Dorianne is a graduate of the Theatre and Drama Studies joint program between University of Toronto, Erindale campus and Sheridan College. She writes short stories, plays and screenplays and was delighted to be accepted into the 2010 Diaspora Dialogues program and also to have her short story accepted into the 2011 edition of TOK: Writing The New Toronto collection. She is also a regularly contributing writer on http://www.sexlifecanada.ca. You can follow her on twitter @headonist if you like tweets about cats, sex, food, queer stuff and lefty politics.
Long Dark Night is a musical spoof of a hard-boiled detective story. It’s full of over-the-top stereotypes hamming it up and groan-worthy puns. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and it could use a lot of polish, but I laughed out loud a number of times. (I do have a fondness for terribly punny jokes.)
Noir seems like an odd thing to spoof right now, as the genre is so dated that I suspect many younger audience members may never have seen any original offerings and only recognize the elements via the many other parodies produced over the years. The jokes are cleverly written enough that I suspect Mark Shyzer could make fun of any genre he put his mind too. But there is a certain appeal to noir: the guns, the booze, the women. Continue reading Long Dark Night (Long Dark Night Productions) 2011 SummerWorks Review→
Origami Airplane reminded me of theatre school, and not just because it was a collective creation with a lot of abstract movement and sound. The whole premise of the piece feels strongly rooted in the theatre school experience: a group of people of different racial, cultural and sexual identities become each others’ family, for a short time at least. So it didn’t surprise me to discover in the program after the show that the company had met each other as classmates at the National Theatre School. Continue reading Origami Airplane (Opus Syndrone) 2011 SummerWorks Review→
I was very interested in seeing Soup Can Theatre’s performance of Marat/Sade because of the reputation of both the play and the theatre company. Last year at Fringe they produced a play called Love Is a Poverty You Can Sell which was based on the songs of Kurt Weill and I had heard great things about it, but wasn’t able to see it myself so I jumped at the chance to see Marat/Sade.
Marat/Sade is a very well-known and lauded play from the 1960s. It had a distinguished run at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, England and the Broadway production won Tonys. There is also a film adaptation. The show is a play within a play; a representation of the French Revolution, particularly the assassination of revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat , as performed by inmates of an insane asylum and directed by the Marquis De Sade.
In death: THE MOVIE Greg Scala plays a film director intent on creating the most controversial movie ever made. The premise is this movie is: a man finds out he’s dying, he struggles with it, and then he dies. This is all explained in a very engaging opening monologue. The catch, we are told, is that the character will actually die. There will be no last minute medical miracle, no afterlife, no magical return from the grave, and that will be unlike any other movie in existence. Continue reading death: THE MOVIE (Human Warnings) 2011 Toronto Fringe Review→
There is some very good singing in this play. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much more about it to enjoy.
I assume the performers have been trained and/or are experienced in singing. I can’t tell though, as the program has no information on them. Bewilderingly, it does list the playwright’s accomplishments as an automotive mechanic and devotes a whole page to summarizing the plot of the play itself.
Long Dark Night is a musical spoof of a hard-boiled detective story. It’s full of over-the-top stereotypes hamming it up and groan-worthy puns. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and it could use a lot of polish, but I laughed out loud a number of times. (I do have a fondness for terribly punny jokes.)
