Twelfth Night in the park

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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siofra lacks horror and doesn’t have much else to offer

 síofra, by Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch, is Act II of the ‘Dark Mother Trilogy’, a series of three horror-theatre plays exploring fertility and motherhood through the folklore of three different countries: Romania (SAMCA), Ireland (síofra), and Germany (spilleHOLLE). It’s presented by Spindle Collective at the diminutive Red Sandcastle Theatre. I didn’t see SAMCA but it got good reviews so I was well prepared to give siofra a shot. Frankly I was quite disappointed and I shall attempt to explain why.

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