I loved Verne Thiessen & Yvette Nolan’s adaptation of the Margaret Laurence novel The Diviners, creatively and energetically directed by Krista Jackson with Geneviève Pelletier, but the rest of the straight plays in the 2024 Stratford season left me somewhere on a sliding scale of cold. The remaining plays (meaning not Shakespeare, not musicals, […]
Theatre As fall formally begins and the major Toronto theatre companies launch into their 2024/25 seasons, two star-studded and atmospheric tragedies take centre stage. Each directed by their host company’s reliably inspiring artistic director, Crow’s Theatre’s Rosmersholm (Chris Abraham) and Buddies in Bad Times’ Roberto Zucco (ted witzel) both offer short but heady translations […]
Once again this season, as is often the case, the strongest pieces at the Shaw Festival reside in the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre. Directed by Philip Akin, The House That Will Not Stand is a complex and moving mandate-era exploration of freedom and family. Written in 2014, Marcus Gardley’s New Orleans-set drama explores an […]
My favourite Stratford production so far* this year is undoubtedly The Diviners, Verne Thiessen & Yvette Nolan’s grand adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s novel of the same name. Staged with beautiful fluidity by Krista Jackson with Geneviève Pelletier, the production contains some of the season’s grandest celebration and its quietest tenderness. The great Irene Poole […]
For the past few seasons, my favourite programming at the Shaw Festival has been Outdoors at the Shaw, a somewhat informal series of concerts and variety shows the bulk out the mainstage programming. These performances would take place across the festival grounds, at the outdoor BMO stage, and, starting last season, at the fun and […]
The Shaw Festival’s mainstage programming this year runs the full gamut from the best in the biz to completely disappointing. At the top of the heap, the most reliable man in Canadian Theatre- Crow’s Theatre artistic director Chris Abraham- takes on the ridiculous farce of One Man, Two Guvnors. It’s a nonsense script full […]
Casting is everything in Bowtie Productions’ ambitious stab at John Cameron Mitchell’s iconic rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It’s a deceptively difficult piece, the smallness of its two-actor/one-act structure placing immense pressure on the performers who have to carry exceptionally dense material with relentless energy and barely a few moments, if any, offstage. […]
Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque has just about the best programming strategy I’ve seen for a small company, especially one serving a remote community without a ton of access to live theatre. Managing Artistic Director Brett Christopher smartly programs all the big fun musicals you’d expect, crowd-pleasers that never fail to slap (this season has […]