Fresh Ink Theatre staged an intriguing spin on the Oresteia and Iphigenia plays of Aeschylus and Euripides at the Hale Chapel in First Church Boston. Agamemnon (Robert Cope), the leader of the Greeks in their decade-long war against Troy, paid a terrible price to enable his fleets to arrive on the shores of Ilium; his […]
Bad Habit Productions put on a versatile and dynamic Orlando, Sara Ruhl’s adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel, in the BCA’s Deane Hall. Directed by Daniel Morris, the show’s performances were enhanced by a mobile set constructed in the round, by sumptuous costumes, and by warm and cool washes of color (orange, blue, and yellow) […]
On the cusp of second wave feminism and nearly a decade into Apartheid rule, Athol Fugard created a female character that would, against all odds, defy the roles society would try to force her into. Queeny, played by Masasa Mbangeni, holds the center of the action while the remaining characters orbit around her. James Ngcobo, […]
A large paper scroll leads us up the stairs to the Berkeley Theatre. On the landing Mamela Nyamza is crouched on the floor, scrawling over and over “I must not have a big bum,” “I must not have a big bum”. As we continue up the stairs we can see how line-by-line the written form […]
The Queen will see you now. Another West End transplant has made its way to the U.S. in the form of playwright Peter Morgan’s The Audience, and it has brought a much-celebrated leading lady, Helen Mirren, to Broadway. While Dame Mirren’s performance as the Queen is captivating and anyone with even a slight bit of […]
With the weather warming up and city-dwellers coming out of hibernation, the Toronto theatre community is providing plenty of places for them to go. You could head down Yonge Street to see Once (starring the always likeable Ian Lake) or to The Annex for The LOT’s Hairspray (with the amazing Matt McKay as Seaweed) then […]
Max Baker’s new play Live From the Surface of the Moon at The Wild Project is a frustrating and uncomfortable glimpse at Midwestern suburbia in 1969, juxtaposing vast technological advancements with the backwards sexual and social norms of the time. While Baker’s premise is an intriguing one, his play suffers from a lack of focus […]
The latest productions from Coal Mine and Safeword share a common goal: to leave you shaken. They share some other things too (small casts, hip tones, interesting spaces) but it’s that shared goal that stands out. That’s not what all theatre artists are doing; most want to entertain you, to move you, maybe even inspire […]