Fleet, comic, utterly cosmopolitan, Six Degrees of Separation is one of John Guare’s sharpest works. Loosely based on real-life events, the play revolves around the mysterious figure of Paul. This young man manages to impress and verbally seduce his way into the homes of some Upper East Side Manhattanites. Two couples and a Jewish doctor […]
There was a buzz in the air as I found my seat at the Tarragon Mainspace at the opening night of Wormwood. The theatre was packed to see the latest from Tarragon’s Playwright-in-Residence, Andrew Kushnir. Audience members trickled in from the lobby where Ukranian folk singers had just entertained the crowd. An announcement was made […]
Workshop productions aren’t really supposed to be reviewed, especially when they’re only playing for one weekend and the reviewer can’t make it on opening night. So, I suppose, you shouldn’t really call this a review. It’s more of a monologue about Holger Syme’s wonderful new adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s Casimir and Caroline with The […]
Historically, operas that choose to focus on love tend to privilege sweeping romances, richly orchestrated melodrama, couples separated by social mores, and, more often than not, a gloriously tragic finale. If you’re going to have several dozen musicians thrumming beneath your story of romantic entanglement, then it seems more than fair for your performances to […]
Did this play deserve its Olivier Award nomination last year? Absolutely. Its development of character, slow revelation of plot and bitingly black humour make James Fritz’s work a triumph of new writing. The story revolves around two parents, Di and David (Kate Maravan and Jonathan McGuinness), whose son Jack has been beaten up on his […]
Two nights in October, I did something I haven’t done in far too long- I went to the symphony. But these were not regular nights at the symphony. There was no Peter Oundjian, an uncharacteristic smell filled Roy Thomson Hall, the average age of the patrons was at least 20 years below expected and, when […]
Belarus Free Theatre can claim that not only is it underground in form but also in substance. What it discusses in its plays is subversive: it challenges basic principles that constitute modern society. Of course, the substance of the underground exists on a spectrum, all the way from Dostoevsky to VICE magazine. After seeing four […]
I realize that the title of this piece may be a bit misleading. To “bash” something, at least in my line of work, is to pan a production so aggressively that you run the risk of being pulled from the comp list. Luckily, Shakespeare Bash’d and I are not in the same line of work. […]