MONDOmagazine

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Communion
Written and directed by Daniel MacIvor
Starring Sarah Dodd, Caroline Gillis and Athena Lamarre
Runs until April 4 @ Tarragon Theatre Mainspace

By Daina Valiulis

Daniel McIvor’s newest work is about a mother and daughter trying to reconnect after years, and the barriers they face, including a drinking problem, a secret that needs to be told, a troubled teenage-hood, a stint in jail, and some fundamentalist religious beliefs — not to mention the balls of fiery anger shooting from both cannons, and a lesbian therapist in the middle of the battleground.

Short and sweet, the piece runs for 85 minutes, which is Read the rest of this entry »

Hush
By Rosa Laborde
Directed by Richard Rose
Starring Conrad Coates, Vivien Endicott-Douglas, Tara Rosling and Graeme Somerville
Runs February 9 – March 21 at Tarragon Theatre

By Jessie Davis

There are languages we speak in the dark — lovers travelling each other’s landscapes, a child caught in a dream that is both blissful and terrifying.  These are languages we could never reproduce willingly, almost as though they’re waiting inside of us to be tapped at the moment when logic shuts down and we let go of our senses.  It’s the moment when instinct and ancient memory take over and guide us through the darkness until we reach safe harbour.  Rosa Laborde’s Hush has come from this place, appearing as a dream to the playwright and presented as such to the eager audience.

The lines are blurred here between dream and waking life, between Harlem (Graeme Somerville), his daughter Lily (Vivien Endicott-Douglas), his lover Talia (Tara Rosling) and his friend and colleague Andre (Conrad Coates).  Together they ponder the existence of God and debate the concept of a hereafter, all against a backdrop of evolving human relationships and the collective terror or bliss that can accompany those changes. Read the rest of this entry »

Obsidian Theatre’s Intimate Apparel
Presented by the Canadian Stage Company
Written by Lynn Nottage
Directed by Philip Akin
Featuring Raven Dauda, Kevin Hanchard and Alex Poch-Goldin
Runs until March 6 @ Bluma Appel Theatre

By Helen Fylactou

Intimate Apparel, a love story set in New York City in 1905, follows Esther (Dora Award winner Raven Dauda), a 35-year-old seamstress living in a boarding house with a bunch of teenagers. Esther has found financial independence sewing wedding-night undergarments for women. Unfortunately, the riches of her work belie the loneliness in her life. Esther begins an exchange of romantic letter writing with George (Kevin Hanchard), a stranger that is working with a deacon from her Church. George is a good-looking Caribbean man working on the Panama Canal. He spends his free time wooing Esther and eventually makes her his wife. Esther illiteracy prevents her from reading or writing letters, but she turns to her friends, who are battling their own demons, for help. George’s letters inspire Esther to jeopardize her freedom and independence at the fantasy that she will live a life of passion and intimacy. Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Donaldson as Ned. Photo by Ed Gass-Donnelly.

And So It Goes
Written and directed by George F. Walker
Featuring Martha Burns, Peter Donaldson, Jerry Franken and Jenny Young
January 30 – February 28 @ Factory Theatre

By Kerry Freek

In Walker’s new play, a dispirited husband and wife (Peter Donaldson and Martha Burns) struggle to deal with their identities, their home, their passions and their marriage, despite unemployment and their mentally ill daughter’s demise. Oh, and they both look to the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut (played by Jerry Franken) for advice.

A rumpled, scarred set with grungy, washed out greys and blacks make physical the psychological effects that Karen’s (Jenny Young) condition have on the family. It is an obvious choice that seems cheesy but serves its purpose. Between the numerous scene changes, musical transitions that sound like post-apocalyptic take on the Seinfeld theme play over a darkened stage. Not particularly helpful, but again, not a major blight on the show, especially since Donaldson and Burns turn out committed performances, and Young is believable as both a mentally unstable and well-adjusted young woman. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Peterson as Billy Bishop. (via Soulpepper)

Billy Bishop Goes to War
Written & composed by John Gray with Eric Peterson
January 26 – February 27 @ the Young Centre for Performing Arts

By Kerry Freek

What can you say about the much-lauded Billy Bishop? Returning after a sold-out 2009 run (and many other wildly successful runs over the past 30 years), Soulpepper’s remount opened the company’s 2010 season with a standing ovation.

Surely it’s been said before. These two (Gray, Peterson) are national treasures, still brimming with vigour, even as they age along with the play—and there’s no disputing it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Madonna Painter
Written by Michel Marc Bouchard
Translated by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Eda Holmes
Starring Marc Bendavid, Juan Chioran, Nicola Correia-Damude, Brian Dooley, Miranda Edwards, Shannon Taylor, and Jenny Young
Runs November 19 – December 13 @ Factory Theatre

By Daina Valiulis

The Madonna Painter tells the story of an eager and idealistic young priest (Marc Bendavid) who commissions a fresco to be painted of the Virgin Mary in order to appeal to God to protect the people of his village from the Spanish flu epidemic.

Set in 1918 Lac St. Jean, Québec, the play introduces Mary Louise (Nicola Correira-Damunde), a laundress at an inn who reads the creases in people’s sheets to unlock their secrets; the young and sweet Mary Anne; the sensual and hungry Mary Frances (Miranda Edwards); Mary of the Secrets (Jenny Young), to whom people confess their deepest, darkest deeds before they die; and the Doctor (Brian Dooley), who has an unhealthy love of chopping off people’s body parts. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo of Nathalie Claude by Rolline Laporte.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre presents
The English-language premiere of
The Salon Automaton
A Momentum production
Written, directed, and performed by Nathalie Claude
December 1-12 @ Buddies

By Kerry Freek

As she settles into her weekly salon, the Hostess (Nathalie Claude) welcomes her stiff companions — the Dandy Poet, the Cabaret Artist, and the Drinking Patroness. Like Dorian Gray, they are forever young, but the Hostess, in her humanity, is distinctly different.

At first, it’s not clear whether she’s aware of her unique position among the group. But as the show progresses, we realize that it’s a self-imposed farce. Claude’s charmingly mad character paces about the impeccably designed set, stomping on pieces of broken glass champagne flutes, wrestling between maintaining decorum and blowing up at her naïve robots (their inability to compute, ironically, a result of her own programming). Read the rest of this entry »

L-R: Mark Gough, Christian Jeffries, Arthur Wright

Soup Can Theatre presents
Love is a Poverty You Can Sell
Featuring MJ Cyr, Jennifer Dash, Mark Gough, Christian Jeffries, Victoria Kucher, Natalie Kulesza, Hayley Preziosi, Jonathan Tan, Arthur Wright, with Ryan Anning and Scott Dermody
November 27-28, 2009 @ Bread & Circus

By Kerry Freek

When I think of the music of Kurt Weill, rarely do shining young faces come to mind. Rather, his influence conjures society’s dark underbelly: murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and other unsavory characters. Certainly not a bunch of wrinkle-free 20-somethings. Perhaps that’s one reason Soup Can Theatre’s inaugural production, a 1920s-style Berlin cabaret, seemed a little green — most performers looked a little too fresh to be singing about life’s hard knocks.

The night’s hosts, played by Ryan Anning and Scott Dermody, at first had trouble with inconsistent German accents and stilted banter, their calls and responses coming a bit too fast and seeming slightly over-rehearsed. As the show continued, however, the two (especially Dermody, who actually looked German) found their groove and worked together to great effect. Between songs, the two grew visibly more comfortable and really hammed up their back-and-forth. The gentlemen’s tiff surrounding Anning’s character’s silver-spooned background was particularly well-timed and enjoyable. Read the rest of this entry »

Gord Rand as Hamlet. Photography by Michael Cooper.

Necessary Angel’s Hamlet
Starring Benedict Campbell, Laura de Carteret, Mac Fyfe, Steven McCarthy, Christopher Morris, Tara Nicodemo, Robert Persichini, Eric Peterson, with Gord Rand as Hamlet
Runs November 19-29 @ Enwave Theatre, Harbourfront

By Daina Valiulis

A raucious party has just occurred, yet in the air hangs the unmistakable sense of melancholy. A large banquet table sits in the middle of the room. Strewn atop it are plates smeared with leftover food, empty plastic cups and cans that crunch underfoot as the action progresses, wrinkled streamers, and empty wine bottles. From the rafters hang dim chandeliers and in a dark corner sits a dishevelled young man with a mop of black hair. His eyes staring, haunted and fixed at the floor. The audience enters into this half masticated world, which becomes further ensnarled as the show progresses, and we become accomplices in the destruction and violence.

Superbly constructed from every avenue — set, lighting, sound design as well as incredible direction and acting to back it up — this version of Hamlet, directed and designed by Graham McLaren, removes giant chunks of the Bard’s text, but keeps all the juicy, necessary bits, which not only tells the story, but leaves you haunted and disgusted with the human monsters on parade. Each is guilty in some way (with the exception of Laertes, played by Christopher Morris, and Ophelia, played by Tara Nicodemo, who are treated as pawns) and they know it, whether they choose to hide it, deny it, or use it to manipulate others. It is this among other things that tortures Hamlet, causing him to drag everyone he touches into his festering pit of despair. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo of Nina Arsenault by David Hawe.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre presents
The Silicone Diaries
Created and performed by Nina Arsenault
Directed by Brendan Healy
Dramaturgy by Judith Rudakoff
November 14-22 @ Buddies

By Kerry Freek

Nina Arsenault is fishy.

As she slinks onto the stage, squirming and gyrating like a feline Barbarella, the audience is drawn to her hyper-feminine figure, perfected with over sixty cosmetic surgeries and suitably wrapped in a plastic tube dress.

In tranny terms, she explains, “fishy” means to excel at being a woman. But Arsenault is something beyond an ideal version of a woman. She looks like a living, breathing mannequin.

She begins the Diaries by recounting her childhood in Beamsville, Ontario. A group of young boys burn holes in the eyes of the women in girlie magazines. They tear up the pictures, and Arsenault, as a young boy, watches the shreds fall to the ground, thinking “these aren’t women; they are goddesses.” The Diaries become the narrative of her struggle — how to restructure these torn pieces of herself into her ideal form, a Venus, or “a superhero drawing of my body.” Read the rest of this entry »

Foreground: Ruth Lawrence. Background: Kate Corbett, Monica Walsh. Photography by Justin Hall.

Rocking the Cradle
Toronto Premiere
An RCA Theatre Company Production
By Des Walsh, freely adapted from Lorca’s Yerma
Directed by Richard Rose
Starring Kate Corbett, Jane Dingle, Darryl Avalon Hopkins, Didi Gillard-Rowlings, Greg King, Ruth Lawrence, and Monica Walsh
Runs November 11 – December 13 @ Tarragon Theatre Mainspace

By Daina Valiulis

“There is no disease in the world like desire,” says Mary, a resident of a small Newfoundland outport. It is this sentiment, fuelled by the burning need to have a child, that tortures a fisherman’s wife, Joan, to madness in Newfoundland native Des Walsh’s Rocking the Cradle. Everything in the production serves to echo this burning and ultimately fruitless desire, from the costumes to the soundscape, the poetic musicality of the script, and especially the set — the home and prison in which Joan is trapped, making for a deeply tortured and effective piece.

Adapted from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma (set in a remote village in Spain during Lorca’s time about a barren woman surrounded by childbearing neighbours), Rocking the Cradle spins the tale of Joan (Ruth Lawrence), a young, dreamy, and optimistic young woman in 1960s Newfoundland who marries Vince (Darryl Avalon Hopkins), a man fundamentally content to have the companionship of a wife at home for the rest of his life, and nothing more. Joan has always dreamed of having a family, however, and as time goes on and she realizes that her dream is growing further out of reach, she transforms into a bitter, angry woman, tortured by feelings of loneliness and isolation. Read the rest of this entry »

7 Stories
Canadian Stage Company in co-production with Theatre Calgary
By Morris Panych
Directed by Dean Paul Gibson
Starring Peter Anderson
Runs until December 5 @ Bluma Appel

By Daina Valiulis

According to Morris Panych, 7 Stories is about “why people live, what people live for, what the reason for their existence is.” Twenty years ago, Panych was commissioned by Larry Lillo, then artistic director of the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, to write 7 Stories, at a time when AIDS first became a hot topic. The play echoes (not so subtly) Sartre and Magritte, calling to mind humanity’s comical need to find meaning in everything. Remounted now in 2009 by CanStage with the original three musketeers Morris Panych, actor Peter Anderson, and designer Ken MacDonald, the production is incredibly indulgent and dated.

The Man stands on a window ledge about to commit suicide (“To be or not to be…”) and before he is able to jump, becomes involved in the lives of the people in the surrounding apartments. The dialogue is at times nonsensical and absurd, reminiscent of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and certainly carries his philosophy that ascribing meaning to life or to the play itself for that matter is futile and silly. This unfortunately becomes very dull after a few minutes. The topic of existentialism has been seen and done to death by artists of all kinds and this production of 7 Stories adds nothing new to the mix. Read the rest of this entry »