In Absentia at the Centaur is a play fraught with symbolism. There are bare trees, a frozen river, the endless winter and the barren (or is she?) heroine of the piece. When Collette’s husband goes missing in Colombia while working for an oil company, she hunkers down and plays psychic possum. Her older sister Evelyn, brilliantly performed by the unstoppable Susan Glover, comes to take care of her.

We hear the subtext – “The most depressing person in my family is here to cheer me up” – addressed to the absent (yet present) Tom, her perfidious husband. She has also planned some infidelity with an unbearably nice neighbour, Bill. At one point she even attributes the kidnapping of her husband to a kind of karmic retribution for her contemplated betrayal.

One day a mysterious young man (played with charisma by Jade Hassouné) appears on the frozen lake and waves to her. His new age psychobabble is one of several irritating aspects of the piece. But it is worth braving a cold February night just to watch him prance around wearing and not wearing the absent Tom’s clothing.

Paul Hopkins is perfect as the philandering kidnapped hubby. He plays the projected and imagined spouse with terrific elegance and takes the bland dialogue to depths of feeling. Carlo Mestroni as the neighbour described as “pathologically decent” is convincing, unfortunately.

Jillian Fargey has the habit of delivering all her lines, and they did feel like line readings, in a monotone. English is a tonal language and without adequate modulation the audience loses the thread of the sentence. Sadly there were a lot of these sentences and they were uniformly dull. It may be a minor point, but what costume designer would allow a Canadian woman to go for a walk on a frozen lake in a short skirt?

The set was spectacular and even before the lights went down several audience members said they wanted to move into the building on stage. In Toronto, “cottage industry” means buying and selling five bedroom cottages. This was one of those.

The beautiful shimmering trees and snow falling projections were spectacular. The moving bed was really fine, but underemployed. What was missing was the playwright who had written Gordon, a brilliant play which premiered at the Segal last year. This play was repetitive and cliché ridden and one had to struggle to care at all about the main character. Even Jasper, the mysterious young man, didn’t give us enough of a hook for any kind of emotional empathy, which made the ending moot. If this play is what passes for passion on the Pacific coast, it still does not cut the mustard in Montreal.

In Absentia, at The Centaur Theatre at 453 St. Francois Xavier St. in Old Montreal through March 4. Most performances are at 8 p.m., but some Wednesday and Sunday performances are at 1, 2 and 7 p.m. Box office at (514) 288-3161 or www.centaurtheatre.com to learn more.

Veronica Classen designed a fabulous set at the Bain St. Michel and the device of having poetry and text messages projected on the high tech grey walls was delightful. She also dressed a cast which was supposedly sweating in the office of a tiny poetry magazine bereft of air conditioner, in seriously dark and heavy clothes … and in a Montreal heat wave only one character wore actual sandals.

The actors in Ars Poetica are a who’s who of Montreal theatre, and Noel Burton was actually terrific as the scoundrel publisher of the magazine. He delivered his overwrought lines with terrific aplomb and almost convinced us that he might have had a fling with the ingénue, delightful Elena Dunkelman. But he was just a tad long in the tooth to be playing the part, even though we were delighted that he did.

He was utterly convincing when sparring with Howard Rosenstein who gave a terrific performance as the father-lawyer persona. Rosenstein shot out lawyer jokes which fared less well. “What’s the point of being a lawyer if you can’t take other people’s property?” Not a bad line but a bit of a machete cutting daisies in this play.

Danielle Desormeaux played the part of Diane Langlois, a cliché writ large who was neither funny nor believable. This is an actress with outstanding skills and her comic timing saved some of the really awful moments in the play. We have all had our share of run- ins with heartless arts bureaucrats but some of the writing was just over the top. It was hard to believe that someone would lose their job at the Canada Council for endorsing a small poetry magazine which couldn’t come up with a strategic business plan. Paula Jean Hixon was terrific as the true believing editor of Ars Poetica and her performance was nuanced and moving.

Ultimately the comic zingers – such as: “Greenfield Park is the deep south … practically Atlanta” – were not enough to live up to the play’s promise of delivering an actual farce. The definition of a farce is that every entrance and exit must be hilarious. The play was about a poetry magazine and there was a great deal of actual poetry both spoken and projected. Perhaps that is just too wordy a topic to sustain the lightness and buffoonery necessary for farce. The wordiness slowed down the action and the blocking was actually uninteresting. A beautiful set which had everyone in tiny quarters only becomes part of the comedy when there is a lot of movement in the tiny space, think state room and the Marx brothers.

Neurosurgery is easy; comedy is hard. This is not a bad first theatrical effort by Arthur Holden at getting the laughs out, but it did not get the audience on this freezing night to generate even one loud guffaw.

Ars Poetica, by Arthur Holden, runs Tuesday to Feb. 12 at Le Bain St. Michel, 5300 St. Dominique St. Tickets cost $10 to $20. Sunday matinee on Jan. 22 is pay-what-you-can.

The minute you walk into the Theatre Sainte Catherine you realize that Cornered is a play that required a considerable amount of thought. The entire interior has been reconfigured as a boxing ring. Then Vinnie, perfectly played by Christopher Moore, comes bouncing onto the stage/ring and starts shadow boxing and you know you are in for a dramatic ride.

Vinnie is the apprentice of the cornerman Rex (brilliantly played by Howard Rosenstein) and Vinnie is constantly being reprimanded and corrected. Moore’s portrayal of this intellectually challenged, hero worshipping loser is right on the money. His timing and emotional nuances are perfectly calibrated.

In spite of a heavy Brit accent, Howard Rosenstein gives an astonishingly dramatic performance. His fears and frustrations as the cornerman of an adolescent boxer are moving. He winds and weaves his way around the younger and faster Vinnie in brilliant almost balletic blocking, and his voice with its considerable range plays our nerves like the taut strings of a harp. Rosenstein gives a performance which is intelligent and literally knocks one’s socks off.

The entire piece is like the elaborate dancing and weaving of a really good fight with just the right amount of verbal jabbing and circling of players until the final knockout punch. Van Dyke has paced the play so that the tension keeps building in irresistible waves until the final moments.

Christopher Moore as Vinnie is the perfect foil to Rex’s digs and plunges. One hears resonances of other plays in this “two hander”: the clowns who wait beneath a blasted tree come to mind. They are the outsiders who are always living in the margins, and looking at the real action from the periphery. These are two grown men with the feeling of the little kids pressing their faces against the window of the candy store.

Jim Burke is a formidable playwright and this play has deserved its awards. The language is really fine and the characters grow on you, until you are there in that boxing club sweating it out, and afraid that the villain will show or “the lads” will enter from the alley to beat up whomever they encounter.

I recommend this to anyone who has the desire to see something really well written, beautifully directed and brilliantly performed.

Cornered runs at Theatre Sainte Catherine (264 Sainte Catherine Street East) through December 3. Tickets: (514) 284-3939 or info@theatresaintecatherine.com.

Ned Cox and Alexandria Haber are really good playwrights and one looked forward to great writing and good laughs in a new collaboration. The cast was impressive as well; featuring some of the most interesting actors in the city. I should have read the fine print.

There are three things which have never thrilled me: Weddings (not even my own,) Hockey (which often seems brutal and meaningless to the uninitiated), and Christmas (the time when people spend money they do not have to buy things that nobody needs to impress people they really do not like).

There were four little women in this story, and one of them, Jane (Paula Jean Hixon) was supposed to get married. She gets abandoned at the altar by Randy (Carlo Mestroni), an avid hockey play who treats the audience to a fair measure of verbal abuse and obsessive hockey behaviour. His buddy James (Shawn Campbell) is expelled from his marriage to Marie (Paula Costain) for cheating on her.

The rest of the play has the in-fighting of the four sisters including Tilly (K.C. Coombs) the peacemaker, and Sabina (Amelia Sargisson), the baby of the quartet. Alexandria Haber plays Beth the “bad girl” of the four.

Maybe one needs to have experienced family Christmas with a plethora of siblings, epiphanies on the hockey ice or a happy marriage and/or redemption (men being forgiven by women for utterly unforgivable behaviour) to really appreciate this play. Ordinarily just watching Paula Costain and Alexandria Haber would be enough.

This is supposed to be a comedy. The best scenes were the scene changes which were made delightful by Dina Aziz’s sound and Amelia Sargisson’s dance moves. When Neil Napier does his little narrative shtick and comes back as a blue collar Santa, I admit there was adequate cuteness of a comic nature. This is a warmity; neither tragic nor comic, but it does try to leave the audience feeling warm all over.

How could this have happened? They had a great (huge) cast, and two terrific playwrights and a director. Aha, now it comes out. In the distant past, a person went through four years of intensive undergraduate training to direct. One learned how to block, draw floor plans and lighting plans and costume history and design and how to inspire motivate and direct actors. There was theatre criticism, classic and modern, and literature sociology psychology and upon graduation a long apprenticeship with experienced professionals.

Hardest of all is directing comedy: Neurosurgery is easy, comedy is hard. The timing of the set ups and delivery have to by sharp and more precise than a Swiss watch. The actors must deliver without milking every line and actors ought to work on physicalization without cliché repetitive movements.

This play had actual potential: it begged for a director who could make it work. We had characters hiding behind plants and Christmas trees in repetitive unfunny shtick. Sadly, no amount of neo-Dickensian references by Napier could make this play funny.

Four Minutes If You Bleed, part of the Brave New Looks at Centaur Theatre, runs through December 3. Go to the Centaur site for tickets.

Muriel Romanes, the artistic director of the Scottish company Stellar Quines Theatre, has been working for three years with director Serge Denoncourt and writers Clare Duffy and Yves Pierre Lemieux under the aegis of Clare Shapiro at Imago Theatre. The result is ANA, a world premiere in French and English with subtitles in both.

ANA, opening tonight at Espace Go, is the story of one woman through history. She is cursed with the gift of splitting, of becoming someone else, in a different time, in a different place. Ana lives through her own family tree of selves, starting from one girl born 5000 years ago in Ur, the first city of the world, to an itinerant artist in 2012, living in the underground malls of Montréal.

Clare Duffy: I was born in London but have been living in Edinburgh for seven years. I come from many generations of Londoners, but my ancestors come from Ireland on both sides of the divide. I studied theatre in Leeds.

Rover: Why Leeds?

Clare: During the miner’s strike I was in London and all the news reports about the strikers sounded like they were from another country and I wanted to find out more of what was actually going on in my own country, so I decided to study at Leeds.

Rover: What did you study?

Clare: I studied English literature and theatre studies. Not so much playwriting as devising, directing and acting. I left university and set up a theatre company which is still going after fifteen years: Unlimited Theatre. It is a company that works in collective creation.

Rover: So you do the writing?

Clare: Well Jon Spooner is artistic director and he writes as well and Chris Thorpe is also a writer and we write together and Jon directs the show.

Rover: How did you come to this project?

Clare: Through Muriel Romanes, the artistic director of Stellar Quines, a female centred theatre company. Female centred but not exclusionary. Some element of the show is woman centred: the direction or writing or performance. This project started as a proposition that we want to do some work about women, mental health and creativity. We workshopped for a while and then Pierre Yves joined us as a writer.

Rover: Did that change the dynamic?

Clare: You are in a creative process and you are happy to have someone join the party. He’s great and there are all sorts of interesting developments.

Rover: So he joined the writing process and the play is in both languages. How did it affect the process?

Clare: I think it changed when Serge joined as the director. It is impossible to say what the effect of this was; it is Yin and Yang … you need structure and you also need the creative chaos to inspire the work. We are still in the “processus”.

Rover: How did you come up with the name?

Clare: Well the play is about a woman who splits. Ana is a palindrome: it can be read backwards and forwards, one half reflecting the other half, and the creative process includes mimicry or mimesis. Mimesis also means represent; and we were engaged with the question of representation and how women were represented in the arts.

Rover: How does that work on stage?

Clare: It is about a woman, Ana, who splits over a trauma of a birth. In one version of her life she keeps the baby in another she kills it. She splits in the trauma of that and keeps spitting. It is traumatic and awful but the split is the result of a sort of impossible choice.

Rover: What is different about the way you wrote this play?

Clare: The bilingual aspect is really different.

Rover: You did a workshop and then worked in a group.

Clare: It is still evolving.

Rover: Does that make the actors crazy?

Clare: Not at all.

Imago Theatre’s ANA, a collaboration between Quebec and Scotland, runs at Espace Go through December 10. It will receive its European premiere at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh on March 2, 2012, followed by a tour of Scotland.

Pictured: Clare Duffy with co-writer Pierre Yves Lemieux.

Every once in a very long while you get to see a performance that reminds you why you keep going to the theatre. God of Carnage was such a performance. Even before it started, “the curtain spiel” was delivered by the voice of a little boy. It was smart ass and cute but it was also perfect.

It has been called a comedy of manners without the manners. It is a kind of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for our times. Two couples get together to discuss the misconduct of one of their children against the other. What begins as a seemingly innocuous chat in the haute bourgeois apartment of one couple ends up as a free for all of gigantic proportions.

Ellen David gave a performance that knocked one’s socks off. She started elegantly as Veronica Novak and built the character into frenzy which left the audience gasping from too much laughter. Marcel Janin was superb as Alan Raleigh, the self-absorbed business lawyer, and at one point in the play he expressed anger by turning a pirouette and sitting abruptly on the floor, a moment that had to be seen to be believed. The audience was laughing so hard that the silence following this was really necessary. Janine Theriault was impeccable in every way. Her timing was fantastic and her moment of triumph was shared by all the people in the theatre. Mark Camacho was delightful. His frustration and his rage when they finally surfaced were hilarious and poignant.

The set by the fabulous Michael Eagan, with its elongated book cases and beautifully neutral furniture, was a perfect metaphor for the pretentions of the couple who lived in it. The costumes were great, and particularly the attention paid to the women’s shoes; gorgeous and very uncomfortable.

Roy Surette has hit it out of the park. There was a great deal of comedy in this play as it flitted over some of the really profound issues of this century. Veronica never fails to remind us that she is a beacon of “civilization”, even as she pounds her husband with her fists. Marcel Jeanine cannot take time off from scamming the public about his client’s dangerous drug long enough to wipe his wife’s forehead. Surette’s blocking was balletic; the movement around cleaning up a sad accident and the subsequent minuet between the characters was nothing short of brilliant.

Years from now, those fortunate few who got to see this production will remind themselves of this spectacular production.

Yasmina Raza is worthy of her accolades and here are her own words about writing for the theatre:

“Most writers don’t know that actors are never better than in the pauses or in the subtext. They give the actors too many words. Writers who’ve never acted tend to write ‘full up.’ All the writers who have flat spots and empty places in their dialogue are writers who’ve been on stage, like Pinter. In a play, words are parentheses to the silences. They’re useful for the actors, but only that; they aren’t the whole story.”

God of Carnage is at Centaur Theatre through December 4th. 514 288 1229

Warona Setshwaelo walks onto the circle of black tiles at the Mai theatre and greets everyone in the audience for being there and then proceeds to grab their hearts and tear them into shreds. Stori Ya is a marriage of traditional story telling with its elliptical repetitions and chants and character morphs, and the great one woman show of the Canadian repertoire.

It takes us from Maria’s beginnings in the care of her grandparents through a difficult childhood onto a horrific adolescence and finally to Canada. There was a great deal in this story that was familiar to me, as a part of a great migratory generation of Canadians that was born elsewhere and had to scrape together an identity and sense of home and belonging as best we could.

The most creative people are the ones who are self-invented, because that is the hardest creation of all. The skills one acquires during this invention are transferable and apparently they are present and strong in Joan M. Kivanda, because she is a masterful playwright.

It is never a problem that Maria chants and speaks in Swahili and Nyamwezi as well as English. The movement from one language to another is so smooth and musical it punctuates the changes in persona and adds to the pleasure of listening to this amazing journey.

Women who are abandoned by their mothers before the age of seven are at great risk in their relationships with men. This is universal; as is the sense of loss and threat to one’s identity. What is amazing in this performance is that all this is evoked without any didacticism. At the end of the lovely poetic performance when Maria turns to the audience to help her to fight to keep her house her home her identity, one is tempted to leap onto the stage with her and stand by her side. The work is so powerful and understated that the most horrible moments are left to the imagination of the awe struck audience.

Millie Tresierra provided just the right amount of blocking and pacing for this lovely piece and Dumisizwe Vuyo Bhembe designed a perfect blend of music to lift the words and emotions in the performance and send them directly to the heart.

Warona is magnificent as Maria; it is a case of the perfect text for the perfect performer. She manages to create a world for the audience while dancing and moving around the enigmatic set by James Lavoie. The visual was confusing and created a cipher. One idea was that it represented the precariousness of the life of Maria and the layers of events in her survival story. Colour is difficult, but more evocative, and the grey and black background to the military green costume did not in fact add to this wonderful piece.

Stori Ya is at the Mai, 3680 Jeanne Mance, Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8pm Matinees: Sundays, 3:30pm. 514-932-1104. Through December 4.

You can’t help but admire Catherine Kidd. Her ability to create performance art and deliver it in a most astonishing way is magical. Hyenas are generally familiar to most, but it may be fair to say that the particulars of their (mythical) hermaphroditic outlaw status in the animal kingdom have never been explained or performed with such agility and brilliance prior to Kidd’s Hyena Subpoena: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hyena.

Kidd has created this performance piece out of the cloth of childhood injustice and the horror of mental institutions and what remains is this bright and shimmering effect.

The narrative has many twists and stages, beginning with the flight of central character and heroine, poet Mona Morse, from negative criticism about her Literature for Livestock work when she heads for South Africa’s Kruger Park. Her fascination and delight with hyenas is riveting, but then she morphs back into a frightened child who is brutally institutionalized, drawing a parallel to the hyena’s misunderstood status in the human mind.

The flashbacks take Mona back to her impossibly cruel experiences in junior high school, including recollections of her best friend Molly, who ends up suffering from schizophrenia. There is the antelope that Molly meets which gives her a chance to meditate on the predator/prey continuum, and the dying lioness – whose image is projected in the huge space – who inspires her to think of civilization and its woes.

These different facets of the performance would have been impossible to link if Alison Darcy had not been the director. She managed to make the large space work for the story and had Kidd cavorting at different levels and from a variety of angles that made the transitions seamless and workable. Darcy is truly one of the most interesting directors in this city and her work with Kidd was breathtaking. Sadly the two week run of Hyena Subpoena was too short. I hope along with the privileged few who got to see it, that the granting gods make it possible to mount this small jewel again.

Hyena Subpoena at Les Ateliers Jean Brillant (661 Rose De Lima – Metro Lionel-Groulx), at 8 pm, until Oct. 29

For more info, visit www.catkidd.com

Once again Talisman Theatre has mounted an English production of a French play, this time Coma Unplugged. This time it’s a black comedy and therein lays the problem: The central idea that we are entering the mind of a man who has suffered a cerebral trauma and is in a coma gives playwright Pierre Michel Tremblay an enormous amount of leeway in introducing and exploring material – perhaps too much leeway. He succeeds some of the time and, sadly, fails at others.

Tremblay is very witty and some of his one-liners are worth repeating, but the repetition of the lines, over and over for humorous effect, is done so often as to become irritating. Moreover, possibly due to cultural differences and/or a failure in translation, a great deal of the gender-based, testosterone driven scenes just weren’t delivering the laughs.

The acting was flawless. Eloi Archambaudoin was riveting as Daniel. From his first song to the final moments of the piece, he held one’s attention. Archambaudoin was onstage for the entirety of the play and did not lose energy or focus throughout. Lines that were rather trivial he made poignant, and he delivered with conviction.

Glenda Braganza was spectacular as Marjorie and her performance made the play come alive. She did have some tedious lines as well, but delivered them with a flair and professionalism that was breathtaking.

Susan Glover gets comedy, and of all the characters hers was actually funny. As Daniel’s mother on meds she was manic to within an inch of credibility and understood with great instinct the need for “set up and delivery.” Chimwemwe Miller had the thankless part of Ishouad, the Twarek warrior, but his physical presence was enormously charming and worth watching, even when he was delivering lines like “A woman is the sash around a man’s waist.”

Donovan Reiter as Roger had the hardest role and the least likeable. He did what he could and played his macho gazpacho part with great energy.

The set was terrific and did things that truly conveyed the strange passages in the mind of the unconscious. Furthermore, the lighting and sound were great and the costumes worked very well.

Years ago, Bob Fosse gave us All That Jazz and created an all-time impossibly high bar with the tale of a man dying of heart failure. It was also about the inside of a man’s mind when the body is giving up, but it was fantastic. Coma Unplugged touched upon dozens of important subjects: materialism, the nature of greed, and the meaning of a writing life when others are sacrificing theirs to save the lives of strangers in distant lands. But the concepts were rattled off so fast they were never given the weight that they merit, and the humour was often physical and puerile.

Coma Unplugged was a great success in French but it lost a lot in the translation. That said, Talisman should be congratulated for their efforts, especially on the fantastic cast.

Coma Unplugged, written by Pierre Michel Tremblay, translated by Micheline Chevrier and directed by Zach Fraser, at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique et de musique (4750 Henri-Julien), until Oct. 29

For more info, please visit: http://www.talisman-theatre.com/

When my companion saw that a grown actor would play the alien Prince in Geordie Productions’ staging of The Little Prince, he shrugged his elegant Argentine shoulders. I was less sceptical because I had seen the preview, and knew that Daniel Brochu was magic onstage. His physicality, gestures, and his voice were all perfection. He embodied the little extra-terrestrial with terrifying grace. Many have read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry but seeing Brochu’s performance truly brings to life the delight and sensibility of childlike wonder.

Alex McCooeye may have been cast as the aviator because of his formidable height, but his straightforward performance and special narrative style really complete the portrayal of the stranded pilot. He is acting is understated and he has the perfect pitch for interactions with Brochu’s Prince.

Danielle Desormeaux is fantastic in all her roles, but I was particularly delighted with her as Rose. She had just the right combination of comedy and vanity. Bill Rowat had a kind of sad elegance in his interpretation of the King, and Harry Stanjofski was, as always, inimitable. He played music throughout the performance without ever letting it dominate or interfere, and his cameos as the businessman, the geographer, and half a rosebush were hilarious. He is a generous actor who gives the stage to his fellow actors and never misses a beat in his comic delivery.

The set was a delight; one has come to expect this kind of magic from set designers Ana Cappelluto and James Lavoie. There was a simplicity and cleverness to it that completed the show’s brilliance. The lighting was discrete and terrific. The costumes were full of whimsy and the puppets were just right.

Geordie has consistently been delivering some of the best theatre in town. Director Dean Patrick Fleming seems to have a gift for delivering great stories on stage. This is a wonderful rendition of a classic and Fleming’s direction had touches of playfulness and elegance all the way through it.

I would recommend that you grab the nearest kid in your environment and book a ticket before they sell out. This is a play that is marvellous entertainment for audiences of any age.

The Little Prince, presented by Geordie Productions, plays Centaur Theatre Oct. 22-23 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. For more information, visit www.geordie.ca.

Paleontology is easy, comedy is hard. Colleen Curran knows how to write comedy, and Montreal audiences have had many opportunities to laugh until their toes curl because she has written memorable and fantastically funny plays. There are scenes in True Nature that reveal her comic genius; one is a rehearsal of a skit to be performed at a fundraiser, which was supposedly written by enthusiastic high school students. The scene’s hilarity grew from the constant references to nineteenth century writers, the bickering about the lines, and the timing of the music. There were further opportunities for laughter during an amusing dream sequence.

The plot is basically a romantic comedy; the romance between a paleontology professor who is dedicated to the work and history of Mary Anning (a remarkable fossil finder who received no credit for her amazing discoveries during her lifetime), and a fellow paleontologist who cleverly interrupts her lecture on the subject.

The rest of the play, however, seemed like a series of unfortunate relationships. One character had serious problems with a best friend, played by Mary Harvey. Here was a very competent actor playing a ridiculous role. Mary dressed like a slightly artsy twenty year old, while apparently working at a high school and performing biological miracles. Then there was the fabulous Michel Perron, who can play anyone and sing anything. His character is entangled in one of the unfortunate relationships but otherwise he does not have a purpose.

Felicia Shulman played Mimi – the over-the-top Jewish sister of the romantic lead – like Joan Rivers on steroids. Her Yiddish pronunciation needed work and thus was doubly funny when she corrected the Yiddish pronunciations of the female romantic lead. Mimi’s materialistic forays into Latin America to try to improve the lives of the poor by buying their crafts at ridiculously low prices, only to have a junta supposedly take over did seem a little extreme.

As someone who grew up surrounded by really sexy, funny, male Jewish intellectuals, I couldn’t buy Bruce Dinsmore as Mitch.  The men I knew had sharp wits and were known for their snappy repartee. Unfortunately, this character was not given enough of those qualities, and his dramatic response to the crisis within his relationship did not make sense in a 21^st century context.

Leni Parker is one of the city’s best actors and she did hold her own throughout this play. Her opening lecture/flirtation is worth the price of admission.  I wish the other characters were as well-written and realized. I must also say that the set starts out by looking like an iPhone and ends up being truly beautiful and astonishing. The lighting was also spectacular.

We were all looking forward to this play, especially those of us who had been to the reading at McGill. It has a lot of intelligence and humour. The problem was that we got a lot of “set up” and not enough “delivery”. Nevertheless, I do congratulate the Centaur for producing a local playwright and engaging so many talented local actors.

True Nature runs from Oct 4 to Nov 6 at Centaur Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit the Centaur’s website: http://www.centaurtheatre.com/43_truenature.html

This Thursday and Friday, the State of the Arts Summit, presented by the English Language Arts Network (ELAN), will bring together the creative talents and cultural professionals from Quebec’s English-speaking arts community to analyse the issues driving our community’s successes. They will discuss this community’s contributions to the province, and will celebrate the artistic diversity that binds us together.

The 2011 State of the Arts Summit is an unprecedented interaction of ideas, in a community whose many factions often work alone and without a collective voice. Here, ELAN continues to promote the understanding of the English arts community as a vibrant component of Quebec society. ELAN will be building on the success of past projects such as the videos, histories and artist profiles available at http://www.RAEV.ca.

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The Summit, a two-day conference entitled “Creative Solutions for a Creative Community”, will take place at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT, 1201 St-Laurent Blvd). These working sessions will gather 120 of the province’s active and influential cultural professionals within the English-speaking arts community – alongside members of the French-speaking arts community and representatives from the education and government sectors – in order to develop a viable action plan for the growth of this thriving cultural sector.

While the working conference is restricted to invited guests, other events within the 2011 State of the Arts Summit program are open to the arts-loving public! ELAN has partnered with several of the city’s leading arts organizations to present a series of English arts-appreciation events intended to spotlight the hot talents currently working within the major creative disciplines that thrive in Quebec.

On Friday, September 23rd, ELAN, Guernica Editions, and Telefilm Canada will host a celebratory soirée in honour of the imminent publication of Minority Report: An Alternative History of English-Language Arts in Quebec.  First commissioned by ELAN Quebec as part of its Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visibles! project of 2010, this significant collection of essays by several of Quebec’s most prominent arts critics reconsiders the historical narrative of the major Quebecois artistic disciplines by explicitly focusing on the English-language contributions that have often been left out of the traditional storyline.  Published by Montreal’s Guernica Editions this fall, this important work will be launched at the historic Centaur Theatre (453 Saint-Francois-Xavier St; 6-8pm, free to public) in Old Montreal.

On Saturday, September 24th, ELAN will host an afternoon of thought-provoking panel discussions at the Atrium de la Maison du Conseil des Arts de Montreal (1210 Sherbrooke St. East; noon – 4pm, free to public). Well-known journalists and intellectuals will discuss the economic and ambassadorial value of the English-speaking art community’s contribution to the province, as well as dissect the old but still prevailing stereotypes of what entails a Quebecois Anglo in the 21st century.

Moderated by CJAD, Radio-Canada, and Hour Community columnist Anne Lagacé Dowson, the first panel is entitled “Many Peoples, One Official Language” (noon-2pm).  Speakers Jack Jedwab (Association for Canadian Studies) and André Courchesne (Carmelle & Rémi Marcoux Chair in Arts Management at HEC, ex-Head of Theatre at Canada Council,) will offer a historical perspective on the evolving social contract between Quebec’s Francophone majority and the minority English-speaking communities.  For the second panel, entitled “Invisible or Too Visible?” (2-4pm), Brendan Kelly (Montreal Gazette), Philippe Couture (Le Devoir), Janet Lumb (Festival Accés Asie) and D. Kimm (Les Filles électriques/Festival Voix d’Amériques) will share observations on the growing presence of English-speaking artists in Quebec and debate possible scenarios for the future.

On Sunday, September 25th, we join our friends at Pop Montreal, with whom we’re collaborating with for our grand finale! At the Theatre Outremont (1248 Bernard Ave. West), ELAN Quebec and Pop Montreal, in association with the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts, will present the world premiere of a brand-new musical, The Season, written by left-of-centre indie-rapper Socalled and starring musicians Katie Moore, Yves Lambert, Narcy, Joe Cobden and Hanako Hoshimi-Caines.

For more information, please visit: http://quebec-elan.org/pages/about/StateoftheArts-Summit

In 1976, on my way from Boulder Colorado to Montreal, I stopped in New York City to see Equus, and I remember with great clarity that at the intermission I could not breathe. The play had stolen all the oxygen in the theatre; it was that good. Douglas Campbell played the psychiatrist Dysart with enormous compassion and that richly timbered voice. It felt as though all the tough decisions I had made about a life in the theatre were clarified that night.

It was with some trepidation that I went last season to see the same play at the Rialto and I was surprisingly delighted. Noel Burton was so comfortable and warm in his performance that the entire play was immensely satisfactory. I remember Nadia Verducci’s splendid work and the heroic choreography of Jacqueline Van de Geer. Paul Van Dyck had done an admirable directing job and it all worked on a tiny budget in an awkward and intimate space.

I understand why the Segal would choose to mount this classic. It is determinately theatrical and every viewing of this work brings new things to mind. On the struggle of the psychiatrist with the job of turning the passionate into the banked cinders of acceptable behaviour, playwright Peter Shaeffer wrote: “The average made lethal”. His writing is flawless.

The Segal’s production, directed and choreographed by Domy Reiter-Soffer, was indeed as astonishing and beautiful as one might have hoped. Reiter-Soffer’s choreography was a delight. The horses were beautifully danced and Dan Jeanotte gave a magnificent performance as the disturbed Allan Strang. Jeannotte’s passion was magical; his acting utterly convincing. It made the rest work.

Daniel Gilford was excellent as Allan’s father, Frank Strang and Patricia Summerset was a quite convincing Jill. Susan Glover had some very nuanced moments in her role as Hester Soloman, but often these gestures fell on Dr. Dysart’s back as he faced the audience down center. Ellen David, who is usually in command on stage, did not quite find her feet as the mother.  Her voice seemed to be caught at an awkward pitch, which given its beauty, made for a strained performance. Jean Marchand as Dysart seemed to suffer from a lack of security in his delivery. Perhaps it was the accent. He rallied in the final scene, but many of Shaeffer’s stirring monologues did not reach the powerful heights they should have hit. He seemed to be always down center facing the audience.

It seemed a bit odd that a company that spends thousands on a production could not find two believable wigs. The set was fabulous and for the first time one had the sense of the immensity of this stage. But no one ever used those great curved structures. Much of theatrical blocking, even during the dialogues, had the actors awkwardly addressing the audience.

These, however, are merely quibbles because Shaeffer’s text remains such a runaway train of drama and exhilaration, that no one who loves the theatre should miss the experience of watching this production and its fantastic lead.

Equus plays at The Segal Centre for the Perfoming Arts until October 2. For tickets, visit the Segal’s website.

You need to get behind this festival. I know we are really in burn out as Montreal celebrates festival after festival. This one however is really unique and worth the effort. The Next Wave is bilingual and features an exciting array of musicals, workshops, panels and GREAT shows.

I used to be a snob about musicals until I studied in the U.S. and caught the fever from my best friend. Then it dawned on me that musicals can go anywhere and be anything and they deliver.

This year’s season looks really intriguing:

The Brain from Planet X / Le cortex de la planète X, presented in an English version and an all-new, locally-produced French adaptation. It is an affectionate spoof of 1950’s sci-fi movies. In this show, a mutant brain from another planet comes to Earth with the intention of dominating our world.

Playing August 12 and 18 in English at Pierre-Dupuy Auditorium, 2000 Parthenais

[title of show], presented in English, is literally the title of the play. It is a musical about two guys writing a musical! [title of show]. A look at the joys and heartaches of creating a new musical show. It is ultimately a valentine for anyone who pursues a dream, and what happens to them when that dream comes true.

Playing August 10, 13, 17 and 20 at CETM Studio, 2205 Parthenais
extremely limited seating – advance reservation is required.

Le prince et le pauvre / The Prince and the Pauper, presented in the original French version and an all-new, English-language edition. This show won the 2008 Marius award in Paris for best new family-oriented musical of the year. A fresh retelling of the Mark Twain classic tale of two boys from different worlds who conspire to switch identities to see how the other half lives, the show will be presented as a specially-staged concert with a live orchestra, supervised by the original creative team. The English–language version will have its world premiere during The Next Wave.

August 9 in English at Espace Libre, 1945 Fullum.

Nos créateurs d’ici / Our home-grown creators presented in French and English. Several Montreal-based creators will have a chance to present excerpts from their current works. This is an ideal chance to see some of tomorrow’s musical theatre creators today.

Playing August 16 The Next Wave Educational Series.

There will also be a workshop of selecting audition material and a panel of musical writers and composers August 8, exact time t.b.a. at CETM Studio, 2205 Parthenais. Extremely limited seating – advance reservation is required.

Finally there will be a special presentation in the park: Stories from 45 years in professional musical theatre: An intimate encounter with Tony nominee Tim Jerome. Tim has participated in some of the world’s best-loved musicals. In addition, Tim is incredibly personable and has wonderful stories to share about the creation of new musical theatre.

On August 9 at 5 p.m. under the trees in Parc de Rouen (corner of De Lorimier and De Rouen Streets). (In case of bad weather, this event will be moved to CETM Studio, 2205 Parthenais).

Daisy and the Wonder Weeds CD launch and community discussion in English. Come and hear musical selections from the runaway hit of last year’s Next Wave Festival, Daisy and the Wonder Weeds.There will also be friendly discussion and debate featuring representatives of such local groups as La ferme dy zéphyr, the NDG Food Co-op, and La co-op verte.

Presented in collaboration with the International EcoCity 2011 Conference. August 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Gesù, 1200 Bleury.

For more information, go to www.montrealnextwave.com. Email: info@cetm.ca. Or call 514-504-9339.

There is nothing more satisfying, after climbing the interminable stairs and sitting down on some age unfriendly chairs, than to see a play that was worth the effort.

After Jesus Jello, I had very high expectations for The Birth of Weza or Go F@#k Your Mother, and was not disappointed. Joanne Sarazen, who is equally astonishing as a performer, has written another very intriguing piece of theatre. The characters are somewhat surreal and just a bit over the top, but somehow once you suspend enough disbelief the reality on stage is utterly consistent and viable.

Director Tamara Brown has made some great casting choices and cleverly introduces the extraordinary reality of the piece with the most hilarious masks, so that the public is notified early that things will be funny and weird. The set is a bit awkward but at zero budget it serves the play and the sound really did its work.

Owen Clark played the fatalistic Tom with terrific energy and an innocence that was both charming and deeply moving. He has a strange way of not focusing his eyes that gave the character the slightest mad turn. His desperate love for Susan was utterly convincing and gave the whole piece the sweetness that made it work.

Mike Payette was terrific as the faltering poet Will and his struggle with his on stage sexuality was touching and terrifying. The layered approach he took was convincing, and its complexity was very intriguing. Lindsay Wilson had the most two dimensional of the parts and she did it with great aplomb. The night however belonged to Catherine Lemieux who played a kind of Oprah educated working class healer who took the New Age babble beyond all frontiers and delivered a femme fatale for the ages. She was equally at home talking about balance in life and wearing a mask as a voiceless stripper. She owned that stage and roared through the material.

If you can see only one show at the Fringe, this is the one I recommend for its audacity and the collective weight of the talent in the production.

The Birth of Weza or Go F@#k Your Mother is A Sheep in Fog Production at Freestanding Room. 4324 Boulevard Saint Laurent. For show days and times, and tickets, go to http://montrealfringe.ca. Or by telephone at: 514-849-FEST.

Beethoven Lives Upstairs opened recently at the Centaur main stage and at first I was worried that the setting was too large for the play. But the Classical Kids’ compact disc adapted from the original work by Barbara Nichol not only filled the space but did it with tremendous imagination and energy. Dean Patrick Fleming, the artistic director of Geordie productions, knew how to take a modest story about a young boy who lives downstairs from the great composer and give it the dimensions of a theatrical epic.

There were fantastic touches like the miniature sets and shadow puppets and the final great scene with Beethoven conducting the Ninth. The whole thing was over too soon, and the packed theatre stood to give an ovation to the play and to the Ode to Joy.

Peter Cerone did a smashing job with the music which threaded through the entire performance and was just loud enough. James Lavoie designed a fabulous set that only got better through its different and delightful configurations. The costumes by Amy Keith were fabulous and had just the right touch of whimsy.

Quincy Armorer was perfection as the uncle in this play, and gave it just the right tone throughout. One can only hope that one will get to see this terrific actor more often on Montreal’s English stages. Lucinda Davis was utterly charming as the young nephew and was lithe and energetic as a little boy. Eric Housknost was great as Schindler and his cameo as The Prince was really fine. It is always a treat to see him perform. Leni Parker is flawless and engaging as the Mother and various other personae, and I especially enjoyed her as the Diva. Most of all I was delighted to see Alex McCooeye as Beethoven… He seemed to be channelling the composer. His performance was surprisingly nuanced and had a terrific impact on the young audience. His physical presence is very impressive and his movement, particularly when conducting was outstanding.

This is a truly imaginative and entertaining theatre experience and I urge anyone who can to grab a kid and head for the Centaur. Geordie seems to get better with every season and we are fortunate to have a theatre for young audiences that provides first class entertainment. The best actors in the city are engaged in these productions and the technical aspects seem to get more elaborate and entertaining. If this were any other city or if these actors were more engaged we would not have this configuration of talent and experience made available to the young. It is a unique and particular theatre moment and one should certainly take advantage of it.

Geordie Productions’ Beethoven Lives Upstairs is at the Centaur Theatre through May 22. BOX OFFICE and INFORMATION: (514) 845-9810 or www.geordie.ca

His play might have been called the Real Housewives of Literature. Ned Cox has finally found his theatrical voice and it is farcical. The Book Club sashays to a ragtime rhythm of set ups and deliveries brilliantly shot out by a dream cast of this city’s most sparkling actors.

It was laugh out loud funny through the first act delightfully directed by the multitalented Ellen David who has given this play her best dramaturgical work as well.

In a world where there are never enough good parts for women, Ned Cox has hit the jackpot. Paula Jean Hixson looks and acts like a brilliant out take from Mad Men, and Paula Costain does a very credible Ginny the British working class ditz. Alexandra Haber is flawless as Susan the group cynic, and Johanna Nutter is hilarious as the eternally smashed Alanna. I was particularly gratified with the collective pronunciation of the character’s name. The group has the feel of an ensemble that has worked together for years and their timing and delivery is fabulous.

The second act takes everything up a notch or two. Haber kills as Scarlet, while Costain’s account of the wife of Potiphat was worth the climb up the damned stairs. Nutter is delightful as Emma and equally delicious in French.

There are a few glossed over and unresolved issues in the play; I would have liked to know why the other women stayed away, other than the cost of equity actors. We are never told this although Susan does make much of it. It would have been good to know a bit more abut Susan’s tragic loss and how it nurtured her chilling attitude. There does seem to be enough for a second meeting of the club.

The set design by Jonathan Stradeski was simple and incredibly elegant for such a tiny space and the lighting by Nancy Rheault and Julien St. Pierre was just right. The sound was great and Stephan Demers did a lovely job in the transitions. Helen Rainbird merits special mention for her delightful costume designs.

One hopes that this work will find a bigger venue, and preferably without too many stairs. It is definitely worth the trip. Best of all, is the experience of witnessing a beloved local playwright find his stride.

The Book Club is at the Freestanding Room, 4324 Blvd. St. Laurent through May 15. Wednesday to Saturday: 7:30 pm. Sunday matinee: 2:00 pm. BOX OFFICE: 514-759-4671.

Canada is currently at war in Afghanistan and preparing for war in Libya; it might be a good idea to review some war history. Canada is a nation whose identity was defined by the First World War. Although Canadian soldiers were treated like cannon fodder they fought well and comported themselves brilliantly.

Over 5,000 Canadians were killed or wounded during the first week in which they saw action. The Canadians proved to be tough and effective fighting men, often engaging in hand-to-hand combat against the Germans. As the war continued for months and then years, Canada’s military would become more and more professional, paralleling Canada’s transformation from a colony of Great Britain to an autonomous dominion. This is the back story of Mary’s Wedding.

The events of Mary’s Wedding take place as a dream the night before Mary Chambers is to be married. In a state of extraordinary reality the playwright works his way from the first meeting of Mary and her neighbour Charlie through his enlistment in the Canadian expeditionary forces and back. The leaps of time are seamlessly written and magically performed. One is worried at first that Mary’s British mother will foul the budding romance, or that his enlistment will end the love that Mary feels.

The scenes go from Canada to Europe as the romance deepens in flashes back and forward. Charlie develops a friendship with Sergeant Flowerdew a.k.a. “Flowers”. His letters to Mary link the two stages of the play and Allison Busner does a terrific job at making the transitions believable. Her vulnerability and intelligence as Mary and her tough and tender work in the britches part show that the director cast well and managed to inspire a fantastic performance.

Dustin Ruck performs well and is competent at his portrayal, but never gives the ethereal and vibrant performance of his partner. Then again it is Mary’s wedding.

I congratulate Persephone Theatre for pioneering a new performance venue. And the theatre at the Conservatoire de musique et L’art dramatique is a lovely and intimate space. What I don’t quite understand is the use of the stage. The set was boring and monolithic and took up all of centre stage, even when bits were moved here and there. The entire upstage was abandoned and the blocking went along the downstage area as though clinging to the audience. The only height was achieved during the riding scenes and even that was not very high at all. In a space which has such an ample stage it really begs for use.

Altogether it is a pleasant nostalgic work and reminds us that this is our defining war.

Evening Performances at 8:00 pm: May 4-6. Matinée performance: Tuesday May 3 at 12:30 pm. Box Office: 514-790-1245 (or 1-855-790-1245) or online at AdmissionCom. Type Mary’s Wedding in the search bar and you will find it right away. Or at the theatre Tue-Fri 1:30-5:30 pm or one hour before the show. At the Conservatoire de Musique et d’Art Dramatique, 4750 Henri Julien H2T 2C8, Jean Valacourt Studio Theatre.

Marie Jones’ Stones In His Pockets is by far the best and most entertaining disquisition on cultural imperialism and (mis)-appropriation of voice that has ever graced a stage. It starts with the uber story of the two native Irish men working as extras in an American movie, and their real life dilemmas. This includes the issues of ambition and failure and the demise of the Irish agricultural industry.

Then there is the glitzy fictional class-ridden love story of the movie. And finally there is the story of the troubled interaction between the Americans and the crews who work for them, and the locals who are both exploited and enriched. All performed by two actors.

Daniel Brochu and Kyle Gatehouse are simply magnificent in their multiple roles and the entire play is brilliantly paced. Andrew Shaver was able to direct them with uncanny precision. Just the fact that the transition from one character to the next was never confusing in this multiple-layered story was just amazing. It is a major tour de force and it was a great pleasure to see the show when a great many in the house were of Irish descent.

Each of the actors moved with grace and split-second change into new sexes, ages, nationalities and persona. They went from extreme river dancing to tragedy in a trice. Especially otherworldly is Danny Brochu’s American superstar Caroline Giovanni, an American who is trying to perfect her Irish accent, even when she is informed it is not altogether useful in an upper class character. She inadvertently might even be the cause of the tragedy at the centre of the story. Kyle Gatehouse is breathtaking as the young extra Jake Quinn and utterly delightful as the prissy ambitious film A.D. Aisling who is infinitely rude and patronizing when she attempts to manage the hordes of extras.

What the play so delightfully demonstrates in its heart stopping paces and what these amazing actors have definitively shown is that there are still quite a few things that theatre can accomplish which far surpass any experience in the cinema that this play so heartily mocks.

Stones In His Pockets plays at Centaur Theatre, 453 St. François Xavier St., through Feb. 27. Call 514-288-3161 or visit their website.

When a smart young theatre company like Table D’Hôte takes an enormous risk that is reason enough to pay close attention. This time they hit it out of the park. The ensemble acting was genuine and beautifully executed the choreography was perfect for this text and the music was sublime. The set, which seemed like a storage area for large white boxes, soon came to life and worked cleverly with the projections to allow for seamless transitions. Even the final gospel song was one of my favourites: “I’ll fly away.”

Rarely has there been an audience so happy after a show, but everyone present on this night knew that they had experienced something rare and beautiful.

The movement was riveting form the moment when the story begins with the allegory of the three sheep. Then there were abstract lists that became sound poetry followed by company song. By the time the duet about jealousy started the poetic stylised format was totally natural.

Director Liz Valdez and the cast along with the producers took an amazing leap of faith. They had fifteen short pieces by Daniel MacIvor and mounted them as a play called Humans, and they pulled it off. This was the most entertaining, provocative and truly hilarious piece of theatre done in this city in English in years. It took Valdez to block something with such grace and fluidity and the ensemble of some of the best and most dedicated actors to deliver this enigmatic, brilliant work.

The delightful story of the teacher and the janitor was delivered with graceful pacing that moved the audience without over stating the conclusion. The story of the gambling brother and the reason his sister continued to love him was beautifully performed. There was a particularly poignant tale about two men who did not speak each other’s language and became lovers. This microcosmic exegesis about love and communication was tasteful and elegant and ultimately hilarious. The sad and beautiful tale of the laughing dog was also a delight and one will never forget the company performing around the man in a bad mood, which was uproariously funny as well as tragic.

Veronique Gaudreau has a particular genius in creating just the right movement to suit this piece. The actors were so good that one believed they had all trained as dancers, and that was Gaudreau’s magic. Live musician and sound designer Dumisizwe Vuyo Bhembe was remarkably good. The music and the singing never overpowered the performances onstage. They supported and supplemented the action perfectly. Lara Kaluza did design a set that was multipurpose and easily made to serve the vastly different elements of the piece. Noemi Poulin designed very sparse and elegant costumes and Jody Burkholder’s lighting was excellent.

If you can get there before they sell out, you will see some of the most delightful performers in this city. Tamara Brown is an event all by herself, Romy Daniel, Richard Gelinas, Jade Hassoune, Eric Housknost, Patricia Manessy, Caitie Parsons, Mike Payette ( who is a fine director and one of the co producers), Warona Setshwaelo, and Anders Yates make up this exciting ensemble. They are so good and so much in demand that this is a very short run. So call while there are still tickets, this is a theatrical experience you do not want to miss.

Humans is playing February 5-13, at The Segal Centre for Performing Arts. Tickets: $25 / $17. Box Office: 514.739.7944.