Jeeves & Wooster At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Jeeves & Wooster At The Shaw Festival I have a vague suspish that Robert and David Goodale must have seen The 39 Steps or Stones In His Pockets and thought, “Jolly good fun! How hard can it be?” And so, taking the inimitable P. G. Wodehouse stories of the amiable, high-born twit Bertram Wooster and […]
The Long Weekend At The Foster Festival – A Review
The Long Weekend At The Foster Festival When the first line of a play is “This weekend is going to make a colonoscopy seem like a lighthearted treasure hunt,” you sense that it’s going to be a bumpy ride. So it is with the revival of Norm Foster’s 1994 hit, The Long Weekend, at the […]
Brushing Up Your Shakespeare
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 me, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend […]
Sleuth At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Sleuth At The Shaw Festival I believe I am on record as not liking plays such as Sleuth, the brain-twisting murder mystery by Anthony Shaffer, now enthralling audiences at the Shaw Festival’s resuscitated Court House Theatre. Like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Sleuth challenges you to figure out “whodunnit” before the playwright finally […]
The Importance Of Being Earnest At The Stratford Festival – A Review
The Importance of Being Earnest At The Stratford Festival Krista Jackson’s vastly entertaining production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, currently playing to packed houses at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, may not be absolute perfection, but it will more than do until something better comes along. Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people” […]
Love Us Most At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
Love Us Most At Here For Now Theatre First, a public service announcement: Please don’t read the programme for Love Us Most, Sara Farb’s world premiere play at Here for Now, before you see the show. I did and expected a very different play from the one I saw. Love Us Most is a sharply […]
Blyth Festival Podcast
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 with the playwrights of upcoming […]
Dry Streak At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Dry Streak At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival has mounted any number of terrifc comedies over the years – Liars At A Funeral and Cakewalk come to mind – but I can’t remember when I last laughed as hard as I did at the astonishing comic payoff of Leeann Minogue’s Dry Streak. Minogue is […]
Othello At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Othello At The Stratford Festival Othello by William Shakespeare, at Stratford’s Tom Patterson Theatre, is the third Shakespeare I’ve seen this season and the third one I have liked. I admired it every bit as much as I did the RSC production in 2024. In my book that makes this season exceptional. Director Haysam Kadri, […]
Sisters Of ’78 At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Sisters of ’78 At The Blyth Festival Sisters of ’78, the new play by Kristen Da Silva, now receiving its world premiere at the Blyth Festival, is a perfect example of what makes Blyth so special. The play fulfills Blyth’s mandate to present new Canadian plays that reflect the lived experience of the people of […]