Tag Archives: canadian stage

Robin Hood at the Winter Garden

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So, Saturday night I reacquainted myself with pantomime after a gap of sixty years or so.  I think the last panto I saw was Aladdin at the Alhambra in Bradford c.1965.  Well why not?  Much has changed and Canadian Stage’s Robin Hood; written by Matt Murray and directed by Mary-Francis Moore discards much that would once have been seen as de rigueur.  I guess much more fluid gender roles, general acceptance of same sex relationships and, maybe, less familiarity with the canonical stories means that what once seemed risqué now seems passé and absent a general idea of how the story should go there’s more freedom to experiment.

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Moonlight Schooner

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Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock.  It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have been stranded on St. Kitt’s by a storm.  It being a holiday they decide to have a night on the town.

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The Far Side of the Moon

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The Far Side of the Moon opened at Canadian Stage on Saturday evening.  It’s a Robert Lepage production; written, designed and directed by him.  It’s very Lepage with the strengths and weaknesses one might expect.  We will come to that in more detail.  It’s a homage to Lepage’s childhood obsession with the US and Soviet space programmes and to the moon in general.  It plays out in two parallel narratives; the space programmes from Sputnik 1 to the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975 and the tale of two brothers in Quebec City circa late 1990s.  The older is an introverted nerd working on a doctoral thesis about popular perceptions of the space programmes and narcissism.  The younger brother is a presenter for the Weather Channel and is shallower than the water over Dogger Bank at low spring tide.  Their mother has just died and they are clearing out her apartment in an Old People’s Home.

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Coming up in November

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Here’s what’s coming up next month as best I know.

  • Canadian Stage’s presentation of Robert Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon opens at the Bluma Appel Theatre on November 1st and runs until the 16th.
  • In the RBA lunchtime series we have the Wirth Vocal Prize winner in recital on the 6th
  • Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance is playing at Soulpepper.  Previews are October 30th to November 5th with opening night on the 6th and the run continuing to November 23rd.

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A whip and a big black dildo

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Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play opened at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre on Wednesday night.  The TL:DR version of this review is that it’s raunchy, extremely funny and rather disturbing.  The more considered version contains spoilers so you might want to stop here if you are planning to see it soon.

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Feud, what feud?

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Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park opened on Thursday night.  This year it’s Marie Farsi’s production (adaptation?) of Romeo and Juliet.  It’s given a Southern Italian setting in the 1930s/40s though any reference to Fascism or the war escaped me.  It seemed largely an excuse to introduce some singing and dancing and some slightly forced humour into the opening scenes.  That’s not the big problem though.

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Mahabharata – part 2

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There’s a change in both style and pace for part 2 of Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata.  (See review of part 1).  The stage band is gone and the whole back wall is given over to video screens.  Sometimes the whole is used and sometimes just the top half; often using split screen effects.  Hana Kim’s projections are front and centre in this instalment.

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Mahabharata – part 1

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Mahabharata is one of the great epics.  It’s long (my somewhat abridged translation runs 1400 pages) and it’s complex.  To condense it into five hours or so of theatre and still have it retain its essential qualities is astonishing but, based on the first part which I saw at the Bluma Appel Theatre last night, Why Not Theatre’s production does just that.

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There’s the rub!

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It’s the rub that makes the difference, not the sauce.  Or so we are told by Fancy’s stepfather and uncle who now runs the family BBQ restaurant somewhere far south of Elsinore in James ljames’ Fat Ham which opened on Wednesday at Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street.  Director Philip Akin describes it as an “overlay” on a well known play by Shakespeare and that’s probably as good a way of looking at it as any.

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Games people play

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Edward Albee’s 1962 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened at Canadian Stage on Thursday evening in a production directed by Brendan Healy.  It’s a long (not far short of 3.5 hours with two short intervals) and complex play; heavily dependent on quick-fire dialogue and with occasional outbreaks of absurdism.  An older academic couple invite the “new man” and his wife back for drinks after a faculty party at a small New England college.  George, a historian of modest distinction, is married to Martha, the daughter of the college president.  The newcomers are Nick, a biologist, and his wife Honey.

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