The Russian Play at The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Russian Play at The Shaw Festival A “like-a-joke” is a dismissive term of art in the world of TV sitcoms. It denotes a snippet of dialog that is structured like a joke, that is recognized as a joke, that triggers the laugh track, but that is not actually funny. To my way of thinking […]
Hilda’s Yard at The Foster Festival – A Review
Hilda’s Yard at The Foster Festival After mounting The Writer, Norm Foster’s newest play and something of a departure for the prolific playwright, The Foster Festival returns to more familiar ground with its revival of his cockeyed comedy, Hilda’s Yard. Set in 1956, in the backyard of the Hilda […]
Sex at The Shaw Festival – A Review
Sex at The Shaw Festival I have wanted to see the 1926 play Sex ever since, as a Mae West-besotted undergraduate, I first became aware of its existence. Mae wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it and went to the slammer because of it. Who wouldn’t want to see it? Thanks to Peter Hinton-Davis and […]
The Glass Menagerie at The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Glass Menagerie at The Shaw Festival The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee William’s 1944 memory play (and the one that established him as a major playwright) is receiving a thrilling production at The Shaw Festival. Directed by Hungarian director László Bérczes in the intimate Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, it features four nearly flawless performances that may […]
Jumbo At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Jumbo At The Blyth Festival Few people associate P. T. Barnum with southern Ontario. Yet one of the most traumatic events of his storied career occurred in St Thomas, a city not far from the shores of Lake Erie. There, in 1885, during a Canadian tour, his circus’s prize African elephant, Jumbo, was killed by […]
The Writer At The Foster Festival – A Review
The Writer At The Foster Festival Norm Foster, Canada’s most prolific and most produced playwright, is known primarily for light comedies that often have a tinge of sadness running just beneath the surface, as was the case with Jonas and Barry In The Home, which I saw last year. The Writer, his latest play now […]
Cakewalk at The Blyth Festival – A Review
Cakewalk at The Blyth Festival The mission of the Blyth Festival in tiny Blyth, Ontario, is to produce new Canadian work on rural themes. That might seem a tough nut to crack, but they’ve been at it successfully for 45 years now and the quality of the plays I’ve seen has been remarkable. Not everything […]
Private Lives at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Private Lives at the Stratford Festival Vodka and vermouth, brandy and Bénédictine, champagne and kyr, none of them are more intoxicating or will make you giddier than the combination of Lucy Peacock and Geraint Wyn Davies in the right comic roles. Elyot and Amanda Chase, the not so gay divorcés of Noel Coward’s 1931 confection […]
Othello at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Othello at The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare’s Othello is, of course, a tragedy. The tragedy in the current modern dress production of the play at the Festival Theatre is that some fine actors suffer under the misdirection of director Nigel Shawn Williams. Williams seemingly has never seen a dramatic moment he didn’t want to underline, […]
Merry Wives of Windsor at The Stratford Festival – A Review
Merry Wives of Windsor at The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare‘s The Merry Wives of Windsor owes its existence, according to tradition, to Queen Elizabeth the First’s desire to see more of Falstaff, who had become an audience favorite in Shakespeare’s histories. Thank you, Queen Bess! The play shows us Sir John Falstaff well past his […]