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!

Continue reading

The Caged Bird Sings at the Aga Khan Museum

The Caged Bird Sings opened last night at the Aga Khan Museum.  It’s a co-pro between the museum and Modern Times Stage Company (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) with Theatre ARTaud.  The play is written by Rouvan Silogix, Rafeh Mahmud and Ahad Lakhani. It’s based on the poetry of Rumi and deals with Sufi ideas of freedom, love and self-abnegation.  It’s sophisticated, often very funny and thought provoking.

TCBS1_Photo by Zeeshan Safdar

Continue reading