Review: (Montreal / Dance) Winnin'

(photo by Frédéric Chais)

No end in Sight
by Caitlin Murphy, Senior Contributor

Winnin' is a compendium of gestures that, like its truncated title, are reluctantly reaching towards completion. Choreographed and performed by the brilliant Dany Desjardins, who has previously created All villains have a broken heart (2008), On Air (2009) and POW WOW (2011), it's an accomplished and powerful piece that explores our obsession with winning, and encourages us to lay down our tools of self-inflation.

Review: (Montreal / Dance) Gustavia

                                                                   (photo: Marc Coudrais)
The Itch
by Caitlin Murphy, Senior Contributor

As a new mother, when my son was crying in public, I often felt compelled by the eyes of strangers to perform the role of concerned mother. And the problem wasn't the concern of course, but the performance. I'd quickly vacillate between stinging resentment and a strange compulsion to keep up appearances. This odd dance – between begrudging what's expected of us, while simultaneously delivering it – may not be a uniquely female experience, but it often feels so. It's a feeling that's being hotly-debated in the media at the moment, and one that is rendered exquisitely palpable in Gustavia.

Review: (Montreal) 4 Girls 4 Ever (Fringe)

Fast-Food with Quirks
by Caitlin Murphy
@juliusmarx1977

Fans of The Breakfast Club may be dismayed to realize that next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the brat-pack cult-flick. Yes, you have officially crossed over from the benign process of getting older, to the complex reality of aging. 4 Girls 4 Ever, written by Ned Cox and Alexandria Haber, and heavily inspired by the film, though not without its quirky charms, still falls a little flat.

Directed by Jen Quinn, the play features an all-female cast of Breakfast Club counterparts – Debbie, 'the brain', Irish, 'the baddie', Missy, 'the princess', and Claire, 'the basket-case' – a rag-tag bunch who also came to be friends through sharing Saturday detention. In a sort of textbook case of 'situation comedy' the play sees the four women get accidentally locked in a classroom together at their 25th highschool reunion. And what ensues is largely what you'd expect – the women bond, bitch, break down, then bond anew. They reflect on what has been, and try to reconcile what's come to be. Oh, and they can't get cellphone reception, of course, and there's a blackout at one point.

Review: (Montreal) My Playwright Sister (Fringe)

The Flaws of the Personal
by Caitlin Murphy
@juliusmarx1977

My Playwright Sister is a tricky piece to review. One of its goals is to actively question our ability to reflect on or represent others, a reminder that we are forever locked in our own limiting perspectives. It's also a true hybrid: a meta-theatrical piece straddling several generic modes. That said, it's also, at its core, a bold assertion that art is a conversation. So I wade in.

My Playwright Sister takes as its starting point My Pregnant Brother, Johanna Nutter's hugely successful one-woman play about her transgender brother, James Diamond, and his pregnancy. This 'sequel' is largely conceived as an opportunity for Diamond to speak back to that play, air his feelings about being represented (and arguably exploited) by his sister. The siblings proceed for the next hour to discuss and debate not only Nutter's original play, but indeed the very play we're watching, referencing the process of creating it, their director, Jesse Stong. Along the way much fascinating ground is covered: the complicated nature of memory, gender-normative assumptions, sibling tension and tenderness, the always humbling and never-easy task of truly understanding another human being.

Review: (Montreal / Theatre) Motherhouse

Holly Gauthier-Frankel  (photo: lucetg.com)

War is Not Enough
by Caitlin Murphy

Setting one's sights on grand subjects like WWI, an artist is always wise to zoom right in – find the specific in the epic, and tell an ostensibly humble tale as a microcosm of the grander narrative. In this regard, David Fennario's play Motherhouse is promising. Inspired by a photograph of women workers at a British Munitions Factory, the legendary playwright focuses his attention on one woman in particular; moved by the defiance in her eyes, he imagines her as Lillabit, a feisty Protestant Anglophone, living and working in Verdun during the first world war.  From this beginning though, more flounders than flourishes in the Centaur's production of Motherhouse.

Plagued by clarity and structural issues, as well as a distinct lack of dynamics, the meandering tale fails to provide a clear hook for the audience to grab onto.  Though we sat in house lights the entire performance, meant to make us feel more involved in the narrative, we wound up feeling oddly left out.

Review: (Montreal) The List

Daring Happiness
by Caitlin Murphy

Umberto Eco said that “We like lists because we don't want to die.”  In Jennifer Tremblay's play The List, an unnamed woman – suffering an isolated existence in the country, drowning in domestic ennui – certainly feels like she's dying. Making lists of errands, chores and groceries is her one lifeline, a repeated reminder to herself that she exists and might matter. Translated into English by Shelley Tepperman and directed by Steph Ouaknine, No Exit Theatre's production of The List aims for much greater resonance than it musters; the discrepancy means that this story of a locked-in woman ends up leaving the audience locked out.

The 75-minute one-woman play begins with a shocking admission: though our housewife narrator (Torri Higginson) didn't actually kill her neighbour, Caroline, she is indeed responsible for her death. It's an intriguing starting point, a premise that gleefully merges the banal with the macabre. The woman goes on to recount how in her boredom, she became fixated on Caroline, mother of four, soon to be five. The contempt and resentment she has for Caroline's messy, laissez-faire life mixes uncomfortably with the awe and envy she has for her existential ease. Caroline is happy. How dare she be.

Review: (Montreal) The Seagull

Lucy Peacock, Diane D'Aquila (photo by Andrée Lanthier)

Hinton's Chekhov's Seagull 
by Caitlin Murphy

In the program for The Segal Centre's production of The Seagull, adapter and director Peter Hinton's name precedes and looms large over playwright Anton Chekhov's. A bold statement reflecting a bold stamp: transplanting the play to a contemporary Canadian context, cross-gendering characters, and playing fast and loose with Chekhov's text. All of which could have gone very very wrong. And didn't. The Segal Centre's first full-length production of a Chekhov play is rich, quirky, vibrant, and deeply satisfying.  

As the evening began, I feared that the winks to Canadian culture – name dropping the likes of Jian Ghomeshi and Christopher Plummer – would quickly wear thin. But soon enough the self-referencing settled down, and Hinton's modern bent felt much more natural and fruitful.

Review: (Montreal) Blue Box (WildSide)

                                                                    Photo by Andrew Alexander
The Box that is not a "Box"
by Caitlin Murphy

Fitting for the Centaur Theatre's WildSide Festival, Carmen Aguirre opens her one-woman show Blue Box with a confession:  the show is actually called Blue Cunt. She went with the gentler euphemism, she tells us, for obvious promotional reasons. Rather like the experience the title describes though, the show, presented by Nightswimming, in association with Neworld Theatre, and directed by Brian Quirt, is a bit of an exercise in frustration.

Review: (Montreal) Othello

Andrew Moodie, Amanda Lisman (photo by Andrée Lanthier)

Stabbing at the Air
by Caitlin Murphy

I’ve always loved Othello. It’s always struck me as Shakespeare’s most accessible play somehow. I like the scale of its plot (essentially a disgruntled employee’s sick ploy to get back at his boss) and the depth of its interest in human psychology (essentially how the mind is able to cannibalize itself). 

In the Artistic Producer’s notes for the Segal Centre/Scapegoat Carnivale’s co-production of Othello, we learn that this is only the third time the Segal has done Shakespeare. And though that is indeed surprising, given this is the Segal’s 47th year, perhaps it’s because the quick rehearsal process imposed by main stage productions can only serve Shakespeare ‘too little, not too well’.

Review: (Montreal) Sketchfest

Vest of Friends

Highs and Lows
but Toronto's Vest of Friends a breath of fresh, funky air
by Caitlin Murphy

Montreal’s Sketchfest, now celebrating its 8th year, is serving up a week-long comedy buffet at Theatre Ste. Catherine.  Though its PR boasts acts from as far afield as Chicago, Vancouver and Calgary, the festival’s specific line up features troupes primarily from Montreal and Toronto, with one each from New York and Philadelphia.

In last night’s early show, the strongest acts book-ended the evening: Toronto’s all-female Lady Business, and all-male Vest of Friends both delivered solid sets.  The evening overall though, clocking in at almost 2.5 hours, certainly wore beyond its potential appeal.  Maxing out at three acts per show, or cutting some of the emcee’s rambling intro would make for a tighter night, with a mightier punch.

Review: (Montreal) Sherlock Holmes

Karl Graboshas (l), Jay Baruchel Photo by: Andrée Lanthier   

Not So Elementary
by Caitlin Murphy

Sherlock Holmes adaptations are in ready supply these days. With Guy Ritchie’s frenetic films, the modern-day BBC series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and the NYC-set Elementary, featuring Watson as a woman, we seem quite culturally obsessed at the moment with re-imagining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic sleuth.  Not surprisingly, this populous terrain is hard to stand out in. Though the Segal Centre’s highly-anticipated production is sumptuous and boasts incredible technical prowess, its trail ultimately runs cold.

Set where Sherlock ‘belongs’ – London, end of the 19th century – the play revolves around a proposed controversial ban on opium, the era’s vice of choice, and the mysterious disappearances and murders that result.  The script was written as a Segal Centre commission, by the multi-talented impresario, Greg Kramer, who tragically passed away right as his play went into rehearsal.

Review: (Montreal) The Number 14

Sarah Rodgers and Stefano Giulianetti (photo by David Cooper)

Making funny
by Caitlin Murphy

Humour’s a funny thing.  

What elicits your laugh-out-loud delight might meet my stone-faced confusion, and vice versa.  So, a few quick comedy taste markers:  The Simpsons over Family Guy; British The Office over American; Larry David over Ron James.  Any day. Descriptors like ‘zany’ and ‘off-the-wall’ make me nervous; I associate them with making funny, not being funny. And perhaps all of this explains why The Number 14’s particular brand of grinding out guffaws was lost on me. But, personal biases acknowledged, the show’s got some splainin’ to do too.

As far as Canadian theatre goes, Axis Theatre’s The Number 14 is an astounding success story; it has toured intermittently for the past 20 years, including a run on Broadway, and garnered numerous awards.  Currently directed by Wayne Specht, the piece was originally created in 1992 by a theatre collective in Vancouver, and directed by Roy Surette, the Centaur’s Artistic Director, which explains the symbolic significance of the show’s final tour stop here in Montreal.

Review: (Montreal) You Can Do Whatever You Want

Darcy Gerhart (photo Maxime Côté)

A Dance With Time
by Caitlin Murphy

In You Can Do Whatever You Want, a shiny red Thunderbird – stuck in place, but roaring through time – connects the lives of Pat, Holly and Donna, three generations of disgruntled Thomas women, living in Burnt River.  Presented as part of the National Theatre School’s New Words Festival, and written by graduating playwright, Jesse Stong, the play is a tender and moving ode to family legacies, women’s relationships, and life’s strangely intoxicating dance with time.

Under the direction of Emma Tibaldo, this production offers a rare treat – a very happy marriage of all production elements, creating a world that feels coherent, inviting and whole.  Technical and design elements were sensitively and adeptly handled:  soundscape and music composed by Brian Kenny, lighting design by Alexander Russ-Hogg, costumes by Naomi Mathieu and set by Shlomit Gopher come together beautifully and with clear commitment to the heart of the play.

Review: (Montreal) Thinking of Yu

l-r  Shiong-en Chan, Danielle Desormeaux (photo by: Ange J. Murphy)

Head and Heart
by Caitlin Murphy

April has been quite the news month for stories that challenge our ideas about responsibility, consequence and our capacity for change.  Playing now at the Centaur Theatre, Thinking of Yu, written by Carole Frechette, directed by Micheline Chevrier, and produced by Imago Theatre, offers up another. 

The play’s starting point, as well as Frechette’s for writing it, is a news article about the 2006 prison release of a Chinese journalist Yu Dongyue, sentenced to 17 years for throwing red paint at a portrait of Mao during the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Maggie, a middle-aged woman with a social-activist past, has recently moved, and finds herself lost in a sea of unpacked boxes and unclear ambitions. Stumbling across the article about Yu’s release, she becomes obsessed with his plight:  the courage of his gesture, the severity of its consequence. Unable to focus on her translation work, or give due attention to her sometime ESL student, Lin, Maggie falls down a rabbit hole of research and speculation.

Review: (Montreal) Release

The Sex of Strangers
Cameryn Moore introduces you to people she knows
by Caitlin Murphy

Our feelings about sexuality can have a torturous range:  shame, vulnerability, dread, uncertainty… and that’s with our clothes still on! 

In Cameryn Moore’s latest piece, Release, she presents a patchwork quilt of characters contending with the vulnerabilities of sexual identity.  The result: a moving and intimate piece about the trials of intimacy.

After a bit of a drawn-out, sleepy opening, Release launches into six monologues, from an array of characters of different genders and sexual orientations, all seeking or discovering some form of release.  A shy lesbian from the mid-west waits for her more brazen lover outside a sex shop in NYC; a drunken, middle-aged woman soaks up the liberating energies of Mardi Gras; a man transitioning to a woman seeks solace in a random conversation with a stranger; a ‘big girl’ recounts losing her virginity to an older man with a fat fetish.

Review: (Montreal) Dance Me to the End On/Off Love

When Even "Hallelujah" Feels Revitalized
by Caitlin Murphy

On the heels of its triumph, Trad, the Centaur Theatre is offering another enigmatic and enchanting ‘import,’ this one from further afield.  Dance Me to the End On / Off Love, a Granhøj Dans Production from Denmark, presents a surreal landscape of theatre, movement, and performance art, through the lens of some very familiar melodies and beloved lyrics – those of  Montreal’s own, Leonard Cohen.

A bold programming choice for the Centaur, Dance Me is clearly interested in challenging and teasing its audience, playing with our desires to see clearly, understand what we’re looking at, and be able to read well.  At various times, we are sung to through a megaphone or nylon stocking, shown Cohen’s lyrics re-written on overhead projector, temporarily stunned with a blinding light, or made to decipher what’s being written in body paint on a dancer’s back.   

Review: (Montreal) The Mahalia Jackson Musical

Ranee Lee with the IGS Choir (photo by George Allister)

The Sound of God
The music is there, the text is not
by Caitlin Murphy

Musical biographies are tough.  Thus my suspicion heading into the Segal Centre and Copa de Oro’s co-production of The Mahalia Jackson Musical that the piece would succeed more as a concert than a play.  In the hands of celebrated jazz performer Ranee Lee, music fans are indeed generously indulged, but theatre-lovers are left hungry.

Written and directed by Roger Peace, much of this rather bald biography of Mahalia Jackson, “the queen of gospel,” is told through direct-to-audience narration. 

Review: (Montreal) Trad

Graham Cuthbertson and Patrick Costello (photo credit: lucetg.com)

The Emerald City
by Caitlin Murphy

In a spirit of Samuel Beckett meets Father Ted, SideMart Theatrical Grocery’s production of Trad, by Irish playwright Mark Doherty, is riveting – beautifully staged and superbly performed; deliciously absurd, but deeply moving too.  Originally produced in 2007 at the Segal Centre’s Studio space, this dark comedy is currently on tap at the Centaur Theatre – and Montreal audiences should feel very very lucky that it is.

As its title suggests, Trad is a play about tradition, but also about how much can be truncated, lopped off or lost – from a word, a body, an identity, a nation – before what remains is no longer recognizable.  100-year-old Thomas has only one arm, and his Da has only one leg.  But in a sort of upside down Godot, the aged male duo sets off on a search for Thomas’ previously undisclosed son, whose name or whereabouts are unknown.  Stuck for so long in the past, the men’s quest becomes a symbolic last stab at the future.  As Thomas and Da, Graham Cuthbertson and Patrick Costello – with bald pates, furry ears and pleading eyes – deliver brilliant performances replete with vulnerability, wit and soul. 

Review: (Montreal) Twelfth Night

l-r Jesse LaVercombe, Shannon Currie (by: Maxime Coté)

To Take a Different Tack
by Caitlin Murphy

I think I’ve reached a theatre-going quota.  A sort of saturation point.  I feel sated, full. Perhaps so much so, Mr. Creosote, that it is indeed a good time for that bucket.  The source of this indigestion:  high-concept, low-return subversions of Shakespeare.  The National Theatre School’s graduating class’s production of Twelfth Night, under the direction of Jason Byrne, falls sadly into this category.

The stage here is very consciously stripped back to its bare bones – the doors and exit sign, costume racks, and actors waiting ‘in the wings’ are on view throughout.  The minimal set consists of a round platform with chaise longue, streams of white material hung at stage left, clay faces littered on the ground, and an over-used and under-integrated projection screen.  Costumes seek to provoke:  Orsino topless in heels and leopard-print tights, Olivia seemingly dressed for a naughty figure skating routine.

Review: (Montreal) Oroonoko

The Prism of Brutal History
Does presenting the unimaginable remind, trivialize or flatten?
by Caitlin Murphy

Boasting live music, choreographed dance, fight sequences, period costumes, and 13 performers, Oroonoko, written and directed by Paul Van Dyck, and presented by Persephone Productions, is an ambitious piece of theatre that is both well-made and well-played. 

Based on Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel of the same title, Oroonoko recounts the story of a young African prince, captured under false pretences and taken as a slave to an English colony in the West Indies.  Through some first person narration in the novel, Behn – one of the first professional female writers – positions herself as actual witness to the events she describes (though the truth or extent of her personal involvement is unverifiable).  In the play, to mirror this narration, a dramatic framing device is used, in which Behn (Rebecca Croll) recounts the prince’s story to Clarice (Shannon Hamilton), an eager, new devotee.  The action of the play moves between Oronooko’s life and Behn’s narration of it.