For all its didacticism, Caterwaul Theatre‘s Unintentionally Depressing Children’s Tales has a misleading title. Meticulous, wistful, and wise, not a single moment in this set of stories is either depressing or unintentional. It might more accurately be called Emotionally Complex Tales for Imaginative Adults.
Anne Carson’s pseudo-translation of Sophocles’ ancient tragedy Antigone, which she published in 2012 as Antigonick, is a weird and wonderful work of dramatic poetry. (Unfortunately, it was perhaps too weird to receive much attention at the time.) I’m happy to report that the new production at SummerWorks this year is just as surprising and innovative as Carson’s original.
Carson, a poet I love for her ability to marry instinct and wit, teaches classics and ancient Greek, and this play is definitely an intellectual exercise as much as it is a gut-wrenching story. I found it very entertaining, but audiences should prepare to sing for their supper: enjoying this one takes some effort.
Continue reading Antigonick (Guilty by Association and Suitcase in Point) 2014 SummerWorks Review
If there’s one thing that strangers do really well, it’s breaking your heart.
Life is weird and sometimes beautiful, but it’s easy to forget all that. It just seems normal. Then some person you don’t know will step out their front door and do something so utterly terrifying it boggles the mind — namely, perform a dance — and all of a sudden you start secretly crying because people are so exquisitely themselves. Admittedly, that sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but it is happening right now in the Annex, as Kaeja d’Dance pairs families with professional choreographers to create collaborative dance-works in front of their own homes.
Porch View Dances takes audiences on a tour of four such dances throughout Seaton Village neighbourhood, along with one roving contact-dance piece and a participatory performance in Vermont Square Park.
Freeway Strangler, playing for three weeks at The Box downtown, isn’t so much a dark comedy as a horror comedy. Not that many people are getting knocked off, as the title suggests. This is a more familiar kind of horror: miserable people being horrible. Which, of course, is pretty entertaining.
Not every love story is a love story. At the heart of Mies Julie — a masterful and punishing play by Yael Farber, currently on stage at the Harbourfront Centre — are two people who genuinely love each other, as confusingly and urgently as people ever do. And as usual, it’s a problem.
Typically in love stories, when love is the problem, it’s also the solution. Even if the star-crossed lovers feel the need to tragically kill themselves, at least dying restores them to the unity of their love. But love is not the solution in Mies Julie, and this is not a love story.