Review: Urban Tales

The Dark Side of Xmas

by Caitlin Murphy

A Montreal tradition with an anarchic mission, Urban Tales, presented by Theatre Urbi et Orbi in association with the Centaur, brands itself as ‘anti-holiday’ storytelling.  This year’s sixth edition once again subverts the expectations of the season by ditching the cozy for the caustic, the sacred for the sarcastic and the holy for the hellish.

It’s a little delightfully ironic then that the Centaur space has never looked warmer or more welcoming.  The leftover set from their production of Good People serves as a perfect base; decked out with wreaths, twinkly lights, garland, and even Santa’s boots peeking out from the fireplace, the setting’s ambience is like a big hot cup of cocoa.  And with added cabaret seating and a bar right on stage, it’s fun to watch the first brave patrons – like teenagers venturing out onto the dancefloor – decide to actually sit on the stage.  The setting not only echoes the topsy-turvy world of dark holiday tales, but it’s always fun to do things in the theatre you’re not supposed to.  Spirited musical accompaniment – mutations of well-known carols, playfully provided by Nick Carpenter on keyboard – perfectly rounds off the evening’s yuletide vibe.

Review: August, An Afternoon in the Country

l-r Eleanor Noble, Clare Coulter (photo: lucetg.com)

Family Pictures
by Rebecca Ugolini

In the oppressive August heat, family tensions come to a boil and secrets and scandals rise to the surface. August: an Afternoon in the Country is an unflinching portrayal of one family’s journey across familiar terrain, the well-worn, cyclical conflicts, celebrations and dramas that make up romantic, platonic, and blood relationships. 

The Centaur Theatre’s 2012-2013 opening night presentation of August is also the English-language debut of playwright Jean Marc Dalpé’s acclaimed French-language script, and neither Maureen Labonté’s lively translation nor director Harry Standjofski’s fine cast disappoint.

Audience members will love August for its true-to-life portrayal of the nature of family conflicts: although it’s natural to hope for a resolution to the tragedies portrayed onstage, like a hot summer’s day that eventually loses steam and fades into a humid, black night, August leaves its broken relationships and hurt feelings hanging in the balance, unresolved, hoping for a better tomorrow, but with only the cold and deadness of Autumn on the horizon.

Review: Intimate Apparel

Lucinda Davis and Quincy Armorer (photo credit: lucetg.com)

The Unchangeable Past

Centaur has a dynamite cast for the Apparel

by Sarah Deshaies

Who hasn't tried to envision what their forebears' past might have been?

Playwright Lynn Nottage concocted Intimate Apparel out of a desire to know more about her great-grandmother, Ethel Boyce, according to dramaturge Caitlin Murphy in the informative playbill. Ethel was a religious woman, a Black immigrant who made her way from Barbados to Ellis Island in 1911, at a time when many were converging on New York City to create new lives for themselves.

Interview: Centaur Theatre Artistic Director Roy Surette

(photo credit: Yannick MacDonald)

Beyond The Launch

After announcing his 2012-13 season, the Montreal AD talks candidly about Healey, Rose, Vancouver Playhouse and the challenge of here and beyond

by David Sklar

CHARPO: So you just had your season launch. How did it go?

SURETTE: It went well. It’s always a bit intense. I think I talked for about an hour about the season and all our upcoming activities. 

CHARPO:  What goes through your mind when picking a new season? How do you choose what shows to pick?

SURETTE: It’s a mystery.  As they say in Shakespeare In Love, my favorite theatre quote, “it’s a mystery how it ever works”.  There are so many factors that go into selecting a season. And there are many questions that I am always asking myself, still feeling relatively new to Montreal. I’ve been here for almost four and a half years now and as someone who programs a theatre in a unique city like Montreal I think, needless to say, it’s challenging. You need to know what’s evolving with the audience.  I’m always of the belief that you want to do a season that people want to come and see. There is no point in doing it for yourself and in fact when you get to the scale of operation like us, you have to sell a lot of tickets. We’re about 50 percent run by our box office.  We do a lot of fundraising as well as applying for government support. But we’re still white knuckling it terms of, are going to make our box office targets? And usually in a year, it’s a real rollercoaster ride. Some shows are quite a bit under, some are over so in terms of balancing a season, you've got to compromise. I wish I could say I have the magical formula but I don’t. I feel I've got a pretty good track record and the confidence of the Board, the staff and the city but you never know. We don’t do the same thing over and over again. Every time we embark on a new production it’s a risk, especially if it’s a new play. Even if you are doing something that was very successful somewhere else, it doesn’t necessarily translate. Having the privilege of working across this country and outside of it as well, there is no guarantee.  You can’t go, “Oh ya this was a really big hit in Australia, it’s just going to rock in Montreal, or it did really well in Vancouver, it doesn’t mean anything for here.”

Review: The Game of Love and Chance

Gemma James-Smith and Gil Garratt (photo credit: lucetg.com)

Marivaudages

A play brought back to greatness

by Chris Lane

Once in a while a modern adaptation of an old text comes along that is both fresh and classic, and Centaur Theatre’s production of The Game of Love and Chance manages to be just that. The play was written in the 17th century by the French master Pierre de Marivaux, who is particularly known for the unique way he manipulates language. Local playwright Nicolas Billon has recently written a new translation of the work, and he succeeds at maintaining the playful wit of Marivaux’s words while making the language modern and accessible (and of course, English). The director, Matthew Jocelyn (artistic director of Toronto's Canadian Stage - where this production is headed), shows his expertise in adapting Marivaux’s work in this uproarious production.

Review: In Absentia

Paul Hopkins, Jilian Fargay, Jade Hassouné

(photo: lucetg.com)

Who says absence makes the heart grow fonder?

In Absentia at the Centaur Theatre

By Richard Burnett

Hopes were high for Centaur Theatre’s world premiere of In Absentia by Calgary-born Morris Panych, the celebrated playwright and director who has won two Canadian Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama. 

But rest assured, Panych will not win a third for In Absentia.

Review: Bliss (Wildside)

Trent Pardy, Jean-Robert Bourdage, France Rolland 

(photo credit: James Lavoie)

The Oracle of Walmart

Engaging, shocking, powerful, bliss

by David Sklar

I had the experience of seeing Bliss two years ago at the SummerWorks festival in Toronto. The story written by Olivier Choiniere, a graduate of NTS (National Theatre School of Canada) playwriting program on the French side, explores the extremities of the world as seen through a Walmart cashier/oracle. The play moves about in a quick, quirky and unpredictable way, edging on disturbing. Its director, Steven McCarthy, who also doubled as one of the actors in the summer production, believes that “Céline Dion is the goddess of the play”. (Thanks Pat Donnelly).  Having won the CanStage award for Best Direction, you should take him at his word.     

Review: Urban Tales

The Danger of Chocolate

Centaur renews its annual Tales

by Sarah Deshaies

Watching Urban Tales is like taking a bite of sweet chocolate, and having your tongue taste a bitter cacao centre. Slightly shocked at first, you swirl the taste around, and let it slide down your throat, and ultimately, it warms your belly.

Review: (Montreal) God of Carnage

l-r  Mark Camacho, Ellen David, Janine Theriault and Marcel Jeannin

(photo: lucetg.com)

Folie à quatre

Roy Surette’s production is a well-oiled machine. Each actor turns out a character with finely-tuned mannerisms and the propensity to go absolutely nuts. 

by Sarah Deshaies

The lights come up to reveal four people set up in a well-heeled living room. Two couples are both awkwardly hammering out the wording of a statement that will keep them in this living room and in front of us for the next 90 minutes, their flaws and foibles exploited and revealed in minute detail under a microscope.

Review: True Nature

Review: A Beautiful View

(photo: Tim Matheson)

Missing Jessica Stein

Love, laughter and lesbian clichés in A Beautiful View

by Amy Barratt

I keep reading that A Beautiful View, the Daniel MacIvor play closing out the Centaur season, is inspired by today’s generation of 20-somethings. Something about how they are free to hook up with partners of either gender and not have to define themselves as gay or straight. I’m skeptical about this premise, but it doesn’t really matter because  the characters on stage in this play are not of that generation. The two women, Linda and Mitch – names that are used in the programme but not once in the dialogue - are kicking forty when we meet them, presumably in the present day. 

Review: Stones in His Pockets

Daniel Brochu (l) and Kyle Gatehouse (photo credit: lucetg.com)

Chasing Hollywood

by Sarah Deshaies

Stones in his Pockets is for anyone who's ever chased a Hollywood dream, or just watched a movie

Small Irish living contrast with the hungry movie-making machine in Marie Jones' play, directed by Andrew Shaver, and staged at the Centaur.

Kyle Gatehouse and Daniel Brochu play a myriad of roles, but their main personas are two buddies who meet up on the set of a Hollywood movie that's taken over a picturesque small town in Ireland. They, and it seems, the rest of the town, are playing extras - they're the backdrop to an over-the-top film set in their in own hometown. Talk about being sidelined. 

Review: MöcShplat

Top to bottom: Marcel Jeannin, Danielle Desormeaux, Michel Perron (Photo credit: Julian Haber)

Is This a Dogfish I See Before Me?

MöcShplat is Shakespeare like you’ve never seen him

by Amy Barratt

You thought a one-man Hamlet was messing with the classics? That was nothing compared to a four-clown send-up of the Scottish play. 

Geordie Productions, into its 30^th year and flirting with theatre for grownups, has brought back MöcShplat, Clowns Gone Bad’s collective creation dating back to 1997. It’s playing at Centaur Theatre this weekend and next with  daytime performances through the week for highschool groups.

The kids are going to have a blast. This is an adaptation of Shakespeare by a group of people who know the original material very well but aren’t afraid to throw 90% of it out and just riff on what’s left.

Sunday Feature: Danny Brochu and Stones in His Pockets

Danny Boy

In Stones In His Pockets, actor Daniel Brochu taps into his roving Irish - and then some

by David King

After the success of Sidemart Theatrical Grocery's Haunted Hillbilly during the last few seasons, it's nice to see actors Daniel Brochu and Kyle Gatehouse reunite with director Andrew Shaver for Stones In His Pockets this week at Centaur. In a play where fifteen characters are constantly in flux by only two performers, Brochu and Gatehouse already have the right chemistry to make it work, while Shaver, fully trained in comedy and clown and with a background at Lecoq, is the right man to help the actors develop multiple personas. 

"Because we had a long rehearsal process we were able to do some animal explorations for this," says Brochu, "not to create animals obviously but the idea of that shadow animal incorporated into people's human qualities. He [Shaver] was great at encouraging us to go in all kinds of different directions."

Review: Hamlet (solo)

...I never knew Will, but...
by Amy Barratt

For me, the test of any Shakespeare performance is: would the Bard himself have liked this? ‘Course I never knew old Will personally but I like to think he would care less about elaborate costumes and rotating platforms than about whether the story comes across. I’m sure he wasn’t above cutting scenes from his own plays when he found the action dragging. A lot of people complain they just can’t get the Shakespearean language. It’s been my experience that if you’re watching actors who get it, then you get it. 

Which brings us to Raoul Bhaneja’s rapid-fire, two-hour delivery of Hamlet, in Hamlet (solo), playing at Centaur as part of the Wildside festival. Bhaneja does not linger, as some actors do, over clever turns of phrase, trying to make sure we get them. His is an enormous verbal task but it is possibly an even greater physical one. His performance is a study in playing the intention, and just saying the words. 

Review: I am I

by Elizabeth Johnston

Don’t be afraid of the press line, “I AM I is an exploration into the duality of the modern man.” Mike Czuba’s play appearing now at the Wildside Theatre Festival is not nearly as cerebral as you might think. At the heart of it, I AM I is about a guy trying to get a girl. One side of him wants to jump her bones and the other wants to take it slow, to get to know her first. 

A Woody Allenesque comedy, the actors deliver their well-written lines with passion and believability. Man 1, the sensitive one played by Canadian Idol contestant George Bekiaris is a perfect foil for lusty Man 2, played by Tristan D. Lalla, a recipient of numerous awards for acting excellence. While Man 1 and Man 2 wrestle over their object of desire, Tamara Brown’s character, Sonya, struggles to make sense of the Jekyll and Hide personality of a guy she’s sort of interested in. Having just come out of a “difficult relationship,” she’s not sure whether she just wants an ear or a grope in the dark. Her indecision makes it that much harder for Man 1 and Man 2 to come together, and Tai Timbers’ live electric guitar “sound track” just underscores their existential angst.

Review: Duplicity Girls

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois


Fifteen minutes into Ned Cox's Duplicity Girls, I realized that this was not a play as much as it was a piece of music for two voices...a kind of chamber opera, if you will. And it was not for nothing that Benjamin Britten's adaptation of Henry James' Turn of the Screw popped into my head. For Girls, as with the James, is about a household where something is not quite right.


But back to the music for a moment...Johanna Nutter and Paula Costain play two sisters who display their hatred for each other in different ways—one openly and darkly (the alto) the other brightly and with no shortage of cheerful passive aggressivity (the soprano). They talk at cross purposes, they repeat each others words (turning the tone to make the phrase mean exactly the opposite of what the other said), they have bitter little duets, quiet arias and little fugues—each note getting under each other's skin. If you are an impatient theatre-goer, this will try your patience. But if you like the ebb and flow of dialogue crisply written, expertly directed (Tanner Harvey) and sublimely performed than you will stick with this difficult work.

Video: Raoul Bhaneja talks about Hamlet (solo)

(From Repercussion Theatre's Twitter Feed)

Review: Hypnogogic Logic

By Gaëtan L. Charlebois


WildSide launched its 14th edition tonight with much noise, and the noise came in the form of the troupe, Uncalled For, and their new work, Hypnogogic Logic. The company of four played to a packed house of devotees. It was a nice, explosive start to the Festival.


However...


As I have said elsewhere, Uncalled For is one of the smartest comedy teams in the city but the problem, with their new work, is they may be too smart by half. Their energy—both intellectual and physical, is in full view from the first moment of the evening (which has, as its conceit, that state of sleep in which the weirdest things happen in your dreams; ie: the sketches). But the person most clearly missing in action is a director (the program tells us they directed themselves). As a result, the pacing is too mad, the voices loud and fairly unmodulated, and finally the show overstays its welcome (and could have handled 15 minutes cut from its 75 or so)...high energy becomes, far too soon, relentlessness.

CharPo's WildSide Photo Album