(Image: Drayton Entertainment) On Golden Pond At Drayton If Marti Maraden is directing a play and there’s any way I can get to it, I’ll be there. That, and the lure of the redoubtable Benedict Campbell in the lead role, is what took me to Drayton Entertainment’s Hamilton Family Theatre
(Image Here For Now Theatre) Forty-Seven At Here For Now Theatre When I was forty-seven, it was a very good year. I married the love of my life, who also turned forty-seven that year, and we’ve been together happily for thirty years. Perhaps Deanna Kruger hasn’t been as lucky because
Mamma Mia! At Drayton I am amazed that I managed to reach my advanced age without ever once seeing Mamma Mia! But I have a good excuse. After all it’s only been around since 1999. It only ran on Broadway for 14 years. Only a few more than 65 million
Sunny Drake’s Every Little Nookie, enjoying its world premiere at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre, is nowhere near as bad as the programme might lead you to believe. In fact, it is quite amusing and rather enjoyable if not ultimately successful. Every Little Nookie tells the complex tale of Annabel
Little Women At The Stratford Festival Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is a quasi-autobiographical novel about the March family of Concord, Massachusetts (not Connecticut as the Director’s Note would have us believe). Set during the Civil War, it relates the travails of the March family – Meg, Jo, Beth,
(Image: Here For Now Theatre) Ale Wives At Here For Now Theatre Ale Wives, by Mark Weatherley, from the newish Here For Now Theatre company, is playing in a tiny space at the Falstaff Family Center in Stratford. It’s an amiable bit of theatrical fluff that plays fast and loose
“The Lion King” tells the tale of a murdered king, his feckless son, and a usurping uncle. Shades of Shakespeare! But this is a Disney production and the real source is a Disney animated film of the same name and anyone who says Disney stole the plot from a Japanese animated film is itchin’ for a fight. But that’s all beside the point. The wafer-thin and perfectly harmless story is just an excuse for a very enjoyable production.
Arthur Przybyszewski (his unpronounceable name is a running gag) is an aging and lonely child of the sixties running his fading family donut shop in an iffy neighborhood of Chicago. Via rather awkward, to-the-audience, interior monologues, we learn he carries a burden of guilt over long ago decisions and his dead father’s disdain.
Actually, I was one of the few dissenting voices on the original production. I felt that the central character’s empty personal life was never dealt with dramatically and left a hollow space where the play’s heart should have been. On top of that, the key roles were played too much on one note for my taste, emphasizing the intellectual rigor of the piece but sacrificing the human connection that would make us care for the people on stage.
Rylance, making his Broadway debut, is a study in actorly technique. The shy, hestitant milquetoast he creates here is a wonderment of tics, pauses, hesitations, stammers, and schtick and a comic masterpiece. His portrayal of the play’s central figure is totally over the top, totally unbelievable and yet you buy every minute of it. He is the main, I might almost say only reason, a trip to the Longacre Theatre is warranted.
Souvenir is not so much about Jenkins herself as it is about the bond that developed between her and her long time accompanist, the improbably named Cosme McMoon. The play’s subtitle, “A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins,” suggests that Temperley has taken liberties with historical fact, but no matter, the tale he tells speaks volumes about trust, friendship, and believing in oneself.
Father Flynn (Brian O’Byrne) is straight out of an old Bing Crosby/Barry Fitzgerald movie, the kind of young, idealistic priest that everyone adores. He’s a terrific homilist, too. He gives two in the course of the play, delivered straight to the audience-as-congregation and I think if I could be guaranteed sermons like that I might become a regular churchgoer. He also seems to have a way with kids, as evidenced in another terrific vignette in which we become the members of the basketball team he coaches.
List of Sites that Review Theatre in Ontario Canada You don’t have to take my word for it. I often find myself in a minority when it comes to opinions on plays and films, for reasons that are more fully explained on the About This Site page. It’s a phenomenon
