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 […]
Beehive At Drayton Entertainment – A Review
Beehive At Drayton Entertainment Beehive: The 60s Musical is an innocuous bit of fluff cobbled together by Larry Gallagher from the discographies of 1960s-era girl groups and female soloists. It is getting a suitably bouncy production from Drayton Entertainment courtesy of director/choreographer David Connolly. There’s no real “book” to this musical. It’s simply a succession […]
Romeo And Juliet At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Romeo And Juliet At The Stratford Festival There are a number of refreshing aspects to Sam White’s production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, now playing to shamefully small houses on the Stratford Festival’s main stage. For starters, she has stripped the legendary “Tanya stage” almost to its essence, providing an opportunity to more fully […]
Something Rotten At The Stratford Festival – A Review
Something Rotten At The Stratford Festival When I saw Something Rotten on Broadway in 2015, I knew it was destined for the Stratford Festival. Not everyone at Stratford was as keen on the idea as I was, or at least so I was told. Fortunately, saner (or at least less stuffy) minds prevailed and Something […]
My Fair Lady At The Shaw Festival – A Review
My Fair Lady At The Shaw Festival Coming off last year’s largest operating deficit in history, the Shaw Festival took a calculated risk by announcing that Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady would run straight through both the summer and winter seasons at the Festival Theatre. On the evidence of the sprightly performance I saw, […]
Witness For The Prosecution At The Shaw Festival – A Review
Witness for Prosecution At The Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival is taking its first whack at Agatha Christie’s old chestnut Witness for the Prosecution (they’ve mounted several others over the years) and under the schizophrenic direction of Alistair Newton it is something of a puzzlement. Witness for the Prosecution is a talky period piece and […]
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory At The Grand Theatre – A Review
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory At The Grand Theatre The continued existence of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a musical based on a 1964 children’s novel by Roald Dahl, bewilders me. When it premiered in London in 2013, discerning critics roundly panned it. It has gone through several iterations since but the book by David […]
A Huron County Christmas Carol At The Blyth Festival – A Review
A Huron County Christmas Carol At The Blyth Festival As near as I can tell, Blyth’s 2023 remounting of 2019’s A Huron County Christmas Carol sticks pretty close to the original script, but with a largely new and energetic cast it seems like a completely new show. Artistic Director Gil Garratt’s devilishly clever updating of […]
Peter Pan The Panto At Drayton – A Review
Peter Pan: The Panto At Drayton Peter Pan: The Panto, at the comfortable St. Jacobs Country Playhouse in Waterloo is Drayton Entertainment’s second foray into “panto” for the 2023 season. If you are unfamiliar with the term, let me refer you to an explanation of the genre in my review of Peter’s Final Flight, based […]