Cymbeline is the production I’d been waiting to see in Stratford all season. It’s really good Shakespeare. That’s what Stratford does- really good Shakespeare- and I think it’s telling that most of the really good productions this year aren’t that. There are quite a few good musicals, one decent Shakespeare, and one that’s close to […]
If you’re going to see Nicholas Jarecki’s high finance thriller, Arbitrage, make sure to bring an Economics major with you. For one, he or she could tell you what ‘arbitrage’ means and how it applies to the film, and, for two, they can help you follow the serpentine and occasionally muddled script. Unlike 2011’s Margin […]
Stratford has to have at least one big, impressive, serious classical play a year. 2007- Lear, 2008-Hamlet, 2009-Macbeth, 2010- Tempest, 2011- well, 2011 didn’t have a big tragedy but Twelfth Night was so good and Richard III (in the Tom Patterson) was such a big deal that they made up the difference. In 2012, it’s […]
By now I’m sure you’ve read all about how great Ragtime is and may be expecting me to disagree. I’m not going to. In fact, I’m going to pile on . No hyperbole here, I promise… Ready? Okay: I have literally never seen one of the festivals (Shaw, Soulppeper, Stratford) pull off a musical nearly […]
I was pretty sure Elektra would be my least favourite thing at Stratford this season. I’m not big on the Greeks (not that I’m against them, they’re just a tough sell and almost always directed by crazy people who want to make everything into a Very Meaningful Movement Piece). I’m most certainly not someone immediately […]
Would someone please explain to me why His Girl Friday is a play? I get adapting plays into movies, and I even get adapting movies into musicals (so long as the songs are original), but a movie into a play? Chances are there’s no improving on the performances in a movie iconic enough to give […]
The Shaw Festival’s Hedda Gabler is good but not exceptional, and with a text as brilliant as Ibsen’s that’s not uncommon but always a little disappointing. The legendary Martha Henry’s direction isn’t bold. With fairly conventional character interpretations for the most part and little unexpected in emphasis, she lets the actors and the text do […]
As a rule, video games don’t age well. The mechanics become clunky when compared to modern titles, graphics start to look muddy, and budget voice actors sound even cheesier. All of these criticisms apply to 2000’s Deus Ex, and yet the game remains oddly compelling: there’s a popular meme that states that every time you […]