After Dark, June 19, 2012

One Fundamental Joy
Healing the spirit
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

When things get hairy - health, finances, The Charlebois Post, life, love - I pick up my dog, he glues his body to my chest (knowing what's coming) and I squeeze him so hard he moans. As I loosen the hug we both do the same thing: we sigh. He nods off and I feel the weight of the world melt away.

As everything was coming down on my head last week - deadlines missed, student protests, Syrian horror - I realized that I might break the dogs ribs if I kept picking him up. Then I thought, "Thank keeeeerist for The Fringe!"

Not just the Fringe, actually.

Theatre.

Theatre For Thought, June 16, 2012

AN UNENLIGHTENED CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH BLUE

joel fishbane

I met Elizabeth Blue a year ago but she still hasn’t met me. Such is the life of the actor: you perform a series of quirky quasi-autobiographical monologues and people start thinking they know you better then their own friends. Hoping to avoid embarrassment in case we bumped into each other on the street, I decided to contact her when I saw she was returning to the Fringe Festival – along with her new show One Week with the Shaman. I’m happy to report that now we’ve properly met - or at least as properly as anyone can meet in the digital world.

“I got into performing as a junior in high school,” Elizabeth Blue wrote in an email, no doubt sent from some quaint café in the heart of Manhattan. “I got the extra role in Into the Woods – Milky White the cow, a role previously given to a stuffed animal.” Apparently the role was such a hit that people to this day call her Milky White. “That cow really opened up doors for me,” she added.

CharPo's Real Theatre! June 15, 2012

Review: Rent

Unpaid Rent

Inspiration lacking

by Jessica Yen

RENT by Jonathan Larson is an iconic Broadway show that since its première in 1996 has enjoyed long runs on Broadway, has been produced worldwide and adapted into a film. This rock opera based on Puccini's La Bohème tells the story of young artists struggling to live in New York's Lower East Side under the difficulties of poverty and HIV/AIDS. A show with this much legacy begs for new interpretations especially since it has been over 15 years since the original production. Unfortunately, the LOT's presentation of RENT lacks inspiration and falls victim to clichés.

CPT's Picture of the Week, June 14, 2012

Event Theatre:

Robert Lepage at Luminato with his (spanking?) new Playing Cards 1: Spades

(as always, his company has terrific pictures; this one is by Erick Labbé)

After Dark, June 12, 2012

Why We Do It
Answering the question: "Why is there so much Fringe shit on your site?"
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

For the next three months or so - whether you go to our national, Atlantic, Alberta, Montreal or Toronto sites - you will see a whole heap of Fringe coverage. Since I started covering the Montreal Fringe, some two decades ago, I have been an apostle of the movement. The reason is simple.

The Fringe is the alpha and omega of Canadian theatre. Before there were festivals at Stratford or Citadels in Edmonton, there were Fringes. Sure, back then we called it amateur theatre competitions (or festivals) but it still boiled down to an assembly of people who loved theatre defining the art of the future as it pertains to this country and, in most cases, doing it with nothing but imagination.

Review: Next To Normal

(poster art)

A Light in the Dark

Clearwater Theatre finds the truth in a complex show

by Stuart Munro

“I am the one who knows you

I am the one who cares

I am the one who’s always been there

I am the one who’s helped you

And if you think that I just don’t give a damn

Then you just don’t know who I am”

So sings Dan, the husband of Diana, about halfway through the first act of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal. Diana has been struggling with bipolar disorder for the better part of sixteen years, but it seems as though this is the first time that Dan is at a loss for what to do. After this, the roller coaster of emotions really takes off, and it becomes clear why Next to Normal is referred to as the “feel everything musical.”

Review: Einstein on the Beach

"Building" from Einstein on the Beach (photo credit: Lucie Jansch)

The Must Be Seen

Glass, Wilson, Childs, Luminato = event

by Axel Van Chee

Einstein on the Beach, an opera composed by Philip Glass, directed by Robert Wilson, and choreographed by Lucinda Childs was something of a holy grail back when I was at music school: everyone talked about it but no one had seen it, except for the few professors who happened to be at the right place, at the right time, and also of a certain age. It is known to be a landmark work that changed, and extended our understanding of not just music, but the art of theatre since the work's premiere in 1976. And that, I think, is what makes the recreation at Sony Center as part of the Luminato Festival such an extraordinary event: what the audience is witnessing is not something new, but a seminal work that, like the atomic bomb (borrowing a page from Einstein), transformed the world of the performance arts.

Theatre For Thought, June 9, 2012

ANOTHER SUMMER OF FRINGE

joel fishbane

Artists are starting to look alarmed. Actors mutter to themselves on the street as directors quietly go mad in the shower. Journalists comb through press kits. Juries are being dispatched. Technicians stockpile coffee and cases of Red Bull. Yes, Canada, the signs are here: another summer at the Canadian Fringe is about to begin. 

The Montreal Fringe is the first festival out of the gate and it has a long tradition of being a ten-day, wine-soaked party that separates the wheat from the chaff. The unprepared usually wake up on the last day in a puddle of their own handbills, hungover and unable to recall if they even made it to their last performance on time. But those made of sterner stuff will flounce off to Toronto and Edmonton with an armful of buzz, solid press quotes and maybe even an award.

CharPo's Real Theatre! June 8, 2012

CPT's Picture of The Week

An iconic photo from an iconic show: Lucie Jansch's image of the segment "Bed" from Robert Wilson's production of the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach, opening this week at Luminato.

Dora Nominations Press Conference

Megan Follows in Nightwood's Penelopiad (photo: Robert Popkin)

It's 9:45 AM in Rehearsal Studio A in The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre

A crowded slate for TAPA

by Jasmine Chen

It's 9:45 AM and already Rehearsal Studio A in The Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre is bustling with artistic directors, arts administrators, city councillors, choreographers, and representatives from  the rich variety of theatre companies across the city. Excited chatter fills the room as colleagues catch up with one another over coffee and mini muffins. There are so many people here that there aren't even enough chairs, but the mood is jovial and there is a sense of anticipation for the coming announcements. Ten o clock rolls around and we are asked to take our seats. We soon learn that this year 116 producing companies registered 212 eligible productions for a total of 169 nominations! 

After Dark, June 5, 2012

On Prizes and PR
Yeah, a rant
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

It seems to be awards season again.

In a few days TAPA (Toronto Alliance of Performing Artists) will announce the nominees for its Dora Awards - one of the most coveted and recognized theatre prizes in the country. TAPA - an organization that truly seems to function - makes a shitload of noise, does everything up nice and I do believe everyone is pleased as punch to get one.

Meanwhile, five Toronto critics (all print) announced the winners of their prizes this week. The Toronto club seems fairly small and more than slightly elitist and denies the growing power of sites like this one but the fact is, those five men saw most of the winning plays and no one can begrudge the sheer, mad amount they work. (Sorry...couldn't resist italicizing "men".)

On our own site Richard Burnett (The Abominable Showman) tore our own critics' prize, The Montreal English Critics Awards (MECCA), a new asshole.  (Full disclosure: I am a founder of the MECCAs and vote in them.) Richard had a few things a tiny bit askew (as does the community which berates the awards every year). One award he mentions is not an award for best text, it is for best new text (and the late Ted Allen doesn't qualify - first, for being late and all...). Lion King was not nominated because no one among the MECCA-ese (12 souls this time out) saw it or if they did, did not care to nominate it. No award was given in Best Visiting or Best Sound, for that matter, not because no one was nominated but because everyone was...once. Yup - over a dozen noms in each category. 

Theatre For Thought, June 2, 2012

SPIDER MAN, STUNTS AND MERRICK’S GHOST

joel fishbane

Most Canadians will be watching the Tony Awards to see if the Stratford Festival’s Jesus Christ Superstar will win Best Revival of a Musical (it won’t) or if  Josh Young will win for his portrayal of Judas Iscariot (er…maybe). But the real drama that day will have already happened over at Foxwood Theatre. Annoyed that Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark only received two nominations (for set and costume), the producers are offering free tickets for the matinee performance to anyone named Anthony, Antonio, Antoinette, Toni or Antonia.  Said producer Michael Cohl: “Nothing would make us prouder than to have more Tonys than any other show on Broadway on Sunday, June 10.”

The stunt, which is cute at best, becomes more significant when one considers that Cohl has long been angling for the title of the Next David Merrick. Although he died in 2000, Merrick remains a titan in the history of American theatre. Merrick was the legendary producer of shows like 42nd Street, Hello Dolly! and Marat / Sade and was himself the progeny of other legendary showmen like P.T. Barnum and Florence Ziegfeld. 

CharPo's Real Theatre! June 1, 2012