Review: (Montreal) Hypno

Marie-Hélène Gosselin, Martin Tremblay Photo: Marie-Andrée Lemire

Things Hypnosis Won’t Let You Forget.
by Nanette Soucy

In the tiny, low-ceilinged and intimate venue of Théâtre Prospéro, Tsunami Théâtre brings us Hypno, a kind of Ouroborean slapstick farce about a stage hypnotist, his oblivious wife, an obsessed fan seeking help for his gelid wife’s self image problem, and the wacky ways in which the couples intersect.  This compact new work by Simon Boudreau clocks in at a brief but narratively complicated hour without intermission. Lines are quick, snappy, and rhythmic, delivered with a stock comedic cadence that verges on corny, but without eliciting a whole lot of groaning.

Review: (Montreal) Les Muses orphelines

Maxime Denommée and Léane Labrèche-Dor (photo: François Brunelle)

Beyond The Page
by Nanette Soucy

In retrospect, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I didn’t know what I was getting into. In fact, that I actually knew Michel Marc Bouchard’s Les Muses orphelines was one of the primary reasons I was so excited about seeing it in the first place. Going to see a play I have a clue about before I’ve bought my tickets is an unusual occurrence for me. I was of the breed of theatre student that was entirely too busy with school to actually learn anything, and even now I seldom read plays I don’t have to work on. Last night at Théâtre Jean Duceppe, I was reminded why: it’s almost entirely futile.

Review: (Montreal) Des couteaux dans les poules

Jean-François Casabonne, Stéphane Jacques and Isabelle Roy (Photo credit: Matthew Fournier)

The Mighty Pen
A play on the primacy of words.
by Nanette Soucy

In a room that is hazy and warm, in a timeless dark age of a far-flung Scottish countryside, we meet a young unnamed woman and her labourer husband William. The singular and most immediately striking feature of La Veillée’s primal and sparse Des couteaux dans les poules is the language employed, or perhaps invented by Scottish playwright David Harrower. Elevating the principle of class markers in a speaker’s language to poetry, he shows us the dynamics between William and his wife, their station in the village, the superstition and taboos of their culture, in large part, by the language they use. The first few moments of our time with them reveal volumes about their world. Their exchanges are visceral, and economical. They share a limited vocabulary to express their thoughts and experience, and as per their time and place, William has many more words to draw from than his wife. Their conversation topics are limited. The day’s toil. Their sweetness and lust. The animals. The property. Practical vocabulary lessons for the curious and perceptive girl. When a skittish pregnant filly requires William’s undivided attention, he instructs his wife to take the grain to the miller in his place.

Review: (Montreal) Kafka's Ape

Howard Rosenstein (photo credit: Brian Morel)

Greywater’s Organ Grinder.
Hard Work and Obedience Will Set You Free.
by Nanette Soucy

The Bain St. Michel has been transformed into a conference room at the Hyatt. There are fancy LED footlights and black velvet backdrops and massive corporate banners and a chandelier of balloons. The only thing missing is wait staff serving drinks or dinner rolls to patrons, seated at eight foot tables draped with linens and topped with shiny centre pieces of wilted lilies.

Red Peter trundles onto the stage with a gait that’s hard to distinguish from an elderly man’s. He addresses the audience gathered in his honour with distinguished authority and a Carolina drawl. His lovely wife sits quietly in the front of the audience dolled up and dressed to the nines for the occasion. He enthusiastically imbibes an expensive vintage bottle of wine as he recounts his epic journey from the wilds to civilization, not sparing us the frathouse stories like the time he chugged a whole bottle of whiskey in a single gulp. His movements veer preternaturally towards the simian side of humanity. His tale is woven thick with poetry and buttoned with the sort of pungent boardroom humour that appeals to guys in suits. His memoir explains precisely why this corporate veteran is not just another suited hirsute captain of industry.

Review: (Montreal) Pervers

(photo credit: Rolline Laporte)

One Tight Knot
A dense entanglement of issues leaves us jangling.
by Nanette Soucy
@NetSoucy

With all the ambition, work ethic and foresight of a film grad who lives in his mom’s basement, young Gethin decides to take the world of cinema by storm by tackling an edgy subject: the pedophile on the block, and the neighbourhood’s reaction to his presence. He’s devised some sort of perverted Rosenhan experiment, wherein he twists the rubber arm of his kid sister Sarah into spreading vicious rumours about him through school.

Review: (Montreal) Les Dishwasheurs

Steaming Panych
by Nanette Soucy

A path through St. Henri is not unlike the trip to the bathroom in a Montreal restaurant. Walking by dark alleys between oxidizing industry, covered in graffiti - like going down the steep stairs into the damp basements of eateries and hearing the dishwashers curse - gives the sense of catching a glimpse at the back end of things; of having gone behind a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” At Atelier Jean-Brillant, Théâtre Momentum sets its translation of Morris Panych’s Dishwashers in precisely the type of damp, poorly ventilated, concrete and steel room that makes up the engines of the neighbourhood’s fancy restaurants.

Review: (Montreal) Grain(s)

Guy Thauvette (photo credit: Maxime Coté)

Grain(s) is Verbatim (through filters)
by Nanette Soucy

As no one can live without it, everybody gets to be an expert about food. Whether you’re choosing all kale and brown rice all the time, or larding up your trucker’s breakfast three times a day, with the variety available to the average North-American, the media obsession with dieting and obesity - by sheer necessity we have to form an opinion about what we put in our mouths.

The environment of Porte Parole’s Grain(s) is unusual. There are cameras and cables and shelving and neon lights and things growing. Upon entry, there are smiling people in lab coats mingling around, alternately engaging in deep discussion with the audience and reassuring its terrified looking members. As the show begins, members of the audience are interviewed and projected on a screen above. The polled audience has well thought-out opinions on GMOs, which is, by some cultural osmosis, actually informed by the story of Percy Schmeiser and Monsanto that they’re about to hear verbatim. Not from the mouths of those involved directly, but through filter upon filter of translation, accents, and interpretations.

Review: Wings of Darkness (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

In this adaptation of a native tale, we see the Bat, resentful of his alienation from both the Winged and the Legged, trigger a territorial war between the worlds of the Birds in the air, and the creatures that walk on the earth.  It takes about 30 minutes into this hour-long show to determine that this is the crux of the story. Besought by excessive flourish and too much effort put into making the script sound like a legend, the audience is left to wade through a quickly-delivered unfortunate abundance of adjectives and third-person pronouns in order to really grasp what’s going on. Where the writing reaches for abundance of poetry, it falls short of elegance to tie itself together. But what it lacks in textual clarity, Wings of Darkness makes up for in visual beauty. Simple costumes, consisting mostly of re-purposed sporting equipment and gaffe-tape, are accented by beautifully expressive masks, also inspired by the world of sports, made from altered baseball caps. With stunning and subtle projections as background, and fitting musical cues underscoring, this diverse cast tells its tale simply and clearly, despite the script. Interactions between characters on both sides of the conflict, in particular the rather diplomatic Squirrel befriending the Eagle and the Blue Jay, balance the impressively choreographed scenes of  violence and war with their warmth and playfulness.

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Review: Stretchmarks (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

If there is an award for Best Poster, let it go to Kimmy Zee and her full-colour vintage pin-up housewife, from back in the days when the duck-face was adorable. I confess this is what brought me to the show, and, unlike so many Fringe shows, I was happy to see the classic housewifery aesthetic carried onto the stage.  Stretchmarks is a sexy burlesque cabaret all about the effect of motherhood and marriage on your sex life. Four delightful Winnipeg women tell us their stories with wit, wonder and song through their various means. One tells us the stories of her deeply-in-love parents, and the unrealistic expectations that creates. Another recounts the consequences of marrying young, which include wearing Northern Reflections, and falling for sweaty washboard players from the Bayou when you’re stunned that they think you’re sexy. A third brings a tear to your eye with a re-write of Cat Steven’s classic Cat’s Cradle as a mother-daughter tale of unconditional support, which is worth the price of admission alone. We don’t hear much from our Yoga-enthusiast fourth, however, other than to understand that for some, searching for inner-peace is a bodily pursuit. It would have been nice to hear a story from Robin Redbreast, “The Tall One” – whose stretch marks are present, if less apparent. Although the show has many brilliant lines and comedic moments, some are a tad too Winnipeg-specific and fly directly over the head of this out-of-towner. Much of the unabashed exploration of the importance of fellatio in marriage-maintenance and the glories of female ejaculation might have been a bit too explicit for this seemingly puritanical Winnipeg audience. In a house of easily 200 people, only one raised her hand when Kimmy Zee asks how many married women still perform fellatio, and was otherwise met with uncomfortable silence when polling the audience for reactions. Who knew Winnipeggers to be so frigid? However, for those fond of fucking, tits and sass, a roiling good time is to be had.

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Review: The Touring Test (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

This scientific experiment to determine the effectiveness of beings designed, as we all are, to elicit an emotional response, is conducted by Dr. Anya Sheinpflugova (Stefanie Wiens) with perhaps… unconventional methods. We’re told that one of the actors on stage is a robot. At the end of each performance, the audience is polled via secret ballot, as to which one. The cast tours city to city under strictly controlled directives, and are forbidden contact with “the outside” and fraternization among each other over the course of the experiment. This leads, of course, to acute cases of the all-familiar iPhone withdrawal and distracting dressing room romances endemic of almost every rehearsal and performance process, even without the strict experimental controls.

The Touring Test brings us all the necessary elements to tickle your sci-fi geek bone; Robot attacks, introverted nerds with poor social skills, and scenes clipped from vintage sci-fi theatre. It will also float your theatre-geek boat with its tongue-in-cheek cracks on artistic life, the cheapness of theatre actors, and the dreaded “It was… Interesting” post-performance note. This multi-generational cast is on point, offering a flawless performance of this witty and engaging script, even handling the collapse of a major set piece with such grace as to make me wonder whether or not the malfunction was part of the show.

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Review: The Daves of Our Lives (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

Poor Dave. His wife is an angry harpy, his widowed step-mother’s been keeping secrets in a way that seems to cause her to gesticulate convulsively, and his daughter, the only teenage girl in history who greets her parents with “Hey Dudes” has brought home a friend who flirts with all the charm and grace of a cinder block who somehow becomes his paramour. All this would drive me to drink too.  I feel even worse for the actor playing him, however, because it seems as though he might have some chops. Mind you, it wouldn’t be difficult to play bored, tired and rolling your eyes at the badly played melodrama of it all when this is the script and these are the cast mates you’re stuck with. Melodrama and over-the-top cheese works when it’s done intentionally. Although The Daves of Our Lives may have been cast to highlight soap-opera-style bad schmacting, the point would have been better made by showing off the talent of good actors relishing in bad behaviour, rather than abandoning the need for direction by showcasing the cast’s lack of skill. In the end, we’re left with as much sympathy for Dave, as we are for the entire cast. Pity and embarrassment on their behalf are not generally the emotional reaction a company wants to instill in their audience.

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Review: Burnt at the Steak (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy


Carolann Valentino, Italian Rose of Texas, can handle anything. Sizzling from the word go, Burnt at the Steak flies us from the lone star state, on the premonitions of Carolann’s psychic mother, to her challenging day job in Manhattan’s highest grossing steakhouse where this motivated restaurant manager introduces us to her co-workers, her clients and her audience-recruited trainees, with ease and zeal.

Burnt at the Steak’s bare basic set, a table, some chairs, releases Valentino to use her greatest asset, her voice, with which a simple vocal shift and a change in the tilt of her engaging smile brings us a full cast of characters whose distinctiveness are clear even as they switch back and forth from line to line within the same song. As competent at nailing an audition and serving a performance piping hot as she is at putting out kitchen fires, this performer’s chops are juicy, and rare. No steak sauce required.

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Review: The Complete History of the Moustache

by Nanette Soucy

Perhaps more accurately titled, A Brief History of Kristian Reimer’s Dating Life, A Complete History of the Moustache is a casual and comedic lecture and presentation of Moustaches and the TV Dads who raise the men that wear them, which may or may not be based in historical fact. Delivered with enthusiasm and self-effacing improvisational charm and besought by the off-putting last minute venue change the presentation itself could use fewer slides, and a touch of dramaturgy in the interest of providing a few tidbits of trivia. The show manages nonetheless to take the audience poll’s moustache-appreciation numbers from 13 at the top, to 31 by the end. Reimer makes a convincing argument for the longevity of his lady tickler.

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Review: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

Apple geek or not, people ought to be lining up for this show like it was launching the iPhone 5. An adaptation of Mike Daisey’s controversial Monologue, lambasted for daring to apply dramatic license to a creative work, I was initially incensed during the opening scene where four actors sat in their chairs reading from their scripts, thinking that the piece should have been billed as a dramatic reading. However, true to the aphorism that the way in which a thing is made is part of its design, by the third scene, the company had sneakily begun re-writing the code of our paradigms of effective presentation, our relationships to our gadgets, and the people that make them. District Theatre Collective are sharp, focused, and clean like all good Apple design, if unfortunately lit to match their fruity and bulbous aesthetic of the late 90’s. The actors tease each other on stage, and master the tales they’re telling with such a thorough understanding that for a moment I was certain they’d been to China with Daisey on his now infamous trip. Whether or not the stories Mike Daisey’s telling us can be taken for actual fact is irrelevant. As the Brechtian quote that carries the show reveals, art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. Sometimes, we have to fudge the truth to reveal it.

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Review: Kuwaiti Moonshine (Winnipeg Fringe)

by Nanette Soucy

The crux of the play is an ultimatum. Cuffed to a door in a Kuwaiti prison wherein he finds himself for bootlegging date rum, our hero Andy has to choose: kill, or be killed. A tense moment, for sure. Unfortunately, Tim Murphy’s performance of the tension, anger and fear of that climactic moment eats the entire show, leaving us unable to feel the love - for his Parkinson’s besought mother, his erstwhile girlfriend, or his niece and nephew - that he tries to impart as his life flashes before his eyes.

This anxiety, so thoroughly embodied might well be real, as it contributes to the difficulty of following the rather complex cast of characters by Murphy’s inability to keep their names straight, and having to correct himself at least a half dozen times throughout the course of this 1-hr one-man show, which seems written as a break-neck run-on-sentence punctuated with ubiquitous “And Then, and then, and then” and fails to set the scene in any way that makes us feel like we’re following a story in the dusty Middle East, rather than listening to a drunk on a tirade at a party.

Other than Our Hero Andy, the only other character we see on stage is Québécois Jean-Luc, who’s differentiated by a backwards baseball cap and a terrible and inconsistent accent. We’re told Jean-Luc is pretentious, and this is somehow shown to us by his enjoyment of Nickelback and tendency to speak in the 3rd person, which make him seem more childish than anything.  Pretentious: It does not mean what you think it means.

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Review: (Montreal) Vigil

Marcel Jeannin and Kim Yaroshevskaya (photo: Andrée Lanthier)

Are you dead yet?
Darkness and Lite at The Segal
by Nanette Soucy

In Morris Panych’s Vigil, at the Segal Centre, in co-production with Théatre du Rideau Vert, we meet Grace, a bed-ridden, silent crone who is besought by a houseguest come to watch over her and tend to her affairs as her life draws to a close.  Kemp has dropped everything to travel a thousand miles to care for the auntie he spent his tortured childhood wishing he were.  Impatient for his host to kick the bucket, he spends the rest of her life unloading the rage and brimstone of his traumatic childhood in the care of an alcoholic father and a mother who desperately wanted a girl. Before Kemp pesters Grace to death, we encounter a dramatic plot twist.

Review: (Montreal) Midsummer

Promo video

Songs in the key of Squee
Is it a musical? An Opera? A play with songs? Does it matter?
by Nanette Soucy

Théâtre la Licorne’s intimacy suggests Saturday night drinks with your old friends Helena & Bob as they tell you the story of how they met, in their grubby apartment after a few glasses of wine. Inevitably, at these things, someone always whips out a guitar, and everybody sings along.

Review: (Montreal) Ines Pérée et Inat Tendu

“S'il n'y avait pas d'enfants sur la Terre, il n'y aurait rien de beau”

-- Réjean Ducharme

(Photo credit: Nicolas Frank Vachon)

The Charms of Ducharme
A difficult play takes (verbal) flight in Montreal
by Nanette Soucy

At a time when visions of armies in riot gear are fresh in the memory, prime ministerial disregard for civil liberties is all that’s transparent about the government, laws change to interfere with the private lives of citizens, and a nation within a nation struggles to define itself in a country which at once disdains and seeks to own and profit from it, a story emerges.

It’s two individuals, at once dispossessed and self-possessed, wandering the universe in search of hospitality, to which, perhaps by clandestine prophecy, they are entitled. They meet, seduce, inspire, alter, assault, threaten and change a variety of unlikely characters along the way. They are Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza. They are le Petit Prince and his Rose. They show up, they change every thing, and wander off into the abyss to expire, leaving things so profoundly shifted that the sameness of the trashed room, the empty bottles, the popped balloons and the 70’s memorabilia strewn about is rendered absolutely eerie.

Review: (Montreal) I, Claudia

Would you be 12 years old again?

Geordie brings Claudia to Montreal

by Nanette Soucy

Can parents of 12-year olds, besought by the stuff of parenthood, have an accurate idea of what it’s like to be one of these “tweens” we hear about now? If they have a memory of being a “pre-teen”, in today’s reality it’s completely irrelevant.  While you’re struggling with the new Facebook layout, their entire emotional landscape is being shaped by the compelling exhibitionism and creative self design that the Internet is made from. When they feel like escaping, they disappear into their screens.

Review: (Montreal) Everything In The Garden

(photo credit: Maxime Coté)

How does Jenny’s Garden Grow? 

The Golden Age...that never existed

by Nanette Soucy

Richard is a man with an idea of manhood that dates from a golden-age that had become mythical, even by the 1960’s where his story takes place, and when Edward Albee adapted Everything in the Garden for an American audience.  A man has a good job, a nice life, a kept wife who keeps house and up with the Joneses. A real man commands respect from his wife, his son, his neighbours.