Multi-Media, February 15, 2013

Step Up Time
C'est La Vie presents its new podcast
by Dave Ross

Indefinitely is C’est La Vie Theatre’s latest entry into the podcast theatre series. Written by Tabia Lau, the play is simple, telling the story of Claire and Charlie, siblings who share one last night together before Charlie, the older of the two, moves away to London to start his graduate school education. 

Radio theatre is extremely challenging to execute. I remember listening to radio plays on the CBC with my father when I was child, and how I would close my eyes and enter the world, be it a café, a street, a living room, or whatever setting was being portrayed. I listened to Indefinitely twice, and closed my eyes on the second attempt… but found myself more interested in the sounds of a snow plow clearing the sidewalk outside my window. Indefinitely simply doesn’t create the atmosphere that one can enter into, and the tension that should be present between the actors is almost non-existent. 

Multi-Media, January 18, 2013

The Abyss

C'Est la Vie begins its new season of podcasts

by Christian Baines

Sam is a young, newly single man on the brink of suicide. Jerry is a much older, long-married Ukrainian ex-pat who first urges him not to jump, but is soon tempted to follow. From their opposite ends of the spectrum, both are locked in a struggle to survive. Men teetering on the edge… get it? And that tagline is pretty indicative of the play itself. Long on familiar, ham-fisted clichés and short on emotional gravitas - and mercifully, duration.

C’Est La Vie Theatre has set itself an interesting challenge in podcasting plays without the aid of visuals. Such a task demands scripts that are absolutely clear in their setting and intent, with nary a line wasted. Jump is not one such script. In fact, it takes some time for it to become clear in this format exactly what Sam intends to do. By the time this emerges, Jerry is threatening to join him, and in truth, it’s hard to take either of their threats seriously.  The commitment and weight just isn’t there in either actor’s voice.