NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Nearly a century ago, Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne wrote a now-forgotten one-act play called The Man In The Bowler Hat. It dealt with the disruption of a conventional middle-class household by a sequence of melodramatic events that in performance could be done for real or, more commonly, take on the texture of a Monty Python spoof. …
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. …
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? …
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — Sarena Parmar’s new play, The Orchard, deserves to be met on its own quietly compelling terms.
We’re back in the 1970s, in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. And we’re plunged into the very real crisis confronting a Punjabi-Sikh family on the verge of losing their home. Correction: not just their home but also their orchard — and its loss will not 0nly be a material one but an assault on this family’s very identity. …
Niagara-on-the-Lake, On. — The scene does offer some amusement. A benevolent Baroness has embarked on a key initiative in her Rousseau-inspired mission to prove she can create a useful maidservant out of a gibbering, feral girl who has essentially grown up among pigs.
The Baroness, portrayed with kindly but steely resolve by Yanna McIntosh, an actress whom we always want to watch, is trying to teach Emily the correct etiquette for answering the doorbell and greeting the new arrival with a silver tray on which a visitor’s card must be deposited. …
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. — It’s characteristic of the Shaw Festival’s new artistic regime that this summer’s lunchtime theatre offering begins with cast members being themselves — by treating the audience to a mini-concert of Irish balladry. One of them strums a guitar, another presides at the piano, and nationalistic numbers like Foggy Dew are sung with appropriate fervor.
There’s also a bit of conversational back and forth with the audience, in deference to current artistic director Tim Carroll’s love for what he calls “two-way theatre” But eventually, the Canadian accents are dropped and the four performers submerge themselves in matters Irish as viewed through the sardonic prism of George Bernard Shaw more than a century ago. …