Writing about the Vietnam War, Mary McCarthy identified the slippery motivations hiding behind the conflict’s carefully-constructed terms. To make their methods sound innocuous, the American military referred to napalm as “Incinder-jell,” and to defoliants as “weed killers.” McCarthy observed that this “resort to euphemism denotes, no doubt, a guilty conscience, or—the same thing nowadays—a twinge […]
I have always hated monographs that moonlight as plays or novels or paintings, though I have to make an exception for Future Conditional. It is so unabashed in its stance on education and class that it commands a degree of respect. As a play for many generations, it probably will not be that, but it […]
The theatrical adaption of the beloved 1973 movie The Sting, now playing at Wilton’s Music Hall, promises an entertaining night back in time. Unbeknownst to them, two small con artists named Johnny Hooker and Luther Coleman make big shot runner Doyle Lonnegan very angry by scamming one of his men. Without giving too much away, […]
It takes twenty minutes for it to truly begin, but Different Class is a sweet example of dramatic subtext. Maria (played by Lucy Penrose) is cleaning her flat the morning after a house party when her friend Andy (Robert Ansell) comes over for a chat. It seems a banal scenario and it certainly is for […]
“You have a brave heart and a beautiful soul and it can be clearly seen by anyone who bothers to look closely” is (loosely paraphrased) one of the last things Rebecca Northan said to her co-star at Tuesday’s performance of Blind Date at Tarragon Theatre. I don’t know if she says that every time- the […]
The Unit 102 Theatre at Queen and Dufferin is an interesting space. It is a black box theatre, with the audience on two sides meeting at the downstage right corner, which also functions as an entrance and exit for the actors. It’s small so it can make for a very intimate theatre experience. The main […]
It is best to see Lela & Co without knowledge of it beforehand—if you want to see worthwhile theatre then stop reading this and go see it, essentially. The reason you want to know less about it is that Cordelia Lynn’s script creates expectations from the outset and relentlessly reshapes them. Lela is a pitiful […]
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 […]