Review: West Side Story

(photo credit: Carol Rosegg)

West Side Story Soars

Fifty-five years later and still a masterpiece

by Stuart Munro

There are certain shows that make me wish I could go back in time and experience them, for the first time, with everybody else in the room. West Side Story is one of those shows. Around the time I was learning how to pirouette, I was also learning how West Side Story had revolutionized theatre and changed the musical forever. I, of course, had grown up surrounded by the effects of those changes (the closest my generation ever got to something groundbreaking was the rock opera, but Jesus Christ Superstar was already ten years old by the time I showed up) and we all now take for granted the fact that musical performers must be actors, singers and dancers. But I’ve always imagined sitting in New York’s Winter Garden Theatre fifty-five years ago, and seeing what must have been something truly exciting and electrifying, and wondering what it felt like.

Last night, I got my wish.

CPT's Picture of the Week, May 10, 2012

Opera is pretty photogenic most of the time, but there are very few pictures that are as striking as this gem from Chris Hutcheson. The drama is there but so too is composition - a magnificent series of coiled verticals thrumming through the chiaroscuro with the characters providing an organic focal point.

It is of the COC's Florentine Tragedy, and features Alan Held and Gun-Brit Barkmin.

Review: How To Disappear Completely

Lighting Life and Death

Itai Erdal uses theatre to confront a hideous process

by Beat Rice

What makes a good piece of theatre? Conventionally, a strong script and storyline, actors who move and sound well, design elements that come together cohesively, and a director who pulls it all together.

How To Disappear Completely redefines what an actor is and what theatre is; it is simply Itai Erdal telling the story of a part of his and his mother's life. You do not need to be a trained actor to be a compelling storyteller, you do not have to know movement, technique, or be able to sing or dance. You can be yourself, talk about yourself, and tell a story that’s close and important to you. Sounds easy right? We all know not everybody can do that successfully. But lighting designer Erdal can and does. Here is an artist who is not an actor and who tells a very personal story the core of which focuses on his mother’s struggle with cancer, and how he was there with her until the end. It sounds like the gist of many cancer patient stories but trust me, it is not. 

After Dark, May 8, 2012

Night Of The Living Dead
An interesting articles has me thinking of the "classics"
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

In the summer of 1976 - I had just turned 19 - I had a hideous job as night clerk at a motel in Quebec City. It was hideous beyond the midnight to eight shift, seven days a week. I lived in a little village far outside of the city and had to commute and/or hitchhike into and back from work. Long, lonely hours were spent with my thumb out...

...but always with a book in my hand.

This was the summer of my great theatre education. Over it I read nearly 400 plays. I owned a mountain of anthologies: great plays of the Restoration; the complete works of Shakespeare (all of which I read that summer); great plays of modern Europe; Shaw; Chekhov; Ibsen; Pinter; Beckett; Osborne; Calderon; Strindberg; great American plays of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s.

During the three hour (on average) daily commute and at least seven of those eight hours at work, I was reading, taking notes and - even! - wrote the one play that actually made me some decent cha-ching.

First-Person: Edward Roy on Beyond the Cuckoo's Nest

The Unspoken

Translating the darkness of the teen years to theatre

by Edward Roy

As I write this I’m deep in technical rehearsals for my new play, Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest, opening on May 9th at Young People’s Theatre. Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest follows the story of three young people dealing with mental illness and mood disorders. Although the subject matter of mental illness is an underlying issue in the play as a writer I felt it was extremely important to focus on the relationships between the characters and explore the challenges they face as teenagers dealing with each other, their desire for acceptance within their peer groups, and the “outside world”. As the story unfolds we watch how the young characters, under the guidance of their adult group facilitator, struggle to navigate their way through tough life choices and the consequences they face when they deny the realities of being a teenager dealing with mental illness.

First-Person: Itai Erdal on How to Disappear Completely

Mother and Me

Exploring life through theatre

by Itai Erdal (production photos by Emily Cooper)

Twelve years ago, I was going to be a documentary filmmaker. I became a theatre lighting designer instead. I never planned to be a designer, it kind of happened by accident. I was a good lighting technician in Israel but I was happy to leave theatre behind to pursue my dreams in film, and when I moved to Vancouver in 1999 it was its booming film industry that attracted me. I worked as a lamp operator in big union movies (Halloween 8, Air Bud 4, etc.), and at the same time I tried to be an independent and documentary filmmaker. I bought a video camera and I tried to start a business of shooting EPK’s (electronic press kits, or the behind the scenes). It was around that time that I received a phone call from Israel telling me that my mother had lung cancer and nine months to live. 

Review: Lost Lounge

(photo credit: Lori E. Seid)

What Is Being Lost?

A reviewer copes with nostalgia

by Beat Rice

I’ve pretty much stopped noticing that I am usually always one of the youngest patrons when I go to the theatre. It’s a non-issue. But I am reminded of it every time I see a show that I just don’t get, because of my age. Lost Lounge is one of those shows. 

Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, a performance duo from NYC under the name Split Britches, with musician Vivian Stoll, together pay tribute to those once thriving lounges that peppered NYC. They comment on how construction enveloped those beloved places where people came together and lounge acts flourished. 

Theatre For Thought, May 5, 2012

THE AUDACITY OF AUBREY DAN

joel fishbane

In theory, there’s every reason to mourn the “hiatus” announced by Dancap, the Toronto production company created in 2007 as an alternative producer of high-end musicals.

Founder Aubrey Dan recently revealed that he would be “stepping back and re-evaluating” his involvement in the production of live theatre. Although the artistic quality of his shows remains in dispute, the fact remains that the company’s presence in Toronto did a good job threatening to throw some energy into the city’s big-budget theatrical scene. 

Toronto has long been dominated by the powerhouse that is Mirvish Entertainment and when Dancap was created, it looked as if the upstart company might give Mirvish a run for its money. I can only hope that Aubrey Dan’s lovely arrogance will be sorely missed in the coming months. His idea to be an alternative to Mirvish was audacious and not without historical precedent: the whole thing is reminiscent of  George White’s decision to challenge Florence Ziegfeld, who had been king of Broadway during the first years of the 20th century. 

Review: Bring It On

(photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Don’t Hate, Congratulate!

Bring It On entertains without apology

by Stuart Munro

Bring It On is one of my favourite terrible movies. Without any pretense of being a Great Film, it joyfully parodies the world of competitive cheerleading and, more importantly, itself. Its ninety plus minutes are spent doing little more than providing light entertainment and it makes no apologies for it. But Bring It On: The Musical was not only written by Tony Award winners Jeff Whitty and Lin-Manuel Miranda (for their work on Avenue Q and In The Heights respectively), but by Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Kitt, composer of the groundbreaking Next To Normal. Would these authors attempt to inject a little depth and grace into this otherwise lighter fare? Should they even try?

I’m pleased to say that the answer to both questions is an enthusiastic “No!”

CharPo's Real Theatre, May 4, 2012

Review: You Can't Take It With You

Krystin Pellerin & Eric Peterson (photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann)

Harking Back

Soulpepper takes on one of the great ensemble pieces and worlds collide

by Gregory W. Bunker

There could hardly be a more fitting theme for today’s audience than questioning the motivations behind the American Dream, and this light-hearted comedy delivers this eloquently. Kaufman and Hart’s play—which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937—also showcases the timeless problem of dealing with the expectations of families; especially the expectations of the families of loved ones. It is a love story between the daughter of the big, eccentric, happy-go-lucky Sycamore family and the son of the small, serious, Wall Street-powered Kirbys. At the behest of their courting children the two families meet for dinner in the chaotic household of the Sycamores. Worlds collide. Ballet, wrestling, orchid collecting, snake keeping, xylophone playing, and firework making are only a sampling of the protagonists’ pursuits of happiness that make this production so lively.

Review: The Real World

Tony Nappo, Matthew Edison (photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann)

What is “The Real World?”

Tremblay juggles realities

by Dave Ross

Michel Tremblay is arguably one of Canada’s foremost playwrights. His body of work is enormous, and many have been translated into English, functioning beautifully even outside their native language. Such is the case with “The Real World?” running now at Tarragon Theatre.

The play is a compact one—7 actors, one set, 90 minutes, no intermission. This compactness doesn’t preclude Tremblay from creating a carefully layered and nuanced story with an overarching narrative direction that pushes the audience towards a truth they can see coming but don’t want to acknowledge. The central figure of the play is Claude, the son of Alex and Madeleine. Set in the 1960s in Montreal, Claude is the intellectual in the family and has ambitions to be a playwright. The play begins with the discord in Claude’s family after his mother reads his first script, in which the entire family, including his sister Mariette, is named. At this point Claude’s script emerges into the play, layering Claude’s viewpoints of events in his family overtop of his reality. The result is a kind of theatrical counterpoint. With the exception of Claude, each family member is portrayed by two actors—one is Claude’s reality, the second is from Claude’s script. Claude is the only character who bridges the two stories. 

CPT's Picture of the Week, May 3, 2012

Luba Goy in a promo shot for her one-woman show

Luba, Simply Luba. Photographer Richard Picton allowed for a headpiece

that says nearly all you need to know about the iconic Ms. Goy.

Review: Crash

(photo credit: Aviva Armour-Ostroff)

In the voice of another (myself)

Crash haunts

by Beat Rice

Crash is a powerful one-woman show written and performed by Pamela Sinha who tells a troubling story based on her own personal experience. She narrates in third person but we know from the start that this is her own tale. Perhaps it is easier to communicate when it sounds like the words belong to someone else. The play is one that explores the everlasting effects a traumatic event, not just to the victim, but also to their family. We discover, that there is always more than one victim; we just struggle in different ways, and lose different parts of ourselves along the way. 

After Dark, May 1, 2012

The Bard Knew
What drama teaches us
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I was raving about HBO's magnificent docudrama, Game Change, on Facebook. This is the film adapted from the just as magnificent tell-all book by Mark Halperin about behind the scenes during the 2008 presidential campaign. The film focuses more on the McCain/Palin side of things (the book also examines Obama's compaign). Anyhoo...it's brill and I was saying as much on FB and one of my friends came back saying that he didn't want to watch it because he didn't ever want to like Palin.

I found the comment fascinating and the fact is that you will probably not like Palin if you watch the movie, but you will understand her a lot more and pity her a little too because she is as you suspect: profoundly ambitious with not a brain in her head. Moreover, Julianne Moore turns in one of those performances which will be remembered for decades because she illuminates Palin's humanity: the woman's frightening determination, her profound faith and - yes - her grizzly mom-ness.