Review: (Ottawa) Skinflick

A Tame Foray into the Adult Film Industry 
by Robyn Lester
@RobinRobynRob

It was adults-only last night at the launch of Ottawa Little Theatre’s 101st season. The play that rung in the new era? Skin Flick, a mildly risqué comedy written by Norm Foster about three unemployed adults who decide that the best solution for their cash-flow problem is to get involved in the billion-dollar porn industry. 

After reflecting on what I saw, I find myself unsure how to proceed with this review. But I will start by saying this: I have never been to a production that elicited such a strong positive reaction from the crowd. There was such uproarious laughter and clapping that the actors occasionally had to pause before delivering their next line. From the sounds of it, everyone absolutely loved the production. Then there was me. Little Miss Negative Nancy.

Review: (Ottawa) The Drawer Boy

Ending 100
by Valerie Cardinal

For the last show of its 100th season, The Ottawa Little Theatre picked Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy, and it’s easy to see why from this production. The award-winning script is backed up by an impressive set, loving direction and solid acting. 

The Drawer Boy is set in 1972 and focuses on an actor, Miles, who ventures into the country to research farm life. He befriends Angus and Morgan, two farmers who appear to lead a simple life but are so much more beneath the surface. For starters, Angus has short-term memory loss after an accident during World War II left him with a brain injury. He’s good with numbers and can make a mean sandwich, but for everything else he depends on his friend Morgan – who may be hiding a thing or two about their past. 

Review: (Ottawa) Steel Magnolias

(via company website)

Delicate and Strong
by Jim Murchison 

Robert Harling’s play is a well written if at times predictable story set entirely in Truvy’s hair salon in the fictional Louisiana town of Chinquapin in the 1980’s. The play had a long run Off Broadway and of course was a very popular star-studded film. 

Unlike the film version there are no men in the play, save the voice of the local radio announcer which sets the tone and the time of year between scenes. That is just fine because the story is about how 6 strong willed women deal with day to day trials and tribulations in this sleepy little southern town where everybody knows your name and your business.

Whether it was because the cast was concentrating on the slow southern drawl or trying to convey the heat in a place where 39 degrees Fahrenheit is considered arctic conditions, it took a little while for the pace to get going and the humour to sink in to the audience.  

Review: (Ottawa) Come Blow Your Horn!

An entertaining trip back in time
by Robyn Lester

As soon as you enter the Ottawa Little Theatre, you know you’re in for a treat. Music from the 1960s is playing.  Ray Charles. The Marvelettes. The atmosphere is fun, light, and lively.  And this production of Neil Simon’s, Come Blow Your Horn, is exactly that. First produced in 1961, this play brings the audience on a delightful trip down memory lane, with themes that are still entirely relevant today.  

Growing pains. Every character is struggling with them. Struggling with their transition into a new phase of life. It’s a reality for all of us, but this play manages to take that reality and make it absolutely hilarious.  The two hours of non-stop fun is kicked off when 21 year old Buddy Baker (Connor Marghetis) unexpectedly shows up at his brother, Alan’s (Corey Pelow) New York bachelor pad.  Buddy has run away from home! He’s free! He’s cut the umbilical cord! He’s an adult now!  Oh, and can he stay here for a while? 

Review: (Ottawa) Death Trap

(from the company website)

When Playwrights Kill It
by Jim Murchison

Ira Levin was a master of suspense when Stephen King was a neophyte. Deathtrap was the longest running comedy thriller on Broadway and a hit movie as well. For those that have seen it they need no synopsis and as the director's notes state, anyone that doesn’t know the play doesn’t want to know anything before seeing it. It would kill the fun.

  

The set design by Mike Heffernan is terrific. An A frame chalet style home serves as a work space and museum for the macabre. The walls are adorned with weapons, handcuffs and theatre posters. The staircase that goes to an upstairs catwalk leading to an offstage loft style bedroom is particularly well utilized. 

Review: (Ottawa) Pride and Prejudice

(From company website)

Deja Vu
by Jim Murchison 

First of all I must apologize to Ottawa Little Theatre for not submitting this review earlier. I dare say that my Pride got the better of me, and my prejudice to accept that I had erred allowed me to wallow for a period of some days. In the same way that there have been two productions of this Jane Austen tale this season, I have written two reviews of OLT's Pride and Prejudice. The first has been swallowed into a virtual wasteland, likely because in my fatigue I neglected to save it properly.

It is fortunate that OLT is proud enough not to be intimidated by the NAC season and suffers no prejudice in underestimating their own abilities. This production is based on Helen Jerome's Broadway production of the thirties which also inspired the first film version with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson but the sensibility is pure nineteenth Century.

Review: (Ottawa) All My Sons

(photo via Twitter; credit: Maria Vartanova)

Beast of War
by Jim Murchison

Christmas is over. It is time to get back to reality. There are few playwrights that expose reality and lift the veil off the convenient little lies we live with better than Arthur Miller. The Ottawa Little Theatre first performed All My Sons in 1949, just two years after its Broadway debut, but 43 years ahead of Canada's first professional theatre production in 1992. The historical notes in the programme indicate that this is the third time that OLT has performed a production of All My Sons but they have never done Death of a Salesman largely considered to be Miller's greatest work. I don't know why that is, but it doesn't really matter as Miller crafts wonderful dialogue and deals with the broken myth of the American dream in this moody and thoughtful 1947 drama about the continuance of life after World War II. 

Tom Pidgeon’s set is a slice of upper middle class Americana. The picket fence, the wood and wicker lawn furniture, trees and perfect flower bushes frame a beautiful house with a mascot roof. An octagonal window glows from the upstairs guest bedroom. David Magladry’s lighting completes the image of the perfect day in the perfect home on a bright sunny day with just a hint of wispy white cloud on the horizon. Things however are not as they appear.

Review: (Ottawa) Hay Fever

100

by Jim Murchison

Saturday was a big deal. 100 years of entertaining the community is monumental in Canadian theatre. The official opening of Hay Fever is Tuesday, but when you have achieved what OLT has achieved it should be marked by a special celebration. The grand opening was attended by dignitaries and special guests and paid special tribute to long time patrons that had remembered OLT in their wills. Before the play commenced, The Capitol Chordettes led the audience in the singing of both God Save the King (circa 1913) and Oh Canada to frame the 100 years of history.

Review: (Ottawa) Black Coffee

Christie, a DB and Hercule

Ottawa Little Theatre gives escape from the summer inferno

by Jim Murchison

The Ottawa Little Theatre presented a night of mystery last evening with Agatha Christie's seldom produced Black Coffee. Before I describe the evening and the performance, the biggest mystery to me was why a play that has one of the most enduring and beloved characters in radio, film and novels -  Hercule Poirot  - has so seldom been produced. Earlier this year I missed the opportunity to see a seldom produced Dr Cook’s Garden by Ira Levin, but the feedback I heard was that it was not very well crafted.

By virtue of being the only play Christie wrote containing Poirot, one would think it would bring producers out of the woodwork or wherever they were hiding eager to cash in on one of literature’s most marketable characters and it shocks me that it was never produced on Broadway. The author herself thought the play to be pretty standard and she actually thought Poirot was a little smug and creepy after a while although not enough to stop writing him into her books and stories. She certainly kept making money off of him. 

Review: (Ottawa) Self Help

Foster Child Another comedy by our king pleases the crowd at OLT by Jim Murchison Last night as the final strains of Oh Canada rang out, a gentleman in my row leaned forward and literally cracked heads with the woman sitting down in the row in front of us. The Three Stooges couldn’t have played it any better. It was a sign that I was in for an evening of farce. Self Help is a play about the compromises we make for survival and comfort and the things we lose along the way as we make our life decisions. It is also about love and sex. Writer Norm Foster has written a play that has considerable disdain for the snake oil salesman and hucksters that pitch self improvement.  Rather than do an in depth exposé of empowerment gurus, Foster  holds them up to examination by lampooning their banal platitudes and hyperbolic assertions that we can achieve anything by ridding ourselves of doubt.

Review: (Ottawa) Translations

Little Theatre/Big Play

OLT does it again

by Jim Murchison

This week I went to see Ottawa Little Theatre’s production of Translations. It is a very ambitious project that explores issues of language and assimilation in 19th century Ireland. Writer Brian Friel has always insisted that Translations is a play about language and only language. Although the play is written in English, the majority of the characters speak predominantly in Irish (Gaelic). Through theatrical convention we are afforded the opportunity to hear them in English. 

Robin Riddihough’s set is a slice of Irish countryside. Large red gates lead into a converted barn where lanterns hang near the steps and lobster traps lean against fieldstone walls. There are tables and chairs there as well, although one might just as well choose to sit on the steps. In every little shelf and storage area there are books. This charming cozy little venue is used as a rustic adult schoolhouse where Gaelic, Greek and Latin are studied along with math and other subjects.

Review: (Ottawa) Lost in Yonkers

John Collins in Yonkers (photo credit: Mike Heffernan)

Simon-izing

A Pulitzer-prize winner arrives in the Capital

by Jim Murchison

There is no arguing that Neil Simon is one of America’s most successful playwrights. Some underestimate his craftsmanship and consider him too formulaic. His one-liners are so perfectly set up that one sometimes underestimates the power of his storytelling. Lost in Yonkers is a Tony Award winner and a Pulitzer Prize play because its themes of family dysfunction and its characters' world-weary struggle to overcome life’s adversity resonate in the minds and hearts of everyone in the audience.

The Ottawa Little Theatre is Canada’s oldest community theatre company because it is not afraid to make choices that challenge its actors and its audiences. Neil Simon’s characters are not always easy to capture, even though laughs are a guaranteed by-product if your timing is good. I overheard the Coat Check person telling a patron that last night’s opening met with a standing ovation so I anticipated a good night.

Review: (Ottawa) I Hate Hamlet

A Night of Ghosts and Traditions

by Jim Murchison

This is my first review at the Ottawa Little Theatre so that, in itself, warrants a few words. There are few theatres these days that have the sense of long time tradition that you feel when you enter the Ottawa Little Theatre, mainly because most theatres are too young. Photos of past portrayals shot in the 1930’s by Yousuf Karsh adorn the downstairs lobby. Résumé pictures of alumnae such as Dan Akroyd and Rich Little wrap the walls in the upstairs lobby.