Results tagged “maevbeaty”

The Mill is definitely one of the most exciting things happening right now in Toronto theatre. It's a series of four plays written by four of the best young playwrights around these parts (Hannah Moscovitch, Matthew MacFadzean, Damien Atkins, and Tara Beagan), each centred on an historic Ontario mill. And while that might sound at first like typical Canadian theatre fodder, there is more than one twist: MacFadzean's play (Now We Are Brody), the first in the cycle, is set in 1854; Moscovitch's (The Huron Bride) is set twenty years prior; Beagan's (The Woods), another three hundred years prior; and Atkins's (Ash) is actually set in our own future. Plus, there's lots of ghosts and gore.

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly affected by the political situation in Iraq from Saddam's rise to power to the present. Interestingly, while Thompson has created the text for the show, she has not created fictional characters. Though they are not credited as such in the program, the following becomes clear: Maev Beaty's "American Soldier" is none other than Abu Ghraib's favourite dishonourable dischargee, Private Lynndie England; Julian Richings' "British Microbiologist and Weapons Inspector" is WMD whistle-blower and Thom Yorke muse David Kelly; Arsinée Khanjian's "Iraqi Mother" is the less notorious Nehrjas al-Saffarh, a woman who was tortured along with her children during Saddam's reign and died in the first Gulf War.