I may have mentioned this a couple times, by I’ve never really been a Danial MacIvor fan. He’s a beautifully poetic playwright but I haven’t found his stories compelling enough to carry his poetry. That said, I loved The Best Brothers. It has a story simple enough to be told coherently and fully in one-act […]
I love Andrew Lloyd Webber; his shows are always big, colorful and dramatic. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat calls for a ton of small characters- eleven brothers, eleven wives, an entire children’s chorus. So, I was intrigued by the idea of a production of Joseph in a black box that advertised a small cast […]
Come Back, Little Sheba is a disjointed play. During the first act, it feels like a trivial tragedy not tragic enough to earn that description. The characters are fretting losers with problems so superficial that it’s remarkable how easy they would be to fix. Marie: date nicer boys (and try just one at a time); […]
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” -Benedick to Beatrice (IV.i) The 2012 Stratford season isn’t very good. 80% of the reason I say that is Much Ado About Nothing. There are places to improve Henry V, Charlie Brown, The Matchmaker and so much else, but they […]
Present Laughter isn’t particularly remarkable. It’s a pretty standard Shaw production despite being written by Noel Coward and not George Bernard Shaw (who only wrote two plays slated for the 2012 season, actually). The costumes are pretty, the set is impressive if not interesting and everybody has British accents. Shaw’s Festival Theatre is a typical proscenium arch- […]
In a season where Stratford is struggling a bit, I haven’t seen a bad Shaw production yet. Ragtime is Fantastic (more on that later) and His Girl Friday is pretty good (again, more to come) but it’s French Without Tears that surprised me the most. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into at […]
It drags in a middle but The Sunshine Boys is the best comedy Soulpepper’s done since they last did Neil Simon (in last season’s The Odd Couple). Simon is hilarious, with a wonderfully human touch of sadness, and the seasoned, naturalistic Soulpepper company fits perfectly with his style. Ted Dykstra smartly doesn’t add too much […]
I’ve always liked Humber River Shakespeare, mostly because I always like Shakespeare- anywhere, in any form, by any company- but their 2012 Macbeth is by far the best thing I’ve ever seen from them. It helps that I attended their very first (and only, this season) show at Casa Loma. A relatively bare-bones company, Humber […]