Ontario

Tao Of The World At The Stratford Festival Playwright-director Jovanni Sy, whose magisterial Salesman in China (co-written with Leanna Brodie) was the smash hit of the Stratford Festival’s 2024 season, is back with an intermittently funny bit of cultural appropriation called The Tao of the World, set in the world of upper crust Singapore. Let…

Suzannah At Here For Now Theatre Suzannah, a meditation on the life of Henrik Ibsen’s wife, by Norwegian Nobel laureate Jon Fosse in a translation by Dr. May Brit Akerholt, is receiving a reverential production under the precise direction of Peter Hinton-Davis at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre. Fosse presents us with three iterations of…

Saturday, Sunday, Monday At The Stratford Festival Among the many good things retiring Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino has done during his nearly forty years at the Stratford Festival is championing the work of Italian playwright Eduardo de Filippo (1900-1984). His Saturday, Sunday, Monday from 1959 is receiving a resplendent production at the Avon Theatre under…

Ship To Shore At The Port Stanley Festival Like most Norm Foster two-handers, Ship To Shore begins simply. The deck of a cruise ship. One man. One woman. One deck chair. Who will prevail? But then, to quote a catchphrase from this engaging comedy, the plot thickens. Erin Walsh (Cailin Stadnyk) and James Goffman (Mark…

The King James Bible Play At The Stratford Festival The awkwardly titled The King James Bible Play, by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman, is a fascinating melange of ideas and notions of a distinctly feminist cast inspired by the work in the title. It is receiving a sprightly world premiere under the direction of Nina Lee Aquino at…

The Odd Couple At Drayton Entertainment The Odd Couple, arguably the best thing ever written by Neil Simon, the United States’ Norm Foster, is getting a laugh-filled revival at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Country Playhouse. The basic premise is no doubt familiar to everyone thanks to the long-running sitcom the 1965 Broadway hit inspired. The…

Amadeus At The Shaw Festival Amadeus, the 1979 hit by Peter Shaffer, is receiving a workmanlike revival under the direction of Shaw’s Artistic Director Tim Carroll. One wonders why. Amadeus tells the wildly ahistorical tale of the rivalry between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Michael Therriault) and Antonio Salieri (Tom Rooney) in late eighteenth century Vienna. Fun…

Euchre Night At The Foster Festival Playwright Norm Foster’s gift for creating fully rounded and psychologically acute female characters is on ample display in his Euchre Night now enjoying its world premiere at the Foster Festival, at the Mandeville Theatre in St Catherines. By the way, if you (like me) have no idea what euchre…

Early Genius At Here For Now Theatre Early Genius, the thoroughly delightful new play by Steve Ross, receiving its world premiere at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre is, according to their website, sold out for its entire run. So what’s the point of writing this rave review? Well, you can always hang out at the…

The Last Mayor Of Rusty River At The Blyth Festival Small town politics receives the Blyth Festival treatment in the delightful The Last Mayor of Rusty River, a broad comedy by David Scott and Blyth Artistic Director Gil Garratt, with original songs by John Powers. The action takes place in the council chambers of the…

Schoolhouse At 4th Line Theatre Schoolhouse, a memory play by Leanna Brodie, is getting a spirited revival under the inventive direction of Monica Dottor at the rural – very rural – 4th Line Theatre. Developed at 4th Line and premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2006, Schoolhouse takes us back to 1938, to SS #1…

Curveball At The Blyth Festival Following up on the success of Sisters of ’78, and with much the same cast, the Blyth Festival’s world premiere production of Curveball tells the story of Stratford’s Kroehler Girls. Like Sisters it is the tale of Canadian women struggling to make their mark in a world dominated by men…

Funny Girl At The Shaw Festival Funny Girl, the bio-musical of Fanny Brice haunted by memories of the performance that shot Barbra Streisand to super-stardom, is being born anew at the Shaw Festival thanks to a luminous Sara Farb. With music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, and a book by Isobel Lennart, Funny…

One For The Pot At The Shaw Festival What to say about One For The Pot now at the Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake other than “WTF!?” One For The Pot by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton is one of the famous “Whitehall farces” that ruled the London stage in the 1950s and 60s. (Neil Barclay’s…

Heartbreak House At The Shaw Festival Tim Carroll’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House boasts a stellar cast. Why then does it fall so flat? A major reason, I think, is that a very important character is missing – Heartbreak House. Not the play but the physical location. Shaw describes the set for the…

Jeeves & Wooster At The Shaw Festival I have a vague suspish that Robert and David Goodale must have seen The 39 Steps or Stones In His Pockets and thought, “Jolly good fun! How hard can it be?” And so, taking the inimitable P. G. Wodehouse stories of the amiable, high-born twit Bertram Wooster and…

The Long Weekend At The Foster Festival When the first line of a play is “This weekend is going to make a colonoscopy seem like a lighthearted treasure hunt,” you sense that it’s going to be a bumpy ride. So it is with the revival of Norm Foster’s 1994 hit, The Long Weekend, at the…

Sleuth At The Shaw Festival I believe I am on record as not liking plays such as Sleuth, the brain-twisting murder mystery by Anthony Shaffer, now enthralling audiences at the Shaw Festival’s resuscitated Court House Theatre. Like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Sleuth challenges you to figure out “whodunnit” before the playwright finally…

The Importance of Being Earnest At The Stratford Festival Krista Jackson’s vastly entertaining production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, currently playing to packed houses at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, may not be absolute perfection, but it will more than do until something better comes along. Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people”…

Love Us Most At Here For Now Theatre First, a public service announcement: Please don’t read the programme for Love Us Most, Sara Farb’s world premiere play at Here for Now, before you see the show. I did and expected a very different play from the one I saw. Love Us Most is a sharply…