Belleville and the Role of the Artist as Critic

I went to see BELLEVILLE this afternoon, Company Theatre's production of the Amy Herzog play about Americans in Paris.

The script owes a debt to GASLIGHT, but is really more about the cognitive dissonance contained in the space between a young American couple's aspirations, and their actual life.

Abby is a girl who'd be at home in a Woody Allan film.  She's trained as an actor, but works as a yoga teacher. She's a neurotic as a cat, can't hold her liquor, and is trying to withdraw from prescription anti-depressants.

Her husband Zack, trained as a doctor, and is in Paris working for Medicins Sans Frontieres, on a cure for HIV in children.  He smokes a lot of dope with their landlord, the male half of a house-owning couple of African immigrants, with two children under five, who lives downstairs.

Zack says they're in Paris because he wants to cheer Abby up.  Abby says they left the States for Zack's career. Early on, we find out the couple is four months behind with the rent.  Abby is unaware of this state of affairs, perhaps because she doesn't speak French.

I just saw BLUE JASMINE, and my question in both these pieces was the same:  who the hell are these university educated women in 2014, who don't know how, or if, the rent is paid?

I don't know: maybe this is commonplace among the bourgeoisie on the U.S. Eastern seaboard. I don't know a single woman of any age, in any class, who doesn't know how much the roof over her head costs, or who is footing the bill, or if the bill is paid.  It's a ridiculous, antediluvian premise, but if you can get past that, the script has merit.

BELLEVILE's strength rests on Herzog's nuanced examination of the marriage of two emotionally unstable people on shaky ground.  The couple reminded me of the twenty-somethings I see in GIRLS. The play works as a study of race, class, and culture. It absolutely nails the fact that French adults in that same age demographic are not, still, semi-adolescents.

Does it work as a thriller?  Almost: but not quite.  A thriller is a twenty-one jewel watch.  It requires a structure of exquisite mechanical precision. This is a collection of intriguing, but not quite functional parts. There was too much telegraphing of plot points, and the ambiguous ending felt lazy, and fell flat.

In the end, because of the script issues, the acting and solid direction by Jason Byrne couldn't sustain the tension he and the cast so carefully built up in the first 3/4 of the play. There's a meal here, thanks to fine work from Allan Hawco, Christine Horne, Dalmar Abuzeid and Marsha Regis. It's worth seeing for the acting, but don't expect great noir.

Now on to topic number two.

There was a very smart and interesting set of articles on theatre criticism on #CanCult Times last week.  Michael Wheeler, the director at Praxis Theatre and a sharp (and delightfully acidic) blogger, political commentator and fine stage director, wrote an article about why Praxis decided not to review their fellow artists' work on their blog. I think he has a valid point: reviewing pushes you outside.  It probably doesn't help you much when you go to be peer-reviewed by arts council juries, either.

There does seem to be a consensus that the community really needs more open and informed discussion about work onstage from more sources, a point well made by reviewer Carly Manga in her #CanCult article on the state of current professional theatre criticism.

When I started this blog back in 2009,  I decided to undertake critical examination of my colleagues' work because I wasn't seeing much writing about why scripts worked or didn't, or about certain issues in the community. I am trying to write less as a reviewer, and more as a writer thinking critically about writing for the stage, and, as an artist writing about the experience of working in the theatre.

There was some discussion by both Manga and Nikki Shaffeeullah about whether reviewers who are not members of a particular community are qualified to discuss work made by that community, an issue several theatre practitioners have raised this winter.

Are there many more theatre creators working now, coming out of a tradition that is not white, or Western?  Sure. It's about time!  Could we use more critical writing about theatre from practitioners who are not middle-aged men, mostly white?  Absolutely.  #CanCult Times issue did just that in a very thoughtful way this week.

For the record, I am a member, not yet carded, of the Metis Nation of Manitoba. My ancestors fought at Batoche.

I had a guy walk up to me in a restaurant over a year after I wrote about a show I didn't think worked very well and tell me we needed to support each other in the Aboriginal community, and that by writing critically about a play by a fellow Aboriginal artist, I had effectively betrayed the community.

I invited him to sit down and join us and discuss the show, and my criticism of it, but he just wanted to talk at me, not to me. After looming and finger-wagging, he walked off.  

Is there anything more patronizing, belittling, and demeaning than assuming my fellow artists, Aboriginal and otherwise, can't tolerate a critical discussion of their work?  Are we really that insecure?Are we to treat each other like kindergarten students, and hand out gold stars just for showing up onstage? 

I'm not going to tell someone that a show works when it doesn't, and I don't care what "community" created the work, even if it is my own, especially if it is my own.  No talk about hegemony excuses a bad show.

THE  PENELOPIAD used an all female, mixed race cast, to talk about war.  It  was brilliant.  Pamela Sinha used  South Asian myth and dance in CRASH to great effect, in a play about a violent sexual assault. She won a well-deserved DORA.  Aboriginal writer and performer Cliff Cardinal made an array of characters come to life in HUFF, and served up an incendiary cocktail of rage, pain and inter-generational abuse, placed very specifically on a reservation. He and Sinha are both at the Playwright's colony at Banff this week.  I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

I have been reviewed since I was eleven years old as an actor, director and writer.  I have had good reviews, mediocre reviews, and bad reviews that smarted like a smack up the side of the head. Some of them were well deserved, some weren't.  I wish more of them had been written by actual theatre practitioners.

If anyone can spend time and money at a show, hopefully it'll be reviewed by the mainstream media.  Why? Because good reviews are free p.r. and sell tickets (duh!) I don't think there's anyone making theatre, who could use less box office revenue.

Like it or not, this still means that means a play, will, most likely, be reviewed by white men, and a few women. If we, as a community, want that to change, more of us are going to have to stick our necks out, and talk about each others' work.

I wouldn't want my work to be reviewed exclusively by mixed race, middle-aged, unmarried, straight, feminist, left-leaning, theatre-making women, anymore than I only want to be seen by that group. Call me willfully naive, but I think if I'm willing to take any one's money for a ticket, anyone who saw the show, can weigh in on my show.

I hope that by thinking long and hard about why my fellow theatre practitioners' plays work, or don't work,  I'll become a better writer myself.  I see the critical thinking required to write about theatre as an important part of my artistic practice. I am trying to write from inside, not outside.

Independence Days: HOMEMAKER, SWELL BROAD and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Each year 150 or so shows happen at each of the three big summer FRINGE festivals:  Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

About 10% of those shows are critical and commercial hits on the circuit.  A few of the intrepid creator/producers of those hit shows decide to try and remount in their hometowns during the main theatre season between September and May.

Two shows that ran here briefly this past week were remounted by their respective companies in independent rental spaces after being critical and box office hits on the Fringe.

I saw my first KEYSTONE Theatre show today.  Keystone has had DORA nominations for their work (for music) and had four and five star reviews in Edmonton and Calgary for THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, which I saw Sunday.

KEYSTONE performs theatre in style of silent film.

Like the lovely meringue pies onstage, the production was a frothy confection.  If you've ever made a meringue pie, you know it looks effortless, but it is not that easy to achieve that delicate, airy perfection.  I went with a friend and we ran into another actor-writer buddy of mine at the theatre. We all enjoyed it.

The work was highly stylized, using techniques derived from clown, buffoon, mime and physical theatre to create characters who are in make-up that functions as a kind of masque. Ginette Mohr did a great job of directing, making everything clean and precise. Dana Fradkin and Phil Rickaby were utterly charming as the star-crossed lovers and Sarah Joy Bennet, in a brilliant costume by Kimberly Beaune, very nearly stole the show as the Devil's minion.

In the end, the Devil (an excellent Stephen La Frenie) gets his due and everyone else also gets their just desserts, all puns fully intended.  The live accompaniment by David Atkinson was stellar. It was great good fun and unlike anything else I've seen staged in Toronto this year. They're doing GOLD FEVER at the Toronto Fringe this summer.  I'll be there!

I also saw THE HOMEMAKER, written and performed by Laura Anne Harris and SWELL BROAD which was written by Brooke Banning and directed by Harris. The shows went up this week at THE STOREFRONT THEATRE after being delayed by flooding in their venue back in February.  Friday night, they had a packed house and that made me happy. It was interesting and committed work, looking at women's lives in the 1950s, sexually, professionally and emotionally.

It doesn't surprise me that these shows were remounted by their creators.  What surprises me is that so few hit Fringe shows get picked up for a remount by one of the bigger theatres in town or offered a co-production deal.

KIM'S CONVENIENCE went to  MTC and the NAC in Ottawa, having had a long remount in Toronto at Soulpepper.  I think that's fabulous.  I also think it doesn't happen nearly often enough.

Laura Anne is a colleague and a friend.  I don't have to be her friend to say she had a five-star hit across the country with her previous show,  PITCH BLONDE.  I was astonished that no theatre in the country picked it up for a remount. The closest she got was a half-hour slot (for a polished one-hour show that had sold out the Tarragon Mainstage) from NextStage.

I don't think I'm alone when I say I've seen quite a few new scripts go onstage far from ready, here and elsewhere in larger theatres with systems for play development in place.  I also see great Canadian plays on the Fringe circuit that would be theatre ready, with minor tweaking, and a bigger production budget, and yet, never get a remount.

Instead of spending a fortune putting on a new play that's two drafts shy of a production, I don't understand why more ADs don't take more work that's already been developed independently on the festival circuit or smaller stages into a mainstage season.

At the Winnipeg Fringe, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights presents a Harry Rintoul Award for best new play.  That script is usually pretty great and rarely remounted by a theatre. Daniel Thau Ellef was here with a monologue at Summerworks this year.  I really wish someone had remounted his REMEMBER THE NIGHT here which took the Rintoul a few years back. SCAR TISSUE by Muriel Hogue also won, had a lot of great parts for women and it's never had a remount.

The CENTAUR Theatre in Montreal offers the best English language play in the Montreal Fringe a cash prize and a remount in their theatre.  Boy do I wish that happened across the country.

Ken Brown is a National Theatre school grad, theatre professor and creator of an epic trilogy of plays  called SPIRAL DIVE about WWII pilots. The critically acclaimed work sold out across the West on the Fringe circuit. He brought part one here a few summers ago and once he finally got reviewed, he got 5 stars and they sold out their last show.  Before that, they were a bunch of unknowns from Edmonton and played to tiny houses.  It's been remounted once in Edmonton and I think it got done in once in Ottawa.

Why Ken Brown, who wrote LIFE AFTER HOCKEY, one of the most successful plays ever produced in this country hasn't had a show put up at one of theatres in Toronto in over a decade is beyond me.  It's not like he hasn't written any hits.

Stewart Lemoine, another Edmonton stalwart has had a few shows produced here, but not many. Why in heaven's name has no one ever remounted a TJ Dawe show in Toronto as part of the season?  It's not like the guy can't fill a house. MEDICINE was fantastic.

The best production of Brecht I've seen in ages was done by PRAXIS Theatre at NextStage.  I really hope someone is going to give those guys an in-town show next year.  The writer who did the adaptation, Nicholas Billon, just won the GG for his ICELAND Trilogy.  Remount the trilogy, any ADs out there?

Yes I know, we have a sprawling farm system for play development.  There are pitch opportunities and playwright development money available from nearly every theatre in the province in Ontario, and festivals of new work all over Toronto:  Rhubarb, HATCH, Paprika, Wired, New Ideas.  I'd love to to know the ratio of production to development, from those incubators.

For those of us who put our bums in the seats and our cash in the box office, it is pretty obvious that the current new play development system isn't working very well.  Bad to mediocre new show, after bad to mediocre new show goes up, discouraging the writers from trying again, and dulling the appetites of audiences for new work.

What about paying a talent scout to find a show (or shows) that worked pretty well somewhere else, take it in, hammer it into shape and remount it?  I know it does happen, and I know there are a few people who run around town looking for companies to co-produce with or shows to remount.  The Theatre Centre has just given  several independent companies residency to develop work.  It's a great strategy and I hope more theatres in town will look for ways to co-produce with independent companies to bring more work here from other cities.

Great Canadian theatre gets made across the county but you wouldn't necessarily know that, looking at the season in Toronto. I'd love some shout-outs for great shows from the rest of  Canada you think are ready for a bigger audience.

I'm taking the next week off to celebrate Easter and have a much needed vacation.  Enjoy whatever spring festival you celebrate and the warmer weather.  I'll see BELLEVILLE when I get back and tell you all about it.

50 SHADES...The Musical Parody and COCK: Date Night Theatre

Sometimes you want to be intellectually challenged by art.  You want to have your world view shaken up.  You want the show you go to see to challenge and provoke you, to ask hard questions, to demand  something of you, to make you think.

Other times, you've had a long tough week at work, or home, or both and you just want to go grab a drink, your besties or your significant other and head into a theatre to forget your troubles and have fun.

50 SHADES...is the latter sort of theatrical experience.

You don't have to be one of the 50 million people who bought the book to enjoy this musical parody.

For those of you who have been on a voyage to Mars for the past two years, "50 Shades... " is a trilogy of erotic fiction following the romantic adventures of Anastasia Steele, a virginal English lit undergraduate and hardware store clerk who falls under the spell of Christian Grey, a handsome billionaire with dark secrets.

There were a lot of women there Friday night who appeared to be having "girls' night out".  Many female patrons had worn their black boots and bits of leather in homage to the BSDM theme of the books and some did bring their own handcuffs, as suggested in the publicity.  I saw a pink fuzzy pair pinned to the front of one young lady's sweater like a brooch. Men were definitely in a minority shareholder position. My friend and I estimated the audience was 70% women and 30% men.

In this version of the story, a women's book club (Shelia O'Conner, Tiffany Dissette and Kim David who also plays the ditzy roomie Katherine with great aplomb) decides on "50 Shades..." as their book of the month, having ruled out, "Cooking Soup for One"(too depressing) and "The Diary of Anne Frank" (the ending was too sad).  We come with them, so to speak, on their voyage of not-so-literary adventures.

"50 Shades..." is a grown-ups' version of of a Christmas pantomime, complete with sight-gag casting, singing and dancing and a loose and loud audience that felt free to shout suggestions ( "NO! take the hot guy!") at critical moments during the performance.

Instead of the ugly step-sisters or the evil queen being played by some middle-aged man in bad drag, we have a Christian Grey (the hilarious Jack Boice) who looks more like Santa's red-haired kid brother than a love god. The delightful Boice would not be out of place at Bears' Night at the Black Eagle. It was a bit like expecting George Clooney and getting Ron Jeremy instead.

Happily for the patrons, his back-up dancers ( BJ Gruber, who is also a very hot Elliot Grey and Datus Puryear)  more than had the good-looking man angle covered. The lovely Caroline Reade embodies Anastasia's "Inner Goddess" with some sultry tango dancing.

The entire cast is a talented bunch of singers, dancers and comedians with a great group dynamic and a lot of energy and charm. There was a certain amount of very cheeky engagement with the audience, especially by the show-stealing Boice in his big number "I Don't Make Love, I F...." and by O'Conner, the recently single housewife in the book club who tries to pick up a man in the front row.

There's a clever and well-performed Gilbert and Sullivan parody song detailing Christian's sexual interests.  The whole script makes great sport of the absolute absurdity of the books:  "I love you and I want to beat the crap out of you". "I'm totally controlled and I feel so free!" At one point, our heroine (Eileen Patterson who is a sweet-voiced ingenue) flees Mr. Spanky-Pants by bailing out of his helicopter. I thought that was a great decision, but as is always the case in these things, love trumps sense and conquers all.

With a bare-bones set, a fine back-up band and a lot of hoary sexual jokes, this over-the-top silly and mildly subversive show is a feather-light entertainment.  I hated the book ( I couldn't get through more than one) but this musical parody of a bad romance makes an enjoyable night out.

Then Saturday night, I went to see COCK at the new Theatre Centre.  It's a fabulous space and I hope they never move again.  They have taken in a few established independent theatre companies to share their new home and develop work. Studio 180  is one of those companies and this is their inaugural production in the new theatre.

COCK is a tight, tense and riveting story about a romantic triangle by Olivier award-winning British playwright Mike Bartlett.

John (well-played by Andrew Kushner) has spent seven years in a problematic live-in relationship with M (an excellent Jeff Miller), a somewhat older and intense man.  John meets the forthright and attractive W (a nicely nuanced Jessica Greenberg) and they begin an affair.  John has never slept with a woman before.  Complications ensue. At on point, M's dad (a terrific Ian D. Clark) turns up to ask John two very good questions: "who are you?" and "what do you want?"

If I say much more, I'll spoil it. The script had the audience laughing and wincing in recognition.

I've dated guys like John once or twice.  This play isn't so much about accepting a range of sexual preferences as it is about a nasty power game played by a passive-aggressive man with everyone around him.

A very wise friend of mine once said to me, "Any relationship is a decision and a commitment."

If you're at the "so, what are we doing here?" phase of your relationship, this could be a tense night out. If you both know who you are and what you want, it's a very good night of theatre. Certainly it is one of the best scripts I've seen on stage this year.

Finally, there was an absolute twitter-storm in the theatrical community in Toronto this week over "Conte D'Amour", the three hour durational performance art/theatre hybrid that was part of World Stage at Harbourfront this week. J. Kelly Nestruck, the Globe and Mail's main theatre critic, publicly declared he booed at the end of the performance.  Lynne Slotkin, a well-regarded and excellent theatre blogger applauded his decision. After that, all hell broke loose.

I decided not to see or review the show.

Nestruck made one comment which I did want to weigh in on.  He said the production was morally bankrupt.  That remark was far more interesting to me than whether or not he booed at the end of the show.

Oscar Wilde famously said of literature that, "Books are neither moral nor immoral.  They are simply well or badly written, that is all."  Is this also true of theatre?

I agree with Wilde for the most part.

When I see work I dislike, it often feels lazy and unfinished.  I feel insulted and ripped off because I paid money to and/or spent time with someone who hadn't cleaned up their thinking and their laziness showed up on stage. When a film or a play is really long, it often (but not always) is an indication of unfinished thinking.

Now, I was raised by old-school Catholics who taught me laziness is a sin and therefore immoral. Is this the kind of immorality under scrutiny here?  Or is this about something else? Talk amongst yourselves.

A Cool Encounter with DANCEMAKERS: "AROUND"

DANCEMAKERS is celebrating their 40th anniversary this season.  AROUND is a new work built especially for this gala occasion.

The Distillery was just opening up when I left town for half a decade and I had never been in DANCEMAKERS new and incredibly beautiful space. Finding it was a bit of a challenge, even with the map. When I got there, I discovered a fabulous hidden venue.

For the performance, they had transformed one of their studios into a lobby/box office/bar with tunes, red carpets over the marley, vintage furniture and brocade upholstered benches that functioned as cocktail tables.  They put out little snacks and offered people a free place to leave their coats. It's an intimate space with a cool yet friendly vibe, a portent of things to come.  We were invited to drink in theatre during the performance.

The house opened and we were escorted into a white curtained studio/performance space in the round with a black marley on the floor and two mikes, one suspended and one on the floor, both corded.  Two rows of chairs inside the white curtained area, tall ones at the back and low ones at the front meant we could see each other as well as we could see the performers. This device integrated and implicated the spectators in a different kind of complicity with the performance than the one provided by the more usual private sanctuary of a seat in the dark.

AROUND is devised, created through a process of improvising on the theme of encounters. The choreographer worked with five company members and five EDAP (emerging dance artist project) dancers to co-create this performance. Designers (sound, lights and costume) and a dramaturge were also involved heavily in the construction.

Everyone is in white.  The curtains that contain the audience gets moved around so the parameters of the container are in flux.  The work is visually, textually and aurally fairly austere.  There's more movement than dance in any conventional sense. It is a cool show: edgy, self-consciously stylish and game.

Devised work is always a little loose.  If you like rigour this isn't going to be your cup of tea.  I thought there was an interesting mash-up of ideas playfully and provocatively executed.   I liked that it demanded that I come half-way to meet the piece and the performers but I didn't always feel I was met in the middle.

I particularly liked a staring contest between two male dancers and the audience near the top of the show. The deconstruction of the nature of the gaze is an interesting thing to play with.   A piece where sound score creator Christopher Willes joins the company onstage to play a white electric guitar with his head literally left blood on the floor. Coupled with the microphones stuffed into two of the male dancers' pants, it gave "cock rock" a whole new meaning.

This is dance walking on the edge of performance art.  My encounter with AROUND was thought-provoking and blackly amusing but spoke more to more to my head than my heart.  It certainly elicited some interesting conversations afterward outside the theatre.

DANCEMAKERS' AROUND continues until April 6th in their studio on the third floor of 9 TRINITY in the Distillery.

Dance, Dance Evolution: EUGENE ONEGIN at The National Ballet & EUNOIA at WorldStage

I saw two very  different nights of dance this past weekend:  EUGENE ONEGIN, performed by THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA at the Four Seasons Centre for The Performing Arts on Friday and EUNIOA by FUJIWARA DANCE INVENTIONS at WorldStage Theatre Festival in the EnWave Theatre at Harbourfront on Saturday night.

I've seen the opera based on the poem by Alexander Puskin a few times.  It's a sentimental favourite as it was the first opera I ever saw performed live. I knew the ballet was performed using a different score than the opera, although still a score of music by Tchaikovsky.

Like Tatiana in Act III,  I'm now much older than I was when my relationship with ONEGIN began. It has lost none of its power but now seems much less romantic to me and more tragic.

In Act I, Tatiana is a young, romantic girl, reading novels.  What she knows of love and the world outside her country home comes from books.  Her sister Olga, danced by a charming and vivacious Jillian Vanstone  is engaged to a poet, Lensky danced by Naoya Ebe in a very promising debut.  Lensky brings home a friend a sophisticated, urbane and trouble-making Onegin.

Onegin was wonderfully performed by Guillaume Cote on Friday night and he was marvelously matched by a spectacularly good Greta Hodgkinson as Tatiana.  Both performances displayed stunningly good marriages of technique and emotion.

We all know someone like Onegin.  He has a rich dad, he's a bit of a dandy, he's spoiled and too handsome for his own good.  He loves sensation but is too shallow for complex emotion. He causes trouble because he can't stand not being the centre of attention and a hurricane with him at the vortex is a good way to hold the room. He trifles with girls' affections because he can.

He pays attention to Tatiana and Tatiana mistakes their shared interests in a larger world she's only experienced in books, for love.  She throws herself at him the night before her birthday, writing him an impassioned letter.

Onegin not only spurns her, he flirts with her sister Olga shamelessly at Tatiana's birthday. He is bored at her party and rude to her widowed mother's guests, who are unaffected country people.

Lensky is so affronted by his friend's behaviour that he challenges Onegin to a duel.  The girls beg Onegin to call it off.  Lensky is killed and both Olga and Tatiana are left heartbroken.  Onegin flees abroad.

Tatiana grows up, marries Prince Gremin, an older, distant cousin (elegantly executed by Etienne Lavinge) and lives happily in his palace with a man with whom she shares respect and love.

Many years later, Onegin returns from his exile abroad.  The Prince receives him.  Onegin is astonished to find Tatiana has become a beautiful and powerful woman.  Finally overcome with sorrow and remorse, he declares his love to Tatiana in an impassioned letter and impatiently presses her to reciprocate.  It is far too late.  The grown Tatiana tells Onegin the truth:  she loves him but she knows that love will only bring her misery.  She sends him away, he goes and when he does she weeps painfully, fully and freely for everything they both lost.

The orchestra, chorus and design were as good as the principals, supporting and enhancing the story.

I loved the restrained palette of the design, especially the way the colors of the costumes were used to underscore the mood and emotions of the characters wearing them. Tatiana wears a white dress for her birthday and a brown one, sombre and autumnal, the day she sends Onegin packing.

The story in the beautiful poem was brought fully to life without a word being spoken.  It is the great power of dance to be able to convey with the body, all the emotions underlying what is never said and felt by us all.

When Tatiana cried, so did I.  Bravo to the National Ballet for a beautiful and moving performing.

Then Saturday night, I headed off to the Enwave Theatre for EUNOIA.

EUNOIA is a stage adaptation of a "univocal lipogram" (not univoweled?). Whatever: the well-known piece of literary cleverness by Governor General award-winning poet and language manipulator Christian Bok received a spirited and very charming stage production this weekend as part of WorldStage at Harbourfront.

The program contains very interesting notes from creator/choreographer Denise Fujiwara about her meticulous process with the dancers and designers. The result of the four-year collaboration was arch, delicate, droll and endearing.

I loved video designer Justin Stephenson's evocative manipulations and deconstructions of the text in projections.

The colour choices of costume designer Andjelija Djuric amplified the emotional tone of the five sections: A/E/I/O/U.

The dancers were some of the most highly regarded contemporary dance artists in the country: Sylvie Bouchard, Claudia Moore, Lucy Rupert, Miko Sobriera, Rebecca Hope Terry and Gerry Trentham. From the opening game of hang-man, they engaged the audience with ease and charm.

The piece required they speak a dense and difficult text while dancing, not an easy task.  Dancers are not actors.  They do not have the vocal muscularity and flexibility of those who speak for a living.  Their voices required the amplification of a hand mike.

I loved all of their physical performances.  I felt they did their best with the text which is not their metier. They brought great elegance to the awkward task of working with a hand mike during a dance performance.  Phil Strong, sound designer and composer and the technical staff of the theatre controlled the levels of music and other sounds with skill and restraint.

The audience gave EUNOIA a loud and spontaneous standing ovation.  It was well deserved by Denise and her cast and design team for executing a complex, protean task with sophistication, beauty and grace.

Mommy Issues: 6 Essential Questions At The Factory Theatre

This week was the first time I've seen a mainstage show at the Factory since the still sitting board unceremoniously fired the theatre's founding artistic director, Ken Gass.

I had attended the Fringe and NextStage there.  I support the Fringe and I was willing to move the boundary line that far.

Then friends self-produced in the Factory Studio this winter and after some thought, I decided to support them.  The show, "OF MICE AND MORRO AND JASP" was a marvel:  beautifully acted, intelligently and sensitively written and tightly directed.  I laughed and cried.  It was one of the high points of the winter theatre season for me.

Then someone gave me a ticket to see Ronnie Burkett and I went with a friend and it was fabulous, as it had been at LUMINATO back in June. Funny, moving, naughty, edgy:  I had a second great night at the Factory.

Then, Volcano produced a MacIvor play in the studio and I bought a ticket to A BEAUTIFUL VIEW and went with another friend.  It is not my favourite play of his, although he is one of my favourite playwrights but it was thought-provoking and affecting, a well-acted, well-directed production.

I tweeted about most of those shows.  I didn't write about them here because I saw them late into short runs and didn't think it was useful.

Then, a friend invited me to join her for 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS this week.  She and I catch a few shows together over a season. She is a thoughtful person and a talented theatre artist.

When we last saw a show together earlier this winter and I told her I was still boycotting the Factory, she asked me a hard question: "Are we going to let the Factory die over this? Do you really think that's the right thing to do?"

The answer to that question, after some thought, was no.  I hate that the board is still in place. The new lobby looks like the garage that belonged to the friend's dad in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
(sans Ferrari or bucolic view). The elevator does not go to the top floor (seriously) meaning the vaunted "access" is for audiences, not artists who still need to climb a flight of stairs to the rehearsal hall on the top floor.

Still, I agree that the Factory Theatre is an important cultural institution in this city and no, I don't want to see it die.

So off I went to see the first play by a well-regarded Canadian woman writer and academic, Prisila Uppal. Her book, PROJECTION: ENCOUNTERS WITH MY RUN-AWAY MOTHER was nominated for a Governor General's Award for non-fiction. The material in that book forms the basis for her play, 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS.

Professor Uppal has not adapted her smart, well-written, well-structured, lyrical and poignant book to the stage. Instead, she has chosen to use some of the material in the book as a jumping-off point for a "theatrical" interpretation of the story about her attempt to reconnect with her run-away mother twenty years after that mother abandoned her, her brother and her quadriplegic father in Ottawa. The daughter hasn't seen her mother in twenty years.  The mother now lives in Brazil and has cancer. Both mother and daughter are writers and academics.

The book just churns out story:  memorable characters, action that speaks to character and drives conflict. It has all the makings of a great play or feature film.

Unfortunately, almost none of that makes it to the stage. There's some beautiful language here, but it takes more than poetry to make a play. The play tries for some kind of magic realism but ends up a mostly incoherent mess.

6 ESSENTIAL... does not create engaging characters in believable relationships or escalate story stakes with action in any way that allows the audience to connect with the material.

The script suffers from a classic problem of first scripts by inexperienced playwrights. The protagonist does not drive the action of the play.

Director Leah Cherniak's decision to pitch this as a loose and loud clown show does neither the actors or the play any favours.  Renata (Mina James in an utterly thankless part) our heroine is presented as a bland bourgeois foil, an MD in the histrionic freak show of her family. Richard Zeppieri (Uncle Garbage) and Maggie Huculak (Grandmother) do their best,  but  Elizabeth Saunders' talent is wasted in an irritating, over-the-top performance as Renata's narcissistic Mother.  Much of the frenetic physical action, rather than being inherent to character, ends up feeling imposed on the amorphous text.

Like the direction, the acting and the script, the set is messy and unfocused, unnecessarily busy for no apparent reason.  I loved the projections, but disliked both the costumes and the rubbish set.

It's an 80 minute show and by the 30 minute mark, I was looking at my watch.

By the time  the play tells any story or creates any credible conflict between the characters, I had been so beat up by the pitch of the production and the performances and so frustrated with and stymied by the disjointed writing, I was just numb, irritated and wanted it to be over.  I didn't care about any of them.

Uppal freely quotes Dickens without crediting him.  Would she had absorbed some lessons in story structure and character creation from him.

You can make all kinds of magic happen in a theatre, as Dickens knew well.

I have experienced some powerful stage magic at the Factory this winter.  A clown in a red nose accidentally killed a wind-up dog and I wept with her.  When her sister slid up the stairs with a battered suitcase to find them somewhere else to go after a disaster, in one pause, one hunched shoulder, one tiny sigh, I felt her love for her sister and the crushing burden of taking care of someone who is totally out of control. A puppet named after an entree with a flower growing out of his head made my heart soar on the wings he wants and doesn't have, except in his heart.

Great theatre isn't about reality:  it's about naked emotional truth.  To make great theatre you need to make me feel your feelings and dream your dreams.

Uppal was right about one thing: some dreams are meant to die.

This play should never have been put on stage at a major theatre in this state. This production is a shoddy disservice to a great book that tells an incredible story.

One of the two artistic directors or dramaturges at the Factory should have put their foot down when this was still in development. There are plenty of skilled playwrights experienced at literary adaptations in town who could have made the book into an electrifying script. Sorry Professor, this is an epic fail.

Hopefully, the next show at the Factory Mainstage is better.

METAMORPHOSIS at THE ROYAL ALEX

It's always exciting to walk through the foyer of the Alex and hand your ticket over to one of those gracious, elegant gentlemen at the front of the interior doors to the lobby in their tuxedos and long black coats.  Every aspect of entering the theatre suggests you are about to be part of something special.

I was not disappointed last week.

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

So begins Franz Kafka's surreal novel, written in 1915, at the beginning of the First World War.

In this brilliant production, Gregor's awful transformation heightens rather than diminishes his humanity.  Damaged, confused, afraid and scarily vulnerable, he becomes an everyman of scorned frailty and repellant otherness.

As Gregor, the astonishing Bjorn Thors spends most of the performance literally climbing the walls of the bedroom that becomes his prison.

His room is presented from the start from a skewed perspective: the floor of the room is the back wall.  The downstairs of the house is a typical proscenium box set.  The aesthetic dissonance mirrors the difference between Gregor's experience of reality as a bewildered and suffering human and others' experience of him as a despised freak.

One by one, his own family:  father, (Tom Mannion) mother, (Edda Arnljotsdottir) and sister, (Unnar Osp Stefansdottir) turn on him.  Gregor becomes their curse: a source of extra work, a drain on their limited resources, an object of  escalating disgust, shame and embarrassment.  Their precarious middle class aspirations teeter on keeping his existence a dirty secret. Their escalating revulsion and viciousness towards their son, brother and former breadwinner is both utterly horrifying and completely believable.

Gregor's sanctuary, his room, becomes his cell and then his coffin, all at the hands of the people he loves. How does this happen?

I thought about Phoenix Sinclair and Jeffery Baldwin, Canadian children who were starved and beaten to death in Canada under the watchful eye of social service agencies while in the care and custody of their own families. No one noticed or intervened. What happens to Gregor happens to someone, somewhere, at home or in care, every single day.

Five actors, one set and a stylized, intelligent and physically rigorous production does more in 90 uninterrupted minutes to examine and illuminate human cruelty visited upon the vulnerable in a domestic enclave than any coroner's inquest.

The European cast performing in English is uniformly fine, with Thor giving the stand-out performance.  The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis enhances the production without ever intruding.

The much-admired production of an excellent adaptation of Franz Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS is certain to become one of the most talked about productions of this Toronto theatre season. David Farr of the RSC and Gisli Orn Gardarsson from Iceland's Ventursport Theatre have achieved that rare feat of making dynamic and engaging theatre out of a challenging work of literature. They are faithful to the absurdity and black humour of the book without abandoning its heart.

 Go: and bug someone to come with you. You'll have a lot talk about after the show.