Authors > Alidor Aucoin
Alidor Aucoin
On Second Avenue Celebrates Theatres Yiddish roots.
By Alidor Aucoin on June 25, 2012
New York’s Second Avenue looms large in the mythic landscape of Broadway Theatre. A century ago the East Village neighbourhood was the ghetto for Jews from Central Europe where Yiddish Theatre In America was born and flourished. It became “americanized,” and went on to influence not only the Vaudeville stage but Broadway itself, On 2nd Ave, playing at the Segal Centre until July 1, is a revival of the show that was staged at the Segal in 1998. . It pays homage to Abraham Goldfaden who is said to have started the first professional Yiddish theatre company in Romania.
Haunted Billy: toe-tapping, ass-slapping country shenanigans
By Alidor Aucoin on May 23, 2012
Dracula meets Dogpatch in Haunted Hillbilly, the honkey-tonk black comedy at the Centaur until June 3. The show is based on Derek McCormack’s book which is centred around a hapless backcountry buck, Hyram Woodside, who sells his soul to the devil to win acclaim as a singing sensation known as “The Lonely Boy.”
The premise has been around for centuries: Luc Plamondon did it in his musical, La Légende De Jimmy, in which movie hearthrob James Dean sold his soul to the devil for stardom. In this case the Nashville setting is part of the joke. The play is send up of Hank William’s career -, the self destructive cowboy singer who was fired by the Grand Ole Opry for his alcohol and substance abuse, and died in 1953 at the age of 29.
Dying is a laughing matter
By Alidor Aucoin on March 25, 2012
In the first beat of Morris Panych’s black comedy, Vigil, at the Segal Centre until April 1, an overly theatrical, neurotic character bursts into his dying aunt’s attic bedroom and off the top says “Let’s not talk about anything depressing. Do you want to be cremated?”
High and lowbrow antics at the Centaur
By Alidor Aucoin on March 12, 2012
The Game of Love and Chance at the Centaur Theatre until April 1st is a deliciously theatrical, interpretation of Pierre Carlet de Chamberlain de Marivaux’s 18th century piece Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard.
Adapted and translated from the French into English by Nicolas Billon and directed with overheated passion by Matthew Jocelyn, the artistic director of Toronto’s Canadian Stage Theatre, the co-production is a contemporary reworking of the classic.
Dead men stalking
By Alidor Aucoin on February 8, 2012
As befits a play called In Absentia, a dull sadness pervades the piece at the Centaur until March 4. The world premiere of a minor work by major award-winning Canadian playwright Morris Panych - it is an introspective, overwrought mediation on love, grief and mortality.
God of Carnage
By Alidor Aucoin on December 16, 2011
God of Carnage, at the Centaur until December 4th, (and probably longer) is a clever and brutally funny farce that’s the hottest ticket in town. A perfect ensemble cast under Roy Surette’s disciplined and brilliant direction unleashes 90 minutes of domestic mayhem on an unsuspecting audience. The play explores that razor thin line between civility and savagery, love and hate. What we have here is reminiscent of Who is Afraid of Virgina Woolf without Albee’s bite.
THE DELIGHTS OF A DOUBLE ENTENDRE
By Alidor Aucoin on November 8, 2011
The Play’s the Thing at the Segal Centre until Nov. 20 is a delightful revival of Ferenc Molnar’s 1920’s period piece, Play at The Castle, (Jatek a Kastelyban), a silly farce adapted by P.G. Wodehouse in which sexual hi-jinks inspire a word play-within- a-play. Set in a Mediterranean villa, the parlour comedy is based on a real life incident in which the Hungarian playwright arrived in his hotel suite with one of his friends and overheard his wife in the next room, apparently in the throes of passion, exclaiming, “I love you, I love you, I shall die of love for you!”
Angst and Anning: an awry comedy.
By Alidor Aucoin on October 26, 2011
Colleen Curran’s True Nature, which opened the Centaur ‘s Theatre season, is really an academic lecture about Mary Anning, the obscure 19th century fossil hunter, disguised as a play.
It is also a sophomoric variation on an increasingly familiar theme involving neurotic baby-boomers torn between romantic commitment and a career. True Nature appears to have grown out of a series of focus groups that came up with a cross-section of characters designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
Brassy Brisket and Ham: Schwartz’s The Musical
By Alidor Aucoin on April 21, 2011
No matter how thin you slice it, Schwartz’s the Musical at the Centaur Theatre until April 24 is as appetizing and as satisfying as a smoked meat sandwich. It is as effervescent as a Cott’s black cherry coke chaser. (Burp). It’s a ludicrous treat, even though bits of it might be hard to digest. The daffy burlesque of a show was inspired by Bill Brownstein’s history of the landmark Montreal deli on The Main published five years ago by Véhicule Press, but the script which went through dozens of rewrites, alters some of the detail in the book, and takes on a life of Its own.
Shrug! Trudeau Stories at the Centaur until June 6.
By Alidor Aucoin on May 12, 2010
Keep a diary long enough, no matter how inconsequential, and it might end up keeping you.
Brooke Johnson met Pierre Trudeau at a dance at the National Theatre School in 1985 when she was a 23-year- old aspiring actress. He danced with her, took her out for a drinks a few times, invited her for a walk in the country...
Macabre Madonna
By Alidor Aucoin on April 23, 2010
The Madonna Painter, The Birth of Painting at the Centaur, is a richly imagined, sacrilegiously macabre, exercise in which playwright Michel-Marc Bouchard delves into long-discarded French-Canadian Catholic ritual and rural ignorance, “the way a flea market hawker displays sacred objects that have been stolen and disguised for resale.”
Bunny Good Time
By Alidor Aucoin on April 23, 2010
The good news about the Segal Centre’s revival of Harvey, the play about an absentminded man who befriends an imaginary a six foot tall rabbit is that it is a hare brained delight.
The not so good news, is that it only runs until until May 9th.
Rambunctious “Comedy of Errors”
By Alidor Aucoin on March 25, 2010
Centaur Director Peter Hinton’s totally off-the-wall staging of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is a rambunctious, gender crossing romp. The pl ay is a ridiculously complicated two hour series of fast-paced, mad cap routines rooted in the mistaken identities of two sets of identical twins who were separated at birth, Antipholus of Syracuse (Marcel Jeannin) and Antipholus of Ephesus, (Andreas Apergis) and their twin servants, both named Dromio.
Literary connections, plays about writers and writing hit the stage
By Alidor Aucoin on February 11, 2010
Imagine, if you will a shoot -out between two of North America’s most
famous French-Canadian word slingers, Michel Tremblay and Jack
Kerouac. George Rideout’s Michel & Ti-Jean, playing at the Centaur
until March 7, is an unexpected surprise, a daring, novel audacious
idea that actually works on stage. The encounter between the two takes
place in 1969, one month before Kerouac drank himself to death.
Tremblay, who was then 27 and anxious to validate himself as a writer,
hitchhikes to St. Petersburg, Fla., with a copy of his then as yet
unproduced play, Les Belles Soeurs in his knapsack to give to Kerouac
to read.
A refreshing, educated Rita
By Alidor Aucoin on December 3, 2009
Taking a cue from last year’s successful Centaur Theatre production of Willy Russell’s crowd pleasing Shirley Valentine, The Segal Centre at the Saidye has countered with an invigorating production of the author’s one other popular play, Educating Rita.
Segal’s “Inherit the wind” succeeds
By Alidor Aucoin on November 4, 2009
Inherit the Wind. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee’s dramatization of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, is a timely old chestnut of a play, especially now that the fossil skeleton of Ardi, a 4-foot tall female primate who died 4.4-million years ago, is making headlines.
Piazza San Domenico
By Alidor Aucoin on November 4, 2009
A kiss is just a kiss but in Steve Galluccio’s overrated romantic farce, In Piazza San Domenico, a lip lock has toxic consequences. Galluccio’s play, held over at the Centaur until November 15, is a crowd pleaser in the same way that mindless B-movies have a following. The playwright claims Feydeau as an inspiration, but Feydeau enlarged human foibles; Galluccio combines the improbable with the predictable, then exploits human nature in crude and unrealistic fashion.
TREMBLAY’S TRIUMPHANT SEASON. Michel Tremblay, that is.
By Alidor Aucoin on October 1, 2009
If there’s any doubt that Michel Tremblay is a national resource, all
you have to do is look around . He’s everywhere. Tremblay’s latest
play – his 30th– Fragments des mensonges inutiles, is at the Theatre
Jean Duceppe until October 17. His fifth novel, La Traversée des
sentiments, comes out in November, and a musical based on his
classic, Les Belles-Soeurs, (lyrics by René Richard Cyr and music by
Daniel Bélanger) will be staged next spring at Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui,
and is already a box office hit. Tremblay is also doing the French
translation of Steve Gallucio’s farce, Piazza San Domenico, which
opens the Centaur season Oct. 6 , Michel Tremblay is also a character
who banters with Jack Kerouac in George Rideout’s play, Michel &
Ti-jean, at the Centaur in February. A production of Albertine in Five
Times is at the Shaw Festival until mid October, and next year,
Stratford will produce For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again.
Wasserman’s Yiddish festival a North American first
By Alidor Aucoin on July 2, 2009
It was touch and go whether the troupe from Poland would make it; translating two dozen Yiddish plays into French and English proved to be a bit of a headache and the logistics of meeting the specific requirements of eight theatre companies and 200 actors, artists, musicians and scholars from around the world was an enormous challenge. Still, in spite of a few last minute glitches, and some anxious moments, all of the world’s major Yiddish players came together under one roof in Montreal for last week’s opening of the International Yiddish Theatre Festival which wrapped up Friday June 25. “We’ve learned a lot, and I think we’re going to put that knowledge to use,” said Bryna Wasseman, artistic director of the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts who came up with the audacious idea...
The other side of Beijing (DATE DE PARUTION 21 AOÛT 2008)
By Alidor Aucoin on June 18, 2009
So you thought the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games were as thrilling as they were chilling?...
Two theatres: Two kinds of family portraits
By Alidor Aucoin on May 6, 2009
Family values are at the heart of Over the River and Through the Woods, Joe DiPietro’s heartwarming intergenerational comedy at the The Segal Centre for the Performing Arts until May 10. It’s a slight play, normally dinner theatre fare, but, like a plate of delicious pasta, the Segal’s production is hugely satisfying. It appeals to anyone who has ever found themselves caught between the demands of their increasingly dependent childish parents and grandparents, and their own, ever demanding professional obligations.
AMADEUS
By Alidor Aucoin on May 6, 2009
Benoit McGinnis fait une impression inoubliable sous les traits de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dans la brillante adaptation qu’a faite René Richard Cyr de la pièce Amadeus, de Peter Shaffer. La pièce est à l’affiche du Théâtre Jean Duceppe jusqu’au 21 mai prochain.
Age of arousal
By Alidor Aucoin on April 9, 2009
Sexuality is turned up full throttle in The Centaur’s lavish production of Age of Arousal, a stylish, often outrageous and sometimes tedious take on how women relate to one another, and how a man can poison that relationship. Linda Griffith’s feminist play about a group of sexually repressed “new age” women in Victorian London, is inspired by George Gissing’s The Odd Woman, the 19th century novel which deals with the fate of emancipated women in a male-dominated society...
Regurgitating the 60s
By Alidor Aucoin on April 9, 2009
It will be 40 years in May since John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their bed -in for peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. Apart from 60-something fans wrapped in the reassuring womb of nostalgia, why should anyone care? Lennon has been in his grave for almost 20 years and at the age of 75, his moody widow’s contribution to peace is to run around the world handing out pretentious little rubber stamps that bear the message, Imagine Peace...
So just how Irish is Quebec?
By Alidor Aucoin on March 19, 2009
So Irish, in fact, that people with names such as Aubrey, Charest, Sevigny, Beaudoin, Duceppe, Bourque, Sylvain and Dore can claim to be sons and daughters of Erin. A new exhibition that opened this week at the McCord Museum illustrates how Quebec has been shaped by the blending of the Irish and French identities...
Tousignant
By Alidor Aucoin on March 19, 2009
Can there be a more dazzling art exhibition around than the Claude Tousignant retrospective at the Musée d’art contemporain?
Let us Prey: One Twisted Sister.
By Alidor Aucoin on March 19, 2009
You’ve got to have doubts about a production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt at the Centaur until March 29 that reduces a complex, engrossing 80-minute play to little more than a war between the sexes...
Compelling “Tryst”
By Alidor Aucoin on March 19, 2009
British playwright Karoline Leach’s unsettling romance, Tryst, running at the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts until March 29 is a compelling , heartbreakingly superb evening of theatre. It’s the story of a Edwardian gigolo, a charming rake with the rather suspect name of George Love (C. David Johnson)...
Buried Child was best of Segal series so far
By Alidor Aucoin on February 26, 2009
The National Art Centre’s production of Sam Shepard’s loopy nightmare, Buried Child at the Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre was a thriller that walked a tightrope between the real and the surreal...
Shirley Valentine
By Alidor Aucoin on February 5, 2009
Shirley Valentine, at the Centaur Theatre until February 22, is a harmless feminist fantasy about a middle-aged housewife who skips out on her husband on two week Aegean holiday to find her self...
The Inaugural Inspiration
By Alidor Aucoin on January 15, 2009
All US presidents eventually reveal their flaws, but the ones who are remembered in spite of their flaws are those who inspire Americans - and by extension all free people - to serve and make a difference...
King Jack
By Alidor Aucoin on January 15, 2009
As one of Canada¹s richest industrialists and media barons, a biography of John Wilson McConnell, the President of St. Lawrence Sugar Refineries who once owned Holt Renfrew and the Montreal Star newspaper is certainly long overdue...
The Thousand Words: Michael Ignatieff addresses Liberals on December 10, 2008
By Alidor Aucoin on December 18, 2008
Habs 100th
By Alidor Aucoin on December 18, 2008
The Habs observe their 100th birthday, next year, but the centennial celebrations got off to a head start earlier this month...
Titanic sails again
By Alidor Aucoin on November 13, 2008
A touring exhibition of artifacts from the Titanic opened this week in the old fourth floor cinema in the Eaton Centre in downtown Montreal, where they will remain until April...
