Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree has been around for 20 years and has been performed about 400 times and it still feels very experimental and rather weird in a good way. It mucks about with time and space and identity while layering on multiple meta-theatrical elements that create an experience that is simultaneously engrossing and somewhat disorienting.
Erased; written and directed by Colleen Shirin MacPherson is currently running at Theatre Passe Muraille. It’s a surrealist black comedy about a post climate catastrophe capitalist autocracy. Unfortunately it doesn’t really hit the mark. To be fair, black comedy with a serious core is desperately difficult to do and about the only person I can think of who could bring off a successful treatment of this subject is Arnando Ianucci. This just isn’t in the ball park.
This year’s Dream in High Park production is Hamlet directed by Jessica Carmichael. Now Hamlet is an interesting choice for this format because it is, notoriously, a really long play and the High Park format demands something that comes in around two hours. A full blown Hamlet, as in the Branagh film lasts over four hours and even with the usual stage cuts it’s a three hour plus project. So getting it down to two hours rather meands that it’s almost as much Carmichael’s Hamlet as Shakespeare’s.
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.
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.
What is home? Where is home? The Home Project; a joint production of Native Earth Performing Arts and the Howland Company presented by Soulpepper, addresses these questions through three actors personal visions reflecting, in their own way, three aspects of the Canadian experience. The stories are interwoven on a simple set of moving boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The sound stage is more important than the physical stage and aural effects; well handled considering we are outside and there’s plenty of background noise, are crucial.
operaramblings 