Unfortunately, for the first time, we won’t be giving you reviews in video from. I know. Boo. Logistics meant we wouldn’t have a video until after Undercurrents was over and we’ve learned that, traditionally, not many people watch the reviews after the shows close. So we’ll all have to live with words this time out. And photos. We do have photos.

Before jumping into that, remember that Undercurrents runs until February 19th and you still have a few chances to see four out of the six shows. And you should.

Not sure what Undercurrents is? Check out our feature article.

We’re posting the reviews in the order we caught the shows. Just thought you might be wondering.

AND THEN IT HAPPENS

And Then it Happens is a hard play to describe. At Undercurrents last year, Two Little Birds Theatre Company had an interactive set-up where they tried to find out from theatre-goers what it was they loved about theatre and wanted to see more of. This show, on the surface, is about trying to deliver on the myriad of answers they got and give people what they asked for. To that end, Sarah Conn (who may be my newest theatre crush), Kiersten Hanley, Laura Astwood, and Guy Marsan (who looks kind of like Ashton Kutcher), delve into a series of little skits that feel more improv show than scripted performance.

Where the show rises above amateur-hour antics is where it starts to push its theme – which is whether tis better to try and give an audience what they want or to simply pursue the art and hope the audience follows. How can you entirely satisfy a room of X-hundred different people, and, should you try? They don’t address that this presupposes whether an audience actually knows what they want. What’s that quote about faster horses?

The show morphs from light and airy to a tone serious enough for a Post Secret event as they bring it back to the beginning, and show us that while we’re all different and want different things, maybe, deep down, we’re all the same. It’s all about trying to make a connection. Performer to audience. Person to person.

In the end, And Then it Happens is a very different type of show, and while not for you if you’re looking for straight up theatre, the performers are fairly engaging, and it’s interesting food for thought.

Edit: I just read Patrick Langstone’s review in the Ottawa Citizen. Perhaps proving the point, I’m the other 50%.

BLUE BOX

Carmen Aguirre’s Blue Box is basically just Carmen Aguirre up on stage telling you her story. Two things to note about that. One, she’s a solid, captivating performer who can easily draw you into her world. Two, she’s got quite a story to tell.

After she tells you the real name of her show, which is too naughty for marketing, the main core of what Aguirre talks about is her *ahem* love life, largely surrounding her repeated encounters with a TV star she calls only “Vision Man” – who’s kind of a douche. Aguirre repeatedly shifts out of this main story to jump into short snippets of her way-more-interesting-than-mine life as a member of the Chilean resistance. She practices the leave them wanting more approach each time she shifts between threads of her story to another time period right at the point you’re most eager to find out what happens next and this is the third way she’s able to easily enthrall you and draw you into her saucy sexy-time story for the full eighty-minute run-time of the show.

If Carmen Aguirre’s name already sounds familiar, you might know her from numerous television roles or you might have heard her name in relation to her book, “Something Fierce” which chronicles her life and time, again, as a member of the underground Chilean resistance during the Pinochet-era. While the show’s now closed out its Undercurrents run, catch it if you can in the future. Or buy the book, which was the very recent winner of CBC’s Canada Reads after a bit of controversy.

LIVE FROM THE BELLY OF A WHALE

Mi Casa Theatre’s Live from the Belly of a Whale is a very long title. And that’s about the most negative thing I can say about this play, which previewed last summer as part of the 2011 Ottawa Fringe Festival. We reviewed it then, but to sum up: Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano have wonderful chemistry, charisma and charm, their theatricality level is ninja, their story was… okay.

A lot has changed between Fringe then and Undercurrents now. The story has been retooled pretty heavily and is a much stronger look at the relationship and ever-changing bond between two siblings. Simply named Sister and Brother, the two share a love of cetacean life until Brother becomes moon-obsessed and it creates a rift between the two.

What hasn’t changed is the charm and chemistry Pearlman (still my biggest theatre crush) and Di Gaetano have on stage. The amount of charm that has me wanting to bring out that old trope about watching them perform the phone book. Fortunately, though, that’s not what they’re doing and instead they have a strong, funny, and touching story to back them up. The two perfectly capture the relationship and imagination of two young siblings. I might have liked a slightly more concrete ending but considering it’s a very metaphorical story and such a minor point in light of the rest of the show, let’s get back to the positives. There’s a lot of laughs throughout the show, some nice self-aware audience interaction, and the two performers know how to take full advantage of the suspension of disbelief audiences adopt as they show off a wide variety of theatrical techniques to create a magical show. Plus, I’d so iPod the soundtrack if they ever release the songs.

The bad news for you readers is that Live from the Belly of a Whale has already closed out its Undercurrents run after selling out all five shows pretty well before the festival even started. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Mi Casa Theatre mount the show again in the future, so jump on it if the opportunity comes up.

HIGHWAY 63

The main through line of Highway 63 is the story of Steve, Chad, and Mary. Steve’s a reclamation scientist, and Chad’s a worker bee and good old boy from The Rock. Both moved to Fort McMurray for work and Chad in particular only plans on staying short term. Mary on the other hand grew up in Fort Mac and intends to head to Toronto for University.

Through their story and a series of intercut verbatim testimonials, the performers show us what life and living is like on the Athabasca oil sands in Northern Ontario. The interviews and research that went into the creation of Highway 63 sets up a strong foundation but it’s thanks to performers Georgina Beaty, Brendan McMurty-Howlett and Jonathan Seinen that the show is so good. They’re all three hilarious and great in their roles, making the show a riot – though there are also some nice emotional beats like Chad’s nightmare, which was very well-staged.

And overall, Highway 63 delivers both on the promise of showing what life is like on the oil sands, and also the promise of –without going all neo-hippy– informing you what’s happening out that way, making you think about our relationship to the Earth, and wondering whether our terraforming Northern Alberta is worth it. There’s a very poignant scene where Mary’s character tries to explain the reclamation process with a cake. Messy business.

Having seen all but one show so far, this is easily my choice for second best show to run at Undercurrents, and since you can’t see the other one anymore, Highway 63 should be the top of your list. Plus, because this show comes from an out-of-town company, the likelihood of seeing it out this way again is low, meaning catch it while you can.

WEETUBE 5400

When you go into a show and you’re encouraged to drink and to leave at any time you like to get another drink, because the actors fully plan to be drinking during the show, you know this is going to be a show that will make theatre-puritans cry. 

After kicking off with a screening of YouTube’s safety video, WeeTube 5400 takes a playlist of the most absurd, random, worrisome, and pointless viral videos on YouTube – the kind you wonder, “why does this exist” – and plays the ones the audience chooses to see, working their way through  three categories of video. Then, creators James Long (who looks much less like Joss Whedon in person than his photo would have you believe) and Maiko Bae Yamamoto perform four minutes’ worth of the comments posted to the videos. This, aside from generating a lot of laughs, shows the absurdity of treating the comment stream as if it were real conversation. The point this hammers home is that these are things you’d never say in person. Ever. Yet people post them online behind the veil of anonymity time and again.

Going into sidebar territory, one of the videos on their playlist was flagged enough based on community standards that it was taken down just before the show. A quick search turned up a re-upload so we were able to watch but that means all the original comments now only exist as part of this show. When you go, remember to ask for the Tiger video. I think it was in the second category.

Long and Yamamoto are fun performers with great timing and so this is a super fun show for mindless laughs – and beer – but it’s more stand-up comedy than theatre. And fun though it was, I’m glad it was only eightyish minutes because unless you do intend to get drunk, it starts to get a bit tired after seventy.

I was thinking of posting one of the videos from their playlist but that would spoil it if it comes up during your show. So I’ll drop an embed in here after Undercurrents.

PS – Jason Long, if you’re reading. The back button on your web browser. Use it. :)

FALLING OPEN

We weren’t/aren’t able to see this show until the last day of Undercurrents. It’s won an award for “Outstanding Original Work” at Fringe in 2011, but we can’t tell you first hand what you can expect. Anybody out there want to chime in in the comments?

Please, tell us in the comments what you thought of any of the shows. How many did you catch? What would you see again? Not only do we really want to know what you think, the show creators might be lurking out there somewhere waiting to hear, too.

AND – if you haven’t checked out some or all of these plays yet, four of the six still have shows left between now and Sunday the 19th. Check them out. Full schedule posted to the GCTC website.

*Photo credits: Natascha Nikeprelevic (And Then it Happens), Itai Erdal (Blue Box), Andrew Alexander (Live from the Belly of a Whale), Layne Coleman (Highway 63), Gunter Gamper (WeeTube 5400)

Having trouble watching the video? Watch it directly on YouTube.

*A town whose name I won’t pretend to try and spell.

Translations runs at the Ottawa Little Theatre in downtown Ottawa until March 3rd. Full information: Visit their website for more details.

And something new we’re trying out, here’s our Translations gallery:

All photos taken by Production Ottawa photographer, David Pasho.

Windcast, produced by Valley Wind Productions, is a regular feature of Production Ottawa, with new videos posted at the beginning of every month. Think of them like the funnies of more traditional media.

In this episode, the Windcasters take on auditions and present some audition tips that will probably seem pretty obvious to you actor types.

For more information on this video or to watch more episodes, visit it’s YouTube page and see the video description.

Now, we had been ready to post a great preview video featuring an interview with festival producer Patrick Gauthier who expertly articulated what Undercurrents was about better than a few paragraphs will be able to do, but unfortunate technical difficulties decided that that wasn’t going to happen so words will have to do it this time. As is, we’re a bit late getting this article up but fortunately there’s still opportunity to see most shows over the next week.

Live from the Belly of a Whale (photo by Andrew Alexander)

Independent theatre in Ottawa has grown quite a bit over the last few years but for most of these small companies, the cost of mounting and promoting a show just isn’t feasible. This means that, outside of the Ottawa Fringe Festival, there aren’t many opportunities for them to showcase their work. Particularly if that work is more experimental in nature and not something that would appeal to mainstream audiences. Enter Undercurrents, presented by the Great Canadian Theatre Company.

Produced by Patrick Gauthier, the Undercurrents Festival, which started in 2011, is about showcasing works of independent theatre that are more experimental in structure or in content and so would be less likely to be celebrated on mainstream stages. The festival subtitles itself as “theatre below the mainstream.” That isn’t to say the shows aren’t quality, just that they aren’t likely to draw large audiences into a theatre over a multi-week run.

In terms of content and being a forum to showcase experimental work, Undercurrents is not unlike Fringe Festivals the world over, but where it differs (in what many would call a positive way) is that the shows are hand-picked rather than chosen by lottery, which suggests a higher level of overall quality. Also, with Undercurrents, the shows all take place in one venue – in this case, the Studio Theatre in the Great Canadian Theatre Company. Proving that the concept is sound, Undercurrents had an 86% attendance level in its first year.

This year’s festival sees six different shows -chosen from 75 applicants- being presented five times in a staggered schedule over the almost two week run of the festival. Three are put on by local companies while three come from companies outside of Ottawa. Tickets are $15 each and you can also buy a three or six show pass and save a couple bucks per show.

The Undercurrents Lineup

• Live from the Belly of a Whale, an “epic of cetacean proportions” about a pair of siblings growing up and having to shed the magic and imaginings of childhood, created by local theatre celebrities, Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Geatano (Mi Casa Theatre), that was previewed for audiences at Ottawa Fringe 2011 (we reviewed it then). This show was so anticipated as to sell out all of its shows before Undercurrents even started though if you’re really lucky, you might be able to snag the tickets of some last minute cancellations.
• Falling Open is another show that was first presented at Ottawa Fringe 2011, though this one in writer-performer Luna Allison’s own bedroom to very limited seating. It’s a one-woman show about sexual abuse told from the perspective of a living doll who bore witness to it all. Below the mainstream, indeed.
• And Then it Happens, comes from Two Little Birds Theatre Company, who sourced the material for their show at last year’s Undercurrents and Wakefest, with interactive exercises designed to find out from theatre-goers just what they want with the intent of using the information gathered to better create a human-to-human connection through art. The show, billed as “theatrical potluck” is about presenting those findings.

Highway 63 (photo by Layne Coleman)

And from non-local companies:

• Blue Box, whose real title is too saucy for marketing, was written and performed by recent Canada Reads winner, Carmen Aguirre. The show is her story, also chronicled in her winning memoir “Something Fierce“, and is about love and life as an underground revolutionary in Chile and then afterwards.
• Highway 63; The Fort Mac Show, which examines our relationships with the earth, with each other, and with the places we live as told from residents of the northern tip of highway 63 – the Athabascan Oil Sands.
• WeeTube 5400, a show inspired and developed from the comments on YouTube videos where “usual niceties of courtesy and amiability do not seem to apply.”

Blue Box and Highway 63 come from Toronto companies, while WeeTube 5400 comes to town all the way from Vancouver. Also worth noting that both Falling Open, and Live from the Belly of a Whale were award winning shows at Ottawa Fringe 2011. Falling Open won for “Outstanding Original Work” while Live from the Belly of a Whale won for “Outstanding Overall Production” and “Outstanding Concept.”

You can find out more information about all the shows, including detailed showtimes, at the Great Canadian Theatre Company website, gctc.ca. And keep watching Production Ottawa where we’ll be posting reviews for every show we see.

Happy theatre-going.

Should You See It is a movie review podcast produced by Production Ottawa to let you know what’s worth your very-in-demand time or money. Every month they talk about a specific topic on their mind and recap what’s worth looking at in theatres in the coming month.

This month, Matthew Champ talks about awards shows, specifically the Golden Globes, and whether they have a place in today’s movie-going world?

Check out ShouldYouSeeIt.com for all their regular movie reviews including the recent “The Woman in Black” and “Safe House”

And for you lovers of the written word, here’s the scripety-script in print form:

Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac is a classic tragic hero. Master swordsman and master wordsmith alike with no shortage of panache and bravado. Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac is also a classic man in the friend-zone when the woman he loves, Roxanne, asks him to take the man she loves under his protection.

Cyrano’s problem is that he was born with an unfortunately large nose a couple hundred years before the birth of the first cosmetic surgeon. Suspecting that no woman, let alone the beautiful Roxanne, could possibly love a man with his sense of smell, Cyrano hides behind his schnoz as an excuse never to tell Roxanne how he feels. Instead, he loves her by proxy through Christian. Roxanne loves Christian. Roxanne loves beautiful prose. Christian loves Roxanne. Christian’s no poet. So Cyrano lends Christian his wit, coaching him on what to say and writing a bunch of beautiful letters to Roxanne bearing Christian’s signature.

There are sword fights. There are laughs. There’s a war with the Spanish. And there were almost tears at the end of the play, which is being presented by ‘Plosive Productions at the Gladstone.

Richard Gélinas plays Cyrano and despite his prosthetic proboscis being not quite the colour of his skin, he does a truly remarkable job capturing the necessary panache and bon vivance that the character needs to carry the play named after him. Élise Gauthier is talented and gorgeous as Roxanne and everybody in the cast of too many to name individually carry themselves admirably, some of them double, or even triple, cast. Worth special mention is Stewart Matthews who stands out in multiple scenes as a true comrade in arms to Cyrano as his best bud, Le Bret.

The only real false beat to speak of was Christian’s alone to bear and is a commentary on actor Warren Bain’s look more than his acting. With his troubadour hair and his extremely youthful look, his moustache just wasn’t working. It made him come across as one of those fourteen year olds with a possibly pasted on baby stache who are just trying to look older and cooler among their peers.

But that shouldn’t set you back. Especially if you’ve never had the chance to see this classic play in person before – and this is a new translation of the original French text – you won’t regret taking the time to check it out during it’s current run at the Gladtsone. Details. Below.

*Disclosure: Matthew Champ, our usual reviewer, was unable to attend this play. Cyrano de Bergerac was reviewed by Allan Mackey who left the on camera delivery to the professional.

Every year, Hot House is broken down into three parts, roughly the first Mondays of February, March, and April, each given to a third of the year’s students. Their plays are put on as a staged reading, with some basic blocking but very little in the way of frills. Here, it’s all about the words. And for a ticket price of only five dollars, audiences are invited to sit down and watch the first public performance of six or seven works as different from one another as pepper and cheese, written by students who might well become Ottawa’s next great playwrights. Especially on a night when most local theatres are dark, there’s no better entertainment value – or way to support emerging playwrights – for the $5 ticket price.

We talked to this Hot House’s playwrights and the coordinator of the Scriptwriting program, Lynn Tarzwell, so here’s Hot House in their  words:

Hot House 2012 (Night 1) takes place in the Algonquin Studio, N112 (in N building), Monday night, February 13th, starting at 7pm. Tickets are $5 and there is free guest parking in Lot 8 nearby.

February 13th’s Plays:

• Pills (written by Cristina Guaglio)
• Deluge (written by Fraser White)
• Sonnet (written by Devon Bryant)
• The Roster (written by Shawn Collins)
• Chameleon (written by Cihan Vercan)
• Metastable (written by Sean McNorgan)
• Soldier A (written by Kurt Shantz)

Scriptwriting Program Coordinator: Lynn Tarzwell
Faculty: Eleanor Crowder
Artistic Director: Doug Phillips

Brett Kelly also stars in the headlining My Dead Girlfriend

In addition to My Dead Girlfriend, the event, called Zombie Night in Canada, will also highlight the work of other local filmmakers; screening Anik Rompre’s “Zombies vs Love”, Ralph Gethings’ “Walking Dead Tales“, and Randy Smith’s “Fear of the Living Dead“. The filmmakers will be on hand through the evening and while there’s no word on any kind of talk back or Q&A, they will be handing out a selection of door prizes to lucky audience members. Let’s hope initiation into the ranks of the living dead isn’t top prize – unless it’s in the movie.

Proceeds from Zombie Night in Canada will be put towards the production of My Fair Zombie – a zombified parody of Pygmalion – when it goes to camera in the spring, and Kelly plans to give attendees to this little soiree a sneak peek at what will be his 22nd movie. Brett Kelly’s decade-and-then-some career has seen international DVD or video-on-demand distribution on all of his films, including The Bonesetter, Pirates: Quest for Snake Island, and most recently, Hell at My Heels, which was picked for North American Release by Lionsgate.

If you’re an undead sympathsizer or living impaired yourself and/or just want to support local filmmaking and have a good time, get yourself out for an, er, lively, night of fun when the dead rise on February 16th. The event starts at 9pm at the Orleans Mayfair (250 Centrum Blvd) with a nine dollar ticket. No discount for the living dead, sorry. And note that neither the undead nor the Mayfair take plastic, so bring cash.

Bullet point details:

• Zombie Night in Canada
• Feb 16th 2 9pm
• Mayfair Orleans (250 Centrum Blvd)
• Tickets: $9

Need more convincing? Watch our 4 minute preview of the Blood on the Moon featuring a few scenes and interviews with Pierre Brault, and the director of the show.

What do you think? Was James Patrick Whelan guilty or innocent? Tell us in the comments below.

For lover of the written word, here’s the review script in print form:

Writer and performer Pierre Brault first performed Blood on the Moon on a Fringe stage in 1999. From there, he did runs at the National Arts Centre three years in a row, toured across Canada, took the show to Ireland, and did an on camera presentation of the show for Bravo. That alone tells you the one thing you need to know: see this show at the GCTC while you can.

Blood on the Moon is a look at a topic we ignore way too easily: Canadian History. In 1868, one of the fathers of confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was assassinated on his front door after a parliamentary debate that ran to 2 in the morning. James Patrick Whelan was put on trial for the crime, and despite dodgy testimony and circumstantial evidence, Whelan was found guilty and publicly hanged. It was the last public hanging in Canada.

Pierre Brault portrays Patrick Whelan and tells the story from his point of view. An innocent man put on trial, convicted, and hanged for a crime –that in the play’s point of view- he didn’t commit. But don’t go thinking that this is the type of dry lecture you got in high school history class. Brault blends a lot of jokes and humour into the drama of Blood on the Moon and he brings these characters — he plays 17 of them in addition to Whelan – to life before your eyes in this one-man show.

His skill at changing between characters with completely different accents, combined with the flow and pacing of the play is done so well that you’ll be so caught up in what’s happening that it won’t even occur to you until afterwards that. “Hey, this was all just one guy and a chair.”

And yes, Blood on the Moon takes minimalist set design to a new level. It may be only a single chair on a blank stage but they create all manner of settings just with the lighting design, starting in the opening moments with a 3 by 9 foot rectangle of light on the floor that you’ll immediately recognize as a stark, lonely prison cell.

But what might be the coolest thing to take away from Blood on the Moon is that this entire event happened here, in our very own city. McGee was assassinated right on Sparks Street, James Whelan was held and hanged at the Old Nicholas Street Jail which is now a hostel that gives daily tours and the court case was heard at what’s now Arts Court right next to it.

All Canadian history should be delivered like this. Buy your tickets to Blood on the Moon before they’re sold out.

*Disclosure: Matthew Champ, our on camera reviewer, was unable to attend this play. Blood on the Moon was reviewed by Allan Mackey who left the on camera delivery to the professional.

Blood on the Moon runs until February 5th at the Great Canadian Theatre Company at Hollan/Wellington. Visit their website for full details.

Watch the Production Ottawa review of Blood on the Moon right here.