I started my exploration of the Fringe on Thursday night at East End United Church with You, Hamlet from DopoLavoro Teatrale directed by Daniele Bartolini. It’s an interactive show in which the three performers take the “Hamlets” (i.e. us, about 20 people) around different spaces in the church in each of which a “scene” takes place. It gets steadily more interactive as time goes by.
Soulpepper opened a run of a revival of their 2019 production of Tennessee William’s A Street Car Named Desire at the Young Centre on Tuesday evening. It’s a terrific production and performance but, as usually happens to me with Mr. Williams’ plays, I found myself admiring it more than enjoying it. Showcasing dishonest, violent people living lives of noisy despair without any form of redemption, however brilliantly portrayed, leaves me wondering what the point of it all is.
The Caged Bird Sings opened last night at the Aga Khan Museum. It’s a co-pro between the museum and Modern Times Stage Company (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) with Theatre ARTaud. The play is written by Rouvan Silogix, Rafeh Mahmud and Ahad Lakhani. It’s based on the poetry of Rumi and deals with Sufi ideas of freedom, love and self-abnegation. It’s sophisticated, often very funny and thought provoking.
The Wrong Bashir by Zahida Rahemtulla is currently playing at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Paolo Santalucia. The story is set in the Isma’ili community in Toronto and all the families concerned were among those kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin. Quite a lot of the story concerns Isma’ili religious institutions and practices about which I am woefully ignorant. Not knowing doesn’t detract from the experience of seeing the play and I have used circumlocutions below rather than try and figure out the technical terms used in the play
Bygone Theatre’s production of The Rear Window; written and directed by Emily Dix, opened at Hart House Theatre on Friday night. It riffs off the Hitchcock film, or rather its source material, but really doesn’t manage to create a sense of menace or foreboding that would make such an adaptation worthwhile.
Apparently Kylie Jenner is one of those people who is famous for being famous which is usually a guarantee that I’ve never heard of him/her/they. But she’s famous enough to have inspired Jasmine Lee-Jones use her as a hook for a play; Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, that opened in the Studi Tneatre at Crow’s on Thursday night in a co-production between Crow’s and Obsidian Theatre.
What does Hedda seek? I think that’s the question at the heart of Liisa Ripo-Martelli’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday evening. It’s not heavily adapted. It’s still Kristiania in the late 19th century and the environment is as dull, provincial, stuffy and “respectable” as can be. The language is a little more direct than Ibsen especially in the way men speak to women but still more is left unsaid than not. Presented with the audience on three sides of the tiny Coal Mine space it’s intimate to the point of, entirely appropriate, claustrophobia.
Woking Phoenix is a play developed and performed by Silk Bath Collective. It opened at Theatre Passe Muraille on Thursday night. It deals with that perennial Canadian issue; the immigrant experience. In this case it’s essentially a single Chinese mother with three children running a Chinese restaurant in small town Ontario. So one has the usual dynamics of kids growing up coupled with being “different” in a very homogenous community. It’s a co-creation of Aaron Jan and Gloria Mok , who also co-directed, and Besse Cheng who appears in the play as the elder daughter.
A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney by Lucas Hnath opened last night at the Young Centre in a production by Outside the March and Soulpepper. It’s one of those pieces that is perhaps easier to admire than enjoy. Technically, everything about it is excellent but sitting through ninety minutes of egotistical bullying is not a whole lot of fun.
How different were sensibilities in seventeenth century England (at least after the Restoration) to contemporary mores? Perhaps less than one might think. Unless you are a woman. And you want to be famous. And you aren’t a queen. All of which presents a problem for young Margaret who leaves her dull, impoverished, gentry family to try her luck at court just as Cromwell and co finally get around to giving Charles I a rather drastic haircut.
operaramblings 