The 13th annual Wildside Festival, at the Centaur Theatre through Sunday, January 17th, definitely lives up to its name. The festival brings together six cutting-edge plays – and it’s a wild and exhilarating ride all the way.

Johanna Nutter is always worth seeing and her performance in My Pregnant Brother, the story about her sister who first became a man and then gave birth to a girl, is astonishing. In a simple narrative, this performer gives the audience a beautiful story related with magic nuances and brilliant simplicity. It is theatre at its most elemental and it makes facing the cold very worth while.

Dance Animal is the explosive and delightful creation choreographed by Robin Henderson and featuring 10 talented and terrifically funny performers. The choreography and the monologues interacted perfectly to send up the musical style and put reality performance television to shame. It was so fresh and original and one can only hope that there will be more shows in this genre. All the performances were wonderful, but I remember best the modern dancer who did not speak but danced her story and had another performer “translate” her modern dance moves.

Someone Between, written and performed by Chantria Tram, is a beautifully staged narrative about the life of a first generation Cambodian woman in Canada. It is a truly interesting work in progress. As someone who was born in a refugee camp, I was particularly delighted by the moments when the young Chantria is trying to interpret her parents’ reality to a “Canadian” girlfriend. The play worked best when it give the actor a chance to act, and her performance as the mother was terrific. There was a little too much information, and too little playing, but it remains a fascinating window into the dislocation and trauma of trying to bridge two very disparate cultures.

Ties is a haunting and very interesting performance piece by the Odelah Collective. Performed by Christine Aubin Khalifah and Greg Gale, and directed by Arianna Bardesono, it addresses grief, love and mourning for a parent. The first third of the piece is physical theatre with repetition, mime and little dialogue. The opening which is performed on the floor could not actually be seen because of the sightlines, and then suddenly it comes to life. It feels like a first act of a work in progress, interesting, but not yet realized. It is certainly worth seeing for its originality and the very fine performances.

Penumbra by Katherine Dempsey is shocking. No, not the sexuality of the piece or the brilliant staging or fabulous performances, but the truth just sets one back on one’s heels. Catherine Berubé is a brilliant performer. Her rendition of the 17-year-old suburban girl who posts an ad on the internet and reaps a world of painful and inadequate sexual and emotional interactions is mesmerizing. Paul Van Dyke is the wunderkind of the English theatre scene and his direction was subtle and brilliant. Michelle Boback performed well the wife who becomes an enabler and Howard Rosenstein gave a fabulous performance of the difficult prissy professor. Christopher Moore was entirely believable as the abandoned boyfriend. Penumbra is the end of romance and its hard edged cynicism is searing.

Dust, by Jason Maghanoy, is well written in a minimalist style that is deceptively simple. Jonathan (Brandon Coffey) and Jenny (Jesssica Moss) perform brilliantly the barely literate and simple minded duo who fall into the hell of the prison routines in Iraq. Their courtship and work is recorded by Jenny on digital camera. As Jonathan tries to pull away from the moral morass of what they are doing and what it causes them to become, his paramour is becoming addicted to sadism. The play was short and very well done, and it addressed the unthinkable which is as useful as it is unpleasant, and this work gives new meaning to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty.

The festival is on until Sunday January 17 at the Centaur Theatre. Box office: 514 288 3161.

Montreal’s been a sad place to be a playwright. The two major theatres were, and some say still are, much too interested in doing second-hand U.S. and U.K. productions, and neglecting both Canadian work and local playwrights. However, there has been a sea change with Centaur’s production of Bated Breath, and In Piazza San Domenico, while the Segal is up for a play by Kent Stetson, winner of the Governor General’s award and Order of Canada. Not a huge risk, but a modest beginning.

Most discouraging has been the ongoing policy of the Playwrights Workshop to focus on public readings of playwrights not from here, and so well established they have a plethora of other venues to be developed and read in across the country. It does enhance the grantability of Playwrights to expose these playwrights because the plays are usually already contracted to open – usually elsewhere. Production in Montreal is much more unlikely. This is why public readings are enormously important to this community. This is not to say that Playwrights Workshop is not serving the community with dramaturgy and writers units and in house readings, which are truly necessary to the development of any script, and they do a splendid job.

One of the artistic directors of a major venue here has told many playwrights that they do not read plays. Being a mischief maker by nature, I organized a cast and went to the A.D.’s office where we merrily read the entire play right then and there. However, what I like to call Guerrilla Play Reading is not for everyone.

Fortunately, there are now two play reading series and they are happening this very weekend. Tableau d’hôte Theatre is in the midst of their new annual event while Infinithéâtre has a series running through tomorrow at the Bain St. Michel.

If you generally enjoy the theatre and have never been to a reading, this is a fantastic opportunity and one of the best shows in town. The actors are professional, the readings will be entertaining and will astonish, and most of all you will be doing the playwright a service by attending.

One of those benefitting from this sea change is Alexandria Haber, winner of this year’s Pam Dunn award for Life Here After, which will be read this evening at the Bain St. Michel as part of Infinithéâtre’s Pipeline series.

At lunch recently she revealed that she started as an actor and then got married and pregnant. This amazing mother of four started writing during her second pregnancy and says that she was inspired to pursue it further while participating in a playwrights’ unit at the Playwrights Workshop, and it was in a recent unit that she wrote the play that will be read tonight.

She has resumed her acting career lately, but says she chose to write because it gave her less of a sense of rejection and offered more control over what the project will be. She is inspired by her contemporaries in this community, and she is fond of playwrights such Caryl Churchill, Sam Sheppard, and Harold Pinter, and Canadians Judith Thompson and Coleen Wagner, whose Down from Heaven was recently produced here.

Like her colleagues in Montreal, Haber attends French theatre. This gives her plays a certain extra dimension. What drives her is the idea that theatre is important. She is particularly pleased when she can portray characters who affect the audience and reflect their lives. “Theatre allows us to explore the stories behind events,” she says.

Haber says that she might have been produced more often in a different city but it is the great community here that makes Montreal special. The public reading at Infinithéâtre will be her first. A mature writer will welcome comments and pick and choose the ones which will enhance the process.

“My main theme is women and their place in the world their relationships and struggles and how they fit in a changing world,” she says. “In a world where woman can technically have it all, but at what price, how do they cope?”

Tableau d’hôte Theatre presents the 1st annual New Canadian Works Series, showcasing original works from emerging and published writers. Tonight, at 7 pm, Kill Zone, a love story by Wanda Graham; tomorrow, at 8 pm, Kayak by Jordan Hall. Venue: ASM Performing Arts, 1216 Stanley, suite 300. Tickets: info@tableaudhotetheatre.ca. Or check out their site.

Tonight at Infinithéâtre’s series of free public readings, at the Bain St-Michel (5300, rue St-Dominique), Alexandria Haber’s Life Here After, winner of the second annual Pam Dunn Write-On-Q playwriting contest. Tomorrow, Nick Carpenter’s The Return of Corporal Mazenet is featured.

Haunted Hillbilly is hilarious and delightful, a romp on the dark side of honky-tonks and revival tent culture with a finger-snapping, toe-tapping integrity that is eerily contagious. When Hyram Woodside, played with great gusto and subtlety by Patrick Costello, sets out to become the brightest star in Country music, he trades in the humble cowboy suit made by his spouse (the superb Gemma James-Smith), and makes a Faustian deal with a kinky couturier in a wheelchair (Greg Kramer).

There is no simple way to describe Kramer’s enthralling performance. He takes the play to a completely different level; and he makes his evil ways hilariously funny. Kramer is a maestro who can make your skin crawl while you laugh out loud. His magnificent portrayal of Nudie alone is worth the trip to the Segal.

The story, a musical adaptation of Derek McCormack’s novel, has all the epic twists and reversals of an epic tale. The directing was very clean and it was delightful to see the actors as they sat in front of a kind of giant patchwork quilt, the set for the opening scenes. Daniel Brochu gives an insanely manic performance as Erskine Mole, the erstwhile king of country. His performance skirts the frontiers of caricature, and stops short at the precipice. Jackie Torrens inhabits the persona of Lil’ Molly, the M.C. and life of the radio show where much of the drama is initiated. Alexis Taylor as Bobbi is the strangely devoted ingénue, and is hilarious as the naïve one-legged love interest of the hero.

Kyle Gatehouse was riveting as Dr. Wertham, the silent companion of the evil Nudie. He never spoke but communicated volumes with his careful and deliciously bizarre gestures. Trent Pardy played Pastor Ray, the disreputable snake oil salesman and honky tonk owner, with manic aplomb.

There was a three-piece band on stage and this presentational bit of staging worked brilliantly in the context of a musical about country and western shows. It also allowed the musicians to interact with the personae in a really clever manner.

It was delightful to see so many truly talented actors and musicians take the stage and deliver a fully realized piece of the theatre. While there was no one song that stayed in one’s mind, the music was professional and well played and delivered even if it did not leave me humming the hook lines as I left. This is a very minor point as so much of the evening was just fantastic.

The fact that the SideMart Theatrical Grocery company is also offering Montreal a Pay What You Can on Sunday, December 13th is fabulous. It is a great audience builder and more theatres in Montreal would do well to reprise this very Toronto tradition. Many theatres there have made just as much at the gate and the good will in the community has become a priceless asset. There is a potential audience of almost a million in this city and, now that English theatre is actually growing for the first time, it also needs to learn how to grow the audience it merits.

The Haunted Hillbilly plays at the Studio at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, 5170 cote Ste. Catherine, thru December 20th. Tickets : 514 739 7944. For more information, contact: info@sidemart.ca. Or visit the Segal Centre site.

Outrage is a very difficult emotion to sustain. Therefore I attended the second of Porte Parole’s one-act plays about the collapse of the Concorde Bridge in Laval with some trepidation. This play about the search for justice was a much more difficult one to mount. The extraordinary thing was that all the talk about lawyers and government reports (and an amazing incarnation of Julius Grey) managed to be moving and theatrical as well as relevant.

From the moment France Rolland walked on stage and began to prepare a large Italian meal and Stephan Blanchette vacuumed the stage using only one hand, the audience was transfixed. Using a real stove and real time to cook, the theatre was overwhelmed with comforting cooking smells while the cast began to juxtapose these with the horrors of what had happened to these seemingly ordinary people.

Brett Watson and Maude Laurendeau-Mondoux reprise their roles as the two actors who are investigating this horrific incident. The bridge collapsed and five people died and six were injured, and the inquiry into the incident decided to call the horrible event a “car accident”. The government reasoned that the SAAQ of Quebec could then compensate the victims, and all would be forgotten. It was unconscionable that the compensation was so very little and the damage to real lives was so deep and unforgivable.

The people who lived through this and their families, were still terribly traumatized when they were encouraged by the actors to come to a collective decision about whether to mortgage their lives and relative emotional recovery to pursue a legal battle with what Julius Grey calls “City Hall”. In the light of recent allegations and admissions about corruption at city hall and ironically in the road and construction industries, this play is an idea whose time has come.

Alex Ivanovici performs an inspired Julius Grey. He morphs brilliantly into an engineer willing to speak at trial for the victims, and does an astonishing comic turn as a sleazy Quebecois journalist who specializes in mob connections and civil corruption.

France Rolland is terrific as Marie Mercadante, the Italian wife of one of the survivors, and evokes a laugh with her description of the eighty women she can call on to raise money for the cause. Her performance as the mother of one of the deceased is gently nuanced with despair.

Stephan Blanchette did solid work as Claude Goyette the grief ridden father of one of the victims, and he was terrific as Mohamed Umberthandi, the injured husband of Maria. Paul Stewart is wonderful as Paul Cousineau. Maude Laurendeau-Mondoux is energetic as Maude the actress who just wants to do something, but she is unforgettable in her portrayal of the wheelchair ridden Louise Bedard.

The gentle humanizing hand of Carole Fréchette is clearly felt in this piece and André Perrier adds direction that is imaginative and original. Once again Annabel Soutar has packed a political punch and delivered an intriguing piece of theatre. While plans to overhaul the Turcot Exchange in Montreal could affect the future of our city for decades to come, the good citizens of Montreal would be wise (and well entertained) to see this play.

Sexy béton II: Justice, by Annabel Soutar, has its last showing tonight at the Segal Centre studio, 5170 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd. Performances at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $22 adults; $10 students and seniors. Call 514-739-7944. Sexy béton III: Abandon runs January 11 – 21, 2010.

I will say it again, the three flights of stairs to the Freestanding Space makes one think: “This had better be worth it.” Hippies and Bolsheviks by Amiel Gladstone so very clearly is.

This simple and sweet story, about a young woman in the late nineteen sixties who brings a draft dodger home and soon has him in bed, was redolent (burning sage and all) of the innocence some of us remember with tremendous nostalgia. The play was homage to a time when a generation in this country believed that they could really be better than they actually were. They say that if you remember the sixties, you weren’t there. Well, I remember them and I was.

Miranda Handford was delightful as Star, the young woman at a crossroads who gave up life with her commune but was determined not to give up on love and having her baby. Thomas Preece is simply delightful as Jeff the goofy draft dodger who falls in love with Star and would even keep the rain from falling in Vancouver if he could. His comic timing was absolutely impeccable and his moments on stage were packed with tremendous energy. Brent Skagford seemed to play Green Tree, the hippie communard, with cool stoned flawless timing; his dorkier Allen was less graceful and a tad slow on the cues. But it was just a preview and one assumes that this would be much faster with some performance practice.

The space is so intimate that your feet practically touch the carpet where the young cast cavorts, which gives the event a bit of a peepshow kinkiness befitting the era being portrayed. The set was exactly as I remembered the transient digs of those days with amateur paintings and Haute Sally Ann design. Holly Simpson created an ambiance which was a perfect objective correlative to the play’s issues, dripping rain and groovy door hangings, and all.

Melissa Trotter provided a soft musical ambiance which gave the piece an emotional and aesthetic coherence. Her position and pin light were a perfect addition to an already terrific set.

Chelsea McIsaac embodies the sheer bravura of a character from the sixties, by putting her career on hold to produce and direct this play. She has created Girl Got Lost Productions, a new theatre company. She did this in Montreal, Quebec, at the height of a recession. And that, folks, is idealism at its best!

Her directing is still a bit shaky. The second act needs an “Italian” (a speedy rehearsal done in triple time). But this is a project worthy of the long climb and the hard chairs. If you are not a Boomer, then this is a great peek into a past well worth remembering; and if you were there, whether you remember it or not, it’s still worth the stairs!

Hippies and Bolsheviks continues at Freestanding Space (4324, boul. St-Laurent) through Dec. 5, with performances Wed. through Sat. Box Office: (514) 279 – 5219. Or email: girlgotlostproductions@gmail.com.

The final two one-acts of George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel Suite, Criminal Genius and Risk Everything, have been launched. Genuinely satisfying as theatre, the two served to provide a workout for laugh muscles I haven’t used in years.

Mathieu Perron directed Criminal Genius at an absolutely manic pace and got some terrific comic performances from his delightful cast.

Dom Pompeo plays the hapless and self declared victim father with a comic intensity that never loses momentum. Mike Payette gives a hilarious performance as his ill fated “slow” son. Tamara Brown is terrific as the “macha” crime leader who is seduced by her own violence and Shiong-En Chan shone with an intense kind of magic as the hostage turned empress of crime. George Bekiaris reprising his role as the alcoholic motel manager from Problem Child just walked away with the play. His one -liners were delivered perfectly and he made even the violent ending unbearably funny.

There are those who are not George Walker fans and have called this kind of play “theatre as slumming”. But if you do not take it all too seriously, this is a wonderful opportunity to see comedy live and really well done. The only drawback is a bit of oblique blocking which leaves audiences at Stage Left craning to see the madcap action.

Risk Everything, directed by Eric Hausknost, is a darker comedy with fewer guffaws but it offered the delight of watching actors in the full stride of their talent. Johanna Nutter as the Queen of Kvetch-mother-from-hell is flawless in her pacing and delivery. She never allows the tension to drop for an instant, and her most nefarious manipulation is totally credible.

Mike Hughs delivered a multifaceted performance as the hapless husband and low-life loser, first revealed in Problem Child. Joel Fishbane is back as the porn director from Featuring Loretta, after filming in the suite next door.

Joanna Sarazan was the straight man to Johanna and gave just the right amount of manic performer on a buzz to make the piece work. She is recognisable as the impossible mother of Problem Child, and manages to convince us of her dysfunctional relationship with both compliant husband and truly wicked mother.

There is an extended run for those of you who still wish to see first four plays. It is a delightful way to spend an otherwise bleak month in Montreal and I do not remember when I have laughed more. It is hugely encouraging to see so much talent, and in so brief a time; a reminder that while the granting agencies had their backs turned, theatre not only survived in this city, it flourished.

I am looking forward to the upcoming play readings and am grateful for the youth and energy that Tableau D’Hôte brought to this not so sweet suite of plays.

Criminal Genius and Risk Everything continue at MainLine Theatre through November 29. Following that, there will be one more showing of each duo of one-act plays: Tues., Dec. 1 – Problem Child (7 pm) and Adult Entertainment (9 pm); Wed., Dec. 2 - Featuring Loretta (7 pm) and The End of Civilization (9 pm); Thurs., Dec. 4 - Criminal Genius (7 pm) and Risk Everything (9 pm). For more details, check MainLine Theatre (3997 boul. St-Laurent) Box Office: (514) 849 – FEST (3378). Or the Tableau D’Hôte Theatre site.

Photo: Cindy Lopez.
From left: Dom Pompeo and Mike Payette (Tableau D’Hôte co-founder).

I admit to being an easy laugh and I certainly had a bellyful when the two jealous suitors in Featuring Loretta pulled all their slapstick bits. Liz Burns had a wonderful deadpan delivery which made her Russian chambermaid (daughter of ex-KGB kingpin who shouts too much) delightfully funny. George Walker knows how to set up his scenes and most important, he knows how to provide the actors with fabulous delivery.

The actual pace of the play was too slow, and I know that for non-professional actors, maintaining momentum the night after an opening can be a serious challenge. However, it is such a treat to be watching this well crafted play that one can forgive the timing.

Tommy Furino gave his performance just the right kind of caricature to make his obsession with Loretta work. Joel Fishbane was just sleazy enough to inhabit the porn director manqué he played. Best of all were the scenes with the two of them tripping over each other to win the lithesome Loretta.

In The End Of Civilization, Olivier Perras was able to inspire some very fine performances. Eric Hausknost, as Max the husband who has failed at finding a job and holding onto his home and family, was both compelling and heartbreaking. Denise DePass took a role full of transitions and perilous curves and managed to make the suburban Hausfrau utterly believable and the newly committed prostitute that she becomes, truly fine. Eric Davies played the same cop he excelled as in Adult Entertainment with just a bit more anger, and a laudable control. Patrick Charron seemed much more at ease reprising the persona of Donny. His performance was smoother and more focused than in Adult Entertainment. Catie Parsons as Sandy the unlovable Lady of the Night did a flawless star turn.

This is a dark and angry play from one of our best playwrights, and it is painfully relevant today. Tableau D’Hôte Theatre has done us a great service in mounting it. If you missed the first two plays in the Suburban Motel series, do not fail to see these. So far I am very impressed by this company and its ambitious and delightful work. We are privileged to have them and I wish them many more seasons.

FEATURING LORETTA – Nov. 17 – 22 7 pm (Nov. 21 & 22 2 pm); THE END OF CIVILIZATION – Nov. 17 – 22 9 pm (Nov. 21 & 22 4 pm). Box Office (514) 849 – FEST (3378). For more details, check out the Tableau D’Hôte Theatre Site. Mainline Theatre 3997, boul. St-Laurent.

When I lived in Toronto there was a story about George F. Walker that he would leave whatever comfortable digs he may have been living in, to stay at a seedy East Side hotel in order to write. It seems to have done wonders for this multiple award-winning and prodigious playwright. This offering by Tableau D’Hôte Theatre, in celebration of five years of producing Canadian plays, was thrilling.

This company has taken a huge risk by mounting the entire Suburban Motel suite. If the next productions are as energetic and emotionally explosive as Problem Child and Adult Entertainment, they will succeed, and we can only pray that they will enjoy many more years to come.

It is meet and seemly to enter a slightly graffiti laden door and climb the salubrious flight of stairs up to Mainline Theatre to see these plays about the seedier side of Toronto. The medium starts on Boulevard St. Laurent and the message packs a punch.

Problem Child about a former prostitute/drug addict and her ex-con husband speeds through some extraordinary twists to a fully satisfying conclusion. Mike Hughs was nail-bitingly perfect as the slightly functional hubby while Joanne Sarazen was utterly convincing as the mother of a child taken by the system. Catherine Lemieux went through the most deadpan lines, with perfect tone and timing, but it was George Bekiaris as the alcoholic motel maid of all trades who was disturbingly hilarious. Hughs and Sarazen were perfectly matched and they flawlessly circled and swept through the small claustrophobic set, never missing an emotionally charged beat. Liz Valdez is a thoroughly confident director working with intelligence and proficiency in the well designed setting.

Adult Entertainment about two rogue cops and the women who love them is more problematic. Liz Valdez and Eric Davis are splendid as Jayne and Max. Their interaction is torrid and cynical and completely believable. Patrick Charron had some good moments as the delirious Donny, but his focus sometimes veered when he was not playing drunk. Annie Lalonde also had a few terrific scenes and then seemed to get lodged into her head tomes for the second half of the play and could not get out of them. The directing was not as assured as it might have been and admittedly there were some difficult blocking problems, but they could have been resolved so that actors were not turning their backs and masking during key scenes.

There is something crazy and wonderful about seeing two of these plays in one night and I am so pleased that there are four more to relish. It is a privilege to witness well written theatre with actors such as Mike Hughs, Joanne Sarazen, George Bekiaris, Liz Valdez and Eric Davis. Valdez is a double threat because of her near perfect direction of Problem Child.

Most exciting of all is a new Canadian Works series that Tableau D’Hôte Theatre is launching this season. The venture into play development will fill a terrible gap in a community of playwrights who have been woefully neglected. They will workshop new scripts and stage a public reading. Bravo.

Suburban Motel suite consists of: PROBLEM CHILD – Nov. 10 – 15 7 pm (Nov. 14 & 15 2 pm); ADULT ENTERTAINMENT – Nov. 10 – 15 9 pm (Nov. 14 & 15 4 pm); FEATURING LORETTA – Nov. 17 – 22 7 pm (Nov. 21 & 22 2 pm); THE END OF CIVILIZATION – Nov. 17 – 22 9 pm (Nov. 21 & 22 4 pm); CRIMINAL GENIUS – Nov. 24 – 29 7 pm (Nov. 28 & 29 2 pm); RISK EVERYTHING – Nov. 24 – 29 9 pm (Nov. 28 & 29 4 pm). At MainLine Theatre, 3997, boul. St-Laurent. Box Office: (514) 849 – FEST (3378). Or: Tableau D’Hôte Theatre

Before the opening performance of Be My Baby, the artistic director of Persephone Theater reminded the audience that this was a very special theatre company dedicated to giving emerging young professionals work opportunities. Gabrielle Soskind is a lovely person and her mandate is very important to a community long beleaguered by a dearth of opportunities. This was not a play that fulfilled the vision of this mandate.

Amanda Whittington’s Be My Baby is about four young woman in the early sixties who are living in a religious home for pregnant unmarried girls, and are forced to give up their babies for adoptions. This is an important story, for the generation who do not remember the meaning of back street abortions. It is a reminder to those of us who organized marches and protested until the oppressive laws were humanized.

The four young girls in the play were not given a chance to bring us the emotional torment that such as they experienced. Besides the shrill delivery of the dialogue, there was a constant leitmotif of bubble gum pop songs from the era that was sugary enough to threaten the listener with diabetes.

The inane lyrics were supposed to be juxtaposed to the horror of the experience, but unfortunately they just underlined the really weak dialogue. The play was suffering from an identity crisis. The performers spoke in Canadian English, but the syntax and vocabulary like “bloke” “lass” and “nappies” were British.

The pace was really slow, and the emotional moments, like the birthing of a baby in an attic room, were so underplayed, that they had the drama and impact of a bad cold. I have seen Nadia Verrucci perform magnificently and she did her best as the mother of one of the girls, but she seemed to be working against impossible odds. She was very nervous, and her husband had been in Burma and he had to be lied to about his daughter’s condition. This is an interesting set up, but there is never any delivery.

When Aimee Rose Ambroziak, as Queenie, is told by Stevie Pemberton playing Mary that she can’t sing, she barely reacts. She has supposedly built her hopes on becoming a pop singer to escape the suffocating life she will return to after her birthing. Amanda Margelony had a few dramatic moments as Norma, only to be used as a plot devise to send Jessica Grant as Dolores to the sick room.

The play did not really come across as a professional performance. The penultimate scene was too pristine to be believable, and the performers did not deliver the characters in a memorable fashion.

I do wish Persephone Theatre would produce better plays, preferably ones which speak to what is happening here today and to us.

Be My Baby plays through November 14 at Studio Hydro Quebec at the Monument National (St. Laurent near the corner of René Lévesque). Box Office: 514 871 2224. For more information check the Persephone Productions site.

If you are an aficionado of chamber theatre and minimalist dialogue, this is the event for you. In a space that feels like someone’s den, on the third floor of a building on St. Laurent Boulevard that used to house the Playwrights workshop, Free Standing Productions has created a little theatrical gem.

Johanna Nutter and Paula Costain deftly play the two slightly bizarre sisters. They exchange dialogue and hand off power and dominance in smooth and pitch perfect performances. Nutter’s Isobel is utterly believable as the debilitated suicidal sibling. Paula is mesmerizing as her lively alter ego who is strangely disturbed and thrilled by the drifting, drifting snow.

It was a delight to watch two such professional actors wind their way through the dialogue and bring the play to its inevitable conclusion. There were some drawbacks to the use of such a space. The bathroom we were informed was hors service during the show and three flights of stairs make it clear that the target audience is limber and young.

There was a kind of novelty in sitting so close to the action, and at one point I did worry that Paula Costain would spill some of her martini on the person sitting next to me. The chamber nature of the performance made the direction particularly challenging and Tanner Harvey used several quite inventive moves and devices to keep it interesting and believable.

The strength of this piece is in the remarkable performances, but I am afraid I must say that these actors could have made a phone book delightful. The writing of the piece was too precious, and worked hard at the repetitions and patterns used by other well known dramatists. In Ned Cox’s Duplicity Girls, it was hit or miss, and needed some serious dramaturgy to keep from circling back at itself.

I confess the angst and despair of two upper middle class sisters does not intrigue me, and there were moments when the young man across the street cooking in front of an unshaded window distracted me from the action that was unfolding quite literally under my nose.

However, the experience is worth the climb up the steep staircase and the acting and directing were good enough to make this a truly interesting piece of theatre.

Duplicity Girls runs at through November 1 at The Freestanding Room, 4324 blvd. St-Laurent, Thursdays through Sundays, 8 pm. Only 30 seats per show so book early. Box Office: Call to reserve, then pay cash at the door. (514) 759-4671

Haunted, Paul Van Dyck’s play about the Great Amherst Mystery, is a hit. From the moment the cello and violin music greet the audience in the hall at the back of St. James Church, you know that you are in truly professional theatrical hands. Even the most skeptical of us can enjoy the seamless playwriting, the flawless direction and truly inspired acting in this event.

The bizarre story features the awful and macabre events that ensued after a simple barmaid was taken for a ride on the Marsh Road by her peculiar boyfriend. Esther Cox managed to befuddle the medical profession, baffle the religious community and was even imprisoned for the activities of her poltergeist. Most peculiar is that all these events actually happened and were written about in great profusion.

There is even a touch of comedy as Ester’s sister, performed delightfully by Alexandra Haber, and brother-in-law, portrayed very effectively by Carlo Mestroni, abandon her to the wiles of a travelling thespian who takes her “spiritualist” act on the road. The thespian is amusingly depicted by Paul Van Dyck, who directed the play with a terrific sense of timing and imagination.

The play had the simplest set, and very effective lighting which was enhanced by the animation of Jeremy Eliosoff. The space was occupied so intelligently that the movements and noises off stage reached brilliant proportions. At one point someone next to me mentioned that they hoped there was an actual priest in the building in case things got out of hand.

Esther Cox was excellently played by Catherine Bérubé. She managed to bring all the bravado of a young woman in defiance of society, and the vulnerability of a small town ingénue into the story of possession. Eric Davis played the clumsy doctor who succumbs to his own medicine in the end. He was just stiff enough at the start and inarticulate at the finish to give Dr. Carritte power and credibility. Kyle Gatehouse was competent as Bob MacNeal, the boyfriend from hell, but it might have served the really strong cast to have a Bob with more punch.

Daniel Giverin is a fine actor and apparently a wonderful music director and fiddler. Trevor Smith was delightful on the cello, and this is one of those plays in which the sound was crucial to the plot, and added to the climax of the story.

I am not a great fan of the horror and ghost genres, but I have to admit that seeing a well crafted, beautifully directed and brilliantly performed play was a great treat. The weather was appropriately dark and wet as the play let out, and I recommend that everyone chance a storm to see this work.

Haunted runs through Oct. 25, and again from Oct. 27-31 at Dawson Hall, St. James United Church. 463 Ste-Catherine West. Entrance: 1440, rue St-Alexandre. Tickets: General ($20): Tuesdays (2 for 1). Box Office: (514) 303–7646.

There was a little irony in the crisp fall air as I followed the cane and walker crowd into the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall: someone was playing Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean on a ghetto blaster that rang out over the Loyola campus. Till We Meet Again is a reproduction of CBC radio broadcasts during World War Two. The cast sings its way through three broadcasts and that is the plot.

The dialogue is taken directly from letters and recordings of the time. The dialogue letters and interviews were not very theatrical. They may have had a huge impact in the middle of a war in a more innocent era, but today they are dull. However, there is a real audience for this show and I was reminded of how important these songs were to the generation of English speakers who sang them. The audience was singing along and responding with heartfelt applause.

The play will follow up a short run here, which ended yesterday, with a 36-performance tour including stops in Mississauga, Ottawa, Markham and Oakville, before returning to Montreal on November 21st for two performances. It was about the nostalgia for an era when conserving wrapping paper made people feel as though they were really making a contribution to victory. For some of the audience there was a Montreal where not one word of French gets spoken, and oddly the French are hardly mentioned in the news of the day. This is a play for a really Anglo audience. One that it will surely find.

I think there is sweetness in Heather Markgraf Lowe which she brings to her direction of this play, although a good dramaturge would have cut some of the longer letters and the interviews with the strangely wooden soldier. In contrast to Dan Jeannotte’s rather monotone delivery is the talented Jane Hackett who also rocked in Slow Dance with a Hot Pick Up this year. Amanda LeBlanc was delightful as Maxine Martine. Stephanie McNamara was a fabulous Alice Thompson and Marian Saminski did a terrific job as musical director, and played a convincing Dixie Coleman. Michael Daniel Murphy was good as Ron Houseman but had to play next to the inimitable Pierre Lenoir as the Lead: a consummate professional. He knows how to deliver song or a line and how to take a joke to the brink of a milking it then pulling back with panache.

David Langlois wrote two very different plays, and did not really pull them together. The music, which is listed menu fashion in the program, tells one story; the dialogue, something completely different. Fortunately most of the audience is so swept into the fog of sentiment evoked by the really beautifully delivered songs that the cast could just as well be reciting the phone book.

Till We Meet Again will be back at Oscar Peterson Concert Hall on Concordia University’s Loyola Campus, 7141 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, for two performances, Nov. 21-22. For more details and a video on the play, check the website. Tickets available at the box office and from Admission – 514 790-1245.

I confess to being an easy laugh. I love comedy and I particularly love comedy in the theatre. In Piazza San Domenico by Steve Galluccio was not that funny. Michel Perron in a mustard yellow fifties suit, and a black wig was the most comic event in the play. The set and the costumes were terrific, but the play failed to deliver.

At the heart of every great comedy there is some truth or wisdom imparted. Commedia del arte is about debunking the hierarchical order of society. Comedy is “The effort to maintain one’s dignity against insurmountable odds.” None of these were evident when Perron as the hero’s wing man was about to mount the ingénue in the middle of the piazza. It seemed like an event from a different play.

When Carmelina, played convincingly by Christina Broccolini, faints at the start of the two-act play, most of the women in the audience already know what the problem is. But we had to sit through the breakup with fiancé Guido (played energetically by Guido Cocomello), the revenge and cuckolding of everyone by everyone and an earthquake. Predictably the wife of Tonino (Perron) almost cheats on her husband and says: “Just before the earth finally moved for me – the earth had to go and actually move.” I paraphrase, but there was not one line that I could remember when it was over. If “music is the food of love” we were served over cooked pasta and empty calories.

The dignity and more nuanced performances of Ellen David as Isabella, the mother of the knocked up ingénue, and the refreshing performance of Vittorio Rossi as Pasquale the seller of fresh figs, gave the piece some very delicate and worthwhile moments. Mara Lalli was a convincing bad girl and Carl Alacchi was over the top as the cross eyed suitor of Carmelina the ingénue. The lines were plastered on with a trowel and if comedy is all about timing, this play went on way too long.

Galluccio has talent but this is a play that needed a lighter touch and better dialogue, and really tight timing. Comedy from the time of the Greeks right through Commedia del Arte and modern ROM COMS is about sex and the boy finally getting the girl or vice versa, but it also needs to be based on solid characters slipping on believable banana peels. That is why it was possible to buy Isabella and Pasquale and almost impossible to believe the shtick of Marisa, a kvetch of Olympic stature. The most hilarious thing about Jocelyne Zucco’s performance as the would be adulteress was the girdle she wore under her bathrobe.

There was little amusing about the fifties for those who remember them, and anyone who tries to romanticize that decade and tries to make us laugh about it had better be really funny.

In Piazza San Domenico runs at Centaur Theatre through November 1. See
Box Office 514 288 3161 for details.