Spotlighting the performing arts
Columnist recalls the past year’s special moments
It was the year the corner convenience store made the mainstage.
The year we met Nuyorican New York, learned their profane poetry and all fell off the wagon together. It was the year Hawksley Workman summoned the gods from his guitar, ballet turned into square dance, and we all got trapped inside a 1980s video game. It was the year Blind Date made it to London’s West End, while Calgary composers David Rhymer and Joe Slabe each took star turns at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, while Calgary playwright and librettist John Murrell turned back the clock to his playwriting days, taking a bow at both Stratford and Shaw.
And oddly enough, in a Calgary theatre season heavy on guys, it was a quartet of fabulously funny actresses — Julie Orton, Natascha Girgis, Myla Southward and Vancouver’s Tara Travis — who generated the theatre year’s biggest laughs.
Here’s a columnist’s memorable moments from Calgary’s 2013 performing arts season.
January: Metamorphosis, High Performance Rodeo. The moment where mom and dad break into his bedroom and discover son Gregor Samsa has transformed into a big, sad bug, in a stunning production from Iceland’s Vesturport Theater.
February: The Kite Runner, Theatre Calgary. The moment at the swap meet outside San Francisco, where a group of Afghan exiles gather each week to buy and sell and try to put their lives back together in a new country, in a beautiful show directed by Eric Rose.
February: Sequence, Downstage, Ground Zero and Hit & Myth Productions. The moment where Cynthia (Alana Hawley) discovers what’s inside the envelope, in smart, engaging theatrical debut by Calgary dad and ophthalmologist Dr. Arun Lakra.
March: Polygraph, Sage Theatre. The moment where criminal psychologist (played by Brian Jensen) administers a polygraph to a young waiter (Justin Michael Carriere), whose roommate has been murdered.
March: Mozart’s Requiem, Alberta Ballet. The moment where Mozart (Yukichi Hattori) reveals his requiem on the occasion of his own death, in a surprisingly diverse and imaginative ballet featuring the choreographic talents of Jean Grande-Maitre and Yukichi Hattori that was highlight of a stellar Alberta Ballet season.
March: Scarlet Women, Lunchbox Theatre. The moment where Julie Orton and Myla Southward reveal whodunnit to whom, and how in Lunchbox’s expertly directed (by Mark Bellamy), fast and funny ode to film noir.
April: Songs From Nightingale Alley, One Yellow Rabbit. The moment where aging madame played by Denise Clarke, sings Beauty Knows No Second Act in this unexpectedly wonderful song cycle from longtime Rabbit David Rhymer,
June: Les Miserables, Broadway Across Canada. The moment where Javert understands that a lifetime spent playing by, and rigidly enforcing, the rules, is a life unlived, in a beautiful, multimedia revival of a classic that arrived just in time to soothe the sagging spirits of thousands of flood-ravaged Calgarians.
August: The Show Must Go On, Calgary Fringe. The moment in the motel where the Hell’s Angels who mistakenly broke down the door to discover a bunch of actors talk Jeff out of quitting the tour, because he’s scheduled to perform Rumplestiltskin at the Hell’s Angel’s daughter’s school, in Jeffrey Leard’s superb fringe solo show.
August: 8 Bit: The Video Dance Game, Calgary Fringe, Mandance. The moment where Mark Ikeda discovers he’s trapped inside a Super Mario game and has to dance his way out to reconnect with his estranged stepbrother (Richard Lee), in another fringe revelation.
August: Til Death: Six Wives of Henry VIII, Monster Theatre, Calgary Fringe. The moment where Henry lands in Limbo and is forced to confront all six of his dead exes, all played (including Henry) by Tara Travis, in an astonishing comic performance.
September: Kim’s Convenience, Theatre Calgary. The moment where Dad (Calgary’s Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) realizes his story isn’t his store, it’s his children, in Theatre Calgary’s first-rate production of Ins Choi’s instant Canadian comedy classic.
October: The M-Fer With a Hat. The moment where Jackie (Haysam Kadri), learns that his sponsor Ralph (Beaux Dixon) has betrayed him by sleeping with his girlfriend Veronica (Carmen Aguirre), in Alberta Theatre Projects’ outstanding presentation of playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’ profane poetry of the New York outer boroughs.
March and December: All the moments — and there were many — where Natascha Girgis delivered comic gold in both Vertigo’s To the Ends of the Earth and then again eight months later, as Passepartout in ATP’s Around the World in 80 Days. And don’t forget: Blanche: The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie Dame; I Am My Own Wife and This is How I Left, Dust, The Gods That Come, The Last Five Years, Denise Clarke’s Wag, The Dandelion Project, Limbo, People You May Know, Fruitcake, Radio: 30, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks’ Better Get Hit in Your Soul, Fugly, Honens’ Bison Noire at Local 522, William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Red, The List, Badger, and Aviatrix: An Unreal Story of Amelia Earhardt, Ludwig and Lohengrin, Billy Elliot, Balletlujah, La Traviata and Chicago: The Musical, Satellites, Ganesh vs. The Third Reich and Sometime Between Now and When the Sun Goes Supernova.
What’s on your list?