Julius Caesar is a tragedy for the masses. For the uninitiated, many Shakespearean tragedies are at least somewhat familiar because his work has transcended every cultural boundary: of course you know of Romeo and Juliet even if you don’t know obscure 16th century Italian poetry – or Romeo and Juliet. Others that haven’t installed themselves […]
If it’s hard to convince new audiences to give Shakespeare a chance, why not take it to them? Shakespeare-In-Hospitals goes to “traditional and non-traditional theatre spaces” with traditional and non-traditional stories – this season’s work is an ambitious blend of Shakespeare extracts, poetry, and original content dealing with tricky themes of family, memory, and loss. […]
It’s the holiday season which means we get to relive the quintessential secular Christmas story – apparently the only one, again and again. Avid Carolers are spoilt for choice – after leaving Spadina Museum full of festive cheer, you can head to The Three Ships Collective’s remount of last year’s brilliant Carol at Campbell House […]
Usually the premise for a comedy troupe is quaint, maybe a little quizzical. Dead Parents Society answers your first question right away and rejoices in how uncomfortable it makes you. Its members all lost a parent at a young age and combine to give a portrait of grief that’s darkly, uniquely comic and all the […]
In Tennessee Williams’ extensive canon, The Glass Menagerie stands out as the original “memory play”: the work is framed as the hazy recollections of the main character, whose reliability as a narrator is an open question. Williams uses this to issue an invitation to actors and directors to fill in and flesh out those memories as […]
If staging the perfect murder is hard enough, staging a good murder mystery has its own challenges. With all the mischievousness of its main characters, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope dodges those responsibilities by flipping the script: the murder is made in front of us and the motive is the mystery. It’s been a while since thrillers […]
Shakespeare earned the right to phone it in. It was clear that even his less daring and promising works would be feted beyond their merits – anything bearing his name would get the benefit of the doubt when the same script by a lesser or less famous playwright would be passed over. More generously, any […]
If reality TV taught us anything, it’s that there’s little easier to lampoon than the lives of the rich and famous; long before and through the television age, Noel Coward recognized and exploited this wonderfully. His wildly eccentric charm along with his inimitable talent and style made him the darling of the aristocracy whose attention […]