Four hundred and eighty-eight years after she was burned at the stake in Rouen, Joan of Arc was canonized by the Catholic Church. It’s a remarkable distance of time for healing of wounds and righting of wrongs. Equally remarkable to me as a writer, is that in 1923, or three years after her canonization, Bernard…
The Shaw Festival’s Androcles And The Lion is a delightful production. It’s fun, interactive, and can leave one with the impression that it’s improvisational at points. However, the impression of improv theatre is just that; these actors know their material to its core. The premise of the play is taken from a classical folktale whereby a…
Juicy bits of information, true or false, have always been hard to resist and easy to pass on. Such schadenfreude is the driving creative force in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s School For Scandal. It’s a play that was written in the 18th century, but is timely for the 21st. If one changed the set to Manhattan…
Two years, one month, and two weeks post-concussion, I am joyfully back to the keyboard. My characters have returned. They ‘peer over my shoulders’ and make observations that amuse, disturb, irritate, surprise and satisfy me. I had missed them and feared that their absence over the past two years was permanent. When I resumed writing…
There are many nights with the Hamilton Philharminic Orchestra that are memorable: The musicians are a finely tuned team and their conductor, Gemma New, is fresh and engaging. But there is the occasional concert that surprises. A Night of Swing, with guest conductor Lucas Walden, was one such event. The performance coming the day after…
When consenting adults can put their imaginations together in virtual reality, what are the implications for morality and ethics? The Nether, a brilliant sci-fi crime drama, poses these questions and others through Jennifer Haley’s tightly written script. The production at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius is both spare and elegant; the cast and the creative team have…
Brilliant! That’s my conclusion about Lisa Codrington’s one act-one hour play, Adventures of The Black Girl In Her Search For God. Codrington pulls no punches yet leaves the audience in stitches, unless the theatergoer happens to be an older white male. At least four such men exited within the first twenty minutes of the production I saw…
Morris Panych’s production of Engaged at the Shaw Festival is unabashed fun from beginning to end. The play was released in 1877 yet the social conventions being satirized are as relevant today as they were over a century ago. We know W.S. Gilbert by his association with Arthur Sullivan and the comic operas they created.…
Tolstoy’s observation that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is just as true for marriages as it is for families. In Strindberg’s The Dance of Death, the marriage of Edgar (Jim Mezon) and Alice (Fiona Reid) is a combination of “hate and love forged together in a…
There are authors and books that make a powerful first impression. When that feeling is sustained through subsequent encounters in person and with their writing, then I know I’m in the presence of someone with a gift. Michelle Butler Hallett is such an author. I met Michelle in the early 2000’s at the Humber School…
Bonnie Lendrum 