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.
So, Saturday night I reacquainted myself with pantomime after a gap of sixty years or so. I think the last panto I saw was Aladdin at the Alhambra in Bradford c.1965. Well why not? Much has changed and Canadian Stage’s Robin Hood; written by Matt Murray and directed by Mary-Francis Moore discards much that would once have been seen as de rigueur. I guess much more fluid gender roles, general acceptance of same sex relationships and, maybe, less familiarity with the canonical stories means that what once seemed risqué now seems passé and absent a general idea of how the story should go there’s more freedom to experiment.
Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock. It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have been stranded on St. Kitt’s by a storm. It being a holiday they decide to have a night on the town.
Abe Koogler’s The Fulfillment Centre opened last night in a production directed by Ted Dykstra. It’s the story of four people in a small town dependent on some sort of giant fulfillment centre; an all too common fate for small town America. In a post-industrial USA it’s that or a prison.
Kanika Ambrose’s The Christmas Market opened on Wednesday in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Philip Akin. At one level it’s a much needed critique/exposé of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and at another it’s basically a very funny comedy of manners. The two are extremely well integrated so that the horror of the TFWP is a bit of a slow reveal.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance is playing at Soulpepper in a production directed by Frank Cox-O’Connell. It’s an enormously ambitious play. It takes the relatively banal setting of a pre-party for a high school 20th reunion and uses it to explore a wide range of issues concerning memory, personal growth (or not), what we keep and what we leave behind and, ultimately, our relationship with Death.
Theatre Gargantua’s Dissonant Species opened at Factory Theatre on Friday night. It’s written by Heather Marie Annis and Michael Gordon Spence and directed by Jacquie P.A Thomas. It’s a multi-disciplinary exploration of the idea that “everything is sound” and it also explores other ideas about waves; vibration, the notion that two people can be (metaphorically) on different wavelengths and it flirts with the idea that everything is “vibration” which is sort of true in a QFT way.
The Far Side of the Moon opened at Canadian Stage on Saturday evening. It’s a Robert Lepage production; written, designed and directed by him. It’s very Lepage with the strengths and weaknesses one might expect. We will come to that in more detail. It’s a homage to Lepage’s childhood obsession with the US and Soviet space programmes and to the moon in general. It plays out in two parallel narratives; the space programmes from Sputnik 1 to the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975 and the tale of two brothers in Quebec City circa late 1990s. The older is an introverted nerd working on a doctoral thesis about popular perceptions of the space programmes and narcissism. The younger brother is a presenter for the Weather Channel and is shallower than the water over Dogger Bank at low spring tide. Their mother has just died and they are clearing out her apartment in an Old People’s Home.
Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play opened at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre on Wednesday night. The TL:DR version of this review is that it’s raunchy, extremely funny and rather disturbing. The more considered version contains spoilers so you might want to stop here if you are planning to see it soon.
The Green Line takes two story lines set in Beirut a generation apart and weaves them into a fascinating, sometimes mesmerizing, poetic and sad story about two families torn apart by civil war. It’s written by Makram Ayache and translated by Hiba Sleiman. It opened on Thursday night at Buddies in Bad Times in a co-production with Factory Theatre and In Arms theatre Company directed by the author.
operaramblings 