King Lear At The Stratford Festival – A Review
King Lear At The Stratford Festival Where’s Geoffrey Tennant when you need him? I really, really wanted to like the Stratford Festival’s King Lear by William Shakespeare currently playing at the Festival Theatre and I strove mightily to do so. But try as I might I couldn’t get past Kimberly Rampersad’s inept direction and the […]
Casey And Diana At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Casey And Diana At The Stratford Festival A small miracle is unfolding at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre where the world premiere of Casey and Diana by Nick Green is receiving a splendid – and far too brief – production under the assured direction of Andrew Kushnir. Casey and Diana weaves a tale of courage, […]
Rent At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Rent At The Stratford Festival The Stratford Festival is trying to attract a younger audience and they seem to be succeeding, at least for their full-throttle production of the musical Rent. The packed houses at the Festival Theatre are reminiscent of the “youthquake” Froghammer produced for New Burbage in season two of Slings and Arrows.* […]
Spamalot At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Spamalot At The Stratford Festival Eric Idle’s Spamalot, now holding forth at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, is surely up for some sort of ecological award. After all, everything in it is recycled. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Whether you’ll enjoy this Spamalot will depend to a great extent on your level of […]
Prince Caspian At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Prince Caspian at the Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival continues its exploration of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia novels with Prince Caspian, now enjoying its world premiere at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It’s another substantial entry in Shaw’s list of plays for young audiences. (The earlier outings in the series were The Magician’s Nephew […]
Gypsy At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Gypsy at the Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival has seemingly always played second fiddle to the Stratford Festival when it comes to musicals. No longer. Their current production of Gypsy, the legendary 1959 Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne musical with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is an unalloyed triumph. Much of the credit for that goes to […]
On The Razzle At The Shaw Festival – A Review
On The Razzle At The Shaw Festival If you are one of those people who subscribe to the mistaken notion that Tom Stoppard plays are dense, philosophically abstruse, and difficult to follow, you can check your apprehensions at the entrance to the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake and simply enjoy the Feydeau-esque farce that is […]
The Prom At Drayton – A Review
The Prom At Drayton The slight but sprightly musical comedy The Prom, a modest succès d’estime on Broadway in 2018, rests on an odd premise. Dee Dee Allen (Blythe Wilson) and Barry Glickman (Andrew Scanlon), two stars with solid Broadway cred (two Tonys and a Drama Desk Award) are headlining a musical based on Eleanor […]
Gypsy At Goodspeed Musicals – A Review
Gypsy at Goodspeed Musicals Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, known to us old-timers as the Goodspeed Opera House, is mounting a workmanlike production of the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim classic, Gypsy, directed by Jenn Thompson. The production tries mightily to do justice to what many critics and historians of the genre consider the greatest […]
A New Slings and Arrows Podcast Debuts
A New Slings and Arrows Podcast Debuts Slings and Arrows fans rejoice. A “kind of official” podcast devoted to the cult favorite is now available and it’s a great way to mark the show’s twentieth anniversary year. Outrageous Fortune, as the podcast is dubbed, promises to be a gold mine for fans who can’t get […]