Tag Archives: dream in high park

Twelfth Night in the park

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This year’s CanStage Dream in High Park presentation is Twelfth Night adapted and directed by Gregory Prest. He takes a pretty straightforward approach. He has added a sort of prologue in which Feste speaks of the relationship between Love and Madness (and makes a few jokes about the audience and their picnics). The Love and Madness thing seems to be the central concept as far as there is one. The first two scenes are reversed too. We first meet Viola on the beach before Orsino gets to make his famous “If music be the food of love” speech. And, of course, there are cuts to fit it into the Dream time slot of 90-100 minutes. None of this really makes a whole lot of difference. The show comes across as a well acted, crisply directed, perfectly intelligible comedy and hurrah for that!

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It’s all about the Fringe and TSM

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July in Toronto is pretty much about the Fringe and TSM.

The Fringe runs June 30th to July 12th and there are 123 shows across 27 venues plus free events. Obviously for a critic that’s overwhelming. Right now I have ten shows booked, including anything that looks vaguely opera related. So:

  • Minimum at Factory Theatre… the Premier of Ontario living in Hamilton on minimum wage.
  • You Choose at Tarragon… an improvised murder mystery from the Howland company
  • God Save the Sodomites at Native Earth… is anyone in Sodom worth saving?
  • Sinner at Theatre Passe Muraille… breaking up with white Jesus
  • Songs for Moby Dick at Theatre Passe Muraille… operatic epic about a whale
  • Night Journey at the Arts and letter Club…studying The Odyssey
  • Brava at Soulpepper… Yannick Gosselin celebrates divas
  • Potato Potato Saves the World at Soulpepper… can a sketch comedy troupe save the world?
  • Ooga Chaka at Soulpepper… two prehistoric cave painters invent art
  • Catching a Cheese Pervert at Soulpepper… Canada’s most prominent anti-vegan influencer searches for the cheese pervert in her hometown
There’s tons more of course and I may add some shows based on word of mouth later but interests and logistics (no-one wants to do shows at Tarragon and Soulpepper on the same day!) came up with this as a starting point. Continue reading →

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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Hamlet in High Park

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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.Qasim Khan as Hamlet (foreground) w Raquel Duffy and Diego Matamoros (BG) in CSHamlet-photobyDahliaKatz-5475

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