This really excellent Shaw season is remarkable for many reasons but perhaps the most notable (at this particular moment in Canadian theatrical history) is its focus on and opportunities for women. They are muses (The Divine) and heroes (Peter & the Starcatcher), complex ingénues and feisty matriarchs (Pygmalion, The Lady from the Sea), scene-stealers (You […]
Popular culture has resoundingly strong opinions and plenty of advice on love. Love is all you need. Love is a battlefield. Love changes everything. Live, laugh, love. Eat, Pray, Love. The list goes on. But, what is this Crazy Little Thing Called Love? For those people who Want To Know What Love Is,* Benjamin Folstein’s […]
One of the principal conceits of this 18th century farce is that one would obviously treat an innkeeper and a bar maid with far less respect and basic human decency than one would their peers, not to mention their betters. This accepted, appalling behaviour is the source of much of the conflict and most of […]
Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. Stupidhead! A Mucisal Cmoedy (B+) A rare straightforward and simply charming effort at the festival, this original one-woman autobiographical musical is refreshingly unafraid of seeming conventional and is therefore able to really be truthful and simply enjoyable. The form is unoriginal and the songs a […]
The National’s version of a modest summer hit is The Motherfucker With the Hat, a vulgar look at a man trying to overcome his addictions and stick to his moral code. This man is Jackie, an ex-con who struggles to maintain a relationship after he finds out his coke-addled partner has been sleeping with the […]
Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. The Emancipation of Ms. Lovely (A-) Almost every play that I have seen at Summerworks this year has involved characters and events that transcend whole decades, and sometimes centuries. In An Evening in July, two women seem to be living simultaneously in the […]
The full title of the Shaw Festival’s latest studio theatre offering is almost as long as its running time (a whopping 3 hours and 50 minutes): The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. Besides the fact that most plays in the studio have no intermission and this one […]
Click Here for our full coverage of the 2015 SummerWorks Festival. Seams (B) An excellent cast and interesting subject matter elevate this somewhat dull, badly paced play about theatre seamstresses in 1939 Russia. Ewa Wolniczek is particularly memorable as Marina, a young woman with too much fight in her. Sochi Fried and Elizabeth Stuart-Morris share […]