Lion in the streets play review
In playwright Judith Thompson's LION IN THE STREETS, the world is seenthrough the eyes of a young girl who has been murdered. Isobel (AlexandriaSage) wanders amidst the lives of family members and neighborhood peoplediscovering death all around her - literally, spiritually, and morally.Sage does a marvelous job as the lost soul looking for a home. Enhancedby a splendid cast comprised of Elizabeth Elkins, Lisa Pierotti, CharlesWilley, Tim Corcoran, Leo Farley, and Paula Ewin, LION IN THE STREETSis a powerful play about the difficulties of living and dying. Thompsonpresents a series of scenarios about infidelity and betrayal, illness, deception,and other daily dilemmas. Throughout, the cast don different personas andoccasionally cavort in modern dance expressions against a background oftheatre class offers an entirely professional, way-above-average rendition of Lion In The Streets, Judith Thompson's rich and challenging 1990 drama.The actors' controlled, complex performances are further enhanced by Jeannette Lambermont's hip, dynamic direction, and are played out against a flawless technical backdrop of set, lighting and costume.The play, enacted by a cast of 28, is a series of dreamlike vignett
Yes, in this world, the wounded hunt the weaker. es that delve into the many secret miseries of 30-something urbanites. Lion in the Streets doesn't do the job. Julia Brandeberry memorably reveals what crawls behind the placid mask of a suburban soccer mom, while Deirdre Atkinson is excellent as the vulnerable spirit who ties these lives together. Eventually, Isobel comes to discover that she is in fact dead, and drifts through the city in hopes of confronting her murderer. Douglas MacLeod's tortured Father Hayes and Darcy Dunlop's dying cancer victim, who longs for an Ophelia-like death, are two of the best, but Susan Bristow also creates a stable of strikingly unique characters, encompassing a worried mother and a shattered rape victim. Tantalizing, imaginative and eerily sad, the first act excites anticipation for the second. Canadian playwright Judith Thompson is known for her refusal to satisfy an audience's Manichaean craving to see the world as black/white, us/them, good/bad. Both plays contained themes of violence and oppression, LION IN THE STREETS focusing more on society's bashing of marginalised people, while SCAPISM looked at the difficulties of remaining an independent artist in the face of love. Each scene is an intense vignette, and there are a few that continue to haunt the mind days later: a working-class preschool teacher forced to defend her way of life before a hostile room of her wealthy clients; a woman dying of cancer, whose wish to end her life like Ophelia in Millais' painting is cavalierly mocked by her best friend--the preschool teacher. On stage, however, you need a compelling story and a sympathetic (rather than simply pathetic) character or two in order to qualify as good theatre. Catherine Egan created the piece's stunning movement. It would have been more satisfying if Thompson had woven the characters from the first act into the second, creating a dazzling overall arc. We're our own worst enemies in life's battles. It's too easy--slothful--to cry down the world for its evil and wickedness without recognizing our own participation in the horrors.
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