Liars At A Funeral At The Blyth Festival – A Review
Liars At A Funeral At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival in tiny Blyth (pop.1,000), Ontario, is kicking off its 49th season with Liars at a Funeral by Sophia Fabiilli, a smashing farce by a playwright who deserves to be better known and more widely produced. Liars at a Funeral recounts the machinations of Mavis […]
A Wrinkle In Time At The Stratford Festival – A Review
A Wrinkle In Time At Stratford A Wrinkle In Time, based on Madeleine L’Engel’s best-selling children’s novel of 1962, is 2023’s entry in the Stratford Festival’s ongoing series of Schulich Children’s Plays at the Avon Theatre. A Wrinkle In Time, the book, is a lumpy mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, and Christian hermeneutics. I found the […]
Much Ado About Nothing At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Much Ado About Nothing At The Stratford Festival After the major disappointment of this season’s King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre comes as a relief. Under the expert guidance of director Chris Abraham, this Much Ado proves that the Festival is still capable of mounting world-class productions of William […]
Buddy At Drayton Entertainment – A Review
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story at Drayton I have often maintained that the fare served up at Drayton Entertainment’s archipelago of Southwestern Ontario theatres serves as a palate cleanser for the hoity-toity, highbrow stuff on offer at the Stratford Festival. Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story is a perfect case in point. After sitting through Grand […]
Grand Magic At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Grand Magic At The Stratford Festival Grand Magic by Eduardo De Filippo, in a new version by John Murrell and Donato Santeramo, is unfolding in three – dare I say – magical acts at Stratford’s Tom Patterson Theatre. Under the assured direction of artistic director Antoni Cimolino, this production proves that great theatre is no […]
King Lear At The Stratford Festival – A Review
King Lear At The Stratford Festival Where’s Geoffrey Tennant when you need him? I really, really wanted to like the Stratford Festival’s King Lear by William Shakespeare currently playing at the Festival Theatre and I strove mightily to do so. But try as I might I couldn’t get past Kimberly Rampersad’s inept direction and the […]
Casey And Diana At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Casey And Diana At The Stratford Festival A small miracle is unfolding at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre where the world premiere of Casey and Diana by Nick Green is receiving a splendid – and far too brief – production under the assured direction of Andrew Kushnir. Casey and Diana weaves a tale of courage, […]
Rent At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Rent At The Stratford Festival The Stratford Festival is trying to attract a younger audience and they seem to be succeeding, at least for their full-throttle production of the musical Rent. The packed houses at the Festival Theatre are reminiscent of the “youthquake” Froghammer produced for New Burbage in season two of Slings and Arrows.* […]
Spamalot At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Spamalot At The Stratford Festival Eric Idle’s Spamalot, now holding forth at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, is surely up for some sort of ecological award. After all, everything in it is recycled. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Whether you’ll enjoy this Spamalot will depend to a great extent on your level of […]
Prince Caspian At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Prince Caspian at the Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival continues its exploration of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia novels with Prince Caspian, now enjoying its world premiere at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It’s another substantial entry in Shaw’s list of plays for young audiences. (The earlier outings in the series were The Magician’s Nephew […]