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.
Life slowly returns to some version of normal.. Here’s what I’m seeing so far for Sptember.
Here are my top picks for May.
Candrice Jones’ play FLEX got its Canadian premiere on Wednesday at Crow’s Theatre in a co-production with Obsidian Theatre. It’s the late 1990s in small town Arkansas. The creation of the WNBA has provided another reason for young women (especially African American women) to try for one of the few escape routes from life in a town where the main employer is a prison. In the prison-industrial complex it’s a sports scholarship or the military.
HOUSE + BODY’s production of Measure for Measure currently playing in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s is Shakespeare with a twist. It’s an adaptation written and directed by Christopher Manousos. The schtick is that it’s part of a radio series of live Shakespeare and we are watching the goings on in the studio where five actors play all twenty characters with commercials, sponsor messages and the rest of the baggage of radio broadcasts. There are also some “off stage” shenanigans involving the actors; principally the two women who engage in wistful glances and then have an almost steamy scene in the “interval”. I’m going to speculate that this is a sort of nod to Isabella’s ambiguous nature in the actual play.
Here’s what’s coming down for the holiday season, as best I know:
There was a certain amount of anticipatory buzz about Michael Ross Albert’s The Bidding War, directed by Paolo Santalucia, that opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night. Crow’s has built rather a reputation for punchy, darkly humorous, Toronto-centric plays. This time it’s basically a satire on the Toronto real estate market and the sharp practices of the real estate and property development industries and for the most part it hits the mark.
It’s coming towards the end of the traditional “season” but there’s sill plenty happening. Here’s how I see may shaping up at present (I expect more theatre listings will come in. They tend to be somewhat less notice!):
First some additional February shows
Opera
Musical theatre is not usually my thing but given the consistently high standard of everything at Crow’s theatre in the last couple of years I was prepared to take a punt on Dave Malloy’s Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet of 1812 despite knowing full well it was a Broadway musical. The bottom line is I found it a very odd experience. There was plenty to like and I kind of get why people like shows like it but It’s still really not my thing but I don’t think I’m the target audience.
operaramblings 