Theatre Smash’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s dystopic one act The Ugly One is a whole lot of funny and whole whack of unsettling all wrapped into a tiny 1 hour package. Director Ashlie Corcoran and designer Camellia Koo pair to stage Maja Zade’s superb translation of the excellent play in a unique and […]
Ranking: #2 My first tears of the 2011 Stratford Festival Season came in the Studio Theatre one afternoon as I took in a play about which I knew nothing. John Mighton’s original work The Little Years was the surprise delight of the season, a new play I loved so much that it usurped some […]
Ranking: #3 A lot of people consider Shakespeare’s early revenge tragedy trashy, vulgar, somehow incomplete and most certainly inferior (to the bard’s more “sophisticated” later works like Hamlet). But some of the smartest directors I’ve ever met are convinced there’s a certain darkly comic genius to it. That seems to be the trick with the grotesquely […]
Ranking: #4 After I read late Stratford artistic director Richard Monette’s beautiful memoir This Rough Magic, I couldn’t wait to buy a copy of the play that made him famous. But when I finally got to read great Canadian playwright Michel Tremblay’s groundbreaking 2-man play Hosanna, I was surprised by how much I didn’t like […]
Ranking: #5 Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath is incredibly demanding. With no fewer than 61 characters (not including “Travellers, Guards, Strikers, Citizens and Hoopermen”), an on-stage river, a rainstorm, ever-changing locales and a moving vehicle of remarkable size, it’s a wonder that any company would consider attempting a production. But if […]
Jesus Christ Superstar is inarguably the biggest hit The Stratford Festival has had in years. But that was fairly predictable. Current Artistic Director Des McAnuff is, at heart, a rock musical man and he’d been dreaming of JCS for quite some time. After the arrival of Josh Young in last year’s Evita and with the […]
Ranking: #7 Take a look at that promotional photo- doesn’t that look like a kickass Richard III? Unfussily sexually ambiguous, surrounded by attack dogs and draped cockily on a throne that’s not hers- I really think that should have been Seana McKenna’s Richard III. I mean look at those boots! Who needs a penis when […]
Ranking: #8 I’m fond of Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot. It was one of the first things I ever saw at The Stratford Shakespeare Festival and this year’s iteration pays lovely homage to that great production with erstwhile Lancelot Dan Chameroy bringing his lovable swagger to the small part of Sir. Dinadan. That said, Camelot is […]