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
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
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
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
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
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
Safe House At The Abbey Theatre I haven’t had much luck with the Irish avant garde. I have vague memories of a wordless Grotowsi-esque rendition of the Great Hunger that came to New York some decades ago. Now there’s Safe House, the new 90-minute whatchamacallit by Enda Walsh and Anna
Stereophonic on Broadway Stereophonic, the cleverly crafted play by David Adjmi, directed with surgical precision by Daniel Aukin, that plays like a Frederick Wiseman fly-on-the-wall documentary, snagged a Tony for Best Play. It’s easy to see why. Set in a Sausalito recording studio circa 1976 and clocking in at just
The Hills of California On Broadway “The hills of California will give ya a start. I guess I better warn ya cuz you’ll lose your heart,” says the Johnny Mercer song from 1948. The Hills of California, the new play from Jez Butterworth now at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre, may not
Falcon Girls at The Yale Rep Falcon Girls by Hilary Bettis, now receiving its world premiere at the Yale Rep, is a grab bag of characters, themes, issues, and notions that comes across more as notes for episodes in a multi-season TV mini series than a fully formed play. That’s
Escaped Alone At Yale Rep Caryl Churchill’s 2016 play, Escaped Alone, is a puzzlement, which despite its 55 intermissionless minutes seems to go on forever. The four women in Yale’s production of Escaped Alone, middle-aged to elderly (although Churchill apparently specified that they are all “at least 70”), sit in
A View From The Bridge at Long Wharf Theatre The now homeless and itinerant Long Wharf Theatre is making ingenious use of an ad hoc space on the second floor of the sleek Canal Dock Boathouse on the shore of New Haven harbor to mount a smashing revival of Arthur
Rampersad Helms ‘The Red Shoes’ At RSC Following in Tim Carroll’s footsteps, Kimberley Rampersad, the Associate Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival is directing and choreographing The Red Shoes at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. This Red Shoes is a new version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “dark fairy tale”
The 2024 OntarioStage Awards What they lack in prestige, they more than make up for in pointlessness.™ It’s the third time around for the annual awards compilation voted “Easiest to Ignore” by the Canadian theatre establishment. The usual caveats apply: As an American, my time in Canada is limited thanks
Lighthouse Theatre Announces Its 2025 Season The Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, Ontario, was new to me this season, but based on my visit to see Norm Foster’s Lakefront, I’ll be returning to their comfy 350-seat house next year. Lighthouse has announced its 2025 season and it looks more than
Shaw Announces Its 2025 Season In size and scope the Saw Festival’s 2025 season will look a lot like the current one, with some intriguing differences. The morning one-act in the Royal George seems to have been axed. But the other shows slated for that venue seemed ideally suited to
Stratford Announces 2025 Season The Stratford Festival has announced a somewhat slimmed down season for 2025 that reflects ongoing financial struggles as the post-pandemic “recovery” proves more sluggish than hoped (or anticipated). For starters, there will be eleven productions next year as opposed to the more usual twelve. Only one
Shameless! I have now seen Something Rotten three times and can reliably report that the show has done nothing but get better, tighter, and more self-assured. I have also now had the opportunity (twice) to see Steve Ross as Shylock. No offense to his understudy, who filled in admirably the
