theatre review

Talking Stick Festival:  Opening Gala and Festival Week
Presented by Full Circle, Talking Stick Festival and
The Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre
At the Roundhouse and other venues
February 21 to 28, 2010

Vancouver , BC: To the accompaniment of  occasional roars from the hordes watching the Canada-USA hockey game on the giant screen at Yaletown Live, we strolled down a relatively quiet Pacific Boulevard to The Roundhouse to attend the opening gala of the Talking Stick festival.

We had arrived at 6  for the reception and chattered to several people visiting for the Olympics, as we waited in line.The house opened shortly before 7 and we found  seats at a table for four and were joined by a couple up for a visit from the Napa Valley. Things started off with a great beat with the Talking Stick house band 'Friends of the Indians' rocking the Roundhouse. They were joined for another rocking number by singer Gillian Thomson of "Sister Says". 

We were welcomed to the opening by co-hosts  Greg Coyes of APTN's The Mix and Theresa Point, Festival Artistic Director Margo Kane and several other gracious hosts before a plethora of traditional songs and dances were performed by Spakwus Slulem, the Eagle Song dancers of the Squamish nation; Tsatsu Stalqayu, of the Coastal Wolf pack of the Musqueam nation and the traditional Gitksan Dancers of Damelahamid.

Chris Bose, poet and storyteller among his other talents, read poems from his newly published book "Stone the Crow."

Delusion by Laurie Anderson
with  Eyvund Kang (viola) and Colin Stetson (horns)
Commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and BARBICANBITE10
Vancouver Playhouse
Feb 17 to  21st,  2010.

Vancouver, BC:  Yesterday I found myself on the opposite side of an interview - interviewee rather than interviewer. I was checking in for my last shift in the Main Press Centre and unbeknownst  to me, lurking around the check-in desk was one of the volunteers who write the daily Volunteer Newsletter. On hearing that this was the last of my 15 shifts he begged, pleaded and cajoled (alright I exaggerate) until I agreed to have a picture taken for the newsletter. 

While I was chatting away a mile a minute about the Cultural Olympiad among other things - the caffeine from my early  morning coffee was obviously still racing around my system - he asked what I had most enjoyed about the Cultural Olympiad. I began to rattle off memorable aspects from several of the shows I had seen and then when my brain finally caught up to my mouth I stopped and thought about it.

The MicroTheatre Series :
At The Cultch (1895 Venables)
1 to 6 Feb, 2010

1) Etiquette - A Rotozaza production (UK)
2) You & The Moon - The Only Animal (Vancouver, BC)
I3) Intimate History - An Untied Artists production (UK)

Vancouver, BC:  Three cheers for the new Wine Bar  at The Cultch. The Olympic road-closures are at the stage where part of Pacific Boulevard and both the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts are closed to traffic so to get from my place anywhere involves ferreting out new routes.  To make sure we were in time for our Micro-Theatre adventure, we set off early along the E. Hastings route to Commercial. Although until just beyond Main Street traffic moved at a snail's pace, after that the pace picked up and we were actually at The Cultch with a good half an hour to spare after collecting our tickets. So we settled down comfortably in the Wine Bar to enjoy a glass of wine while we waited to be called for our show.

Nevermore - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
Writer, Composer, Director  Jonathan Christenson
Production Designer Bretta Gerecke
Choreographer Laura Krewski
Sound Designer Wade  Staples
A Catalyst Theatre production presented with the:-
Arts Club Theatre Company, Cultch, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival,  Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
Arts Club Granville Island Stage
Jan 21 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  Wow, they just keep coming. One stunning show after another. I just love the cornucopia of art that is spilling out all over my beloved  city of Vancouver during the Cultural Olympiad. Nevermore is  another superb production not to be missed. The visual aspects  are  spectacular, the music haunting and the effect is strangely disturbing and other-worldly.

As you take your seat, you see a  bank of panels on an otherwise bare stage and think minimalism and simplicity. But these panels will confound your imagination and be transformed by brilliant lighting into transparent moving screens behind and through which strange characters move.  Clad in strikingly geometric and oddly shaped black and white costumes, coloured by red, blue and purple lights, these characters inhabit two bizarre worlds, the imagined "real" world of Edgar Allan  Poe's bitter life and those equally dark and bitter worlds created in his stories and poems.

Mrs. Dexter & Her Daily
By Joanna McClelland Glass
Directed by Marti Maraden
Co-production of the Arts Club Theatre Companys
and Canada's National Arts Centre
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
Jan 7 to Feb 17th,  2010

Vancouver, BC:   I loved this show. From the minute the "sunlight" of a new day began to brighten Pam Johnson's meticulously detailed set, the spacious kitchen and dining area of an obviously well-to-do family's home, I was drawn into the unfolding routine of daily life in the Dexter home. The design team, Johnson, Marsha Sibthorpe (lighting) and Philip Clarkson (Costumes) gave director Marti Maraden an attractively authentic environment which the characters created by Fiona Reid as Edith Dexter and Nicola Cavendish as Peggy Randall, the "daily", really seemed to inhabit.

The script has an interesting and unusual structure, essentially consisting of two monologues about the intersecting lives of the two characters, who never actually appear together on stage. The first act belongs to 65 year old Peggy Randall, a indomitably optimistic charlady, who has worked for the wealthy Dexter family for about 10 years. We learn the sad details of her early life, see her soldiering on with her work despite aching joints and dental problems, and dealing bravely with her fears of ending her days alone and poor in social housing. Peggy has been a fighter all her life. She tackles adversity headlong and makes lemonade out of the lemons that life throws at her. She is smart and she can do anything from fixing broken electric fans to hanging curtains. But she can't fix her employer's shattered life and her attempts to communicate with the as-yet-unseen Mrs. Dexter,leave us admiring Peggy's spirit while feeling most unfavorably disposed towards the seemingly spoiled, and self-pitying Mrs. D.

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Directed by Anita Rochon
Studio 58, Langara College
Nov 19 to Dec 13, 2009

Vancouver, BC: Led by two Studio 58 alumni, director Anita Rochon, and Mike Wasko as the insanely jealous  Sicilian king Leontes, the student cast succeed in presenting a interesting and entertaining production of  The Winter's Tale. I use the word succeed deliberately because as I look back on my  reviews of other  productions of this play (Winter's Tale, Summer's Storm), I note that this play in more ways than the conventional meaning for me is a problem play, and it is a real challenge to pull it off well.

The problem lies with Shakespeare, not with whoever happens to be playing Leontes. The entire premise centres around the sudden irrational jealousy of Leontes that leads him to accuse his wife Hermione (Melissa Dionisio)  of adultery with his childhood friend, Polixenes, Prime Minister of Bohemia  (Jason Clift) who has been visiting Sicily for the past months.  Since the text begins with a cordial Leontes pleading vainly with Polixenes to tarry a few days longer in Sicily, and then within  a few minutes of observing his wife succeed in her plea to have Polixenes stay, turns Leontes into a maniacally jealous man, it requires a huge leap of faith for the audience to follow Leontes down his path of lunacy.

White Christmas: The Musical
Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Book by David Ives and Paul Blake
Based upon the Paramount Pictures film written for the screen
by Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, and Melvin Frank
Director Bill Millerd.
Musical Director Bruce Kellett. Choreographer Valerie Easton.
Arts Club Theatre Company
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
Nov 12  to  Dec 27, 2009

Vancouver, BC: As those of you  who have followed my recent  theatre travels and cruise adventures dancing at sea to destinations from Bora Bora to Beijing to  Los Angeles to New York, know by now, I am delirious about dance, so how could I not love a show with a song titled "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing"?  Add some rapid-fire tap dancing, great ensemble work and music and lyrics that are embedded  in my memory bank from years back, and White Christmas makes for a delightfully sentimental evening's entertainment.

Irving Berlin wrote the song “White Christmas” for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. Sung by Bing Crosby,  it won the Academy Award that year and  was later used in  the 1954 film version of  White Christmas. In today's lingo it  went viral and today there can't be a person over the age of 1 anywhere in the world who does not know this song. Following the more recent cross-genre trend of going from film to musical (like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) rather than the previously more usual  musical to film, the musical version of  White Christmas was first produced in San Francisco in 2004. But it still retains its 1950s feel.

The story opens on Christmas Eve 1944 somewhere in Europe where two  US army soldiers, former Broadway entertainer, the reserved Captain Bob Wallace (Jeffrey Victor)  and extrovert philanderer, Phil Davis (Todd Talbot)  are putting on a show for the troops. Their respected General Henry Waverley (Rejean Cournoyer) is returning to the US for treatment of an injury.

Fast forward ten years. Wallace and Davis are now a successful entertainment act and they encounter the performing Haynes sisters, reserved Betty (Sara-Jeanne Hosie) and extrovert Judy (Monique Lund).  Phil and  Judy hit it off instantly, but  Bob and Betty - well, there has to be a down arc to the story for it all to be resolved happily in the end. 

Aided by various acts of "larceny'" they all land up at the inn in Vermont that just happens to be owned by the retired General Waverley, who is being visited by his young niece from California, Susan (Rachael Withers). Business at the inn is down, but the feisty manager, Martha Watson (Susan Anderson) is not letting the general know just how bad things are. Wallace and Davis decide to help out their general, but busybody Martha gets involved and things start to unravel.  But it is Christmas so of course all ends well.

DIARY/JOURNAL INTIME
Choreographer: Helene Blackburn
Vancouver East Cultural Centre
A Cas Public Production      
September 29th to October 3rd
 
Vancouver, BC:  BLUE JEANS AND POINT SHOES

This is dance theatre that you can take your husband to….and your teens…and anyone else you can think of.   The opening offering of the Cultch Family Series is a knock-out.  The re-furbished Cultch main stage was bathed in the light of a thousand candles being arranged and moved about by the seven members of the company, the men in jeans and the women in point shoes, as the audience entered the theatre. 

Frozen by Bryony Lavery
Directed by Renée Iaci
shameless hussy productions and Theatre at UBC
Dorothy Somerset Studio, UBC
Sept 22 to Oct 3rd, 2009.

Vancouver, BC.  Bryony Lavery 's play has all the elements that should make for  compelling theatre. An tragic situation connecting three characters - a serial killer, the mother of the girl he abducted and the academic who is studying him and others like him;   and issues that one can argue endlessly : is he evil or is he sick? Can he be forgiven,  should he be forgiven and what does forgiveness really mean?

Yet when I left the theatre instead of being engaged in the tragedy of the story and the complexity of the issues, I found myself  instead wrestling with the question of what, for me is compelling theatre- the sort of show, specifically a dramatic play, that makes me walk away thinking - wow that was good.

As a splitter not a lumper, I tend to  divide plays into three categories. First there is the play that captures me so completely, intellectually and emotionally,  that I am almost living the experience with the actors. Then there is the work that engages me intellectually  so that I have lots to think and talk about, but it does not touch my heart. 

The Veil by Shahin Sayadi
Directed by
Presentation House
 Sept 24 to October 3 , 2009

Vancouver. BC:   The evening opened with a welcome from Brenda Leadley, the Artistic Director of Presentation House with a message about why we should protest damaging government cuts to grants for the arts, and then The Veil, written and directed by Shahin Sayadi proved to the audience why we should be taking to the streets. 

This is a stunning piece of theatre that takes us on a journey into the uncharted perception of a world as seen and experienced by a Muslim grandmother.   I can't imagine this story being told anywhere but in a theatre.  And what imagination!  It is a history lesson, love story and the triumph of those mysterious veiled women that Westerners find so hard to understand.