(Image: Bruce Horak) Cottagers And Indians At The Blyth Festival If you’ve ever sat through a land acknowledgment at the beginning of a play and thought “What a load of happy horses**t this is,” boy do I have a play for you! It’s Drew Hayden Taylor’s 2018 Cottagers and Indians,
(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,
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.
Based on the hit movie of the same name, “Scoundrels” tells the tale of Lawrence Jameson, a suave, vaguely English con man (John Lithgow) who, with the aid of a corrupt chief of police (Gregory Jbara), has had an illustrious career bilking rich women like Muriel Eubanks (Joanna Gleason) out of their money on the French Riviera. His idyllic life is thrown into disarray with the appearance of Freddy Benson (Norbert Leo Butz), a distinctly down-market but nonetheless successful American version of Lawrence.
At first glance, the play seems to be about baseball’s (and therefore society’s) ambivalent attitudes towards homosexuality. When Darren Lemming, the studly African-American superstar of the Empires, a team that looks a lot like the Yankees, announces, for no particular reason, that he is gay, the revelation produces a fairly standard array of responses. Most people are accepting, in the currently politically correct manner, but more atavistic feelings seem to lurk just beneath the surface.
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
My ever so polite “rant” about programme policies at Ontario theatres has been posted at Stratford Festival Reviews. I encourage you to not only read it but to share your thoughts in the comments. Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the minuscule Foster Festival, which one might
Maurine Watkins, The Woman Behind ‘Chicago’ My article about Maurine Watkins, the woman who wrote the “blasphemous” play, Chicago, in 1926 has been posted on the Stratford Festival Reviews website. I hope you’ll give it a read. It’s a fascinating story, if I do say so myself. And I do!
The Complete Wingfield Farms Cycle at Stratford-Perth Museum In what some aficionados will no doubt consider the theatrical event of the season, the Stratford-Perth Museum will be presenting the entire Wingfield Farms canon, all seven plays, starring Rod Beattie, on seven consecutive Sundays from July 3 to August 14. The
Donna Feore Has Competition As we await the reviews for the Stratford Festival’s production of Donna Feore’s Chicago, there’s this . . .
Ship To Shaw – Robinsong B&B It was no big secret that prices in the hospitality industry were on the rise after two and a half years of pandemic. Even so, the cost of lodging in Niagara-on-the-Lake’s posh bed and breakfast establishments came as something of a shock. Even nearby
Using ArriveCan, Your Entry Into Canada Using ArriveCan, the Canadian phone app that “facilitates’ (if that’s the right word) entry into the Great North is mandatory. At least for now. Entry requirements for border crossings are in a constant state of flux and have been for a while. If you
