Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery Of The Human Heart At The Shaw Festival It is with heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these last words in which I shall ever record the singularly entertaining piffle that is Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery Of The Human Heart
Candida At The Shaw Festival The works of George Bernard Shaw seem to be almost an afterthought these days at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which was founded precisely to honor his considerable output. Severn Thompson’s smashing production of Candida is a bracing reminder that the Festival ignores the master
The Melville Boys At The Foster Festival The Melville Boys, an early play by Norm Foster, is marking its 40th anniversary with a sterling revival at The Foster Festival in St. Catherines, Ontario. The Melville Boys was Foster’s second published play and according to the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia the one
Onion Skins And Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival is capping its 50th anniversary season with Onion Skins And Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes, a vibrant and moving story of the thousands of young women who volunteered to work the fields of Ontario during the Second
Kiss Me Kate At St. Jacobs Country Playhouse I grabbed a ticket for Kiss Me Kate at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Country Playhouse when I saw that the cast included that fabulous farceur Eddie Glen and that immense talent Neil Barclay as the gangsters. And indeed their rendition of “Brush
Get That Hope At The Stratford Festival Toronto’s Little Jamaica is coming apart – quite literally in Get That Hope, Andrea Scott’s earnest if somewhat shambolic play now receiving its world premiere at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre. As nearby gentrification-fueled demolition causes plaster to shower down from the ceiling
The 12 At Goodspeed Musicals The 12, the new musical at Goodspeed Musicals by Robert Schenkkan and Neil Berg, about the twelve apostles minus Judas (yes, those guys) looks terrific. The set designer John Doyle, who also directs, has created a surprisingly attractive dump of an abandoned industrial site. It’s
Wish You Were Here At Yale Rep Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here, now playing at New Haven’s Yale Rep, is a well-intentioned disappointment. Wish You Were Here charts the gradually unravelling relationships among a tight-knit group of five female friends in Karaj, Iran, during a tumultuous period. The decade
Summer Stock At Goodspeed Musicals Summer Stock, the horribly dated 1950 film starring Gene Kelly and a fading Judy Garland, has been transformed into a “new musical comedy” at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, CT. The big question for anyone who remembers the film is “Why bother?” There are two
Gypsy at Goodspeed Musicals Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, known to us old-timers as the Goodspeed Opera House, is mounting a workmanlike production of the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim classic, Gypsy, directed by Jenn Thompson. The production tries mightily to do justice to what many critics and historians of
The Ripple, The Wave At Yale Rep Playwright Christina Anderson’s earnest The Ripple, The Wave That Carried Me Home makes great use of water as metaphor. The 90-minute play, performed without intermission at the Yale Rep, strives for poetry as it tells the tale of segregated swimming pools in the
Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse The Westport Country Playhouse is presenting a middling revival of Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical Show. Conceived by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Murray Horwitz, it wowed Broadway (and me) back in 1978. For this outing, a co-production with Barrington Stage and Geva Theatre
Our Audience Is Dying Twenty years ago, in the brilliant Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, the fictional advertising agency Froghammer created an ad campaign for the equally fictitious New Burbage Festival featuring a billboard headlined “OUR SUBSCRIBERS” that showed an elderly white woman on her deathbed, her husband grieving
Wisconsin Theatre As an American, I pride myself on having pierced the Poutine Curtain to bring news of Canada’s theatrical riches to my benighted fellow countrymen. Now I discover that Ilana Lucas, an intrepid reporter for Intermission, a Canadian online magazine devoted to theatre, has made the reverse journey and
The 2023 OntarioStage Awards What they lack in prestige, they more than make up for in pointlessness.™ Once more unto the breach with 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
The 2024 Season – Part Two To the extent that Americans are aware of the theatrical riches of Ontario’s summer “festival” season at all, they are probably familiar with The Stratford Festival and The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I discussed the 2024 season at these august institutions, along with my
The 2024 Season – Part One As Christmas approaches what better way to escape the crass commercialism of the holiday season than to toss another log on the fire, settle back with your single malt, and savor the crass commercialism of the 2024 theatrical season in southwestern Ontario! By now
Shaw’s best seats Back in the days when I was writing guidebooks to Orlando’s many theme parks, I would include a section in my descriptions of various attractions called “the best seats in the house,” wherein I would attempt to guide readers to the best locations from which to maximize
