The Melville Boys At The Foster Festival – A Review
The Melville Boys At The Foster Festival The Melville Boys, an early play by Norm Foster, is marking its 40th anniversary with a sterling revival at The Foster Festival in St. Catherines, Ontario. The Melville Boys was Foster’s second published play and according to the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia the one that put him on the […]
Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Onion Skins And Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival is capping its 50th anniversary season with Onion Skins And Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes, a vibrant and moving story of the thousands of young women who volunteered to work the fields of Ontario during the Second World War, while the farm […]
Kiss Me Kate At Drayton Entertainment – A Review
Kiss Me Kate At St. Jacobs Country Playhouse I grabbed a ticket for Kiss Me Kate at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Country Playhouse when I saw that the cast included that fabulous farceur Eddie Glen and that immense talent Neil Barclay as the gangsters. And indeed their rendition of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” was was […]
Get That Hope At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Get That Hope At The Stratford Festival Toronto’s Little Jamaica is coming apart – quite literally in Get That Hope, Andrea Scott’s earnest if somewhat shambolic play now receiving its world premiere at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre. As nearby gentrification-fueled demolition causes plaster to shower down from the ceiling of their flat, the Whyte […]
The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? At The Stratford Festival – A Review
The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia? At The Stratford Festival In the spirit of full disclosure let me say at the outset that I am not an Edward Albee fan. I did not expect to like The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia? now playing at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre. Honesty compels me to record […]
Naked Radio At Drayton Entertainment – A Review
Naked Radio At Drayton Entertainment Naked Radio, the genial comedy with music enjoying a first-rate production at the Drayton Festival Theatre chronicles the travails of station WHLO (“Well, Hello!) in Middletown, a fictitious town somewhere in Ontario. Bart Dunwood (Jeff Culbert), a third-generation DJ, welcomes eager-beaver DJ wannabe Mike Young (Kaden Forsberg) to his new […]
The Saviour At Here For Now Theatre – A Review
The Saviour At Here For Now Theatre Here For Now Theatre marks yet another artistic triumph with a searing production of Deirdre Kinahan’s The Saviour, featuring a tour-de-force performance by Rosemary Dunsmore. Before The Saviour begins, we see the elements of Fiona Mongillo’s simple but ingenious set grouped together and covered by a sheet. A […]
The Trials Of Maggie Pollock At The Blyth Festival – A Review
The Trials of Maggie Pollock At The Blyth Festival In it’s fifty years of telling stories of Huron County and other rural Canadian communities, the Blyth Festival has told a fair number of tall (and true) tales, but surely none so outlandish as the one spun in Beverley Cooper’s The Trials of Maggie Pollock. Maggie […]
Whit’s End At The Foster Festival – A Review
Whit’s End At The Foster Festival Norm Foster is back in form with the world premiere of Whit’s End at the Foster Festival’s new digs in the commodious Mandeville Theatre at Ridley College, a prep school for the over-privileged in St. Catherines. As I become more familiar with the oeuvre of Canada’s most prolific (and […]
Resort To Murder At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Resort To Murder At The Blyth Festival Murder mystery plays like Resort To Murder are part of a grand theatrical tradition that dates back at least to Mary Roberts Reinhart’s creaky 1920 murder mystery, The Bat, and that includes such old chestnuts as Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap of 1952, which is still running in London. […]