15 AUGUST 2012- I am about to watch a show directed by my favourite Canadian playwright (Morris Panych). The set is fascinating to me. I love absurdist drama, and the designer (Ken MacDonald) has made appropriately bold choices with this fantastical set that feels like an even larger than life version of a cute doll house. The […]
It is not that often we get to see realism on stage anymore. Even more rare: three hour productions. Do people even have that sort of attention span these days? Lucky thing for intermissions. At least in opera you have the chance of being taken on a musical journey. But this is three hours – […]
Tom Stoppard’s absurd Hamlet spinoff is beloved among my particular demographic of friends who are really into Hamlet, Gary Oldman (who starred in the movie version), and wacky British things like Doctor Who. I am not one of these people, I just hang out with lots of these people and find them exhausting. Despite this, […]
Death of a Salesman is exactly the sort of piece that Soulpepper does brilliantly- intimate, personal, actor-driven, and a modern classic. The tight-knit company always fares well with family stories and any time you can cast the first couple of Soulpepper- Joseph Ziegler and Nancy Palk- as the parents at the centre of things, it’s […]
I’ve always liked to believe you can tell a fine play by its title. In this case, playwright Jordi Mand has ingeniously chosen a seemingly ordinary one which, in actuality, alludes to the electrifying secret that propels the story forward in this head-to-head dispute between Marion (Susan Coyne) and Teresa (Christine Horne) about what really […]
Would someone please explain to me why His Girl Friday is a play? I get adapting plays into movies, and I even get adapting movies into musicals (so long as the songs are original), but a movie into a play? Chances are there’s no improving on the performances in a movie iconic enough to give […]