Having fallen in love with the human special effect that is a large ensemble tap number (or, perhaps rather more accurately, observed the audience’s love for them), Shaw Festival Artistic Director Tim Carroll has cornered himself into a very specific style and era of musical theatre programming. While there’s plenty to love about said style […]
I don’t quite understand what happened here. This was my most anticipated production of the season- a small chamber piece from and featuring two of my favourite festival artists- but I’m fairly certain the show was pitched as an original (performers Marla McLean and Graeme Somerville are credited as “co-creators”), an intimate work crafted out […]
A very strong ensemble of some of Shaw’s (and Canada’s) best highlight this strange(r than usual) Will Eno show, an adaptation of Ibsen’s epic Peer Gynt that falsely claims you don’t need to know the original to follow along. You absolutely need to know the original in order to feel rooted at all in this […]
The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario never fails to impress. While I’d love to see them use their secondary stage a bit more to really challenge their audiences with intimate counter-programming, their mainstage blockbusters at the beautiful Spriet theatre reflect diversity of tone and style within the “must sell well” demands of maintaining such a […]
The ultimate test of any great theatre script lies in its second production. Though unfortunately sporting the same director as the original 2023 Stratford run and its 2024 Soulpepper transfer and thus perhaps not as thought through from the drawing board as I may have liked, playwright Nick Green’s glorious Casey & Diana is currently […]
Conceived, adapted, and directed by Daryl Cloran originally for Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, this joyful and zany adaptation of As You Like It uses the Beatles’ sprawling songbook to sculpt Shakespeare’s “play with music” into a full tilt musical. Currently onstage at the Grand Theatre in London, the imperfect but polished production is a […]
Coming off the exceptional one-two punch of August’s Mary’s Wedding/Murder for Two, I was excited to return to Gananoque’s Thousand Islands Playhouse for a second set of shows as they close out their 2024 season. Unfortunately the combination of Jesus Christ Superstar and Arun Lakra’s Sequence proved less of a slam dunk than what I’ve […]
Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque has just about the best programming strategy I’ve seen for a small company, especially one serving a remote community without a ton of access to live theatre. Managing Artistic Director Brett Christopher smartly programs all the big fun musicals you’d expect, crowd-pleasers that never fail to slap (this season has […]