Jan 202016
 

elle7

Here’s another review by a man who seems to think everything would be better as a movie and reviews the play as if it were a text and not a series of scenes and tableau-like images that, as the play wears on, remind you more of German Expressionist theatre than what he inappropriately calls “magic realism.” He makes no mention of the theatricality of the play. His descriptive vocabulary is minimal. “Tense” — what does that mean? And he obviously hasn’t read the novel. This is typical of a certain withered Toronto provincialism that equates the Academy Awards with the acme of our culture and thinks that by mentioning them you mark yourself as hip and in the know. 🙂

What can you expect from a newspaper that so badly read the mood of the country as to endorse Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party in the last election? And we all know how that went down.

dg

A white person left for dead in the North American wilderness in the days of conquest and colonization. A highly symbolic encounter with a bear – and local indigenous peoples. An epic journey of survival across a frozen landscape seeking revenge.

No, it’s not The Revenant, the Alejandro Iñárritu film leading this year’s Oscar nominations. It’s Elle, Douglas Glover’s 2003 Governor-General’s Award-winning novel – now transformed into an occasionally tense, but frequently funny play by the actress Severn Thompson.

Read the rest at The Globe and Mail.

  3 Responses to “Another review, slight, comical, provincial — the review, I mean @ The Globe and Mail”

  1. I say if he can’t get past his conviction that this staged performance would be better suited to film (y’know special effects and all), just think how he would cope with the original novel where he would have to make up the “pictures” all by himself.

    • Joe & Jeff, We are seeing here reviewing at a level of cosmic thoughtlessness, as in the sound of no mind. Kind of hilarious given the Globe’s track record lately. Also makes you kind of breathless. 🙂

  2. roughghosts has it right. Like, all novels should be realistic and as self-explanatory as cereal boxes, plays should be as clear as movies. The reviewer was out of his or her league. The Globe should know that.

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