Mechanically Inclined At The Foster Festival – A Review
Mechanically Inclined At The Foster Festival Mechanically Inclined by Stratford Festival star Steve Ross (Chicago, La Cage Aux Folles) is part of the Foster Festival’s recent effort to foster (get it?) new Canadian plays. In a programme note director Jamie Williams, second in command at the Foster Festival, describes Mechanically Inclined as “a love letter […]
Pinkerton Comes To Prospect At Lighthouse Festival – A Review
Pinkerton Comes To Prospect At Lighthouse Theatre Pinkerton Comes To Prospect by Jamie Williams belongs to a genre (or perhaps sub-genre) of farce that plays fast and loose with the presumed conventions of the melodramas that flourished at the turn of the last century. These shows tend to feature frontier settings, outlandish plots, ludicrous coincidences, […]
Powers And Gloria At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Powers and Gloria At The Blyth Festival Powers and Gloria by Keith Roulston, which premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2005, is receiving a powerful revival under the deft direction of Peter Hinton-Davis. The Powers of the title is Edward Powers (Randy Hughson), the 73-year-old head of a thriving furniture business in a small, unnamed […]
Screwball Comedy At The Foster Festival – A Review
Screwball Comedy At The Foster Festival Norm Foster built his reputation as a comic playwright by being a keen observer of the foibles and follies of Canada’s suburban middle class. In his 2017 Screwball Comedy, currently at the Foster Festival in St Catherines, he ventures into a world where he is on somewhat less familiar […]
Hidden Treasures At Lighthouse Festival – A Review
Hidden Treasures at the Lighthouse Festival, Port Dover Hidden Treasures is the umbrella title for two extremely funny one-act plays by Norm Foster being presented by the Lighthouse Festival in Port Dover, Ontario. The plays in question are My Narrator and The Death of Me and they are well worth a trip to the shores […]
Gnit At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Gnit At The Shaw Festival Perhaps if you are familiar with Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 verse play Peer Gynt you will like Will Eno’s Gnit (pronounced guh-NIT) at the Shaw Festival more than I did. Perhaps if you are familiar with Ibsens Peer Gynt, you will dislike Gnit more than I did. Gnit is described as […]
Wait Until Dark At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Wait Until Dark At The Shaw Festival Frederick Knott’s 1966 Broadway hit Wait Until Dark is something of an American classic and it is a truth universally acknowledged that every classic is in desperate need of getting a new adaptation. So it is that the Shaw Festival is presenting Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2013 revision of the […]
A Woman’s Love List At Orillia Opera House – A Review
A Woman’s Love List At The Orillia Opera House With A Woman’s Love List, now receiving its world premiere in the small, 105-seat Studio Theatre at the Orillia Opera House, Norm Foster ventures into the realm of fantasy – or is it magical realism? – and finds it filled with laughter. Carly (Kristen Da Silva) […]
Humour Me At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
Humour Me At Here For Now Theatre Humour Me by Beverley Cooper, the amiable bit of fluff currently at Here For Now Theatre, works yet another variation on the time worn theme of two damaged souls who slowly discover they were meant for each other. For me, at least, it didn’t quite work. Evalyn (Martha […]
Quiet In The Land At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Quiet In The Land At The Blyth Festival “For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land.” Psalm 35:20 Quiet in the Land by Anne Chislett, the only play being presented this season on the Blyth Festival’s enchanting outdoor Harvest Stage, has a fascinating origin story. […]