L'Addition @ Battersea Arts Centre

L’Addition begins with a foreword; the two actors coming out, lights up, to give us some information. The bit is reminiscent of the preambles ahead of performances, efforts to provide warnings to audiences. While it pokes fun at these things, at the same time it values and respects them, the tension between honouring the audience, challenging them, and respecting them at the forefront. 

We’re asked to forget the preamble, but of course are unable as the “performance” begins. Cyclical and slapstick in nature, it repeats and repeats, weaving around, never quite repeating in the same way and yet clearly the same. On the eve of the US election, it felt haunting to watch people repeating and repeating and never learning from their mistakes. 

What are we doing when we warn our audiences into oblivion? And what are we doing when we see a pattern, even say we want to break it, but are wholly unable? Absurdism feels so relevant in these times. I hear there is Rhinoceros outside…

Bert and Nasi are exceptional performers in their ability to fill the space, hold the tension, without a word. They play off one another beautifully, feeling improvised when of course we know it is wildly well rehearsed. The physical and textual choreography tripping beautifully over one another as if it is by mistake. 

review. Blood + Soil by Rouvan Silogix - Theatre ARTaud @ TPM Backspace

Theatre ARTaud present an ambitious new work, straddling political commentary and surrealism (which, if we’re honest, is that political commentary nowadays?). The new play, Blood + Soil, begins with the chorus as the audience enter, interacting and tempting the audience, while a devil-like character lurks. As we move in to the play, we’re presented with a parable about a small city in Canada who choose to secede, only to repeat the mistakes of the past in their own implementation and exertion of power and ownership.

I had mixed reactions to the piece. On one hand, I adored the clever playfulness of the chorus, and the intelligent commentary on current affairs as told through the parable. There were some very enjoyable performances, notably the riveting Amaka Umeh who plays Snowball, one of the lead revolutionaries. Additionally, the ongoing live accompaniment from Ivana Popovic served to create wonderful tension in the live performance.

On the other hand, I found the overall style of the production to be abrasive; there were a lot of scenes shouted, and although alienation is one of the basic tenets of Artaud’s work and much surrealist theatre, in a story-based performance such as this, I don’t think this was the specific alienation they were looking to achieve.

On the whole, I think the script could have used some tightening; there were a number of interesting and insightful observations created through the physical and verbal language of the performance, including some really stunning (and at times, shocking) imagery. Yet It left me with the feeling that it didn’t quite achieve its own goals.

Definitely a production that will challenge you intellectually in ways unlike what you will find from a lot of other performance in the city, so worth checking out if you’re looking for that stimulation.

review. Waiting for Trudeau @ Winnipeg Fringe

Winnipeg playwright Raphael Saray has penned a delightfully absurd interrogation of the modern obsession with celebrity. We see a number of characters who morph and change, jump into alternate realities, with a playful yet serious (though laughing out loud) commentary on how we spend our time and attention. I was a huge fan of the referee, who jumped in to police content and action to meet specific (if absurd) criterial. 

This was so much fun. Glad I got to catch it. 

review. The Orange Dot by Sean Dixon @ Theatrefront

It is less common than you'd think to see a piece of new Canadian writing that is as highly stylized as Sean Dixon's The Orange Dot. Borrowing a structure from Beckett's Waiting For Godot and Ionesco's The Lesson, Dixon has created a world which is not as it seems, in which inane conversation and repetition, two classic absurdist techniques, are made to seem normal, until suddenly they aren't. Discussions of pop culture and daily city life, the back and forth banter of Joe and Nat, seem like an inane play at first, leaving the audience wondering why they are bothering, and yet we stay, we watch. Slowly the world starts to crumble, and the inane begins to be more clear, but by time we realize it is happening, things are well off course and deep into the absurd. 

That is the thing that is most difficult about the absurdist style. How can the shifts away from normalcy be clear and concise, and yet not telegraph to the audience what lies ahead? This debut production, directed by Vikki Anderson, struggles somewhat with those shifts. The early shifts out of the recognizable world and into the absurd were less clear in my view, than they ought to have been; rather than causing the audience to begin to question what they are watching, they served to contribute to confusion. It is a delicate balance to manifest the verfremmdungseffekt I believe is central to achieving this in a production, and at least in the performance I saw, it wasn't quite there. 

That said, overall the performances from Shawn Doyle and Daniela Vlaskalic were quite good, with Doyle standing out until the final moments when Vlaskalic came into her full and truthful range. Earlier scenes didn't always link up from a stylistic perspective, with Vlaskalic putting on a folksy overdrawn accent that she shifted in and out of throughout scenes. Again, I think this comes down to clarify of the shifts in the world of the play; some finer subtlety in these shifts would have helped to enable the audience to think about the play and the message more clearly, rather than simply wonder what was going on in these moments. 

Definitely a script worth seeing, and the difficulties i list above are likely to be worked out through continued performance as the production settles into itself later in the run.