The House That Will Not Stand At The Shaw Festival – A Review
The House That Will Not Stand At The Shaw Festival The House That Will Not Stand, an ambitious work by Marcus Gardley, now receiving a sturdy production at the Shaw Festival’s Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, opens a fascinating window on a little-known period of American history. In the early decades of the nineteenth century New […]
Saving Graceland At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Saving Graceland At The Blyth Festival Artistic director Gil Garratt’s new play, Saving Graceland, is a quiet triumph for the Blyth Festival, a perfect example what Blyth does best – tell stories about real people that have not just relevance but resonance with its audience. On the surface, Saving Graceland is a downbeat tale of […]
The Secret Garden At The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Secret Garden At The Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival’s production of The Secret Garden is often lovely to look at. It boasts some arresting stage pictures, beautiful fantasy costumes (Judith Bowden), and inventive stagecraft. It has a clever set (Beyata Hackborn), effective lighting (Kevin Lamotte), and a solid cast. Yet, for me at least, […]
One Man, Two Guvnors At The Shaw Festival – A Review
One Man, Two Guvnors At The Shaw Festival In 2012, One Man, Two Guvnors, Richard Bean’s anarchic adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 Servant of Two Masters, a British import, exploded on Broadway, took New York by storm, and made an international star of James Corden. Now director Chris Abraham has done the seemingly impossible – […]
The Orphan Of Chao At The Shaw Festival – A Review
The Orphan Of Chao At The Shaw Festival This season the Shaw Festival’s morning one-act offering at the Royal George Theatre is Michael Man’s adaptation of Ji Junxiang’s The Great Revenge of the Orphan of Chao. Written in the thirteenth century but based on a much earlier story, The Orphan of Chao tells the epic […]
Doris And Ivy In The Home At Drayton Entertainment – A Review
Doris And Ivy In The Home At Drayton Entertainment Doris and Ivy in the Home by Norm Foster is destined to be one of Drayton Entertainment’s biggest hits this season if the reaction of the packed house at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse is anything to go by. If you saw Foster’s 2015 piece, Jonas […]
Wendy And Peter Pan At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Wendy And Peter Pan At The Stratford Festival “Female-forward” is one of the sillier neologisms of our new theatrical dispensation, but it is an apt descriptor for Wendy and Peter Pan, now being presented at Stratford’s Avon Theatre as part of the ongoing series of Schulich Children’s Plays. As the title suggests, English playwright (the […]
The Farm Show: Then & Now At The Blyth Festival
The Farm Show: Then & Now At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary season by going back to its origins with The Farm Show: Then & Now, a lively bit of meta theatre directed by artistic director Gil Garratt, with additional dialog by members of the cast. The show is […]
La Cage Aux Folles At The Stratford Festival – A Review
La Cage Aux Folles At The Stratford Festival I was such a devotee of the 1978 French film, La Cage Aux Folles, that I assiduously avoided all of its various American stage and film adaptations. Until now. I’m glad I waited to break this particular fast with the glorious production of La Cage starring the […]
Cymbeline At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Cymbeline At The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which is receiving a disappointing production at the Tom Patterson Theatre, is the most problematical of the Bard’s so-called “problem plays.” Critics from Dr. Johnson to Harold Bloom have wrestled with explicating the play with middling success and I am not foolish enough to try. Cymbeline is […]