As You Like It At The Stratford Festival – A Review
As You Like It At The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, now being presented at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre under the direction of Chris Abraham, is a pastoral comedy. Well, it’s supposed to be. The play contrasts the regime of the usurper Duke Frederick of France with the idyllic and idealized […]
Macbeth At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Macbeth At The Stratford Festival I saw Robert Lepage’s production of Macbeth at Stratford’s Avon Theatre and I came out humming the scenery. If you saw his Coriolanus at Stratford or Kà, still playing in Las Vegas, you know that Lepage is a visual artist of considerable genius and one of the best theatrical magicians […]
Tons Of Money At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Tons of Money At The Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival’s laudable tradition of reviving forgotten comic gems from the so-called “mandate period” (Shaw’s long lifetime) continues with the 1922 farce Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine (the pseudonym of Archibald Thomas Peachey). Alas, Tons of Money is not tons of funny. (Feel free […]
Anything Goes At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Anything Goes At The Shaw Festival Anything Goes, directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad is yet another musical comedy triumph for the Shaw Festival. Rampersad and the Festival are most definitely on a roll. Rampersad seems to have made a decision to foster a troupe that can tap dance like nobody’s business. Her success in […]
Stick Around At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
Stick Around At Here For Now Theatre – A Review Here For Now Theatre describes its season opener, the world premiere of Stick Around by Rebecca Northan, as a comedy. “Comedy” is apparently Canadian patois for “it’ll rip your heart out.” While it has a few laughs, Stick Around is the “mildly fictionalized” and decidedly […]
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels At The Stratford Festival I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels when it premiered on Broadway in 2005 and didn’t care for it very much. Twenty years later, at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, I found I liked it even less. Here’s what I had to say in 2005 (substituting the names of performers […]
Dear Liar At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Dear Liar At The Shaw Festival I was somewhat distressed to note that this season the Shaw Festival is only presenting one play by their namesake playwright, Major Barbara, which opens relatively late in the season. So Dear Liar by Jerome Kilty, presented in the intimate Spiegeltent, is especially welcome. Based on the voluminous correspondence […]
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe At The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe At The Shaw Festival Back in 2016 at the Stratford Festival, Shaw Artistic Director Tim Carroll directed an adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (hereinafter LWW) by English playwright Adrian Mitchell. I didn’t review that show but I remember it as being […]
Bedtime Stories At The Firehall Theatre – A Review
Bedtime Stories At The Firehall Theatre Bedtime Stories, a 2006 comedy by Norm Foster, which just opened at the Firehall Theatre in Niagara Falls, Ontario, is unusual for a Foster comedy. It also marks an unusual collaboration between the Foster Festival and the community theatres of the Niagara Region. As Emily Oriold, Artistic Director […]
Annie At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Annie At The Stratford Festival Let’s put aside the many ironies of Canada’s premier theatrical company staging a musical that features a New York City billionaire who not only claims to be the world’s most successful businessman but who has the ear of the president. Instead let’s talk about Annie, the musical destined to become […]