The past few weeks in Toronto theatre featured a range of works that at their core all touched on similar themes despite their vast superficial differences. In tense, inflationary times, these four pieces examined how financial pressures can bring out the best and worst in all of us. Most explicit on this topic was […]
Conceived, adapted, and directed by Daryl Cloran originally for Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, this joyful and zany adaptation of As You Like It uses the Beatles’ sprawling songbook to sculpt Shakespeare’s “play with music” into a full tilt musical. Currently onstage at the Grand Theatre in London, the imperfect but polished production is a […]
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 […]
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 […]
This season’s Shaw Festival programming on the Royal George Theatre’s iconic proscenium stage showcases a strong assortment of styles and themes ranging from trademark execution of a Shaw classic, to a freshly adapted childhood favourite, hyper-stylized Chinese fable, and a noir vision of a twisty whodunnit. As current Artistic Director Tim Carroll continues to […]