Hub Theatre features an impressive ensemble of male actors to perform and excel in a laugh-out-loud, hold-your-sides, bring-your-Shakespeare-philes production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged] at Club Café. This production works in ways that their prior performances have not. First, the small cast is a tight ensemble unit featured fluidly throughout the evening […]
The first thing you need to know is that I saw a very different King John than the rest of you will. Arriving at the theatre, I opened my program to discover, with utter heartbreak, that the wonderful Graham Abbey was out for the evening and would be replaced by his understudy in the show-shaping […]
It’d been 5 years since I last saw my favourite Shakespeare play live, and many years since I’d seen it done well. So I was more than excited to see Stratford’s current production, despite my whole-hearted belief that the company’s chosen leading man was at least 20 years too young (and a sprightly man to […]
Occasionally (and I mean very occasionally, sadly) I see a Shakespeare play that makes me deliriously happy. This was one of those plays; the first at Stratford since Des McAnuff’s glorious 2011 Twelfth Night. I got a little bored in Act 5 (Act 5 of Midsummer being one of my least favourite things ever) and […]
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays to stage. The action is fairly simple and the characters generally pretty accessible but there’s magic, a monster, a spirit, multiple apparitions and a big on-stage storm. A big budget, a brilliant directorial brain or, ideally, both is required to pull it off without things looking […]
I have a complicated task in this review: to try to defend a production of Hamlet in which I did not admire the performance choices of the eponymous character. It is a theater cliché (more like a truth universally acknowledged) that no production of Hamlet can stand without its protagonist. And yet, there were elements […]
Lost and Found (A) What a better way to start my fringe binge than Marilla Wex’s Lost and Found. From the first moments of her honest and integral solo show, Wex performs with energy, consistent humour and a smile. I think I wrote down “absolutely charming” twice. It’s everything you want in a solo show: […]
My second day at the Toronto Fringe was a one-play affair (don’t judge, I had things to do). But here’s the FULL LIST of our festival reviews if one isn’t enough for you. Love’s Labour’s Lost (A-) I was nervous about this one. My love of Shakespeare Bash’d and their clear, thoughtful approach to the […]