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.
shaniqua in abstraction is a one woman show written and performed by bahia watson that deals with her search for identity as a (light skinned) Black woman in Canada. It starts with a casting call and works outwards from there. She sings, she dances, she runs on the spot, She interviews characters who aren’t there and gets caught up in banal daytime TV shows. If you can have a kaleidoscope in black and white it’s a kaleidoscope of experiences.
Francis Končan’s Women of the Fur Trade opens tonight (Thursday) at the Aki Studio in a production by Native Earth Performing Arts. I saw a preview last night. It’s not an easy play to describe. It’s a comedy. But with several twists. It has a historic setting. But it plays fast and loose with time. It’s funny, disturbing and relates events from a female point of view that rarely get seen that way.
So it was back to the Bluma Appel on Thursday evening to see part 2 of Matthew López’ The Inheritance. Part 1 had certainly left plenty of active plot lines to be resolved (or not) so it looked like being an interesting ride.
Matthew López’ The Inheritance is an epic adaptation of EM Forster’s Howard’s End. It’s epic in scale and scope. It runs for two evenings; each over three hours long and it features a rich, and sometimes bewildering, cast of characters. I was going to wait until after part 2 before writing about it but I actually think it will work better to review it in two parts. So here is part 1 as seen on opening night (Wednesday) at the Bluma Appel Theatre.
operaramblings 