Playboy Of The Western World At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Playboy Of The Western World At The Shaw Festival Tá bearna mhór idir scéal gallda agus gníomhas salach. J. M. Synge The Shaw Festival is giving J. M. Synge’s groundbreaking 1907 play, Playboy of the Western World, a sturdy production under the direction of Jackie Maxwell in the Studio Theatre that bears her name. Maxwell […]
Village Wooing At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Village Wooing At The Shaw Festival Each season, at the Royal George Theatre, the Shaw Festival presents a short one-act play at lunchtime. This year it’s George Bernard Shaw’s rather slight two-hander, Village Wooing. Village Wooing is a trifling piece – Shaw called it a “comedietta.” It is receiving a puzzling and egregiously over-produced rendition […]
Myth Of The Ostrich At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
Myth Of The Ostrich at Here For Now Theatre When I saw Liars at a Funeral at the Blyth Festival, I thought I had seen the funniest show of the 2023 season. Matt Murray’s 2014 comedy Myth of the Ostrich, in a dream of a production at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, is giving it […]
Outlaw At The Foster Festival – A Review
Outlaw at the Foster Festival Norm Foster’s Outlaw, is not a new play, but its setting and subject matter were new to me, quite unlike any Foster play I have previously seen. Instead of contemporary middle-class suburban Canadians, Outlaw gives us three pistol-packing Americans in Kansas in the years after the Civil War and one […]
Sticks And Stones At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Sticks and Stones at the Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival’s ambitious plan to stage all three installments of James Reaney’s so-called Donnelly Trilogy is off to an impressive start with Sticks and Stones. It is artfully abridged, adapted, and directed by artistic director Gil Garratt, and presented at the magical outdoor Harvest Stage. James Reaney […]
Richard II At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Richard II At The Stratford Festival For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings. Before I get to Jillian Keiley’s and Brad Fraser’s Frankenstein monster of an adaptation – a “revolutionary” adaptation no less – of William Shakespeare’s Richard II, let me get something off […]
Wizard of Oz: The Panto At Drayton – A Review
Wizard of Oz: The Panto at Drayton Wizard of Oz: The Panto at Drayton Entertainment’s Huron Country Playhouse in Grand Bend, Ontario, is keeping a beloved tradition alive. When impresario Ross Petty announced his retirement in 2019 after Peter’s Final Flight, there was a danger that pantomime might fade from the Canadian consciousness. That would […]
Liars At A Funeral At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Liars At A Funeral At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival in tiny Blyth (pop.1,000), Ontario, is kicking off its 49th season with Liars at a Funeral by Sophia Fabiilli, a smashing farce by a playwright who deserves to be better known and more widely produced. Liars at a Funeral recounts the machinations of Mavis […]
A Wrinkle In Time At The Stratford Festival – A Review
A Wrinkle In Time At Stratford A Wrinkle In Time, based on Madeleine L’Engel’s best-selling children’s novel of 1962, is 2023’s entry in the Stratford Festival’s ongoing series of Schulich Children’s Plays at the Avon Theatre. A Wrinkle In Time, the book, is a lumpy mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, and Christian hermeneutics. I found the […]
Much Ado About Nothing At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Much Ado About Nothing At The Stratford Festival After the major disappointment of this season’s King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre comes as a relief. Under the expert guidance of director Chris Abraham, this Much Ado proves that the Festival is still capable of mounting world-class productions of William […]