Last Landscape

(Bad New Days in association with Common Boots Theatre at Buddies in Bad Times through Jan 26)

The surface joy of this inventive and thoughtful piece allows the audience a meditative break from the noise of the modern world. Almost entirely wordless, Last Landscape sees a company of five labourers use the detritus of their post-natural environment to approximate memories of what once existed. The show plays out slowly as each scene is created and disassembled, quiet except for SlowPitchSound’s live performance of a mesmerizing soundscape blending natural sound and music. It’s immensely peaceful, but then of course there’s the dread. Allow your mind to drift for even a moment out of the ASMR-ish trance and the dire climate warnings and lonely sadness baked into the piece from its pandemic-era inception fill every inch of the expansive Buddies in Bad Times stage. Not every vignette connects completely to the whole and a one-act runtime might better match the flow of the piece but the creativity and thematic depth of Last Landscape raise it to incredible heights as a singular achievement in haunting tonal and thematic dissonance.

 

Winter Solstice

(Necessary Angel in association with Canadian Stage and Birdland Theatre at the Berkeley Street Theatre through Feb 2)

Written by Roland Schimmelpfennig in 2017 and translated from German by David Tushingham, Winter Solstice is a frustrating piece that seems to contain warring much-better plays. A staid but competent production by Necessary Angel artistic director Alan Dilworth features a stellar cast each of whom give their characters a strong sense of inner life. The text however doesn’t support so much development as the compelling marital dynamic between Kira Guloien’s Bettina and Cyrus Lane’s Albert is quickly backburnered to focus on the invasion of fascist ideology into their mannered upper middle class home in the form of semi-invited guest Rudolph (Diego Matamoros). Schimmelpfennig has a lot of interesting ideas about ideological creep and the consequences when it’s met with the politeness of privilege but the play’s split focus pairs with a short runtime to force forcefulness when the playwright’s point requires subtlety, time, and trust.

 

Dinner with the Duchess

(Here for Now in association with Crow’s Theatre in the Streetcar Crowsnest Studio through Feb 2)

Like last year’s Casey & Diana which transferred from a summer run in the Stratford Festival studio theatre to the Soulpepper mainstage in January 2024, playwright Nick Green’s current Critics’ Pick Award-nominated piece has made the jump from a smaller regional stage (Stratford’s Here For Now) to a larger Toronto space (Crow’s Theatre’s studio) running concurrently with our awards season. Revisiting the production after my rave review last fall, the script remains vibrant, emotionally complex, and impeccably researched. That said, perhaps to fill the slightly larger space with slightly more challenging sightlines or perhaps just a consequence of time and familiarity, the performances all seem to have grown since the Here for Now run. In the case of supernova leading lady Jan Alexandra Smith, that’s not a problem at all. Her character’s bigness is baked in and she’s an actress of such depth that no amount of additional grandiosity can pull her feet too far off the ground. The trouble comes with Rosie Simon’s journalist Helen, an understated character with the tricky task of standing up to her subject while embodying a complete contrast in personal style. Perhaps it’s a failing of my memory but I remember more subtlety in Simon’s performance months ago rather than the fragrant flirting and mouth-covering gasps at emotional revelation that mark the character now. The strength of the ensemble dynamic lives in the contrast and, while the overall production has barely lost a step, I fear Helen’s losing her punch by trying to hit too hard.