The Shaw Festival’s Hedda Gabler is good but not exceptional, and with a text as brilliant as Ibsen’s that’s not uncommon but always a little disappointing. The legendary Martha Henry’s direction isn’t bold. With fairly conventional character interpretations for the most part and little unexpected in emphasis, she lets the actors and the text do […]
It takes ages for A Man and Some Women to get going. I was sure it was the worst thing I’d seen in a long time- what with its affected accents, stiff corsets, slow pace and lack of energy- but the further into the play I got the more I started to like it. By […]
I can finally exhale. The Newsroom season finale is everything I wanted it to be. Or at least it’s almost everything I wanted it to be and knowing as I do that Aaron Sorkin is but a human being I will take “almost everything” any day. The episode wraps up stories that needed to be […]
As many of you already know, Disney Canada has been nice enough this year to give us some extra copies of some of ABC’s most engrossing 2011-2012 shows on DVD and Blu-ray to share with you amazing readers. Last week we gave you the opportunity to win Revenge Season One on DVD by answering “what’s […]
The studio theatre last year was home to some of my favourite Shaw Festival productions. It’s where the festival breaks out of the period mold, drops the accents, and explores a little bit. But it only works if the text being put on is worthy of the creative space, like When the Rain Stops Falling […]
Ah for the sweet relief of the back half of a two-parter *sigh*. For every awkward “Surprise”, there is the legendary greatness of “Innocence” and the same is certainly true (but more stark) with “Tragedy Porn” and “Mock Debate”, the two episodes that make up “The Blackout”, The Newsroom‘s season one penultimate outing.* As much […]
Heads up, the first part of this article will be about Urinetown itself. I’ll tackle the production later on. Don’t take the opinions in the first part as a reflection of my feelings on the generally good Stageworks show. If you want to read only the review, it starts by the production photo so just […]
Director Eda Holmes was very thoughtful in her approach to George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance. In her director’s note she talks about the idea of experimentation (the mixing and matching of couplings and alliances to see how each turns out) and how she and designer Judith Bowden interpreted that theme into a Petri dish “where all […]