i-ROBOT Theatre

Birds & Stone Theatre

June 17 -25, 2011

http://www.swallowabicycle.com/irobot.html

Stories about robots that can interact with humans are certainly nothing new. Whether you favoured HAL, Rosie, KITT, C-3PO or the Fembots, robot stories in all their various genres and mediums have become fairly commonplace. Except in the theatre. Think about it…..when’s the last time you saw a robot story that didn’t involve the tricked-out special effects that can only come with a big blockbuster movie? Or at the very least, the visual magic that TV can provide? Robot stories in the theatre can’t rely on technical wizardry to tell their stores. And therefore, for a lo-fi robot story to work, it must have a compelling plot, actors able to behave inhumanly, and just enough “cool” stuff to give the performance that science fiction feel.

i-ROBOT delivers quite well on all three counts.

The play starts in the home of Jonathan. A man living alone, yet surrounded by intuitive talking robots that take care of his every need. His bed adjusts its firmness depending on how restless he is. An alarm desperately tries to wake him every morning. His lamp dims or brightens as Jonathan needs to see. A humidifier works tirelessly to make sure he is moist enough. His TV finds the channel Jonathan needs according to his viewing preference and a toaster lives just to make him the perfect breakfast. But Queen among robots is Jonathan’s wife, a perfect human replica he made himself as a proto-type for a robot project he is working on at his job.

We learn that Jonathan will be presenting these prototypes to important investors in the hope that his next generation robots will mean big money for the company. But the investors, while impressed with how human the robots appear and act, are put off by the fact that they are too human and turn down the investment. Jonathan’s boss demands he stop wasting company money and shut off the prototypes, including his own wife. While Jonathan is crushed at the career defeat and even more despondent at having to lose a wife he has come to love, he is not so far gone into techno-creepy land that he cannot disengage from the project. Arriving home, Jonathan explains to his robot wife what has happened at work and that he will have to shut her down. She protests, declaring her love for him – love she says is beyond simply her programming and refuses to comply. Things turn ugly from there. Without giving away the whole plot, we are treated to robot rebellion, robot self-actualization, robot self-doubt, robot death and robot afterlife.

It’s a complex plot at times with many ideas, philosophies and imaginative themes taking place. Not to mention a poetic narrative running through the performance. Frankly it’s a play that a lot can be said about. But, in the spirit of the robot, I will be succinct and precise. Here’s the good and not so good:

Good

1. The opening scene where Jonathan’s appliances talk to him and then talk behind his back when he leaves is a brilliantly written and produced piece of theatre. In fact, all the scenes involving his appliances are well worth the price of admission

2. Jeffrey Olynek who plays Jonathan gives a wonderful subtle performance that allows his character to be somewhat nerdy without falling into tiresome cliché.

3. The three prototype factory robots, Mikaela Cochrane, Elaine Weryshko and Scott Morris steal the show with their combination robot/human delivery and intense characterization. Bravo to all three actors equally.

4. A scene in the second act that depicts a computer ossuary is spectacularly creepy and beautiful. This scene perfectly shows that you don’t need special effects to create impact when you have good writing and good acting.

Not so good

1. I wish I could say that all the cast was a strong as those I mentioned above. This was not the case. I was especially disappointed with the wife robot, whose performance lacked the energy, intensity and believability I would have liked to see.

2. A pseudo dance scene in the second act was amateurish and went on far too long. I understand that it was to be a representative plot driver, but it was unnecessary and took away from the flow of the story.

3. The final scenes were a little thin. I like unresolved stories and plots that don’t spoon feed you all the answers, but the play’s ending felt more like a lackluster trickle-off than a satisfying halt.

RATING

For the guys – It may be lo-fi sci-fi, but it has all the elements that made you love robot stories in the first place – SEE IT

For the girls – It may be sci-fi, but this is not a testosterone-fuelled story. It’s funny and sad and you’ll wish your humidifier talked to you this way – SEE IT

For the occasional audience – While the robot story will be familiar to you, the performance may be too alternative and experimental for your liking – SKIP IT

For the theatre junkie – If you are ready to forgive some performance and plot issues, it’s an incredibly well- conceived imaginative piece of theatre unlike anything you’ve seen before. SEE IT

Queen Anne’s Revenge – The Rise and Fall of Blackbeard the Pirate

Arrata Opera Centre

June 9 to 18, 2011

www.thisisamobhit.com

 

I don’t know which would have been more disappointing, watching the Canucks get walloped in game 7 of the Stanley Cup or sitting through the performance of Queen Anne’s Revenge last night. I think if made to choose, I’d have to say the play was more unfortunate. Vancouver was beaten fair and square and I really can’t complain, but I feel that Queen Anne’s Revenge unfairly forced my dislike through unnecessary and avoidable elements.

First though, the plot.

The play opens with a Royal sailor by the name of Teech who has been let go from the service and is in need of a sailing job. Unable to find legitimate work, he signs up with a crew of pirates under the rule of Captain Hornigold. The crew gets cranky when Hornigold won’t let them pillage English ships and a mutiny unfolds putting Teech in the captain’s role. Teech, unafraid to pillage any type or nationality of ship, earns a wide reputation as a man to be feared. Embracing his new found cult status, Teech takes on the persona of Blackbeard by donning ….you guessed it…a big black beard….and playing up this mythically nefarious persona.

At the same time, we are introduced to Governor Eden of the colony of North Carolina and his beautiful daughter Charlotte. Eden is suffering from a lung disease and the only way for him to get the medicine he needs is by appealing to the Governor from South Carolina, Spottswood, to give him the curatives in return for Charlotte’s hand in marriage. Charlotte loves her father beyond all else and is more than willing to marry Spottswood, despite her dislike of him, if it means her father’s health and happiness.

The two stories collide when Blackbeard decides to set up a blockade on South Carolina until Spottswood pays for the colony’s release. Charlotte and her friend Grace are captured by Blackbeard en route to South Carolina to arrange for the wedding to Governor Spottswood. Despite his pirate behaviour, Blackbeard shows gentlemanly kindness to Charlotte. A romance blossoms between the two, only to be complicated by plots of revenge from both the ousted pirate Captain Hornigold and Governor Spottswood himself.

I have no issue with the story itself. It’s a fairly safe and classic boy and girl from two different worlds meet and fall in love type of affair. And the staging, with the video projections as background scenery and the double-sided stage, was innovative and visually very clever. It was the dancing and the singing and a portion of the acting that threw the play into a tail spin for me.

I have let it be known before that I hate musicals. But to call this a musical would actually be disrespectful to the genre. Instead, what we get are generally horrid voices, singing poorly written songs that only take away from the flow and energy of the play itself. It’s a small theatre and the audience sits VERY close to the actors so there was no mistaking the many off-key or just average singing voices. But in fairness, the voices may have been better had the libretto not been so awkward. With mostly atonal music to sing by, cliché verses and sloppy phrasing, it would have been hard for even decent singers to sound great. The dancing sequences were even more of a mess. None in the cast are professional dancers, and their movements were comically stilted and amateurish.

I have no idea why the playwright felt the need to ruin a perfectly good story with these silly asides of song and dance by a cast so inept at the tasks, but by the sixth or seventh time they broke out into song, I literally had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

The acting was another head-scratcher for me. There were several standouts in the cast that kept me engaged. Sarah Wheeldon as Charlotte was outstanding as the classic goody-two-shoes with a secret passion for adventure. She was also the only member of the cast that could really sing. As tiresome as her songs were, at least it was nice to hear a decent voice giving life to them. Jeremy Coulter as both Governor Eden and Captain Hornigold carried the stage with great bravado brought dimension to his fairly thinly-constructed characters. Aaron Ranger as Israel Hands, Blackbeard’s right hand, gave a wonderful natural performance that was one of the most believable of the night. Even Darren Hopwood as Blackbeard did a fine enough job. But just when I thought I could at least settle into decent acting and forget the rest, I got hit with some of the worst performances I’ve seen in a long time. Suffice it to say that outside of Wheeldon, the women in the ensemble were remarkably awful and one of the male leads embarrassingly so. People….if you are going to do accents….can you PLEASE be consistent about them and not allow them to fade in and out or change national dialect throughout the play?!

Clocking in at 2 hours and 45 minutes with a 15 minute intermission, Queen Anne’s Revenge was a long journey that unfortunately ran aground for me.

RATING

For the guys – Yes there are pirates and sword fights. But the pirates sing and dance (sort of) SKIP IT

For the girls – Yes it’s a romantic love story. But the pirates sing and dance (sort of) SKIP IT

For the occasional audience – The staging is cool and there is some good acting MAYBE SEE IT

For the theatre junkie – Don’t. Trust me. SKIP IT

The Importance of Being Ernest

Scotiabank Theatre Chinook

June 2 and 25

http://www.cineplex.com/Movies/MovieDetails/The-Importance-of-Being-Earnest.aspx?date=2011-6-2&loc_cookie=CALGARY+-+AB&tab=cineplex#Showtimes

 

I normally don’t have wonderful things to say about Cineplex theatres. Admission is too expensive, the popcorn is often stale or overly salty (or both) and the lobby’s arcade décor and resulting decibel level is enough to make you want to stay at home and rent a DVD instead.

But when Cineplex airs one of its Front Row Centre Events, they become my hero. In 2006, the smarty-pants at Cineplex realized that by airing quality theatre, opera and concert events, they would be able to lure back the adult audiences that had been steadily slipping away over the years. My understanding is that this strategy has been a huge success for the company, and I couldn’t be happier. The productions they show are fantastic, the filming technique superb, the price points are reasonable and because the performances are captured live-to-tape in High-Definition, it truly does feel like you are part of the real audience.

The Importance of Being Ernest, the Oscar Wilde classic, is the latest offering from the Cineplex folks. Directed by and Starring Tony-award winning actor Brian Bedford, the play debuted at Stratford in 2009 to rave reviews. Then off to Broadway it went where the raves continued, landing the play an extended run and Bedford a 2011 Tony nomination for his portrayal of Lady Bracknell. Yup. You read that right. Bedford takes on the role of the formidable older woman in the play in a  way that forever changes what it means for an actor to gender-bend.

The play centers around a non-existent man named Ernest Worthing. He is the alter-ego of Jack Worthing who uses that name whenever he visits London so he can behave as he pleases without having to soil his real reputation. To his friends in the country, Ernest is Jack’s troublemaker brother. In the city, Jack is Ernest. The main reason Jack desires to visit the city these days is because he is in love with Gwendolyn Fairfax, who is very keen to marry him but cannot overcome the disapproval of her mother, Lady Bracknell. The problem it seems, is that no one knows who Jack/Ernest’s parents are. As a baby, he was found abandoned by a man who raised him, left him a fortune, an estate, and a pretty young ward – Cecily Cardew.

When Jack’s city friend, Algernon Moncrieff (Algy) learns of Cecily’s existence, he decides he must meet her. Pretending to be Ernest, he shows up at Jack’s country estate. Cecily is delighted to finally meet the black sheep of the family, and she and Algy fall in love. Jack arrives home, followed shortly thereafter by Gwendolyn and Lady Bracknell. Mistaken identity, high farce, plot twists and a surprise ending take over from there in a play that Wilde himself called “a trivial comedy for serious people.”

While the story itself may be trivial, there is no great moral lesson or social importance to be learned from the show, the use of language in the play is anything but frivolous. Wilde’s famous use of sarcasm, wit and clever turn-of-phrase are on full and glorious display in this script and the lines literally dance in your brain like an intellectual tickle-fest.

But we already know that the play itself is spectacular. The real question is, how’s the acting?

Bedford is not the first male actor to take on the role of Lady Bracknell, but there is no doubt that he is the first male to actually become the Lady Bracknell. The wonder of his acting in this performance is that he embodies the cantankerous upper-class woman without one iota of camp or affectation. In fact, he is so believably good at the part, you quickly forget it is Brian Bedford playing a woman and instead just revel in the character and her juicy, scene-stealing lines. His Tony nomination is well deserved and as my companion noted to me, “I could have watched Bedford as Lady Bracknell for 5 more hours!”

However, if you think this is a one great performance play, I am happy to say that this isn’t the case. There is not a weak link in the entire cast, and in true Wilde form, not a single character goes without the bon mot lines that keep the audience laughing. Of particular mention is Santino Fontana’s Algy, who takes his roguish persona to a new level by bringing modern effortlessness to a very smart-alecky, erudite character.

This is an outstandingly fun and clever play, performed by an outstandingly talented cast and brought to Calgary by an outstandingly savvy corporate initiative.

 

RATING

For the guys – Watching the men get into and out of trouble with the ladies will ring all your bells. SEE IT

For the gals – Watching the men dig themselves into a hole and seeing the ladies hold all the cards to get them out again is great fun. SEE IT

For the occasional audience – It’s a light, fun comedy with tons of great lines you’ll wish you wrote down so you could use them again. SEE IT

For the theater junkie – You love Wilde already. Get ready to love Bedford and his cast. SEE IT