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 […]
Harry Potter And The Cursed Child At Mirvish – A Review
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child At Mirvish, Toronto As my mind wandered during the longueurs of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, currently packing them in at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto, I found myself contemplating theatre history. There was a time, more than a hundred years ago, when folks got their […]
The Drawer Boy At The Blyth Festival – A Review
The Drawer Boy At The Blyth Festival The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey is considered by some the greatest Canadian play ever written. That is certainly a defensible position if we are to judge by the revival the play is receiving at the Blyth Festival in a production for which the adjective incandescent is not […]
Chitra At The Shaw Festival – A Review
(Image: Shaw Festival) Chitra At The Shaw Festival Indian poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, the same year his own translation of his one-act play Chitra was written. It is being revived in a charming production directed by Kimberley Rampersad at the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre. Chitra […]
The Importance of Being Earnest At The Shaw Festival – A Review
(Image: Shaw Festival) The Importance of Being Earnest At The Shaw Festival Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, often described (and with some justification) as the most perfect comedy ever written, is receiving a somewhat lopsided revival at the Shaw Festival’s Festival Theatre under the direction of artistic director, Tim Carroll. I will dispense […]
Everybody At The Shaw Festival – A Review
(Image: Shaw Festival) Everybody At The Shaw Festival Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Everybody is an exceedingly entertaining modern riff on the medieval morality play Everyman that works remarkably well in the intimate confines of the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre at the Shaw Festival. Everyman, officially The Somonyng of Everyman, is the earliest surviving dramatic work in the […]
1812 At The Foster Festival – A Review
1812 at the Foster Festival While you and I were spending the pandemic hunkered down, trying to figure out what to watch next on Netflix or any of a dozen other streaming services, Norm Foster was busy banging out 10 plays. That’s how you become Canada’s most prolific playwright. One of them, the tersely titled […]
Billy Bishop Goes To War At Drayton’s Schoolhouse Theatre – A Review
Photo: Jim Hodgkinson and Jacob James, Drayton Entertainment Billy Bishop Goes To War At St. Jacobs Schoolhouse Theatre Billy Bishop Goes To War, at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Schoolhouse Theatre, tells the stirring story of William Avery “Billy” Bishop, a Canadian World War One air ace and hero. Most of my fellow Americans have probably […]