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Chronicling a Love Affair with Canadian Theatre

Rampersad Helms Red Shoes At RSC

the red shoes

Rampersad Helms ‘The Red Shoes’ At RSC Following in Tim Carroll’s footsteps, Kimberley Rampersad, the Associate Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival is directing and choreographing The Red Shoes at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. This Red Shoes is a new version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “dark fairy tale” by Irish playwright Nancy Harris, […]

Announcing The 2024 OntarioStage Awards

The 2024 OntarioStage Awards What they lack in prestige, they more than make up for in pointlessness.™ It’s the third time around for the annual awards compilation voted “Easiest to Ignore” by the Canadian theatre establishment. The usual caveats apply: As an American, my time in Canada is limited thanks to Immigration Canada’s ongoing efforts […]

Lighthouse Theatre Announces Its 2025 Season

Lighthouse Theatre Announces Its 2025 Season The Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, Ontario, was new to me this season, but based on my visit to see Norm Foster’s Lakefront, I’ll be returning to their comfy 350-seat house next year. Lighthouse has announced its 2025 season and it looks more than promising. It kicks off with […]

Shaw Festival Announces 2025 Season

Shaw Announces Its 2025 Season In size and scope the Saw Festival’s 2025 season will look a lot like the current one, with some intriguing differences. The morning one-act in the Royal George seems to have been axed. But the other shows slated for that venue seemed ideally suited to the former vaudeville house. As […]

Stratford Festival Announces 2025 Season

Stratford Announces 2025 Season The Stratford Festival has announced a somewhat slimmed down season for 2025 that reflects ongoing financial struggles as the post-pandemic “recovery” proves more sluggish than hoped (or anticipated). For starters, there will be eleven productions next year as opposed to the more usual twelve. Only one show has been announced for […]

Shameless!

Shameless! I have now seen Something Rotten three times and can reliably report that the show has done nothing but get better, tighter, and more self-assured. I have also now had the opportunity (twice) to see Steve Ross as Shylock. No offense to his understudy, who filled in admirably the first time I saw the […]

Here For Now Is Here To Stay

here for now new home

              Here For Now Is Here To Stay [Press Release] On Monday, June 10th, 2024, HERE FOR NOW THEATRE announced that the company has found a permanent home for the next 15 Seasons. Here For Now Theatre, an award-winning independent professional theatre company in Stratford, is set to renovate […]

Who’s Hugh O’Brian?

hugh o'brian

Who’s Hugh O’Brian? A recent conversation with an actor friend (yes, we all go slumming from time to time) brought up the old showbiz wheeze about the Five Stages of an Actor’s Career. I looked it up on Quote Investigator and the earliest documented telling of the joke was by Hugh O’Brian. It’s worth repeating […]

Our Audience Is Dying

Our Audience Is Dying Twenty years ago, in the brilliant Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, the fictional advertising agency Froghammer created an ad campaign for the equally fictitious New Burbage Festival featuring a billboard headlined “OUR SUBSCRIBERS” that showed an elderly white woman on her deathbed, her husband grieving by her side. I was […]

Wisconsin Theatre. Yes, Wisconsin

Wisconsin Theatre As an American, I pride myself on having pierced the Poutine Curtain to bring news of Canada’s theatrical riches to my benighted fellow countrymen. Now I discover that Ilana Lucas, an intrepid reporter for Intermission, a Canadian online magazine devoted to theatre, has made the reverse journey and returned with valuable intelligence. It […]