Tag Archives: Reviews of the performing arts

Never Shoot a Stampede Queen (at Granville Island)

Never Shoot a Stampede Queen
By Mark Leiren-Young
Directed by TJ Dawe
May 10 to May 25
Granville Island Stage, Vancouver, BC

Based on the award-winning book (2009 Leacock medal for humour), the stage version of Stampede Queen just closed in Kamloops at the Western Canada Theatre where it played to full houses, standing ovations and rave reviews. This version just finished a brief preview run in Duncan–also playing to a couple of packed houses, a standing O and delighted audiences. The show is big fun and 100% Stampede Queen approved (Stampede Queens showed up and approved it).

 

An ode to bodies electric

In the Next Room (The Vibrator Play)
@ Theatre Inconnu until March 2/13
Directed by Naomi Simpson
Written by Sarah Ruhl

Reviewed by Leah Callen

Sparks fly in the 1880s when Dr. Givings electrifies women with his revolutionary therapy for hysteria–a vibrator. His wife, Mrs. Givings, is a live wire desperate to plug in to her husband’s secret practice in the next room. But the good Dr. turns her off and turns on the sensitive Mrs. Daldry instead, with a prescription of casual pleasure to put the roses back in her cheeks. Tension builds when Leo, a passionate painter, a robust Mr. Daldry, and a black woman named Elizabeth are drawn into the undercurrent. The play warns: be careful not to over-pet a cat or it might burst into flames.

Watching In the Next Room causes fits of laughter. The actors’ paroxysms were so refreshingly real and unabashed when struck by erotic lightning. Emma Conde hit the high note perfectly as the delicate Mrs. Daldry undressing dutifully. Elizabeth Marsh delivered an emotional climax as the wet nurse, as natural as rain. I was torn by her character being more comfortable in her own skin than the two uptight, white ladies–both touching and stereotypical. James Roney was one hundred percent Bohemian as Leo who wants to immortalize the down-to-earth Elizabeth with a painted halo. Celine Richmond gave a magnetic performance as the midwife, Annie, while Jason Stevens was a forceful whirlwind as Mr. Daldry, who just wants his appetite satisfied. Odile Nelson was a bit of a caricature as the intense Mrs. Givings, but she drove the plot forward with a firm reign and growing pathos. All the while, Julian Cervello basks in the electric halo of his table lamp as Dr. Givings. In a clever lighting maneuver, each time a patient finds sexual enlightenment, they too achieve a golden halo.

I enjoyed the sense of humour in the simultaneous staging. Mrs. Givings pours cups of tea for guests in her rosy living room while her husband strips them down to their basic anatomy in his clinic. When the power goes out, both husband and wife must resort to old-fashioned methods to get by. While Dr. Givings examines an uncomfortable patient in his office, people finger a piano in the living room.

Sarah Ruhl’s wordplay is often hilarious, but she also gets downright poetic. The play questions soulless, mechanical sex. Leo muses that a light without a flame is not divine, and Mrs. Givings prophesies that future fireflies will be electric. The lyrical dialogue of In The Next Room gave me playwright envy. The plot has a darkly comical edge. There’s a fine line between being electrified and electrocuted, between delight and discomfort. These characters marvel at the literal electricity passing between them. However, the true charge comes from within, or as Walt Whitman once dubbed it in his poem I Sing the Body Electric: “the charge of the Soul.” Science has yet to unlock that mystery.

Loosen your corset strings before you go to the theatre: I’m sure you’ll get a buzz out of this daring production.

In the Next Room runs until March 2 at Theatre Inconnu, 1923 Fernwood Road (across from The Belfry). Tickets available for purchase online or over the phone at 250.360.0234.

 

Reviewer Leah Callen is a budding poet-playwright-screenwriter studying at the University of Victoria.

 

Seeing Red at the Belfry

Red by John Logan
Directed by Michael Shamata
Until October 14/12

Seeing Red

Reviewed by Leah Callen

Red, The Belfry’s latest offering, highlights the relationship between Master and Initiate in the infernal chapel of artistic genius. Ken, a young artist, starts out as the assistant to the “high priest of Modern art,” Mark Rothko. We enter his inner sanctum where paint pots, ashtrays, and booze bathe in red light. It’s Luciferian, edgy and brooding. Like an alchemist, Rothko mixes paints and blows smoke as scarlet vapours rise around him, repeating his personal mantra: Rembrandt, Rothko, and Turner. Ken, his green assistant, pleads “pray for me.”

Rothko gazes out on the audience, appraising us as his masterpieces in progress. He urges Ken to be human, to have compassion for art. It lives and breathes, vulnerable to injury like a blind child in a room full of knives. He worries his murals will never forgive him if he hangs them in the Four Seasons Restaurant at the Seagram Building – his latest commission.

Red and black are the emotional colours of Rothko’s art — and playwright of John Logan’s words. Light and dark, intellect and heart, even Santa Claus and Satan have a tug of war. Ken and Rothko take turns embodying opposite energies. Ken tends to practical matters such as mopping, canvas construction and take-out food while Rothko guards the sacred tasks of selecting the perfect mood music, pigment, and cigarette. The scenes are dark as murder, but full of wry humour. I laughed out loud more than once, was touched by other moments. Red is very human.

At the heart of Red lies Rothko’s inability to connect. His compassion is towards his canvas. Even as Ken shares a traumatic memory, Rothko seems unable to offer real comfort. The two keep their physical distance throughout the play until the end.

At first, I resisted Rothko’s art. I’ve never been a huge fan of Abstract Expressionist anything. The set replicas invoked post-traumatic memories of Voices of Fire from my childhood. Curiously, the characters’ conversation about the canvases altered my point of view; I left appreciating the symbolism and movement in Rothko’s work. Music added a sweet touch to this production. When artist and apprentice share a canvas frantically, the overture from the Marriage of Figaro runs up and down in the background, foreshadowing that the servant is going to rise to the Master.

Actor Oliver Becker channeled Rothko with realism. I loved his feistiness and honesty. The character begs us to be fully human, to embrace our black as well as our red. There’s an inevitable narrative arc. The bond between master and servant builds; Ken, played energetically by Jameson Matthew Parker, grows a spine. Still, the actors pull off the transition without steering into cliché. I wanted to follow them as they worked on each other like canvases.

In spite of Mozart, I walked home humming Black and Red from Les Miz. Red: the colour of desire, black: the colour of despair. The themes in Red and Rothko’s art are universal.

Leah Callen is an aspiring poet-playwright-screenwriter studying at the University of Victoria.

 

Witness to a Conga and Other Plays

Witness to a Conga and Other Plays
By Stewart Lemoine
Newest Press
206 pp; $19.95

Reviewed by Jenny Aitken

Stewart Lemoine’s most recent collection of plays demonstrates the comedic timing and wit that earned him the position of resident playwright at the Teatro la Quindicina housed in Edmonton’s Varscona Theatre. Over the past few decades he has written over 60 plays, yet his work remains poignant and fresh.

Published plays like these are crucial because they offer the reader and audience member a chance to appreciate the quality of writing as well as the quality of acting. Published plays also function as exemplars for students and aspiring playwrights to demonstrate that character, depth and humour can be revealed through dialogue.

The book begins with Happy Toes, a fast-paced comedy featuring five characters but focusing on two. Lemoine’s characters are cleverly constructed; there’s Edgar the middle-aged clarinet teacher with a crush on his bank teller, and his friend Alex, who fears he may be the “other man” in his relationship with Janine. The drama comes to a head during one of Edgar’s orchestra recitals, when a screaming match between Alex and Janine delivers the energy and pizzazz the orchestra lacked. “Happy Toes” is like your Uncle Alfred, quirky and even a little weird, but likable nonetheless.

As for the second play, The Oculist’s Holiday, I can see why it would be sandwiched in the middle. Set in Toronto in 1934, the story unfolds through Marian Ogilvy’s recollections of her vacation in Switzerland three years earlier. Although I appreciated the explanation of her position as storyteller – that she is a guest speaker at a graduation of a Women’s Business College – the monologues grew tiresome nonetheless. That being said, there was still humour throughout, as when Marian discloses information of her sexual encounters despite the “windmill gestures” being given to her by the college’s teachers.

The book closes with Witness to a Conga, truly saving the best for last. In preparation for their upcoming wedding, Martin’s fiancé Laura has asked him to prepare a list of people he wants to invite. Unfortunately, he can’t think of anyone. Told entirely from his perspective, this play chronicles Martin’s relationships with the people who have affected him most: There’s his now-deceased mother Eleanor, who left Martin’s father for another woman. We learn of his father Walter, whom he calls once every couple of years, and finally there’s Sheila, a former professor he probably shouldn’t still be thinking about. As Martin faces these “ghosts” from his past, he also must decide if he is the type of person who leads a conga, or someone who just sits and watches.

I found this book exemplified the quick and occasionally pointless manner in which we speak. Although the dialogue seemed random and unconnected at times, it worked because of the offbeat nature of Lemoine’s characters. Witness to a Conga and Other Plays is very much like a conga line – sure it may seem silly at times, but if you jump on board, chances are you will have a good time.

Jenny Aitken is a third-year creative writing and journalism student at the University of Victoria. She grew up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and has written for the University’s student paper, The Martlet, and for Boulevard Magazine.

Afterthought on a Fringe Gem

Afterthought on a Fringe gem

Bookworm
By Corin Raymond

Who would think that a one-hour dramatic monologue about books by a guy who looks like a truck driver could bring tears to your eyes—but that’s what happened for me at the last performance of Bookworm, the final show of the Victoria Fringe Festival of 2012.
Corin Raymond likes to say he’s a singer-songwriter who lives with his books in Toronto. He admits to having three or four thousand of them, all of which he’s read, some many times. His love for books—their feel, look and the sound of their words in his mouth—was instilled in Raymond by his father, a bibliophile, teacher and “secret actor.”
Raymond’s unabashed passion for books and affection for his father brought the entire audience to its feet, roaring approval. It’s no surprise that Bookworm was named a “Pick of the Fringe.” Catch it in Vancouver if you can.

Reviewed by Joy Fisher, a fourth-year student in UVic’s Writing Program