Ontario

The Tempest At The Stratford Festival Departing Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino’s particular brand of rough magic is on fulsome display in his imaginative production of The Tempest by William Shakespeare on the Stratford Festival’s main stage. I have long maintained that Cimolino is, arguably, the greatest interpreter of the Bard in North America, perhaps the…

And Then There Were None At Drayton Entertainment I didn’t add Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None at Drayton Entertainment’s St Jacobs Country Playhouse to my list of must-sees for a simple reason. I hate this kind of show. Why? you might ask. For the simple reason that, fiercely intelligent as I am, I…

Waiting For Godot At The Stratford Festival If you have seen Waiting For Godot by Samual Beckett as many times as I have, you approach each new one with trepidation. So it is with relief that I am able to report that director Molly Atkinson’s take on this classic at the Stratford Festival is good…

Guys And Dolls At The Stratford Festival After nine years, Donna Feore’s sublime production of Guys and Dolls is back on the Festival Theatre stage to bathe those who saw the 2017 edition in glorious nostalgia and to enchant those encountering it for the first time. Based on the stories of Damon Runyon, with music…

The Hobbit At The Stratford Festival I saw The Hobbit at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre with an audience of 800 students, some of them quite young. Their verdict is in. They loved it! They seemed to be rapt throughout the entire two and a half hours. They cheered some of the special effects, often…

The Beaver Club At Lighthouse Theatre I feel compelled to warn my readers that The Beaver Club by Barb Scheffler, now playing at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, ON, contains humour that is raunchy, off-colour, smutty, and occasionally downright dirty. I loved every minute of it! Four women of a certain age who live…

Something Rotten At The Stratford Festival Donna Feore’s Something Rotten, the big hit of the 2024 season, has been remounted this season along with another of Feore’s smash hits, Guys and Dolls, to celebrate, one can only assume, Antoni Cimolino’s last season with the Stratford Festival. Cribbing shamelessly from my 2024 review, Something Rotten is…

Death Of A Salesman at the Stratford Festival Starting off with an ear-piercing trumpet solo, Stratford’s Death of a Salesman at the Avon Theatre may be the loudest production on record. Director Dean Gabourie has given us a Salesman full of sound and fury signifying . . . well what exactly? Death of a Salesman…

I Am An Island At Here For Now Theatre I Am An Island by Julia Lederer, now receiving its world premiere at Here For Now Theatre, is described as a “surrealistic drama (with some very funny bits).” Okay, fair enough. I guess that absolves me of any obligation to try to explain it, because quite…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Stratford Festival I absolutely loved Chris Abraham’s gender-bending take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre in 2014. Graham Abbey’s sumptuous staging of the play in the Tom Patterson Theatre is utterly different and every bit as good, if not more so. A Midsummer Night’s…

Finding Neverland At Drayton Entertainment Finding Neverland, the undistinguished musical tale of the creation of J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan,” has followed a long and winding road which has brought it to the Hamilton Family Theatre in Cambridge, Ontario. When, after several iterations, it arrived on Broadway, Neverland was pooh-poohed by the snooty New York…

The Surrogate At Here For Now Theatre The Surrogate by Mohsin Zaidi provides a smashing opening for Here For Now’s 2026 season. Under the shrewd, kinetic direction of Christopher Manousos the play grabs the audience by the gut immediately and doesn’t let go. Zaidi has crammed a lot (arguably too much) into The Surrogate’s 95-minute…

Ruby And The Reindeer At Here For Now Theatre Ruby and the Reindeer by Mark Crawford, Here For Now Theatre’s holiday gift to Stratford, is flat out terrific. Heartfelt, warm, effortlessly charming, and with a sweetly powerful feminist message, it is destined to become a Christmas classic. Ruby and the Reindeer is a memory play…

Rogers v Rogers At Crow’s Theatre After seeing Michael Healey’s brilliant (and brilliantly funny) The Master Plan at Crow’s Theatre not even the dreaded Canadian winter could keep me from coming to Toronto to see his Rogers v Rogers. The fact that Tom Rooney was playing all fifteen characters was icing on the cake. Rogers…

A Huron County Christmas Carol At The Blyth Festival This year’s production of A Huron County Christmas Carol is the third iteration of Blyth’s inspired adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. I enjoyed its previous outings in 2019  and 2023 and it just seems to get better every time it’s revived. The adaptation by Blyth…

A Niagara Christmas Carol At The Foster Festival It’s become quite the thing for regional theatre companies to create bespoke variations of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” The Foster Festival’s entry in the growing list, A Niagara Christmas Carol moves the action to the Niagara region during the construction of the Welland Canal in 1840,…

Goblin:Oedipus At The Stratford Festival           There once was a king named Oedipus Rex.           You may have heard about his odd complex.           His name appears in Freud’s index           ’Cause he looooved his mother. The late Tom…

Bright Star At CAA Theatre Bright Star, the Steve Martin/Edie Brickell musical, was apparently not a hit on Broadway in 2016, running a mere 109 performances. In the hands of Garner Theatre Productions and their co-producers it is a substantial success at the Mirvish Company’s CAA theatre. Unfortunately, as part of Mirvish’s subscription season, it…

Octet at Crow’s Theatre Octet, the a capella musical by Dave Malloy, now at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto under Chris Abraham’s direction, has received ecstatic reviews from all the critics. So why do I find myself neither shaken nor stirred? Octet is set in your typical church basement (nicely evoked by set designer Joshua Quinlan),…

Misery At St Jacobs Country Playhouse I once described the fare offered by Drayton Entertainment as a welcome palate cleanser to the hoity-toity fare served up by august institutions like the Shaw and Stratford Festivals. Misery by William Goldman, adapting Steven King’s novel and movie of the same name, is the perfect case in point.…