What the Thunder Said (2006)

• Read Martin Denton’s review for nytheatre.com

• Selected by nytheatre.com as one of the “15 People of the Year in 2005″

Lenz (2005)

• “…an environmental adventure unlike anything I’ve ever partaken of in my years of theatregoing….visceral and affecting…If you care about challenging, boundary-stretching theatre, then go see this show.”
  — Martin Denton, NYTHEATRE.COM, October 2005

American Standard (2005)

• Read the Globe & Mail review (March 19, 2005

• “Movement, design and atmosphere contributed to one of the most intimate works this year. A company to watch for sure.”
  — Glenn Sumi, NOW magazine, Dec. 2000

The Memory Of Bombs

• “ The performance itself is more punk circus than theatre…Bluemouthinc. uses movement and music better than almost any other troupe in town. NNN”
  — Glenn Sumi, NOW magazine, August 2004

• “The Memory of Bombs unfolds in a haunting location, and a flurry of awe-inspiring images and physical movements assault the senses.”
  — Kamal Al-Solaylee, The Globe and Mail, August 2004

Something About a River

• Winner of the 2004 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Independent Production.

• “The company that’s bringing me to my critical knees is Toronto’s Bluemouth Inc. In one, five-hour evening, Bluemouth is remounting all three parts of its trilogy, an environmentally staged elegy to a Toronto long dead if not quite completely buried. It’s a marathon “performance installation” that requires physical and mental stamina…The work evokes different moods and responses…the images are by turns exquisite, frightening and hypnotic. *** 1/2″
  — Kamal Al-Solaylee, The Globe and Mail, November 2003

• Read the Globe & Mail review of Something About a River

What the Thunder Said

• [Critics’s Pick] what the thunder said (bluemouth inc). This powerful show by site-specific troupe bluemouth inc. takes us (by bus, blindfolded) to an undisclosed location, where we see evocative, suggestive scenes unfold with bold theatricality and heartbreaking beauty. An Eastern flavour underlies the work, which on the surface seems to be about the price of gung-ho American values. Unforgettable. Aug 7-10 and Aug 12-13 at 8 pm. Off-site, meet at Factory Theatre. NNNN.
  — Glenn Sumi, NOW magazine, Aug. 2003

• 5. Bluemouth inc. (Something About A River, Part One: The Fire Sermon; Lenz) Memories of staging tricks are often what audiences retain from interdisciplinary performances. Bluemouth — Stephen O’Connell, Sabrina Reeves, Lucy Simic and Richard Windeyer — delivers the entire package, complete with story, characters and most importantly, emotion. In The Fire Sermon, set in a porn cinema and the first part of a trilogy, and later — superbly — in Lenz, played out in various hotel rooms, the company kept surprising and mesmerizing viewers.
  — Jon Kaplan’s “Top 10 Toronto Theatre Artists of 2002″

Lenz

• “Too often, multidisciplinary performance is experimental but soulless. In stark and bloody contrast, Lenz has a dramatic heart throbbing at its centre.Crea ted by the always fascinating bluemouth inc., the site-specific show has viewers visit three hotel rooms to learn the story of Lenz (Stephen O’Connell), his sister Iris (Sabrina Reeves) and Pierre Riviére (Christopher Taylor Wright), the latter at first a shadowy player in the tale. Murder, a blurring of internal and external realities and the quest for connection with other people make up various strands of the plot.Well, plot might not be quite the word. Viewers see the three segments of the show in random order, depending on the hotel room key they draw, and it’s left to each audience member to piece together an account that makes sense. What the production achieves splendidly is giving the whole event an emotional arc, even if the narrative arc is occasionally unclear.Writers O’Connell and Reeves bring the kind of in-your-face intensity (that’s an intentional acting style, since they work in close proximity to the audience) that never rings false, while Richard Windeyer’s soundscape enhances the chilling quality of the text. Wed beautifully to its setting, touching uncomfortable feelings that people usually ignore, Lenz is scary, heightened theatre.And I mean that as a compliment.”Rating: NNNN— Jon Kaplan, NOW, October 2002

• “Site-specific performance(s) like this one reinvent spaces that might otherwise remain mundane, sort of like browsing through a 7/11 after living in the Kalahari Desert for a year…An insightful glimpse into the seedier side of living…” — Malcom Rogge, Lola, Fall 2001

Something About a River, Part One: the fire sermon

• “….no company I’ve seen in the festival juggles more balls as strikingly as bluemouth inc. Their multimedia piece Something About A River begins a year-long, three-part journey with The Fire Sermon, and the fact that it’s an off-site show for SummerWorks shouldn’t keep you away. Nor should the fact that it’s being presented at a soft-core porn movie house, the Metro XXX Cinema (677 Bloor West, at Clinton). It’s a totally appropriate venue for the first section of a show that looks at different sorts of concealed ambivalences; in this case, the ambivalence revolves around our attitude toward sexuality.The company specializes in multidisciplinary work, as I discovered when I saw Ceasefire, their 2001 SummerWorks piece. In that show the audience was invited onto the stage with the actors to watch a man in a cage playing a clarinet, films projected on the actors and intense movement-based work.Something About A River plays with the metaphor of what’s hidden beneath the ordinary and everyday, and as a symbol for that idea the company’s chosen Garrison Creek, which runs – mostly buried – beneath Toronto. (I know someone whose basement’s been flooded by the creek, which occasionally swells and rises above ground level.) The Fire Sermon is performed near the upper part of the creek; a winter show will take place near its centre, and a spring performance is planned for the creek’s mouth.It’s an ambitious undertaking, and should be splendid if the other two parts are as strong as the first. Performers Stephen O’Connell, Sabrina Reeves, Lucy Simic, Robert Tremblay, Glenn Christie, sound designer Richard Windeyer, lighting designer Jud Martell and Byron Wong, who’s credited with additional imagery and music sources, have created a rich mix here, a series of interrelated stories that aren’t easily taken in on a single viewing. They make great use of the venue and what can be done there – the Hollywood-style murals on the walls, trailers from 50s horror films, let’s-all-go-to-the-lobby-style cinema commercials, evocative new video clips – to look at what we think and feel about sex both overt and covert. Again, the actors are adept at making a statement via movement as well as by what they say, so there’s added potency.Even if I didn’t get all the layers of material, there’s something special about the project. It’s still haunting me a week after seeing the show, and I can’t wait for the other two parts, or the whole three-part staging in the fall of 2003.A clever and splendidly visceral site-specific production about sexual ambivalence…

  Rating: NNNN “Critics pick”

  — Jon Kaplan, NOW magazine, August 2002

• “Risk pays off for bluemouth as the sticky floors and seedy nostalgia of the Metro Theatre lend themselves perfectly to its latest venture. Incorporating film, live performance and dance, this piece offers us an evolving story in an all-encompassing environment. Most impressive is the consistent level of awareness of both the lovely rundown movie theatre and the living, breathing audience it contains. The result is a cerebral, yet accessible, exploration of sexual ambivalence that refuses to let us simply press play and sit back in the anonymous darkness. As the first part of a planned trilogy based about and around the West End’s buried Garrison Creek, The Fire Sermon leaves us anticipating where bluemouth will take us next.” — Sue Balint, The Eye, August 2002

Cease-Fire

• “An excellent production when you allow it to wash over you…” **** (4 stars)
  — Don Mosely, The Eye, August 2001

• “The inventive bluemouth inc invites the audience into direct, non-participatory contact with performers in Ceasefire, a multimedia piece about the Bosnian war. Dance, hand-held lighting and film projection into a birdcage are among the highlights of the piece. The movement and staging are always intriguing…Stephen O’Connell’s caged clarinetist draws attention with his speeches about birds”
  — Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine, August 2001

Pas Avec Espoir, Pas Sans Espoir

• “An eloquent meditation on grief…”
  — Susan Walker, The Toronto Star, Dec. 2001

• “An intense, highly suggestive work…”
  — Gwen Adams, Lola, Summer 2002