STRATFORD — You find yourself worrying about the Stratford Festival’s bungled revival of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever even before the performance begins.
‘That’s because a glance at the printed program notes reveals that director Alisa Palmer, a Shaw Festival veteran who really ought to know better, has decided to impose some kind of trendy feminist agenda on Coward’s 1925 comedy. Hence, among other things, Hay Fever actually deals with a mother-daughter power struggle: Coward’s memorable creation, veteran actress Judith Bliss, is suffering a mid-life identity crisis, while daughter Sorel is merely doing what a young woman must do, which is to break free of her family and become independent.
Kevin Hanchard as Martin Luther King. Photo: David Cooper
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — We’re in a run-down motel room in Memphis. It’s the night of April 3, 1968, and we’re watching Martin Luther King, a few hours after he has delivered his “we’ve been to the mountaintop” speech and has reaffirmed his vision of the promised land.
It’s also a few hours before he will be assassinated on the motel balcony.
The Shaw Festival’s tiny Studio Theatre provides the venue for its gripping production of Katori Hall’s award-winning play, The Mountaintop, and it helps contribute to a sense of claustrophobia and containment. There’s a startling moment when King, beautifully portrayed by Kevin Hanchard, attempts to leave the room — but when he throws open the door, he finds his way blocked by a monstrous snowdrift. Are we getting a dose here of the magic realism that encircles Hall’s brilliant re-imagining of the events leading up to a real-life tragedy? Perhaps. On the other hand, as Alana Hibbert’s cheerfully resilient chambermaid reminds King, Tennessee is prone to snowfalls, even in April.
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.
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.
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.
Photo. Jay Kopinski. Tess Degenstein as Cecily & Brett Christopher as Algernon.
The comedy, The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde, one of the 19th 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.
They say we all have our demons to fight against. Of course, rarely does anybody believe in such creatures as demons, ghosts, devils, products of someone’s imagination, like , CS Lewis’ for example. Still, who knows? After seeing 9th Hour Theatre Company’s version of CS Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters,” one begins to wonder. But, let’s start from the beginning.
It all started on Sunday afternoon, in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre’s Studio space, where Lewis’ imaginative and philosophical narrative about good and evil, seen from the devil’s perspective and told through Screwtape’s Letters to his nephew Wormwood, came alive.
David Warburton faced a mammoth task in taking on the role of the player in Brian K. Stewart’s one-hander.
The premiere two years ago received many well-deserved accolades. In addition, the performance of Greg Kramer, the actor who originated the role, gave the impression that this was THE way to play the part. Sadly, he passed away. His death added a further level of emotional difficulty for an actor presenting The Player’s Advice to Shakespeare.
No matter, Warburton appears to have decided. In the current production of The Player’sAdvice to Shakespeare, now on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he offers a totally different and equally mesmerizing character. His actions are more reasoned as his player remains the great actor telling a story of his time, explaining how he, a former member of Will Shakespeare’s company, happens to be in the Tower of London, waiting to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
The Great Divorce, originally by C.S. Lewis, is a work that reflects on the Christian ideas of Heaven and Hell. 9th Hour Theatre has taken on the mammoth task of adapting the work for the stage, with seven actors portraying all 22 characters. The show, although firmly rooted in Christianity, transcends both religion and philosophy. At its core, it’s a story about the way humans live their lives and the road-blocks all of us cling to on our path to self realization and happiness. Therefore, although it deals with many a heavy theological question, it also manages to be infinitely approachable, entertaining, and beautiful. Most importantly, the show makes the audience think and challenges them to take a critical look at their own lives. If art is supposed to promote discussion and to make you ponder life’s more tricky questions, then 9th Hour Theatre’s production of The Great Divorce is art in one of its purest forms.
In The Great Divorce, a man finds himself in a desolate, grey town, representing Hell, surrounded by suitcases and passengers waiting to jostle and complain their way onto a bus. As our Narrator chats with his fellow passengers, it becomes clear that the motley crew each carry their fair share of psychological baggage. The bus arrives at its destination, a picturesque countryside, which turns out to be the foothills of Heaven. This place, while beautiful, is also more dense than the reality the ghosts are used to. The audience follows each character as their guide tries to convince them to walk toward the mountain, with its abundant light and love. Nothing worth having comes easily, though, and our willowy ghosts find themselves poked by the grass that won’t give way under their scant weight. As their spirit guides try to convince them that the longer they walk, the easier it becomes, the Hell that each of our bus riding characters carry inside themselves starts to and fill them with doubt. Few have the courage to take the first painful steps toward salvation. …
Photo. Andrew Alexander. David Adams as Prospero, Claire Armstrong as Miranda.
The current production of “The Tempest” at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival is a perfect example of a strong directorial and design concept hi-jacking the play. This can happen with Shakespeare and sometimes an off-beat concept works. This one doesn’t. The conceit of a travelling side-show troupe sets a lively boisterous tone that’s completely at odds with the play’s atmosphere of mystery, revenge and magic. Director Craig Walker refers to the troupe’s leader, ultimately Prospero, as “part mystic and part con artist.” This cheapens the character and we’re left with a tawdry mountebank instead of a wise philosopher magician.
