Stage stealers

Siblings, princes, libertines,
advanced humans and Dracula

LUST IN LUGGAGE:
Brett Christopher and Jillian Niedoba in Dangerous Liaisons

by NEIL BOYCE

The fall theatre season looks almost too good as small, dedicated companies keep punching above their weight, long-established Quebec playwrights are revealed to English audiences, we see the first season programmed by Centaur’s new artistic director, and witness the Segal emerge as THE English-language venue to be reckoned with.

Scorched, the Montreal premiere in English of Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies, begins the Centaur season on Oct. 7. Richard Rose directs the award-winning story of a brother and sister’s return to the war-torn country of their parents to fulfill a final wish. One of the best from a Montreal playwright criminally underperformed here in English.

Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre appear in Centaur’s Brave New Looks series with Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Oct. 22. Directed by Alison Darcy, the story with live music follows a prince imprisoned since birth in a mountain cavern.

Later, Centaur artistic director Roy Surette dons his director beret for Skydive, premiering Nov. 11. The high-concept piece has two windblown performers soaring above the stage for the entire play, flashing back as 30 seconds of a skydiving free-fall gone wrong are stretched out from initial jump ... to inevitable splat?

Two strong productions open the season today, Sept. 11 at the Segal: Dangerous Liaisons has Alexandre Marine directing Brett Christopher—a standout actor in a great cast—as the most debauched of the many libertines oozing through 18th century French “nobility.” Meanwhile, at the Segal’s nifty new Studio theatre, the dazzling young company SideMart Theatrical Grocery recount a true story of clowns and Nazis in Oooo!

CAT AND KIDS

The moral dissolution shifts from palace to family mansion on the Segal main stage on Oct. 26, as Greg Kramer directs Tennessee Williams’s powerful Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Brick, Maggie, Goober and them five screaming monkeys vie for the attention of plantation owner Big Daddy, surrounded on all sides by “Mendacity!”

Speaking of lil’ monkeys, Geordie’s “Theatre for Young Audiences” at the D.B. Clarke are always a blast of anarchic, pee-on-the-seats fun, as hundreds of kids break free from parental restraints, shout at the stage and point at actors. I wish more nights at the Centaur were like that. The mayhem begins with Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince on Nov. 28.

Talisman Theatre borrows two SideMart boys—Patrick Costello and Graham Cuthbertson—and Marcelo Arroyo for Down Dangerous Pass Road, opening Nov. 6 at Théâtre La Chapelle. An eternal moment of déja-vu maddens three brothers attempting to deal with their father’s drowning, 13 years past.

FRENCH GOES ENGLISH

Infinithéâtre’s Guy Sprung takes the helm for their Oct. 16 opener at Bain St-Michel, John and Béatrice. Half myth, half fairy tale, the first English production here of the work by Governor General Award-winning playwright Carole Fréchette starts with a love-ad premise: “Well-to-do young heiress, intelligent and perceptive, who has never loved anyone, is seeking a man who will interest, move and seduce her. Substantial reward offered.”

Oct. 22 at MainLine, Tableau d’Hôte launch the English Montreal premiere of Judith Thompson’s Lion in the Streets, another ambitious undertaking for a company that loves a challenge. This Canadian classic follows a murdered little girl as she wanders though her old neighbourhood many years later. Of the part typically played by a petite actress, artistic director Mathieu Perron notes, “To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever cast a 10-year-old to play a protagonist in this play.”

DRACULA AND OTHELLO

Amid the bands and comedy in their fall schedule, Théâtre Ste-Catherine host Transhumain, Oct. 1–5, and several of the Harvest V (LGBT International Theatre Festival) productions running from Oct. 7–12. Fallen Angel inhabit the Monument National with Dracula Oct. 29. Persephone Theatre stage will have Othello at the McCord Museum from Nov. 13 (Gabrielle Soskin directs). Un-Profiled, the sixth installment of Black Theatre Workshop’s Poetry Jam Series takes on the topic First Impressions on Sept. 28 at the Green Room (5386 St-Laurent). Andy Warhol’s lasting influence is re-imagined in the cross-disciplinary Factory Project, beginning Sept. 20 (more next week); Petros Adamyan’s State Armenian Dramatic Theatre tour here—for the first time in its 152 year history—Oct. 11.