Sam Holcroft’s A Mirror opened on Thursday evening at 918 Bathurst in an ARC production directed by Tamara Vuckovic. It’s a complex play with many levels and multiple places where the boundary between play and audience dissolve. The first “framing device” has us as the audience for an “unlicensed” play which s being performed under the cover of a wedding.
It Could Still Happen’s The Herald opened at Buddies in Bad Times last night. It’s a really difficult work to pigeonhole. It’s a poetic exploration of “labour” through words and music using Ancient Greece as a sort of vehicle for discussing more contemporary, or perhaps, universal concerns. It starts with playwright and director Jill Connell making a speech in front of a projection of the “principles for work” which could perhaps be summarised as “labour should be a temple of awareness” but along the way we get a lot of astrology; night charts and day charts and Antonio Banderas and whether his fashion line includes capes.
The Surrogate by Mohsin Zaidi, directed by Christopher Manousos opened in the intimate Studio Theatre at Crow’s last night in a production by Here For Now Theatre. It’s an impassioned piece about the ethics of surrogacy. So let’s look at surrogacy and what Zaidi is trying to say about it. It’s the practice of a couple, usually wealthy, usually male, usually gay contracting with a woman, usually poor, usually vulnerable, often immigrant, to carry a baby that is not biologically hers to term. Surrogacy is legal in forty plus US states but illegal in Canada and, crucial to the play, Louisiana.
Ronnie Burkett’s show Little Willy opened at CanStage Berkeley Street on Friday night. It’s a puppet show like you have probably never seen before. It’s clever, it’s filthy and it’s very funny. Burkett is creator, puppeteer, actor and singer all rolled into one. The plot concerns a second rate, but very Canadian, theatre company attempting to stage a production of Romeo and Juliet. What ensues is frankly rather hard to describe.
On one level Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke seems like just another Southern Gothic tale of repressed small town folk with southern accents shouting at other members of their thoroughly dysfunctional families. There’s plenty of that of course but there’s also a fascinating analysis of how relationships can be made or broken according to, essentially, how individual life arcs align. This aspect is very clearly brought out in Paolo Santalucia’s production that opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday evening.
Natasha Mumba’s play Copperbelt which had its premiere at Soulpepper on Tuesday evening is a very interesting work. On one level it’s a tight, well crafted drama in the “dysfunctional family” genre so beloved by playwrights. Intergenerational and gender role conflicts abound. But beneath that there’s something much more interesting.
In 1621 one Elizabeth Sawyer, inevitably a poor, old woman, was hanged as a witch in London. A play, The Witch of Edmonton, loosely based on the trial and events leading up to it, hit the boards shortly after. It was a popular success. Now Jen Silverman has taken the framework of that Jacobean tragicomedy and grafted onto it a critique of late stage capitalism. The result is Witch, currently playing at Soulpepper in a production directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster.
Erin Shields You, Always opened at the Berkeley Street Theatre on Wednesday night in a production directed by Andrea Donaldson. It’s the story of the rlationship between two sisters. The elder, Liz (Maev Beaty), is a high achiever; solid academics, law school, husband and two children. The younger, Delia (Liisa Repo-Moretell), is a college dropout, singer songwriter and a vigorously promiscuous Lesbian (or maybe bisexual) even though there’s only one orgy in Brazil. In spite of, or because of their differences they are very close.
Canadian Stage opened a production of Amy Herzog’s adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Bluma Appel Theatre on Wednesday evening. It’s directed by Brendan Healey and stars Hailey Gillis and Gray Powell as Nora and Thorvald. It runs two hours without a break and it’s mesmerizing from start to finish. Direction, acting and designs are all of the highest quality and Gillis gives one of the best performances I have ever experienced.
Michael Healey’s Rogers v. Rogers directed by Chris Abraham opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night. It’s a sort of follow up to The Master Plan in that it’s Toronto based and deals with corporate greed and incompetence coupled to governmental ineptitude and general inability to keep up with the corporate world. It’s different in that it’s two related stories mashed together and, more notably, in that Tom Rooney plays all the characters.
operaramblings 