So Much Theatre: King Lear
The final production of this year’s National Arts Centre English Theatre season is Shakespeare’s King Lear. But it’s not just any King Lear; it is King Lear with an all-Aboriginal cast—the culmination of an idea actor August Schellenberg and the late director John Juliani had forty-five years ago – and, on top of that, Aboriginal […]
So Much Theatre: Death and the Maiden
Death and the Maiden is set in Chile in 1990, in the aftermath of the Pinochet regime. Fifteen years earlier, Paulina Salas (Geneviève Sirois) was abducted, tortured, and raped for two months. A chance meeting has her husband Gerardo Escobar (Chris Ralph), a lawyer freshly appointed to the new government’s commission to investigate the prior […]
So Much Theatre: Evolution Theatre’s Mary Magdalene and [boxhead] double-bill
Evolution Theatre’s double-bill of two very different plays (Berni Stapleton’s Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety and [boxhead] by Darren O’Donnell) is challenging for both the performers and the audience. Whether or not you’re ready for the challenge will very much determine how much you enjoy both productions. In the single-performer Mary Magdalene and Adventures […]
So Much Theatre: Communion
One of Canada’s foremost contemporary playwrights, the prolific Daniel MacIvor, has written yet another complex play where what takes place on stage is second in importance to what takes place in the audience member’s head. In Communion a mother, Leda (Jenny Munday) tries to come to terms with her strained relationship with her adult daughter […]
So Much Theatre: The GCTC’s 2012/2013 line up
On Wednesday afternoon, the Great Canadian Theatre Company announced the six productions that will make up its 2012–13 season—a season without a name, but that will be characterized by “heart and humour,” according to outgoing Artistic Director Lise Ann Johnson. The season will kick off this September with The Secret Mask, a semiautobiographical tragicomedy by […]
So Much Theatre: The Communication Cord
The Communication Cord is light comedic fare that delivers plenty of laughs and will especially delight lovers of Irish—or, for that matter, British—comedy. The plot’s genesis is simple enough. Junior linguistics lecturer Tim Gallagher (David Whiteley) has a scheme to borrow the ancestral Donegal home of his lawyer friend Jack McNeilis (Tim Oberholzer) for an […]
So Much Theatre: East of Berlin
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40_BqMFhEN0[/youtube] One doesn’t expect there to be so many opportunities for laughter at a tragedy about the personal legacy of the Holocaust, but that’s what makes Hannah Moscovitch an outstanding playwright, and East of Berlin a thought-provoking, entertaining play. East of Berlin is a memory play, told from the perspective of Rudolf (Rudi) Klausner (Simon […]
So Much Theatre: Penny Plain – Great puppets, wooden play
Penny Plain is all about the puppets. They’re exquisitely crafted, detailed, and lifelike. Their strings are in the skilled hands of Ronnie Burkett. It would be a tragedy to be unable to see them clearly. Well, I wish I’d brought a pair of opera glasses. Penny Plain, the blind proprietor of a boarding house, is […]
So Much Theatre: Cyrano de Bergerac
Take your familiar theatre review column, sprinkle in some academic insights and a good dose of industry knowledge, and you’ve got So Much Theatre: a semi-regular feature by Apartment613?s Andrew Snowdon. Follow Andrew on twitter: he’s @snobiwan. Not all love stories are romantic comedies where everything turns out alright at the end. Indeed, some of […]
So much theatre: Blood on the Moon
Take your familiar theatre review column, sprinkle in some academic insights and a good dose of industry knowledge, and you’ve got So Much Theatre: a semi-regular feature by Apartment613?s Andrew Snowdon. Follow Andrew on twitter: he’s @snobiwan. People still talk about Blood on the Moon nearly thirteen years after its inaugural run as a Fringe show […]