| We’ll leave it to the Bettys to decide the past season’s most outstanding productions, directors, actors, designers and catered opening night reception (what, they don’t have a Betty for that? They should). Here, instead, is my own personal list of the most memorable shows of 2004-05. Sometimes they were outstanding (The Black Rider, West Side Story); sometimes they simply grabbed the attention (Vertigo’s uncharacteristic Dear Boss, for example).
Of course, the list is coloured by my own interests, tastes and prejudices – as that grand old American drama critic George Jean Nathan once observed, a critic who says he’s without prejudice is like a general who says he doesn’t believe in taking human life.
1. The Black Rider (November Theatre-Ground Zero-Calgary Opera). A superb production, imported from Edmonton, of my kind of musical – gruff, gorgeous songs by Tom Waits and a jagged-edged libretto by William S. Burroughs.
2. Liberators, Occupiers and Population (One Yellow Rabbit-Hebbel am Ufer-Het Huis van Bourgondië). Where was One Yellow Rabbit while other local arts groups were playing provincial ambassadors at Ottawa’s Alberta Scene festival this spring? In Amsterdam and Berlin, playing Canadian ambassador to Europe with this triptych about the occupation and liberation of The Netherlands during the Second World War. Created in collaboration with Dutch and German companies, LOP was both an engrossing history lesson and a chance to check out the kind of work that young European theatre artists are doing today.
3. West Side Story (Theatre Calgary-Citadel Theatre). Another superb musical production, also imported from Edmonton (but with some Calgary talent). The reunited creative team of Bob Baker, Denise Clarke and Don Horsburgh (Into the Woods) once again thrilled us with this irreverent, exhilarating remake of a classic.
4. Bigger Than Jesus (WYRD-Necessary Angel-One Yellow Rabbit). Rick Miller returned with a revised version of his one-man show about JC, deftly directed by co-author Daniel Brooks. With religious fundamentalism rearing its blinkered head all over the world, this is a gratifyingly sane, funny and sincere assessment of Christianity’s thorny-crowned figurehead.
5. The Leisure Society and Get Away (tie) (Alberta Theatre Projects). At playRites, François Archambault’s nasty black satire of shallow values was predictably amusing, while Greg MacArthur surprised us with another, equally nightmarish vision of a sick society.
6. Elizabeth Rex and Bat Boy: The Musical (tie) (Mob Hit Productions). Mob Hit became a company to reckon with this season, with two very different but equally enjoyable productions. A bewigged Valerie Planche shone as Good Queen Bess in a nicely done version of the late Timothy Findley’s Shakespearean drama, while a befanged Adrian Marchuk led a ramped-up cast in the zany cult musical about the popular tabloid freak.
7. Drinking in America (Sage Theatre). David Trimble brought all his considerable grit and pathos to this hard-hitting revival of the old Eric Bogosian solo about the U.S. love affair with excess.
8. Glenn (Blacklist Theatre). The Blacklist collective gave us the belated Calgary première of David Young’s brainy bio of Glenn Gould, which could be subtitled Four Reedy Actors in Search of an Eccentric Musician. Tim Koetting, Trevor Leigh, Evan Rothery and Philip Warren Sarsons did a delightful job of charting the four ages and aspects of Canada’s mercurial piano genius.
9. Dear Boss (Eldritch Theatre-Vertigo Theatre). You like Puppets Who Kill? How about a puppet that butchers poor prostitutes in Victorian London? Eric Woolfe’s quirky take on the Jack the Ripper killings, employing puppets as well as live actors, swam too far out of the mystery mainstream for some Vertigo patrons, but others, myself included, found it fresh and clever.
10. Macbeth (Theatre Calgary). Also not everyone’s cup of gore, Christopher Newton’s production had more intellect than passion – it was a Shavian’s Shakespeare – but there were striking scenes and performances in this updating of the tragedy, set post-First World War with a burly, bullet-headed Jim Mezon as the title tyrant. |
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