Both of Canadian Stage’s current offerings are about people sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with. Both remarkably self-satisfied domestic dramas purport to be about “so much more” but that’s really about it. In the one-act contemporary opera Julie, well-to-do scorned woman Julie (Lucia Cervoni) sleeps with her callous, manipulative, engaged servant Jean […]
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The Road to Paradise is certainly timely. As we continue to battle wars and tragedies of all sorts across the world, we need pieces that bring people together to reflect and dialogue on what truths lie untold, and what we can do about it. Playwrights Jonathan Garfinkel and Christopher Morris wish to create a dialogue […]
Finally, finally, after months of waiting, Jessica Jones is here. Since the first stills of Krysten Ritter in character as Jessica were released, I was ready for this show, and the first episode not disappoint. In a world with a lot of superhero TV shows already airing, and more planned, Jessica Jones has no trouble […]
I don’t much care for Shakespeare, but I wonder what my father thinks of King Lear. There was a magnificent (and free) production of the tragedy in Central Park in summer 2014, casting a white-bearded John Lithgow as the mad king. On a stark, distressed wooden platform, the geezer spat fire and lightning at his […]
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 […]