STRATFORD, Ont. — That could well be a white lab coat that Lucy Peacock is wearing when she first seizes our attention in Paradise Lost. To be sure, there are glimpses beneath of a clinging black outfit that makes its own insinuating statement, but the laboratory touch seems particularly appropriate given that this is someone who delights in treating human beings like specimens to be played with and driven into the abyss. …
1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON. Prairie Nurse, the latest show in TIP’s summer 2018 lineup produced in association with Toronto’s Factory Theatre, is billed as a “culture-clashing comedy” centering around the arrival of two Filipina nurses in a small Saskatchewan community in the 1960s. The play, written by Filipina-Canadian playwright Marie Beath Badian, certainly has its moments of humour and clever poking at Western assumptions of Asians; and this production, directed by Sue Miner, succeeds in effectively playing up these moments for audience reaction. …
STRATFORD, Ont. — The Stratford Festival’s 2018 playbill is now complete — and the final entry is an absolute winner.
Napoli Milionaria! is the name of the play, and it’s a wonderful, steaming broth of an entertainment — robustly staged with understanding and affection by festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino and featuring a stellar cast led by Tom McCamus as the beleaguered head of a turbulent Neapolitan household clinging to survival during the Second World War. …
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Peter Hinton is a director who has long thrived on risk-taking. Indeed, he would probably tell you that the right to take risks is a necessary component of meaningful artistic activity.
Along with that component comes another necessity — the freedom to fail. There are times when Hinton, the former head of English theatre at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, has failed spectacularly, but there have also been visionary achievements — a startling Way Of The World at NAC, a visually sumptuous Lady Windermere’s Fan and a controversial but rewarding Cabaret at the Shaw. …
STRATFORD, ONT. — By the time the assassination scene arrives in the Stratford Festival’s new production of Julius Caesar, the sense of foreboding is palpable.
It’s not just the soothsayer’s urgent warnings to “beware the Ides of March” or the fearful nightmares of Caesar’s wife who pleads with him to remain at home and not go to the Senate on this fateful day. It’s also the noirish atmosphere that shrouds Scott Wentworth’s production in its early scenes. …
Viewed at the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON
Performed in the more intimate space of the Firehall Theatre, Midsummer (A Play with Songs) by Scottish playwright David Greig is perhaps the most thematically unique offering in TIP’s summer 2018 season. In contrast to the easy-going comedies and fun musicals, Greig’s work is one which engages with deep questions of finding happiness in life and whether one can truly live past their ‘prime.’ …
NIAGARA-ON THE-LAKE, Ont. — The musical numbers are sublime in their execution. The visuals can be stunning — reflecting a creative imagination that embraces the adage that less can often mean more. A superb cast has been assembled. The entire evening has a silken efficiency that reflects professionalism at its highest. What more can we want? …
A new work by expatriate playwright Jason Hall, The Canadian, deftly mixes together classic elements of farce with uniquely Canadian themes (some relating to the town of Gananoque itself) to great comedic effect. The strength of the script is much enhanced in this production, under Rob Kempson’s direction, which takes place in the Springer Theatre. The expertly choreographed falls and trips, constant slamming of doors in people’s faces, and funny soundtrack, to name a few, each further contribute to the hilarious spectacle. …
STRATFORD, Ont. — It’s one of many startling moments in the Stratford Festival’s production of Coriolanus. Through pride and arrogance, the tarnished hero of the play’s title has squandered the love of the Roman populace and is fleeing for his life. So we see him behind the wheel of an automobile, speeding to safety as an increasingly forbidding landscape flashes past. It could be a journey into hell — it seems so ominous and interminable — and it’s happening within a rectangular, wide-screen frame surrounded by the blackness of the Avon Theatre stage. Finally when he halts the car and steps out, Coriolanus is clearly in a blighted, forsaken place. …
Harvest performed at the 1000 Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, ON
A play that is inspired by a real-life experience of his parents, Ken Cameron’s comedy Harvest successfully transmits an equal amount of seriousness and humour as directed by Charlotte Gowdy in the Firehall Theatre. Performed by an extremely versatile pair, Sheldon Davis and Catherine Fitch, Harvest tells the story of a retired couple who decide to rent out their farmhouse when they move to the city. A WestJet pilot named Ron is all too eager to move in immediately. …