith plays a small number of female foils for the hero to react against
(lovely newlywed couple at the hotel scene eating big sandwiches while
handcuffed together). Richard Gélinas and Zach Counsil play everyone
else. In the train stopped at Edinburgh scene this includes: a train
platform newspaper boy, several policeman, a conductor and the comedy duo
(Laurel and Hardy?) in the compartment, often switching between all of those
a dozen times in a minute, making for a frantic dramatic scene as the hero
(face prominent on the newspaper front page) tries to avoid being noticed by
people.
The story is as you would expect - framed for a murder, the hero tries to
find the spy master before the stolen military plans are shipped out of the
country. The fun is in the implementation, rather than the writing. The
actors do show they know that they are acting at times - with the hero
opening a door to a noisy party and closing it, then faking opening it,
trying to catch the sound effects operator off guard. There were two
mistakes, one when the handcuffs fell off unexpectedly, and the other being
the reversed Edinburgh station sign direction. But those are minor. Fun and
worth seeing again.
- 20110720 20:00 Spider's Web at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$25 show, $25 dinner at Sweet Art, $5 parking near OLT.
A nice twisty Agatha Christie mystery, with the plot changing your idea of
who did it. But that's just half the story, the other half is the trouble
the people there get into when trying to rapidly hide the murder from the
police, who have been tipped off by someone. As the director remarked, doing
that kind of play takes a lot of traffic control, which they did manage to
pull off until the final curtain drop. There was even some overlapped
dialogue, making conversations sound more natural. Since this is the second
day of their summer production, the actors were good but missed a few of
their lines. Initially the accents were hard to decode, but that passed
quickly (voices were amplified more than usual which may have helped or
hindered or both). Sarah Hearn stood out with a bit of extra character
acting, and John Muggleton had an evil aura about him - he's good at playing
villains. A bit above average show - I was involved in the story more than
usual, due to the good writing and the actors' ability to perform it.
- 20110706 19:00 Antony & Cleopatra by A Company of Fools at the Andy Grover park in Stittsville.
$15 show, $10 Burger King dinner.
A rainy day turned into a pleasant evening in the park. The set was their
usual multilevel multipurpose stack of boxes, with a large map of the
Mediterranean area on a backdrop sheet. The position of the characters was
shown by magnetically snapping a corresponding saucer shaped disc onto the
map. The costumes were simple and bold, good for identifying the characters
(Cleopatra in sharp gold and blue, Romans in white with a red stripe) and
good for quick changes by the actors. The comic side of the fools shows all
over the place, such as using a tin can telephone to send messages which
would have been done by courier over days. Pompey shows up as a shy pirate
that the audience has to call on stage. There's a really good sea battle
done with cut out cardboard ships on sticks from behind a low blue curtain on
sticks around the stage, with the ability for an observer to zoom in (they
switched to bigger ships when the telescope was lengthened). The Fools
showed off their improvisational ability by incorporating audience reactions
into the script, such as a baby crying causing Antony to say that the battle
was so bad it made babies cry. Though sometimes the improvisation goes on a
bit too long, leaving me waiting for them to get back to the story.
![[Fringe 10 Show Passes]](images/Fringe2011Pass10Show.JPG)
20110616 to 20110626 The Ottawa Fringe Festival 2011 at various venus around Arts Court and University of Ottawa.
$7.50 show (several 10 show passes), $5 parking near OLT or free at World Exchange on weekends.
![[Fringe Button]](images/Fringe2011Button.JPG)
We've put together another packed schedule of
plays to see at the Fringe Festival, numbering about forty. Hopefully we'll
survive the marathon.
My favourites (ones which I wouldn't be ashamed to recommend to friends,
in order of most fun first) currently are:
- Every Story Ever Told
- Best of Fest - Trapped in a Vox
- Glitch
- Fruitcake - Ten Commandments from the Psyche Ward
- When Harry Met Harry
- Peter n' Chris Save the World
- Melting in Madras
- Padre X
- Curriculum vitae
- Fucking Stephen Harper
- The Animal Show
- Roller Derby Saved my Soul
- Question Period the Musical
- All My Children
- Five Lies
- Live from the Belly of a Whale
- Pick Your Path
- Preshrunk
- The Interview
- Wet Dream Catcher
- Playing Dead
- Subnormality
- eX's & Oh's
- Spotlight On...
![[Fringe Schedule Last Entry]](images/Fringe2011Schedule.JPG)
Here are the ones we've actually seen, out of the whole 53.
- 20110626 21:30 Playing Dead at Café Alt.
A zombie horror story. It starts with a tough woman with the machete
chopping her way through a jungle, then fighting off a monster puppet,
hacking off its head in a spray of blood (red ribbons). There's a remote
cabin in the jungle with a young couple making out, they're on vacation
for a few weeks. There's also a scared inept guy running away with a
gun, who's worried about his bottled drinks getting dirty when he drops
them. There's a TV with flashbacks to a research lab where
nanotechnology to cure cancer is getting out of hand, keeping the body
alive even though the brain's been mangled by the same technology. The
various people meet up at the cabin. The vacationing couple make
mistakes, turn into zombies and are killed by the survivors (spectacular
knife through the head for one). The inept guy gets tougher and goes off
with the survivor woman to find a way out of the zombie infestation.
- 20110626 20:00 Curriculum vitae at Arts Court Theatre.
British comic Jimmy Hogg starts the show in a bathrobe, looking for
coffee. He uses a mixture of mime (mismatched invisible socks,
disgusting herpes test mini umbrella garbage handed to audience member)
and a voice with strong cadence. He's out of work, and needs to get a
good job. A BA in general studies and a CV is his hope to slither up to
employers, but someone else will be ahead of him who's better at skills,
lying, or personality. He organises part of the show around elements in
the CV, starting with Name. The topics also range to other jobs he's
held, from childhood (swimming lessons where he just is inert for a
chocolate milk shake), office clerk, city council floor mopper (fired but
unemployment pays more than employment did), construction worker, theatre
caterer floating job that was really good but turned sour, and many
others. At the end, we have an idea of what life is like in Britain for
the less skilled person.
- 20110626 18:00 Canuk Cabaret at Arts Court Theatre.
A cabaret show of many acts, introduced with a Canadian flag. There's
lip-sync dancing, pseudo-sex, whip, stomach trouble blowing from both
ends at a Catholic elementary school on Good Friday (a good friend does
the laundry in that situation), guest Fringer (Dave Dawson of Black Sheep Theatre I think)
singing Tomorrow, There's Always Tomorrow from Orphan Annie
the Musical, a paean to driving the prairies, a vaudeville act with an
almost nude woman dancing to opera music with giant fans of feathers and
somehow always hiding the interesting bits of her body with the feathers,
Katie Hood guest from The Animal Show does a monologue about
dating a convict (the parole board is just like a parent approving the
relationship), and it ends with a fantastic light show in the dark where
the afterglow from lights swung on long strings makes pretty shapes in
the dark.
- 20110626 16:30 Playing for Advantage at Arts Court Library.
Romantic life ingeniously described as a tennis game. Including a tennis
score board that announced the state of the relationship, starting with
"Seeding" and "Rally for Serve" for the initial meeting and dating. They
also had a tennis court laid out by the actors on the stage with masking
tape. After many volleys and returns, the relationship goes from good to
bad, when things like New Zealand vs Australia rivalry fussiness goes
from a harmoniously glossed over element to an undisguised problem
breaking the relationship. At the end, the game's over.
- 20110626 13:00 Padre X at Arts Court Library.
A reenactment of John Weir Foote
telling the story of his path through World War II. In uniform and with
few props (a pair of flags, a pair of boots on the floor, and an easel
with the Dieppe
battle plan) he crams in an amazing amount of detail in this
biography. You'd think from the title that it wouldn't be interesting,
but once he gets started (as the unassuming Chaplain talking to an
admiring crowd while waiting at a train station), it's quite enthralling.
Even the stories about mud. We come out understanding why he went to
war, and what he and his men went through, including capture by the
Germans (he would be of more use with his men in POW camp than back in
England). At the end, the actor (Marc Moir) told us
about his visit to the War Museum where he was able to look at some of
Captain Foote's artifacts, including his bible. He even found notes
inside it that helped him refine some of the dates in the script.
- 20110625 23:00 When Harry Met Harry at Academic Hall.
Quite the fun performance as Harry the obsessively concerned with proper
procedure long term employee is forced to go on a team building seminar.
Really good acting, and audience participation (as if we're in such a
seminar).
- 20110625 20:00 Question Period the Musical at Alumni Auditorium.
Everything you thought would be in the show is here. How to appeal to
stupid voters (target the grade 3 mentality), question period, back room
negotiations to get something for poverty in to the budget in exchange
for not making a minority government fall, free food isn't bribery, and
rap for question period, even in French. Biggest audience I've ever
seen, filling the Alumni Auditorium with 200 enthusiastic fans giving it
a standing ovation. Ran a bit long so we missed our next show.
- 20110625 18:30 Melting in Madras at Academic Hall.
One of the better stories of the day - pure story telling by a guy with a
guitar about his trip to India to study yoga. He's quite good at
capturing the scenery of the street and temple, and even the food, then
life in a hospital after he eats some bad food (grapes he suspects, but
my friend says from experience that it could have been the watermelons).
- 20110625 17:00 Requiem for August at Academic Hall.
A very stylish show, with sheets draped over stairs and pedestals, a
candle and actors in fine dress (almost like mannequins before the show
starts). They talk poetry about summer to each other, to the background
sound of seagulls and waves at a seaside beach. While it's very stylish,
the poetry fragments don't connect into a story, instead just evoking
feelings of summer vanishing. The second half is (Oh Nest) Honest
Insanity where we hear the same script three times, once in the
dark, once in a night club and once as told to a girlfriend (who leaves).
It's about a woman who's stalked and then kills the stalker with a marble
bookend swung in her purse.
- 20110625 15:30 Sounds from the Turtle at Academic Hall.
A band with two guys and a girl falls apart when the girl is preparing to
leave for theatre school far away. One of the guys does all the work,
the other plays the keyboard. The stress of having to do a show possibly
without the singer brings out their claims of love for her, but she
doesn't stay.
- 20110625 13:30 OYTPS Showcase - Sweet Nothin' at Academic Hall.
The Orleans Young Players Theatre
School students put on a performance of Sweet Nothin', the story
about young singers wanting to be discovered and the older diva trying to
kill their careers by duplicity.
![[Notebook Page for Complex Numbers with Set Sketch]](images/Fringe2011NotebookPage.JPG)
20110625 12:00 Complex Numbers at Academic Hall.
The trouble with dating other men while being married. It demands
honesty on all sides for it to work. A narrator behind an occasionally
transparent curtain would read from a book about non-monogamous
relationships to point out things that weren't working.
- 20110624 23:00 Peter n' Chris Save the World at Café Alt.
Zany adventures of friends, going to the library for finding out about
composting, one lured away by the seduction of truth bombs from an
activist lecturer, side trips into Chris' head where the neurons are
fighting inner demons, grand battle with worker insects at the
underground secret composting site. Very good physical acting, dancing
with umbrellas, slow motion fights, truth bombs.
- 20110624 21:30 Something with Virgins and Chainsaws at I.T. Hall (Tabaret Hall classroom 311).
Improvised horror story in an underwater research station where people
are killed off one by one in the shoe store (don't ask).
- 20110624 20:00 The Search for a Reason for a Murder at I.T. Hall (Tabaret Hall classroom 311).
Seemingly crazy mayor of Murder Town upsets a young adult writer who's a
police officer.
- 20110624 18:30 Callaghan at I.T. Hall (Tabaret Hall classroom 311).
Improvisation - FBI rogue agent hunting for his friend who's been
kidnapped and hidden in a Tokyo subway tanning station.
- 20110623 20:00 Last Gig of Lenny Breau at Royal Oak Basement.
This is mostly about guitar playing. It starts out as a recreation of a
Jazz gig by Lenny, complete with house band noisily pounding away
upstairs just like Lenny used to have to face. The music was pleasantly
mellow and not too loud. Colin
Godbout imitated his style (I don't know how accurately), able to
make music by just slapping the guitar with one hand, plucking strings
with either, playing the bass track on the same guitar as as the rest of
the tracks (had to re-tune a string to do that) and generally being
flexible about making sounds. He also told us a bit about Lenny's life,
with a few props like the impressionist painting reproduction Lenny
carried in his guitar case, and a 6 string guitar (Lenny preferred 7
strings). He ended with an extended Five O'Clock
Bells about sunrise and morning bells, using it as a background for
an ambling chat, some about technique (polychords and trios he
was playing), some about the bells representing his domineering father.
We had a bit of a talk-back at the end, where audience member Jim from
South Florida (I think it was James McCreavy) told a story of
his evening with Lenny Breau in 1983 after an Ottawa Chateau Laurier gig.
Lenny enjoyed the dinner and conversation at Fuller's Restaurant and said
it was real nice being straight. He then performed amazingly well the
next night. But the night after that, he fell off the wagon and didn't
even show up for his gig. Jim also found out that Lenny didn't drive
because after eating Mescaline, he couldn't
tell what colour the traffic lights were. Lenny also pioneered the use
of "like" as a filler word in conversation.
In my opinion, Lenny was thought of as a great guitarist because he
was the key that filled a hole in people's expectations - fine tuned by
learning classical, jazz flamenco and other styles, thus discovering the
true global shape of the cultural hole that makes a great guitar player
(plus technical ability and practice). A good show if you like guitar
music or are a guitar player and want to see a variety of techniques.
- 20110623 17:30 Roller Derby Saved my Soul at Leonard Beaulne.
Amy, a woman turning thirty finds her life trivial (watching TV, loving
vampire stories, frittering away time at a tech support job), and is
envious of her successful younger sister June.
When she goes to watch her sister at a Roller Derby game, she's
enthralled by the outfits and the variety of different people playing.
She visits the "Fresh Meat" desk and signs up. In the next 18 weeks of
basic training, she makes friends with a dragon tattooed woman, falls for
a coffee shop barista, and loves playing queen of the track (last one
standing while racing around the ring, she imagines she's body checking
vampires off the track).
Skipping over an accident that brings down her sister, lesbian
impoliteness, the secret of the alpha woman, the Roxanne drinking game,
motivational trash taking from June, we get to the big game. Amy's
knocked over and injured by an elbow to the face, but revives enough to
be angry and when whip thrown ahead by Dragon, gets in the zone and leads
the race. Wining was good, but having a new family of teammate friends
was better. Well performed (on roller skates) to a sold-out house, with
a well written happy story.
- 20110622 20:00 Five Lies at Royal Oak Basement.
A well written story unfurled in a teensy stage in the hot basement of
the Royal Oak. Mostly it's about Mark and his case worker (Universal
Servant - formerly known as an angel but that was just an approximation
for early Humans) Phyllis, who intervenes when he tries to jump off a
roof.
She puts him on the 5 Lies program (formerly 3 Wishes, but that was
too expensive for the Universal organisation budget), explaining that he
can tell five lies and the universe will be adjusted so that they'll be
believed. A lie is cunningly defined as you knowing it's wrong and it
being said with intent to deceive. After a false start, he tells his
coworkers that he's got his job back after being fired (turns out the
boss had a coworker frame him for theft). They believe it and as a side
effect, his boss dies in a car accident that night, leaving nobody to
contradict the lie. He's a bit upset about that side effect, emergency
summons Phyllis, and hears some stories about other limitations.
Apparently abstract art is a side effect of someone untalented people
lying that they were great artists - the definition of art got changed to
make the lies work. To avoid using up a lie, Mark learns how to tell the
truth, or at least pepper his statements with maybes.
With a bit of guidance from Phyllis (popping in only every two years
due to a big case load), he straightens out his life. Even so, he runs
into ethical trouble a few decades later when his wife gets stick - can
he lie on her behalf? If he says she's going to get better, it might be
slightly true, so a lie won't operate. As time advances, he becomes
mature enough to ask Phyllis how she's doing, and suggests she apply for
that department head job despite being stuck as a case worker for
decades. The happy ending is that Mark finds a young suicidal woman on
the rooftop, and uses a lie to get her to stick around while he starts a
new career as a Universal case worker under his new boss Phyllis. Listen
for the bell that marks the lie that Phyllis used on Mark at the start of
the show.
- 20110622 18:30 eX's & Oh's at SAW.
It starts with a male airline steward telling the audience to put away
their cell phones and get ready for the show. There was lots of laughter
when he repeated it in French. The story is about the relationship
between Joe (the steward) and Wendy (a nice girl zoologist who seem to
fit together). Wendy's roommate Cassandra is always looking for the
right guy but not finding someone (3D: date, dick, dump), and envies the
way Joe and Wendy are in love, more than just lust (which they are
awkward at).
At the present Wendy hates Joe since he broke up with her. Joe
regrets this. Flashback scenes (signaled by a referee's whistle) show
us how they met (nice scene with milk crates stacked to make trees for a
forest where Wendy is bird watching and talking with Joe), how they're
now fighting (night club scene with disco lights and Wild Wendy), and
their fantasies (a nifty triplet song with forking to different phrases
for each person where they differ in the kind of lover they like). As
part of Wendy's zoology Dolphin suicides (inhaling sand) are mentioned as
a breakup equivalent in the animal kingdom. It stops at a happy point
where Joe and Wendy make up and Cass finds a guy who's actually orgasmic
(that's all she was looking for).
- 20110621 21:30 My Mother's Daughter at Arts Court Theatre.
A character study of four women, slightly showing how their mother
influenced their personality. There's the party girl, the beauty and
drug queen, the thinking worrying dieting one, and the poet creative one.
We see how they handle boyfriends, love, parents who are absent or die
when they are a child.
- 20110621 20:00 The Interview at Ottawa Little Theatre Studio.
A powerfully spoken police interview of an old man about a murder at the
old age home. The bad cop gets frustrated when his questions are
answered too generally ("Why are you here?" turns into a philosophical
discourse). The good cop perseveres and extracts a story of childhood
hate for an older neighbouring boy, who happened to be murdered in the
room shared with the old guy. The old guy deflects questions or just
doesn't know the answer when the question is too direct. A study in
forceful characters, lots of shouting, and finally the old man is worn
down into dithering distress. The police don't get their answers, but do
discover a final inconsistency, maybe the guy wasn't from that old age
home. Simple but striking set design using a clean gray and light gray
background (just one diagonal boundary on the whole wall), and the same
diagonal half gray on the chairs.
- 20110621 18:30 Pick Your Path at Academic Hall.
Like a choose your path adventure book, this show periodically stops to
ask the audience for a decision on what to do next, using loudness of
response to the multiple choices to pick what happens next. Ours started
out with the lazy last chance for mankind heroine having to stop the
alien invasion. The first choice was to wake her gently or with a splash
of water, the audience predictably choose water. There's a training
session with a drill sergeant, outfitting with weapons that are adequate
(lots of laser pistols, hover boots) but unfortunately not charged up,
and a meeting with the alien general on their space station. A giant
marshmallow eating contest (the audience choose brain over brawn) is
easily won by the heroine, with the substitute devil from the audience
(Jason Morneau enthusiastically volunteering) having to suffer
marshmallows while she secretly tossed hers aside. In the end, the
audience went for the mixed ending, not the happy or sad one.
- 20110620 21:00 All My Children at Leonard Beaulne.
One man (Matt Smith) with a long
and good story about pretending to be the father to the children of his
former girlfriends. As he tells of his travels and hunting down and then
meeting the kids (usually for lunch, often with the mother knowing), we
imagine a portrait of each one. He doesn't do super distinctive voices
or behaviour but his story telling ability fleshes out people and places
very well - Seattle, the Hurricane restaurant, the waitress and food
there, jump starting the car of a virtual son. It does have a
potentially happy ending too, at the canal tomorrow at noon.
- 20110620 19:30 Fruitcake - Ten Commandments from the Psyche Ward at Arts Court Library.
I recommended this one to my friends right after I saw it. Why? Because
Rob Gee has so many good stories
and makes poetry fun. One story starts out with the brilliant patients
who figure out that since they're insane, they will have a good defence
if they rob a bank. So in occupational therapy they paint a couple of
water pistols black and ...
He does the ward report to inform the next shift about the status of
all patients in a rapid fire poem of sorts, naming each patient and what
their state is or actions they've done. Quite a long list too, and if
you didn't catch it, you've got a few hours to find out before the next
shift. There's a good poem about the drugs he's handing out to each
patient, with the scientific names of dozens if not a hundred drugs
cunningly rhymed.
After all ten commandments (#2: Though shall not covet thy neighbours
sanity; #8ish: Though shall not kill, thyself, not when I'm on duty) he
had us singing the refrain "it could be worse, it's not time for the
hearse" to his insanity song. Lots of fun.
- 20110620 18:00 Am I Blue at Arts Court Library.
A woman who's somewhat flakey and needful of attention tries all sorts of
things to better herself. But she just isn't capable of writing a book
on retracing the path of her distant ancestor Francis Drake, or doesn't
get answers from sex therapy, or fails at starting a "People Cakes"
cupcake business (no sugar in dough, wants clients to experience the
inner cupcake decorator). But she does like partying, but even there she
isn't good at understanding other people. Elizabeth Blue does get across
the personality of her character, but it's a bit depressing that she
never learns or even gets lucky.
- 20110619 21:30 Double Yellow Line at Leonard Beaulne.
A two thread story comparing driving with progress in a career.
Sometimes you go over the line to go faster, but then sometimes you crash
and get hurt. Same thing with the promotion ladder in a legal office.
- 20110619 20:00 Preshrunk at Leonard Beaulne.
A murder mystery about people in a psychological therapy group. Firstly
we find out their quirks, revealed by interaction with the others and the
occasional aside monolog to the audience. Then there's the hunt for the
murderer, in Agatha Christie style.
- 20110619 18:30 Einstein's Bicycle at Leonard Beaulne.
A scrapbook of things from the 1960s and later (with a historical sound
track), such as the moon landing or Deep Blue defeating Kasparov in chess
(with live chess pieces in the background while the main characters talk
about the news of the decade).
- 20110619 17:00 Spotlight On... at Leonard Beaulne.
Improvised show by Crush Improv based on stories told by guest Emily
Pearlman (of Countries Shaped Like Stars
fame). One is her night of postering with a friend and finding an
unromantic hotel in Vanier to sleep in (played up as sticky door knobs
and blood on the carpet and something in the sink and a water logged
ceiling, just to start). Another is hitchhiking at the dead sea with
some beach boys, who turn into orthodox Jews when they get close to
town.
- 20110619 15:30 Fucking Stephen Harper at Leonard Beaulne.
Gay journalist Rob Salerno tries to get an interview with Stephen Harper
in the 2008 election and is brushed off or avoided every time. Finally
he tries to ambush him and gets to ask a few questions while being
tackled by the RCMP. Done as a slide show with lots of citations and
photos to support his point, and a few John Baird references.
- 20110619 14:00 One Man Show of Doom at Leonard Beaulne.
Our actor (Jason Morneau) happily living the beach lifestyle is yanked
into the auditorium and forced to entertain the audience, or die, in 45
minutes. We get him to define Safari for us, shows of his dancing, and
talk about how candy is ruining the world. Garfield his cat makes an
appearance and wants his balls.
- 20110618 23:00 The Walk at Arts Court Theatre.
The story of women and girls enslaved for sex, told as flashbacks and as
the construction of a play about the topic (with tension between the
sponsoring nun, the playwright and the director). A large cast in masks
replays many of the sad situations, of women held prisoner by uncaring
cruel men (and women) for sex with up to a few dozen people a day. Some
try to escape but are caught and beaten. Others suicide. There's the
story of Celeste, one from Nigeria who manages to escape to Ottawa with
her child, and is still fearful (Nigerian JuJu black magic holds them
fearfully captive).
- 20110618 21:00 Glitch at Arts Court Theatre.
Another excellent script by David Hersh, cutting and pasting the same
words into different sequences, with the actors performing them in very
different ways. One time it's lovers, then it's a big argument of
angryness, then it's lesbians, all with the same words. The protagonist
wanders into the bar holding this repeated mess and gradually realises
that it's repeating, learning to dodge the punch when he's accused of
adulterating someone's wife (or whatever the variation is). Quite
fascinating.
- 20110618 19:30 Every Story Ever Told at Arts Court Theatre.
Ryan Gladstone tells us
summaries of many stories, War and Peace taking the longest (rapid fire
listing of names of characters), Rocky series, City Lights by Chaplin
also make frequent appearances. It works well since the audience already
knows the stories and likes to guess what they are from the summary.
Then we make up a story from the basic elements: Theme (perserverence),
Quest mode + Film Noire, Hero with a weakness (orphan, peanut allergy),
Villain, Call to Adventure (dropped map in schoolyard forest) and so on
until we have the story of Edward the 9 year old boy vs Mr. Peanut the
teacher. Lots of fun, quite entertaining due to Ryan's energetic and
quick witted performance.
- 20110618 18:00 Subnormality at Arts Court Theatre.
It's about many things, maybe about expectations being low. The set is a
bar and the alley outside, with the people there. There's the worst
dating service, which has horrible profiles, but low expectations make a
lucky match seem better (woman beater actually gives jobs makeing boxing
gloves to poor immigrant women). An old loner gets a young single girl
at the bar to figure out her life, so she can say No. Truth is stranger
than fiction, comparing a Craig's list entry for diabetic hampster owners
to the telephone system capturing awkward silences in those little boxes
on the phone lines. The sexy rich woman shares a cigarette with someone
on break in the alley, making connections that otherwise wouldn't happen
if you stuck with only your friends, they leave, the one on break goes
back to begging. Nicely performed sets of small interleaved stories.
- 20110618 16:00 Wet Dream Catcher at Arts Court Theatre.
A very interactive play about dream cleaning. It's so surreal that it's
like being in a dream, with sentences full of nonsense words that are
still enough to give us a story, mixed in with dirty haiku. The big
eyeball is the tool for reading minds and cleaning dreams (apparently I
have one about Jack Layton's mustache). After a dream is cleaned, comes
an orgasm (a rubbery squeezable abstract little toy that's got lots of
soft spines and two googley eyes) tossed into the audience. The story is
about the dream catcher agent who runs around the world cleaning up
countries, until he gets to Russia where beautiful women who are hand
models surprise him on a flight home, which leads to a party and an
airplane crash, where the endangered species in the cargo are eaten.
Very surreal and silly, but fun. The audience danced at the end to the
words of WW2 Secrets read very seductively by Kris Joseph (who was in the
audience and volunteered).
- 20110618 14:30 Best of Fest at Arts Court Theatre.
This was a performance of the winner of the Youth Infringement Festival,
titled Trapped in a Vox. A patient in a sleep clinic hears
voices in his head, that are keeping him awake. He tries to keep them
secret from the doctor, to avoid being thought crazy. The voices,
embodied by two nurses, keep on trying to get the patient to kill
himself. Are they ghosts? Maybe demons. The patient gets into an
argument with the voices and convinces them that god doesn't exist so the
devil doesn't exist, making the voices ask him to shut up. Then they
change their story - it was a test, they were pretending to be demons.
He's the messiah and should kill himself. Now they are aliens,
investigating what the fish is thinking. They forecast the doctor's
words and cell phone call, so they're time travellers now. Then cats.
Eventually the doctor gets the truth out about the patient drunkenly
causing the death of his wife, so it's post-traumatic stress disorder.
Very well written (by Michael Kosowan) and rapid fire performed rational
arguments.
- 20110617 23:00 RaRa!: and the boifrend that br3ked her heart up at SAW.
Quite the performance. Matthews James Donovan in drag plays a rock star
woman doing a show after a heart attack (and operation) brought on by her
sensible psychologist boyfriend defecting to a woman in the better
apartment on the top floor. He's very good at singing, playing the
keyboard and acting, pulling together a character out of quite campy
elements. A little too campy; he's not so good at writing stories. But
the songs are good, like "The Misery of More" sung by RaRa pretending to
be her boyfriend criticising about RaRa not being happy with the 18th
floor apartment when there are 20 floors in the building. RaRa
spontaneously sings songs (many original) so well and casually that
they're part of the conversation she's holding with herself and the
audience to mull over the breakup and the story leading to it. Being
over the top, she loves her fans too, and has "self worth by audience
response". All sorts of drama happens during the show, including a
couple of deaths (one where she asks the audience has to urge her on a
bit - an ethical problem for the audience) and another that's reversed in
Peter Pan style. Unfortunately the writing is so over the top and campy
that some people will absolutely hate the play and the character, but if
you can ignore that, then there's plenty of acting, singing and music to
enjoy.
- 20110617 21:30 The Suckerpunch at SAW.
The story is based on a good SF idea, the device that lets you rewind
time (or is it memory) for five seconds so you can try again, sort of
like the Omega-13 in Galaxy Quest. This play concentrates
more on the personal side of things with a test subject, who's a loser in
life, using it to pick up girls by rewinding time when he blunders in
conversation, sort of like Groundhog Day. Brent Hirose plays all the roles,
fairly well though not quite distinctly enough for me to confuse Seth the
security guard with the test subject, maybe because there were too many
similar characters. One of the two (or maybe they're one) has a failing
marriage, and after some arguments over the phone with his wife, wishes
that the time rewind could do more than 5 seconds. Things break down
even more, the rewind trick turns out not to be all that beneficial, and
even ends the play in an infinite loop (nice plot trick - that universe
now has no future). An average show - watchable but not outstanding.
- 20110617 20:00 The Animal Show at SAW.
This was the highlight of the evening, though the audience was unusually
small so we had to applaud extra hard at the end. Katie Hood tells her
semi-autobiographical story of life as an animal rescuer with amazing
energy and enthusiasm. It starts off being about saving the animals and
getting paid too. When there's a report of an injured animal, she gets
dispatched to rescue it, or to dispose of the body.
There are good times, such as an appreciative audience watching when
she rescues an eagle floating in the water (her small net is helped out
by a friendly fisherman with a giant fish net, turning disaster into
success). There are disturbing ones, like the house where they extract
41 wild and inbred cats from the basement, leaving the scent of cat urine
on her clothes and skin for ages (funny because it's so true). At times
she feels like a hero, and that fits in one of the four phases of animal
rescue feelings listed on charts she has brought with her. There's the
boyfriend and a happy relationship, which lasts until the wounded cat
that brought them together dies. In the end, there's too much death and
too many cutbacks at the animal shelter, where following the rules brings
praise (or at least not losing the job) but delays help or kills the
animals.
- 20110617 18:30 Dying Hard at SAW.
Stories from people in the mining areas of Newfoundland, originally
recorded by an anthropologist and replayed by actor Mikaela Dyke. She's good at
taking on the personality of each different character and their vocal
habits and accents, perhaps a little too good for the first of the six
subjects, with a really thick accent. We hear their tales of working in
the mine in rough conditions, and then dying slowly from cancer (mostly
due to radon gas) or silicosis of the lungs, or more quickly from
physical injuries. Their wives have to live with a sick miner or as a
widow, trying to keep their large numbers of children fed on meager
compensation payments (still
being argued over) from the government and sometimes mining
corporations. Not a fun play, but well done and worth seeing if you are
unaware of that part of history.
- 20110616 19:30 Live from the Belly of a Whale at St. Paul's Eastern United Church.
Another whimsical production from Mi Casa Theatre, the people who
did the wonderful Countries Shaped like Stars a couple of
years ago.
Dividing the dark, damp and nicely cool huge basement of the church
diagonally is a wall, with an entrance draped in fabric and small
Christmas lights, which you push through to get to the performance area.
The audience has wooden chairs on platform tiers and the actors get a few
rugs in front of a tall wooden box made from French doors (translucent
glass windows) with too many door knobs and hinges. There are some
simple pole lights to illuminate the area, and a xylophone and small
night table lamp to the side. This could all fit into the corner of
someone's house, not too surprisingly for Mi Casa's mode of operation.
While people were finding their way to the seats in the dim dampness,
someone was whistling and strumming a guitar in the distant dark and we
were given the opportunity to write a letter to a sibling to get us in
the mood for the theme of the play.
The main story is about two siblings, often playing competitive
taxonomy games (audience members who know Latin are at an advantage in
the interactive warmup part of the show), most listing whale types. In
this world, the whales are the navigators of the ocean, watching the moon
to set their course, while other creatures set their paths by whale
watching. The siblings say they don't like their parents, and there's a
song about that - hiding under the stairs done with a stair silhouette
inside the French doors with fingers walking down the stairs. There are
wonderful touches like that all throughout the play, I'll skip over the
pirates and astronomers to keep this short. Super absurdity is brought
in by their third sibling, the egg child in a fishbowl, which the girl
treats seriously (blowing bubbles in the water around it to keep in
touch) and the boy finds gross and annoying, leading to the Stone Cold
Heart song. Most of the songs are in pairs as we switch between the
girl's and boy's point of view.
The boy makes off with the moon, the girl is left alone, sending out
antagonistic messages in bottles, then goes swimming in the ocean to find
the whales which might know where the moon is. There was good use of cut
up plastic bottles for the creatures of the sea, and undersea ambience is
created by shining lights through a rippling green glass vase on a record
player turntable. It's marvelous what they can do with simple things.
The girl gets eaten by a whale. While the boy is on the run, he gets
blown into the ocean (nifty mime with fingers walking on an arm for land
and curled fingers for waves on the sea, with voice effects for wind and
waves), and then gets eaten by a whale. They are happy to find each
other and they sing a very pleasant duet accompanied by xylophone and
guitar to mark the event.
The audience liked it. I found it good, but not as good as
Countries Shaped like Stars which had a more whimsical air
to it, and a smoother romantic tie than rough sibling rivalry. Their
earlier work had a strong linear story to it, while this one is somewhat
segmented. I suspect that's why Whale didn't involve me as much in the
characters or in the story. But that may change. They're still working
on the play, with a final version due in February 2012.
![[Notebook Collection]](images/Fringe2011NotebooksConsumed.JPG)
- 20110615 20:00 Assassins produced by Real World Productions at Orpheus House.
$20 show, $11 dinner at Hintonburger.
This is a musical about the odd topic of USA presidential assassins. We
saw many if not all of the assassinations, and discovered a few patterns in
their motivation. Guns are very common. They had several, and demonstrated
that they get people's attention by pointing them at the audience, which went
particularly silent. Gun shots were done effectively by off-scene cast
sharply rapping a heavily dented garbage can lid with a stick. Most
assassins are upset at being at the bottom in wealth and social status, and
many are crazy (one with stomach pains). As the play went through the list
of assassins, photos of the presidents were torn from the counter at the end
of the hall and crumpled up. There's a summary scene where the assassins
we've seen so far want their prize (redress for Lincoln disuniting the USA,
social justice, etc) and don't get it. Democracies can survive assassination
quite handily by electing a replacement (with a vice-president for the
immediate replacement), so assassination is effectively useless in forcing
things to change.
We also see a bit of the post assassination - with a marvelous hanging
scene. All the scenes have a lot of movement and flow (well choreographed),
but the hanging is surprising. A religious assassin feverishly talks about
god while climbing the stairs to heaven (a tall ladder on wheels), then is
whisked to the other side of the hall where a man with a noose awaits on a
balcony, putting the noose over the assassin's neck while the assassin is
still high on the ladder. The crowd of spectators then holds up the
assassin's feet while he moves away from the ladder, the imaginary trapdoor
opens, he falls and the lights abruptly go out.
The grand finale is the J.F.K. assassination, where the other assassins
tried to convince Lee Harvey Oswald to not commit suicide due to a failed
marriage and other problems, but instead go for fame. People will remember
his name, and enhance the historical significance of the others.
Conveniently his bundle of curtain rods contains a long distance rifle and he
went to the the window and did the deed.
It was neat seeing the play in the hall, with the audience on wooden
chairs around the room and actors in the middle and flowing from all
directions. If you're planning to go, decide if you should be near the piano
for the music or far from it so you can hear the actors better. Sounds were
more natural - no amplification here though there's a bit of echo from the
walls. Acting and singing were good, with most if not all of the performers
visiting from Sheridan College.
- 20110611 19:00 The Silicone Diaries produced by Buddies in Bad Times at University of Ottawa Academic Hall.
$36 show (4 pack price), $19 dinner at Swiss Chalet.
This is the story of a person who started out as a boy and ended up
looking quite female. It starts with a 5 year old Nina (nee Rodney)
Arsenault noticing mannequins at a department store and the proportions
and curves of their shape. Most of the rest of her life is dedicated to
changing her appearance to that perfect but unrealistic look. The voyage has
several stages, and lots of surgery.
After getting a degree or two, she found a steady job in the transsexual
shemale internet web camera chat business, where being able to write well and
type fast is actually an advantage. We heard about web cam tricks and how
real appearances can be a turnoff. There are a few poignant stories of
people she met online and in real life. And finally after enough money has
been earned and with help from a rich benefactor, she got to San Francisco
for some surgery.
There's also a lot of silicone involved in changing body shape cheaply,
with scary tales of directly injecting black market silicone into flesh (even
if the silicone is of good quality, it's illegal because of the risks of it
getting into the blood stream and clogging up the brain, heart or lungs).
This also revealed the transsexual culture - respect due to the ones looking
closer to real women, jealously guarded contacts to the black market, their
language dialect. Nobody ever reveals where the silicone comes from either,
making the whole thing very dodgy. The purveyors do try to establish a good
reputation since they're in it for profit and repeat business - it takes many
small injections to flesh out things semi-safely. But I wonder if they hush
up the failures, though we did hear about those too.
The payoff for all this work, combined with makeup, fashionable clothes
and an inhibition relaxing drug and some Champagne was being picked up by Tommy Lee in a bar. He's a
rock star big enough to have hirelings do the picking up for him. She
savoured the looks from the jealous women at the bar, all trying to get his
attention, as well as valuing the desire of a man who was married to Pamela
Anderson. Of course it didn't last too long, once Lee's entourage informed
him about the true nature of the situation.
The next stage was cheap Mexican surgery to shave bones, rearrange noses,
trim ribs. Nina did include a lot of photos in the show about this part of
the process, which is quite gruesome. But somehow she healed up, suggesting
that it's equivalent to her body being in quite a few car crashes. Her
facilitator and translator, Momma, had been operated on so many times (free
surgery when she brings in customers), for example indecisively changing her
nose many times, that anesthetic was no longer wearing off quickly. She did
die later on during an operation, at a fairly old age (sixties?), but that
was guessed from her walk, not her appearance.
Finally, Nina got into exercise for improving the body. After getting
annoyed with sweat while exercising with corn-row hair (suitable for
attaching wigs to), she shaved her hair off. She did take off her gorgeous
wig during the show and showed us that she had indeed achieved her childhood
dream - that mannequin look.
An interesting tale, because we don't often hear about life in the
transsexual culture and the dangerous things they do in the quest for beauty;
it's a twist on what real women do on the same quest. She told it well (just
a few word stumbles, good writing), with quite a few photos, but tastefully
not emphasizing the erotic.
- 20110611 14:00 Kismet one to one hundred produced by The Chop Theatre at the Arts Court Theatre.
$36 show (4 pack price).
An interesting look at people's beliefs in fate and destiny, or Kismet.
100 people were interviewed across Canada, from 1 to 100 years old. The four
actors reenacted interviews, presented audio recordings of them, and talked
about the meaning of fate. The big feature of the set was a giant wall and
100 tennis ball sized white spheres that could be magnetically stuck to it in
all sorts of different patterns, from a line chart to a simple landscape to
the social network around a farm. They also had a hand held video projector
and painting sized translucent screens they could place or hold up to show
short video clips of their travels while doing the interviews.
The interviews had some stock questions on people's belief in fate, their
favourite song, what they believed in, life changing events and other things.
Not too oddly, most of the fate and life changing was about meeting a
romantic partner. One interviewee described her ideal man and was surprised
when he walked past shortly after. Another woman retreating for a year to
the wilds of the B.C. coast after bad times was surprised by a visitor one
stormy night who became her partner. Odd that they should meet? Not really,
she had the only light on the coast during bad weather.
There was also a bit of real psychology showing how people understand or
don't understand Kismet. For example, people winning millions of dollars are
as happy as people losing their legs, a year after the events. The audience
was asked to pick the next story by either random choice or by hearing a
summary of the stories before choosing. The audience choose the summary
route, which led to some seductive cliffhangers from the actors selling their
tales. Another test was to choose one of two ways of handling picking a
photo to keep. The first way is: after picking a photo, the other photo gets
destroyed immediately. The second way: you get to switch photos the next day
if you wish to. The audience choose the second way. That showed that people
in the audience seem to like to know as much as they can in advance, and keep
their options open. Reasonable, but quite un-kismet.
The show was entertaining because of the good variety of insights into
people's lives and their belief in fate. No plot in the show, but a
collection of stories about people's hankering for a plot in their lives is
interesting too.
- 20110610 19:00 Kawasaki Exit produced by One Yellow Rabbit at the National Arts Centre studio.
$36 show (4 pack price), $15 dinner at Jadeland.
A dark stage sets the tone of this play, and makes it easier to read the
surtitles projected on the backdrop. It started out with an adult couple
driving somewhere in Japan (the central part of the set was a car interior),
speaking in Japanese (thus the titles). We found out a little bit about
their life (20 years working for a Vodka firm) and relationship (not the same
person anymore) and indirectly about their trip. They stopped to pick up an
unsuccessful actor (who does whatever gigs he can find) and shop for a
hibachi barbeque cooker.
When the man pulled out the vodka and shared it around, saying that this
was recommended by a web site, I was puzzled. However, when the pills come
out I figured it out; they're going to use the carbon monoxide from the
barbeque to kill themselves while drugged to sluggishness (carbon monoxide
would already be painless). The man because of his weary life, the actor
because of lack of success, but I'm not sure why the woman wants to die.
They proceeded to the final stages, but the man dragged the woman out of the
car when she passed out first (she'll revive soon in the fresh air) and then
went back to die, leaving the actor out too (he was paid, thus not suicidal
yet). A friend provided a hint - the man was balding and wore a warm tuque on his head, perhaps as a
result of chemotherapy for cancer. That would explain everything - the woman
was sympathetically suicidal.
The second half of the play is the reverse. They performed everything
backwards, though speaking individual sentences normally. Now that we knew
the ending, this was a good review (ha!) of what they were really saying. I
suspect that it would be quite hard to act backwards. At least memorising
their lines in different languages would make it easier to avoid confusion.
An okay play, but not that entertaining. Could have a powerful sad impact
if people you care about have recently died.
- 20110608 19:30 Exit the King at the GCTC Studio produced by Third Wall Theatre
$29 show, $17 dinner at Spring Roll House.
An interesting consideration of death. The king has put off dying for
several centuries and now has only a few hours left. His older queen tries
to get him to realise this. The younger queen hopes that love endures, and
doesn't want him to know that he's dying. The guard announces the changes in
the king's state, while the Doctor tells us what's going wrong with the king.
There's also a busy maid who has to do everything. That's because the
kingdom is directly tied to the king's health - most of the population has
left (including the castle staff), the neighbouring kingdoms are encroaching,
earthquakes and landslides are destroying the ground, cracks are appearing in
the castle walls and time moves too quickly.
So what does the king represent? A real king of fairy tale age who's
finally dying? All kings and the end of monarchy? Or just a Human life,
with the kingdom being the body and the king being the ego that lives in it?
The king has left death for too long, just like many people who don't
consider what to do at end of their life until it's too close. He now has to
deal with the royal progress to death (heart attacks are reserved for
businessmen), which the doctor and older queen know well, though the king
doesn't have a clue about what's in store for him.
Andy Massingham is the king - youthful curls change to thin streamers of
white hair, and he ages quickly, falling as frail muscles let him down. Good
use of that falling practice from Bifurcate Me. He also shows
other aging facets quite convincingly, turning blind at the end and having to
be lead by the old queen through the landscape of death. The rest of the
casts was evenly good, an unusual occurrence. Costumes were pretty nice too,
like the guard in armour with the shiny metal closed helm that opens like a
kitchen garbage can, or the queens' costumes (the king wore pajamas). The
set was simple, with cloth tapestries for the walls (which fall as the castle
decays), and three rocking chairs for the thrones, the biggest one being huge
and making Massingham look like a little child. Sound had a scary moment of
wild heart beats as the king spasms, making you wonder if the kingdom and
theatre were going to go down with him.
So, if you care to contemplate the meaning of life, this is an interesting
play, with a solid performance.
- 20110604 21:00 5 Easy Steps (to the end of the world) at Arts Court Theatre by Zuppa Theatre Company.
$36 show (4 pack price).
The show starts off shrouded in mystery and mist as the audience members
are lead through a thick fog (water based) to seats that are scattered around
the stage floor and covered with plastic sheets. The theatre is hot, but not
damp, because they've turned off the ventilation to keep the fog. The show
starts with one of the actors in the audience talking softly. Then it's the
end of the world and the lights go out. Another man wanders around the
darkness with a little blue keychain flashlight cutting swaths through the
fog. Apparently it is the end of the world and he's looking for his old
friend. They meet up in the first man's place, and are joined by a woman
who's bringing champagne, apparently hard to get in the chaos of the end of
the world. Drinking, talking about the Bobcats highschool team that was the
peak of their lives, they are also projected on screens in the theatre from
web cams on a little platform on strings. Then animatronic manikins
(rotating arms, necks, flashing mouths) in fantasy costumes (1950's
housewife, dress in drag, baseball coach) are revealed, they correspond to
the three people and imitate them having a discussion. The humans put on the
costumes and relive their past. Eventually the story of the gay man's friend
being killed in a car accident by the other two comes out, there's a tense
scene with a suicidal gay man and a gun, then morning comes.
The theatrics were good, however the story was a bit disjointed for me so
I didn't get really involved with the characters.
- 20110604 14:00 Yichud at Academic Hall at the University of Ottawa by Theatre Passe Muraille and Convergence Theatre.
$36 show (4 pack price) $32 dinner at Golden Palace.
Far off in the distance is the sound of music, which as we got closer to
Academic Hall was obviously coming from somewhere inside the theatre. The
lobby was full of men in Jewish orthodox dress (black vests and black hats)
dancing to the beat in lines and circles who encouraged men of the audience
to join in the celebration of a wedding that afternoon. The women were
inside the theatre, at the bride's side of the wedding.
After that rambunctious start we get to see the inside of an orthodox
Jewish wedding. Which means the bride and groom have only gone on chaperoned
dates, never touched each other. There's lots of music and festivities.
There are also family arguments and problems in the back rooms, with the
mother and father of the bride divorcing soon due to umm, marital problems.
The groom's brothers play tricks on him - giving him all sorts of rules and
advice about what to do with the bride when they're married, such as saying
nothing, turning the lights out, and keeping a sheet with a small hole
between them while having sex. They quoted quite a few religious rules as
part of the argument. That make for several awkward minutes with the eager
bride in the Yichud room (a room in the Synagog where the new couple spends
their first few minutes alone).
Worth seeing for the experience of an old Jewish wedding, something you
don't get in ordinary life. The play layers on the drama of family life to
the cultural experience. What with the introductory festivities in the
lobby, this is quite an involving and fun play.
- 20110603 19:30 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show (subscription), $15 dinner at MacDonalds.
Lots of fun. This is the story of a confidence artist in the French
Riviera who meets up with an inept con who wants to learn from him. The
master's normal technique, perfected over many years and no longer a thrill,
is to find a woman with money and become the person she wants (such as a
prince fighting a revolution in a small country) until she hands over the
cash.
He demonstrates how it's done by pretending to be the prince seducing an
oil baron's daughter visiting from the USA. However, things go wrong when
she moves faster than him and starts dragging him off to Oklahoma to be
married. There's a funny dance and song where she describes what she likes
about Oklahoma (the messy and smelly details of cattle farming), causing the
master to try to get out of marriage. She has a pistol and makes him dance,
turning it into a big number with lots of supporting cowboys and girls. To
get out of the bind, the master gets the student to pretend to be his insane
brother Ruprecht locked away in the basement, with all sorts of horrible
personality behaviours (like the mason jar of farts he carries around with
him). That disgusts both the audience and the cowgirl.
The meat of the plot (the cowgirl was just a warm up) is the contest
between the master and student to see who can con the Colgate soap queen out
of $50000 first. There are some tremendously delicious double takes and
twists and turns in the plot, but I'll say nothing more to avoid spoiling the
rest of it.
So, very good writing, with lots of fun details (the french fry tea cart
that appears for a mere 5 seconds in a song about French things). There's
also an excellent set that's made of many moveable pieces on wheels that is
choreographed into different configurations along with objects (window
elements, hints of a casino wall, hotel ceiling lights) dropped from the fly
loft. Each piece also looks pretty good and dimensional (not just a flat
painting) - like the twin curvy stair sections with railings and a balcony
that can be arranged as a grand staircase in a mansion or outdoor garden
walkways.
Everything else worked unobtrusively: live orchestra, lighting, rows of
bellboys and chamber maids in identical costumes, rich people in quite a
variety of different dresses (a hotel lobby is a recurring location), and
good acting from everyone. In particular, Rob Henderson as the master was
excellent as the mature gentleman con artist.
Worth seeing for the fun. Worth seeing again to show it to friends. A
second viewing won't be boring since the plot is so twisty that you'll be
able to reinterpret it in a new way.
- 20110601 20:00 This is What Happens Next at the GCTC main theatre.
$37 show, home dinner.
A fun and serious play that's about story telling. It's Daniel MacIvor
telling his stories (with director Daniel Brooks), supposedly stories with
some truth from his life, on a raised platform stage surrounded by dozens of
stage lights on poles, with few props. He starts by arriving late and
telling a story about being stuck in a line at Starbucks. Spoilers - skip to
the last paragraph or two if you don't want to know half the plot. He lists
the characters in advance, and we find their stories interacting - kid Kevin
has to spend Saturday with his drunk father Mike, because baby-sitter /
astrologer Arin (formerly female Erin) has a date with the lawyer Susan who's
available because client Warren is skipping out on a meeting with her to
visit his gay ex-partner to get some stuff back. More happens after that, as
the title suggests.
My big take-away was noticing MacIvor's very good story telling and acting
ability, switching styles as he switched characters. Lighting is also used
to give each character their own environment. The astrologer was the most
serious (audience at its quietest, hazy dark blue light), the drunk father
was hand waving fun (yellow sunlight), Warren was a train wreck waiting to
happen (with a rapid duet argument between him and his partner showing why
they are ex's, that segues into the other point of view story). The lawyer's
story was classic vaudeville stand-up comedy (static movement, the funny was
in the voice emphasis and rapid fire words). The kid's story had a sad and
serious double meaning, using fairy tale language about the father drinking
to be a little bit happier and a little bit taller but with the curse that
drinking too much of the potion is poison. The kid's story ends up blaming
Will (willpower or unthinking desire) for the bad things, so the giant
squishes the little man that comes out of the door in his forehead. That
made for some good philosophical meat on the story bones. Maybe that's why
he had the philosophy textbook in his hand at the start of the show.
Overall, very enjoyable for the performance and the meatier things to
think about. Worth seeing again in a year or two.
P.S. Dangling story thread: why didn't the Goths in the soccer swamp get
run over?
- 20110531 20:00 Messiah on the Frigidaire at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $21 dinner at Lone Star, $5 parking near OLT.
A good comedy about trailer park people and the meaning of life. One
woman wonders if there's more to life than living in a trailer park with her
couch potato husband, worrying her friend since childhood about her malaise.
They both see Jesus (or Willie Nelson) in the shadows a street light casts
through a butchered hedge on the refrigerator door. Could it be a sign?
Things get out of control when it gets publicity and they have lots of
visitors. The husband is awoken from his couch with ideas for exploiting the
attention, the childhood friend channels messages from god through the
refrigerator (destroying a satanic video store), and the woman is worried
that it's wrong. The sign does change their lives and gives them a better
understanding of what they already have. Most notable is Susan Nugent for
being most in character as the childhood friend. Also notable are the weeds
growing under the trailer porch and pickup truck being repaired in the
neighbour's lot. Lightly amusing, average OLT, worth seeing once.
P.S. I like the new gray gradient tiles pattern carpet. Their fundraiser
of selling off square feet of the carpet for doodling on is obviously now
over.
- 20110501 19:30 Brent Butt standup comedy as part of the Prarie Scene series. At the National Arts Centre theatre.
$48 show.
Dean Jenkinson from Winnipeg warmed up the audience for the first half
hour, the best part being his story about taking an airplane flight in
northern Canada, which has quite casual security checks when compared to the
usual commercial airlines.
Brent Butt did an hour of material, where we learned he has a 27 inch
head, likes hot dogs, and and avoids political bias in his jokes. He was
quite good at getting the audience to suggest topics, which he'd then talk on
in a humourous way, after a few seconds pause to think of a strategy. That
takes lots of brains, which could explain the large hat size.
- 20110426 20:00 Deliver us from Evil at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $18 dinner at The Yangtze, $5 parking near OLT.
A murder mystery in the rectory. Wife of the rector, played by Cindy
Beaton did a good job of being nervous and paranoid about the staff. The
character Peter was acted with exagerated gestures and motions, which later
turned out to be part of the plot, so I can't complement the actor on acting
extremely, but John Eric Ladd did a good job acting as if he was acting
extremely. The surprising part of the set was the rain outside the window.
Everyone in our group noticed that it sounded really realistic, and when the
lights went up, it was obvious - they were using falling water, not a sound
system.
- 20110416 20:00 Show Tune Showdown at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$25 show, $25 dinner at Won Ton House, $5 parking near OLT.
Another fine game show battle between Orpheus, Suzart and Sheridan. Tied
up near the end, with lots of help from the audience (they got most of the
trivia) until Sheridan broke ahead with the last song and a great performance
on the spot with just sheet music. Second and third tie broken by an extra
question, which Suzart got right. Judges Kathleen Petty, Yvan Pednault and
MP Paul Dewar (came despite there being an election on) spiced up their
answers with details about what they liked, and they liked a lot (lots of 10s
awarded).
- 20110406 20:00 The Middle Place, produced by Project: Humanity, at the GCTC main theatre.
$37 show.
A play based on interviewing people at a homeless shelter for youth in
Toronto and condensing it down to the essentials. There are five actors.
One is the interviewer, played as an awkward kid in sneakers by Andrew
Kushnir (the real playwright and an interviewer). The other four barefooted
actors portray various clients and staff at the shelter, switching characters
with a brief duck of their head. They're quite good - you can easily
recognise the different people by posture, mannerism and talking style after
a switch. The set is a bright white oval slightly raised and tilted towards
the audience, making a brightly lit area on the stage. There's an imaginary
outside and inside boundary at the oval's edge, manifested by the characters
raising a hand to be buzzed in or out by an invisible door guard. The
interviewer asks his questions from the stairs and rear of the theatre, while
the audience mostly watches the stage and four main actors.
The stories teased out from the inhabitants are as you'd expect, a mixture
of relationship drama (talked about, not distractingly shown since it's an
interview), dealing with a tough life (pregnancy, crime, work), plans for the
future, and a few ice breaking questions (what would you do with $10k?). Out
of this comes a picture of bad parents and broken children (most trying to
make things better but many with obstacles of all sorts). The child-parent
relationship can be surprisingly strong, though only to the non-deadbeat
parent.
- 20110322 20:00 Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $18 dinner at Eastern Africa Restaurant, $5 parking near OLT.
A group of men are fresh volunteers and we see the usual stereotypes and a
few new ones about Irish men and in particular the Protestant side of
Christianity interacting (tough guys, hate for Catholics, loyalty to the
king, different classes). War gives them the usual worries about death,
crisis of faith, and causes mental colapse. Lots of opportunity for acting,
though the topic isn't that interesting to me. However, the ending is very
dramatic, with the men going over the top (good trench set - a tall wall
crossing the whole stage that they have to climb) in a red lit theatre
filling cloud of smoke.
- 20110316 20:00 The Shadow Cutter at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, co-produced with Sleeping Dog Theatre.
$36 show, $15 dinner at Les Grillades.
A surprisingly good play (given other negative reviews), at least for me,
about an old card magician named Dai (David) Vernon
(Verner). But then perhaps it was the classroom/theatre atmosphere at
the beginning (lighting, big red curtains, and audience interaction that
reminds you that there are many other people here, all watching) that got
things off on the right foot.
It runs mostly chronologically, with flashbacks from the lecture (done as
Pierre Brault being an audience member who's asked by DV to play the role of
DV's father and other characters, since he's read all of DV's books and knows
his stories). There's a fun bit where Brault tunes his accent to be more
Scottish/Irish to match DV's mother's voice.
In the lecture, DV is an old man, with shaking hands and mannerisms. But
Massingham drops that later on, presumably because he's running in flashback
time. Though he could have used a bit more shakiness and oldness at the very
end when we find out that the lecture has just been the imagination of a
senile and forgetful DV, in his apartment.
There are some good lighting tricks with smoked glass and mirrors, so you
sometimes see the surface as a mirror where DV is practising his tricks and
at other times you can see through it and once it was both. That was nifty,
with Pierre Brault playing the father doing a simple trick on one side of the
surface and DV as himself as a child playing with the objects in the virtual
reflection. The childhood scenes also have some old Victorian Ottawa colour,
to the amusement of Ottawa locals.
It's a legend rather than a biography so you have an overly sweet
coincidence where the elusive "center deal" card trick is found in a Kansas
City gambler whose great uncle happens to have written the card book that Dai
Vernon worships. The story rolls along, covering DV's rising importance,
marriage to a nice pair of ankles, too much obsession with card tricks,
domestic problems with ignoring his wife and not spending much time earning
money, the hunt for the center deal trick, the breakup of his marriage (wife
drinking in response to problems, kid ignored too even when wounded by wife).
The only gap in the time line is the part after the breakup, where we can
assume he had many decades of enjoyment as a professor of magic tricks.
Worth seeing if you like a story and some fine acting. Though I suspect
that the story may appeal more to men than women.
- 20110304 19:30 Into the Woods at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show (subscription), $15 dinner at Ho Ho's Restaurant.
When I first saw the stage with a forest (black branch silhouettes, tall
rectangles, tall panels of fairy tale words at the sides) and three little
houses on it, I thought of the three little pigs, and indeed one house was
brick and another wood. Instead it was a reflection of Stephen Sondheim's
writing style; several parallel stories happening at once, this time
Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Jack of Beanstalk fame and Rapunzel. The
parallel structure also shows up as group songs where the characters from the
different stories are simultaneously singing about their identically themed
but separate troubles.
The first half of the show followed the Brothers Grimm fairy tale
interpretation more closely than Disney would. Besides the happy ending, it
keeps gruesome things that children like such as birds pecking out the eyes
of Cinderella's mean sisters. It wasn't totally Grimm since separate plots
were fleshed out and joined to make this play, so you see things such as the
baker from Rapunzel buying Jack's cow for some possibly magical beans.
Act 1 is motivated by the baker and his wife running around the woods,
trying to get four ingredients for the witch, who will in return lift an
anti-fertility curse on them. The ingredients included a red cloak, a pure
as gold slipper, yellow hair and a milky white cow. As the audience can
guess, these are items from four famous fairy tales. This leads to scenes
where the wife is chasing after Cinderella, trying to get her slipper. Or a
scene where the cash-less baker is hunting through his pockets to find
something to give to Jack for a cow.
Skipping over several stories, we get to Red Riding Hood (MacKenzie
Salhany) after she has been eaten by a wolf (by the way, really good wolf's
head costume with quite big white teeth) and saved by the baker. She has
become a tough, scary and street (woods) smart kid, threatening strangers
with her self defense knife. She also now wears the wolf's skin rather than
the red cloak (snatched up by the baker). This impresses Jack, who wants to
impress her so he goes and steals the giant's magic harp and gold egg laying
chicken, ending up killing the pursuing giant by chopping down the beanstalk.
At the end of Act 1, all the stories have been happily resolved, at least
from the point of view of their main characters. They got their wishes.
The second half shows what happens a couple of years later. In Act 2, a
carelessly discarded bean provides a path for the dead giant's wife to come
down from the sky for revenge. The princes are still dashing, but after
other women (some girl guarded by disgusting dwarves, and a sleeping woman in
a glass box) rather than their wives Rapunzel and Cinderella. The baker and
wife have a child but are fighting about the size of their house.
Things fall apart from then on. Even the narrator gets sacrificed. But
to no avail, people die, houses are crushed, castles are crushed. There's a
particularly gruesome spot where the baker's wife is squished, though that's
done off-stage with just a sound effect. Only a bit of planning and some
helpful birds bring down the giantess. The survivors have an ending of their
own by grudgingly forming a new family, with the baker, Jack, Red and
Cinderella.
A few notes about the production. The cow was a scene stealer. Instead
of just a static prop, they had a life size cow (prop designer Sam Smith's
responsibility) that could move around (hindquarters on wheels, rear legs
cranked by them), and act (front legs of actor, eye blinks, neck swings,
mouth opens - good for eating magic ingredients). At the curtain call we got
to see Susanna Atkinson step out of her cow. She did a great job of
puppeteering, even playing patty-cake with Jack in the background while his
mother was nagging him about selling the cow. And of course, there's a
marvelous dance scene.
The play doesn't have any main star roles but I did notice Grame Parke as
a very good Jack - not too smart but happy and very alive. He's also a
newcomer to Orpheus, around half the cast is newcomers for this show!
Others also were quite good. Shaun Toohey did some fine acting as the
baker. I particularly liked the way he stayed in character while he
retrieved a bun and cookies dropped by Red Riding Hood (she's a good woods
punk, but no juggler). Nicole Milne was a great witch, and quite attractive
as a defrocked witch (costumes and makeup no doubt added to that).
Coincidentally both are also in Zucchini Grotto. Emily Reid also
was notable as the baker's wife. Even the stage hands were better than
usual, disguised as ogres (lying quietly against the set they are responsible
for during the action) rather than just dressed in black. Maybe that's why
actors like Sondheim so much - there are so many juicy roles, where not only
the stars get a chance to shine, and the whole cast did shine or at least
glowed strongly; nobody flamed out.
Rapunzle's tower was amazing. It filled the stage right up to the
ceiling, with its cute wood shingled roof way up in the rafters. Apparently
the whole thing is made of Styrofoam blocks, assembled then cut with a hot
wire into rough stone shapes, then painted and heavily fire proofed. Inside
is, I was told, a spiral staircase leading up to the window that Rapunzel
looks out from. That was also the scene of the only noticeable glitch - the
lighting guys failed to light her, so you saw an eerie figure in the dark
window, with streams of hair spilling out. Lighting made up for it near the
end with a well lit scene where Cinderella and Red are on stage in one spot
and Jack and the baker are on the stage stairs, lit with a pattern of
sunlight and forest leaf shadows.
The play does bring up some moral points. There's a blame cycle where
everyone is following the chain of causality that lead to the giantess
arriving and pointing out the part that someone else played. Another point
is that the giantess is a person too, who helped Jack at first, before Jack
stole from the giants and then killed her husband. So who's the bad guy now?
Costumes looked excellent, with the usual fantasy ball gowns taken to the
next level. Even the wolf was dressed up, as a very toothy stylish dandy who
happened to have a lot of body fur. He (Dennis van Staalduinen) did a good
on the spot in-character improvisation when interviewed by a TV evening news
channel, wish I had the link for it. One notable costume was Cinderella's
mother, a tree. The bottom part was a stump (on a platform moved by stage
ogres), her gown was under lighting that made it look like forest shadows,
branches stuck out here and there, and it was all topped with a lit halo
around her hair. Sets, props, makeup, hair, lighting, costume departments
all in one!
While the show was well performed and fun to watch, it wasn't as
entertaining as my recent favourite, The Producers. I suspect
that's because the play follows a group rather than a main character, and has
losses that affect the characters. It's funny when the stepsisters get
blinded, because we think they're bad. Not funny when the baker's wife gets
squished, because we think she's good, even though she did dally with a
prince. Many people have noticed this about Sondheim's works. Contrast him with the
more commercially successful Andrew Lloyd Webber, who I suspect favours
stories with a central character you can get involved in, rather than
following a village. Sondheim wins awards for original work, Webber is
popular. So, summing up, worth seeing once for the spectacle.
- 20110215 20:00 The Long Weekend at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $14 dinner at The Yangtze, $5 parking near OLT.
A fun play, keeping the audience laughing. It's about a pair of couples,
putting on false faces to get along with their friends, but really hating
each other for assorted reasons and falling in love with the wrong people
despite obvious mismatches. The bulk of it revolved around negative opinions
about the other people, often revealed by talking disparagingly about
something (like the lack of a driveway or the kitchen paint colour) with a
spouse and then saying the opposite to the person when they show up, just to
be polite.
The play was helped tremendously by the good character acting (for
example, facial expressions of anguish by Dale MacEachern), that made you
follow the thrust and ripost of their snide verbal attacks with interest.
Two years later after divorces and switched partners, the group meets again
and they have new peeves about each other, particularly after falling in love
and then finding they don't like the person. "It's funny because it's true"
may apply in reverse to the many people who gave it a standing ovation;
perhaps there were a lot of people who experienced subterfuge and divorce in
the crowd?
- 20110212 20:00 The Trouble with Being Ernest at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show, $46 dinner at Big Easy's.
Starting out a bit weak (the mens' voices weren't quite theatrically
authoritive), this play got going by the second half. Maybe the women were
better at throwing their voices? Lots of words, well performed. The setting
had been changed to British India rather than England, making the different
social circles in the country and city seem a bit more separated. The
servants were Indian, and there was some sitar music at times, particularly
at the big ending done in a Bollywood dance style. I should really describe
the play, but I've run out of time.
For the light bulb count, it went from 3 out to 1 (and it's missing, not
just dark), additionally with one ceiling still light burnt out (if what I'm
seeing above the audience is actually a fixture).
- 20110205 21:00 This is a Recording at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass), $18 dinner at The Works.
Some similarity to last time, but with more death - such as the children
of a man dying from bleeding internals, who are more concerned with his fate
than he is.
- 20110205 15:00 Spent at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass).
Great comedy. My favourite of the series. Worth seeing again because
it's so funny and has so much content. It starts with an unemployed man in a
suit holding a cardboard sign that says "Hire Me!" After a bit of flirting
with the audience (good use of facial expressions to show hope and
disappointment), a second suit comes up with a sign that says he'll work for
$600,000, held upside down. Obviously a high level executive.
The theme is the 2008 recession. The two actors then simulate TV news
reports from the BBC, with marvelous shifts in expression and voices (and
jumping around or turning backs to simulate camera cuts) as they interview
financial experts and people who lost their livelihood from around the world
- German trader with hair that he keeps on flipping out of his eyes
(simulated with fingers), stoic Japanese, Australian, swearing New Yorker and
so on.
There's a congressional hearing with Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. The
questioning politician tries to ask him if it is unfair that he took all the
money while shareholders and clients lost everything. Fuld just replies with
details about salary numbers, but whenever wealth is mentioned, he subtly
licks his lips. The audience noticed.
For a bit of a side story and fantasy excursion, we follow two Toronto
(pronounced humourously Brittishly by the BBC reporters) financial management
men on a window ledge. After they discover each other (after some dangerous
looking ledge walking and last thoughts), they jump (accidentally) together.
We see them falling with ties fluttering in the wind, but then they manage to
spread wings and fly, ending up in Heaven. There they have a good innocent
time, until they start a feast that ends up as cannibalism, and have problems
paying their restaurant bill.
Lacking money, they pull out a banking card and use that to get cash.
Lots of cash - flying out onto the stage. Which they then greedily grab.
After some fighting and excreting of money (how symbolic), they end up in
hell. There the Devil grabs them on his trident and tosses them around.
They play both the Devil (a two actor job - providing horns and cleft feet)
rapidly switching with the men in suits. Then they resume their fall and go
splat onto Bay Street.
But they don't die, and soon all the news media (in all different
languages) are reporting about the miracle on Bay Street. We have a
interview with the holy financial men (one calmly staying still except for
his finger tracing infinity signs and the other in some sort of bug-eyed
religious trance). There's a marvelous Rapidfire panel discussion of
the holy financial men, with the two actors portraying the whole panel
getting into a violent argument about the meaning of the holy financial duo.
The two then leave earth, and when there are signs of financial recovery,
there are reports of people sighting them. The show ends with the two
catching a train near Toronto and heading out, hobo style, done as a Charlie
Chaplin silent film.
An amazing amount of material in one show (written by Dean Gilmour,
Michele Smith and the two actors), which alone makes it worth seeing again.
Additionally it's quite topical. The acting by Adam Paolozza and Ravi Jain
is very good, they're masters of timing, movement and expression, not to
mention voices! Worth seeing a few more times.
- 20110205 13:00 My Pregnant Brother at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass).
The audience loved it, I'm out of time so you should be able to find a
good review elsewhere.
- 20110202 20:00 Strawberries in January at the GCTC
$37 show.
A bit confusing but not sleep inducing arrangement of stories about four
people and their relationships. Confusing because it's all lies - stories
made up by François as he re-tells the events as a movie. Good use of
projected images on the stage rear to set the scene from the movie point of
view. Also used a brick wall with a big window of transparency to change
from a coffee shop (showing shelves of cups) to a hotel desk (rows of
keys).
- 20110129 21:00 Hard Ways at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass), $38 dinner at Petit Bill's.
Amazing what you can do with one actor stuck in a US border interrogation
room, with nothing but a one way mirror to talk to. His chatter about being
caught with too much cash while crossing the border leads to stories that
reveal his true reason for being there. The hot little room periodically
suffers an attack of some sort, moving things around and depositing items
that prompt our actor's character to explain more. The appearance of some
dice make him tell the story of getting a Player's Club card at the local
casino for the free parking, so he can visit his young daughter in Canada
more cheaply. That changes to the towel he gave her, which also doubles as a
craps table. By the end, the heat has ramped up and the water cooler
disappeared, when we find he's there because his daughter died while
neglected for hours in a hot car. His hot bureaucratic Hell was reached by
suicide on the Falls, but that heat is negligible compared to the pain he
feels inside.
It's a good point of view story, but I don't feel too sympatheric since
the main character seems to be quite stupid in getting himself into trouble.
He doesn't know the odds behind casino gambling (and he idiotically plays 3
card Monty where he loses, rather than Craps where he at least has some
skill). His anger and selfishness do him in too (as well as the Casino's
easy credit policy). Shouting at his young daughter doesn't impress me.
Fortunately the odds are quite low that people are that stupidly bad, maybe
less than one in a million? No? It does
happen, though in Canada it is the cold that kills too. Hmmm, maybe more
often than that, CBC
reports "About once a month, children are left alone in vehicles in B.C.
casino parking lots while their parents gamble, according to B.C. Lottery
Corporation documents obtained by the CBC through an access to information
request." Looks like this play is more relevant than I thought!
- 20110129 15:00 Shadows at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass).
Nice to see a particularly boyish Margo MacDonald again as Eva, with Sarah
Finn as Josephine, in a well acted show about a lesbian actress in 1930's New
York city. It's essentially a biography, told in out of chronological order
slices of time. The main topic is Eva's affair with Josaphine (attaching,
divorcing husband, good days, breaking up, meeting years later) and the gas
explosion that disfigured Eva in the middle, but not in that order. The
scenes reveal the characters' personalities well (good acting there, perhaps
that's why it got good reviews at the Fringe Festival), but unfortunately
don't form an enthralling story line for me (or the tendency to doze off
could be due to a sleepy afternoon show time).
- 20110129 13:00 Bifurcate Me at the GCTC Studio
$10 show (undercurrents festival 6x pass).
The best show of the day in my opinion. Lots of physical action, all
about falling down in the name of science.
Two blackboards, one with a legend of abbreviations for falling styles
(FSp - free fall with a spin, FC - partial fall with a catch, and dozens
more, including the very long duration Japanese Butoh fall) and a second one
with equations using those codes. So if you see AM*20FC means Andy
Massingham will do 20 falls with a catch. The actors are truely heroic or
crazy for punishment in this play about a scientific experiment testing some
theory or other on the human guinnea pigs. The off scene scientist
dispassionately tells them which trial to run, they do the falls and related
actions (fall while hugging the other subject, Julie Le Gal, or while
talking, or while climbing stairs). After each experiment, they might take
their pulse rate and write the results on the blackboard chart section, or
draw chalk outlines on the green floor for the fall positions.
After one long run of three experiments (one of which has the 20FC entry -
I counted and they did indeed do that many), the scientist tells them that he
didn't get good data and they have to do the whole run over again. This is
over 30 getting up and falling on the ground actions. You groan, and they do
it all, all of it, ending up with Andy's bald head turning quite sweaty and
Julie yet more bruised and with a bleeding elbow (bruises on the shoulder
noticable while taking bows at the end of the show). Yet the second run of
seemingly random moves (the sequences of falling over a box with a couple of
wooden steps, in time to a metronome, is wonderful) is repeated exactly,
making me think of actors performing a play. There is some off-experiment
talk as the English speaking Andy develops a crush on the French Julie, with
suitably Canadian language misinterpretation at times. And there's that
wedding dress in the filing cabinet drawer. But the fun is seeing them put
falling safely training to good use.
- 20110111 20:00 Trying at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $25 dinner at Takara Japanese Restaurant, $5 parking near OLT.
An enjoyable two character play. The foundation is the excellent writing
of Joanna McClelland Glass about a young woman taking on the job of private
secretary to elderly judge Francis Biddle. Jim McNabb played the old man
quite well; with limps and other characteristics of age. The script provided
some of them too, including repeated questions and forgetfulness as the
judge's condition worsened. Sara Duplancic played Sarah Schorr the
secretary, with 1960's style hair, dress and polite deference, which breaks
appropriately when the judge's unfairness and bullying becomes too much for a
sensible Saskatchewan girl. She cries at a couple of emotional points when
the judge matter-of-factly mentions some of his work while writing his
memoirs (the judge had pointed out the bathroom as a place for crying), such
as his regret for the Japanese internment laws during World War II.
The theme of the play is "trying", trying to get along with each other.
They did succeed, with reconciliation after the bullying outbreak. A year
later were getting along well, with Sarah taking on much of the work (cheque
writing, letter enhancement) that the judge could no longer do quickly.
The set was good too. It's a former stable (suitably framed with huge
timber support beams - were they real?), outfitted with plenty of 1950's
items. I particularly liked the black and white photos of the judge and
colleagues at important events/conferences on the wall. They also had nice
wooden filing cabinets, an ancient Dictaphone, gas powered metal heater boxes
(you can tell that Sarah had won the judge's trust when you see her adjusting
them), and just one desk lamp that looked too modern.
Worth seeing once, and maybe again in a decade or so to refresh the
memory.
- 20101217 20:00 It's a Wonderful Life at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show, $38 dinner at Trattoria Caffe Italia.
This was an unusually fun play simulating a radio show doing the story
from the It's a Wonderful Life film. Notable elements:
- The Gladstone Sisters - good harmony. They sound good without a backup
band, partly because they accompany themselves with just their own sounds
or sleigh bells or banjo & kazoos.
- Sound effects - done live for many, many things. It's always there but
sometimes you notice the sound person - such as when she elaborately put on
safety glasses before breaking glass in a bag to simulate the sound of
rocks thrown through a window.
- David Holton - a really good Jimmy Stewart voice plus shy and clumsy
mannerisms for George Bailey.
- Teri Loretto-Valentick - lively performance of Mary Hatch Bailey,
including reacting to the other actors while her radio character was idle.
She was also the director.
- Lucas Granzotto-Martin - sign holder stage boy and the theatre owner's
son (I was a bit surprised that Steve Martin wasn't in the show himself).
He was funny by being bored and having to go to the bathroom and other
hijinks.
It was better than previous radio show productions, perhaps because the
story from the film added more to it. It seems to have been sold out too;
there were even people in the wings, on second last night. But you can also
see the end of the Gladstone era as maintenance winds down, with 3 candelabra
bulbs (one last show, usually none) and one ceiling light burnt out.
- 20101207 20:00 Inspecting Carol at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, home dinner, $5 parking near OLT.
A fun show about a company performing the Christmas Carol badly and in
fear of having their funding cut. Good looking set on stage with real
theatre seats in front of a stage on the stage. Memorable points are the
English actress switching to a southern US drawl (Charlotte Stewart is a
voice expert in real life). The newly hired (for "multicultural" reasons,
meaning in the USA's culture that he was dark skinned) actor without time to
learn the lines converting the future ghost's children of poverty and
ignorance into the turkey's dark and white meat. Mark Sparks used his strong
voice and directness to portray that actor trying to be serious about his
role while under pressure. Christine Drew (an acquaintance) had a big part
this time, including a funny scene where she tries to be sexy in a red dress
to seduce the supposed inspector from the funding agency. J. Taylor Morris
was pretty good as a really bad actor / presumed inspector. So was Louis
Lemire as the bored political actor, trying to alter things in crazy ways to
make a statement, helped by 1960's hippie hair. Finally, the finale was
memorable too, both the big stage disaster and the revived inspector. A good
show, going above average in the second half.
- 20101124 20:00 I at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show, home dinner.
I tested out my recommendation that the play was worth seeing twice by
going to see it again, dragging along my mom this time. Yes it is worth
seeing twice. I noticed a few new things - the details of acting,
foreshadowing and what the chorus was doing.
The acting details happened first, because I somehow didn't engage with
the flow of the story until a bit later than usual, so I observed Andy
Massingham's crazy eye movements and Emmanuelle Zeesman's enthusiastic
glances and stares at her hero. Guess that's acting - doing things wildly
enough to be visible to people at the back of the theatre. Or maybe that's
just due to sitting in the front row.
I also paid more attention to what the chorus was doing, which most people
will only subconsciously pick up since their attention is on the main
characters. The chorus is always on "I's" side, supporting his opinions.
They watch him with adoration (and violin music) while he tells his story
about growing up in a grass hut in London. They thump books to emphasise
points when he's talking about Literature. They react in pain when Eugenia
gets carried away numbering the characters that should be in a play. I
noticed that they start bumping into Eugenia more often as she gets ensnared
by "I's" teaching, another sign of "I's" increasing influence.
In the foreshadowing department, "I" warns about his brainwashing, proudly
claiming that he writes things to "capture the reader". Maybe this play
should be thought of as a paranormal horror story. As well, in his book of
rules, there are 40 chapters (I suspect one for each previously captured
aspiring writer) and he's adding a new one soon. One minor production
difference is that the door number didn't change from 41 to 1 this time,
maybe that was too cute.
The young writer finds her own voice because she wants to write a play
where the lead character is a woman. In retrospect this is more obviously
the factor that frees her from "I's" influence. He claims to have already
written every possible plot, but literally can't understand what she's saying
when she's asking him about the lead being a woman. Maybe her play is about
a woman having to surpass the old male establishment, much like this play,
maybe it is this play.
I also talked with David Hersh a bit in the lobby before the show and
found out that most of the chorus is made up of volunteers, except the two
leads who stuck around the whole time during preproduction. As well, the
ending is actually a new one, not one of the seven he initially had written.
Finally, a lot of this is inspired by Eugène Ionesco's The
Lesson, with some flipped references such as the bearded tenor instead
of the bald soprano. Ripping out the skeleton from that play and fleshing it
out with a huge chorus worked really well!
- 20101119 20:00 I at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $38 dinner at Lindenhof.
"I" is a witty and funny absurd play, about writing a play. A young woman
named Eugenia (enthusiastically and energetically played by Emmanuelle
Zeesman) moves to Paris to write the best play ever, hoping to be inspired by
working in the room formerly inhabited by her favourite playwright. She's
read all of "I's" plays many times over as a child, and won't read any other
author's works until she's understood them completely. I'm not sure that's
wise, but then "I" is so famous that he's known by just his first name's
initial letter.
Surprisingly, and despite the warning to lock the door, Eugenia lets in an
absent minded bald headed stranger in academic robes, who turns out (after
some roundabout questioning) to be "I", played with a superior but not too
pompous attitude by Andy Massingham. He agrees to mentor Eugenia and they
start right away. "I" has points to make and hates being interrupted, which
Eugenia can't help doing. And of course, Eugenia won't be able to write
anything as good as his material.
As "I" explains things, other academically robed people come on stage,
accumulating into a chorus. They initially don't do much, other than
listening to "I" talk and occasionally doing double takes (making for some
quite humourous moments) when Eugenia gets things wrong. She normally doesn't
see them and just walks by them. They can speak (Eugenia won't be able to
hear them), but usually don't (afterward I found out that they originally had
lots of dialog but it was hard to hear what so many people were
simultaneously saying so lots of it got off-loaded to "I"). A nice bit of
depth is added by a violin player (David Whitely I think) who reacts in an
amused benevolent way to Eugenia's mistakes, and there are one or two other
musical ones mixed in with the additional chorus members.
However, as the chorus grows and grows, they start filling up the stage
and swamp Eugenia's space. When the crowd gets big enough, Eugenia does get
pushed around, lifted up and carried around, then sucked down and devoured by
a sea of hands.
My theory is that every time Eugenia gives in to "I's" way of thinking,
another chorus guy shows up. For example, when "I" asks her to choose
between tragedy and comedy, the correct answer is tragedy because it makes
people happier at the end of the play, like torture being ended. Comedy is
sad because the fun stuff stops at the end of the play. If Eugenia's mind
gets changed to this, then another chorus member gets created. Several other
people thought the chorus men were different versions of "I" from earlier
times. The playwright suggested in the talk-back that they were former
aspiring writers who visited that room and got consumed by "I's" way of
writing instead of finding their own voice.
There's also a wonderful discussion on how many characters to have - 3
seems to be the number, but Eugenia carried the odd number rule to larger
values (conveniently at that moment there are 13 on stage). The original
play was slated to have a chorus of 40 men (a bit of a counterweight to the
one woman!) since it would be a nice big group, though in practice the show
only has 26 (the Gladstone stage isn't that big). Of course, this is
somewhat uneconomical in a professional theatre, but when all your acting
friends hear about it and want to be in the show, it's practical as a
volunteer operation.
At the end, the playwright (he's also the director) choose a satisfying
ending from the seven that he'd originally written. Eugenia finds her own
voice and starts actually writing (before she just sat at the typewriter
staring at a blank page, and had never actually written a play). That
triggers a number of events - the concierge changes the room number from 41
to 1, the chorus melts away and "I" starts losing words - Andy Massingham did
a good job of speaking loudly with gaps of silence.
Quite a fun and witty play, worth seeing again in my opinion. I'll verify
that soon...
- 20101117 20:00 Vimy at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, co-produced by GCTC and NAC.
$36 show.
The play is a look at World War I from the point of view of four Canadian
survivors of the attack on Vimy Ridge. It starts with their stay in a field
hospital under the care of a Bluebird nurse, where we discover the nature of
each soldier's wounds, their personality, and a bit about the nurse and her
story. Time starts jumping between different points in the past, with a
conversation or other event in the hospital turning into a scene from the
soldier's life in Canada - going canoeing with a friend, digging water supply
tunnels, signing up with the army. Some of the actors switch parts when this
happens - becoming the brother or a friend of the soldier remembering the
past. All of this brings out familiar regional differences between Canadians
- Western from Winnipeg, Indian, French Quebec, Ontarian, East coaster.
Though they may disagree on the name or brand, they all like hockey and beer.
Time advances to the preparations for the battle for Vimy Ridge, with
lower rank troops actually receiving maps of the area (unusual at the time)
and time to practice maneuvers related to the attack. Of course there are
lots of other preparations, like digging tunnels. Time remaining goes from
three months down to smaller and smaller chunks, where they have to do
different tasks, until it's 5 minutes before and we're waiting with the
troops underground. Time now stretches out tremendously as they wait, with a
candle for light, a cigarette to smoke and some rum to drink before the
battle, stuck under the wooden plank walkway set which has become a cramped
tunnel ceiling. The director did a good job of making the time stretch here.
We see the different parts of the battle - one guy gets stuck in a crater
and claws his way over dead bodies to get out, another is stuck in the middle
of gunfire from all sides for a day. But they all run into trouble - a gas
attack fells one (horrendously fulfilling an earlier vision of fire with
green light), stray bullets another and we now know why they're in the
hospital. There is a bit of afterwards: one gets a commendation for saving
another soldier, one doesn't make it out of the hospital.
One thing I noticed was that the sound effects quality (choice of sound,
volume levels, spatial placement) was much above average and very effective
for setting the atmosphere of different places and times. Perhaps that's a
side effect of being a joint production. The set was also of decent quality,
serving multiple purposes (cliff, tunnel, hospital) with deluxe minimalist
style, though the lighting could be a large part of that. Our neighbouring
audience member who does volunteer work as a war museum interpreter noted the
accuracy of the beds and uniforms.
One other noteable point: the characters frequently said they had memories
stuck inside themselves. I think is a reference to Remembrance Day, though
it accidentally sounds a lot like a recent NAC slogan about the theatre
inside.
Go and see it for a well engineered production on a serious topic that's
also quite interesting to watch, particularly if you're from Canada.
- 20101112 19:30 Annie at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show, $15 dinner at Ho Ho's Restaurant.
A nicely entertaining musical about Orphan Annie of comic strip fame.
About 10 children and a golden retriever dog are the stars of the show,
with Sophia Rathwell-Swettenham carrying the load of the lead orphan Annie
quite ably. Trevor Houle as Daddy Warbucks does a good acting job of showing
true affection towards Annie. Barb Seabright-Moor plays the mean orphanage
operator Miss Hannigan in a way that does homage to the film performance of
that role by Carol Burnett.
The story is a simple heartwarming one, set in the 1930's depression,
about an orphan finding a home and a new family, which I won't describe to
avoid spoiling things.
Of course there are lots of musical numbers in all sorts of different
settings. They include a rooftop scene of many unemployed people around a
fire barrel being cheered up by Annie, a paean about New York City by
Warbucks, and a radio show and a reprise imitation of it by the orphanage
girls, and more than a dozen other ones. The set makers did a decent job,
with a skyline of buildings with lit windows and moveable sets (Warbucks's
stylish place with the fancy fireplace was the best one). Another impressive
one was a drop-down overlay of illuminated signs for New York City (Bar,
hotel, etc) done as light bulbs (neon signs first were used for advertising
in the USA in 1923 so they could have used those too). Costumes and props
did the job - depressing dingy faded floral prints for the orphan costumes
were notable for not being notable. FDR's wheelchair was quite an old model;
I wonder where they got it from.
If you see the play a second time, watch the orphans listening to the
radio show (the audience is mostly watching the brightly lit show on the
other side of the stage) and you'll notice that they're reacting to it and
playing their characters even though they are out of the spotlight. They're
doing things like pulling up their cheeks with their fingers to make a really
big smile during the dental advertisement. I also noticed that one of the
girls had on black shoes while the rest were beige. After the radio show
finished, the attention focused back on the orphans reprising the radio show,
and that included a tap-dance segment by the little girl with black shoes,
Elliza Bowie I think.
The most noticeable glitch in the opening night performance was when
Annie's wig of fancy curls started bouncing and sliding off her head while
she was energetically performing. Warbucks surreptitiously slid it back in
place when he was near Annie, staying in character with an affectionate
smile. The other big glitch was a missing window in Warbuck's house,
apparently due to the stage hands missing a cue. They did the smart thing by
not dropping it in during that act - I and most people didn't notice it
wasn't there. The rooms just looked more full in later acts.
To sum up, it's worth seeing for the entertainment factor.
- 20101107 15:00 Wingfield Lost and Found at Shenkman Arts Centre.
$35 show, home dinner, free parking.
Wingfield is just as great as ever. I thought it was kind of ordinary
until the story got going, then it was Rod Beattie's marvelous character
portrayals in combination combined with my imagination that brought the world
to life. The script was no slouch either, besides moving things along well,
Dan Needles has kept with the times so now you have a cell phone coordinated
cattle roundup which goes wrong, and references to an exit strategy if
climate change makes the farm dry up. That's the main theme of this one -
drought. But it's alleviated by reuniting lost things, lost water and lost
people. Worth seeing again. Particularly if you're from Canada and can get
cultural references (like the NDP noise).
- 20101029 20:00 The Turn of the Screw at Laurier House. Show web site: http://turnofthescrew.ca/ Runs until November 7th.
$25 show, no dinner due to a very filling team pizza lunch at work.
This play is a Halloween ghost story told appropriately in an old manor
house formerly inhabited by some of Canada's prime ministers.
Before describing the play, I should mention the location (with thanks to
the staff who opened up the building for the show), which adds greatly to the
atmosphere of the production. Laurier House is an old Victorian (Second
Empire style) house built in 1879, 7 years after the play takes place. We
went up the red carpeted stairs to the second floor landing, which was big
enough to hold 4 rows of 7 wooden chairs (with thin pillows) for the
audience. The actors performed in front of us and up and down the stairs.
The dark wood panelling in the staircase area takes you back to an older
time, both in look and in the scent of old wood. If you know the history,
then you'll have the added bonus of knowing about the séances and
crystal ball used nearby by one prime minister. The lighting is also part of
the atmosphere, with floor lights illuminating the walls all up and down the
stairs and a couple of spot lights for the main area in front of the
audience. When the lights fade out, we're left in in cozy warm (steam
heated) darkness, except for worries about what else may be out there,
unseen.
Kate Smith plays the governess who runs into ghostly trouble with her two
children. Kris Joseph ably plays everyone else, from the absent uncle, house
keeper, right down to the boy (looking like Dobby while acting small). Since
the staging is so limited, I found myself imagining the scene more than usual
- such as a 3 story brown sandstone tower that the a ghost was seen on in a
stormy night. Other people imagined different types of stone.
As we're sitting very close to the actors, we were able to inspect their
clothing in more detail. You notice things like a watch chain, the shape of
the buttons on a blouse, shoes which need polishing, or cloth that looks too
new, more than you would otherwise. Overall, those period costumes fitted
their roles quite well. We also thank the actors for not accidentally
spitting while speaking loudly.
SPOILERS: The story puts the newly employed young governess in charge of
the manor house, with strange orders not to contact the master. She starts
off well enough, making friends with the mute daughter. But then the evil
(or abused or inappropriately trained) 10 year old son shows up, kicked out
of school for saying something naughty. The stress on the governess builds
up as she finds out more about the death of the previous governess and the
valet and how they influenced the children in bad ways, perhaps with too much
sex out in the open. She starts seeing ghosts of people who match the
description of the former governess and valet, even though there are
supposedly no pictures of them. She has to defend the children, to stop the
ghosts from attracting them away to a watery death in the lake, or worse
possessing them for carnal purposes. Or maybe the children are playing with
the governess's mind, going out into the garden and staring up at the roof as
if someone was there. This ambiguity has made the original novel attractive
to literary critics, trying to decide if the governess really saw the ghosts
or was insane. The end result was brutal, with the daughter sent to an
insane asylum and the son dying in the governess's arms (climactic ghost
exorcism or just crushed to death?). The governess moves on, always looking
for pairs of children. Is she now working as a matchmaker for the ghosts?
An entertaining little play, worth going to for the cozy atmosphere.
- 20101026 20:00 Honeymoon at Graveside Manor at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $13 dinner at The Yangtze, $5 parking near OLT.
A very entertaining and funny farce of a Halloween sort. Good haunted
house set (not just spider webs but puffs of dust from people and things
touching the furniture). Josh Sparks did a very good job of being crazy,
even after the show when the actors were taking their bows. Good scary hair
and costume for Tina Prud'homme in her role as car accident victim mistaken
for a zombie. Had me thinking the women in white was a ghost right to the
end, though I suspected something was up with the gun a bit earlier. The
audience agreed that it was entertaining - breaking out into laughter and
applause quite a few times. Worth seeing once for the surprise of the
mystery, then a few years later when you've forgotten the details but still
remember that it was good.
- 20101016 20:00 Hamlet (solo) at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by Hope and Hell Theatre Co.
$25 show, home dinner.
Very good Shakespeare, surprisingly audible and more understandable (who
the characters are and their relationships) for a performance by a single guy
in front of an audience with no amplification, at least from the front row.
My only regret is that he doesn't do distinctive body language as well as
I've seen others do; so sometimes you can't tell which character he is
playing when he's having a conversation. It's interesting for the
Shakespearean core - the words in action, but not particularly entertaining
for the casual viewer. Though because it is done with words, some things
become more prominent and funnier, like the speech by Polonius about how
Laertes should behave in life. Wish I could write more about Raoul Bhaneja's
marvelous performance (and understanding Shakespeare better) but I'm busy at
work this weekend.
- 20101015 19:30 A Flea in Her Ear at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), home dinner.
As usual the first show of the season is lots of fun. A surprisingly
large cast did justice to this translation of a French farce. Good acting,
good comic timing (culminating in the dramatic pile-up of people at the end
of the second act). Though some of the players were hard to understand, like
the guy who speaks only vowels :-), or the Spanish hot tempered husband with
a gun. The French Canadian hotel guest who nobody could understand (French
French is different) was a third. Good set too, and it's fun to watch the
change in one of the two intermissions. Unfortunately I'm busy at work this
week so there isn't time to write much more, so you'll just have to go out
and have an enjoyable time yourself.
- 20100922 20:00 The List at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by GCTC.
$36 show, home dinner.
An unusual ticket taking procedure (at the front door, before the show)
flowed into the audience entering behind and around the stage (a giant window
frame looking onto fields with distant mountains, and one near tree), making
them appear to be a crowd passing by the window to the people already in
their seats.
This play was another one in the depressing slice of life category, but
this time it was about being a housewife stuck in a house and raising
children (except on joyous Wednesdays when day-care took them) rather than
the usual gritty and stupid (like spending money on drinking) poverty
situation.
She's made mistakes and realises that, but her overly compulsive neatness
personality locks her into making more. She starts with admitting to moving
to the country to get her husband's undivided affections, which just made him
tired from commuting and her tired from raising three children. She now
hates living in the country. In comparison with her sloppy neighbour
Caroline (kids drawing on walls, full cloths hamper in the living room), she
does spend more time cleaning up play-dough, washing things and ordering the
children around, but seems less happy for it. There's a nice allusion to the
balance between doing different things when she walks barefoot along the
window ledge while talking about it.
That neatness uses up a lot of time so she makes up lists of things to do
so she can be more efficient. There are important items, floating items
(like making a dental appointment because her teeth look yellower one day)
and things which get procrastinated. Unexpected events upset the lists (good
handling of unexpected things is desirable but rare, in all sorts of
systems). Undone list items get copied onto new lists or dropped. Some of
the lists turn into songs in musical interludes during the play.
One of the unimportant items, finding the phone number for her city doctor
to give to Caroline, gets dropped and Caroline dies indirectly from that due
to medical sloppiness. Much like accidents in the real world (see
comp.risks) it's a series of failures: no reference for a better doctor,
artery got cut, blood transfusion, no anticoagulant, blood clot, lying down
recommended, death. But still she blames herself. Actually, having someone
that organised not find the phone number seems jarringly inconsistent to me.
Particularly for a mother. Now she's stuck with helping take care of
Caroline's kids. Of course, they always remember how their real mother did
things in comparison to their new assistant mother.
So what's this play about? I think it's the busyness of doing so much
when raising children that you lose sight of the big things. Or just don't
have time to think. Most of the critics think this is a boring play (maybe
because they're men), but apparently for some women who have lived that life,
it can be much more significant. I didn't find the play very entertaining,
but it sure was fun to write about.
Which reminds me, there were lists on pillars in the entrance hall. One
was a to-do list for the world, which while having lots of the usual worthy
things (peace, anti-pollution, education, CBC funding) missed my big one -
redundancy. One more big asteroid impact and life could be snuffed out.
I'll have to do something about that. All right, put that at the top of the
list!
- 20100921 20:00 Crossing Delancey at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $10 dinner at The Yangtze,
$0.50 parking near Yangtze, $5 parking near OLT.
A good character play about a young woman named Isabelle who is finding
her future husband along two paths. One is her fantasy love for a partly
successful writer who visits her bookstore frequently to check on his sales.
She's read all his books, but he doesn't remember her name. The other path
is the eldest son Sam who is running the family pickle business. The pickle
guy is "helped" by Hannah the matchmaker, who sets up some embarassing
situations. Isabelle's bubbie (Jewish grandmother) has her own advice.
After much pushing and pulling in different directions, by different people,
Isabelle finally figures it out. The core of the play is that pushing and
pulling - dates, a derailed romantic phone calls that turns into an interview
for writing an article, relationship tensions and duties, a story about hats
affecting personality, a new hat for Isabelle, then a dress. A really bad
suit for Sam (obviously poor fit and apparently really bad style too). Yes,
there are all sorts of odd things that make this quite a character play.
Dee Dee Butters (of Orpheus Producers Swedish fame) did a
very good job of portraying Isabelle. Danielle Silverman had several
stumbles over words as Bubbie, but made up for it with excellent Jewish
grandmotherly actions (good writing of stereotypical lines delivered with a
good accent). Cathy Nobleman was a bit crazy as Hannah the matchmaker. I'm
not sure if she was also a bag lady, but she did always have a small wheeled
wire cart full of things and seemed to have her office in the park, and would
be really happy if she got money for her efforts. Sean Brennan (writer
Tyler) and Jean-Claude Lizé (pickler Sam) were both good as the men in
the story, with a neat double entendre for Tyler (was it a romantic dinner or
a secretarial job offer) and hard swimming for Sam (turbulent waters stirred
up by the women).
It may be stereotypical, but it is a stereotype with heart.
- 20100731 19:00 Trouble on Dibble Street at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott Ontario.
$25 show, $18 dinner (half of the very good food for two people deal, next
time only need 1 main dish, not three to be full) at the Wonton Chinese
Restaurant in Prescott, free parking.
This one was quite a fun play. Lots of local references, live music,
funny acting (Kris Joseph was wonderfully humourous as the doctor from
Quebec), good costumes (period ones from the Prescott of 1910) and quite a
large cast (big scene at the end with added children making a big scary mob
on Spook Hill). Of the two I saw today, this is the one I enjoyed.
- 20100731 14:00 Macbeth at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott Ontario.
$25 show, $2 ice cream bar, free parking.
A decent Macbeth. Nice to see Kris Joseph in the main role, being quite
dramatic in the classical English theatre way. But it was Macbeth. Very
sunny too, glad I had the big hat and a bit of shadow from my girlfriend's
huge umbrella.
- 20100727 20:00 The Andrews Brothers at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), home dinner.
A good excuse to pump out a lot of music and dance from the 1940s. The
stage hands greet visiting backup singer and pin-up girl Peggy Jones with a
few tribute songs and pretend to be real singers rehearsing with her (nice
number with moving around the giant poster of her in sync with the other guys
moving her physically the same way, and a fun amazingly fast word song).
There's a bit of tension as she flirts with the stuttering shy Patrick, well
played by David daCosta.
The Andrews Sisters can't do the show but the stage hands know it by
heart. With a bit of a push from Peggy after she sees them joking around
with Hawaiian grass skirts, they take over the show. One of the best parts
was a bit of audience participation for a driving in a jeep song and then a
farewell song which one of the "privates" picked from the audience knew and
was able to sing along with.
They were believably awkward as the sisters, besides wig and high heeled
shoe troubles, they awkwardly did the gyrations that women have to do (which
makes me realise how sexist those moves are). That awkwardness also made
them seem to sing less well. So when the wigs were off, it was a pleasure to
hear them singing as men again for a few more numbers. And yes, there was a
tap dance song, which the guys had to abandon to Peggy Jones (Emmanuelle
Zeesman) who showed off her skills there (and a permanent smile). As you may
guess, owner Steve Martin's dance training skills were put to good use in
making this show.
- 20100716 19:00 A Midsummer Night's Dream by A Company of Fools at the Andy Grover park in Stittsville (now a part of Ottawa).
$15 show, $9 KFC dinner.
A good production at a really good site. We grabbed some take-out chicken
and a couple of lawn chairs and got to the Alexander Grove Park in
Stittsville shortly after the play had started. The site was magnificent,
with huge pine trees shading the glade where about 150 people where sitting
in a half circle in front of a stage made from stacked wooden boxes. A
pleasant breeze blew away the muggy heat of the day.
The actors stayed on their toes, improvising as they interacted with the
audience, while performing Shakespeare's play in the original language.
Quick costume changes while ducking down behind the stage or going into a
tent at the side let the cast of six cover many characters (including fairies
and an ass).
Their use of water balloons for the love potion was fun, and I can see how
it would help on hot days. That worked back into the play too, with
complaints about wet spots in the forest amongst other references. One
oddity was a balloon which exploded sideways and didn't make the actor wet!
A quite enjoyable evening. Note: chicken grease does go through paper
towels and into pants fabric.
- 20100611 20:00 Italian American Reconciliation at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average).
Not much time to write a review - got thousands of photos to process from
a recent trip. The play had good Italian accents all around and tough
Italian guy attitude mannerisms for Aldo Scalicki, played by Steve Martin.
He even was the tough guy (threw out someone) when he mixed with the audience
at the beginning before starting his tale about people's crazy relationships.
Lots of talking to find the layers of relationship. Most memorable scene is
when Aldo tries to seduce his best friend Huey's ex-wife as a warm-up
requested by Huey before Huey comes to visit at midnight. Despite the
gunfire, things work out in the end.
- 20100610 19:30 Airport Security at the Irving Greenberg studio theatre in the GCTC building.
$25 show, walked to the theatre from work!
Nice mixture of stock security and instructional phrases as an initial
audio background. Good moveable pair of units each with a large hinged box
on a platform which could be a gate, baggage conveyor, airline seats,
security scanning station. I think the plastic box/trays for putting in
items may have been the real thing, wonder how they got them out of a secure
zone :-) There were several short segments, some following a few story lines:
a couple in love but with paranoia problems (marijuana in the bag, sex in the
bathroom), another following a first-timer with packing worries (what did she
forget in her huge knapsack?), and some others, plus a room full of people in
the dark who don't know what's going on except when one of them on "the list"
occasionally gets taken away by a hooded figure who claims they're there to
help.
I would have liked to see a bit more of what it is like from the security
people's point of view - there was one segment that teased in that direction
when the paranoid husband had trouble answering the question about knowing
what was in his suitcase, since his wife packed it and he was being a little
bit too rigid about interpreting the rules. The clerk wanted to be really
sure that he didn't know since that would mean calling security, filling in
lots of paperwork and putting up with security hanging around for hours.
Anyway, nice to see Kris Joseph and Gruppo
Rubato in acting again, making up for missing the fringe festival this
year.
- 20100609 20:00 Heroes at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by GCTC.
$35 show, home dinner.
A good dialog/character play between three old men in a home for war
veterans in France in 1959. It's quite funny yet sadly melencholic, as they
know they are close to death. Very good character interaction (translated by
Tom Stoppard so you know its well written). Plus there's a stone statue of a
dog that sometimes gets included in their group - some of them are a bit
crazy and others are not. That makes for some odd situations, like their big
push to go to Indo-china or have a picnic, requiring roping up (it's not all
dialog) to climb the hill to the poplar trees. Nice to see our top local
actors doing such an intensive character piece. But no time for review
details.
- 20100608 20:00 Present Laughter at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $20 dinner at Eastern Africa
Restaurant, $5 parking near OLT.
A good farce but with lots of over acting. That's partly because it's an
almost autobiographical slice of Noël Coward's life. It's hard to tell
what the famous actor is feeling, because he keeps on acting. Though by the
end you get the idea that he's annoyed by too many people being attracted by
his charisma, though he initially doesn't mind taking advantage of the young
female ones. Unfortunately no time to write a detailed review.
- 20100604 20:00 The Producers at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show ($40 at the door), $20 dinner at Swiss Chalet.
A really good production of a very well written funny play by Mel Brooks
(first performed in 2001). It is the same story as the original 1968 movie
with some additional material after the original end. Plot outline:
accountant notices that a flop could make money by spending less than the
amount raised from investors and then closing quickly, producer and
accountant hunt for worst script, a terrible director and inept cast,
performance is so bad it's good, jail time ensues.
The sets and costumes are very good, partly because Orpheus had a head
start with some material from the Windsor Light Musical Theatre
company's spring 2009 production (look for the pigeon coop and some of the
outrageous symbols of Germany costumes). Partly because the Orpheus teams
are good (I hear about the costume department had a dream team, and you see
that in the credits where they all mention the other team members). That
perhaps gave them time to do more than usual, including details like sequins
on sausages.
All the sets are good, starting with the opening Broadway theatre front to
establish the floppiness of Bialystock's shows, which is a forced perspective
solid stage filling thing rather than just a painted backdrop. The most
impressive set was for the actual show within a show, which was full of
pizzazz. There were moving mountains, a wall sized eagle icon (outlined in
electric lights) that splits in two to let dancers enter the stage from
behind, pedestals for actors to stand on to give the scene more depth. The
whole thing complements the over the top performance on the stage.
Intermediate sets were good too. One was for an accounting room where
Bloom works unhappily (essentially Humans organised into a computer). I
wondered why they made such solid desks/filing cabinets/half-wall cubicles
for five accountants, on wheels so they can roll them on quickly while the
audience watches the scene. Their secret is revealed when Bloom pulls a top
hat and cane out of a filing cabinet drawer, and then a number of chorus
girls (pseudo-scantily clad with lots of gold things on strings all over
their costumes), pop out of the filing cabinets, all done to show how Bloom
wants to be a producer rather than just a public accountant.
Even the plain office where Bloom and Bialystock work has its fancier
side - it changes to a totally white set when Ulla paints it all. I found
out at the opening night party that the secret is panels with Velcro, and
doubles for the props.
The acting starts out well and gets better. Right at the beginning there
are several background actors (cops, prostitutes, a newspaper vendor, city
workers) all doing "business" with their own background stories as well as
the crowd leaving the flop and complaining about it, and finally Bialystock
overhearing the crowd's cruel comments. Apparently each crowd "audience"
member had a role to fit the costume, such as rich Texan, or top hatted New
York establishment man and his wife, which helped the actors nicely flesh out
even these secondary characters.
There's quite a bit of humourous dialog and story to this show (written by
Mel Brooks so it can get a bit tasteless but more the funnier), carried off
well by the stars Shaun Toohey (of Zucchini Grotto singing fame) and Kodi
Cannon (who I may have seen at a few Fringe shows in the past). They do a
good job of the chemistry between the two characters, though Kodi is perhaps
not geeky enough at the start. There's also opportunity for hamming around,
as this is a Mel Brooks show it has double takes and stares galore,
particularly for the Swedish bombshell Ulla.
Being a musical, there are also a lot of musical numbers (Mel Brooks also
wrote the music!), and fitting everything in makes this one of the longer
productions Orpheus has done. The most impressive is of course the
Springtime for Hitler show within a show. It starts with symbols of
traditional Germany personified - four show girls with outrageous costumes,
often with side tables attached to their waist containing their symbol (beer
mugs, etc) and huge headgear (beer stein, pretzel, sausage). Once they've
finished their parade, they fill out the background by staying on pedestals
and platforms where they can be visible and dancing but out of the way of yet
more dancers filling the center of the stage. There's a huge musical number
with brown shirted Nazi party members and military (swastika arm-bands didn't
get censored) tap dancing, of all things, around in Busby Berkeley style
pinwheel formations. With somewhere around forty people, the stage was quite
filled and lively.
The choreography worked well. In particular I liked the way they showed
just how very many elderly women Bialystock had to seduce to get funding. It
goes from a stage filling mass of eighteen actors with walkers dancing around
in all directions (quite a sight in itself) suddenly ending up as a row of
swooning senior citizens, with Bialystock grabbing the cheques just ahead of
the domino wave of falling women and Zimmer frames tipping over onto their
backs.
Yes, definitely lots to see and quite funny (got a standing ovation at the
end). Worth seeing again, particularly since there's so much material that
you'd likely notice things you'd missed the first time.
- 20100330 20:00 An Act of the Imagination at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $12 dinner at Ahora, $5 parking near OLT.
A murder mystery swirling around a murder mystery writer who has
mysteriously started writing romances. Was it sparked by a real romance?
That's the key question to keep in mind to have a chance of guessing what's
what. The play starts with a gunshot (just testing apparently) and you just
know that the gun will have to be fired again later in the play. But by who?
This one was twistier than usual; with the audience's intermission votes for
the prime suspect turning out wrong. I was a little puzzled since the gun
hadn't been fired yet, so to me it was a question of who has done what? Keep
an eye out for the sliding panel next to the fireplace, which has a slight
discrepancy (edge isn't the same as the others) that you won't notice until
it's too late to notice what it was like before the gun was fired. But
that's trivia, the real meat was in who knows what and who's lying, and I
can't tell you without spoiling the plot.
The actors carried out their roles well enough (no problems hearing what
they were saying, even with odd accents, though I wouldn't know if that Welsh
was correct). Though I question whether real elderly women have Jane
Morris's jerkily feeble arm motions and indecisive choice of direction to
move in when stressed. Oh well, though a bit annoying for me and overused by
too many actors (or am I just seeing her in many plays?), those actions do
clearly convey that the character is upset and confused.
We were kept involved and guessing until the end, when it was revealed to
be Bernard Slade's fault. That made it an entertaining night.
- 20100421 20:00 Facts at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre.
$35 show, home dinner, free parking.
A good police procedural, with Israeli and Palestinian police detectives
figuring out who may have murdered an archaeologist. They follow a flimsy
trail where the archaeologist is revealing inconvenient truths about biblical
history and thus provides a motive to their only suspect, an Israeli Settler
who's car broke down nearby and near in time to the murder. On that hunch,
they bring him in for questioning, with the Palestinian being the good cop
(which he and the audience laugh at). The fun is mostly in the witty word
play between the cops and during the interrogation. They do find a
suspicious gap in his story, and unexplained parking tickets. He or his car
is up to something in Hebron, and not just at the time of the murder. It
does end unhappily, though with no need for a blood gutter around the stage
for Kris Joseph's Settler, unlike The Pillowman.
- 20100416 19:30 The Comedy of Errors by the Centaur Theatre Company from Montreal at The National Arts Centre Theatre.
$37 show, $25 dinner at Viña del Mar.
The setting was quite modern but the words were the original Shakespearean
English in this production (I was able to keep up, but just barely). I
mostly remember the set, and a few bits of acting.
The whole area (walls and floor) is veneered in metal sheets, with lines
where some of the metal can swing out of the way to reveal a statue, or have
a table slide out onto the floor. There are two doors (one elevator style,
one swinging) and a central passageway. There's an illuminated photo of the
queen on one wall and a clock without hands on the other. And hand sanitiser
dispensers beside the doors, which do get used. The space is turned into a
Via Rail station by the additon of a destination signboard (with Greek cities
named) and audio ambience. Or a modern bar - with a very very long metal and
glass bar (with illuminated shelves of bottles and glasses in the corners and
stools under the central part) rolled out through the elevator door
dangerously quickly. Or a bedroom (beds, sofas, tables slide out from the
hidden metal doors). Or a night club with a Star Wars theme implied by a
signboard outside, and a troop of passing people in Darth Vader costumes.
There's a projected image from a hand held TV camera shone on a wall to
highlight views of an argument between some of the characters. Supposedly
some of this is inspired by Montreal. The actors conveyed the confusion and
frustration of the errors quite well. The two Dromios get beaten by their
masters when they get things wrong (like not knowing where the sack of gold
is), but everyone shows their frustration in their voice and gestures.
Surprisingly, there's also some singing. At the end there's a nice contrast
of modern costumes (most of the characters are dressed like YUPies trying to
be stylish) against sturdy century old fashion when the sinful vampish Lady
Gaga-ish "woman" meets the ancient abbess of the church.
- 20100410 20:00 Blood Brothers at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $15 dinner at Phnom Penh Noodle House.
A different musical, with a sad ending. Live band with a piano, sax,
precussion and a couple of string instruments. They were good and a little
bit too loud, making the words in the first half of the play partly
inaudible. However, they fixed that for the second half (that was just the
second night for the show; hopefully it will be better balanced in future
performances).
The story is about twin brothers, separated shortly after birth to live in
a rich family and a poor family, with superstition keeping the poor mother
quiet about the deal she made with the childless rich woman. The children's
lives unfold on their respective tracks as you would expect, with them
becoming friends on their own, even though both parents want to keep them
separate. The dramatic downturn comes in late adolescence when the poor guy
loses his box making job, plunging him into a depression, spurning help from
the rich guy and alienating his girlfriend. Anyway, he makes stupid
decisions and his life gets worse from there, until the fatal ending.
But what about his upbringing makes him so stupid? Is it just being worn
down and made hopeless? But he was on top of the world shortly before losing
his job. Perhaps it was the responsibity of becoming a father combined with
losing a job. He also thinks he grew up while the rich guy (at university)
didn't. Perhaps he grew up too much. Or maybe his lack of education and
lack of practice with thinking meant he couldn't see the future clearly
enough to plan ahead and avoid stupid decisions.
It was nice to see Margo MacDonald in a serious role, but Emmanuelle
Zeesman was better as the poor mother. She lived that character by wearing
with age and stress (nice wrinkles and tired looking hair and somehow Peggy
Laverty found a faded flower pattern dress - they don't sell that fabric and
I suspect it would be hard to find used) but yet happy at times, enduring her
fate and eventually prospering a bit on her own. The music had an overall
dreamy slow sadness to it, though there were several happier lively bits, I
particularly remember the kids playing song and the new neighbours song.
- 20100330 20:00 Enchanted April at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $18 dinner at St-Hubert's chicken place plus lots of Lindt factory
outlet chocolate, $5 parking near OLT.
A delightful Italian castle revives the spirits of several early 1920's
British people suffering from a dreary post-war life.
- 20100327 20:00 Where the Blood Mixes at The National Arts Centre Studio.
$20 show (half price deal).
A surprisingly good slice of poor life play about First Nation's people
abused by the residential school system (kids removed from their families and
worse). The old generation father is wasting his time in a bar, wasting his
money on fruitless gambling (3 Beavers machine on stage) and his mooching
friend, and is ashamed to be seen by his daughter from the city when she
comes looking for a reunion. Though the live guitar (played on an assortment
of instruments, including something that could be a double neck slide guitar)
bar music by Jason Burnstick was very good. Turns out that a lot if this was
due to the suicide by the mother/wife after her daughter was taken away; the
husband and friends didn't recover for decades, though there is promise at
the end when the daughter finally gets to meet her dad. Why was it a good
play? This time there was more character development; we could see how they
changed and got mangled, and how they might find a way out.
- 20100317 20:00 blood.claat at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre.
$35 show.
Slice of poor life, this time in Jamaica and with more blood than usual.
The actress/playwright did quite a good job of portraying the many different
people tied to one girl's growing up troubles. One difference from other
slice of life plays is that the people are a bit more aware of their history,
including African pre-slavery royalty and British colonial horrors.
- 20100313 20:00 Show Tune Showdown at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$22 show, $23 dinner at Takara Japanese Restaurant, $5 parking near OLT.
I had a really enjoyable night at Show Tunes Showdown last night. To sum
it up, Zucchini Grotto Theatre Company was technically perfect singing as a
group (amazing harmony, even when doing the rapid fire multi-threaded
Rhythm of Life), and individually. Orpheus Musical Theatre
Society mixed in more theatrics and was quite entertaining. Sheridan Music
Theatre Performance Program won overall with some excellent student
performances.
Sheridan had help from ringer Constant Bernard (quite a large fellow with
a great voice, semi-finalist on Canadian Idol) who was good at coming up with
theatrical actions to win audience and judge acclaim, and points. One
amazing feat was doing the splits (lowering himself to the ground slowly by
spreading legs wide) to make one song finale much more memorable. In another
he serenaded the judges shamelessly after finally deciding to dive into the
transvestite role from the Rocky Horror Show (the reward for naming the song
on scant trivia clues is the chance to perform it).
The audience got to perform too. The woman behind us named the Barbra
Streisand song People but didn't want to sing it (she's a
pianist), so she got local theatre fan and well known volunteer Wendy B. to
do the singing. However, the main accompanist Jane Perry heard that remark
and got our seat neighbour to play the piano while Wendy B. sang. They gave
it a good shot and got several points, which they donated to Orpheus.
Oddly, there were several songs I recognised, The Internet is for
Porn and Schadenfreude from Avenue Q, and ones from
Wicked and Spamalot (I'm All Alone with real coconuts). It's
even more fun when you know what the songs should sound like.
Bob LeDrew was great as the MC again, with lots of horrible puns (now for
the next thong from The Full Monty...). The judges were excellent
again, particularly Pierre Brault (taking the serious critic role) and
Kathleen Petty improvising their interaction on the spot.
- 20100305 20:00 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show, $24 dinner at The Works.
The backdrops may be painted in a bold cartoon style but the pace of the
story and acting pull you into a more detailed world. The world of 1840
small town life, where Huck Finn just doesn't go to school and Tom Sawyer
avoids it as much as possible to play Robin Hood in the forest with Huck and
his avid followers, the town kids. Subject of course to aunt Polly's nagging
and punishments, like the famous fence whitewashing scene. That's where the
show starts taking off, when you see a dozen kids trying to paint the fence
in a big musical number, conned into thinking that it's not work by Tom.
Yes, child actors and hordes of them, from young and small on upwards, all
doing quite a good job with the singing, dancing (synchronised cartwheels and
other quite ambitious moves), and painting.
After convincing the audience that the dead cat in a sack was a prop, the
story moves on to the graveyard where Tom and Huck witness a murder and
frame-up by the villain Injun Joe (evilly played by John Collins). The town
drunk is put on trial and Tom's decision to speak out saves his life at the
cost of making Injun Joe a mortal enemy of Tom. Unlike watered down modern
stories, this one has naked death and real danger, which does indeed make the
drama much more interesting.
Along the way to the climax, there's a stupidly wonderful scene where
widow Douglas teaches Huck to read words by spelling them out phonetically.
It's such a simple scene, but well acted and given time to develop, so at the
end of much trouble (and some really humourously horrible soundings of words)
the audience cheers when Huck figures out his first word.
The climax happens when a cave tour (before the town picnic which Tom was
avoiding because Injun Joe was recently seen by Huck) goes a bit wrong. Tom
and Becky are lost and get further lost in the caves. There's a good use of
editing (scene in the cave alternating with a lighting change and actors
moving into place to show the above ground scene) to show both Tom and Becky
getting desperate while the parents and town folk are frantically searching
or praying that two angels get returned. The scary part is that Injun Joe is
in the caves too, searching for treasure that the town drunk had found a map
to. That's quite enough tension! And then Tom is down to their last candle.
They pray for light, and there's a strange interlude in the darkness when
a dark but sparkly figure reflecting blue lighting dances on stage (listed as
the Spirit of Light in the credits). Not all that often that you see an
impression of a dark cave rendered as dance, which works fairly well.
After the big fight, where Huck comes to the rescue as Injun Joe is trying
to kill Tom, they find the gold. There's a minor moral here portraying that
gold isn't worth a life, when they leave behind most of the gold to pull out
a wounded Huckleberry Finn.
The ending has a nicely childish pay-off, with the survivors attending
their own funeral and crying at their eulogies.
- 20100224 19:30 Mrs. Dexter and her Daily at The National Arts Centre Theatre.
$20 show (half price deal), $10 parking in the garage, $19 dinner at Moni Mahal.
This is a very well done character play and that's what makes it worth
seeing once, more if you enjoyed the story telling. We just see Peggy
Randall in the first act: the daily housekeeper going about her chores and
talking to herself and the audience. This flurry of stories is prompted by
the divorce of her employer and upcoming sale of the house. We find out
about Peggy's underage marriage and breakup, her subsequent lover who gives
her four children (one dead, one insane, one who ran away to success in the
oil patch, etc) and didn't give her much else other than trouble. She moves
from the east coast to Toronto, runs a boarding house, loses the boarding
house because the lover runs a bordello in her station wagon, gets a job
making electrical usage meters for Sangamo (nice historically accurate
mention) for 13 decent years, then is on disability for work related wear,
and becomes a maid who's strangely good at repairing electrical equipment.
She's planning to retire with Mr. Trouble in the near future, but is keeping
that secret from everyone.
Nicola Cavendish did a good job of knocking off her chores (folding
laundry, fixing a fan, kitchen duties) while emulating her character's
failing memory and concentrated story telling. In the post-play talkback she
said that it was only the night before that she had finally mastered the text
of the play - and there is a tremendous amount. But she pulled it off and
with a good Springfield accent too according to one audience member (NC had
listened to interviews with the person the character was based on).
In act two Edith Dexter tells her stories too, prompted by the divorce and
drinking a bit too much. She's really annoyed at her confidante best friend
neighbour who had an affair with Edith's husband. After lots of details
(don't mention Portofino), we find out that it was because Mr. Dexter wanted
to do something different before dying rather than staying in the same life
and winding it down. Again a good acting job by Fiona Reid, with lots of
stress to get all those words right. I wonder how she developed the facial
expression for someone eating olives after their husband had sucked the
stuffing out of them, described as being similar to the way baby birds are
fed. Incidentally, when she's off stage in the first act, she is reading a
book (and listening to Mozart), but not the book in the play.
One funny previous production moment was when Peggy was fixing the fan and
unrolling some electrical tape, but couldn't find the end. She gave up and
violated stage tradition by going off stage and getting Mrs. D. to fix it for
her. Off stage Mrs. D. frantically tore off a strip with her teeth and Peggy
got a round of applause when she came back with the unrolled tape.
- 20100223 20:00 The Memory of Water at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$20 show, $24 dinner at Lone Star Cafe, $5 parking near OLT.
A study of daughter dynamics. When the mother dies, three daughters come
to visit along with their emotional baggage. Jane Morris was excellently
annoying as the vegetarian Teresa who overflows with bitter blame when drunk.
One underlying theme was the vagueness of memories, explicitly echoed as a
memory loss patient one of the daughters was treating in the back-story. But
here it is memories of childhood events that are misattributed and warped to
suit the daughter's personalities. Apparently this does happen in large
families. Some memories are hidden, until they come out at events like this,
revealing dark secrets and the truer personalities of the children and their
parents. I'd say that the flirty daughter unable to form a long lasting
relationship was too much of a stereotype, except that I know people like
that.
Audience response was mixed, with a few leaving at intermission. I found
the character interactions (fighting mostly at the start) and unveiling of
their problems interesting and dramatic, but then perhaps others find it too
familiar. Or too modern and impolite. Or maybe they have suffered through
too many deaths of relatives and friends to find the whole concept
entertaining.
- 20100213 20:00 Shakespeare's Danish Play at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $53 dinner at Big Easy's.
The Company of Fools pulls it off again, keeping up the entertainment
value of last year's A Midwinter's Dream Tale. This version of
Hamlet was quite entertaining, even though it's mostly about trying to
perform Hamlet rather than the play itself (they summarise the play at the
beginning in just a minute or two to refresh your memory). All sorts of
things go wrong (there's a curse or a ghost or both that's summoned by saying
"Hamlet") and amusing side trips happen while they're trying to perform
Hamlet with five clowns, led by the straight man Pommes Frites (with an
excellent funny fake French accent like Peter Sellers doing inspector
Clouseau, "Focus"). One example is when the intermission happens too early
leaving a spot where Pomme Frites entertains the audience with chewing gum
(from under a seat). One little girl in the audience broke up when Pomme
repeatedly sent hapless Steve up the stairs to the Booth, repeatedly saying
"booth" like a parent telling a child to go to their room. 'Restes did do a
serious run at the To Be or Not To Be speech, admist the noisy smoke
machines. But the rest of the time, 'Restes was sufficiently dense to annoy
Pomme. Shidgit was voiceless, with rival Vivi saying her lines ventriloquist
style, though things got a bit less cooperative in the battling Ophelias
scene (Shidgit performing while chained to a solid old fashioned bathtub on a
dolly, chasing after Vivi who was trying to steal her lines). The actors
quick witted improvisational skills wove audience interruptions into their
dialog seamlessly, so you likely won't see the same play twice (and it's
worth seeing twice) unless someone coughs annoyingly at the same time or the
audience goes "awwww" when 'Restes is sent to the booth.
- 20100119 20:00 Drinking Alone at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$20 show, $16 Mexican dinner at Ahora,
$5 parking near OLT.
This is one of the best OLT shows I've seen. It's a Norm Foster play so
the writing is well paced, intricately interleaved and funny, but the acting
really brough it to life tonight. In particular Jennifer Scrivens as the
escort service lady dragooned into pretending to be a fiancée was
marvelously emotional. Good casting choice, picking someone larger than
usual who besides being insecure about their appeal to others can also
dominate the other family members - when she shouts "sit down," they do. The
writing had a running gag of talk about her child leading to tears as she
described not being divorced, not separated or even married, just smelling
the bus diesel fumes as the boyfriend left town. Funny enough, but she made
it real, which made it even funnier. Orrin Kerr was also notable as the
irritated and disappointed father, perhaps because he reminds me of a former
coworker who looks similar and also owned a bookstore, though the second half
of the play diverged from his reality into fictional family dysfunction.
Nicole Tishler looked the part of the thin news anchorwoman, helped by hair
styling and costuming (Peggy Laverty). Worth seeing again.
- 20100115 19:30 Mother Courage and Her Children at The National Arts Centre Theatre.
$37 show, $10 parking in the garage, $30 dinner at Johnny Farina at Elgin.
More enjoyable than expected, due to good performances and a
non-traditional set. Good use of 8 pianos on wheels to set up various
locations (at first I thought the backs of them against the wall were a left
over Robert Lapage airport corridor set). As other people have noted, it was
hard to hear Mother Courage singing the opening number due to the loud
drummer also on stage, but her words were discernable for the rest of the
performance. The story shows the drain of war on people even though some of
them claim to like war for the moneymaking and other exceptional contexts
(like killing peasants and stealing their cattle is good during war, not so
good during peace). Really good wooden wagon - looks quite realistic and
functional except for the brakes. Some nice stagings: wagon behind the stage
backdrop casting a shadow as it moves along, tower of wood to represent the
barn the daughter climbs for her final heroic moment that looks a lot like
the backs of the pianos but is several stories tall, stately funeral
procession of black pianos with music lights on for the field marshal's
death. And of course, Kris Joseph was there as a dashing soldier trying to
get a free drink and other minor characters so we had to go and see the
show.
- 20091218 20:00 The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Town Women's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of A Christmas Carol at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $40 dinner at Trattoria Caffe Italia.
Entertaining. Odd that several Noises Off actors worked in this amateur
actors simulation. Being amateurs, the script got changed (Scrooge has nice
skin) and there were oddities like a few musical numbers that weren't quite
on plot. I recognised the overall plot and some text fragments from seeing
the original Christmas Carol a few days earlier, which helped in
understanding what they were making a mess of. But that's not essential;
they get into enough trouble of their own.
- 20091215 19:30 A Christmas Carol at The National Arts Centre Theatre.
$37 show, $10 parking in the garage, $19 Moni Mahal Indian food buffet.
Dark (painted black) and dramatic set, with lighting and movement of props
to suggest various places other than Scrooge's bedroom. The classic story is
told yet again, and quite competently. Nice touch having the same era
Christmas hymns sung by the cast, reminding us that it's a very Christian
ceremony about Jesus. Enjoyed seeing Kris Joseph as Scrooge's nephew Fred,
didn't know he could play the xylophone. The timing was pleasantly quick,
starting early with no intermission so we got home in time for bed.
- 20091208 20:00 I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$20 show, $23 dinner at Sushi Kan, $5 parking near OLT.
A musical with a series of mostly humourous vignettes about romance and
relationships. Was weirdly consistent with More Work than a Puppy seen just
a few days ago, though more for general audiences.
- 20091206 20:00 More Work than a Puppy at the Irving Greenberg studio theatre in the GCTC building, a benefit for the Shannon Reynolds Endowment Fund.
$20 show.
Actresses touched by the recently deceased Shannon's life told the woman's
side of life around babies and raising children. Started with the theme from
2001 (Also sprach Zarathustra) with the 10 actresses screaming and groaning
in pain or pleasure under the direction of a conductor. Each one then told a
story in their own way. For example, one had dozens of toys and children's
clothes thrown at her by the other actresses and picked them up and put them
in a basket all the while telling her story about children. Humourous in
general tone, with a lot of complaints about the difficulty of giving birth
including some gruesome details.
- 20091204 19:30 Inclement Weather and Contries Shaped Like Stars at the Irving Greenberg studio theatre in the GCTC building, produced by Mi Casa.
$30 show.
IW was simple baby peekaboo acting that works on adults. CSLS was simply
wonderful again, though this time I caught a few more things (didn't realise
he had packaged up his love into the balloon).
- 20091118 20:00 The Children's Revolution at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by GCTC.
$35 show.
Good story about Doctor Janusz Korczak (a pen
name) who was a psychiatrist in Poland who took care of children, after
seeing that hospital treatments didn't help the underlying causes of poverty
and lack of parents. He built an orphanage, a model of the time (1911-1942,
children treated with more respect than usual, even having their own court
system), and stayed with the children even to the Nazi death camps. One of
his orphans helped out the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama, which is why
this got written and produced.
The actual production used live children to good effect. It was also nice
to see Paul Rainville in a serious part, with his underlying friendliness
fitting the role well.
- 20091113 20:00 Little Women at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$30 show, $20 dinner at Swiss Chalet.
Well performed, amazing rotating set, though the material wasn't great in
song or story aspects. It's the story of four sisters growing up and going
their separate ways, despite promises to not grow up. The central writer
struggles and finally finds some success, more when she writes about her
sisters growing up. Reminds me of Sita Sings the Blues where
the writer also bounced back from her relationship and life problems by
writing about it.
- 20091111 20:00 The Final Twist at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $40 dinner at Big Easy's.
Nice murder mystery, with a down and out young writer writing a real
murder which may or may not actually be carried out by his patron. Steve
Martin was good at looking dumb, confused and awkward. Luscious set too.
- 20091031 14:00 The Drowsy Chaperone at The National Arts Centre Theatre.
$49 show, $8 parking in the garage (yearly pass).
Quite a fun way to spend an afternoon. This is a musical theatre show
about an audio recording of an old musical from 1928 being played by an aged
art lover, in his apartment, describing it to us like we were his friends.
Of course, we see the real actors doing the show while he listens to his
record. But if he repeats a section, skips something or pauses, the real
actors do too. This is carried to a fun extreme when he accidentally puts on
a record for a different show and the whole performance turns into a Chinese
fantasy. His enthusiastic art appreciation and commentary on the show makes
a stock piece of fluff (the show he's listening to) so much more interesting.
Besides pointing out odd trivia, his reactions are enjoyable to behold. Now
just how many actors can tap dance, do comedy, sing and also roller skate
around a whole scene while blindfolded? Yes, the cast was quite talented.
Loved the scenery chewing Adolpho, who's name is hard to forget. Good
writing and acting.
- 20091030 20:00 Tell Me on a Sunday by Unicorn Theatre at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
$0 show, $0 parking on the street.
Nicely done early Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The plot is about girls
from Britain going to New York and onwards, chasing the wrong kind of guys,
repeatedly, while ignoring the good ones because they're too short. Bronwyn
Steinberg was directing (she's working on her masters degree at Ottawa U) and
brought us a nice live sound (no microphones) with sound levels nicely
balanced between the live music (electronic piano, real guitar and violin)
and the three singers. She was also behind us in the audience, looking on in
an inscrutable possibly motherly fashion. The set was made up of baggage, I
think both representing the symbolic emotional kind and because of all the
travelling the girls did. They also had a sturdy set of stairs on wheels
which the actresses moved around to gave them a way to change the set (giving
it the feeling of being different places) without having to do much work or
take much time in the small basement space of the studio. Lighting was
similarly effective and unobtrusive. Nice singing and acting, though I have
different favourites than my girlfriend so I can't definitively say who was
best.
- 20091027 20:00 And Then There Were None at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$20 show, $20 dinner at Lone Star, $5 parking near OLT.
Well done Agatha Christie murder mystery. Nice to see elderly but lively
Johni Keyworth again, who played the surreal fairy in Enter
Screaming in the Fringe festival. Good to see a pro who can also step
down to do Fringe. We also noticed Barry Daley as the nervous doctor, him of
Cogsworth fame from Beauty and the Beast. Of course, all the
characters are characters. The plot was as convoluted as you can expect,
with the audience given a chance to guess who did it during the intermission.
I got it wrong, but then there are so many possible suspects. The trick is
for someone to fake their death, but then they'd have to collude with some of
the other people who might examine the body too closely, which didn't seem
likely, but ended up being the case. There could have been other endings,
and I wonder if there are plays that randomly change the ending every
performance.
- 20091024 19:30 The Ark: The Theatre of Ancient Greece at the Dominion Chalmers Church.
$20 show.
Students from The National Theatre School of Canada working with
professional actors from the National Arts Centre (Peter Hinton being a
motive force and MC) showed off the results of their month of study, this
time examining Greek theatre. They read a couple of dozen plays to prepare,
talked with archaeologists, historians and linguists (as well as the usual
acting experts to help them perform the plays), and otherwise looked around
to see behind the fuzzy veil of time. We got a good taste of the historical
range (startup of city states, mature democracy, culture failing in wasted
wars), a guess at what the actual spoken Greek sounds like, and a play on the
the rarity of finding plays while hunting through garbage dumps for papyrus
fragments before the local farmers use them as fertilizer (less than 10%
remain even from playwrights who wrote a hundred plays). The Greek
theatrical contests had 3 tragedies and 1 satyr (horsy kind) show;
we got excerpts from both of those (cast of 28 was able to do justice to the
chorus parts, and they had quite solid masks for some). Besides the rarity,
the translation and cultural background are ambiguous, so we were shown a few
interpretations to see how wildly off they could become from the original
Greek words. An oddly interesting evening.
- 20091023 19:30 Gabriel the Musical by Goya Theatre Productions at the Centrepointe Theatre.
$38 show, $18 Lebanese dinner at Les Grillades.
There are only a few souls coming back from Earth, making for dismal
returns by the Universal Holding Company (chaired by God, famous saints as
board members). Go-fer boy Gabriel is sent down to Earth in Human form to
see whether Earth should be sold off to Satan or kept. Things look pretty
bad, even more so because Satan is his tour guide. Written and directed by
Gord Carruth, with quite a large cast and lots of musical numbers. I
recognised Andrew Galligan (clown in Pirate Jenny's Circus at the Fringe)
playing the lead role, and James McDougall (Horton in the Seussical) doing a
tough guy and then a drugged out guy in a marvellous stoner scene. Decent
Satan too, though he laughs a lot.
- 20091002 19:30 Noises Off at The Gladstone Theatre.
$38 show (subscription average), $24 Korean BBQ dinner at Soora.
Quite the comedy of a farce within a farce. Even the programme has a
funny smaller programme inside it, for the farce within. There's lots of
physical comedy (Steve Martin uses his dance skills to do the splits over a
sardine spill, falls down stairs with shoelaces tied and then frantically
hops around backstage trying to get revenge), which I can't really describe
well, other than it was done with good fast pacing and there was lots of it.
There is no central character, instead we have a troop of actors (the real
actors were quite good at being bad) trying to play a British farce. The
first act is their rushed dress rehearsal, where we learn their personalities
and quirks which will soon lead to active hostilities.
Their backstage conflicts erupt in the second act, representing what it's
like a month into their tour. We see this from backstage because the whole
set (quite solidly built of 2x4s and plywood with sections on wheels joined
by locking bolts) has been taken apart and rotated 180 degrees (worth staying
for in the theatre during one of the two intermissions). It erupts into
violence (director has too many lovers, others are jealous of each other)
while the play is going on, making for a strange split between the public
show and the silent frenzy of hurt feelings, near axe murders, drinking, tied
shoelaces and other dirty tricks. Good thing the set is so sturdy, with all
that door slamming and running up and down stairs.
Life seems to imitate art, as we noticed Patrick MacFadden (former
Carleton U professor (Ottawa
Sun reference), who played the old drunk actor doing the burglar and
having trouble hearing and staying conscious) being helped out of the theatre
by the real crew. Hope he's okay.
Their show disintegrated in the third act, where the dirty tricks go too
far, leading to misplaced props (those sardines are slippery, and yucky when
put down someone's blouse), injured and missing actors (they had two other
actors taking Patrick's role, not sure if that was part of the script or part
of reality, though they both wouldn't leave and funnily echoed their lines in
a duet). Overall, it's a nice bit of writing, setting up the audience with
knowledge of how the play should be done and then seeing how badly it can go
wrong. Worth seeing a second time to catch all the stuff you missed the
first time, and to see how much is improvised.
- 20091001 20:00 The Pillowman at Arts Court, produced by Vision Theatre.
$25 show, $24 dinner at Casa Do
Churrasco.
Quite a few funny moments, but this play also is a take on violence and
the warping it does to people it touches. The police think they have their
man when they interrogate the writer of a vast body of mostly disturbing
stories, some of which have recently come true. He doesn't have a clue about
the child murders, then he finds out that it may be true and his brother is
involved, then it may be something the police are totally fabricating (are
there really any bodies?) just to leash in writers in an oppressive
dictatorship, then... It's quite the dark river flow of threatening
violence, fear of death, torture, lightened by flashbacks to an abused
childhood (dark deeds done in caricature silly fashion on the third set
behind a stroboscopically transparent curtain), ending in death. Quite
engaging, worth seeing again in a year.
Kris Joseph played the lead role, with a very good story telling voice,
both in the way he tells it and in being nicely loud enough for everyone to
hear. He also looks like a guy about to be executed, running through
emotional states as he's squeezed by the good and bad cop pair (nicely done)
and his brother into eventually wanting to be executed. Alison Almeida had a
nice bit part as the child scrabbling in a box buried underground (good set
and lighting effect for that one).
By the way, ingenious use of duct tape strung from a few framing boards to
make walls and floor to ceiling prison bar shadows (placed between the stage and
audience). Also look for the blood gutter/lip around the central stage and
the not-equal sign instead of a swastika on the giant flag.
- 20090923 20:00 The Syringa Tree at the Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, produced by GCTC.
$35 show.
One woman and one set covers the life of a girl growing up as a white in
apartheid South Africa. The story shows the culture from the white side but
with echos of the troubles the black side had to face (nanny has a baby
without authorisation, and the need for "papers" to avoid being beaten).
Both sides feared the police and the racist laws, and certain neighbourhoods
of the other side. There aren't really clear cut sides since there were white
people who hated the blacks on principle and other whites who helped them
(racing around to find a missing black child, braving black towns at night).
That tense background is mixed with the childish delights of growing up,
being friends with the black servants and inadvertently absorbing parts of
their culture.
- 20090915 20:00 Same Time Next Year at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$20 show, $20 dinner at the Shanghai Vietnamese restaurant in the Byward
Market, $5 parking near OLT.
Funny (sitcom writer unleashed) and memorable for the framework of time
passing from 1951 to 1975, with video summaries of the passing years between
acts (music, news, TV, movies). The time is reflected in the personalities
of the pair of adulterous adults, though it got a tad extreme with the 1960's
rebellious hippy mother vs buttoned down father (son died in Vietnam, made
him angry and fascist).
- 20090801 19:00 Much Ado about Nothing by A Company of Fools at a park near St. Laurant, Ottawa.
$20 show ($10 typical).
Marriage and money and power all jumbled about. The Fools weren't sure of
a city grant for funding so they cut down to four actors, with the other
parts played by bundles of sticks with a bucket on top for a head. This
worked out quite well, with the secondary actors moved like puppets or a
quick swap of a hat and apron with a live actor for more important moments.
Good crowd too on a pleasant night (mosquitos came late) in the park.
- 20090731 19:30 Seussical the Musical at école élémentaire catholique Sainte-Trinité in Rockland Ontario.
$30 show.
A silly but fun musical put on by summer theatre camp children with a few
pros scattered around to leaven the production. The guy playing Horton
(James MdDougall) was notably good at being a worried elephant.
- 20090717 19:00 Measure for Measure at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott Ontario.
$22 show, $15 dinner (half of the very good food for two people deal) at the
Wonton Chinese Restaurant in Prescott, $2.50 ice cream cone, free parking.
A good production, entertaining enough and on the comprehensible side of
Shakespeare productions, though not quite as much fun as last year's As
You Like It, perhaps because this was one of the first performances.
Kris Joseph (whose career we are following) was excellent as a villain, and
also played the nice guy he had sentenced to death for fornication. Liked
the tee-shirt. The other actors held up their roles well too, particularly
Craig Walker as the duke. The live musicians made it more memorable. With
this rainy summer, they were ready with an alternate tent or a church, but
things turned out well and it only rained in the amphitheatre for just a
minute at the very end.
- 20090618 to 20090628 The Ottawa Fringe Festival at various venus around Arts Court and University of Ottawa.
$7 show (several 10 show passes), trail mix and other snacks from the
knapsack or pulled pork sandwiches ($6) and racks of ribs ($20) from
Rib-Fest,
$5 parking near OLT or free at World Exchange on weekends.
This year I and my girlfriend have a list of plays to see, almost but not
quite all of them, carefully scheduled to see as many as possible without
running out of options near the end of the week and a half long festival. My
favourites (ones which I wouldn't be ashamed to recommend to friends, in
order of most fun first) currently are:
- Today is All Your Birthdays
- Enter Screaming
- Heebs and Dweebs
- Spiral Dive, Episode one
- Oreo
- Countries Shaped Like Stars
- Jesus Rant
- Catgut Strung Violin
- Hooray for Speech Therapy
- Pirate Jenny's Circus
- Chaotica
- Jem Rolls' Leastest Flop
- Is Shakespeare Dead?
- This is a Recording
- The Tribulations of a Failed Vigilante
- Welcome to the Moon
- Porn Star
- On Second Thought
- Grandpa Sol and Grandma Rosie
- Inclement Weather
- The Accident
- Duel
- Burying the Hangman
- Ten Years (as before, I found it interesting but my GF didn't)
Here are the ones we've actually seen, this list may reach the low forties
in number with good luck:
- 20090628 18:30 The Entrepreneurs at Arts Court Library.
- 20090628 16:30 The Secret Love Life of Ophelia at Arts Court Library.
- 20090628 15:00 On Second Thought at Arts Court Library.
- 20090628 12:00 Playing Princesses at Academic Hall.
- 20090627 23:00 The Accident at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 21:30 The Women Come and Go at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 20:00 Chaotica at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 18:30 Satanic Panic at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 16:30 Is Shakespeare Dead? at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 15:00 Chatroom at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090627 13:30 jump! at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090626 22:30 The Tribulations of a Failed Vigilante at the SAW Gallery.
- 20090626 21:00 House at the SAW Gallery.
- 20090626 19:30 Uncalled For presents Today is All Your Birthdays at the SAW Gallery.
The best one yet. Very entertaining, very good physical action and an
ingeniously humourous script about CERN and time travel. Plus lots of
birthday cake at the end, more than you can count. Worth seeing again
and a few more times!
- 20090626 18:00 Like a Virgin at the SAW Gallery.
- 20090625 21:30 The Squatter Heart at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
- 20090625 20:00 Dante at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
- 20090625 18:00 Porn Star at Arts Court Library.
- 20090624 23:00 We Never Clothed at Arts Court Theatre.
- 20090624 21:00 Inclement Weather at Café Alt.
- 20090624 19:00 Countries Shaped Like Stars at Café Alt.
My girlfriend waited in line to get tickets for this one (had to
temporarily abandon the pork to find her) as it was very popular,
particularly after several newspaper reviews. The small room made the
production quite intimate, with people on sofas and chairs arranged on
each side of the long rectangular acting area (kind of like a bowling
lane), with Christmas lights on the ceiling and step ladders at each end.
The actress did bowl some beer mugs of water down the floor too, at one
point. A very whimsical, romantic and sad story. Fortunately they're
showing it again in early December at the GCTC (or on demand if you hire
them).
- 20090623 21:30 Hooray for Speech Therapy at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
- 20090623 19:30 Under the Radar at Alumni Auditorium.
- 20090623 18:00 Grandpa Sol and Grandma Rosie at Alumni Auditorium.
- 20090622 21:30 Fish Face at Academic Hall.
- 20090622 20:00 Enter Screaming at Academic Hall.
- 20090622 18:30 Jem Rolls' Leastest Flop at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
- 20090621 21:30 Wild Abandon at SAW Gallery.
- 20090621 20:00 Burying the Hangman at Academic Hall.
- 20090621 18:30 Welcome to the Moon at Academic Hall.
- 20090621 17:00 Oreo at Academic Hall.
- 20090621 15:00 Spiral Dive, Episode one at Academic Hall.
I saw this one last summer in Saskatoon and noticed how it stood out as
being very professional for a Fringe show. It maintained its excellent
quality for the Ottawa performance, though we only got Episode 1 here;
Episode 2 is being unveiled out west this summer. It's the story of a
prarie farm boy joining up in the air force in World War II. It captures
the feeling of going through training, learning to fly, leaving friends
behind (one of whom is used as a ghost narrator, pointing out the less
romatic deaths that were all too common) and then going to England. The
three actors do very good characterisation, particularly for all those
odd characters in the training squadron. The writers were smart and
interviewed veterans to find out what things were really like, so it has
the detail of real life at the time. For a while they were even using
one veteran's lent uniform, but he died last year so they retired that
bit of authenticity.
- 20090621 13:30 Catgut Strung Violin at Academic Hall.
Follows the story of an army recruit and his violin, through enlistment,
basic training, action and beyond. Sounds simple but the way the actors
show the story with physical movement is amazing. It's like very speedy
mime. Starting with hooded figures, we see the Anton, a young man,
tricked and cajoled to be in the army by his wiser elders. The actors
change roles by ripping off layers of costume, from officers arguing
about who gets the boy to medical examiner and then the drill sergeant.
There's one memorable moment as they dress the boy in uniform, in a
rolling pile of twisting limbs and bodies taking off old clothes, putting
arms through jacket sleeves and pulling on coats inside out, ending up
with everyone in the right uniform. There's a parachute down to the
front (with one of the falling actors quickly whipping out a passing
cloud costume and acting as a cloud for about five seconds before
switching to something else). There's fighting, the front, capture by an
enemy, a sad escape, a mine field, a desert scene ending with the
post-war honours that don't quite match the deeds. Worth seeing again,
and enjoyable in all languages.
- 20090620 23:00 Pirate Jenny's Circus at Alumni Auditorium.
This play isn't quite what the title implies on the surface, going deeper
and darker at the end. Good singing and live music make this a true
musical. It even has lots of props, like a wooden cart full of circus
stuff. It starts off quite lightly with the travelling circus and their
show. However, Genny also has to do tricks to make money, as it's not a
very successful circus. Their leader is discovered by the police and
shot, leaving the circus to fall into the evil hands of Genny's brother
Bill. He gets them to put the show on a boat. Still unsuccessful,
nerves fray and things go black, very black. After the trial, the
audience has a choice to make about how they want it to end. I won't say
more. Either way, it was a performance to remember.
- 20090620 21:30 Save Point at Alumni Auditorium.
Charming mother and disaffected son story. The son spends his time at
home playing video games, and his mom wants him to shape up. Lots of
nagging (a good solid well done chunk of parental interaction), with nice
voice chat / conversation with mom mixup. It's accompanied by the other
son, who's also the sound man for the show, sitting at a laptop connected
to a ghetto blaster. So when mom complains son isn't eating enough
fruit, the worry is scurvey and rickets, but we hear cricket noises,
sound son gets corrected. Roles get reversed when they're suddenly
immersed in a fantasy quest video game, where son has to revive mom as
they fight the monsters (alien with a raygun suspended from a clothes
line). Lots of jokes about the virtual world, and current topics like
Vista.
- 20090620 20:00 The Parker & Seville Show at Alumni Auditorium.
Vaudville comes back to life. Though we also know this is a story of the
life of the two actors, so we know it ended with death at a childrens
party. Has its moments but Vaudville skits are a bit to short for
today's non-drunk audience, somthing more meaty would help (like a longer
version of one of their films).
- 20090620 18:30 Duel at Alumni Auditorium.
A decent performance and portrayal of character. The angry man, his
Vegan wife, his comic book store friend and enemy (and die hard Nordiques
fan). Good use of cardboard boxes. Horrible death scene before the end
with flying red pulp, then the very dramatic duel.
- 20090620 16:00 This is a Recording at Aluni Auditorium.
A very well performed enactment of stories told by people in interviews,
sort of like the animated Creature Comforts series. Good
use of fabric to make a wedding dress, or a saint holding a luminous
baby. The stories were quite varied and enthralling, one was a drug deal
gone bad, another was about favourite heros and the choice of Turtles
makes me think the original interviewee was a child.
- 20090620 14:30 Antique Bliss at Alumni Auditorium.
In the future, Victorian rules have been revived. Some of the
adolescents in the neighbourhood families rebel, others conform.
Rebellious girl spies on the boys school to learn. Non-rebellious one
says "It's not proper" when approached by a lover. Boys are similarly
mixed up, switching between rebelling and conforming, not to mention the
usual sexual tensions. In the end, things go badly wrong and the
survivors have to leave. I'd have liked to see the parents do a bit more
explaining to the kids of why they have the Victorian style rules of life
and marriage, rather than mostly saying "No". Also I missed the Science
Fiction component, why did the Victorian rules get revived, did society
collapse?
- 20090619 23:00 Ten Years at Arts Court Theatre.
A sequel to growing up in Ottawa Orleans, this time with life in Retail
and searching for meaning and the next level of development.
- 20090619 21:30 Waiting for André at Arts Court Theatre.
Bohemian life and poverty parallel plotted with Waiting for Godot
advertising at a train station (one of the silliest advertising
exercises).
- 20090619 20:00 Jesus Rant at Arts Court Theatre.
What was Jesus's life really like, and how it has been warped by
religion.
- 20090619 18:30 In a Magic Kingdom at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
Growing up with adversity and death and yet finding hope. Well
ennounciated.
- 20090618 23:00 Back to Front at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
A no longer young actress's life as missing something, or someone.
- 20090618 21:30 No Exit Upstage at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
Two roommate actresses with differing personalities meet at auditions and
clash, comparing the life of a hard worker with one who's lax and the way
they assign blame for their failures.
- 20090618 20:00 ...Comes Around at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
A linked chain of sexual encounters and the shallow relationships of
casual sex, with Absinth. The pink light of orgasm.
- 20090618 18:30 Heebs and Dweebs at Léonard-Beaulne Studio.
Amy Salloway does it again. Though this is the first public performance
of her new show, it was quite entertaining for the sold out venue.
- 20090617 20:00 The Affections of May at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$18 show, $23 dinner at Takara
Japanese Restaurant, $5 parking near OLT.
City guy and country girl move to a small town, city guy can't stand it
and leaves, country girl unhappy but thinks she's faithful. Locals gossip.
Some come courting, some for other reasons, but they end up changing country
girl's mind, or rather revealing the real situation to her. It's a tale
about marriage, breakups, discovering other people's deeper intentions, and
moving on. Good use of scrabble to reveal lustful true thoughts. Besides
the lead actress Venetia Lawless, Dale MacEachern who played the country
bumpkin putting on an act, impressed me. His manerisms remind me of Dan Redican from The
Frantics, doing an honest ordinary guy annoyed at other's complexities.
- 20090616 19:00 Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb at the Diefenbunker.
$6 show (includes popcorn).
Lots of funny bits, but this time it struck me that the film could be
serious about what could happen. The Human element could fail (maybe not a
base commander but if the USA's President wanted to start his own war he
might be able to do it). Things like the bombs cased with material that
would be converted to radioactive poison dust in the atmosphere seem
plausible, and scary. Though a bit of research makes them less scary. There
are cheaper ways to make a doomsday machine (one suggestion I ran across was
a lake of Freon-12 ready to evapourate and destroy the ozone layer for
decades, thus wiping out most plant life and everything that depends on
it).
Still, it was strangely comforting to be watching it from a nuclear bomb
proof bunker. Well, not if the bomb hits anywhere nearby. And we'd have
popcorn for a while.
- 20090613 11:45 Up at AMC Kanata 24.
$6 show, $3 (loyalty benefit) popcorn.
Tears, action and characters. Worth seeing again.
- 20090612 19:00 Trudeau Stories at The National Arts Centre studio, part of Magnetic North.
$25 show.
An odd tale of a relationship between the actress (then a theatre student)
and Pierre Elliot Trudeau, after he had been prime minister of Canada. Too
odd to be fiction! It started with her being the student representative on a
board, which entitled her to go to a gala where Pierre Trudeau showed up. He
noticed the young actress in oversized high heeled shoes stuffed with toilet
paper and asked her for a dance. That was as romantic as it got. Later on
PET met her for dinner and lunch in Montreal at various times, talking about
all sorts of things. We never know the motive, but can guess from "two
lonely souls" that his circle of acquaintances was getting too stratified.
Of course, when they went to a bar, Trudeau would be recognised and swarmed
by law school students. The play is about these small moments, ending with
PET's funeral.
There was also a talkback after the play, where we got to hear from the
actress/writer on how she developed the play, which started as a story
telling session which people liked too much. We found out that she didn't
see Trudeau's children much (they were small at the time). The other
students knew about the relationship, which for later years of students
turned into a myth. Anyway, it's interesting to see, particularly since it's
her personal Trudeau story (mine involves being on the train before the
funeral train, crowds in the train station (plus a large group of Sommeliers
who had their own car or two) and seeing people and TV crews getting ready
beside the track all the way to Montreal). She's now touring from Ontario to
the east coast for the summer season.
- 20090609 19:00 Jake's Gift at The War Museum auditorium, part of Magnetic North.
$25 show.
Quite a moving story about a modern day French child who meets a Canadian
veteran of the Juno Beach campaign. Julia Mackey plays all the roles,
switching by merely changing expression and body posture (she's got that old
man shuffle down pat). The girl asks Jake all sorts of questions, annoying
him but revealing his past as a soldier and her family's past as conquered
people. She also unconsciously guides Jake's reconciliation with the past,
suggesting he talk with his dead brother like he did with his wife. The
final exchange of gifts is tearfully touching, though a nightmare for
Environment Canada.
- 20090607 16:00 The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan at The Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre, part of Magnetic North.
$25 show.
Fantastical use of puppets and costumes to bring a very odd person and his
conquests to life. Don Juan was sent to hell after seducing, and I suppose
having sex, with over a thousand women. He's been released for this night
only to tell his story as a play, to give a moral warning to ordinary people
several centuries after his death. That guides the medieval / renaissance
style of dress, character (Spanish ladies) and set design.
He starts with his upbringing by a pack of dogs, with two of the actors
wearing giant dog heads (one long and sleek necked, another a bulldog),
acting quite like dogs, down to the leg movement and good barking.
Once he gets older, he falls in love with a woman but is rejected from
society as he is considered a beast. He proves himself worthy of favour by
losing a fight with a bull. The lead devil (the devils are assisting
grudgingly) wearing his very furry pants rides a kid's tricycle with this
huge bull's head built around the handlebars. Glowing eyes and puffs of
steam from its nostrils only heighten the menacing tricycle driving, snorting
and pawing of the devil. His love is just a face (papier mache) held up from
behind by one devil's hand with a piece of white lacy fabric flowing from the
face over to the devil's other arm, so you just see a face, fabric and a
delicately moving arm. Yet it seems like a whole person.
Of course, he falls in love with someone more racy in a bar. This woman
is strangely lifelike even though it is just two mannequin legs, a pair of
breasts, two arms and a face, run by three devils and occasionally breaking
into fragments and then reforming into a person.
Anyway, his life goes to hell from there and with some ingenious scene
changes using the 4m tall wooden cabinets on wheels (one scene is inside his
head), reaches the end where he pleads that love conquers all. The audience
doesn't really want to do an orgy on the spot.
- 20090606 16:00 Nevermore - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe at National Arts Centre studio, part of Magnetic North.
$25 show.
This one is notable for its quite stylish costumes (cartoon caricatures of
old clothes styles done in weird perspective - a lady's hat looking like a
large asymetric kite rather than the original circular normally proportioned
model, hoop dresses done as gigantic black hoops with ribbons but without
fabric). Naturally, the predominant colour was black. The actors were
similarly made up, with black shadows around their eyes and black headbands
(conveniently holding a small microphone on their forehead).
Though the subject was dark (Edgar Poe's life as a series of abuses, hope
followed by failure, deaths), the actors were quite lively in movement, song
and speech. Speaking of which, there was quite a lot of material in the
script covering the details of Poe's life. Oddly, I got the feeling that all
of it was taking place in England, not mostly in the United States of
America. Overall, the production went very smoothly and the audience
definitely enjoyed the experience of being in a stylishly warped world.
- 20090605 20:00 The Full Monty at Centrepointe Theatre by Orpheus.
$25 show.
Quite a fun bit of entertainment. Lots of humour, double entendres
included. Brave actors revealing their not so perfectly shaped bodies, in
contrast to the professionals with their well defined muscles. It's also a
good character showcase, with Sean Tooley doing a very good fat friend and
Debbie Murphy playing a lively old but experienced piano player and motive
force. I was also surprised by Stefan Keyes who fooled me into thinking he
was an old man, and then sung noticably well. Spoiler - watch out for bright
lights hiding the Full Monty at the end. And in an unusual minor note, the
program was very crisply printed (sharp text and clear photos, bright
auditorium lights helped too), with character relationships briefly described,
which made it easy to look up actor/character associations after the play.
- 20090531 14:25 Star Trek at AMC Kanata 24.
$12.50 show.
A pretty good movie. As fun as watching an old episode. Though part of
the fun is seeing what the characters are doing that's different than the
original series. Having that alternate time line sure does free up the
writing restrictions.
- 20090512 20:00 Snake in the Grass at The Ottawa Little Theatre.
$18 show, $25 Don Cherry's restaurant.
A strangely assertive and yet nervous woman comes back to inherit the
family home. Her sister had stayed there, taking care of their father, and
seemingly got fed up and killed him. The nurse is out for blackmail. We
expect the crazy home-staying sister to be the only survivor. We are
correct, but for slightly twistier reasons, revealed after a nicely
unexpected diversion to midnight ghost stories of abuse (wife beating vs
father abuse).
- 20090509 20:00 Show Tune Showdown 2009 at The Bronson Centre.
$16 show, $22 Royal Treasure Restaurant Chinese dinner.
An energetic evening of competition between three amazing musical groups
of four singers. Zucchini Grotto won, but the score is almost irrelevant
since they were all great and the judges were generous. Of note, Sarah Lynn
Strange had the opportunity to shine blindingly twice in solo performances
(one taunting a boy to not touch her, another one started by her Zucchini
team naming a tune now popular in funerals which she then sung sadly well).
The 2nd place Sheridan team was really good, students or not (except for that
fabric prop - good concept using it for waves etc, but didn't work as well as
other staging tricks in other songs). I wonder what their careers will be
like. Suzart had quite a few great tunes too, and carried off the
non-singing part particularly well. Their staging for Triplets (baby
costumes and chairs) is an example of why their performances are so
entertaining. The MC (Bob Ledrew), the judges and the audience (some members
can sing amazingly well) added to the show too, making this an evening of
great fun.
- 20090501 20:00 A Guy Named Joe by Odyssey theatre at The Gladstone Theatre.
$35 show, $9 KFC 3 pieces of chicken meal.
The performance we went to was being recorded by a two camera team, with
stereo sound (seats reserved for "Mike"). The cameras picked up actors in
upper half face masks with long noses. Comic masks and the odd music
dribbles make this play seem silly but underneath is the solid foundation of
life as a poor person. The large set made of foldout panels on hinges
accompanied by a few plank boxes, benches and fragments of plaster lathe
conveys the appearance of a cheap rooming house room quite well. In a flurry
of prop choreography it also becomes the swanky landlord's condo, an alley,
and a courtroom in the grand finale. Joe's apartment is at the source of the
landlord's concerns. It's got crummy maintenance. Joe has to do dubious
jobs for the landlord in exchange for rent. The landlord is attempting to
evict people before redeveloping the property into a condominium. It's also
a money laundering scheme for the true royalty, a distant secret mafia family
who strike fear into everyone of power in the city. Only Joe doesn't realise
what he's stepped into.
After being evicted and suffering a decline in abilities due to a hard
life on the street and shelters, Joe's willing to do anything. When he
accidentally gets the keys to the landlord's condo while picking up his mail
(the landlord steals the mail), he's willing to join his cousin's gang and
their implausible heist plans. The quick plan is to loot the landlord for
funds for big heist supplies. But the rent income will be more than the big
heist, so... To cover up the disappearance of the landlord (into a closet)
until the rent cheques come in, the group runs the rental business. The play
suggests that the tenants would be better off with honest property
management, which even Joe and his slightly smarter brother and petty
criminal friends can do. Besides actually fixing things (and discovering
that they weren't even though the books said so), they have innovations like
catching rats and betting on them in races. Joe's love interest is the other
kind of poor - a cleaning lady who's working hard and trying to get ahead,
making slow solid progress. He tries to keep her from finding out what's
really happening (though the elderly murder mystery writer clues in within a
few seconds of walking into the landlord's place). Things happen. In the
end, the courts and landlord trump the petty criminals, conveniently ignoring
their evidence as being from unreliable or insane people. But then they
trump the courts by using fear of the mafia. It's a bit cynical that the way
forward isn't through truth, but through fear and lies. At least they have a
moral dilema to worry about at the end, rather than being poor.
- 20090429 19:30 The Ecstasy of Rita Joe at National Arts Centre.
$0 show (preview), home dinner.
Historically it's the first notable and distinctly Canadian play, from
1969, about life as a North American native Indian in Canada. It's a sadly
realistic view of a decline into poverty and petty crime by people who can't
fit (hold down a job and be polite) into Western culture. The ones who stay
on the reserve are frustrated and hopeless with centuries of not going
anywhere. The ones in the city are worse off, yet many want to go there.
The lead actress portrays Rita as mentally deficient, like a child, unable
and uncaring to remember recent things while able to remember fragments of
her childhood. Nice use of verbal flashbacks while talking to the judge to
show that. Maybe she's not innocently childlike, since she does seem to like
sex, or is too passive to avoid men with a passing interest in her body. She
flops around the city, her simple impulsive theft and other lack of city
proficiency more and more frequently making her collide with the law. On the
male side, the lead actor is smart enough, but he's also blindly angry.
Anger combined with getting drunk ruins his life, both from the Western
fitting in point of view (loses his job, gets thrown out of beer gardens) and
absolutely.
The cast of almost a dozen fills in the other characters of Rita's
childhood (class+teacher, groups of friends, relatives), appearing out of the
dark when Rita starts a story. Quite often they will sing (with a lead
vocalist who's a bit too quiet in contrast to the excellent voice projection
by the actors) and play music on drums, guitar, and other instruments.
The play makes me think of various things related to the topic. Likely
that's one reason for its creation. How does Western society treat stupid or
insane people in contrast to Indian and other cultures? What could be done
to improve the Indian/Western lack of fit? Should we improve it? How did it
get that way? How does this look when compared with a twelve-step program,
where Indian Circles follow a strangely similar model to a 12-step discussion
group? That last one is there because I'm currently reading Living the
Twelve Steps: Change Ourselves and Change the World by James Duncan,
which notices that similarity and comfortable cultural compatibility.
Will the future for the Indians and Westerners get better? What would the
ideal future look like? If the melting pot doesn't work, should they be
separated more completely (reserves with more independence and less
interaction with the outside) or destroyed (not nice) or kept on with benign
neglect in hopes that a miracle happens? That makes it sound like Western
culture is doing the deciding. Perhaps the Indians should figure out their
own future. Guess that's the current answer: benign neglect in hopes that
they sort out their own way in the world. Sort of like the twelve-step
program.
- 20090422 20:00 The Net at The Great Canadian Theatre Company main theatre by GCTC.
$37 show, home dinner.
A good fighting contrast between the three male generations of a fishing
family. The supposedly smart and educated grandson (anti-globalisation
demonstrator, believes in compromise and getting along with people, but can't
apply that to his family) is being roped into a new family fishing company
because the grandfather requires eldest son inheritance. The middle
generation uncle has things under control with dubious Mexican investors for
his drug smuggling operation. The grandfather lives in the past to some
extent, missing his dead wife and not being aware of the smuggling. There
are lots of heated arguments about the future of the family empire
(grandfather wants lineage to continue unchanging, uncle makes deals to
survive in the present, grandson wants to leave it all behind and be a city
boy). There's a riot at the fish plant again (grandson says sharing their
quota would have stopped that, the others laugh and say that the crab would
have been wiped out by unrestrained greed). Violence ensues under cover of
the riot and the middle uncle wins, for a while at least.
Good performances from the trio. The grandson acts annoyingly dopey as he
should be, and has mannerisms that remind me of some PEI people I know. The
grandfather is convincingly old (nice long frozen pause as he tries to
remember). The uncle is lethal and short fused. Nice lighting of the
deceased wife's photo in the dark.
- 20090407 20:00 London Suite at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
$18 show (subscriber rate), $33 NAC Le Café early-bird special, $5 parking near OLT.
Survived a traffic blocking protest, enjoyed watching the Rideau Centre
Congress Hall being demolished by a ballet of excavator mounted power
jackhammers turning concrete into billowing dust, a man wielding a cutting
torch attacking the roof and a very tall crane lifting the roof fragments.
The play had a nice simple set with London logos surrounding a sketch of
hotel room (furniture, doors but no walls). This is a four part set of
playlets by Neil Simon taking place in the same hotel room:
- Settling Accounts about a financial advisor who has stolen his
client's money, and is held at gunpoint by the client in the hotel room.
Besides fitting in well with this year's financial failures, has a nice
twist at the end. Good angry client (a failing book author), okay
whimpering advisor (almost but not quite realistic).
- Going Home about older mom being set up on a date with a
Scottish elderly wheezy and snorting bachelor. Good story telling by the
mom after she comes home late at night.
- Diana & Sidney about a gay elderly man meeting his now
successful but somewhat fragile TV producer ex-wife and asking indirectly
for help with cancer.
- The Man on the Floor was the best one, perhaps because of the
effective physical comedy and American accent of the tourist in London with
a back problem. Good dynamic between the man and his wife. The other
characters were fun characters too - old knowledgeable doctor, assistant
manager (distinctively Scottish), bellboy. Nice ending, with almost
everyone incapacitated.
- 20090325 19:30 The Blue Dragon at the National Arts Centre.
$20 show (Spring Thaw deal, preview show), $20 Moni Mahal Indian food buffet.
The sets were amazing on this show, which is mostly by justly famous
Robert Lepage and his company. It started with a mature combination of video
technology and actors, with a Chinese ribbon style dancer deflecting clouds
of particles in the video surrounding and lighting her, while she moved
around the stage. Then there was a bit of caligraphy as the expat in China
showed us how to draw a line, with his drawings projected on large tiles on
the wall behind. It's not just a line, it's also the separation between sky
and earth, the number one, and if you add a vertical line and some roots, a
tree. The set itself transformed from airplane to airport to train station
to small loft apartment, using lots of mechanics and roll down doors,
lighting and video overlays. Good use of fluorescent lighting! Trains and
boats went by in the background (physical models) as the actors rode
retrograde bicycles (the bikes were on black stands that moved at their own
speed), giving the effect of one biker overtaking another while viewed from a
travelling camera. There was a story too, which got more and more
interesting as we found out about the characters' baby and relationship
problems. See it for the sets, and while doing that, experience a bit of
contemporary China while swimming in the story that weaves everything
together.
- 20090321 20:00 The Radio Show at The Gladstone.
$35 show (half price bums in seats pricing not taken advantage of), home dinner.
Lets you feel what it's like to be in a studio audience at a radio show.
Good singing from the Gladstone sisters. Well done George Burns and Gracie
Allen style hosts riffing off each other. Most of the actors spoke with
accents of the time. The first half is mostly a mystery show (my favourite
part). After intermission it's a comedy, similar to Abbot and Costello. We
were there on costume night so many of the audience members had on hats and
clothes of the 1920s to 1940s, several were also dancing on the stage before
the show and during intermission.
Here's a picture of the theatre programmes from mostly 2008 spread out on
the floor. I just don't have time to scan them all in, describe the shows or
do much more than take this group photo before throwing them out (need the
space), so you'll just have to look and be amazed! You should be able to find
most of them in the subsequent list of shows we've seen (culled from old
calendars, web searches and piles of trip photos).
Before the start of this log, I and my theatre enthusiast girlfriend went to
many more shows. Here's a list of most of them going back into the mists of
time. Before then, I'd been to plenty of GCTC shows and a couple of Fringe
Festivals, but definitely not as many as I've been to since meeting her!
Copyright © 2012 by Alexander G. M. Smith.
