I just spent an hour and a half with Shakespeare Bash’d Artistic Director James Wallis and his wife/collaborator Julia Nish-Lapidus. The conversation sprawled- I asked them what fans of their previous Fringe hits The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing could expect from their upcoming Love’s Labour’s Lost; they sung the praises […]
Please excuse the vulgarity of this review’s title; Kat Sandler‘s immersive dialogue has a tendency to catch on and affect my vocabulary for a few hours after I leave the theatre. The upsetting news is that, having just taken in her thrilling new work about three rough-edged foster brothers looking to break into the cockfighting […]
For their inaugural production, socially conscious Clock Tower Theatre chose a contemporary Canadian play limited neither by its time nor its place. Rather, The Harrowing is one of those no-frills political thrillers that could just as easily be about Jesus as about Maziar Bahari or a dystopian hero of the future. Designer/AD Justin Büyüközer embraces […]
At the Papermill Theatre last week, the East Side Players premiered one of the most ambitious and beautiful works in the Canadian theatrical canon- Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex. The complex hypothetical places the “virgin” Queen rather outlandishly in the barn where Shakespeare’s troupe The Lord Chamberlain’s men are lodging after performing Much Ado About Nothing […]
I don’t go in for sexy vampires and demons and things anymore. Not that I ever really did. There’s nothing wrong with sexy vampires and demons and things, I guess, except that I feel like they’ve taken what was once my favourite network away from me. With The WB of Gilmore/Dawson/Everwood fame a distant memory […]
For weeks (many weeks) leading up to last night’s season 10 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, the ABC promo department has been drilling it into our brains: “it’s Grey’s Anatomy, Farewell to Cristina!!!!!!!!!”. This was an important one- the first original intern to leave since Izzie (season 6), and the departure of Sandra Oh who was […]
It’s with Jules Massenet’s gorgeous setting of the classic story of an “errant knight” that The Canadian Opera Company closes out a truly exemplary season. This was the season when I finally learned to love The COC, when I finally felt like I had a favourite opera composer (Donizetti) and a favourite soprano (Adrianne Pieczonka), […]
Out from the looming shadow of Peter Sellars’ agonizing Hercules, The Canadian Opera Company is crawling back to the light as they close in on the end of their generally strong 2013/14 season. Said light is shone by thoughtful director Stephen Lawless onto Donizetti’s emotionally mature and structurally sound opera about the great and confounding […]