Nathan The Wise at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Nathan The Wise at The Stratford Festival Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1779 play Nathan The Wise (translated and adapted by Edward Kemp), now playing in the Festival’s Studio Theatre, is one of the literary gems of the early Enlightenment. Lessing applied humanist logic, as opposed to blind superstition, to the problem (still with us today) of […]
Mother’s Daughter at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Unless you hold a cum laude degree in English History you will be well advised to arrive at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre early so you can pore over the program notes for Kate Hennig’s Mother’s Daughter.
Little Shop of Horrors at the Stratford Festival – A Review
Let’s cut to the chase — Donna Feore is a genius.
The Shaw Festival 2019, Part I
The Shaw Festival 2019, Part I The first four plays of The Shaw Festival’s 2019 season have opened and they’re a mixed bag. Here they are in descending order of my personal preference. Rope At the risk of the proverbial apples to oranges comparisons, perhaps the best of the bunch is Rope, a 1929 British […]
Glory at Drayton Entertainment — A Review
Glory at Drayton Entertainment As an American visitor to Canada and an inveterate theatergoer, I take great pleasure in seeing plays and visiting theaters that few visitors manage to discover. In the process, I often see plays that don’t seem to have any real equivalents south of the border. (No, not that border!) A case […]
The Penelopiad at the Grand Theatre – A Review
The Penelopiad at the Grand Theatre Blame The Handmaid’s Tale. With the popularity of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian tale of a toxic patriarchy there is a temptation to view all her work as feminist screed. Never mind that Atwood herself rejects that label, the zeitgeist will not be denied. It is to director Megan Follows’ credit […]
The Drowsy Chaperone at St Jacobs: A Review
The Drowsy Chaperone at St Jacobs St Jacobs, Ontario, is known for its Farmers Market and its antiques, but it also boasts a small gem of a theater. The current show at the St Jacobs Country Playhouse (through April 15, 2018) is The Drowsy Chaperone and it’s a winner. With a book by Bob Martin […]
Lear at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto – A Review
Lear at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto Director Graham Abbey and his Groundling Theatre Company continue their gender bending ways with Lear, starring Seana McKenna, which drops the King from William Shakespeare’s title and presents the tragic monarch as a woman. The results are mixed. Once again, Abbey proves himself a masterful interpreter of Shakespeare. The […]
Four Christmas Carols
Four Christmas Carols How do two Americans keep themselves occupied when visiting Canada during the deepening cold of early December? Why take in four very different versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol of course. The initial plan was to see just one, but…well, you know how these things go. First up was our original […]
Angels in America’at KC Rep – A Review
Angels in America at KC Rep Tony Kushner’s two-part Angels in America is receiving a sturdy revival at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s downtown Copaken Stage. This sprawling two-part epic, subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, is at turns surreal, whimsical, hallucinatory, bitchily funny, poetic, brutally blunt, and ultimately quite moving.