COLD IRON IS A 

TITANIC COMEDY

Art Szombathy & Christina Kozak are Louis IV & Medusa in the British Museum

Ian Malone as Don Juan Ponce De Leon

One of the most remarkable things about COLD IRON IS A TITANIC COMEDY are the crisp, dense black and white tones used throughout. Each frame becomes a moving snapshot/performance still that stands on its own as a beautiful example of the creators eye for precIsion within a narrative that defies precise definition.

Director Wes Rickert has assembled an ensemble of superb performers who are able to master that timeless balancing  act between silent poses that add to a layered ensemble, as well as distinct solo performances that create both character and depth. Rickert plays freely and joyfully with loose historical narratives and classic performance art techniques that allow the spectator to follow a fantastical journey through iconic themes ranging from the discovery of America to the snaky tale of the famed Medusa. The erotic mingles with the commonplace and it all comes through with a superb, sharp edged parodic tone that is both playful and serious. 

Moments of watery pastoral imagery mingle with zany prop laden tableaus that seem to, perhaps unconsciously, tell the non linear story of how story can become cumbersome and unable to float when it adheres too closely to traditional narrative techniques. The central plotline/metaphor found in the title clues us in at the outset as we embark on a journey that is doomed to a rich, engaging form of glory and defeat. The original Titanic becomes the reiterative tale of a ship that sinks over and over again as story upon story surfaces, sinks, and re-surfaces - from the sentimentailzed Di Caprio/Winslett version to countless other artist's interpretations of that infamous chunk of cold iron that we just cannot seem to get enough of.

The choice of stark, black and white settings - finely set with a contained baroque-like atmosphere of evocative props and costumes - produces a kind of nostalgia for the present that moves us back and forth, in and out, of and through a present past and future that composes a tremendous sense of the here and the now. Set among the contemporary 'ruins' of  Kensginton Market, Little Italy, City Hall, and urban bicycle lanes, the complete mise en scene both floats gloriously and sinks beautifully into a breakneck array of sound and image. There is never a dull moment as this fun, sexy, surreal, thought provoking seventy minute tour de force floats seamlessly through a titillating and mind blowing consciousness of sight and sound.

BELOW ARE PREVIEW NOTES WRITTEN FOR THE PREMIERE SCREENING;

Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy was shot, scored and produced in Toronto during 2013, with locations that include City Hall, Kensington Market, Little Italy and the city's bicycle lanes.  While not the basis of the film, they provide place and time references in a filmless film that is a timeless kabuki opera formed by poetry.  

Starting with a bird's eye view, multiple players come to the stage as fictional characters carving out their individual journeys.  Passages follow from landscapes painted with cinematic tracking to rolling waves in great lakes.  The players balance on one leg of fiction and another leg of art history.  Words fall from their mouths like water, beans and flowers.  In a room of grand pictures a kettle is an unplugged key, relating to the waves, to the sinking of a ship which claims to be a comedy in a language that is difficult to understand.  Constant is the unravelling and the dance in the room of reproductions where words are also pictures and this medium is our present consumption.

What does the Chinese script mean?

With all of the references to art history - the British museum, the nude, the portrait, the painter, the musician, ballet  - the empty shopping cart brings to mind the sculpture by American artist Duane Hanson of the life size hyper real woman entitled "The Supermarket Lady" (1969), a cart that overflows with objects of mass consumption.  But director Wesley Rickert offers an empty cart, drawing attention to an emptiness found in many of the vessels of this film; not an emptiness that leads to tragic despair but instead to a space that is big enough to begin again.

One of the anchors in this film is the character Don Juan Ponce De Leon (whose claim to fame was accidentally discovering Florida) played by Ian Malone.  Malone plays De Leon as the transient hippie, hipster, hitchhiker, man on the road, a beatnik poet headed for the beach.  He holds the records, the voices, as dead and dying vinyl in his hands.  And yet his presence is as important as the tea kettle, making connections to the vibrations of other objects and words in time and space.  Sound trippy?  The tea kettle interacts with the ballerina and Louis IV, connecting players who otherwise do not relate.  Is the connection significant?  Political?  Is the kettle connected to tea?  To the British museum?  To Medusa with whom Louis IV dances?  Who cuts off his head?  Are the American beaches connected to Chinese script?  Are there elements of chance poetry?  Are accidents the unravelling of history?  Is the electric kettle a symbol of revolution?

Two other anchors in this film are Louis IV, a pretended connoisseur of culture played by Art Szombathy, and Tally Aurora, a shape shifter who is also Medusa, a bird, and musician played by Christina Kozak.  Louis IV and Medusa interact with each other through their dance in the British Museum.  Louis IV looses his head to the cool and collected Medusa, who slices, cuts and edits the dead weight from his back.  Maybe it is a gesture of kindness or necessity, to remove what is no longer needed for art.

The film overflows with gestures and references to cutting ties with art history and art processes.  Theother characters make appearances as brief as hallucinations or fragments of a dream that appear and never return.  When faces do reappear, they are transformed and not always recognizable.  Moving inside, outside, from beach and lake to streets and bicycles, back to the operatic stage again.  Snapshots of people too distant to recognize, familiarity blurring with strangeness, a dream like consciousness merging with photographic memory.  The feeling of deja-vu.

When the Neoist Pied Piper, played by the real life leader of Neoism Istvan Kantor, arrives with his megaphone, the director brings us back to the stage, to remind us that this is clear cutting fiction, which is Rickert's platform for art making.  Through the megaphone Kantor's voice rings with the director's words:  "The hole is a schedule for difficult births".  Another key to what lies ahead.  Wide open spaces.  An audience of one.  Coincidental neoist dump trucks.  People, cars and bicycles.  A recycling of culture.  A wiping out of formula.

We are entering the what happens next era and the future looms big on the horizon as east meets west again.  There is an empty cart, great lakes and an ocean.  The audience must learn to sink or swim or emerge from the fresh waters of digital film making.  Philosophy and humour are the paddle, boat and compass of this fiction.

This kabuki opera film narrative is a surprisingly emotional off-beat comedy.  It embraces, squeezes and spits out multiple perspectives, offering no easy conclusions.

Istvan Kantor as the Neoist Pied Piper

CELEBRATING

OUR MEN IN DANCE

Mafa Makhubalo

Dance Immersion’s twenty year anniversary event showcased a diverse selection of choreography as an ensemble of men - and one woman - took the stage in an impressive array of  explosive, at times contemplative presentations. Ranging from moving liberationist narratives to syncopated ensembles, all of the artists managed to simultaneously unite and separate themselves from each other as they revealed distinct and expressive physical presence.

Sani-Abu Mohammed

In Breaking Out, the second piece in the program, the appearance of a single dancer - after the opening ensemble entered in flowing white skirt like costumes and bare torsos - reflected the other men’s free flowing dance play with a vivacity and rapid muscularity of shoulder movement that dazzled and punctuated the already beautifully stated lines of Patrick Parson’s choreography. Although described as “masculine, strong and virile” the four men were able to represent “the essence of the graceful male dancer” alongside more traditional gender modes, giving the overall piece, and the evening in general, an amazing variety of emotional, sensual, and physical fervor-cum-sensitivity.

Shavar Blackwood

One piece later in the program, entitled Katuma, possessed a strong performance element that began with a subtle and evocative entrance as Casimiro Nhussi deftly played “the old man, the savvy, whose music and dance is part of his life.” Nhussi seamlessly melded the ponderous steps of a slow moving man with a cane into the fierce, fulsome, and sharply defined lines of his own choreography, culminating in a finale that bore the essence of freedom through the commingling of mind, spirit, and body.

Amanda Benn, in Land of My Soul, simply and powerfully delineated Mafa Makhubalo’s gestural choreographic poses as testament to political upheaval and the struggle to attain unity and freedom, while Shavar Blackwood’s This Woman’s Work gave three men the opportunity to move beautifully, together and apart, through the gorgeous strains of the Kate Bush song of the same name. In unbuttoned black shirts, and plain black trousers, Irvin Washington, Matthew Cuff, and Shavar Blackwood created a virile and ethereal homage to the male body, the music, and the movement as they gave distinctly defined impressions of masculinity and self-assured grace. 

Evolution, the opening dance segment, utilized powerful drumming and traditional African dance rhythms that “follows through modern technologies and continues with the rite of passage…after one’s life circle, [ending] with the rhythms from traditional instruments praising ancestors.” The ensemble of four musicians and one dancer created a striking, high energy introduction, replete with skilful agility and physical power alongside the equally resounding and evocative musical accompaniment.

Shawn Byfield

Shawn Byfield danced through his own joyful creation Funk For Your Feet with impeccable timing and a strong connection to the audience as he engaged spectators with a fully committed expressiveness, beautifully supported by Sharon DiGenova’s very focused lower body lighting that allowed the beating rhythms of Byfield's dance shoes to play a starring role in this high charged rapid fire presentation.

Casimiro Nhussi

BaKari I. Lindsay’s Blood Memory, danced by Lindsay himself, offered a pensive, beautifully conceived meditation that suggested the many planes of gender and heritage that one man chooses to explore. Supported by a gorgeous red costume - both skirt and pants existing alongside each other - the vibrant red fabric, with sheer form fitting upper lines and opaque lower body contours - gave the varied movement a simultaneous combination of free flowing grace and muscular prowess befitting the layers of physical and emotional experience that the dancer embodied.

Living In the Moment, choreographed by Mikhail Morris - danced by Morris himself, alongside Benton Morris, Renaldo Barrett, Dorrian Brown, and Brandon Owusu - ended the evening with a spectacular, epic expression of “spiritual connection (African) and experience of one’s past whether it’s good or bad in the abstract format of expression, of one’s soul in the present day.”

The overall evening was a strong and engaging testament to twenty years of Dance Immersion’s commitment to a diverse range of social and political themes within past and contemporary cultural environments. Vivine Scarlett’s (founder, program director, curator) program notes state clearly and powerfully the company’s mandate as she articulates the value of this recent celebration of men in dance;

“In recognition of the contributions by all men who continue to expand their knowledge, raise children, and engage in a multitude of activities that result in positive contributions to themselves and the world; this presentation dismisses the violent images we see and hear about Black males in the media. It is designed to offer a positive view of dance styles representative of the diverse voices that contribute to the Canadian arts ecology..”

CELEBRATING OUR MEN IN DANCE 

RUNS AT THE ENWAVE THEATRE (HARBOURFRONT) 

UNTIL FEBRUARY 8TH)

Bakiri I. Lindsay

But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

I just don't think it'd understand

And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

He might blow up and kill this man...

You can tell your ma I moved to Arkansas

Or you can tell your dog to bite my leg

Or tell your brother Cliff who's fist can tell my lips

He never really liked me anyway

Oh tell your Aunt Louise, tell anything you please

Myself already knows that I'm okay

Oh you can tell my eyes to watch out for my mind

It might be walking out on me today

But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

I just don't think it'd understand

And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

He might blow up and kill this man

Ooo

‎The Opening Ceremony of the XXII Olympic Winter Games will happen Friday, February 7, 2014, at 12:14pm ET. The 2014 Grammy's happened just last night and thirty four couples, (same sex and opposite sex) united in a ceremony that has been viewed by some as  intrusive propaganda - an anti-Christian leftist political message inappropriate at an awards event that is suppose to be just about the music. In an age when sexual identity is still such a hotbed for infuriating discussions one may wonder where the whole notion that the personal is political has gone to. So many songs depend upon narratives that call into question traditional notions around love and romance, and yet we still have irate people voicing their opinions when a specific political message shows up in the midst of a lavish first world spectacle that tends to cloak everything in pomp and circumstance, and often shrouds the real life details of living and loving in very troubled times within non-specific, frequently heteronormative scenarios that leave so many sexual and gender possibilities out of the equation. My fakey achey breaky heart bleeds for spectators who cannot see the forest for the grammy nominated trees. For all the tone deaf music loving homophobes out there, get a grip!!!

And how does any of this politicized banter relate to the current piece of musical theatre gracing the stage at Theatre Passe Muraille? The Way Back to Thursday is a tender, at times bleak, always loving account of a gay man's struggle to find his way through all of the intolerance and lack of acceptance in time to share his identity with someone he loves deeply.

Living in a large urban centre can make the innocent and poignant charm of a musical about coming out in a homophobic world where huge political strides forward have been made seem a bit hokey and somewhat naive. And yet seventy-five minutes of non-stop melodic song cycle discourse between a young man and his grandmother ultimately wins one over in Rob Kempson's musical tour de force. 

The song cycle format allows two gifted performers, Kempson himself and Astrid Van Wieren, to tackle the daunting task of taking on a relentless parade of emotion, from childish delight to mature disappointment and discovery. Van Wieren has a powerful and commanding presence as her beautiful voice subtly navigates the array of musical motifs Kempson has created for her to explore. Kempson's physically and emotionally charged performance runs the gamut from frolicking pre-teen to inquiring adult who feels he has to leave the nurturing confines his grandmother provided and move to a large city to discover himself. 

Both performers move effortlessly through a narrative that brings us full circle, and yet the musical direction and the simple set, although effective, may not have given the political and emotional message the strength and power it truly needs. Simplicity can be a strong choice for a complex message, and yet The Way Back to Thursday could fare well through the use of more layered, less citational musical motifs - and a somewhat more developed sense of iconic theatrical gestures such as camp, satire, and even projections that would allow the Hollywood imagery referred to throughout to speak silently - and for itself.  

Rock Hudson plays a small part in a narrative that might have explored his presence further, thereby taking the analogous struggles between grandmother and grandson into more intricate areas. Two forty five minute acts, with an intermission, rather than a single hour and fifteen minute cycle, might begin to support the complexities of this very ambitious, entertaining, and important musical project.

Musical strains reminiscent of fifties pop, moving into more staccato rhythms that cite composers as diverse as Sondheim and musicals as iconic as A Chorus Line, could have been diversified further, giving the stories and the emotions a somewhat more layered rhythmic intensity.

And yet, at the end of the play, on the way back to the thursday night, old movie/filmfests that grandma and grandson once shared, one finds a very simple and moving story that still needs to be told in an era when there are still countless people being made to feel ashamed, even terrified, of their sexual identity. The Sochi Olympics and the Grammy Awards may appear to be very opposite cultural and social events, but they both take us back to, through, and hopefully beyond the horror that homophobia has wrought for decades. The innocent charm of Rob Kempson's musical, the terror of current Putinesque politics, and sixty eight women and men being married at the Grammys last night,  reminds us that there are so many intricate ways in which to view the personal and the political. The Way Back To Thursday promises to become one of many positive vehicles for a universal, much needed message about love.

CANADIAN REP THEATRE PRESENTS

PACAMAMBO

The inaugural season of the Canadian Rep Theatre began at the Citadel this week with a

powerful and evocative production of Wajdi Mouawad's Pacamambo. Shelley Tepperman's translation is a direct and effective version of the text that might have delved a little more deeply into the poetic language that the metaphoric properties of the script suggests. Nevertheless, in the hands of a wonderful ensemble, and under the concise direction of artistic director Ken Gass, the initial Canadian Rep Theatre production is a tremendous beginning for the company.  

Primarily a dance space, the Citadel was transformed by the stark white of Marian Wihak's wonderful rectangular playing area, creating a spare minimalist effect that gives the actors, and a few sharply defined props, a spacious environment to inhabit in a tightly choreographed array of blocking and creative movement. Jung-Hye Kim's simple costuming, effectively dividing the symbolic from the real through the use of black and white for two characters, and grey-ish tones for the day to day wear of the other players, give the overall drama a very crisp feeling appropriate to the glaring emotion and intrusive interrogation that the narrative embraces.

Kyra Harper as Marie Marie delivered a beautifully understated performance through the use of impassioned/smouldering vocal skill and great physical agility as she navigated the confines of a very mutable bed that moved across the stage - becoming a kind of elegant cage-cum-lumbering-slumbering confine.

Michelle Polak created an entertaining, frequently moving form of comic relief in the midst of very serious scenes as the Moon/Growl presence. Her canine prowess gave great credibility and physical diversity to an extremely difficult role that, in the hands of a less skilled performer, could have become a kind of light, not easily digested form of parodic play.  

Karen Robinson as the psychiatrist began with a commanding presence that never faltered as she played dual parts with a very strong, and committed performance well-suited to the well-meaning yet decidedly institutionalized, at times symbolic quality of her roles. When Robinson re-enters near the end of the play, a very simple change to to her sharply defined costume allows her already established eloquence and passion to morph into a razor sharp connection to the central motif of the play.

Death permeates the narrative yet uplifts, entertains, and ultimately enlightens as audiences are drawn into a sixty five minute journey through a young woman's introduction to one of life's most difficult lessons. As Julie, the central inquisitor and wide-eyed traveler on the road to Pacamambo, Amy Keating is consistently believable and extremely engaging as an angst ridden teen in pursuit of symbols, hope, and poetic emotional support as she makes her way through loss, canine camaraderie, and the poignant, timeworn trauma of adolescent enlightenment. 

PACAMAMBO RUNS AT THE CITADEL (304 PARLIAMENT STREET, JUST SOUTH OF DUNDAS) 

UNTIL FEBRUARY 2ND

A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD

Running for only three nights at Buddies In Bad Times Cabaret Space, A Conversation with Edith Head is a unique and thoroughly engaging ninety minute monologic tour de force that delights the eye and ear as photographs, gowns, and immaculately researched cinematic design history all meld together into an evening of gorgeous nostalgia.

Susan Claassen's performance deftly handles the staccato mannered tone of Head's vocal stylings as she seamlessly weaves audience interaction with beautifully nuanced acting and physical prowess. Claassen inhabits the stage with grace and comfort, making her audience believe they are at home with Edie and all her glorious designs. Stuart Moulton as Miss Head's Host gives a lively supporting performance as he skillfully and effortlessly intervenes from time to time, keeping the legendary  lady on her toes as she rambles through an endless array of Hollywood memories. 

On opening night Claassen was able to diplomatically make fun of a front row fellow dressed in "lumberjack" plaid, winning him - and the rest of the audience - over with her grand sense of humour and impeccable timing as she captivated one and all. 

The collaborative script, written by Claassen and Paddy Calistro, is packed with countless anecdotes and clever segues in and out of witty, at times poignant sequences. Anyone interested in the Hollywood of a bygone era, when the star system and studio glamour were still intact - with Edith Head as the grand dame of costume design - will not want to miss this star studded evening of absolute delight.

A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD RUNS AT BUDDIES IN BAD TIMES THEATRE UNTIL JANUARY 19TH

in co-production with Theatre Smash

Maja Zade’s starkly effective sixty minute translation of Marius von Mayenburg’s tragicomic fable-cum-parody of the cosmetic surgery industry graces the stage of Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace with a powerful cast and intense and concise direction from Ashlie Corcoran. This Dora Award winning re-mount has the original cast re-playing the roles of four power hungry hedonists in hot pursuit of wealth, each other, and the perfect countenance. 

Sharp, bright lighting, interspersed with subtler shadowy sequences, beautifully handled by lighting designer Jason Hand, pulls the audience into the drama at hand in a perhaps unintentionally yet appropriately unflattering way. With bleachers on either side of the raised rectangular playing space spectators are forced to view themselves and the actors as complicit participants in a game of love lust and competitive squalor. Sound by John Gzowski blasts us in and out of explosive environments and gives us the necessary ease of complicit discomfort that the script demands. 

Apples are placed onstage and in the front row for actors to become even closer to their thoroughly engaged spectatorial voyeurs, becoming biblical props in a kind of symbolic Adam and Evil Garden of Eden scenario gone terribly wrong form the very beginning.

Hardee T. Lineham as Scheffler, the ruthless boss, gives a remarkable layered performance with vocal nuances and rapid physical movement that give him an almost Anthony Hopkins/Hannibal Lekter presence that simultaneously frightens and amuses. 

David Jansen’s portrayal of Lette, the initial ‘ugly one,’ provides a kind of put upon Pygmalion figure rising angrily from the fleshly sliced ashes. Jansen delivers a delicate and powerful balance of ‘ugliness’ and great physical and emotional charm. 

Jesse Aaron Dwyre as Karlmann gives an equally powerful performance in a dual role that allows him to become the sexually marginalized character who preys off various rivalries at the outset. 

Naomi Wright, as a kind of raven haired Joan Rivers archetype-cum-allegory plays an elderly dowager’ly mother of eerie proportions, as well as the straight talking Fanny - wife to Jansen’s initially perplexed and bewildered ugly one. Wright gives a layered, sharply played performance that rounds out a first rate ensemble adept at handling the tricky business of directly and simply written parody that soars to Kafka-esque heights by the end of the play - finding Dwyre and Jansen in a deliciously sexy encounter of the narcissistic kind. Camellia Koo's set and costumes are pristine, sharp, CEO inspired silhouettes in black and white and grey, enhancing a white raised dais of a stage that puts all of our self adoring tendencies on display for us to examine, laugh at, and be horrified by. Leaving one with the eternal question, who is that smiling at me in the glistening relentless snow white existential mirror of post-modern life. Oh my, it's me...

The Ugly One runs at the 

Tarragon Extraspace 

until February 16th

Evelyne de la Chenelière's remarkable play, Flesh and Other Fragments of Love, inspired by Marie Cardinal's renowned novel, is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on love, marriage, and many other aspects of all-too-human interaction that need to be seen rather than hinted at in a mere review. But I won't let that stop me. 

Direction by Richard Rose is impeccable as he has the three characters inhabit the stage with an intense triumvirate of circularity that is simultaneously  menacing and embracing as the trio takes hold of the entire playing space - making complex sense, with every deliberate move, of the circumstances that surround a tragic discovery during a vacation on the Irish coast.

The opening moments of the play possess a slightly annoying ring of nattering, bickering domestic repartee between the central couple, but this very quickly disappears, having set the stage with an essential element of pointed talk that leads into an incredible, acute, and finely tuned balance between the elegant poetry of the script and a kind of naturalistic delivery that the actors deliver seamlessly - with a perfect balance of the subtle and the sublime.

Linda Gaboriau's translation of this English Language premiere was applauded by the playwright and the novelist during a talkback session before the opening. Gaboriau has achieved such a unique and powerful version of the original script that mixes monologues with dialogue in a relentless breakneck fusion of conversation and meditation, that it feels like one is witnessing a very rare and stunning artistic collaboration of novelist, playwright, and translator - when in fact Gaboriau has simply and brilliantly listened to the original and found the heart of the drama within the spoken voices and the silent consciousness of three very conflicted characters. There is humour and sarcasm and love and pain and the whole mess of glorious emotion that comprises a single lifetime and a single relationship.















At the core of the drama is a strong feminist voice that carefully delineates the pitfalls of a marriage and how a couple can begin with the best of intentions yet lapse into timeworn cliches about love and marriage and the heavily gendered roles of 'man and wife.' Maria del Mar as Simone gives the character an incredible and believable form of domestic, intellectual, and ethereal passion, while Blair Williams dazzles with charm as her husband Pierre. He both seethes and adores as he witnesses the emotive descriptions and responses that his husbandly rationalizations motivate and administer to. Nicole Underhay as Mary rounds out the cast with a performance choreographed by Denise Fujiwara in a way that elegantly reflects this unique balance of poetry and naturalism. Underhay's subtle vocal tones blend into heightened gestural forms of of poetic delivery - all beautifully enhanced by movement that is neither grand nor understated. It is both. She may very well be a contemporary madonna figure flanked by a kind of Simone de Beauvoir character who fights for her principles within very modern, very material circumstances.

Set  design by Karyn McCallum provides an amazing variety of levels and perspectives, from the raked central area to low lying spaces, giving the drama a reflective surface upon which to project the many layers of conversation, meditation, rationalization, and gorgeous, deceptively surreal narrative images that move us, with great aplomb and emotional engagement toward a very moving and complex finale.

FLESH AND OTHER FRAGMENTS OF LOVE 

RUNS AT THE TARRAGON MAINSPACE 

UNTIL FEBRUARY 16TH