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Relatable family conundrums and existential humour for all comers in Vania and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Plosive Production’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a two-act production with plenty of tongue-in-cheek Chekhovian references for the well-read and relatable family conundrums and existential humour for all.

Middle-aged siblings Vanya (Chris Ralph) and Sonia (Mary Ellis) live humdrum lives in their childhood home in Pennsylvania. That is, until their static daily routine is disrupted by the arrival of their vainglorious movie-star sister and benefactor Masha (Teri Loretto-Valentik), with arm-candy Spike (Drew Moore) in tow. To her siblings’ despair, Masha announces her intent to sell the family home. Deep-seated sibling rivalries and mid-life crises mingle as the characters discover what it truly means to live.

The Red Carpet Theatre Society Presents Interior Panic

Interior Panic: A short but stunning showcase of one woman’s descent into madness

A quick Google search will tell you that Interior: Panic is the prequel to Tennessee William’s masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire. As a huge fan of that play, I was thrilled to see this production and revisit one of my favorite flawed females. This show adds a whole new dimension and understanding to the infamous Blanche Dubois (Blanche Shannon here). Happily, Interior: Panic also stands well on its own so it can be appreciated by theater patrons of all backgrounds.

Family foibles with a Russian twist in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Don’t let the name fool you. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (VSMS) is not the twelve-act adaptation of some soul-crushing Russian epic – though it does have its Chekhov influences. Rather, VSMS is a two-act comedy about three siblings and their rivalries and squabbles as they live their middle ages.

After caring for their parents during some very difficult years, Vanya and Sonia live a retired lifestyle on the family estate. While they seem to have no material wants, after an outburst from Sonia it begins clear that they envy their sister Masha, who went on to live the life of a movie star after their parents developed Alzheimer’s.

Sonia complains of the tedium of a life she’s yet to live — in such a way that these complaints also seem embedded in her routine. However, the predictability of their lives is soon disturbed when Masha makes an an unannounced visit, bearing news of the family estate’s imminent sale and Spike, a vapid and virile young actor who just can’t seem to keep his clothes on…

Young artists dazzle at the 18th Youth Infringement Festival.

This past week saw the 2016 instalment of the Youth Infringement Festival. The festival, now in its 18th year, is an opportunity for young theatre artists to practice and put to work their passions in a way that generally isn’t open to them. Every play presented is written, directed, and performed entirely by artists aged 15-25 (under the mentorship of local professionals) and the festival itself is produced by young adults in that same age bracket. Some of the artists are enrolled in post secondary theatre studies or already have various stage credits to their names, but many have only their high school drama experiences behind them.

Like the upcoming Ottawa Fringe Festival coming up in just about a month, Youth Infringement is a theatre buffet of different shows and styles. Of the six plays presented this year, three of them impressed me quite a bit so let’s start with them:

Ottawa Little Theatre’s Mouse House keeps you guessing.

Mouse House sees best selling gay author, Carson, looking for inspiration to finish off his latest book. To find it, the socially anxious Carson decides to spend a few weeks back at the isolated cabin where he and his brother grew up. His hopes of peace, quiet, and serenity are dashed pretty quickly when an intruder breaks into the cottage in the middle of the nigh to rob it. The robber, Troy is quickly knocked out with a bottle of wine too good to have wasted on him and wakes up the next morning chained to a bed.

Check your brains at the door and enjoy My Fair Zombie at The Gladstone

In the beloved Tony Award winning Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, Professor Henry Higgins accepts a bet to take an uncouth cockney flower girl, train her in speech and manners, and pass her off indistinguishable from a well bred Lady of high society inside of six months. No spoilers from me as to whether or not he succeeds but I know what you’re thinking. What if Professor Higgins had been given a real challenge? What if Eliza Doolittle had been a zombie?

Well, welcome to the London of My Fair Zombie, where zombie attacks are the norm, roaming the streets in packs at night, and where, for the living, dealing with death is just a way of life. An extended opening song and scene is followed by one such attack, resultings in Higgins saving Eliza from being put down and the bet begins.

Examination of Woyzeck’s tormented soul a bit of a headache in Third Wall’s Woyzeck’s Head.

In Third Wall Theatre’s first professional production in two years, James Richardson takes us inside the head of the troubled and tormented Woyzeck. We see Woyzeck as a soldier. We see Woyzeck undergoing medical experimentation. We see Woyzeck jealous of his lover’s growing closeness to an attractive drum major.

What we don’t see, or at least what I somehow missed, was the thread weaving those individual lines together. Without that thread, the individual elements were so disconnected from one another so as to create a lack of cohesion and an antipathy for even being in the theatre. Leaving things open to interpretation is valid. Seeking to push an audience to think and make their own connections is valid. Staging to keep an audience at arms distance from connecting to the main character is valid. But here, now, and especially when it comes to that third one, it didn’t work for me. In the end, in my antipathy, I was simply left wondering why? Why care? Nothing in this show answered the (to me) important question of why should I care about this guy, why do I want to be in his head, and why does this warrant my attention?

Phoenix Players’ Staff Room doesn’t quite make the grade

The staff room. That mysterious place typically forbidden to students and where teachers can let slide their authoritative personae. Ever wonder what they get up to in there? The Phoenix Players’ production of Staff Room endeavours to shed some light on the matter.

The results, while comedic at times, tend to show that even these learned administrators are subject to the same human flaws as the rest of us. As Andre Dimitrijevic mentions in his director’s notes, because many of us, perhaps in Ottawa particularly, work in offices with staff rooms likes these, places which are a kind of “sanctuary… where insiders can drop their guards or hatch plots and where new members are tested or indoctrinated.”

The GCTC presents Janet Wilson Meets the Queen

Hey Mama Welcome to the 60s!: GCTC Presents a Retro-Themed Season Closer

Let’s go back, way back, to 1969, a time of Vietnam War draft dodgers, the emergence of contemporary feminism, astronauts landing on the moon, hippie-driven free love, and the crumbling façade of domestic bliss. Janet Wilson Meets the Queen shows us these clichés and more in a darkly comic coming of age tale that will have you questioning your own politics from start to finish.