Last Minute Pitches - Vierge and The New Alphabet

I had meant to write about these events sooner, but I'm barely keeping my head above water when it comes to this blog...

Anyway, last night we saw Vierge at Factory.  This is an exciting, mostly fun, play that looks into the lives of 4 Canadian teens with Congolese backgrounds.  Two have been in Canada for most their lives, while the other two are fairly recent immigrants who speak English, but also pepper their speech with a fair bit of French and some Lingala as well.  The play covers the typical teenage drama of teenagers becoming adults with all the confusion that brings.  There is less emphasis on social media than is probably the case for Gen Z today, though sexting becomes a significant plot point.  What is quite different is how seriously the young women all take religion, as they are all members of a church youth group, which is a somewhat different perspective than most plays about young people these days.  Anyway, there is a single show left - today's 2 o'clock matinee.  More info and to book tickets here.

The other thing that I had meant to post about was the current show at MOCA: Athena Papadopoulos's The New Alphabet.  This is the most interesting thing I've seen at MOCA in a while.  It calls to mind a mash-up of 90's-era David Cronenberg (Naked Lunch/eXistenZ) and Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock.  It closes today, however.  MOCA is open until 6, though they note there is limited street parking.  I typically bike there, but it's going to rain all afternoon, so even though I am a bit tempted, I don't think I'll go back for a second viewing.  Here are a few of the pieces I liked from the show.  (I'll go back and clean up the labels later...)

Again, apologies for the extreme tardiness in getting this posted.

A Long, Strange Trip (to Ottawa)

I guess it wasn't all that strange a trip, but it was a bit exhausting.  Unlike dropping my son off at Carleton last fall, he was able to consolidate what was coming back with him to the point that I was able to take the train up yesterday, and we took the train back today.  Though VIA had a lot of trouble just a few weeks back, the train there was on time and coming back we were delayed at most by 10 minutes.  When things go well, VIA is probably the best way to get to Ottawa.  It's far less stressful for me than driving at any rate.

It's still quite a long train ride, however.  I was able to charge up my iPod and listened to music all the way there and most of the way back.  I didn't quite make it through Katherine Mansfield's Selected Stories (Oxford), but I got pretty close.  I have to admit that her stories generally don't do a lot for me, which is probably why I wasn't able to get through the whole book.  I had even brought an additional(!) book -- Guy Vanderhaeghe's Homesick, but I barely cracked it.  Given that I'll be on transit a lot next week, since there is so much rain in the forecast, I should be able to finish the final 100 pages of The Singapore Grip and then start in on Homesick.  

I got into Ottawa around 10:30 pm on Wed., made it to Rideau Station on the LRT (at least this was working after that ice storm that knocked it out).  I got through one quick work assignment and then crashed.

In the morning, I thought I would stop in at a Tim Horton's on the way to the National Gallery, but it was packed, so I just went straight to the National Gallery.  There's a small coffee shop right there at the Gallery, so I went there and grabbed a muffin.  Then I went straight into the museum at 10 am.  There was some trouble with their system, so they just waved me in.  I had seen the main exhibit, Uninvited, several years back when it was up at the McMichael.  I went through it again but very quickly.  

I liked this series of small sketches by Marion Long.  They were probably on view at the McMichael, but I'd have to go check to be sure.

Marion Long, Morning Sun, ca. 1925

Marion Long, Lower Bay Street, the Mystic City, 1930-5

This time around I spent more time on the main floor with the Group of Seven to contemporary Canadian artists, and I spent a bit less time on the upper floor, mostly just looking at the Impressionists to contemporary art.  I stayed just over an hour.  It was a decent if somewhat compressed visit.

Georgia O'Keefe, Lake George with Crows, 1921

Joseph Cornell, The Hotel Eden, 1945

I then caught a cab to Carleton to help my son finish cleaning his room (he had done most of it last night, completely abandoned by his roommate) and packing up the rest of his stuff.  We dropped about half of his stuff off at the off-campus place where he'll be living next year.  While I would have preferred that he live on-campus at UT, it is also true that he will have developed a lot more independence by living that far away from home.  And he's starting to think he'd come back to Toronto to go to the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy for his Master's, though that's a bit far ahead at this point.

My main complaint was that there are no small shops or restaurants around the Carleton campus, which seems like a clear market failure.  It wouldn't have mattered as much, but essentially all the on-campus dining options were also shut down as classes were over.  We finally found a coffee shop in the Minto Centre, though they had sold out of all their sandwiches, so we just had the yogurt parfaits.

It took another half an hour to check the room to make sure nothing had been left behind, and then he ordered an Uber to get to the VIA train station.  (I'm still holding out on putting the app on my phone!)  We were able to order a couple of sandwiches at the small restaurant in the station.  Then we only had a few minutes to wait before it was time to line up for the train.  The ride back was pretty smooth and, as I mentioned already, only a few minutes late.  So mission accomplished!

I'm assuming I'll take him back by train either at the end of August or very early September.  (Maybe I'll take Dickens' Dombey and Son on that trip...)  In terms of long rides, I am thinking of going out to Montreal in October or November to see the Marisol exhibit.  I'll probably train it rather than flying, but I'll decide closer to the time.  I'm also thinking it might be time to get out to Detroit.  I haven't been there in many years.  Probably not since my mother died, though I did make it back to Ann Arbor in 2008.  For a long time I had thought I would take the train to Windsor and then get over to Detroit on my own.  However, we now have 2 options to get to Detroit directly by bus, and that is a bit more appealing to me.  I missed the Van Gogh show, waiting on my passport, but if I make it over between mid-August and mid-October, there are two exhibits that look worth checking out, including one called After Cubism.  So this is something I'll look into; the bus prices are a lot more stable than plane fares, so I don't think I'll need to plan quite so far in advance.  

Take That, FOMO!

It has been a much longer gap than normal since my last post.  All I can say is that things have been busy.  I had to get through US taxes, then Canadian taxes, including figuring the tax for my son.  Then I had a book review due (which I wrote out in longhand while watching a couple of sets at The Rex - and then the editor only asked for minimal changes, so in that case multi-tasking worked out pretty well).  Then I had two presentations due this past Monday for TAC.  One presentation was literally pulled together in a day.  Now that I have just a bit of breathing room, I can perhaps get somewhat caught up, though I'll never write down everything that I think would be interesting enough (to me) to get up on the blog.  There's just not enough time in the week.

Anyway, in my last post, I was bemoaning how I didn't make it out to SF to catch the Kronos Quartet.  I ended up seeing a play called Metamorphosis (based on Ovid) at Crow's Theatre instead, but I didn't care for it all that much. It turns out Glen Sumi wasn't a fan either, giving it only 2 stars, so it probably wasn't just my desire to be elsewhere.

I starting thinking through some alternatives, and I settled on going to NYC to see Stoppard's Leopoldstadt, as I have grave doubts it will turn up here in Toronto (after it was cancelled due to COVID).  Over time, I picked up more and more things I would want to do, including probably attending the musical Some Like it Hot.  Then I got an email blast from Boston MFA about a pretty amazing exhibit on Hokusai and his impact on other artists.  I had a gap in my calendar around May 20 and started trying to put a trip together that would include a day in Boston.  I found a few workable solutions under $500 through Expedia but the price kept jumping up when I tried to book.  (Expedia has not been my friend at all these past few months...)  Eventually I gave up on that and set my sights on early June.  The same thing happened through Expedia but Kayak finally found a way to make it happen, even though I may have missed out (slightly) on a sale Porter was running.  So I am going to Boston to check out Hokusai.  Then have to get up super early on Friday to head to New York.  If I miss that flight I'm screwed.  I have essentially three full days in NYC, so lots of museums.  I'll probably even make a stop at the Brooklyn Museum to see an exhibit that offers a feminist challenge to Picasso. I'll try to write more on the Picasso Century celebrations another time.  And if I can make it work, I'll see The Music Lesson as well.*  Then I come back midday on Monday.

The flights are all booked now, and I just need to look into all the other pieces.  It's definitely something to look forward to, though I'm sure I'll be stressing and fretting about missing my connections.  I've have a few close calls, especially on my last trip to Chicago (which I definitely do need to jot down here), but things have generally worked out in the end.  Though there was one time where snow conditions and cancellations ultimately derailed the entire trip to see my dad (and in retrospect this was a very bitter pill...), and then another time I got very sick (almost certainly food poisoning) right before a trip to Brooklyn (to see O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh) to the point I ultimately had to pull the plug.

* Apparently, The Music Lesson closed back in Jan.  Too bad!  Then there was a Tracy Letts's play called The Minutes that looked interesting, but it closed last year!  This sounds like something that may end up playing Toronto, though most of his plays haven't.  The timing looks a bit suspect, but I might be able to see the revival of Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. That's probably worth checking out.  Anyway, I'll start making the rest of my plans soon.