Glory at Drayton Entertainment — A Review
Glory at Drayton Entertainment As an American visitor to Canada and an inveterate theatergoer, I take great pleasure in seeing plays and visiting theaters that few visitors manage to discover. In the process, I often see plays that don’t seem to have any real equivalents south of the border. (No, not that border!) A case […]
The Penelopiad at the Grand Theatre – A Review
The Penelopiad at the Grand Theatre Blame The Handmaid’s Tale. With the popularity of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian tale of a toxic patriarchy there is a temptation to view all her work as feminist screed. Never mind that Atwood herself rejects that label, the zeitgeist will not be denied. It is to director Megan Follows’ credit […]
The Drowsy Chaperone at St Jacobs: A Review
The Drowsy Chaperone at St Jacobs St Jacobs, Ontario, is known for its Farmers Market and its antiques, but it also boasts a small gem of a theater. The current show at the St Jacobs Country Playhouse (through April 15, 2018) is The Drowsy Chaperone and it’s a winner. With a book by Bob Martin […]
Lear at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto – A Review
Lear at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto Director Graham Abbey and his Groundling Theatre Company continue their gender bending ways with Lear, starring Seana McKenna, which drops the King from William Shakespeare’s title and presents the tragic monarch as a woman. The results are mixed. Once again, Abbey proves himself a masterful interpreter of Shakespeare. The […]
Four Christmas Carols
Four Christmas Carols How do two Americans keep themselves occupied when visiting Canada during the deepening cold of early December? Why take in four very different versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol of course. The initial plan was to see just one, but…well, you know how these things go. First up was our original […]
Shaw Festival 2014
Shaw Festival 2014 The picture-postcard-perfect town of Niagara-on-the-Lake was abuzz with shoppers and theatergoers when we arrived on a resplendent summer day for Shaw Festival 2014. You could be very happy just strolling the streets of this upscale village, admiring homes straight out of a glossy magazine, or shopping in the chic boutiques, or dining […]
The Best Brothers and ‘Hirsch’ at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2012
The Best Brothers and Hirsch at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival I am fond of saying there is a Poutine Curtain that prevents Canadian culture from penetrating south of the border. So one of the pleasures of visiting the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is the chance to see the work of Canadian playwrights who otherwise might have […]
Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2012
Much Ado About Nothing In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick are the fun couple of the William Shakespeare canon. As seemingly incompatible as oil and water they are nonetheless fated for each other and the pathetic fallacy of their inevitable coming together, engineered with a clever trick by their friends, is what makes […]
A Word Or Two at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2012
A Word Or Two By his own admission, Christopher Plummer was quite the heartbreaker in his youth. Today, just shy of his 83rd birthday, he’s still at it. In A Word Or Two, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s Avon Theatre he is sweeping audiences off their feet and leaving them begging for more as he […]
The Matchmaker at Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2012
The Matchmaker Thornton Wilder’s farce The Matchmaker is perhaps best known, to the extent it is known at all these days, as the progenitor of the musical smash Hello Dolly. It would be nice if the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s current production changes all that. Here is a production that is every bit as worthy of a […]