Three generations in three plays

Just for You

The success of this production is due to the perfect marriage of writing, actors and direction.

Let me fine tune that assessment.

Just For You is a two character play, a romantic comedy at that, about a forty-year-married couple and how they are able to reconnect because of the husband’s encounter with a balloon.

You simply must have believable actors with true chemistry for the story to work. The casting of Don Reid and Jocelyne Rioux worked on all levels.

With the firm hand of director Lesleigh Turner at the helm, the layers of the performances were seamless. Pitch perfect. I felt I was eavesdropping on the intimacies of a long-married couple. That’s right, forced to watch and listen as Grandpa and Grandma get intimate on the McManus stage. And get this: I didn’t mind!

Lynda Martens’ writing is sharp, measured, knowing. Of all the plays in the festival this is the one that is most ready for prime time.

Just For You was featured as part of Theatre Aurora’s Playwrights of Spring Festival in March, 2009.

The Chaos Womb

I loved the program notes for The Chaos Womb: “An accidental, aimless, arbitrary, designless, desultory, driftless, incidental, irregular, objectless, odd, purposeless, stray, unaimed, unplanned, unpremeditated murder. And what of it?” The order of the list — alphabetical even!

Let me be frank — I think the show that I witnessed covered that list but I’m not sure. In the dark, I scribbled a “?”

But what I do know is this, if I was a drama teacher and I gave my students just the alphabetical listing above and told them to create a show incorporating all those elements, I’d give the students involved in this production an A+.

Chaos incorporated so many elements, it was a bit unnerving: A narrator in the rafters. No spoken word on stage. Gun shots into the audience. Victims falling around me.

Heck, I was even willing to be taken out as a measure of my good will. (Ok, I was hoping they would, so I could relax for the rest of the show.)

The students deserve credit for doing something completely different, pushing the limits of our ideas of theatre.

QUIZ

Quiz has a wonderful title and I believe the plot has great potential — as listed in the program: “Quiz is a dark take on the off chance that without warning, anyone, anywhere, might ask you a question. You may not know the answer, or the rules, or why you’re even there but one thing you can be sure of: Winning isn’t everything.”

Since I ask questions ad nauseam, and yes, of complete strangers, this plot line is just up my alley. I have the bruises to show for it.

Unfortunately Quiz’s potential wasn’t realized. I felt like I was watching a night of improv, where a group of actors take a theme and develop it as they go along, live on stage.

Maybe that’s not so far off the mark.

I know I’m supposed to pretend I don’t know, but I’m not going to — there were recent cast changes in this production. Even the program listed five performers while there were only four on stage. Hence it was not surprising the rhythms of this comedy were a bit off. I hope Mr. Smith further develops his script. His Quiz has great promise.