Canadian Stage opened a production of Amy Herzog’s adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Bluma Appel Theatre on Wednesday evening. It’s directed by Brendan Healey and stars Hailey Gillis and Gray Powell as Nora and Thorvald. It runs two hours without a break and it’s mesmerizing from start to finish. Direction, acting and designs are all of the highest quality and Gillis gives one of the best performances I have ever experienced.
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.
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.
The first of Amplified Opera’s series of three shows in the Ernest Balmer Studio took place last night. The series explores the idea of “otherness” in opera. The Way I See It , directed by Aria Umezawa, explores how the opera and wider world treat the visually impaired and how we (in the broadest sense) can not just accommodate but incorporate their insights and perspectives into our performance practice.
operaramblings 