(photo credit: Andrea Gallo)
Heart, yes! Substance...
by Chad Dembski
I did not see Too Late! (antigone) or Alexis. Una tregedia greca during the Festival TransAmériques in 2012 but heard plenty of positive and rave reviews of both shows after the fact. The company MOTUS seemed to hit Montreal at the perfect moment of the Maple Spring, the daily orchestra of evening protests in almost every Montreal area of pots and pans and with a massive feeling of change in the air. At the core of MOTUS seems to be a desire for change, to build a Utopia here and now and for the future of all mankind.
Nella Tempesta uses Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as its base to ask questions around power, master and servant and how we can help each other. Huge piles of blankets are used in various ways to represent a wide variety of objects from a boat, a rock, and a cape. The piece begins promising with a storm scene with strobe lighting that instantly brings us into the space. From there though the piece falls apart more and more as it plods along with seemingly little to no direction. A script is brought on stage and various attempts at Act 1 Scene 1 are approached but often stopped or questioned before they really get going. The piece plays more like an open rehearsal where none of the performers have made any solid decisions on how they want to play the piece.
