Cate Simpson

Patrick Marber’s Closer follows four people through various dating configurations, affairs and dramatic breakups, conveyed through a series of short scenes several months apart. The star-studded 2004 film adaptation was nominated for two Oscars; now Alumnae Theatre have brought it back to its stage roots.

Alumnae’s production is slick and entertaining, but it suffers slightly from miscasting. Steven Burley as Larry is too physically slight to be as imposing as many of his scenes require, and often when Larry’s true bullying nastiness should be most apparent, we see him only as a victim. His softness of manner and of accent also mask the class tension we are meant to perceive between him and Anna, and oblique references to this are never fully explored.

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Walking The Tightrope, the most recent production by British playwright Mike Kenny, is ambitious children’s theatre. The story follows a young girl, Esme, who visits her grandfather soon after her grandmother has died. At a loss to explain why Nana Queenie won’t be joining them this year, Grandad Stan tells Esme that Queenie has gone to join the circus. The lie becomes gradually more elaborate, until the real circus comes to town and forces him to reveal the truth.

The play walks its own tightrope between being lighthearted and energetic enough to keep the kids interested, and giving its subject matter the emotional weight it requires. Employing a popular device in children’s entertainment, the actors double as storytellers and keep things moving by narrating their actions. Repetition also keeps us tuned in to the central theme — that change is inevitable and part of life — which emerges as the take-home message for younger audiences.

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Dog Sees God, which re-imagines the characters of Charles Schulz’ Peanuts as teenagers based on the dispositions of their childhood incarnations, is part comedy, part meditation on the end of innocence.

Faithfully following the comic’s main characters to their logical adolescent conclusions, writer Bert V. Royal and director Lezlie Wade bring us the earnest and lovable CB (Charlie Brown), searching for meaning after the death of his beloved beagle; Stiffleresque school bully Matt (Pigpen); and stoner Van (Linus) who has replaced his blanket with a pot habit.

The cast, all stars of Degrassi: The Next Generation, play their teenage roles as well as you would hope. Alex Saslove and Siobhan Murphy do a particularly convincing job of capturing bitchy codependent best friends Marcy and Trisha (Peppermint Patty), who mix White Russians in their lunchtime milk cartons. The first half hour, as we discover what time has done to those tiny cartoon friends, contains some of the play’s best dialogue and all of its comedy. Lindsey Clark, understudy for Paula Brancati, is both funny and terrifying in the role of Van’s sister (Lucy), whose pyromaniacal tendencies have landed her in an asylum.

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Binti’s Journey is a play about many things. It gives faces and names to the AIDS epidemic in Africa — sometimes numbingly anonymous in its scale — while also managing to be about the end of innocence. Degrassi: The Next Generation actor Jajube Mandiela brings a touching naivety to Binti, the work’s teen narrator, that gives her story both pathos and humour.

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