Ontario

Gnit At The Shaw Festival Perhaps if you are familiar with Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 verse play Peer Gynt you will like Will Eno’s Gnit (pronounced guh-NIT) at the Shaw Festival more than I did. Perhaps if you are familiar with Ibsens Peer Gynt, you will dislike Gnit more than I did. Gnit is described as…

Wait Until Dark At The Shaw Festival Frederick Knott’s 1966 Broadway hit Wait Until Dark is something of an American classic and it is a truth universally acknowledged that every classic is in desperate need of getting a new adaptation. So it is that the Shaw Festival is presenting Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2013 revision of the…

A Woman’s Love List At The Orillia Opera House With A Woman’s Love List, now receiving its world premiere in the small, 105-seat Studio Theatre at the Orillia Opera House, Norm Foster ventures into the realm of fantasy – or is it magical realism? – and finds it filled with laughter. Carly (Kristen Da Silva)…

Humour Me At Here For Now Theatre Humour Me by Beverley Cooper, the amiable bit of fluff currently at Here For Now Theatre, works yet another variation on the time worn theme of two damaged souls who slowly discover they were meant for each other. For me, at least, it didn’t quite work. Evalyn (Martha…

Quiet In The Land At The Blyth Festival “For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land.” Psalm 35:20 Quiet in the Land by Anne Chislett, the only play being presented this season on the Blyth Festival’s enchanting outdoor Harvest Stage, has a fascinating origin story.…

On A First Name Basis At The Foster Festival The Foster Festival is celebrating its ten year anniversary by reviving the play that opened their first season, Norm Foster’s artfully crafted and very funny two-hander On A First Name Basis. David Kilbride (Jamie Williams) is a wealthy novelist whose output of spy novels have provided…

The Wind Coming Over The Sea At The Blyth Festival The Wind Coming Over the Sea, the heartbreaking, elegiac play by best-selling Canadian author Emma Donoghue (“Room”) marks yet another triumph for the Blyth Festival. The Wind Coming Over the Sea tells the true story of Henry and Jane Johnson, Ulster Protestants who formed part…

Forgiveness At The Stratford Festival The current efforts toward “truth and reconciliation” in Canada address the outrages visited upon the country’s First Nations peoples. Forgiveness, by Hiro Kanagawa at the Stratford Festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre, does something similar for Canada’s Japanese minority. Forgiveness is based on Mark Sakamoto’s memoir about his Japanese grandmother Mitsue (Yoshie…

Sense and Sensibility At The Stratford Festival Kate Hamill brings an antic disposition to her adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novels. Her Sense and Sensibility, now getting an energetic, if occasionally over-emphatic production at the Stratford Festival stays more or less true to the original while mining its comic possibilities. For the non-Austen fans, Sense…

Major Barbara At The Shaw Festival I keep forgetting how deliciously witty, falling down funny, and eternally topical George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara is. Fortunately, the Shaw Festival remounts it from time to time to remind us. The current revival, the first since 2013, is helmed by Peter Hinton-Davis. It may not be the definitive…

Forget About Tomorrow At Here For Now Theatre Forget About Tomorrow, a play by Jill Daum now receiving its Ontario premiere at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, may be tough going for some, but thanks to sensitive direction by Peter Pasyk and a talented cast it rewards our close attention for its 80-minute length. Jane…

Sir John A At The Blyth Festival Most theatre companies in Canada give a nod to the righteous anger of the country’s indigenous (or First Nations) population by opening every show with a performative and, to my mind, meaningless “land acknowledgement.” The Blyth Festival has a history of placing the issues underlying those acknowledgements front…

Anne of Green Gables At The Stratford Festival I had any number of nits to pick with Anne of Green Gables, adapted and directed by Kat Sandler from the 1908 novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, but in the end none of that mattered. Swept along in a shameless sea of sentiment and schmaltz, buoyed by…

Winter’s Tale At The Stratford Festival Thank God for director Antoni Cimolino! His searing, lyrical, and ultimately shattering production of Winter’s Tale at the Tom Patterson Theatre is the best Shakespeare I’ve seen at Stratford – or anywhere else for that matter – in many years. I came to this Winter’s Tale wondering if Cimolino…

As You Like It At The Stratford Festival William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, now being presented at the Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre under the direction of Chris Abraham, is a pastoral comedy. Well, it’s supposed to be. The play contrasts the regime of the usurper Duke Frederick of France with the idyllic and idealized…

Macbeth At The Stratford Festival I saw Robert Lepage’s production of Macbeth at Stratford’s Avon Theatre and I came out humming the scenery. If you saw his Coriolanus at Stratford or Kà, still playing in Las Vegas, you know that Lepage is a visual artist of considerable genius and one of the best theatrical magicians…

Tons of Money At The Shaw Festival The Shaw Festival’s laudable tradition of reviving forgotten comic gems from the so-called “mandate period” (Shaw’s long lifetime) continues with the 1922 farce Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine (the pseudonym of Archibald Thomas Peachey). Alas, Tons of Money is not tons of funny. (Feel free…

Anything Goes At The Shaw Festival Anything Goes, directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad is yet another musical comedy triumph for the Shaw Festival. Rampersad and the Festival are most definitely on a roll. Rampersad seems to have made a decision to foster a troupe that can tap dance like nobody’s business. Her success in…

Stick Around At Here For Now Theatre – A Review Here For Now Theatre describes its season opener, the world premiere of Stick Around by Rebecca Northan, as a comedy. “Comedy” is apparently Canadian patois for “it’ll rip your heart out.” While it has a few laughs, Stick Around is the “mildly fictionalized” and decidedly…

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels At The Stratford Festival I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels when it premiered on Broadway in 2005 and didn’t care for it very much. Twenty years later, at the Stratford Festival’s Avon Theatre, I found I liked it even less. Here’s what I had to say in 2005 (substituting the names of performers…