All posts by Ilana Lucas

Ilana Lucas has been a big theatre nerd since witnessing a fateful Gilbert and Sullivan production at the age of seven. She has studied theatre for most of her life, holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton and an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia, and is currently a professor of English and Theatre at Centennial College. She believes that theatre has a unique ability to foster connection, empathy and joy, and has a deep love of the playfulness of the written word. Her favourite theatrical experience was the nine-hour, all-day Broadway performance of The Norman Conquests, which made fast friends of an audience of strangers.

Review: Krapp’s Last Tape (Singing Swan/Theatre Passe Muraille)

Photo of Bob Nasmith provided by the company
Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille revives their production of Samuel Beckett’s play for its 50th season

Making it to 50 is a huge milestone for anyone, particularly a theatre company. To celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, Theatre Passe Muraille brings Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape back to the stage, remounting the popular Singing Swan production co-produced by VideoCabaret.

Instead of his 50th, Krapp is celebrating his 69th year, and from actor Bob Nasmith’s deliberate overemphasis of the haggardness and frailty of his visage, it’s a hard-living 69. When the curtain – rarely used in the small Backspace, but necessary to preserve the reveal of a dusty jewel box of a small period set (Chris Clifford) – rises, he is setting up to review a tape he made when he turned 39. Like a Russian nesting doll of reflection, that tape also contains a review of a tape made when he was in his twenties.

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Review: Gertrude and Alice (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre)

Photo of Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry by Jeremy MimnaghToronto’s Buddies in Bad Times remounts a play about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude and Alice, Buddies in Bad Times’ remount of Independent Aunties’ 2016 work about the lives of revolutionary writer and bon vivant Gertrude Stein and her “secretary,” Alice B. Toklas, doesn’t feature the traditional biopic structure. After all, as the characters tell us, if we want all of the facts in a timeline, we can simply consult the handsomely-appointed program, one of the most informative and attractive I’ve seen outside of the Shaw Festival, before or after the show. More to the point, Stein says, “what happened is only one part of what is important.”

So, what is important? We start with Stein (Evalyn Parry) welcoming us to the proceedings, part lecture, part party and part peek into the inner workings of Stein and Toklas’ (Anna Chatterton) decades-long working and romantic relationship. In a constant patter of audience acknowledgment, but not participation, she quizzes us as to whether we’ve read her works, and if not, why are we here? Are we interested more in the image of Stein and Toklas than in Stein’s ideas? Why are we much more likely to have read the work of those she mentored – all men – than hers? These questions hang in the air throughout the evening.

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Review: Gay Play Day (Alumnae Theatre)

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Gay Play Day is Toronto’s festival of theatre featuring work by LGBTQ playwrights

Gay Play Day, hosted by Alumnae Theatre and now in its seventh year, is a play festival focused on premiering work by LGBTQ playwrights and on LGBTQ themes. There are two programs, presented at different times, which seem to be structured to appeal to different audiences.

Pink, comprised of Fade to Black, Labels, Diamonds on Plastic, and Point and Click skews toward an older, more conventional audience with more traditionally structured work; one play nostalgically venerates Old Hollywood, and in another, a shopaholic, drunken Southern belle monologist (Margaret Lamarre, tearing up Philip Cairns’ Diamonds on Plastic) is right out of a slightly crasser Tennessee Williams play. Lavender, made up of I’ve Just Seen a Face, Missed Connections, The End is the Beginning and Coming Clean, feels a lot younger and a little more chaotic and fun, much of it an evolution of standup or sketch comedy.

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Hot Cuts (Birdtown and Swanville) 2018 SummerWorks Review

Photo by Slater Manzo

Hot Cuts, written and directed by Aurora Stewart de Peña and presented by Birdtown and Swanville at the 2018 SummerWorks Festival as a workshop presentation, reminds me of a moment in that most ‘80s of ‘90s movies, The Wedding Singer. Both that movie and this play have a great deal of fun with their over-the-top ‘80s style and references, though the play deals with the vagaries of small-town mall hairdressing rather than small-potatoes wedding performance.

The Wedding Singer, mostly fluff and sparkle, surprises with a bizarre, painful moment where the lead character has a rage-fueled existential meltdown in song. Though there’s no singing in Hot Cuts, it’s that feeling of existential menace that simmers constantly under the surface of the show, in an intriguing and uncomfortable way.

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A Room To Perform (Katie Lyle/Shelby Wright)/YES (Linnea Swan) 2018 SummerWorks Review

Photo of Linnea Swan by Tim Nguyen

A Room To Perform/YES, a double bill created by Katie Lyle and Shelby Wright and Linnea Swan respectively, and now playing at the 2018 SummerWorks Festival, is an interesting duo. Both pieces have to do with restrictions in dance, but one embraces the restrictions, while the other rebels against them. It’s hard to be the clinical rules-follower when the cool renegade shows up, so I feel the former show suffers a bit from the pairing, even if it holds its own.

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