At least once a year, my father tells me he’d rather not go see Romeo & Juliet. When I ask why, he always says it’s because he’s seen it before. Personally, I think the great thing about Shakespeare is that it’s always different. No matter how many times you’ve seen Hamlet, the actors and director […]
Easily the most emotional production at the Stratford Festival this year is For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. I’m not usually a cryer at the theatre but I was inconsolably moved by this piece. Here the Canadian master playwright Michel Tremblay shares his most intimate story, that of his mother. That’s it; it’s just […]
I, like almost everyone else, had never seen The Winter’s Tale before this year at the Stratford Festival . I’d read it, discussed possible stagings, and analyzed the characters, but never seen for myself the play with 2 worlds. That, I suppose, is a theme at Stratford this year: 2 contrasting worlds in a single […]
I love Toronto. There are many many reasons for this, not the least of which is the independent theatre scene. Every week it seems I stumble upon another company dedicated to doing theatre their way, whatever way that may be. Often small, rarely well-funded and often brimming with talent, Toronto’s many many theatre companies are […]
Dangerous Liaisons (at the Stratford Festival this season) is pretty badass. It’s badass in embarrassingly large and frilly french wigs (Yanna McIntosh as Mme de Volanges wears a particularly silly one). It’s badass in petticoats, badass in tights and badass while perched daintily on lavishly ornate pieces of furniture. This solid piece of badassery is […]
Do Not Go Gentle, Geraint Wyn Davies’ one-man show at Stratford, was a strange experience for me. I didn’t care about the life of poet Dylan Thomas going in and I can’t really say the play convinced me I should change my mind. But it didn’t seem to matter if I cared about Thomas, as […]
I find it singularly difficult to review a production that everyone seems to love. Everyone I’ve spoken to about the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s Peter Pan has told me they loved it. And I don’t mean casual love, I mean “that was the best thing ever!”, rave reviews that tell me the production will surely blow […]
… but he’s not living in Paris. He’s in Stratford, hanging out with Brent Carver and having a grand old time. Jaques Brel himself may just be the star of this show, no offense to the four sensational performers featured in The Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s staging. It’s his songs that really make the piece fly. […]