Off the Fence

2008-07-17T00:34:00.002-04:00

Charlie Brooker is my hero.

Reason number a million. (Is anyone else finding it disturbing how often 9/11 conspiracy theorists pop up in your day-to-day life?)

2008-07-16T23:04:00.001-04:00

Keep on bloggin' in the free world...

Those of you who followed the link a few posts ago may have noticed that I am now blogging about theatre over on the Globe and Mail website at the unambiguously titled Nestruck on Theatre blog. (NOT, for short.)

Though I have been blogging for five years in this little corner of the Internet and have got used to the occasional skirmish, I must admit I was a wee bit shocked to suddenly find a prominent playwright and director I admire in the comments telling me that my reviews are "quickly dashed off, ill considered, poorly thought out, and completely subjective knee jerk reaction[s] to a painstakingly constructed, carefully considered, well thought out piece of theatre". Yoicks. I guess this is why Terry Teachout doesn't allow comments on his blog...

But, you know, if I can dish it out, as it were, then I should be able to take it. And I am quite excited to be trying something relatively new for a critic, foolhardy though it may be.

The question salient to you folks who come here, of course, is what am I do to with Off the Fence (formerly On the Fence until I had a loss of faithlessness in England). Obviously, I must dedicate myself to my new home for a bit, but I feel that there will always be important non-theatre issues that will draw me back here.

For instance, here is my question about Katy Perry's song I Kissed a Girl, which I love and hate myself for loving. Is the way that she sings the word "it" over two syllables the most annoying moment in popular song in the past five years - or is it pure mothereffing genius?

2008-07-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

Oh come on...

It's a funny cover.

2008-07-11T00:21:00.000-04:00

OMG.

I love MGMT.

2008-07-02T19:09:00.001-04:00

Work in progress...

Check it out.

2008-06-29T00:43:00.003-04:00

His own personal Jesus.

Father Raymond J de Souza writes the most ludicrous paragraph I've read in months, re: the failed appeal of his former boss Conrad Black:

The courts have spoken, and definitively so. The legal process is over. The great man has been jailed. The sadness is deep, but not complete, for from Florida the caged bird still sings.

OK, even Black's defenders must find that embarrassing... What a Maya Angeloulou!

2008-06-25T16:21:00.005-04:00

Reviewing the reviewer: I have no heart.

Celia McBride responds to my review of So Many Doors in a letter to the Globe:

I have to admit I was awestruck by reviewer J. Kelly Nestruck's lack of emotional reaction to my play So Many Doors (All The Right Stuff, Yet So Unmoving - Review, June 14). We've met audience members unable to speak after the show, sobs still caught in throat, eyes puffy from crying - truly moved. [Read on.]

I know many playwrights/directors/actors are hesitant to respond to reviews, fearful that it makes them look unprofessional or touchy, but I'm in favour of dialogue about theatre in general...

Speaking of, Marty Bragg's response to my review of My Name is Rachel Corrie - in which I called him "faint-hearted" for backtracking on producing the play - is here.

Double speaking of: Anthony Neilson responds to Michael Billington's one-star review of his new play Relocated:

This is the great danger of the play-as-thesis. It assumes that the play is an expression of the playwright's character. And, since playwrights desire approval as much as the next person, it leads to dishonest and complacent work. A play should reflect life as the playwright sees it - not as they, or anyone else, wishes it to be. If one sees a world in which there are no permanent truths, it is dishonest to fabricate them for the sake of approbation. Worse, it is a dereliction of duty. A play-as-thesis is by nature reductive, an attempt to bring order to the unruliness of existence. But bringing order is the business of the state, not the artist.

2008-06-25T09:45:00.003-04:00

More hard-hitting journalism from Le Journal de Montreal

Yesterday, Le Journal sent a staffer pretending to be a unilingual anglophone out to Montreal's St-Jean Baptiste parade in a Canada T-shirt. Absolutely nothing happened.

Everyday, more and more, it seems like Le Journal is taking its editorial direction from Just for Laughs: Gags...

(Bonne belated St-Jean à tous!)

2008-06-24T23:49:00.002-04:00

Master of Ceremonies Hammer

The Columbia Journalism Review has a great little article about the New York Times' difficulty finding a consistent style for rappers. Why does RZA get referred to as Robert Diggs and then Mr Diggs on second reference, while a pop star like Elton John is rarely outed as Reginald Dwight?

Even more confusing are articles that seem to follow no logic whatsoever: a December 3, 2006, Times profile on celebrity Sirius Radio hosts refers to rap personality Ludacris as Christopher Bridges (and as “Mr. Bridges” in subsequent references), but allows Eminem (Marshall Mathers), Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus), and Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) to use their stage names. On second reference, though, Bob Dylan is “Mr. Dylan,” while Eminem remains Eminem; Snoop is only mentioned once, but judging by former Times treatments he would have been called “Snoop” or “Snoop Dogg” had his name come up again.

“If you look in our archives, which we famously refer to as our compendium of past errors, you’ll see plenty of examples of us looking ridiculous,” Sifton says. “One of the difficulties that the Times has in addressing contemporary culture, and certainly hip-hop culture, is that we risk looking stupid all the time.” [Via Optimus Crime]

2008-06-24T18:36:00.004-04:00

Canadian Theatre in New York Day.

Look, it's a somewhat-difficult-to-figure-out-if-it's-positive-or-negative review in the New York Times of Bash'd!, the gay hip-hopera by Nathan Cuckow and Chris Craddock:

The production confers a kind of sainthood on [main characters] Dillon and Jack — taking a supernatural turn at one point, it appropriates the heavenly wings of “Angels in America” — but then “Bash’d!” isn’t drama; it’s fabulist agitprop. Yet it comes down to earth at the right times, and is blunt where it needs to be, in its vigorous defense of gay marriage and in a haunting recitation of names of people murdered in homophobic hysteria, beginning with Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena. And going on. And on. And on. In such moments “Bash’d!” shows its rage, its grief and its driven, heartfelt determination.

Here's the unabash'dly positive review from AP. I love the headline in particular: "‘Bash’d’ champions gay civil rights — in rap." That's kind of like: "Old people in documentary sing about aging - in rock'n'roll!" or "Woman makes way to market - on bicycle!"

(I'm allowed to make jokes about copy editors, because some of my best friends are copy editors.)

2008-06-24T12:32:00.003-04:00

Judith Thompson narrowly misses first tier of adjectives.

Her play Palace of the End, which opened off-Broadway last night, nearly gets a great review in the New York Times:

Three scalding monologues make up Judith Thompson’s “Palace of the End” at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, and three pitch-perfect performers deliver them. Which, a couple of years ago, would have made for courageous, electrifying theater, since Ms. Thompson’s subject is the travesties associated with the war in Iraq.

Now, though, this production by the Epic Theater Ensemble has to settle for the second tier of adjectives — “absorbing,” “thought-provoking” — because the territory has been pretty thoroughly worked over in plays, documentaries, books and articles of all sorts. That’s not to say that examining the war and its effects is no longer important; just to warn that this intense hour and 40 minutes may, to American viewers who have already taken in a lot of such stuff, start to feel like self-flagellation (or perhaps like being flogged by a neighbor; Ms. Thompson is Canadian).

Variety, meanwhile, is not impressed.

2008-06-24T12:22:00.004-04:00

Down with the J!

Oh crap. This isn't going to make crossing the border any easier for me...

2008-06-23T10:32:00.003-04:00

You go away for a couple of weeks...

And Marty Bragg resigns as artistic producer of CanStage aka Canadian Stage. My guess is that soon after he is gone, Toronto theatre will miss having ol' Bragg to kick around. That's been a popular sport at least since he moved George F Walker's Heaven from the Bluma to the smaller Berkeley in 2000. (Coincidentally or not, Walker hasn't written a new work for the stage since...)

Other playwrights who have beefed with him publicly recently include Joanna McClelland Glass, Colleen Murphy and Brad Fraser. The critics have had it out for him since Hair with at least one calling for his resignation. Then there was the My Name is Rachel Corrie debacle and then the mistake of hiring David Storch as "artistic director" but not letting him artistically direct... It's been piling up.

You can't really call seventeen years with an organisation a capitulation, however. Bragg is one of charismatic presences in Toronto theatre and a real survivor. Perhaps later on we'll think more fondly of his successes... My main desire is that CanStage go (back?) to the more traditional arrangement of general manager and artistic director. Artistic producer has always like seemed like an oxymoron to me.

ANIMUS UPDATE: Looks like we can transfer any kicks towards the very alive horse Luminato. Mike Wheeler has an entertaining and incisive rant going after the festival run by the politically well-connected here: "[T]his is bad strategy. It’s the same kind of Lastman-era flawed logic that got us a basketball team named The Raptors and the notion that somehow we can buy a world class city instead of building one." Word, though I am grateful to any festival that brings us the likes of Black Watch and Tim Supple's A Midsummer Night's Dream...

2008-06-22T23:48:00.005-04:00

Feckless journalism.

The Guardian, a newspaper written by adults for adults, recently ran an article about the explosion of bands that have the word "fuck" in their name. Wrote Alexis Petridis:

[Fuck] might just have still retained some of its capacity to shock in the punk era, but its omnipresence in hip-hop, the most popular music in the world, did for that. Three years ago a pop record called Fuck It was knocked off the top of the charts by a pop record called Fuck You Right Back and not an eyebrow was raised. And perhaps that's the real reason why so many bands have "fuck" in their name: it's just an everyday word.

Well, in the UK perhaps. Meanwhile over in the States, The New York Times, a newspaper run by inadvertently comic self-censors masquerading as adults, couldn't even bring itself to print the name of the band Fucked Up in a review of one of said band's concerts - not even with asterisks; readers were helpfully pointed to a blog URL where they could learn the name of the band the NYT thought worthy of a review. But this is a newspaper that couldn't even bring itself to print the title of Owen Pallett's (admittedly stupidly titled) album He Poos Clouds.

I know I complained about the New York Times' policy just a couple weeks ago, but there's something about this that just really sticks in my craw...

2008-06-13T12:14:00.004-04:00

Hive2 gets Stars3

I'm on holiday in Montreal until Thursday, but some of the Magnetic North reviews are still appearing.

UPDATE: And here's the 2.5/4 star review for So Many Doors by Celia McBride.

2008-06-11T20:25:00.005-04:00

Vantastic.

Well, OK, the weather isn't Vanastic at all in Vancouver. But the Magnetic North theatre festival ain't half bad. Though there have been a couple of hitches - here's my report from today's Globe:

Do disasters always strike in three? The Magnetic North Theatre Festival's recent run of lousy luck is testing the principle out.

First, Calgary playwright Sharon Pollock's house burned down.

Then, Newfoundland director Lois Brown was hit by a car and is in hospital with broken legs.

Finally, on Monday night, the RMS Titanic sank. [Read on.]

And a few new reviews: Loft from The 7 Fingers (Les 7 doigts de la main) gets four stars; Kevin Loring's debut play Where the Blood Mixes gets two and a half stars; and Tim Supple's A Midsummer Night's Dream gets 3.5 stars (this one's at Luminato in Toronto).

I have also seen April 14, 1912, Theatre Rusticle's dance-theatre piece about the Titanic (which previously got four stars in the Globe from Paula Citron); Hive2 (the review will appear in a day or two); and Townsville, the Mag North student production which was all about, er, the concerns of theatre students, but was well-performed, had a great design and featured Crystal Castles' Air War, which is basically all you need to win me over.

And I've seen all this while battling labyrinthitis, which explains the lack of bloggery and also explains why I am so looking forward to taking a week off starting Friday.

2008-06-07T12:02:00.003-04:00

Review round-up: Black Watch, Rachel Corrie, Love's Labour's Lost

Busy time for theatre critics. Shaw and Stratford have segued into Luminato in Toronto... Then I'm off to Vancouver for Magnetic North tomorrow morning. Here are some reviews I haven't had a chance to post over the last few days:

- Love's Labour's Lost at Stratford - 2/4 stars.

- The National Theatre of Scotland's visiting production of Black Watch gets 3.5/4 stars. (You'll find a couple of versions of this review up on the Globe's website from different editions - it was my first opportunity to file an overnight review for the Globe.)

- And the contentious My Name Is Rachel Corrie gets 3/4 stars:

[I]s the play itself as one-sided as its critics say?

Absolutely, though it never pretends to be more than the personal writings of one individual who identified with the Palestinian cause.

We might want Corrie to view the conflict through a wider lens, to not excuse suicide bombings the way she does, but we're stuck with her the way she actually was.

To a certain extent, anyway. Rickman and Viner have watered down Corrie's views to make her more palatable, a questionable decision that seems politically rather than artistically motivated. The references to "chronic, insidious genocide" that appear in her published letters, for instance, are omitted in the passages quoted here. The decision not to present Corrie with all her warts (some do remain) is problematic, verging on the propagandistic. [Read the whole thing]

What I'm referring to here is a line that appears in her letters as: "Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature."

It ends up in the play as: "Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature."

What do you think? Attempt to whitewash or judicious editing?

2008-06-03T14:58:00.003-04:00

Shrew oughta know.

OK, the puns are getting weak as we approach the end of Shaw/Stratford opening madness. Today, Peter Hinton's The Taming of the Shrew gets three stars from me in the Globe:

The play opens with a rendition of My Husband's Got No Courage in Him (one of many popular songs from Shakespeare's time interspersed through the show to provide the "shrewish" perspective). Hinton immediately cuts to a pub scene where a wife is tied to a "ducking stool" and dunked underwater. This early form of waterboarding was a typical punishment, according to the program, for "a woman deemed to be a common scold"; the Elizabethans had ways of making you not talk.

This contextualization allows us to understand why Irene Poole's limping Katherina might be tetchy. If it was hard being a woman at the time, it must have been tougher still for a disabled one. [Read on.]

The Toronto Star's Richard Ouzounian is not so impressed, gives only 2/4 stars, while The Sun's John Coulbourn goes for 3.5/5.

For the fractionally challenged, I wonder if I should start rounding these reviews up with a common denominator? That'd be 15/20 from me, 14/20 from the Sun and 10/20 from The Star. Or should I do it in percentages? 75% from me, 70% from the Sun and 50% from The Star?

2008-06-02T15:53:00.003-04:00

Euripides pants? Eumenides now!

Stratford Festival's The Trojan Women gets three stars from me. Great cast, low-budget sci-fi design:

If the Stratford Shakespeare Festival should ever find itself under attack by ancient Greeks, never fear: The theatre's female company members could easily repel them. The Trojan Women shows just how ferociously strong four of them - Martha Henry, Kelli Fox, Seana McKenna and Yanna McIntosh - can be. [Read on.]

I'm sorry Marti Maraden had to bear the brunt of that little where-are-the-exciting-Canadian-directors rant at the end of the review. It could have been dropped in to many a review...

On the other hand, TTW gets a full 5/5 rave from John Coulbourn in the Sun, 3.5/4 from The Star's Richard Ouzounian and a rave from the Waterloo Record too

2008-06-01T21:14:00.002-04:00

You have to be pooing me.

From The New York Times magazine's recent article The Return of the One-Man Band:

[Owen] Pallett’s decision to limit his options seems motivated not by a desire to do less with his songs, in a minimalist sense, but by the hope of avoiding those things that most bands do too much of. The sleeve of Final Fantasy’s most recent album (the title is at once innocent and vulgar, and can’t be printed here) lists violin, trombone, concertina, accordion, harpsichord, a string quartet, shouting and a monologue among its instruments, but guitar is nowhere to be found; neither, for that matter, is a drum kit.

The New York Times can't print He Poos Clouds? That's just ridiculous.

2008-05-31T11:01:00.003-04:00

Stratford: Cabaret

This one's a bit of a divider. Amanda Dehnert's revival gets 2.5/4 stars from me:

[O]n the whole, there's just too much busyness going off in all directions. A silent-film motif (with video projection by Sean Nieuwenhuis) often takes away from the production numbers, and there are too many ill-advised attempts to get the audience involved, including a failed gambit to get people dancing in the aisles. I understand Dehnert wants us to feel implicated, but it just makes us feel uncomfortable.

The Star's Richie O goes up a half star to 3, while The Sun's John Coulbourn goes with 4.5/5 despite calling Trish Lindström "an unfortunate choice" for Sally Bowles.

2008-05-30T10:41:00.002-04:00

Stratford Festival: The Music Man

My review is up and, yes!, I pull out the ol' Four Stars for only the second time in my tenure at the Globe:

Well, I'm sold! Sure, I fancy myself a sophistimacated fella from the big city, immune to cotton-headed sentimental fluffery. But I gotta tell you folks that you'd be missing out big time if you didn't head on down to the Stratford Festival of Shakespearean Splendours and catch their light-as-a-feather, family-friendly revival of The Music Man.

It's pure candy floss for the soul, I tell you, guaranteed to rotate any frown by 180 degrees and put more spring in your step than a Swiss watchsmith turned shoe maker. [Read on.]

If you think I got a little bit carried away trying to emulate Harold Hill's patter there, you should have read it before the copy editors got their wise hands on it. Though I will forever mourn the loss of my reference to Samuel Tilden...

On the other hand: The Star gives a full 4/4 as well, while The Sun goes for 4/5.

2008-05-29T12:52:00.003-04:00

Let the Danes begin!

The Straw and Shatford reviews continue to flow. First up, Ben Carlson's Hamlet directed by Adrian Noble - which gets 3.5/4 stars from me:

When Ben Carlson's Hamlet picks up Yorick's skull in that much-parodied graveside scene, he doesn't look the old jester straight in the eye sockets as is usual. Instead, he holds the cranium high above his head as if he is remembering being a small child below and contemplating the long, sad passage of time that separates that time of ignorant innocence from now.

There are dozens of magically melancholy moments like that in Adrian Noble's new production, where crisp direction and compelling acting combine to make Shakespeare's greatest play seem fresh even in its most familiar scenes. [Read on]

In the Star, Richard O. goes for the same number of stars and calls Carlson's "the kind of performance that comes along once in a lifetime," while John Coulbourn goes for 4.5/5 and shifts the focus to Noble.

Next, back to Niagara-on-the-Lake and to Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town, which gets 3/4 stars for me:

New York, New York - it's a wonderful town. Actually, first it was "a helluva town," but in the film version of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town the lyric was softened.

And it was after that revised lyric that Bernstein's next musical, Wonderful Town, was titled. The least well-known of the composer's New York trilogy (the third being West Side Story), this 1953 Tony winner is getting an entertaining revival at the Shaw Festival that has its wonderful moments, but is not quite the helluva show it could be. [Read on.]

The Star's R.O. is half a star more enthused, while The Sun's Johnny C goes for 4/5.

2008-05-27T17:35:00.004-04:00

Stratford Festival: Romeo and Juliet

Read it online before it hits the paper tomorrow. Two and a half stars out of four for Des McAnuff's first Stratford production since 1983:

In the thrilling opening to his new production, a pregnant woman and her baby get caught in the crossfire of rival gangs of Capulets and Montagues, who duel with switchblades, pistols and Vespas until the Prince breaks them up with his Uzi. The following flashy scenes set in modern-day Italy include iPod-toting Lolitas and a barista making espressos right on stage. ...
After the spectacular opening, McAnuff has a few more tricks up the humungous sleeves of Paul Tazewell's colourful costumes. None, however, are clever enough to paper over the production's gaping hole: a Romeo and a Juliet who are both out of their depth. [Read the whole thing.]

It's not all set in modern-day Italy, by the way. I think it's quite clever what McAnuff has done, read the review to find out more, he wrote coyly and hoping to keep his review atop the "Most Viewed" list.

On the other hand: Richard Ouzounian's the only other one with a review up so far. He has many of the same things to say in The Star: 2.5/4 stars. (Those of you who are fond of the Ooze's "cool dad" moments, will enjoy his incorporation of the phrase, "Don't be hatin'.")

Has a Stratford show ever ended with a Cure song before? Something tells me no...

2008-05-27T14:56:00.004-04:00

Shaw Festival: The Little Foxes

Not nasty enough, according to my 2.5/4 star review in today's Globe:

While [Eda]Holmes's production tells the story competently enough, it is simply too polite.

For example, Regina's line about being either "a coloured or a millionaire" is in fact Holmes's bowdlerized version of Hellman's original line; the script uses the terrible word "nigger" there and throughout the script, but she or the Shaw has cut them all. I'm sure there were good intentions behind this anachronistic alteration, but my question is: If you're going to put on The Little Foxes but don't want to disturb or unsettle the audience, why put it on at all? [Read the whole thing.]

(I think, by the way, you could justify taking the N-word out of the show; it's just that here it's representative of an overall toning down of the production.)

Having just watched Des McAnuff's unostentatiously post-racial production of Romeo and Juliet last night (Juliet, Montague, Tybalt and Capulet's Wife being among those played by actors of colour) at Stratford, I'm particularly glad I highlighted the lack of colour-blind casting at Shaw so far this season in this review.* If I were a visible minority up at the Shaw, I think I would find it a little bit depressing that the only roles available to people who looked like me outside of the musical in the first round of openings were maids and servants... Little Foxes has a specific racial dynamic in its plot, but none of the other shows would have been hurt.

On the other hand: The Star's Richard Ouzounian gives The Little Foxes 2/4 stars, while The Sun's John Coulbourn goes for 3.5/5. John Law in the Niagara Falls Review, however, gives 4/5 and raves: "It's hard to imagine the Shaw operating at a higher level."

(NOTE: This post has been edited after I received an email informing me that Shaw's later openings will feature more colour-blind casting.)