Colonial Circus; currently playing at Aki Studio, is a hilarious and intermittently disturbing sideways look at colonialism. It’s a clown show performed by Two2Mango; Shreya Parashar and Sachin Sharma. So, we have two people of Indian origin in slightly bizarre white-face playing both “native” characters; a priest and his disciple, and representatives of the Raj; a British lady and her manservant.
It’s been 73 years since the first performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting. The play though has become an established icon of experimental 20th century theatre and millions of words have been written about it. It’s currently running at Coal Mine Theatre in a production directed by Kelli Fox. As far as I remember (and it’s been fifty years since I read the play) this production plays it straight and pretty much entirely according to the stage directions in the script. The set is a tree and a bunch of dirt. Nobody sits in a dust bin. So everything turns on subtlety and timing which is quite a challenge.
Chelsea Woodley’s Enormity, Girl and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, in a production directed by Andrea Donaldson for Nightwood Theatre, opened at the Jackman Performance Centre on Saturday night. It’s enormously ambitious and performed with great skill and energy but I’m not sure it entirely works.
Octet, by Dave Malloy, opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday evening. I guess it’s Crow’s big musical this year; a kind of follow up to Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet, but it’s actually a very different kind of show. One major difference is musical. All the singing is a capella which puts extra demands on the singers (and isn’t unpleasantly loud). The whole cast; eight of course, are really rather good singers and pull off the solo and ensemble numbers extremely well. They can also act and they are backed up by a really effective lighting plot Imogen Wilson) and video (Nathan Bruce) that pretty much replace the set, which is pretty basic.
King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild opened at Soulpepper on Wednesday evening but I saw a preview on Sunday which forms the basis for this review. It’s an unusual and compelling show with a clever story line, some terrific acting (verbal and physical) and a Sufi influenced Arabic jazz band for good measure.
Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin is a rarity. It’s a serious play with an overwhelmingly female ensemble cast that looks at issues of class, gender, power and authority almost entirely through a female lens. It’s hard hitting, sometimes violent and often shocking which makes for compelling theatre. It opened on Thursday evening in the Baillie Theatre at Soulpepper in a co-pro by Soulpepper, Crow’s and the Howland Company, directed by Weyni Mengesha.
Old Times by Harold Pinter is currently playing at Soulpepper in a production directed by Peter Pasyk. It premiered in 1971 in London and i’s very much an artefact of its time and place besides being decidedly weird in a Pinteresque way. A well off married couple living somewhere fairly remote on the English coast are being visited by the woman who, twenty years earlier, was the wife’s roommate when they were both young “secretaries” in London but who is now married to a Sicilian aristo.
Devon Healey’s Rainbow on Mars opened on Wednesday evening at the Ada Slaight Hall at the Daniels Spectrum. It’s a co-production by Outside the March and the National Ballet directed by Nate Bitton and Mitchell Cushman with choreography by Robert Binet.
Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park opened on Thursday night. This year it’s Marie Farsi’s production (adaptation?) of Romeo and Juliet. It’s given a Southern Italian setting in the 1930s/40s though any reference to Fascism or the war escaped me. It seemed largely an excuse to introduce some singing and dancing and some slightly forced humour into the opening scenes. That’s not the big problem though.
Lucian, Plato and the Secrets of the Pussy was my eighth and last show at this year’s Fringe. It wasn’t on my original list but I heard good things during the week so I added it. I’m glad I did. It’s written by Jules Spizzirri and Sydney Scott and directed by Alyssa Featherstone. It’s playing (there are two more shows) in one of the Fringe’s larger spaces; the Michael Young Theatre at Soulpepper.
operaramblings 