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 […]
Did this play deserve its Olivier Award nomination last year? Absolutely. Its development of character, slow revelation of plot and bitingly black humour make James Fritz’s work a triumph of new writing. The story revolves around two parents, Di and David (Kate Maravan and Jonathan McGuinness), whose son Jack has been beaten up on his […]
Belarus Free Theatre can claim that not only is it underground in form but also in substance. What it discusses in its plays is subversive: it challenges basic principles that constitute modern society. Of course, the substance of the underground exists on a spectrum, all the way from Dostoevsky to VICE magazine. After seeing four […]
Banana Boys (Factory Theatre) I’m loving the Naked season at Factory. The text-centric, stripped down approach the company is taking to all the pieces in their so-far-so-good fall seasonette is spotlighting great performances, inspiring directorial creativity and refusing to let great texts get overshadowed by trappings. Banana Boys is the perfect example of what’s so […]
Not since 1605 has Guy Fawkes night brought the British government so close to destruction than on this past November 5.* Parliament was dissolved. The monarchy was threatened. The United Kingdom lay on the verge of total collapse. At least, that is the reality that played out on the Music Box Theatre stage in Mike […]
Written and performed by Sarah Thorpe, Heretic is a modern retelling of the story of Joan of Arc. Currently at the Theatre Passe-Muraille Backspace, this Soup Can Theatre production is a remount of an earlier version that Thorpe helped to produce last spring. In the programme, Thorpe tells us that the show was inspired […]
There’s something really special happening at the Theatre Centre right now. Actually, there are two (soon to be three) special things happening at the Theatre Centre right now. They are the productions that make up Why Not Theatre’s latest theatrical experiment and I can’t say enough about them, or it. The November Ticket is […]
Edmond (The Storefront Arts Initiative) In David Mamet’s bleak one-act Edmond, nearly every actor plays multiple roles. Director Benjamin Blais has his large, diverse cast nearly omnipresent and in perpetual motion, creating a swirling, oppressive crowd through which Tim Walker’s frantic Edmond has to constantly fight to make his way to each of the 23 […]