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Undercurrents review

Andrew Snowdon — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Tuesday evening marked the beginning of Ottawa’s third annual undercurrents festival at the Great Canadian Theatre Company (1233 Wellington Street West). Festival Director Pat Gauthier’s showcase of six theatre productions includes a mix of local and national creations that highlight some of the best cutting-edge theatre in the country. With each show lasting about an hour at the most, very reasonable ticket prices, multiple performances, and productions you might not normally get to see—or know about until after the fact — the festival is one of the most accessible theatre available.

In short, undercurrents is like a theatre mixtape. Here’s a peak at a few of the shows on offer:

SKIN (Deluxe Hot Sauce): If The National Film Board Did The Vagina Monologues…

There is perhaps no better means to express a woman’s alienation than German operatic vocals. Brecht knew it, and so does Deluxe Hot Sauce. The group was last seen clambering over church pews at sunset wearing slips as part of 2012’s SubDevisions festival. Deluxe Hot Sauce are still in their slips, but now have more members and a deeper thematic narrative.The musically-infused, movement-rich show is inspired by folk tales of the Selkies: seals that shed their skins to become beautiful women for a short time. To piano (and other instrumental) accompaniment by Nick Carpenter, the six performers (Katie Bunting, Sarah Finn, Annie Lefebvre, Kelly Rigole, Doreen Taylor-Claxton, and Beverley Wolfe) take turns exploring different aspects of the feeling of “not being comfortable in one’s own skin”—of alienation, isolation, and the attendant loss of identity. Their complex and fragmentary storytelling, appropriately enough, takes a variety of forms, including music (a bowed harp and a fiddle being among the instruments wielded by cast members) and physical movement bordering on dance. The cast is incredibly unified; it is sometimes difficult to tell where one ends and the next one begins, so fluid are the transitions between character, mood, and method of conveying the story.

One could theorize that the central Selkie story, which probably sprang from the same root as The Little Mermaid, was thought up to explain someone’s wife “suddenly” running away—presumably from a life of intolerable oppression. The “abandonment” of a marriage and family by a wife and mother is still demonized in a very sex-specific way, with little regard to the reasons, circumstances, or underlying causes thereof. The public exploration of this—or indeed any—individual experience from the female perspective is still rare enough that tackling the theme alone makes this a notable production. But it’s the execution that makes it not only entertaining, but emotionally engaging. SKIN is a series of impressions that leaves the overall impression of a whole. It is resistant to analysis, yet intensely provocative both intellectually and emotionally. The effect is somewhat as though The Vagina Monologues were reimagined by the National Film Board—vignettes that shift rhythmically from one to the next, from light to darkness, music to speech, rolling like waves.

Photo courtesy of Jacqui Jensen-Roy

The Public Servant (Theatre Columbus): Staring Into The All-too-familiar Abyss

If you live in Ottawa, you either are (or were) a public servant, or you know at least one (if this is not the case, I want to hear from you to find out how you managed that). An Ottawa audience, therefore, should be ideal for a show about life in the public service. On the other hand, an Ottawa audience, being familiar with life in the public service (if only by proxy) should also be the harshest judge of the accuracy of such a show.

The Public Servant follows newly minted policy analyst Madge (Haley McGee) through her career in an unidentified department of the Canadian federal government (although I gather it’s supposed to be Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), where she encounters a colourful variety of other public servants (Sarah McVie and Amy Rutherford, in various roles) and a surprising amount of paperwork on her trajectory from wide-eyed idealism to crushing disillusionment. It’s billed as tragi-comic; as hackneyed as that term may be, it’s apt in this case. Owing to chillingly true-to-life character work—particularly on the part of Rutherford—and a clearly researched understanding of the atmosphere of public service bureaucracy, what is essentially a sad mirror of many people’s everyday reality delivers a laugh a minute. It doesn’t hurt that they make a delicious art out of perspective-bending transitions using cubicle dividers and desks.

Theatre Columbus has an intentionally slow, deliberate development process. As a matter of fact, I first heard about this show at the 2011 Magnetic North Theatre Festival, when I bumped into Sarah McVie and Amy Rutherford (it may have even been director Jennifer Brewin; it was a party, two years ago, at night) in the lobby of SAW Gallery. I asked if they were working on anything (a standard party question) and they told me they were: a piece on the life of the average public servant, and that they were using research techniques much like those used in the creation of verbatim theatre to get an idea of what it was about.

Have they hit their mark? Never having worked in the public service myself, I can only say that what I saw matches the stories I’ve heard over the years pretty much perfectly. In at least two of the characters portrayed, I could swear I recognized current or former public servants I know personally. The constant heartfelt laughter of the Ottawa audience is the best testament to The Public Servant’s veracity.

At times, The Public Servant is nothing more nor less than a high-quality generic office sketch (think the two Cathys from The Kids In The Hall), but it does highlight the particular idiosyncracies of the public service. The narrative follows an arc from potential and hope to futility and despair. At its climax, the scene portraying the dreaded job competition interview is so vividly accurate and so hilariously sad that I would see the show again for that alone. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, the performance ended with what is perhaps my favourite underrated Canadian patriotic song, a relic of Expo 67, Canada’s centennial year, and the Golden Age of the Public Service.

If you work in the public service, worked in the public service, would pick a life of crime over working in the public service, or simply appreciate a good poke at contemporary Canadiana, you must see The Public Servant.

As a rule, early performances of undercurrents shows tend to sell out before the festival even opens on the basis of word-of-mouth alone (take it from someone who tried to get a second ticket to The Public Servant). That being said, it’s always worth calling the box office in case seats become available. For the full undercurrents line-up and schedule, and to book tickets, visit the GCTC website.

So Much Theatre: Fly Me to the Moon

Andrew Snowdon — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:00:19 +0000

No matter how routine your job, you never really know what you’re going to find when you go in to work.

What starts as a regular shift for Belfast home-care workers Loretta Mackie (Margo MacDonald) and Frances Shields (Mary Ellis) quickly turns into a question of scruples when their client dies on the toilet on the day his pension cheque is due to be deposited. The moral dilemma with which the protagonists of Marie Jones’s Fly Me to the Moon are faced grows deeper and deeper as the day goes on, forcing the pair to invent a more and more complicated cover-up, until the action reaches an unexpectedly sentimental conclusion—all with Mr. Davy McGee’s dead body in the next room.

Fly Me to the Moon is a well-written comedy with just enough room for social commentary. The two characters form a classic comedy pair—the dynamic between the honest but simple Loretta, and the astute but opportunistic Frances is at the root of the tension. If they didn’t have conflicting character traits, not only would there be no humour, but there would be no play at all. The fundamental driving force behind the decisions Loretta and Frances make is economic desperation. Although the specifics of their respective situations reflect the Northern Irish society in which they live, the underlying desperation is not limited to time or place and quite universal in Western society. Marie Jones has been able to express a local reality that is accessible globally, and filtered through the medium of comedy.

Despite the large, intricate set, all but a few moments of the action take place in one evenly-lit room in the centre of the stage. Yet the unoccupied third of the stage, dominated by the backdrop of row-housing and a cobblestone path created by lighting alone, never feels like wasted space.

What makes the stage seem full is a pair of energetic performances by both MacDonald and Ellis (along with a brief vocal cameo by Zach Counsil). The dialogue is natural on its own—I imagine it would work quite well as a radio play—but it’s the physical acting, the facial expressions, and the sense of timing that MacDonald and Ellis bring to their roles that makes this a performance worthy of a large stage (and a full house). The total running time of the performance is less than two hours, due in part to the appropriately rapid pacing (director John P. Kelly’s specialty). It is, however, the tension created by the urgency of the situation, and the ever-increasing financial and ethical stakes of the care workers’ dilemma that makes it seem as if no time passes at all.

Fly Me to the Moon is an excellent choice for the Great Canadian Theatre Company and for this season: it’s Irish, but not too Irish; it’s dark, but not too dark; and above all, it’s funny.

Fly Me to the Moon runs from November 1 to November 18, 2012 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company. Up-to-date showtimes and ticket prices are available at the GCTC website.

So Much Theatre: The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum

Andrew Snowdon — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:42:05 +0000

I’ve listened to my share of Cape Breton coal mining stories, having had an elementary school teacher whose father was a doctor in just such a settlement. Although I found the world laid out in The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum familiar, I also found it fresh and full of life.

The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum tells the story of the MacNeils, a Cape Breton coal mining family, from the viewpoint of Margaret MacNeil (Francine Deschepper). Margaret lives in a shack with her bereaved mother Catherine (Martha Irving), her surviving brother Ian (Jeff Schwager) and her invalid grandfather (David Francis). She meets and falls in love with a Scottish veteran, Neil Currie (Gil Garratt), whose brash manner, fierce pride in his heritage, and love of playing the bagpipes rekindle a joy in life that they had forgotten. Ian fights for worker’s rights, Grandpa MacNeil fights to breathe, and Neil fights to give Margaret a better life—but their fortunes are ultimately tied to the mines.

It’s not necessary to know the geography of—or anything else about—Cape Breton to follow the play (although it might have been nice to have a little map in the program for those of us with a foggy sense of the Maritimes). Those with some knowledge of the places and events mentioned will find it rendered faithfully and with emotional sincerity. Wendy Lill has adapted Sheldon Currie’s novel in a way that preserves the story’s intimacy while effortlessly showcasing the Cape Breton cultural idiom. The play, an NAC co-production with Halifzx’s Neptune Theatre in celebration of its 50^thanniversary, is also directed by its original interpreter, Mary Vingoe, who among other distinctions was the founding Artistic Director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. She and two of the cast members (David Francis and Martha Irving) also took part in the NAC’s The Ark on Fogo Island project last year, which probably contributed to the cast’s rapport as an ensemble.

Francis conquers the challenge of playing a character who is all but mute and immobile with a highly practised subtlety of expression that makes him as interesting as, and a perfect foil for, the talkative Catherine. There is a difference between playing a stereotype and playing a role immediately recognizable as a Cape Bretoner, and both Irving’s portrayal of Catherine and Deschepper’s portrayal of Margaret fall well on the correct side of that line. Schwager and Garratt are each great on their own, but their dynamic together highlights the conflicts that drive the action. The performances are perfectly balanced, which is essential for a play where every character has many dimensions.

The set makes the utmost use of both horizontal and vertical space to represent a variety of locations, central to which is the MacNeils’ living quarters. The lighting is simple, subtle and therefore effective. There is also plenty of music in The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum, not as mere decoration, but as an integral part of the story and its imagery. Most of the music is performed live, onstage by Gil Garratt’s character. The NAC Theatre is quite a large space—until it is filled with the just-short-of-deafening wail of Bagpipes, which are meant to be played in the open air. Although many (myself included) find it quite pleasant—and Garratt plays not only the pipes but also a tin whistle and a fiddle with natural ability—for those who can’t abide the pipes it might be a bit much. Even then, it’s probably worth the potential discomfort.

The Canadian obsession with attempting to articulate a national identity is, if not exactly productive of a definite answer, at least the inspiration for a great deal of artistic and literary output. Some have tried to pin the birth of the nation down to military distinction, giving us Billy Bishop Goes to War, Vimy, and Passchendaele. There are undoubtedly nations that can and do trace their origins back to defining moments of military victory, such as the United States and Great Britain. As important as these events are to history, I think Canadian national identity—if such a nebulous concept even has meaning—is rather to be found in the Prairie homesteads, the traplines of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, the steel rails laid through the Rockies, the coal mines of Cape Breton, and, today, the Alberta oil sands. This is why plays like The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum (and Dying Hard, and Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show) deserve a central place on our national stage.

The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum has a dark twist, in an already dark story, worthy of Chuck Palahniuk (it is no wonder that Helena Bonham-Carter starred in the 1995 film adaptation of Currie’s novel, Margaret’s Museum). This darkness is shot through with a piercing shaft of light: the indefatigable spirit of Cape Breton. This production is delightful, entertaining, and thoroughly satisfying—a great way for the NAC English Theatre to open its season.

So much theatre: The Fly with Stones party at the GCTC

Andrew Snowdon — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:54:32 +0000

One might expect that two theatres located within a twenty-minute walk from one another—and with a similar core audience demographic—would have some kind of frosty, dramatic rivalry. Not so, in the case of the Great Canadian Theatre Company and the Gladstone Theatre. These two theatres have somewhat of a shared history; before the GCTC moved into its current location, the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre at the corner of Holland and Wellington, it occupied the theatre that, after extensive renovations, became the Gladstone.

By what we are to understand is happy coincidence, the Gladstone is opening its season with Irish playwright Marie Jones’s Stones in His Pockets, starring Zach Counsil and Richard Gélinas and directed by John P. Kelly, while later in the fall the GCTC will present Marie Jones’s Fly Me To The Moon, starring Margo MacDonald and Mary Ellis, and also directed by John P. Kelly.

The logical thing to do in such a case is to have 1) a party, and 2) a discount on tickets. So on Tuesday evening, the GCTC hosted an Irish-themed “Fly with Stones” party from 5 to 7 in their spacious lobby, featuring Shepherd’s pie, lemonade, and Guinness, as well as a live Irish band.

The highlight of the well-attended event was an informal “script-off” between the two casts, each performing a staged reading of a scene from the other’s play, sight unseen, and then each presenting a full scene from their own play. This was a great opportunity to see four experienced, versatile actors having a lot of fun with each others’ material; as Stones in His Pockets is already halfway through rehearsal, Counsil and Gélinas had a more polished scene to work with, but MacDonald and Ellis seem to have fairly developed ideas of their characters even this far ahead of their end-of-October opening night. At the very least, everyone had their Irish accents primed.

After the script-off, there was plenty of time for attendees to meet and converse with each other and the artists. This is always the best way to learn things about productions that you wouldn’t otherwise know until you held the program in your hand; for example, Counsil mentioned afterward that in Stones in His Pockets, he and Gélinas will get to perform an Irish dance, choreographed by Gladstone Theatre co-owner, fellow actor, and accomplished dance instructor Steve Martin.

Stones in His Pockets opens the 2012–2013 Gladstone season on September 7th, while we have to wait until October 30th for the GCTC première of Fly Me To The Moon (the GCTC season opens with The Secret Mask on September 11th); the theatres are offering a two-show voucher granting admission to both plays for $60, a significant cost savings (I am informed that subscribers to either theatre’s season get an equivalent discount, so nobody loses out).

So Much Theatre: Review of Circle Mirror Transformation

Andrew Snowdon — Mon, 28 May 2012 22:03:02 +0000

It is only by looking in a mirror that people can see themselves as they are.

In the final play of the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s 2011–12 season, Circle Mirror Transformation, five people’s lives intersect over the course of a six-week community centre creative drama workshop. The class is led by enthusiastic former hippie Marty (Mary Ellis) and attended by her comparably reserved husband James (John Koensgen), recently divorced furniture artisan Schultz (Andy Massingham), ex-New York failed actress and aspiring massage therapist Theresa (Sarah McVie), and introverted teenager Lauren (Catherine Rainville). Through various group exercises (that will be either peculiar at first, or all too familiar, to any given audience member) they get to know each other—perhaps too well, as they start to pry at the cracks in each others’ personal lives, for worse and for better.

Playwright Annie Baker has made use of a similar framework to the NBC sitcom Community: take a few people who have very little in common and wouldn’t interact under normal circumstances, and throw them in a room to learn something together. Circle Mirror Transformation certainly starts as a comedy; as time goes on the interactions get more and more serious, but it retains its fundamental humour right until the final moment.

Because of her astute choice of setting and situation, Baker is able to do a great many things that would be frowned upon in most plays, such as have the characters tell each others’ backstories while merely suggesting the events in the characters’ present lives. Each of the characters is in one way or another at a turning point in their lives. Normally it’s a bad idea to concentrate on more than one character’s journey—and some of the character development is consequently how-the-heck-did-that-happen abrupt—but it adds a certain feeling of realism. People do have lives, and sometimes they collide with others’ lives, and Circle Mirror Transformation refuses to simplify that.

The drama of Circle Mirror Transformation depends more on how the characters interact with each other than what is said. It follows that interest in the action depends on how real and sympathetic the characters appear. Thus, this talented, experienced cast makes this play what it is. Mary Ellis is a gem; she and Koensgen play off against each other well and when the veneer is scratched off, fight and make up exactly as a long-married couple would. Massingham definitely inspires sympathy in Schultz’s emotional vulnerability. McVie somehow incorporates Theresa’s dazzlingly naïve arrogance into a character you believe will be fallen for by someone, or everyone. The least experienced cast member, Catherine Rainville, is not merely a fresh face; she more than holds her own on stage. Lauren’s change in character is the most sweeping (yet least motivated), and Rainville portrays the spectrum easily. She has certainly not wasted the opportunity to debut on the GCTC stage alongside four local luminaries. The actors are all at their most natural (as anyone who has met them in a social setting could verify), and their acting styles match their roles perfectly.

The angle of the set and the mirrors along one wall—which have nothing, by the way, to do with the “circle mirror transformation” to which the title refers—solve some of the problems with blocking resulting from people moving naturally and sitting in a dreaded circle (a problem that plagued the similarly-themed I Do Not Like Thee, Dr. Fell produced earlier this season by SevenThirty Productions at the Gladstone Theatre). This, fortunately or unfortunately, means that one’s position in the audience has an immense effect on what exactly one sees; those rows closer to the stage (and to the right of the house) will see “more” than those seated higher up. I don’t think anybody loses out; there are no really bad angles. The set, by the way, is an absolutely accurate depiction of a community centre studio or school gym, complete with painted cinderblock wall, vinyl baseboard, and door jamb painted to match.

There are a lot of techniques in the text that would be classified as unadvisable in general, but they all work in this specific case. The frequent blackouts and episodic nature keep the comedic pace rolling. The direct exposition is entirely in keeping with the setting. Whether it’s by chance or minor genius doesn’t really matter, in the end. The overall effect is interesting, entertaining, and makes sense.

When this season was launched, I wasn’t too sure about Lise Ann Johnson’s choice of this piece—and of course none of us knew at the time that it would be the last she would direct as Artistic Director of the GCTC. I had feared this was going to be a very actor-y play; it appears these fears were unfounded. The opening night audience is always filled with actors and people close enough to the theatre to be able to think from an actor’s perspective. Many of them certainly were familiar with the exact exercises portrayed in the play, and some definitely took it as a play targeted toward the creative class. However, I believe it is unquestionably universal; the characters do not need any prior knowledge of drama and neither does an audience member.

Circle Mirror Transformation isn’t a play about actors, for starters; it’s a play about regular people. It is only by looking in a mirror that people can see themselves as they are, and it’s up to drama to provide that mirror.

Circle Mirror Transformation plays at the Great Canadian Theatre Company until June 10.

So Much Theatre: King Lear

Andrew Snowdon — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:15:00 +0000

The final production of this year’s National Arts Centre English Theatre season is Shakespeare’s King Lear. But it’s not just any King Lear; it is King Lear with an all-Aboriginal cast—the culmination of an idea actor August Schellenberg and the late director John Juliani had forty-five years ago – and, on top of that, Aboriginal costumes and setting – presumably the choice of director Peter Hinton. It’s not unusual for Shakespeare’s plays to be re-set in different periods and locales (in fact, these days it’s almost the norm), but there’s usually a reason for doing so. Is this, then, an Aboriginal King Lear? No. That would be grossly inaccurate. It is, rather, merely an Aboriginal-flavoured King Lear.

King Lear is Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy next to Hamlet. As he realizes old age is taking its toll on his capacity to rule, Lear (August Schellenberg) decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters Goneril (Monique Mojica), Regan (Tantoo Cardinal), and Cordelia (Jani Lauzon), and abdicate to spend the final years of his life in rest and ease. Unfortunately, he lets vanity and pride determine the division of his estate, and leaves himself powerless, at the whim of his two greedy and ambitious eldest daughters. As in all Shakespeare, when a King makes a Bad Decision, everyone suffers for it.

Owing to the unevenness of the performances, the production comes off as shockingly amateurish. It is almost as if each actor were from a different production of King Lear—and, like a hastily-assembled all-star hockey team, they don’t seem to belong together. It would be meaningless to say any one performance stands out, since they all do.

Kevin Loring is, by now, familiar to Ottawa audiences. As Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, his ambition is a catalyst for the total destruction of the social order that parallels Lear’s own decline and fall. He’s capable and energetic, but only in scenes where he interacts with other characters. His soliloquies, however, lack something vital. Goneril (Monique Mojica) is probably the strongest Shakespearian actor overall; her characterization is multidimensional and interesting, whereas some of the cast has trouble in both these respects. Lear’s Fool, also played by Jani Lauzon, wearing what could best be described as a shamanistic motley (with a Union Flag loincloth) is supposed to provide both comic relief and the wisdom Lear lacks; here the concentration is on the comic relief. As the Fool is about the only character consistently moving and reacting naturally throughout the piece, this relief is welcome.

What’s most disappointing is that Schellenberg flubs some lines—given the fact that this has been a dream of his for four decades, it’s a wonder that this is even possible. Lear should be the most powerful, present character on stage. His descent into madness (or senile dementia, depending on your interpretation) is supposed to be through violent anger to feebleness. The violent anger, the rage, these never come across; this Lear is feeble throughout. Since the impact of the play depends on Lear’s character arc, it ends up being not much of a tragedy at all.

Speaking with other audience members after the show, I found out that some of them were disappointed that there was no synopsis in the program as it was hard to follow what was being said—not the language, but the diction. Acting Shakespeare requires particular skills and a sense of the rhythm and meaning of the language, and that definitely varied from actor to actor.

Suzanne Keeptwo, the Aboriginal Advisor and Community Liaison for this production, gave an interview to Guerilla Magazine in which she raised the question of why “the institution of white man’s theatre” would “decide to depict this story as one that belongs to the Algonquin.” That is an awfully good question. What was the point, and did this production make it? If it was, as originally conceived, to prove or show that there are now sufficient Aboriginal actors of sufficient calibre to stage King Lear on a national stage with an all-Aboriginal cast, then yes—just barely. That purely symbolic objective is not, however, justification to charge an audience to see it. If the intention was—as it ought to have been—to present an interpretation of King Lear from an Aboriginal perspective, or with Aboriginal relevance, or emphasis on Aboriginal themes, then no. Far from it. Honestly, the first objective would have been better served by having the all-Aboriginal cast do King Lear without trying so hard to make it look “Aboriginal.” It’s as if someone thought that if you have Aboriginal people on stage the audience expects to see them in traditional (I don’t have the knowledge required to speak to its authenticity, so I’ll give the team the benefit of the doubt) dress, feathers and furs, running across the stage, tomahawks raised, emitting war-whoops. Because that actually happened.

I have gone on the record before as being a Shakespearian purist, and this is true to some extent. I believe that, despite archaic language, Shakespeare’s plays for the most part stand the test of time. Shakespeare’s best lines still get a laugh out of the audience, for instance—as long as you can hear them. I don’t think Shakespeare should never be done in modern dress, or set somewhere different, or cast gender-blind; these are all decisions a director can make in order to get across a particular interpretation. But those decisions had better be made to get across a particular interpretation, and not just for the hell of it.

During the production, hearing the lines, it occurred to me that there is, potentially, an Aboriginal reading of King Lear. This potential is as yet untapped. One day, perhaps, an Aboriginal director will discover and develop its interpretation. I look forward to that day.

So Much Theatre: Death and the Maiden

Andrew Snowdon — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:04:48 +0000

Death and the Maiden is set in Chile in 1990, in the aftermath of the Pinochet regime. Fifteen years earlier, Paulina Salas (Geneviève Sirois) was abducted, tortured, and raped for two months. A chance meeting has her husband Gerardo Escobar (Chris Ralph), a lawyer freshly appointed to the new government’s commission to investigate the prior regime’s human rights abuses, bring home Dr. Roberto Miranda (Paul Rainville), who Salas recognizes from her past. In an eruption of years of repressed emotion, she turns the tables on her former captor. She wants revenge; her husband wants justice; Dr. Miranda wants to live.

Right away, there is a life-or-death conflict. So this should be an exciting, suspenseful, thrilling play. And it is, at times, but not as much as it ought to be. Chilean-Argentinian playwright Ariel Dorfman set Death and the Maiden in a real historical setting that, although international news at the time, may not be familiar to everyone. Consequently, much of the dialogue is dedicated to establishing the political environment at the time, and although that environment itself was thrilling, we can hardly expect its description to be. When the action and the dialogue do turn visceral, unfortunately the performances don’t consistently match the intensity of the text. In this case, it’s not the pacing that’s off: it’s the passion. It would be stereotypical to expect that Latin-American characters will always be passionate, expressive, and flamboyant. In this situation, however, confronted with these conflicts, whatever the characters’ cultural background, they should be at the very edge of their emotions on the brink of violent expression of their passions. At the very least, the act of binding a conscious person to a chair should involve some sort of struggle or resistance.

Rainville’s performance is the most riveting, perhaps because its peak is in the form of a monologue, whereas Ralph and Sirois spend most of their time pitted against each other, arguing about him. When Ralph’s passion does kick in, it seems a bit abrupt. Sirois is uneven, and since it is her character’s emotional breaking point, her desire for some kind of personal justice, that is the impetus behind the events in the play, she is on average about a tenth as intense as she needs to be to be sympathetic. The audience needs to feel her pain, or there is no conflict and no suspense. Part of this lack of veracity may have been due to concentrating on less-important aspects of characterization—specifically, accents. I’ve said before that if you can’t maintain an accent, you shouldn’t do it on stage—or be directed to. A halfway-effective effort is infinitely more distracting than an actor concentrating on other aspects of their characterization. The structure of the text requires the overall intensity to start early and increase steadily until the climax; this unfortunately was not the way it was played.

Andrea Robertson Walker’s set is an impressive three-level platform neatly evoking both the inside and outside of the Escobars’ beach house in a somewhat cubist manner. Most of the action takes place in a narrow band midstage, but the shallowness of the playing area is made up for by the depth of the set and suggested action offstage. David Magladry’s dynamic lighting lends essential realism to this offstage action, as well as a sense of the passage of time. The visual and auditory production values are quite high for a professional show of this size.

The final scene of Death and the Maiden is baffling, and strikes me as unnecessary. The play presents a dialectic, essentially, between personal revenge and social justice, without deciding positively for one or the other. This is perfectly fine, and in the spirit of Boal (or even Blackbird) encourages the continuation of the debate in the minds of the audience after they’ve left the theatre. Or it would have, had this final, ineffectually symbolic scene not ruined the uncertainty. This is one case, in my opinion, where not resolving the story would not only make sense, but be beneficial, and I don’t think the artistic intention comes across well enough to outweigh that.

Whether or not the themes are universal in an abstract sense, Death and the Maiden deals with events that happened within living memory and remind us that totalitarian militaristic regimes that torture their citizens still exist and have effects on individual lives that long outlast their dictators.

Death and the Maiden is playing at the Gladstone Theatre () until May 19. Tickets are $23-$39.

So Much Theatre: Evolution Theatre’s Mary Magdalene and [boxhead] double-bill

Andrew Snowdon — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:02:53 +0000

Evolution Theatre’s double-bill of two very different plays (Berni Stapleton’s Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety and [boxhead] by Darren O’Donnell) is challenging for both the performers and the audience. Whether or not you’re ready for the challenge will very much determine how much you enjoy both productions.

In the single-performer Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety, Nancy Kenny is the famous former lover of Jesus Christ who stumbles into a modern-day Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after wandering the earth in a boozy wash for nearly 2,000 years. As she struggles to deserve the kindness of her sponsor and crawl her way to redemption, she reminisces about her life with Jesus, revises inaccuracies in the Stations of the Cross, and recites sermons on the rules and etiquette of drinking and sobriety.

Nancy Kenny steps beyond her comic core to present a portrait of a person who is both pathetic and powerful in her passion. The slapstick physicality of certain moments clearly owes a lot to director Andy Massingham. Staging the play in and around the audience is entirely appropriate to the character’s instability, and although it’s a bit of a pain to swivel around to see her in the different stage areas, it keeps interest and momentum going.

Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety relies heavily on a Catholic context, and to the degree that it does, cannot therefore be universal. It’s not quite esoteric; the level of familiarity required is not far above that necessary to get Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Evolution Theatre does tend to program plays that rely on Catholic symbolism for their effect (Little Martyrs, and to some degree Ex Cathedra, the second play in The Lavender Railroad). It’s possible that this narrows the audience they reach. On the other hand, it’s unusual outside of Francophone theatre and so the potential of attracting an audience with an Anglophone Catholic cultural background is there. Overall, Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety is an interesting piece of speculative fiction that takes a realistic look at addiction through a very particular filter, and also examines the way we perceive history through the filter of myth.

Then, in [boxhead], a young geneticist (Stewart Matthews) with a box on his head—quite literally, a cardboard box —at the end of his rope, decides to make a clone of himself (Chris Bedford). Under the watchful, interfering eye(lessness) of two noncorporeal narrators (also voiced—in real-time—by Stewart Matthews and Chris Bedford), they set about trying to get the boxes off of their heads, trying to clone time itself, and trying to discover why they can’t conceive a child together. Meanwhile, the narrators desperately need something from the audience, and are willing to resort to extreme measures to obtain it.

The two actors look like bent stick figures in lab coats with no facial features; in other words, exactly like xkcd characters come to life. Matthews immediately establishes Dr. Actions as a stridently-pitched Marvin the Paranoid Android, inspiring sympathy while remaining ridiculous. Bedford is more subdued, which over time becomes a relief from Matthews’s intensity. The narrators have personalities reminiscent of GLaDOS, the disembodied, omnipresent computer voice from the Portal series of video games. There’s a lot of dialogue that takes place in total darkness; it’s too bad that the vocal processing often distorts the words. On one level, [boxhead] has four characters; on another, it is a gruelling monologue arranged for two actors, who need to be perfectly synchronized and locker-room-comfortable with each other, and Bedford and Matthews are. That the audience is an audience is not only acknowledged, it is played upon. One could say that this play not only breaks the fourth wall, it is about the internal fourth wall.

There is nudity in [boxhead] (sorry for those of you hoping the sign outside meant Nancy Kenny would be working blue); I would hesitate to call it gratuitous nudity. Is nudity gratuitous when its very gratuitousness is the point? I would leave it as a surprise but it’s neither brief nor incidental and deserves mention, if not quite a warning. Much of [boxhead], in fact, needs to be left a surprise and is not brief. It’s never boring, but according to my tailbone it is long; it’s impossible to pin down the exact running time because that depends to a large degree on the audience.

The problem is, despite the tremendous value for money that $25 for two shows offers, these particular two shows do not belong together. [boxhead] is more than capable of standing on its own, and Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety is too substantial to be merely an opening act for a full-blown play. If anything, it should be in a double-bill with a piece of similar scope, style, and subject—as Evolution did admirably with The Lavender Railroad. Even after making allowances, these two plays are for vastly different audiences. That’s not to say that people aren’t generally broad-minded enough to appreciate both—I hope they are—but most are going to find one suits them orders of magnitude more than the other. When I think of who I would privately recommend see one or the other, I come up with entirely different sets of people. The crossover group would be disaffected (or open-minded devout) Catholics with a craving for surrealistic comedy.

Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety is raw, emotional, mature, and real; [boxhead] is stylized, philosophical, puerile (in a good way), and fantastically absurd. They’re each compelling in diametrically opposed ways. The only thing tying them together (besides the Serenity Prayer) is the theme of eternal loneliness and isolation. Appropriately enough, they belong together in the same way as people who end up sharing a seat on a crowded bus: uncomfortably.

Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety and [boxhead] double bill runs until April 28. Tickets are $20-$25.

So Much Theatre: Communion

Andrew Snowdon — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:23:12 +0000

One of Canada’s foremost contemporary playwrights, the prolific Daniel MacIvor, has written yet another complex play where what takes place on stage is second in importance to what takes place in the audience member’s head.

In Communion a mother, Leda (Jenny Munday) tries to come to terms with her strained relationship with her adult daughter Annie (Stephanie MacDonald) through therapy, while Annie tries to come to terms with her own identity and her relationship with her mother first through extreme faith, and then by seeking to understand her mother’s relationship with her therapist Carolyn (Kathryn MacLellan), who herself is trying to come to terms with her inability to give people the help they seek. The play consists of three dialogues: between Carolyn and Leda, between Leda and Annie, and between Annie and Carolyn. These slowly reveal the events that have driven mother and daughter apart, the factors that will bring them back together, and the way in which they define themselves.

The KAZAN Co-op, which has put together this production, is clearly a close-knit collective; the way all of the elements of the scenic and costume design blend with the performers and enhance their performances is characteristic of the work of a group that has grown together to form a unit. I could easily see Communion becoming a community theatre standard, primarily because the role of Leda provides a rich opportunity for an older female actor to take on a realistic role that requires considerable comic and dramatic skill. Munday’s performance will, rightly, be the gold standard against which subsequent Ledas will be judged. MacIvor’s text requires the actor to hold the audience’s attention for a protracted, nerve-wracking period of time through stage business alone, and then to run an emotional marathon from anxious despair to blissful serenity. It could look like hard work—or, as in Munday’s case, it could look like the journey of a real human being. Both MacDonald and MacLellan bring reality and depth to their roles as well, but Communion is mostly about Leda.

The third act, or the third dialogue—and it is difficult to discuss this piece in detail without giving away its many surprises—presents a bit of a problem. It is absolutely necessary for the structure and symmetry of the piece, but the narrative continues well after the story proper reaches completion at the end of the second act. In this way, it’s a little like the final scene of Death of a Salesman. In a similar way, it’s hard to imagine either play without its final commentary.

Fundamentally, Communion is about the error of seeking to define oneself in terms of the external. Therapy and dogmatic religion are characterized as ineffective, or at least incompletely effective, as is the search for meaning in or through the approval of a family member. Only by stepping outside these ready roles, and to the degree that they do, do any of the characters achieve the sense of integrated identity that they seek. On one level it’s refreshing to see redemption coupled with the rejection of faith, but this nihilistic philosophy of radical agnosticism won’t sit well with everyone, even if there’s no direct indictment of belief or faith per se. Whether or not this is a universally palatable viewpoint, it’s more than worth considering; the climactic acceptance of faith is far too cliché in dramatic literature.

Communion features an ambitious set for the Studio space of the NAC, a brilliant text with memorable characters, and performances that etch them indelibly into one’s mind. It’s puzzling that this is the first time a MacIvor play has been staged at the NAC, but the omission has been rectified in style.

Communion is playing at the National Arts Center (53 Elgin Street) until April 21. Tickets are $39.

So Much Theatre: The GCTC’s 2012/2013 line up

Andrew Snowdon — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:00:16 +0000

On Wednesday afternoon, the Great Canadian Theatre Company announced the six productions that will make up its 2012–13 season—a season without a name, but that will be characterized by “heart and humour,” according to outgoing Artistic Director Lise Ann Johnson.

The season will kick off this September with The Secret Mask, a semiautobiographical tragicomedy by Winnipeg playwright Rick Chafe about a son reunited with his estranged father who has suffered a stroke. The next production, at the end of October, will be the Canadian premiere of Irish dark comedy (is there any other kind?) Fly Me To the Moon, by Marie (MAH-ree) Jones, in which a pair of home care workers face a moral dilemma when one of their clients dies suddenly. Fly Me To the Moon will fittingly be directed by John P. Kelly, who at the helm of SevenThirty Productions has made a name for himself locally specializing in presenting Irish comedies.

As the holiday season approaches, Vancouver’s Axis Theatre will return to the GCTC with the 20th anniversary production of The Number 14, a transdisciplinary physical comedy that graced the GCTC stage 12 years ago, which takes place on a bus route in the East Hastings area of Vancouver. In January, Carmen Aguirre and director Brian Quirt return with the full production of 2012 undercurrents sellout Blue Box, a tightly-braided story of fighting for freedom and chasing after love. The National Arts Centre English Theatre / GCTC co-production of The Edward Curtis Project, an exploration of aboriginal identity and the myth of “the vanishing Indian,” will take the stage in April; the accompanying photographic exhibit will be in the Lorraine “Fritzi” Yale Gallery upstairs at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre for the duration of the run.

The season will wrap up in June with a dark comedy from last year’s GCTC resident playwright Rosa LaBorde, Like Wolves, featuring a couple celebrating their 54th anniversary in their honeymoon suite, which has changed as much as they have. Of course, the wildly successful undercurrents festival will return for its third year in February under Patrick Gauthier’s keen curatorship.
With the possible exception of The Edward Curtis Project, all these are comedies, albeit of varying levels of darkness. Three of them have another theme in common sure to resonate with an older audience. The Secret Mask deals with caring for an elderly parent, Fly Me To the Moon is in an elder care setting, and Like Wolves features a couple facing the prospect of committing themselves to care in their declining years. Although this apparent theme won’t necessarily alienate a younger audience, neither will it entice them through the door. This, however, seems sensible. In sticking with generally safe, palatable comedies, the GCTC has programmed a season that will be comfortable to existing and potential subscribers (those who buy a discounted package of tickets to an entire season well in advance). It’s a simple fact of economics and lifestyle that subscribers tend to be in an older age bracket (let’s say over 40). It’s not that this demographic doesn’t appreciate novelty and experimentation—take a look at the Fringe Festival audience, for example—but when they’re paying for the bus-pass convenience of a subscription, they’d rather their ride be a smooth one. Since subscriptions are the heart of the GCTC’s business model, it is in their best interests to tailor their season to appeal to that segment of the audience, first and foremost.

Although the other three productions are a little more adventurous (and likely to appeal to a younger prospective audience), they too are “safe.” The Number 14 has been around for twenty years; although it’s being revamped for this tour, it is a proven, known piece. People who did not get to see it the last time it rolled through town twelve years ago are eager to see it; those who did are urging others to with some confidence. Blue Box is also a known quantity. Not only the box, but much of the language is blue. Thanks to the alarming battle on CBC’s Canada Reads 2012, which her book Something Fierce won, Ms. Aguirre can style herself “accused terrorist” if she so desires. The content certainly pushes the boundary of “safe,” and we haven’t seen a finished, mainstage-ready version (the undercurrents production has been retroactively, and accurately, described as a “workshop production”) with whatever Brian Quirt’s directorial vision turns out to be. But Aguirre is a solid, engaging performer with a solid text, and sold out her undercurrents festival theater run before it opened. That’s pretty safe. The Edward Curtis Project would be a wildcard, but it will at the very least bring the NAC English Theatre subscribers into the GCTC building, and if you already have one theatre season subscription, chances are you’re the kind of person who buys theatre season subscriptions.
In the wake of the decimation of the CBC, it’s nice to be able to report some happy financial arts news. As you may be aware, the skyrocketing price of steel during construction of the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre saddled the GCTC with an extra $1.6 million burden of debt, the carrying cost of which threatened their ability to continue operating. Last year, the Taking Care of Unfinished Business campaign was launched specifically to raise funds to pay down this debt. To date, they have raised over $770,000 in private and corporate donations; it’s possible—even likely—that they will be free of this debt within a couple of seasons and well on their way to their next goal of establishing an endowment fund.

It’s nearly impossible to predict what a theatre season’s going to look like before any of the shows have been cast (besides Blue Box, that is) or many of the directors announced. I would hazard a guess that this relatively mellow approach will prove more sensible than more flamboyant programming would, and I’m rather looking forward to seeing everything. None of the productions announced made me cringe, which is a good sign.

Or at least, I think it is. Ask me in June of 2013.

As an aside, four out of the six productions were created by female playwrights (and I’m not sure about the creative process behind The Number 14, so possibly four-and-a-half). This was not mentioned during the launch, nor do I believe it was specifically planned (although the genesis of Fly Me To the Moon was definitely consciously feminist… we’ll get to that when I write my review); it just happened to turn out that way—organically—and nobody thought it remarkable.

And that’s the way it ought to be.