xArts Club Theatre Company On Tour
The Piano Teacher by Dorothy Dittrich

Dates and Venues October 4 – November 6, 2018, | Various venues throughout the Lower Mainland

Reviewer Ed Farolan

Well-made plays are usually winners. and Dittrich´s play is a winner. In fact, it won the Best Original Script in last year's Jessie's.

A well-made play (not in the derogatory sense) follows the technique of how to write a good play. The French dramatist Eugene Scribe coined this phrase, la piece bien faite, and other French dramatists, Sardou, Dumas fils, Augier, etc. followed suit. In fact, melodramas, and later on, TV soap operas followed this tradition.

A well-made play has a simple plot such as this one. It has a few characters, in this case, only three characters, and involves a problem which is settled at the end. It is basically Aristotelian in its approach.

The stage is also simple, so is everything in the play, in the acting, in the dialogue which is simple (not simplistic, which sounds pejorative.) But it's the simple, not complicated plays that win awards. And this one, as mentioned earlier, was a winner.

In my opinion, this is a play intended for women. It´s written by a woman and obviously, it has a woman's perspective. Women tend to like this type of play. Not that I don't like it, as a man, but I guess for most men, this isn't their cup of tea. Men generally tend to go for Shakesperean battle scenes or movies like Terminator. However, for those soft hearted types who like sentimentality, men or women or transgenders, this is a play that might touch your hearts.

The play made its debut last year at Arts Club´s BMO Theatre, and the same actors (Megan Leitch, Caitriona Murphy and Kamyar Pazandeh) and directors (Scott Bellis and Rachel Ditor) are in this tour, as well as the same production staff.. The play is at the Surrey Arts Centre until Ocober 20th and will continue touring to different venues in the Lower Mainland until November 6th.

© 2018 Ed Farolan