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.
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.
Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Case for the Existence of God, in a production directed by Ted Dykstra, opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday night. It’s a story about the somewhat unlikely friendship between two would be single fathers in a small town in Idaho. It’s mostly pretty sad but with some really funny moments. We can come back to the God thing.
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.
mouvance is a CD of music by Jerome Blais performed by Suzie LeBlanc (soprano), Eileen Walsh (clarinets), Jeff Torbert (guitars), Norman Adams (cello) and Doug Cameron (percussion). At first glance it looks like a set of songs or maybe a song cycle in the sense that it sets a series of French texts by various writers. In fact it has its origins in a multi-media show about, to quote Blais, “the universal themes of movement, migration and uprooting”. I think this is why I found it more satisfying to think of it as an integrated whole because there’s really no sense of separation between the “songs”. Continue reading
WILDWOMAN, by Kat Sadler (who also directed), is part of the {{her words}} festival at Soulpepper and I attended the first preview performance on Thursday night at the Young Centre. It’s not usual to review previews but I’m out of the country for most of the run proper so there it is. It’s an interesting piece. It weaves together two (more or less) real stories that are quite tenuously related into a single integrated narrative that explores humanity, power and the role of women in society.
Tu me voyais is a new CD from soprano Christina Raphaëlle Haldane and pianist Carl Philippe Gionet. It contains Gionet’s arrangements of Twelve Acadian Folk Songs plus a piece by Adam Sherkin setting poetry by Gionet and two pieces by Jérome Blais setting texts by Léonard Forest and Herménégilde Chiasson.
The twelve folk songs are all Acadien but unsurprisingly some of have roots further back in France. There are songs from Poitou and Gascony (so they are really English….) and so on. They are typically strophic songs with refrains and get a respectful treatment in the style of French chansons though this doesn’t mean the piano part is straightforward!. I like the simplicity of this approach because many of these songs are just gorgeous and Christina sings them with beauty and humour and, in some places, considerable agility coupled to a command of standard international French, Acadien and Poitevin. She really has a lovely rich yet flexible instrument. Gionet is a very sympathetic and accomplished accompanist too.
operaramblings 