Photo: Barb Gray (Capital Critics Circle)

Le Financier (Turcaret ou le financier) d’Alain-René Lesage, mise en scène de Laurie Steven, adaptation en anglais de Laurie Steven et de Joanne Miller. . 

Cette première mondiale d’une adaptation canadienne an anglais  de Turcaret, le Financier d’après le texte de Lesage, a été réalisée à l’intention des acteurs masqués de la  Commedia dell’arte. Malgré les costumes d’époque d’une beauté extraordinaire, les masques d’une grande qualité artistique, la chorégraphie délicate de l’ensemble et un décor d’une grande sensualité qui s’inspire des tableaux de François Boucher, le résultat laisse beaucoup à désirer.

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Juno and the Paycock.  Photo. David Cooper

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — It’s only a cameo appearance, but when the remarkable Jennifer Phipps shows up in the second act of Juno And The Paycock as a bereaved old Irish mother mourning the son who has become a victim of the Irish Civil War, you can hear a pin drop.

Phipps is with us for only a few moments in the role of the mourning Mrs. Tancred, her head held high despite everything that’s happened to her, but that’s all the time she needs to communicate not just grief but stoicism and resilience in the face of terrible loss. It’s always at the most personal level that we can become really aware of the price exacted by human conflict, and this venerable Shaw Festival veteran delivers.

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If you blinked, then – like Hamlet trying to steel himself to action – you missed your chance.

On Saturday, Prescott’s St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival hosted Globe To Globe, the riveting international touring production of Hamlet by London, England-based Shakespeare’s Globe theatre company. It was in town (and Canada) for two shows only before hitting the road again.

The company is touring Hamlet to every country in the world between now and 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The show also links to the 450th anniversary of the writer’s birth this past April.

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Photo. Jay Kopinski. Tess Degenstein as Cecily & Brett Christopher as Algernon.

The comedy, The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde, one of the 19^th century’s greatest wits, is currently playing at the 1000 Islands Playhouse. For anyone unfamiliar with the play, it concerns two wealthy playboys who have been leading double lives to escape their boredom with the restrictions of polite society. When they both use the alias “Earnest,” the plot becomes chaotic and full of twists and turns, all happening in Wilde’s witty dialogue.

This is a very clever and stylish play but this production, directed by Daryl Cloran, seems to be mostly frosting and not much cake. At times, for example with Cecily’s rather contemporary method of serving tea to Gwendolen, it degenerates into slapstick. This play is not a farce and Wilde has written characters that can certainly be played believably. Everyone here, with a couple of exceptions, is working so hard at the style that any element of reality is lost. Style is meaningless if there’s no substance.

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