For theatre fans, the holiday season means more in New York than jam-packed stores, high-kicking Rockettes, and the dreaded SantaCon. The new year brings with it the uplifting promise of hope – hope that the spring season will bring unique, creative, and unforgettable new productions to the Broadway stage. You see, there is a certain […]
Purists will hate this Macbeth. The theatrically skeptical will find it heady and ridiculous but, mostly, it’s the purists who will hate it. Director Sophie Ann Rooney takes huge, ambitious leaps of interpretation and some of her key cast members don’t have a clue how to speak the verse. They absolutely have a point, the […]
Dystopia is all the rage these days, as any of the recent hits in YA fiction/blockbuster film adaptations will indicate (The Hunger Games; Ender’s Game; The Giver, etc.). The Boston fringe theatre scene is no exception, and companies can choose to either stage new works (e.g. Flat Earth Theatre’s What Once We Felt) or give […]
The history of Shakespeare Bash’d, up to and including their current production of Macbeth at the Monarch Tavern, reveals a pattern of wonderful comedy and middling tragedy. Some of this has to do with the Fringe Festival comedies being shorter and more fun, enlivened by the festival environment. But, mostly, I think it comes down […]
Hart House’s Tempest, which runs until November 22, was certainly big on ambition. While there were moments of brilliance here, they often came too few and far between. The ensemble of nymphs, expertly choreographed by Ashleigh Powell, executed coherent and well-rounded physical and vocal performances. The Troupe of white-clothed and white-powdered spirits (compliments of […]
Two strong but ultimately uninspiring productions are currently playing at the Four Seasons Centre as the kick off to the Canadian Opera Company’s 2014/15 season. Though they’re of comparable overall quality, Falstaff and Madama Butterfly have little in common. The former is visually grand with lots of awkwardly long breaks to change the elaborate sets […]
Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play was part of Theatre@First’s 10th anniversary. This was only the second play I’ve seen by Theatre@First, but so far I’m not impressed (I wasn’t formally reviewing the other production so it can live on in nameless infamy). Now, it’s not the company’s fault that I wasn’t impressed, they did nothing explicitly […]
Don’t screw around with Shakespeare…unless you can make it hella-entertaining. This was the thought that pulsed in my mind as I watched the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of Comedy of Errors, directed by David R. Gammons. I was both excited and apprehensive about this show due to my own shifting views on one of […]