Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, and Sam Shepard lead the remarkable ensemble that pick and drag their self-centered, infectious bodies through the captious county of Osage in August. Adapted from her Tony and Pulitzer-winning play by the same title, Tracy Letts pairs with director John Wells (The Company Men, Showtime’s Shameless) to […]
SpeakEasy Stage Company presents a moving and thoroughly enjoyable, even grandiose but always heartfelt, production of The Color Purple. Based on the novel by Alice Walker and the hit movie, the musical is an immersive tale of Celie, an “ugly” African-American woman who has enough heartache and troubles for us all, as she journeys from […]
“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.” Sherlock Holmes was right – such is the reality of being a Watson. No, I am not simply talking about Holmes’ friend, Dr. John H. Watson. As […]
Increasingly, some of the most solid theatre on the Toronto scene has come from companies you could classify as “Indie 2.0” (technically an Equity term but one I’ve decided to allocate a bit more freely). These are companies that operate along indie lines, with small-ish budgets and casts, but use union artists. The effect is […]
Returning once again to the sheer, overwhelmingly anticipatory joy of fans everywhere, The Hunger Games, a popular book series now turned even more popular series of big budget Hollywood releases, returns with the second installment, Catching Fire. Directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Jennifer Lawrence as the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen as well returning rolls from […]
A good movie adaptation of a a good book teases something out of the text. It figures out what is important about the text, what has made it resonate with literary audiences for years. It takes a stand on what it’s adapting, and adds something to it besides just flesh and blood rendering. It’s on […]
I am not a public crier. Of the hundreds of movies and theatrical productions that I have seen in my 26 years on this planet, I can count on one hand the number of times that I cried in a theatre. So, you can imagine my bewilderment when I found myself wiping tears away with […]
First Published: July 12, 2013 There’s something about spectacle. The book version of World War Z was all about the literary spectacle, taking the normally claustrophobic zombie story and blowing it up, writ large across the worldwide campus. I’ve always described it as Contagion with zombies – a world wide, political thriller that just happened […]