Results tagged “rhthomson”

This has been a week for big announcements in theatre. First off, Brendan Healy has been appointed as new artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, taking over from the departing David Oiye. And just this morning, Tarragon Theatre announced the winner of their inaugural Under 30 National Playwriting contest: Evan Placey for his play Mother of Him.

Michael Frayn's play Democracy, currently playing at Tarragon, is not always easy to follow. For some reason, this doesn't particularly matter. The second political drama set in Berlin in Tarragon's current season chronicles the rise and fall of Willy Brandt, West Germany's charismatic leader from 1969 until 1974, and is crammed full of politicians, spies, treaties and references to the nuances of Cold War-era Germany that may occasionally go over your head. But it never for a second stops being absolutely fascinating. Frayn is known for his tightly-packed scripts, most famously for his smash-hit farce Noises Off, but also for his other political work, Copenhagen. This one focuses on the relationship between Brandt and his favourite aide, Gunter Guillaume, an East German ex-pat who also happens to be a spy.

There is a moment near the end of the first act of Maureen Hunter's play Wild Mouth when Oliver Becker, playing the tortured Ukrainian WWI vet Bohdan, grabs Sarah Orenstein as proto-feminist anti-war Englishwoman Anna (pictured, left), douses her in pig's blood, and then rubs the animal's heart all over her face and body. It's a shocking and highly provocative moment, and seems to foreshadow a very dark second act. But that's not quite what we get. The play, very capably directed by R.H. Thomson, has some fascinating scenes as well as something genuinely profound to say about humanity's compulsion to war. But the second act seems somehow weak in its conviction, flirting with a darkness that is the logical conclusion of the events preceding it, and then backing away from it. You begin to think we're heading into Miss Julie territory, but we instead wind up in a typical rural Canadian drama.