I went to University in Boston. Don’t ask me why but I had it in my head that I had to leave home after highschool, live in another city (another country, as it turned out), get some space from the town where my parents live, where I’d spent all of highschool and lived since I […]
Canadian theatre icon Seana McKenna’s take on the title villain in Richard III was one of the star attractions of The Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2011 season; Gareth Potter’s ballsy (forgive the pun) and brash turn as disillusioned drag queen Hosanna in Michel Tremblay’s heartwrenching play of the same name was a personal highlight. Their physical […]
Toronto’s mayor is a Mr. Dursley-esque grump face with a popularity rate so low in the heart of the city that I’ve literally never met one of his supporters. They like him in the suburbs I guess, or so the electoral map suggested, but down where we use the TTC and go to the theatre […]
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is gearing up for their 60th Anniversary, recently posting the promotional photos for the 14 productions in their 2012 season. Head to www.stratfordfestival.ca for details on the upcoming shows. 42nd Street A Word or Two The Best Brothers Cymbeline Elektra Henry V Hirsch MacHomer The Matchmaker Much Ado About Nothing The […]
In my University writing classes I always wanted to write inside baseball stories about how Shakespeare people talk about Shakespeare. Every professor I ever had (playwriting, screenwriting, tv writing- all of them) told me I wasn’t allowed. They said the audience would tune the characters out because they didn’t understand, that everything had to be […]
Ross Petty’s annual Christmas Pantomime has been a beloved event in Toronto for 16 years. I can remember going as a kid and getting to see Canadian legends like Mr. Dressup (Ernie Coombs), Fred Penner, Kurt Browning, Rex Harrington and Karen Kain onstage as absurd twisted fairy tale creatures. It was the thrill of the […]
Shakespeare in Action’s second tragedy isn’t as strong as its repertory companion Romeo and Juliet. While the casually modern staging works wonderfully in R and J, in a modern Mackers a low budget can make things look haphazard because of the precision necessary to pull off a military look. The company would have been better […]
In the weeks before Anonymous hit movie theatres I was asked no fewer than 20 times how I felt about the film. “Could it be true?” people wondered of the absurd tagline: ‘Was Shakespeare A Fraud?’; “are you outraged?” demanded others, inquiring whether my bardolatry had me on the defense; “why is Xenophilius Lovegood in […]