By Patrick LangstonLydia Riding and Attila Clemann in a scene from Kate Hennig’s The Virgin Queen. Photo: Andrew Alexander
Cloudburst, Toto Too Theatre’s latest offering is a funny, profane, warm-hearted play about the enduring love between two elderly women in the dimming twilight of their lives.
An award-winning play from Nova Scotia dramatist Thom Fitzgerald, it is a touching but clear-eyed character study that focuses on a seldom-visited aspect of the gay culture — old age — and the very real crisis looming over the future of the feisty, uninhibited Stella (Maureen Quinn McGovern) and Dot, the sightless love of her life, played by Arlene Watson. …
By Thom Fitzgerald, TotoToo Theatre. Directed by Sarah Hearn
Stella and Dot have loved each other for 31 years. Now in their 70s, they are threatened with separation when Dot’s granddaughter decides that “for her own good” Grandma should be moved to a retirement/nursing home, which also handles final arrangements when death comes knocking. …
The 2018-19 theatre season is now beginning and the Capital Critics Circle hopes to bring you a wide variety of reviews touching all the theatres in Ottawa (professional and community), as well as performances from elsewhere in Canada and around the world.
We will also focus on the dance programme at the National Arts Centre, on French language theatre in Ottawa and the area, on the student theatre at the University of Ottawa theatre programme, we hope to be reviewing work in Montreal, in Toronto, in Paris France and wherever else we might be. …
Angel Street (Gaslight) By Patrick Hamilton, Classic Theatre Festival Directed by laurel Smith
PERTH, Ont. — The Perth Classic Theatre Festival has come up trumps with a sizzling revival of Patrick Hamilton’s renowned psychological thriller, Angel Street.
Director Laurel Smith and an excellent cast steadily crank up the tension in the production that opened on the weekend. But Smith never loses sight of the fact that Hamilton’s 1938 play about a vicious husband who is steadily driving his wife towards madness is also an unsettling study in character. In fact, it was this latter aspect that was seized on by actress Ingrid Bergman for her Oscar-winning performance in the 1944 movie, released under the title of Gaslight. …
Angel Street (Gaslight) By Patrick Hamilton, Classic Theatre Festival Directed by laurel Smith
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that makes victims question their sanity.
The term was adopted after Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gaslight, set in Victorian England in 1880, became an enduring hit after premiering in London.
Two years later, it played in New York as Angel Street (and launched Vincent Price, who played the villain, towards stardom). Then came two movie versions with both titles in use. (The 1940 British movie was called Angel Street, while the 1944 Hollywood version, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer and introducing a young Angela Lansbury was Gaslight.) …
Director Andrea Donaldson has taken a cast of mixed talents and various levels of experience, and transformed what might have been an uneven ensemble into a perfectly coherent orchestration of immense enjoyment. The Taming of the Shrew has been reinterpreted into many different forms of performance by a multitude of theatre groups from vastly different cultures (the American musical Kiss Me Kate or the anti-colonial text by Martinican Daniel Boukman who sets his version in post -revolutionary Algeria as a theatrical intertext – La véridique histoire de Hourya– , critiquing the failure of the revolution to liberate Muslim women who, in the author’s mind, kept their symbol of subservience by continuing to wear the veil.) …
Richard Sheridan Willis, the new artistic director of the Saint-Lawrence Shakespeare Festival comes to his new position with an impressive background of experience in Britain, US and Canada where he worked with theatres in Toronto (Citadel Theatre, Tarragon Theatre) …
Actors Rose Napoli (Celia) and Katherine Gauthier (Rosalind) in a scene from As You Like It on now at St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival.
Lysistrata and the temple of Gaia or Apocalyptus interruptus by David S. Craig. A production of the Odyssey Theatre in Strathcona Park. David Warburton and Catriona Leger. Photo Barb Gray
Odyssey Theatre has at last been reborn under the stars in this Canadian premier. After a period of experimenting, of reflexion spent by Laurie Steven and her talented team of actors, set and costume designers and writers, they have found a stage esthetic which has allowed them to make a smooth transition from the use of the Italian Commedia dell’arte that they so beautifully integrated from the start, towards a more flexible, more modern solution to their stylistic confusion of the last few years. …