Abraham Out As Cimolino Successor
Abraham Out As Cimolino Successor It appears that Chris Abraham, once considered one of the top candidates to replace Antoni Cimolino as artistic director of the Stratford Festival is out of the running. From the Toronto Star: “The Stratford Festival’s search for a new artistic director, the most powerful and influential position in the country’s […]
Liars At A Funeral Is Back
Liars At A Funeral Is Back I saw Liars At A Funeral in 2023 at the Blyth Festival and raved about it. This season it is being revived by Drayton Entertainment at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse. As is so often the case with plays and productions I love I hesitate to see other productions. […]
The Wind Coming Over The Sea At The Blyth Festival – A Review
The Wind Coming Over The Sea At The Blyth Festival The Wind Coming Over the Sea, the heartbreaking, elegiac play by best-selling Canadian author Emma Donoghue (“Room”) marks yet another triumph for the Blyth Festival. The Wind Coming Over the Sea tells the true story of Henry and Jane Johnson, Ulster Protestants who formed part […]
Forgiveness At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Forgiveness At The Stratford Festival The current efforts toward “truth and reconciliation” in Canada address the outrages visited upon the country’s First Nations peoples. Forgiveness, by Hiro Kanagawa at the Stratford Festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre, does something similar for Canada’s Japanese minority. Forgiveness is based on Mark Sakamoto’s memoir about his Japanese grandmother Mitsue (Yoshie […]
Sense And Sensibility At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Sense and Sensibility At The Stratford Festival Kate Hamill brings an antic disposition to her adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novels. Her Sense and Sensibility, now getting an energetic, if occasionally over-emphatic production at the Stratford Festival stays more or less true to the original while mining its comic possibilities. For the non-Austen fans, Sense […]
Major Barbara At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Major Barbara At The Shaw Festival I keep forgetting how deliciously witty, falling down funny, and eternally topical George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara is. Fortunately, the Shaw Festival remounts it from time to time to remind us. The current revival, the first since 2013, is helmed by Peter Hinton-Davis. It may not be the definitive […]
Forget About Tomorrow At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
Forget About Tomorrow At Here For Now Theatre Forget About Tomorrow, a play by Jill Daum now receiving its Ontario premiere at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, may be tough going for some, but thanks to sensitive direction by Peter Pasyk and a talented cast it rewards our close attention for its 80-minute length. Jane […]
Sir John A At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Sir John A At The Blyth Festival Most theatre companies in Canada give a nod to the righteous anger of the country’s indigenous (or First Nations) population by opening every show with a performative and, to my mind, meaningless “land acknowledgement.” The Blyth Festival has a history of placing the issues underlying those acknowledgements front […]
Norm Foster’s Halfway There Is Back
Last season, Drayton Entertainment revived Norm Foster’s Halfway There at their namesake venue in Drayton and I absolutely adored it. So when I learned they were bringing it back this season, this time at their very stylish Cambridge location, I was quick to book tickets and bring friends along. The show boasts the same cast […]
Anne of Green Gables At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Anne of Green Gables At The Stratford Festival I had any number of nits to pick with Anne of Green Gables, adapted and directed by Kat Sandler from the 1908 novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, but in the end none of that mattered. Swept along in a shameless sea of sentiment and schmaltz, buoyed by […]