Bethune Imagined

Not one of our favorites this year. We would have stayed through the whole thing if it had been a no intermission event, but the thought of hanging around for 15 minutes to sit through more was just not appealing. It was Friday evening, I was tired and we went home.

So what was wrong? not the actors, who all seemed quite competent. The staging was interesting. But the dialogue just did not work. Everyone was making a speech, not having a conversation. Only George Bernard Shaw can get away with that (and even he can't always) because his characters are expressing a point of view on a political issue. These characters were talking to each other about quite intimate subjects like sex and relationships> Occasionally one (usually Bethune slid into a rant about some political issue, but not for long and not coherently enough to make a point.

YOu have to suspect that if another author had presented this to Ken Gass, he would have sent it back for a re-write, but since he wrote it, it slipped through.

Wide Awake Hearts

Great staging, sound and lights. Great performances from all four actors - Maev Beaty, Raoul Bhaneja, Lesley Faulkner and Gord Rand.
But somehow the play just does not work. I enjoyed Gall's earlier play, Alias Godot, but this one did not grab me. It is a little slice of life with no real plot, but bounces back and forth between real life and theatre to the point where it becomes annoying, or worse, boring.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Generally, I am happy to watch Seana McKenna in anything, but when she gets material like this, the result is outstanding.
Joan Didion's play about the year in which her husband and daughter died is beautiful - more of a narrative poem than a play. It is sad, but it is also funny. It is about death, and reactions to death, but it is also a wonderful portrait of a long marriage and a close family.
McKenna gave a beautifl performance - totally controlled, but completely believable. You leave the theatre wondering how she can put herself through that every day, but of course, the answer is talent.
Definitely worth a standing ovation.

Death of a Salesman

I have studied this play, but had never seen it performed, so I was curious to see it. I should probably have read it again before going, as I clearly had very little memory of the play at all.
The first scenes are difficult, as the characters are not particularly likeable, but as the story progresses, my interest increased. This is not just the story of Willie Loman, but the story of America, striving to succeed and desperate to be liked. As the story unfolded, I found myself cringing (when Howard fires Willy because he is too old, ignoring decades of loyal service) and sympathising with Willy as he comtemplates his life without a job. It reminded me of my father when he was in a similar situation. The characters are archtypes of America, even today. Willy Loman is all Americans who firmly believe that they too can succeed and get rich, if only things go right.
Great cast with Joseph Zeigler as Willy and Nancy Palk as Linda. Michael Hanrahn and William Webster as Charley and Uncle Ben were also strong. The rest were adequate but not memorable.
The audience gave the performance a standing ovation. I came close, but not quite, probably becuase the play is not as stirring as I need for the full ovation package.

Peter Pan

We waited to the very end to see this play so that Aiden could be as old as possible. At 3 and three quarters, he was barely there. But he did stay through the whole play and did not want to leave. He clapped for Tinkerbell and at the end and seemed to enjoy the experience, so it can be counted a success.

It did not live up to my memories of the Shaw production, which was Aiden's father's first experience of live theatre. Rob was a llittle older (5) and was riveted by the whole thing, in comparison to Aiden who squirmed and wiggled a lot. But I think Aiden had a point - I found parts of the production dragged and were not necessary. I would have cut the narrator entirely and picked up the pace.

The staging was quite good, amd I particularly loved the pirate ship. The fight scenes dragged, but Nana was fantastic.

The performances were all good of course - Sara Topham, Michael Theriault, Tom McCamus deliver regularly.

The Andersen Project

A Robert Lepage spectacle that has received tremendous reviews. I liked it and found it very impressive from a technical point of view, but the story was definitely secondary to the spectacle, so the evening dragged after we passed the 90 minute point. It lasted 120 minutes, so there was a problem.

One has to wonder what the Danes, who commissioned the piece thought about it. While it is generally about Hans Christian Andersen, and was commissioned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, it seems like a very Canadian play with references that may mean nothing to anyone else. The jokes about the French, however, are likely to resonate across Europe!

The material was performed by Yves Jacques, who played all of the characters brilliantly and moved amazingly quickly from one to the next.

It may be that the play was oversold by Lepage fans and was thereby doomed to disappoint.