Your guide to the fall anglo season
From a Centaur road trip to culture clash at the Segal, Jim Burke fills us in on what to anticipate for anglo theatre this autumn.
Summer hasn’t exactly been a period of drought as far as theatre is concerned. We had the Fringe Festival, Shakespeare-in-the-Park with Repercussion’s Julius Caesar, summer stock seasons at Théâtre Lac Brome and Hudson Village Theatre, and those bighitting Just pour rire co-productions, Mary Poppins at Théâtre St-Denis and Roméo et Juliette at TNM. But hardcore theatre aficionados can really start to get themselves more frequent fixes over the coming weeks, when both francophone and anglophone communities launch their fall seasons.
Two weeks ago, when we took a look at the upcoming francophone season, we were forced by the sheer number of productions to pick out some particular eye-catchers. Anglophone theatre is, of course, a little less teeming here in Montreal, so we think we’ve managed to cover just about everything that’s happening throughout the fall. But if we’ve missed anything, please feel free to draw our attention to it at the email address below.
Centaur Theatre (453 St-François-Xavier St.) begins its fall season with Nick Payne’s Broadway and West End hit Constellations (Oct. 4 to 30). It’s a two-hander in which the romance between a physicist (played by Cara Ricketts) and a bee-keeper (Graham Cuthbertson) explodes into a multiverse of alternative realities. It’s directed by Canadian legend Peter Hinton, who delivered a superb production of Funny Girl at the Segal last year.
Porte Parole has built up a reputation for gripping documentary theatre with the likes of Seeds, Fredy and J’aime Hydro (which is remounted at La Licorne starting Tuesday). The Watershed (Nov. 8 to Dec. 4), a visiting co-production with Crow’s Theatre, sees the company in a more playful mood, with domestic comedy fuelling a countrywide Winnebago trip. The stakes, however, are deadly serious, given the trip has to do with investigating Canada’s threatened natural resources.
This year’s Brave New Looks slot is taken by Chlorine (Oct. 19 to 29), a tragicomic love story, set in the early ’80s in the Eastern Townships, between two teenagers, one of them paralyzed by a bullying incident from her early childhood. First seen under the title Chlore at La Licorne, it has been translated by Johanna Nutter, who also directs.
More information at centaurtheatre.com.
The Segal Centre (5170 CôteSte-Catherine Rd.) kicks off its season with an adaptation of Chaim Potok’s 1972 novel My Name is Asher Lev (Sept. 11 to Oct. 2), in which a young Hasidic man finds his artistic vocation at odds with his family’s religious values.
There’s more culture clash in the Segal’s big showcase première of the season. Prom Queen: The Musical (Oct. 27 to Nov. 20) is based on the true story of Ontarian Marc Hall, who fought a legal battle to bring his boyfriend to his Catholic high school prom.
The Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre is revisiting one of its most popular productions with a concert version of A Shtetl Wedding (Sept. 24 and 25). Multicultural company Teesri Duniya returns to the Segal Studio with The Refugee Hotel (Oct. 26 to Nov. 13), Carmen Aguirre’s drama about the reverberations of the Pinochet coup in 1970s Montreal.
More information at segalcentre.org.
Geordie Productions launches its first season under new artistic director Mike Payette. He’s directing Instant, one of the company’s school touring shows, while previous Geordie boss Dean Patrick Fleming directs the other, Water Weight. Meanwhile, Amanda Kellock both directs and adapts the mainstage show, The Halloween Tree (D.B. Clarke Theatre, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Oct. 21 to 30), a familyfriendly chiller from Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury.
More information at geordie.ca.
The fruits of Infinithéâtre’s playwriting initiative, The Unit, will be unveiled at various theatres from Sept. 11 to 17, in a series of free readings. Infinithéâtre’s commitment to new writing also includes the annual competition Write-on-Q, and one of the previous winners, Arthur Holden’s Battered, gets a full production at the Rialto Studio (5711 Parc Ave., Oct. 18 to Nov. 6). It’s the provocative story of a man who inadvertently breaks his girlfriend’s arm, leading to radical life changes during courtordered counselling. Meanwhile, Howard Rosenstein’s tour-deforce performance as Kafka’s Ape makes a welcome return for one night only, Nov. 17 at Centre Culturel N.D.G. (6400 Monkland Ave.)
More information at infinitheatre.com.
This weekend is the last chance to catch the fun gender-swap production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives at Hudson Village Theatre (28 Wharf Rd., to Aug. 28). After that, there’s a visiting adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novella The Double (Sept. 7 to 11). The Toronto company Bad New Days transforms this blackly comic nightmare of a usurping doppelgänger into a Chaplinesque piece of physical theatre.
More information at villagetheatre.ca.
Independent company Talisman Theatre brings its latest production to Théâtre La Chapelle (3700 St-Dominique St., Oct. 13 to 29). It’s the English première of Sarah Berthiaume’s Yukonstyle, which first played at Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui and is the second of Berthiaume’s plays to be translated by Talisman (the other being The Flood Thereafter). Yukonstyle revolves around a diverse group of youths in the frozen north affected by the Robert Pickton murders (a case confronted by Imago’s production of Pig Girl earlier this year).
More information at talismantheatre.com.
It’s off to the ball for a rarely performed musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein at Place des Arts. Cinderella (Salle WilfridPelletier, Oct. 18 to 23) was first aired on television in 1957 as a vehicle for a young Julie Andrews. Broadway Across Canada gives us the opportunity to see why the lavish stage adaptation won a Tony in 2013.
More information at placedesarts.com.
I’m pleased to report that one of my favourite Fringe performers, James McGee, will bring his definitely marvellous Le Merveilleux and Marvelous World de Bonhomme Caramel back to MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent Blvd., Sept. 22 to 24). First performed during the Solos fest at MainLine earlier this year, it’s the sad, sweet and very funny story of a children’s television presenter trying to pluck redemption from spiralling failure.
Other attractions in MainLine’s busy schedule include the Montreal Clown Festival (Sept. 30 to Oct. 2); a new play from Persephone Productions called Jerome of Sandy Cove (Oct. 6 to 16), which provides a possible solution to a Canadian mystery; the return of The Rocky Horror Show (Oct. 20 to 31) and Chocolate Moose’s one-man Iliad (Nov. 2 to 13); and D2 Productions’ stage adaptation of Stephen King’s author-meets-sledgehammer classic Misery (Nov. 9 to 13).
MainLine will also host the Fringe World Congress from Nov. 16 to 18, the first time this event has been held outside Edinburgh.
More information at mainlinetheatre.ca.
Over at Théâtre Sainte-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine St. E.), the bilingual dépanneur-set comedy Dépflies reaches its 10th and final edition (Sept. 21 to Oct. 8). Watch out for it on the small screen, however — it’s in development with CBC. There’s more comedy theatre with the (mostly) monthly Joketown on Sept. 17 and Nov. 19.
More information at theatresaintecatherine.com.
Student productions often have a lot to offer in the way of boldness, variety and, of course, youthful energy. Dawson’s theatre department (Dawson Theatre, 2000 Atwater Ave.) begins its fall season with Friends (Sept. 21 to 24) — not the ’90s sitcom, but Kobo Abe’s slice of Kafkaesque absurdism about a man destroyed by well-meaning attempts to pry him out of his loneliness.
A more raucously absurdist piece comes next with Alfred Jarry’s scatological Shakespearean spoof Ubu (Oct. 5 to 8), before Shakespeare proper raises the tone with Much Ado About Nothing (Nov. 16 to 26).
More information at dawsoncollege.qc.ca/professional-theatre. Coincidentally, the National Theatre School is presenting Philip McKee’s modern take on Much Ado About Nothing in collaboration with 12 graduating students. Its title has been truncated to Much Ado (Oct. 24 to 29).
After that, there’s Moisés Kaufman’s immensely moving documentary theatre piece about a homophobic murder in Wyoming. Based on the death of Matthew Shepard, The Laramie Project is directed by Djanet Sears (whose Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God was at Centaur last year) and plays from Dec. 12 to 17.
Both productions can be seen at Monument National (1182 StLaurent Blvd.).
More information at ent-nts.ca.
Not many details yet on the Concordia theatre department’s fall season, but impressive directing talent such as Dean Patrick Fleming, Harry Standjofski and Micheline Chevrier will be behind productions. Keep visiting concordia.ca/finearts/theatre for further developments.
Finally, it may seem odd that we’re including the francophone Théâtre La Licorne (4559 Papineau Ave.) in this Anglo season roundup. But not only is this obliging theatre continuing with its tradition of occasional English-surtitled performances (Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus can be seen with surtitles on Oct. 20 and 27, Douglas Maxwell’s Des promesses, des promesses on Nov. 10 and 17), they’re also bringing in an English production this season: Leslie Baker’s blackly comic but emotionally devastating Fringe hit about a child abuse survivor (Oct. 10 to 21). You probably won’t need surtitles to figure out what she’s getting at when I tell you it’s called F--- You! You F---ing Perv!