Tao Of The World At The Stratford Festival Playwright-director Jovanni Sy, whose magisterial Salesman in China (co-written with Leanna Brodie) was the smash hit of the Stratford Festival’s 2024 season, is back with an intermittently funny bit of cultural appropriation called The Tao of the World, set in the world
Suzannah At Here For Now Theatre Suzannah, a meditation on the life of Henrik Ibsen’s wife, by Norwegian Nobel laureate Jon Fosse in a translation by Dr. May Brit Akerholt, is receiving a reverential production under the precise direction of Peter Hinton-Davis at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre. Fosse presents
Saturday, Sunday, Monday At The Stratford Festival Among the many good things retiring Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino has done during his nearly forty years at the Stratford Festival is championing the work of Italian playwright Eduardo de Filippo (1900-1984). His Saturday, Sunday, Monday from 1959 is receiving a resplendent production
Ship To Shore At The Port Stanley Festival Like most Norm Foster two-handers, Ship To Shore begins simply. The deck of a cruise ship. One man. One woman. One deck chair. Who will prevail? But then, to quote a catchphrase from this engaging comedy, the plot thickens. Erin Walsh (Cailin
The King James Bible Play At The Stratford Festival The awkwardly titled The King James Bible Play, by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman, is a fascinating melange of ideas and notions of a distinctly feminist cast inspired by the work in the title. It is receiving a sprightly world premiere under the direction
The Odd Couple At Drayton Entertainment The Odd Couple, arguably the best thing ever written by Neil Simon, the United States’ Norm Foster, is getting a laugh-filled revival at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Country Playhouse. The basic premise is no doubt familiar to everyone thanks to the long-running sitcom the
Rhinoceros At The Yale Rep The Yale Rep is mounting a spirited revival of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist masterpiece Rhinoceros in a new adaptation by Frank Galati (from a translation by Derek Prouse) under the direction of Liz Diamond. Ionesco’s parable depicts a small French town whose residents are turning, one
English At Long Wharf Theatre English, the first play by Sanaz Toosi, comes to New Haven with impeccable credentials – a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 following its Off-Broadway debut in 2022 and then a Broadway remount in 2025. Even though English is now getting a solid production at Long Wharf’s
A Christmas Carol at KCRep Having just seen two modern Canadian adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at the Blyth Festival and the Foster Festival, I found it fascinating to take in a good, old-fashioned production of the perennial holiday favourite in Kansas City, Missouri. The KCRep is one of
Spunk at Yale Rep The Yale Rep in New Haven, Connecticut, has unearthed a treasure in Zora Neale Hurston’s exuberant 1935 play with music, Spunk. It was never produced and lay forgotten before being rediscovered in the Library of Congress in 1997. Refurbished and lovingly fleshed out with new songs
Make England Great Again Upstairs At The Gatehouse Scathing political satire seems to be in short supply on North American stages (if I’m wrong, please correct me in the Comments), but thanks to Francis Beckett’s perfectly timed Make England Great Again it’s alive and well in London. Make England Great
Mitridate Re Di Ponto at the Teatro Real When I was a lad of fourteen I had learned to do something kinda fun. At the same tender age, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had learned how to compose an opera. Mitridate, Re di Ponto, the opera in question, is being presented at
The Odyssey And The Oddity I took a break from theatre to go see Christopher Nolan’s bladder-busting three-hour blockbuster The Odyssey. I can confidently report that it’s okay. I won’t presume to “review” it. Film criticism is above my pay grade, but I will permit myself some observations. It seems
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Bob Krist, retired photographer for National Geographic magazine, who is now sharing his professional know-how along with a growing collection of travel videos on YouTube. Like me, he has a life-long love of theatre so a pilgrimage to Canada’s two major
Brushing Up Your Shakespeare I am an avid listener of The History of English Podcast, by Kevin Stroud, which helps while away the time as I commute back and forth from Stratford to the Great Satan to the south (thank you, Immigration Canada). Unless you’re a hopeless language nerd like
The Blyth Festival Podcast I wanted to give a brief shout out to the Blyth Festival Podcast, an excellent way to keep abreast of what’s coming up at Blyth. Hosted by Joanne Wallace, Blyth’s Director of Development, these short (35 to 45 minute) episodes typically take the form of interviews
“We’re A Cult” – The Leonor Stratford has a new “third space!” The Leonor on George is hard to categorize and hard to resist. It’s a bookshop/boutique/tea room/performance space that seeks to become a gathering place for Stratford’s arts community and those drawn to it. The tag line says it
Stratford Takes A Giant Step – Backward When the Stratford Festival began in 1953, it was helmed by a Brit, the legendary Tyrone Guthrie. The Festival continued to turn to the mother country for leadership for many years thereafter. Since Richard Monette became Artistic Director in 1994 the Festival has
