Ranking: #7 The first thing that stands out about The Shaw Festival’s current production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is Sue LePage’s perfect set. Tennessee Williams is notoriously detailed in his stage directions; he describes the feel of the place just as much as the look- the sounds, the smells, the generally […]
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Ranking: #8 Candida is a play that is both fascinating and a little dull at the same time. It’s an inconsequential marital squabble that goes on a bit too long and contains perhaps a bit too much philosophizing on the meaning of love and marriage. It’s also revealing and engaging as a social study […]
Whitney Cummings was not a name most of us knew before this TV season. Now, thanks to the annoying and ubiquitous ads for her eponymous new show Whitney, she feels like a familiar and annoying relative. Still, Cummings is the driving force behind not one, but two new shows starring women and about women, […]
Ranking: #9 My notes on The Shaw Festival’s production of My Fair Lady contain only one word: “Birds!!!”. The reason for this is that there is very little to director Molly Smith and set designer Ken MacDonald’s interpretation apart from the far-from-novel metaphor of birds and bird-related things (various “spread my wings” themes and such- […]
The lunch jam was annoyingly over-processed, no one cares about Emma and Will, Santana’s betrayal is unbelievable and the rejection of Vanessa Lengies was just sad (how many years has that girl been playing a teenager? 13 years!) But Chris Colfer is still one of the best young actors on TV, every single character got […]
Ranking: #10 Drama at the Inish, a comedy written by Lennox Robinson and directed by Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, does nothing in particular wrong. The dialogue is clever, the plotting concise, the staging effective, the set well dressed. The talented cast aptly juggles their quick comic material with excellent Irish accents. But the […]
THE CONTEXT: While not exactly a fan of Two and Half Men, I have watched a good portion of the early seasons, and am able to laugh pretty unselfconsciously at the series’ particular take on sitcom conventions. And I’m intrigued to see how they deal with all the real life scandal. • Oh so no […]
CBS’s best comedy isn’t what it once was- it’s a little broader, a little less clever, a little lazier; but that’s in comparison to what it once was, not in comparison to everything else. In comparison to everything else, it’s still one of the happiest-making things out there. How I Met Your Mother makes me […]