It Runs In The Family At Drayton – A Review
(Image: Drayton Entertainment) It Runs In The Family At Drayton Tired of all that high-brow nonsense at Stratford and Shaw? Then fire up the family car, point it west, and head for the Huron Country Playhouse outside Grand Bend, the largest of Drayton Entertainment’s venues. Check your critical faculties at the door and immerse yourself […]
Cottagers And Indians At The Blyth Festival – A Review
(Image: Bruce Horak) Cottagers And Indians At The Blyth Festival If you’ve ever sat through a land acknowledgment at the beginning of a play and thought “What a load of happy horses**t this is,” boy do I have a play for you! It’s Drew Hayden Taylor’s 2018 Cottagers and Indians, now being revived at the […]
On Golden Pond At Drayton – A Review
(Image: Drayton Entertainment) On Golden Pond At Drayton If Marti Maraden is directing a play and there’s any way I can get to it, I’ll be there. That, and the lure of the redoubtable Benedict Campbell in the lead role, is what took me to Drayton Entertainment’s Hamilton Family Theatre in Cambridge to see Ernest […]
Forty-Seven At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
(Image Here For Now Theatre) Forty-Seven At Here For Now Theatre When I was forty-seven, it was a very good year. I married the love of my life, who also turned forty-seven that year, and we’ve been together happily for thirty years. Perhaps Deanna Kruger hasn’t been as lucky because her new play, Forty-Seven is […]
Mamma Mia! At Drayton – A Review
Mamma Mia! At Drayton I am amazed that I managed to reach my advanced age without ever once seeing Mamma Mia! But I have a good excuse. After all it’s only been around since 1999. It only ran on Broadway for 14 years. Only a few more than 65 million people have seen it worldwide. […]
Every Little Nookie At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Sunny Drake’s Every Little Nookie, enjoying its world premiere at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre, is nowhere near as bad as the programme might lead you to believe. In fact, it is quite amusing and rather enjoyable if not ultimately successful. Every Little Nookie tells the complex tale of Annabel (Rose Tuong), an artist (vulvas […]
Little Women At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Little Women At The Stratford Festival Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is a quasi-autobiographical novel about the March family of Concord, Massachusetts (not Connecticut as the Director’s Note would have us believe). Set during the Civil War, it relates the travails of the March family – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and their mother, […]
Ale Wives At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
(Image: Here For Now Theatre) Ale Wives At Here For Now Theatre Ale Wives, by Mark Weatherley, from the newish Here For Now Theatre company, is playing in a tiny space at the Falstaff Family Center in Stratford. It’s an amiable bit of theatrical fluff that plays fast and loose with time and history to […]
Buying The Farm At Drayton – A Review
(Image: Drayton Entertainment) Buying The Farm At Drayton Buying The Farm, a deceptively light-hearted comedy by husband-wife team Shelley Hoffman and Stephen Sparks is getting a crowd pleasing production at the Festival Theatre in Drayton, Ontario. Aging bachelor farmer Magnus Bjornson (Terry Barna) is tending to business on the farm that has been in his […]
2 Pianos, 4 Hands At The Royal Alexandra – A Review
2 Pianos, 4 Hands (2P4H) At The Royal Alexandra 2 Pianos, 4 Hands (hereinafter known as 2P4H, as the cover of the programme has it) at Mirvish’s Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto is, along with The Drawer Boy, one of those Canadian theatrical treasures you keep hearing about but somehow never get the chance to […]