Kelly Bedard
The Shaw Festival has elevated The Doctor’s Dilemma into a moving and impactful tent pole of its excellent post-pandemic season.
Kelly Bedard
The landing page for all of our Shaw & Stratford Festival reviews from the 2022 season. Stay tuned as this page will update throughout the summer.
Kelly Bedard
Nearly three full hours, consisting of very little plot yet somehow lots of plot contrivance and noted mainly for its extended bursts of tiresome moralizing, Too True to be Good is quintessentially Shavian in a way I find hard to love. It’s so typical that there’s almost a strange comfort in its inclusion in this, […]
Kelly Bedard
Artistic Director Tim Carroll programmed the 2018 Shaw season with a throughline of war stories, mostly World War I stories. The theme is so pervasive that it seems to divide the season pretty much down the middle, so that’s how I’ve decided to group the plays together- War & Peace. Read about the season’s civilian stories […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. For the past 6 or 7 years, I’ve consistently called the Shaw Festival my favourite acting company in Canada. Former artistic director Jackie Maxwell spent her years at the helm assembling an unparalleled stable of talent […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Claudio Vena’s original compositions…
Kelly Bedard
This was not my favourite season at The Shaw Festival. They had fewer bad productions than Stratford but they didn’t have as many great ones either. The best production of their season was a one-act playing sporadically at different venues, the second best a very limited run in the small studio space, then there’s a […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Nicole Underhay is one of those people who brightens whatever room she walks into and, especially, every stage she walks onto. She wielded that power to extraordinary effect in her Outstanding Actress-nominated role in Mrs. Warren’s Profession directed by […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. This is Jennifer Dzialoszynski’s third nomination in a row. Well, third and fourth, really, since she’s nominated in two different categories- Outstanding Supporting Actress for her scene-stealing turn as Laertes in Shakespeare Bash’d’s Hamlet then for Outstanding Actress as no-nonsense Vivie […]
Kelly Bedard
Two classics- one British, one American- both, in their way, about growing up and letting go. They both feature real-life couples as their young lovers and both are currently playing on the Royal George stage. That usually would be where the comparison ends but, for her production of Shaw’s contemplation of the worth of women, […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The detail in Eo Sharp’s sprawling, modern set for Peter Hinton’s reimagined modern take on Pygmalion at the Shaw Festival was incredible. We interrogated the Outstanding Design nominee about what the post-its in Higgins’ office said and what […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. One of the Shaw Festival’s most consistently wonderful leading men, Outstanding Actor nominee Patrick McManus highlighted one of the festival’s biggest hits of 2015 as a completely redefined Henry Higgins in Peter Hinton‘s insightfully modern Pygmalion. Can you remember […]
Kelly Bedard
Oh, Peter Hinton, where would the Shaw Festival be without you? Pygmalion is exactly the sort of “ugh, this again?” play that the festival has no realistic way of avoiding, but that’s why they need Peter Hinton. A rare director of grand ambition, a Peter Hinton production is never boring, never simple, never lazy. Even […]
Kelly Bedard
Click Here for the Full List of our 2015 Toronto Fringe Reviews Hanger (A) Hilary McCormack is a wonderful actress- subtle, emotive, engaging and strong (further evidence of this can be found just one paragraph down). Unfortunately, Hilary McCormack is working in an industry and a time where there is not yet a suitably rich […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The last time we interviewed Gord Rand for the Nominee Interview Series, it was 2013 and he’d been nominated for a zero-budget workshop production staged in an abandoned office building. This time around the engrossing actor is […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. A consistent bright spot in the incredibly strong Shaw Festival company of players, the utterly charming Marla McLean shows off a huge range and host of great accents season after season but it’s her patented sweet-but-strong demeanour […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. We love the Shaw Festival. Pound for pound they have our favourite acting company in the country and they consistently introduce us to interesting texts we’ve never seen produced. But there are few directors at the company […]
Rick Chason
One day, as a teenager, I was about to read a copy of Pygmalion and my father said to me, “Why do you want to read Pygmalion? Isn’t it just My Fair Lady?” That question struck me as odd at the time, but I’ve come to realize that there’s something of a consensus among American […]
Kelly Bedard
Inner Monologue: “Do not talk about how period costumes and British accents on a proscenium stage is so boring and standard and Shaw Festival-y that you want to scream. Don’t talk about that, Kelly. Just move on, choose not to care this year, choose to get over it. Focus on the amusing captions that director […]
Kelly Bedard
This was a fabulous season for the Shaw Festival. Out of ten productions, there was only one I thought just wasn’t very good (sorry, Juno). Everything else was a mix of the delightful, if common (Arms and the Man, The Philadelphia Story, most things at the Shaw), the astounding (The Mountaintop) and the inspiringly baffling […]