Vancouver play

The Passion Project
Director/Creator   Reid Farrington
Pacific Theatre and the PuSh Festival
Pacific Theatre
an 27 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  When I initially read the description of The Passion Project as "video art installation- meets theatre" I wasn't sure what to think about it other than that it would be novel and different. After seeing it, I concluded that think is the wrong word. It is more a sensory experience than a cognitive experience.  And what on earth do I mean by that?  Let me try and articulate my experience.

Arriving somewhat early, as usual, I await the start of the show in the lobby of the theatre. A suggestion of what is to come is shown by three sets of grainy black and white images projected onto a sackcloth screen. As more people arrive we are taken round to the back entrance of the theatre and told that we should wander around during the performance for an interactive experience.

The theatre space has been reconfigured and some rows of seats removed. There is a 10 x 10 square delineated by rows of panel with loops of ropes hanging overhead. Around the square there is room for the audience to walk. The lit set is quite striking. The ropes and sack-cloth screens evoke a sense of medieval times; the demarcated space, a sense of confinement.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Book by Jeffrey Lane  Music and Lyrics by David Yazbek
Based on the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Dale Launer, Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning
Orchestrations by Harold Wheeler;  Vocal music arrangements by Ted Sperling/David Yazbek; Dance music arrangements by Zane Mark

Directed and co-choreographed by Max Reimer
Co-choreographer Nathalie Marrable
Music Director Steve Thomas 

Vancouver, BC. If you have not already got your tickets to see this show pick up the phone or hit the keyboard soon because this is going to be another sellout holiday hit for the Vancouver Playhouse.

Although I usually watch cynically as Vancouver audiences give standing ovations  I have to confess that this time I was on my feet with the rest of them.  

As these photos by David Cooper show, the production was visually  appealing. The songs were entertaining, the lyrics witty, the choreography terrific- and can you call any one performance a standout when all the performances including the ensemble dancing were standouts? Well, yes I guess you can.
 

Andrew Wheeler plays Lawrence Jameson, a  suave, sophisticated, elegant con-man who leads a good life as a "prince" on the French Riviera, by charming rich women out of their money and possessions. Smooth as Michael Caine was in the 1988 film version,  I remember thinking at the time that he would never have been able to con me. But I have to admit that  if I encountered Wheeler's smooth "prince" persona - and if he could dance - I mean real  ballroom not the stage variety - he could probably con me into supporting a war effort in his non-existent kingdom as easily as he did the other women- as long as he would waltz with me!

  Lawrence's ally in his nefarious activies is Andre, the chief of police, played with gusto and a wonderfully bad French accent by David Marr, who really excels in this type of comic role.

THE VERTICAL HOUR  by  David Hare
Directed by  Tamara McCarthy
The Jericho Arts Centre
A United Players Production    
November 13th to December 6th

Vancouver, BC:  VERTICAL HOUR LACKS LOINS
I applaud United Players for bringing this intellectually engaging play to the Jericho Arts Centre.  The work of David Hare is always good for  lively discussion on the way home from the theatre.  But this production is like having three really nice, interesting people over for dinner; and you discuss politics, doctors, psychiatry, war, relationships, sex, marriage; and they stay way too late.  There is a lot of talk about  what is really going on during the evening with very little evidence of anything but talk. 

David Hare has written three very interesting lead roles and Director, Tamara McCarthy has failed to bring them to life.  There is no ferocity, no sexual tension, no passion, irony or sub-text...just people talking and talking and talking.

The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen
Adapted and translated by Errol Durbach
Directed by Gerald Vanderwoude
Theatre at UBC/Yorick Theatre co-production
Telus Studio Theatre,  UBC
Oct 29 to Nov 7, 2009

 Vancouver, BC:  Don't miss this production of  Ibsen's The Master Builder. Re-shaped with a surgical precision by Errol Durbach's concise adaptation and Gerald Vanderwoude's taut direction, it is a sharply focused portrait of a man at the pinnacle of his profession, brought down by his desire for a nubile young thing. The play may have been written in 1892, but the story is played out frequently in the media today as politicians,  business executives, perfomers and preachers publically beat their chests crying "mea culpa" as their wives file for divorce and half their assets. I tried to count on one hand such situations in the recent past but soon ran out of fingers!

Halvard Solness (Chris Humphreys) is the Master Builder. A self-taught man with no formal training in architecture, he epitomises success in his town, allowing little opportunity for the young would-be artisans like his draughtsman, Ragnar Brovik (Nicholas Fontaine), to earn commissions to build projects of their own. Ragnar's father, Knut Brovik (Matt Young), the aged architect who once employed Solness, and Kaja Fosli, Brovik's niece (Odessa Cadieux-Rey),  both work in his office; they wait for him to put his stamp of approval on Ragnar's designs so that he can branch out on his own.He is utterly self-centered, manipulating everyone from his wife Aline (Trish Pattenden) to Kaja and the Broviks, to achieve his own ends. But his success is built on the destruction of other people's happiness. His wife has never recovered from the loss of the family home in a fire , even with the support of  Dr. Herdal (Maurice Verkaar).

And then out of the past appears Hilde Wangel (Fiona Mongillo), who has come to claim her "castle in the air."  

 Solness, who outwardly appears so prosperous and confident, has doubts.  He believes that he is one of a few chosen people, who can want something so insistently  that they will it into happening - through the agency of  devilish trolls. He harbours a secret  fear - that retribution for his good fortune must come, and it does - but  he just does not recognize its agent  when he sees her.

This is perhaps the most mystical and symbolic of Ibsen's later plays and I find it fascinating that Ibsen, the father of realism in the theatre, needs to invoke a belief in supernatural forces,  to account for Solness's self-doubts. But for a man in his mid-sixties, nearing the end of a prolific but often critically challenged career, it would not be odd for Ibsen to transpose his own inner concerns with memory and the reality of past and present, into his protagonist.

EVIL DEAD - THE MUSICAL (The Vancouver Production)
Book & Lyrics by George Reinblatt
Music by Frank Cipolla, Christopher Bond, Melissa Morris, George Reinblatt
Music Supervision by Frank Cipolla
Additional Lyrics by Christopher Bond
Additional Music by Rob Daleman
Director: Mark Carter
Choreographer:  Ken Overbey
Musical Director: Sylvia Zaradic
Norman Rothstein Theatre
A Down Stage Right (DSR) Production    
October 29th to November 7th

Vancouver, BC:  THIS CHEESE IS FUN!
The set is crappy (and very cleverly designed), the costumes are deliberately tacky, there have not been worse wigs since Dynel was invented, the props fall apart, the acting is over the top, and my cheeks ached from grinning through the whole show.  This is cheesy as an art form.  The evening is a riot of bad puns, brilliantly bad acting, great singing and fun choreography. 

Director Mark Carter keeps this paper-thin musical airborne for the by keeping his attractive cast racing at breakneck speed so you are hardly aware of the dead spots in the script. 

Based on the cult classic Sam Rami movie, which is a send up of horror films, the musical is a spoof of a spoof...tricky territory for a director with less skill than Carter.  But he pulls it off with the help of a smart set designer, John Bessette and the wacky choreography of Ken Overbey ... and that cast. 

Scott Walters plays the manic Ash with bulging biceps, bulging veins and bulging eyeballs.  He has the nice guy, potential psycho thing nailed.  He is ably abetted by Meghan Gardiner as both dumb blonde Annie and not so bright Shelly, who is so good in both parts that she should be given away as Christmas presents. 

Nelly Boy   by Dave Deveau
Directed by Cameron Mackenzie
Zee Zee Theatre and Screaming Weenie Productions
PAL Theatre
Oct 22- Nov 1, 2009

Vancouver, BC:   For 75 minutes you could have heard a pin drop in the small space of the PAL theatre.  As the actors exited and the lights went to black, the words "brave, terrifying, sad"  competed in my head with "so that's the real Allan Zinyk".  I think this is the first time I have seen him playing a normal person in a straight as opposed to a comedic role, and it brought to mind a handsome Allan Rickman - as Steven Spurrier (Bottle Shock) not the infamous Snape, of course.

  But I digress.  Zinyk plays the Man/ Father of Nelly/Nelson (Amitai Marmorstein) a fragile young teenager who is struggling to come to terms with gender identity.  As Man (not a social worker, a cop, a teacher, a lawyer-  therapist maybe?),  who is simply there to get Nelly to tell his story,  Zinyk conveys flashes of compassion, mixed with irritation and impatience, with sudden switches of character to become Dad.

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. 

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.  

Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer
and The Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Dean Paul Gibson
Arts Club Theatre Company
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
Sept 10 to Oct  11, 2009

Vancouver, BC:  The Arts Club opened its 46th season with a riotously funny evening of  two plays by writers who would not at first come to my mind as writers of comedy. Peter Shaffer after all, is probably best known for Equus - a  intensely disturbing  psychological drama.   And I have never really found the Chekhov plays that I have seen or read to be exactly a bundle of laughs.

But as the curtain raiser to Shaffer's Black Comedy, Artistic Director Bill Millerd and Director Dean Paul Gibson chose Chekov's The Marriage Proposal.  And what an inspired choice.

Brilliantly performed by Sasa Brown as Natalia Stepanova, Simon Bradbury as Stepan Stepanovitch Chubkov and Jeff Meadows as Ivan Vassilevitch Lomov, it was clever and very funny.

Ivan, a lanky hypochondriac with palpitations and a dragging leg, comes to propose marriage to Stepan's 25 year old "on-the-shelf" daughter,  Natalia, but before he actually gets a chance to propose, they get into an argument about who owns a piece of land and he leaves inma huff. Natalia realizes that her "last chance for marriage" has just walked out the door and sends her father to get him back.

He returns but her argumentative nature gets the better of her and they get into another argument, this time drawing in her father. Both Bradbury and Meadows are hilarious but Sasa Brown's portrayal of a glowering, desperate, determined Natalia steals the show in this short farce.  I loved it.

Way of the World by William Congreve
Directed by Adam Henderson
United Players
Jericho Arts Centre
until September 27, 2009

"A man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing and sincerity".

Vancouver, BC:  William Congreve certainly had a way with words and is justifiably referred to as  "the English Moliere".  The United Players has chosen to open it's 50th Anniversary Season with his most famous comedy.  It is an inspired choice. The Way of the World minced into the Jericho Arts Centre last night and gob-smacked the crowd with wit, repartee, epigrams, raillery, cant and delightful double-dealing.