An odd, rarely produced adventure at sea that many Shakespeare fans have never seen, Pericles is the only one of the four Shakespeare plays currently at the Stratford Festival to be relegated to one of the smaller theatres. Dreary Hamlet, overly traditional Shrew and uneven Love’s Labours are all playing on that famous festival stage […]
Of the many “just do the play” attempts at Shakespeare this season on the Stratford mainstage, director John Caird comes closest to presenting an incarnation of true interest. Patrick Clark’s overly pretty design traps the actors and distracts the audience and a few casting missteps drag the affair down but, armed with arguably the most […]
Two moderate highpoints of the 2015 Stratford season, Possible Worlds & The Physicists are both works of thematic ambition with refreshing visual flair. Strong casts and well-paced direction help both pieces stand out though neither stirs the heart nearly as much as it attempts to challenge the mind. In John Mighton’s Possible Worlds, a somewhat […]
Thank god for Kate Hennig. In a Stratford season where women are both underrepresented and terribly misused, she’s offered us a heroine ten times as complex as Pericles and two of the most compelling supporting female characters of the season to boot. In a season of dull period pieces and literal interpretation, she’s bent history […]
It’s difficult with a play like this to separate the effectiveness of a production from one’s emotional reaction to the story being told. It’s Anne Frank- dark and devastating, punctuated by heartbreaking moments of lightness, romance and even joy. Anne’s words, structured by playwrights Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (adapted by Wendy Kesselman), are so […]
Gord Rand is new to Stratford; he did one studio production back in 2002 but Oedipus really feels like a brand new introduction. Like with Maev Beaty last season, this is a strange reality that gets people talking about a well-established and highly respected performer as if they are just now being discovered. In the […]
One of the principal conceits of this 18th century farce is that one would obviously treat an innkeeper and a bar maid with far less respect and basic human decency than one would their peers, not to mention their betters. This accepted, appalling behaviour is the source of much of the conflict and most of […]
When I was six years old, I fell madly in love with The Sound of Music. And I mean madly, as in I went absolutely mad. My poor parents and older brother were subjected to an endless stream of six-year-old Julie Andrews imitation on an 8-hour drive to Montreal. 8 hours, nothing but “do-mi-mi-mi-so-so-re-fa-fa-la-ti-ti!” (see, […]