Chronicles Of Sarnia At The Blyth Festival The Blyth Festival has another comedy hit on its hands with the world premiere of Chronicles of Sarnia by Sarnia native Matt Murray. Murray also wrote Myth of the Ostrich, which Here For Now Theatre produced earlier this season. He clearly has a
Frog Song At Here For Now Theatre In a delightful change of pace, Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre is presenting Frog Song, an opera – yes, an opera! – for children and never has its tent theatre and its bucolic setting seemed more magical. With a book by Taylor Marie
The St. Nicholas Hotel At The Blyth Festival The saga of southwest Ontario’s ill-fated Donnelly clan continues in The St. Nicholas Hotel, the second installment of The Donnelly’s: A Trilogy at the Blyth Festival. The others in the series are Sticks and Stones and Handcuffs. After the broad overview of
Wedding Band At The Stratford Festival The Stratford Festival has another triumph on its hands in the form of Sam White’s searing production of the 1962 Alice Childress masterpiece, Wedding Band. Except for a mention in the author bio, the programme omits the play’s telling subtitle, A Love/Hate Story in
Margaret Reid At Here For Now Theatre What’s real? Who can you trust? Do we create our own truth or are we at the mercy of the truth of others? Margaret Reid, Madeleine Brown’s anarchic, surrealistic, and meta-theatrical examination of these existential questions may not answer them, but she sure
The Apple Cart At The Shaw Festival I can only assume that the reason that George Bernard Shaw’s The Apple Cart is not as well known and as frequently revived as some of his other works is because it deals with politics with a capital P. I dare say that,
Dream Hou$e at Long Wharf Theatre Playwright Eliana Pipes has furnished her new play Dream Hou$e (as it is styled in the program) with an abundance of themes in a variety of styles. The overall effect is striking but cluttered. The Castillo sisters are trying to sell their recently deceased
I Am My Own Wife at Long Wharf Theatre The Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, is giving Doug Wright’s Pulitzer prize-winning one-person play, I Am My Own Wife, a respectful if ultimately disappointing revival starring a very talented young actor, Mason Alexander Park. The play revolves around
London Assurance at The Irish Rep – A Review After the deaths of Richard Sheridan (School for Scandal) and Oliver Goldsmith (She Stoops To Conquer), the English-speaking stage seems to have lain fallow until the emergence in the late nineteenth century of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, at least
My Name Is Lucy Barton on Broadway “LAURA LINNEY IS LUMINOUS” a sign outside Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater announces. If only the same could be said of My Name Is Lucy Barton. This one-woman show, which I am compelled to report, received rapturous reviews from the New York critics,
Tootsie on Broadway Tootsie, currently playing at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, is a musical comedy that’s strong on the comedy and surprisingly weak on the musical side of the equation. Based on the 1982 film starring Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie tells the tale of Michael Dorsey (Santino Fontana), a forty-ish actor who,
Angels in America at KC Rep Tony Kushner’s two-part Angels in America is receiving a sturdy revival at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s downtown Copaken Stage. This sprawling two-part epic, subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, is at turns surreal, whimsical, hallucinatory, bitchily funny, poetic, brutally blunt, and ultimately
The 2023 Guide to Stratford and the Stratford Festival After a Covid-induced hiatus, I have resurrected my annual Guide to Stratford Ontario and the Stratford Festival, completely updated for 2023. It is now available in e-book format on Amazon’s Kindle Store. The guide began as a labour of love, created
The Shaw Festival Is Canada’s Great Theatre Bargain After sharpening my pencil and doing some calculations, I have decided that the Shaw Festival, in drop-dead-gorgeous Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is the greatest theatre bargain in Canada. I have booked tickets for the missus and myself for the entire 2023 season at the
(Image: New YorkTimes) Gimme A Break! This review in the New York Times made me want to open a vein and slide into a warm tub. Why on earth do people like director Thomas Ostermeier insist on grafting their gawdawful “visions” onto Shakespeare, instead of creating their own works that
Serving Elizabeth Streaming on Stratfest@Home Serving Elizabeth, a wonderful new play by Marcia Johnson, travels in time from Kenya in 1972 to London in 2015 with five terrific actors playing all the roles. The conceit of Serving Elizabeth – and this is all entirely fictional – is that Mercy, an
Midsummer Night’s Dream Streaming on Stratfest@Home Before he tackled the job of desecrating Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 2022, director Peter Pasyk warmed up with the Bard’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2021. The script has been ruthlessly cut to accommodate a cast of just eight and an intermission-less running time of about
Billy Bishop On Demand If you missed Drayton Entertainment’s excellent production of Billy Bishop Goes to War earlier this year, you’ve been granted a second chance. In honour of Remembrance Day, November 11th, Drayton is presenting “Billy Bishop On Demand” for a limited time, from November 7 to 11. And
