Wellington Oracle

– Oracle restaurant review by Don Chow of foodiePrints

Please don’t mind the title.  I have not made a favourite of a restaurant I have only visited twice.  We at foodiePrints have had many a fine meal at Allium, both lunches and dinners.  I celebrated my 29th birthday there, a surprise party thrown by my better half with many of my closest friends.  We reserve seats there on many special occasions.  We bring out-of-town house guests there.  We drop in spontaneously when it’s quiet.  Though, we were slightly disappointed by our last outing during the New Year.

The Allium restaurant has actually shut its doors to customers twice during our tenure in the Hintonburg/Wellington West neighbourhoods.  The first time was due to an out-of-control grease fire spreading from the kitchen belonging to the upper floor tenant of the building, Les Grillades.  The second was during the month of July when Allium closed its doors for renovations. (more…)

– photo by Richard Ellis

Would it be a pointless tautology, especially in light of Pinter’s own discomfort with the term, to call Third Wall Theatre’s production of Old Times Pinteresque?’

Pinter once famously distinguished between two kinds of silence, one characterized by the absence of speech and one characterized by its obscuring presence, and what makes director James Richardson’s staging Pinteresque is its power to make both kinds of silence speak… with startling force.

The play relentlessly interrogates the relationship between recollection and invention, history and authority. It features only three characters – the married couple Deeley and Kate, and their dinner-guest Anna, and each is persuasively acted (by Richard Gelinas, Kristina Watt and Sophie Goulet respectively). In a couple of instances during Friday night’s performance, both Watts and Goulet fumbled the delivery of their lines, but both recovered adeptly, Goulet in particular able to weave her halting speech into Anna’s mercurial characterization. (more…)

-Theatre review by Michelle Desbarats

Can a floor painted to resemble parched ground transform into the earth and dust of South Africa? Can an illusion of sky become the actual fabric over another place? Can a swing suspended from a branch of only belief be a doorway? As the audience settles into their seats for the opening night of The Syringa Tree, the first play of the GCTC’s 2009/10 season, Robin Fischer’s set design waits, stark and silent with promise.

The award-winning play was inspired by the playwright’s childhood in Johannesburg during the apartheid era. At the heart of the play is the connection between a white child and her black nanny. Because Pamela Gien, the author, has given so deeply of her heart, it is a moving and wondrous piece. (more…)

An update on road reconstruction from Annie Hillis of the Wellington West Business Improvement Area:

Did you ever think you would be so happy to see asphalt??

Wellington St West is now paved with the first layer of asphalt all the way from Parkdale Avenue to Merton Street! We can confirm that both the contractor and the weather are sticking to schedule and the roadway is slated to be paved and open again to two-way traffic by Nov 15th. We’re also happy to report that the c ontractor has been leaving the site with a minimum of three open stretches for parking along Wellington St West, unencumbered by supplies or equipment. (more…)

Since the opening of the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre in 2007, the Fritzi Gallery space adjoining the upstairs lobby has been an integral part of a night out at the west end theatre. The idea has been that the content of the exhibition takes its theme from the GCTC play being presented at that time.

Under the curation of the Cube’s Don Monet the exhibitions have often taken a fascinating turn, with aspects of the scripts brought out to the foreground in ways that can surprise and challenge.

That collaboration is set to continue, according to both parties, but the wall space that stands empty in the off-season may soon have a curator all its own if Ottawa artist Trevor Sylvain has his way. In fact, beginning this September, Sylvain has already begun to take advantage of the space the gallery provides when the GCTC season is not yet underway.

Check the audio link below to hear Trevor talk about the Fritzi’s new programming.

 

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This update from the West Wellington Business Improvement Area has good news for the residents and businesses of Wellington Street West in Hintonburg:

It’s official, we’re home to the hardest rock in the city!

Does that mean we have more heavy metal bands per capita than other neighbourhoods? Well, we do have plenty of great local bands (and cool venues to hear them in like Elmdale House Tavern, Daniel O’Connell’s Pub and The Carleton) but it’s the rock beneath our feet – and beneath our street – that is so hard. And it’s the rock – as opposed to the sandy subsoil that can be found in many other parts of the city – that has made Phase 2 of the Wellington Street West Road Reconstruction Project such an enormous effort. (more…)