The Glass Menagerie at The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Glass Menagerie at The Shaw Festival The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee William’s 1944 memory play (and the one that established him as a major playwright) is receiving a thrilling production at The Shaw Festival. Directed by Hungarian director László Bérczes in the intimate Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, it features four nearly flawless performances that may […]
Jumbo At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Jumbo At The Blyth Festival Few people associate P. T. Barnum with southern Ontario. Yet one of the most traumatic events of his storied career occurred in St Thomas, a city not far from the shores of Lake Erie. There, in 1885, during a Canadian tour, his circus’s prize African elephant, Jumbo, was killed by […]
The Writer At The Foster Festival – A Review
The Writer At The Foster Festival Norm Foster, Canada’s most prolific and most produced playwright, is known primarily for light comedies that often have a tinge of sadness running just beneath the surface, as was the case with Jonas and Barry In The Home, which I saw last year. The Writer, his latest play now […]
Cakewalk at The Blyth Festival – A Review
Cakewalk at The Blyth Festival The mission of the Blyth Festival in tiny Blyth, Ontario, is to produce new Canadian work on rural themes. That might seem a tough nut to crack, but they’ve been at it successfully for 45 years now and the quality of the plays I’ve seen has been remarkable. Not everything […]
Private Lives at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Private Lives at the Stratford Festival Vodka and vermouth, brandy and Bénédictine, champagne and kyr, none of them are more intoxicating or will make you giddier than the combination of Lucy Peacock and Geraint Wyn Davies in the right comic roles. Elyot and Amanda Chase, the not so gay divorcés of Noel Coward’s 1931 confection […]
Othello at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Othello at The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare’s Othello is, of course, a tragedy. The tragedy in the current modern dress production of the play at the Festival Theatre is that some fine actors suffer under the misdirection of director Nigel Shawn Williams. Williams seemingly has never seen a dramatic moment he didn’t want to underline, […]
Merry Wives of Windsor at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Merry Wives of Windsor at The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare‘s The Merry Wives of Windsor owes its existence, according to tradition, to Queen Elizabeth the First’s desire to see more of Falstaff, who had become an audience favorite in Shakespeare’s histories. Thank you, Queen Bess! The play shows us Sir John Falstaff well past his […]
Henry VIII at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Henry VIII at The Stratford Festival Henry VIII is one of William Shakespeare’s last plays and one of the oddest. It would seem that the play was designed to compete with the growing popularity among the Globe’s monied clientele of court masques, elaborately staged pageants that featured rich costumes and ingenious special effects. Ironically, the […]
Billy Elliot The Musical at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Billy Elliot The Musical at The Stratford Festival In Billy Elliot The Musical the Stratford Festival has another smash hit musical on its hands. The whoops of joy from young girls, the thunderous applause after every number, and the outpouring of love that accompanies the curtain calls are proof enough of that. And yet . […]
The Neverending Story at The Stratford Festival – A Review
The Neverending Story at The Stratford Festival Hats off to the Schulich family, whose obviously generous donations fund the production of children’s theatre at the Stratford Festival! In the 2019 season their largesse is bringing us The Neverending Story, adapted by David S. Craig from German writer Michael Ende’s popular book, at the downtown Avon […]