by AMY BARRATT

January, usually a slow month in English theatre, is shaping up to be anything but in 2003. It got underway with the Wildside festival at Centaur, which continues through this weekend. And there are at least six more openings before the month is out.

Of the five shows at the Wildside, one of the hottest tickets should be Hatched, an original show by an international collective called SaBooge. Hatched is a clown and commedia-inspired creation about a Victorian circus performer who is supposedly part-woman, part-bird. It is based on British author Angela Carter’s 1986 novel, Nights at the Circus. The premise is, journalist Jack Walser goes backstage at the circus meaning to expose the fraud of “Fevvers,” the winged woman who’s the toast of London. He ends up joining the circus as it travels to Russia, and falling for Fevvers on the way.

The performance features two live musicians and five performers who do the work of about 10. I’m still trying to figure out how one of the women (I initially thought she was two women) managed her costume changes. In simplicity of décor and concentration on the physical, the show is reminiscent of Theatre Smith-Gilmore’s Chekhov’s Shorts, seen last season at the Saidye. The initial banter between Fevvers and her assistant Lizzie immediately creates the atmosphere of seedy 1899 London. Though a couple of the circus scenes slow the action down, this is a magical, entertaining evening well worth the trip. Hatched has one performance remaining at the Wildside festival, Friday, Jan. 17, at 9 p.m., 288-3161 for tickets.

Act local

A couple of small local companies also have productions currently running. Purple 9 Productions (King Lear: A Godfather’s Story, Cobra: the Musical) presents their version of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross Jan. 17–18 at Erskine United Church (du Musée, corner Sherbrooke). The group is leaving us no excuse not to get to know their work as they will be following up Glengarry with a production of Patrick Marber’s Closer beginning Jan. 31 at the same venue.

Arbat Theatre, which garnered critical acclaim several years ago with its inaugural production of The Glass Menagerie, has resurfaced after a long silence with Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth, playing at the Calixa-Lavallée Theatre until Jan. 26. The play, which was a hit off Broadway as well as in London’s West End, is about young love, drugs and money in upper-crust Manhattan.

Another small company not heard from in a while, Soulfishing, is back with a collective creation called one small step sideways. Directed by Alex Ivanovici, with original music/soundscape by Carey Dodge, the piece for five actors will take place at Hors Bord, (3655 St-Laurent, #104) from Jan. 22–Feb. 2.

The Alternate Theatre (Venus, Language of Angels) will be presenting Tales of the Lost Formicans, by Constance Congdon, beginning Jan. 24. The play, which deals with the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease on an American family, is presented in association with the Alzheimer Society of Montreal. Performances will be at the J. Armand Bombardier Theatre of the McCord Museum…

Which is suddenly a hot location for anglo theatre it seems. Projet Porte Parole’s series on the Quebec health-care system, Santé, is being presented there over the next six months. Each short documentary play will be presented just once, on a Wednesday evening, and each will be followed by a guest speaker and an audience question and answer period. The first installment was in November. Part two, titled Doctors and Bureaucrats, will be on Jan. 29 at 7 p.m.

Rounding off the month, the Centaur season continues beginning Jan. 28 with Strawberries in January, a charming comedy by Evelyne de la Chenelière which made its French-language debut at Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui last season.

Among the more exciting events coming up in February are the inaugural production of Le Nouveau Théâtre Anglais, founded by a group of professionals with over a century of local theatre experience between them. Still Once, by playwright Thomas Morison, will be directed by Michael Springate and star, among others, Harry Standjofski and Diana Fajrajsl. It opens Feb. 12 at Théâtre La Chapelle.

Happy theatre-going and don’t forget to take your vitamins. :

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