1939, written by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan and directed by Jani ,opened last night at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street theatre. The setting is a Residential School in Northern Ontario which is set to host the King and Queen as part of their 1939 tour of Canada. The Welsh, but fiercely anglophile[1], English teacher decides that putting on a production of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well would be suitable fare for the royals.
This year’s Dream in High Park production is Hamlet directed by Jessica Carmichael. Now Hamlet is an interesting choice for this format because it is, notoriously, a really long play and the High Park format demands something that comes in around two hours. A full blown Hamlet, as in the Branagh film lasts over four hours and even with the usual stage cuts it’s a three hour plus project. So getting it down to two hours rather meands that it’s almost as much Carmichael’s Hamlet as Shakespeare’s.
It’s still mostly festival season with two events coming up in Toronto.
There’s Summer Opera Lyric Theatre It runs July 26th to August 4th and features three operas in piano score with young artist singers. The operas are Puccini’s La Bohème, Handel’s Serse and Mozart’s Idomeneo and the venue is the Alumnae Theatre on Berkeley Street. Full details, tickets etc. Continue reading
So it was back to the Bluma Appel on Thursday evening to see part 2 of Matthew López’ The Inheritance. Part 1 had certainly left plenty of active plot lines to be resolved (or not) so it looked like being an interesting ride.
Matthew López’ The Inheritance is an epic adaptation of EM Forster’s Howard’s End. It’s epic in scale and scope. It runs for two evenings; each over three hours long and it features a rich, and sometimes bewildering, cast of characters. I was going to wait until after part 2 before writing about it but I actually think it will work better to review it in two parts. So here is part 1 as seen on opening night (Wednesday) at the Bluma Appel Theatre.
First some additional February shows
Opera
Here’s a round up of February shows not previously mentioned; mostly straight theatre.
The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (I’m going to abbreviate this to Shadow) is a theatre work created by Geelong based collective Back to Back Theatre. It’s currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre as part of Canadian Stage’s season. Back to Back is an unusual company. Its actors all have perceived intellectual disabilities but, collectively, they have created theatre that has been seen on stages all over the world, on film and on television.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, which is currently running at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre has garnered impressive accolades since its 2001 New York debut. It’s won a Pulitzer and been named, in 2018, as “the greatest American play of the last 25 years” by the New York Times. It’s well written, dramatically well crafted and often very funny but, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t deeply engaged by it.
operaramblings 