REVIEW: Staging Mortality: COLD BLOOD & BETROFFENHEIT at CANADIAN STAGE

I've been to Canadian Stage two weeks in a row, where I saw two very different shows about mortality. Both shows were dance/theatre hybrids.  The body often speaks what words cannot.

As a culture, we have a very uneasy relationship with death, and the suffering and sorrow that often accompanies it.  Mostly, we avoid thinking about it or talking about it. Even funerals are now often referred to as "celebrations of life." No wailing or gnashing of teeth allowed anywhere, ever. No black armbands, no mourning dress, no public show of grief.

Thank Heaven, for a theatre where you can leave your game face at home, and the artists will let you weep quietly in the dark.

The delightfully eccentric Belgian duo of Michelle De Mey and Jaco Van Dorael decided to look at death from the point of view of dead people: people who died suddenly, inexplicably, by accident or design. COLD BLOOD was weird, wonderful and quite magical.  The miniature dioramas used to stage the various nano-dances the company created and live-projected with their tracking cameras, were perfect for the blackly charming, surrealistic tone of the show.

A dark cloud drifted across the massive centre screen, inky and nebulous.  We were told we were being hypnotized: in three, in two, in one. We got pulled under: to a Hades of their own invention.

At one moment, early on, a giddily gorgeous, and completely silly finger tap number, in black and white, screened at a drive-in. The camera pulled in tight on fabulously synchronized nano-tap in an art-deco inspired Never-never Land. As memories of  late-night Fred and Ginger, and Busby Berkley chorus girls fill our collective imaginations, a voice-over reminded us that when we see these old movies, all the people in them are dead.  Nostalgia:  bringing the past back to life.

The play moved into darker territory, albeit leavened with uneasy humour.

Plane crashes and car accidents happened. A murderess committed suicide, and an elegiac contemporary solo dance exquisitely conveyed the crushing isolation of her life in a world of concrete high-rises, and Tinder swipes.

The most moving moments of the evening were the last. A man left his wife in the midst of an unresolved spat to walk to work.  He donned the gear of an astronaut and headed off into space, never to return. David Bowie underscores his demise: an otherworldly drift into a limitless void.  We know The Starman whose music was a part of so many of our youths is gone forever.  The silence that followed the music was heart-breaking. There weren't many dry eyes in the house.

The show is still a little raw, and there are places where it feels awkward, struggling to find the right tone.  No matter: it was a beautiful and trippy voyage of imagination to a place where we'll all end up, but rarely plan on going.

Last weekend, Crystal Pite, Kidd Pivot and Jonathon Young returned to Toronto with their critically acclaimed show from  last summer's Panamania:  BETROFFENHEIT.  The collaborative creation examines a horrific personal tragedy and its effect on one of the survivors.

Young's only child and two of her cousins died in a fire, at  his wife's family summer property, in 2009. Young and his wife were asleep in another cabin. News reports from the time made mention of the fact Young was injured trying, unsuccessfully, to rescue the children. His marriage did not survive the accident.

The show follows Young on a nihilistic journey to the bottom of a void of addiction, despair and loss as he tries to escape, then examine, and finally accept what has happened. He gives a completely committed, utterly harrowing performance as a man nearly destroyed by guilt and grief.

Pite's astonishing and demanding choreography was brilliantly danced by her-jaw-dropping good company, Kidd Pivot. A Weimar-influenced cabaret has seldom seemed so seductive or damaging.

The movement, combined with the sets by Jay Gower Taylor, costumes by Nancy Bryant, fantastic sound design and composition by Owen Belton, Allesandro Juliani and Mae Rae, and evocative lighting by Tom Visser came together perfectly to create an arresting, intense and memorable night of theatre.

Young's text is great in parts (the beginning) and weaker in others (the long speech in Act II) and could, overall, have been pared back, particularly in the second half.

It's hard to be both the writer and the performer when the material is this close to the bone.

Young, Pite and company have salvaged beauty from tragedy and created a deeply moving work of art.

COLD BLOOD and BETROFFENHEIT both appeared at CANADIAN STAGE this February. BETROFFENHEIT continues on an international tour with stops in Vancouver and Victoria later this month:   http://www.kiddpivot.org

                               

REVIEW: Last Chances: THE WINTER'S TALE, THE CHERRY ORCHARD & ONE NIGHT ONLY

Two Fridays ago, I saw one of the most anticipated theatre events of the Toronto winter season to date.  Graham Abbey, long-time Stratford leading man has founded his own company, Groundling Theatre. In collaboration with COALMINE THEATRE  he is presenting his company's inaugural production, Shakespeare's THE WINTER'S TALE in the intimate confines of  Coalmine's new 100 seat venue at 1454 Danforth Avenue in Toronto.

If you join the groundlings in the cheap seats, as I did, for $20 you can have a plump velvet cushion against the wall, at the very edge of the stage, pretty much in the actor's aisle for entrances and exits.  The only way I could have been more immersed in the action, was to actually don the motley and go tread the boards myself. Not that the talent on stage needs any help from me or anyone else, thank you very much. It's an excellent production of the play with an absolutely stellar cast.

THE WINTER'S TALE is a difficult play to do well.  King Leontes (a masterful Tom McCamus)  the male protagonist is an unsympathetic character, and to a modern audience, incredibly sexist.  The tone of the first act is tragic, with a family destroyed by his jealousy and rage: the second act is comic and romantic, as a collapsed marriage gives way to young love among the rustics, reconciliation, and hope.

The action of the show begins with McCamus/Leontes watching his wife Hermione (an elegant and understated Michelle Giroux) and son in a film, a ghostly presence in his house. His late wife's closest ally  Paulina (Lucy Peacock, commands the stage as show's heart and its moral compass) hovers. He's tortured by regret and remorse.

McCamus plays Leontes as a man whose narcissistic rage and insecurity drive him to destroy his relationships with all the people he loves. He treats his wife and son like chattel, and drives his brother and his most loyal courtiers away.

The "exit pursued by a bear" at the end of the first half  is handled in an extraordinary fashion.  Brent Carver morphs from the victim, Antigonius, who is handed the horrifying task of leaving Leontes and Hemione's baby daughter to die in the woods into the beast who consumes him. Carver plays the moment as if his own grief and guilt come out of him to literally, eat him alive. Amazing.

Collectively, the company nails the tonal shift between the two halves, supported by a very simple but evocative design  by Steve Lucas and pitch-perfect music by performer and composer George Meanwell. Meanwell also provides a nice cameo in the role of Time at the top of second half of the play.

The second act, with Carver as the singing pick-pocket Artolycus and Mark Crawford and Robert Persichini as two hilariously dim-witted and good-hearted shepherds was an utter delight. As Perdita and Florizel, Sarena Parmar and Charlie Gallant are charming as the young star-crossed lovers, and Patrick Galligan was a suitably outraged Polixenes. The play ends with a real reconciliation between parents and children and then, Leontes and Hermione: tenuous but tender, and hard won.

There are rush seats at the door, but you need to arrive early, as they are coveted and few. I'd be hard pressed to think of a more romantic place for a theatre-lover to spend this Valentine's Day weekend, then as a groundling watching this polished, intelligent and very intimate production of Shakespeare. It's a night at the theatre to cherish.

If your Valentine likes having their funny bone tickled, you might want to head over to the Factory Theatre tonight and catch ONE NIGHT ONLY.- THE GREATEST MUSICAL NEVER WRITTEN this weekend.

An exceptionally good crew of improvisors: Ashley Botting, Carly Heffernan, Ron Pedserson, Jan Caruna, Reid Janisse and Alex Tindal,  in tandem with a kick-ass band led by Jordan Armstrong , and backstage Deus-ex-machina director Melody Johnson, create a musical, based on a series of suggestions from the audience on the spot:  For real! -and it totally works!

 The Factory's stage, which often feels unwieldy is put to excellent use here, with a gorgeous red velvet curtain hung in the proscenium arch centre stage, adding glamour and covering quick changes, entrances, and exits.  I'm not always a huge fan of improv, but the cast has great chops and work together like a well-oiled comedy machine.  After the show, there was a cabaret performance in the bar and an artist painting scenes from the show. I had a great time from start to finish. It's a very fun night out.

It's the last weekend for one of my favourite plays, THE CHERRY ORCHARD by independent company, The Chekhov Collective. It's about a family of charming upper class spendthrifts who have so squandered their fortune, that their family estate is about to be sold out from under them to pay their debts. A hundred years after its debut, it's still a great play about a paradise of carefree innocence lost to folly and fortune's changing tides. It's also a very challenging tragi-comedy, whose tone is tricky to capture. For the most part, this production gets the blend of humour and sorrow just right.

The largely white set by Dimitrii Khilchenko was very pretty to look at, but a little cluttered, and the scale of the set pieces felt too dainty for the space.  The director, Dmitry Zhukovsky  made vivid tableaux at the top of each act and did a lot of fine work with most of his actors. 


This production has some outstanding performances, particularly Andrew Pogson as Lopakhin, the peasant turned successful entrepreneur, Richard Sheridan Willis as Gaev, one of the owners of the orchard,  Llyandra Jones as the put-upon adopted daughter, Varya, Joy Tanner as Charlotte, the eccentric governess, and John Gilbert as Firs, the family's old servant. I also really enjoyed the antics of Nina Gilmour as the affected and silly besotted maid, Dunyasha and Yury Ruzhyev, the pretentious footman and object of her affections. Clayton Gray was charming as the sad-sack Yepihodov, the man who actually loves her, and who she wants nothing to do with. Harrison Thomas and Thalia Kane were a credible pair of young lovers as starving student Trofimov, and soon to be penniless daughter, Anya.

As Ranevskya, the family matriarch, Rena Polley seemed to struggle with her role and neither lighting, direction, or her costume did her any favours.

Most of the wardrobe was perfect for the period production, but Polley  looked out of place in a dress that was incongruously contemporary.  Worse yet, the lighting and blocking frequently left her delivering speeches in the dark.

In one of the play's most powerful moments, when her brother arrives at a party she's decide to throw on the night their house is auctioned off by the bank, they exchange a look and we see she finally grasps that they have lost their home for good. She delivers a moment of great emotional intensity that was barely allowed to register, as she was positioned onstage so she was visible to only a small portion of the audience.

It's worth checking out for both the play itself, and for the many good performances in the production.

THE WINTER'S TALE by GROUNDLING THEATRE COMPANY and presented by COALMINE THEATRE COMPANY continues at the Coalmine Theatre until February 20th http://www.coalminetheatre.com. ONE NIGHT ONLY continues at THE FACTORY THEATRE  http://www.factorytheatre.ca and click "What's On"( top upper l/h side)  or call (416)504 9971.  The CHEKHOV COLLECTIVE'S production of THE CHERRY ORCHARD continues at the Berkeley Street Theatre upstairs http://www.thechekhovcollective.com for dates, times and tickets.

TRUTH and RECONCILIATION: The Royal Winnipeg Ballet's GOING HOME STAR

There was a lot of heart onstage last night at the Sony Centre.

Andre Lewis, artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, spoke in French and English, welcoming and honouring two distinguished prima ballerinas, now retired from the stage: Karen Kain and Evelyn Hart. He also welcomed a contingent of elders from the 1st Nations community.  An elder, Bernard Nelson, from Eabametoong First Nation, held the feather and prayed over us. There were carvings from local aboriginal artists for sale in the lobby.  Social workers were on stand-by in case anyone found the story we were about to see too triggering.

The Bear Creek Drum Group drummed us into and out of the theatre, which was a truly spectacular highlight of the performance.

This wasn't your typical night at the ballet.

GOING HOME STAR is a collaboration between the 1st Nations Community and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB). For its 75th anniversary, the Winnipeg-based classical ballet company chose to create a full-length ballet derived from the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which was headed in Winnipeg. For those of you who have been living under a rock on Turtle Island, Justice Murray Sinclair toured the country, gathering an historic record of the experiences of the survivors of the residential school system.

The RWB commissioned a text from award-winning novelist Joseph Boyden, derived from the survivors' experiences, and then had their star choreographer, Mark Godden, turn the story into a ballet. The narrative is the lynchpin of the production.  It is one of the ballet's great strengths and also its principal weakness.

GOING HOME STAR is beautiful to look at, and certainly compelling, affecting, and disturbing. The set, projections, costumes, and score work well together.  The dancers were all in fine form. Tanya Tagaq's iconic voice glistened in Christos Hatzis' dense, and occasionally perplexing composition.

What GOING HOME STAR doesn't do very well is tell a clear story on stage.  Most of the audience studiously spent the interval with their faces in their programs reading the synopsis, trying to understand what they had just seen.  The second act used more voice-over as a component of the score, and was much easier to follow, and therefore connect with.

The cavernous Sony Centre stage rather overwhelmed the emotional intimacy of the piece. I so wished they'd had the Bluma Appel or even the Fleck as their Toronto venue.

GOING HOME STAR is a unique and valid, if uneven effort from Canada's oldest ballet company. The survivors of the residential school system have an important story to share with Canadians, and this iteration of the tragedy, with its message of hope and healing is well worth experiencing. Just be sure to get there early enough to read the synopsis first.

GOING HOME STAR is at the SONY CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS in TORONTO  tonight with tour dates across Western Canada this coming spring.  http://www.rwb.org

Overwhelming Beauty: KISS & CRY Astonishes at Canadian Stage

This weekend, Michele Anne De May and Jaco Van Dormael of Belgium and their extraordinary crew of technicians reprise their hit production from last season,  KISS & CRY at Canadian Stage.  I saw it last night, and it is a marvel.

Sensual, droll, and heart-breaking, visually mesmerizing, technically astonishing, and achingly lovely, KISS & CRY tells the story of a woman in the winter of her life, remembering her loves.

A series of dioramas and miniature tableaux are employed in relating the story, along with two pairs of incredibly dextrous and expressive hands. These are shot by a series of very fluid tracking cameras and projected onto a massive screen, centre stage. Voiced-over text and music underscore the shifting images, driving and shading the narrative as it unfolds.  The synthesis of sound and image submerses the audience in a dream-scape of couplings, and the myriad emotions the evolving relationships evoke.

If you want to give your best beloved an enchanting Valentine's night, skip dinner in an over-crowded restaurant next weekend, and head to Canadian Stage this week instead.  I can't think of a lovelier, or more romantic gift. Apparently there are still a few tickets left.

Kiss & Cry  continues at Canadian Stage's Bluma Appel Theatre until February 7th. http://www.canadianstage.com or (416) 368 3110.

From Russia with Love: Dmitry Zhukovsky Talks About DIrecting A CHERRY ORCHARD

Dmitry Zhukovsky is opening his production of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's most beloved play, THE CHERRY ORCHARD on the playwright's 112th birthday, January 29th.

"It's important to strike the right balance between drama and humour. I don't want it to be overly sentimental."

Finding the right tone has always been one of the trickier aspects of mounting the famous play. One of the most notorious "artistic differences" in theatrical history was a debate over precisely this subject. Chekhov gave the play to his friend, the great teacher, actor and founder of the Moscow Arts Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavsky to direct. Chekhov's wife, Olga Knipper, played Ranevskaya, the aristocratic matriarch, spendthrift and protagonist, whose ancestral family estate, including a beautiful cherry orchard is in danger of being sold to pay her family's debts.

The inaugural production, at the Moscow Arts Theatre also opened on Chekhov's birthday. Stanislavsky thought the play was a tragedy. Chekhov said his play was a comedy. The production received mixed reviews and the playwright was not happy with the debut, famously saying, "Stanislavsky has ruined my play."

Zhukovsky hopes to be more faithful to the playwright's intentions. I ask him why he thinks a play from 1904 still connects with contemporary theatre audiences.

"Chekhov poses universal and eternal questions of what it means to be human. At the moment of the play, each character is in an existential crisis. They are all overwhelmed by their own desires, their own issues. It's not about class structure, or old 19th century ideas. We've focused on human emotions and the emotional and intellectual relationships between the characters."

I point out that, in many ways, THE CHERRY ORCHARD centres around a real estate deal, specifically a fraught development deal. Certainly Toronto audiences can relate to that.

"Yes, the family at the centre of the play is trying to encapsulate a moment in their history, which is about to be lost. They have spent their childhoods in this incredibly beautiful pastoral landscape, a kind of Eden. The play is about a about a loss of innocence. In the design of the show, we have really worked to create the beauty and innocence of the place."

Zhukovsky has only been in Toronto for a few years, although he has already managed to start his own company, THEATRUS. This past fall, he presented work at Nuit Blanche. He worked for years as an actor, director and acting teacher in Russia. Russian is his first language. Whose translation is he using?

"Rena Polley, the company's instigator, has used a number of translations to assemble the script." Polley is also playing Ranevskaya. 

His cast includes a number of other well-known Toronto performers, including John Gilbert and Nina Gilmour.

I'm looking very forward to seeing what Zhukovsky and company do with one of my favourite plays.

The Cherry Orchard continues at the Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley Street, until February 14, 2016. Performances are Tuesday -Saturday at 8;00 PM with matinees at 2:00 PM on Sunday afternoons. Tickets are available at http://www.thechekhovcollective.com or in person at the box office.

IN THE BEGINNING: ANTOINE DEFOORT of GERMINAL ABOUT SURPRISES and MAKING THEATRE FROM SCRATCH

Antoine Defoort is in France this week, at home with his kids.  His GERMINAL creation partner, Halory Goerger, however, is in Toronto with their other three cast members, plus their three technicians, presenting their internationally acclaimed creation, GERMINAL at WORLD STAGE at HARBOURFRONT CENTRE. The morning we spoke, his team was on the plane.

The show opened last night, and is here for the weekend, as part of the festival, before moving on to Usine-C in Montreal for four performances in early February.

Why isn't Defoort coming to Canada?

"Halory and I take turns.  Last week, I was in New York.  This week, Halory comes.  We both have kids."  I can hear his wry smile in his voice. Whatever you create comes with its own demands.

So is GERMINAL created on the spot?  "No, the text is fixed. We adapt (the performance) to the text, to the audience. But each night, we begin from scratch, with the void, in the black box."

GERMINAL is a piece about the process of creation.  It asks the question: " What would you do if you were to create the world from scratch?"

What provoked the creation of this play?  "Halory and I began a project: a conceptual box, an allegory of the genesis of human civilization. It didn't work.  So we said: what if we begin at the beginning: where does creation begin?"

Is this biblical?  "Oh, no!  There are certain elements that are in Genesis (the first book of the Old Testament in both the Torah and the Christian Bible) but we wanted to think more about the act of creation;  how do you create? Many sparks drew us. It takes many sparks to create."

GERMINAL was first created at the invitation of the prestigious Biennale du Danse in Lyon in 2012. 

"We were surprised: we work with text - and visuals."

Defoort trained as a visual artist and his partner, Goerger, comes from theatre. Their collective creations are a synthesis of their mutual interests and expertise in these areas, with equal weight given to both text and aesthetics.

Since its premiere in 2012, GERMINAL has been a critical success, going on to play at prestigious festivals including the Carrefour International de Theatre in Quebec City, and the Festival D'Avignon.

What  else does Defoort want to tell me about the show?  Not much!

"I don't want to ruin the surprise! We work to surprise you! I want the audience come to the work as we came to create this: blank, then, together, we can go with the flow. There's a lot of build in the piece."

After repeating this creation for several years now, I wonder if he is still surprised by the piece as a performer.

"Oh yes!  Working with the piece for so long has allowed us to acquire a deep knowledge of the text, of the rhythm. Now we can play it with more refinement.  You know, when it is live, it's always different every night because the audience is different, how you meet is different."

It's true. As a performer in live theatre, one is always exquisitely conscious of the attention and energy of the audience, of their level of engagement.  It's a very nuanced relationship.

"It went well in New York. We got a very nice review in the New York Times."

Indeed they did.  Having read it, I think it would be fair to say it was a rave.

I'm looking very forward to my surprise from Goerger, Defoort and company this weekend.

GERMINAL opens THE WORLD STAGE FESTIVAL at HARBOURFRONT CENTRE and continues until January 23, 2016 with nightly performances at 8:00 PM. http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage or call (416) 973 4000. 

In Montreal for four performance from February 3-6 at USINE-C http://www.usine-c.com or 

(514) 521 4493 for tickets and information.

NEXT STAGE THEATRE FESTIVAL is a FINE START to TORONTO'S WINTER THEATRE SEASON

The tree is down, the seasonal parties are over, and the grim part of the winter has arrived: cold, snow, depleted cash, and expanded girth being all that remain of last month's festive excesses.

What better way to cheer oneself up after facing the dreary prospect of a Toronto January, then to travel down to the Factory Theatre where Next Stage Theatre Festival is heading towards its final weekend.

At this juncture, I've seen half the festival.  It's a strong program this year, with a number of exceptionally fine scripts. There's also a very nice heated tent housing the box office, and a bar with hot chocolate and other warming libations.

I started  my festival-going with THREE MEN IN A BOAT, Green Pea's adaptation of a turn-of-the century comedic novel by Jerome K. Jerome.  It's no wonder this Toronto Fringe festival remount has been a run-away audience favourite. The cast of three (plus Montmorency, the fox terrier) are absolutely delightful.  The arch production has a clever and very funny script by Mark Brownell and deft direction by Sue Miner, who keeps the trio's droll antics teetering on the precipice of camp. Matt Pilipiak, Scott Garland and Victor Pokinko play a hapless trio of toffs who decide to take a boating holiday on the Thames. Together they offer their fortunate audiences a combination of great chemistry, manic energy, and impeccable comic timing, making this feather-light vintage treat a must-see. Nina Oken's spot-on period costumes and the lovely vocal harmonies on those 1889 pop hits are the garnish on a show that goes down as effortlessly as a Pimm's #1 cup on a warm summer evening.

Next up was STUCK.  Natasha Boomer and an assortment of friends improvise a half-hour play on the basis of a suggestion thrown out to the comedic duo by the audience.  The day I was there, Boomer and Kevin Whalen were madly improvising on the premise they were stuck in his wife's bedroom closet. Whelan's actual wife, with baby in arms, was seated in the front row. As if that weren't enough plot for 30 minutes, the fire alarm went off in the theatre.  The performer's played through like the troopers they are, incorporating the ringing bells into their act, until the Toronto fire department insisted we evacuate the premises for real. We were about 12 minutes in at that point. Bummer! The performers were so three G (that's good, giving and game for you non Dan-Savage readers) that I'm happily heading back in this weekend to see what a complete version of this high-stakes premise turns out like. I'm betting fast and fun.

Monday night, I saw BLOOD WILD, by Rabbit in A Hat Productions from Montreal.  It's a cleverly written and well-executed (all puns intended) old fashioned, shoot 'em up Western, with whiskey, saloon girls, gunslingers, train robbers, and, of course, a sheriff.  Directors Paul Van Dyck (also the writer) and Sara Rodriguez keep the ton's-o-action plot moving along at a good giddy-up. The cast of David Baby, Julia Borsellino, Eric Davis, Patricia Sumersett, Alex Weiner and Paul Van Dyck manage the gun-play and word-play with equal ease. Sumersett and Borsellino play siblings, and the intensity and tenderness of their relationship gives the show heart.

Next up, was one of the most anticipated plays of the festival, Nicholas Billon's adaptation of the Greek tragedy AGAMEMNON. Billon does not credit his source material in the program, although "after the play by Aeschylus" is clearly on the handbill, so perhaps this was simply an oversight. Certainly, I was glad I knew the original play. His truncated and cryptic adaptation is long on visuals and smart ideas, but short on the development of story and relationships.

Designers Shannon Lea Doyle (set/costumes/projections), Kaitlin Hickey (lighting), Andy Trithardt (sound) and director Sarah Kitz offer a very stylized and au courant production, with the ghost of Iphigenia hovering over the production, unseen by the household, but ever present onstage, perched on a massive pair of stilts.

The cast is excellent and the characters Billon has created are fascinating, but the roles are, for the most part, underwritten. Susanna Fournier as Chrysothemis is a wilding teenager, anorexic-thin and throwing herself at any and every man who comes into her cross-hairs. Amy Keating  does a fine job of creating an Electra who is an asexual gamer/psycho/hobbit. Samantha Brown as Cassandra is a foreigner brought home as a trophy of war by Agamemnon.  Ron Kennell makes a blackly comedic meal of the role of  Clytemnestra's castrato/toy-boy/henchman Aegisthus. Marcel Stewart as Halaesus does fine work in one of the more developed characters in the play, Agamemnon's buttoned-down, PSTD addled aide-de-camp. Earl Pasko is also wonderful as the Old Man.

As Agamemnon, Nigel Shawn Williams plays the conquering hero with great gravitas and a smouldering undercurrent of violence. As  his wife, Clytemnestra, Brigit Wilson creates a middle-aged woman both defiantly reveling in, and afraid of losing her sexual power.  The murder of her rival here is so unsupported by the text that nothing the actors valiantly try to do can wall-paper over the gaping hole in the text. The laughter that greeted her bloody appearance after the murder came from complete disbelief at the turn of events. The ending was fantastically chilling: foreboding and terrifying.

It's a 45 minute show in a 75 minute slot. I hope Billon finishes writing the play and remounts it.  It's definitely going to some really intriguing places: but it's not quite there yet.

NEXT STAGE THEATRE FESTIVAL continues until January 17th at the Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street.  For a full schedule, tickets go to http://www.fringetoronto.com or call 416 966 1062.