The Ballad of Weedy Peetstraw – playing at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of SummerWorks – is a bluegrass opera by Peter Anderson and John Millard. As the show opened there were 4 people on stage and the theatre was filled with beautiful singing. I assumed that it was recorded because, even though it had the feeling of live singing, the sound was so big I couldn’t imagine that there were enough people left in the cast to make it.
Utopia. It’s a bold title for a play, right? It’s got all kinds of philosophical baggage that comes with it. Any work of art that stamps such a word on a program owes some allegiance to the weight of that baggage. At SummerWorks this year, Len Falkenstein’s Utopia can wear its title with pride.
The story is this: Karen owns a farm she loves, handed down to her from her father, and she is determined to make a living from it, and create a life for her daughter, Jess. Jess doesn’t want that life, she wants to run off with one of the farm workers—Zach. Into this little family drama, a planet appears and attaches itself to Karen’s property. This planet is full of the natural resources we’ve almost completely squandered here on earth, and those resources attract the attention of corporations and politicians. Will Karen agree to sell her claim to this planet, or will she protect it (as an extension of her farm)? Continue reading Utopia (Theatre Free Radical) 2013 SummerWorks Review→
What is an oubliette? I sure didn’t know until this SummerWorks show where I found myself thrown headfirst into one to meet four unnamed women who have survived a war and are forced to deal with each other and the shared memories of their old lives.
An oubliette is a dungeon, with access only through the top. What better venue for such a setting than the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. The space is high and narrow, and you are forced to look down upon the performers who always seem trapped. It is a dynamic that wouldn’t work for all plays, but it certainly works for Think,Pig!‘s production of Oubliette. Continue reading Oubliette (Think, Pig!) 2013 SummerWorks Review→
Sunny Drake, currently starring in X (at the Scotiabank Studio), is a force of nature. A real-life cartoon. He bounds, jumps, fizzes and cranks his way across the stage, full of pluck and charisma–and we can’t look away. Drake’s considerable talent as a performer also extends to staging: his cheap-but-brilliant lighting tricks are a highlight of the performance. This is someone who knows how to play to his strengths, who knows what his audience is here to see, and has no shame or guilt in throwing it at them.
Rushing into The Anglican Church of The Epiphany and St. Mark at the very last minute, I wasn’t able to read the program notes for Purgatory in Ingleton ahead of time. If I had, I would not have felt so lost during the performance. Or rather, I would have understood that my feeling lost was somewhat the point of this SummerWorks play.
