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…
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…
Matilda The Musical is the delightful tale of a little girl who survives the emotional abuse of her narcissistic, conniving and stupid parents, and the spirit crushing conduct of the headmistress of Crunchem Hall Elementary. The book upon which this musical is based was written by Roald Dahl, so we know that there will be both…
If the United Nations aspired to be a dancing school for world leaders and if politicians learned to dance life like champions moving with grace, never colliding with other leaders, then the world would be a better place. That’s the hope expressed by characters in Master Harold And The Boys as they struggle to find…
Aspiring set and costume designers will love the Shaw Festival’s Alice in Wonderland, as will anyone who remembers the book with fondness. Others not so much. The production itself is spectacular. There is a stunning merge of audiovisual effects with the stage that is playful (the drinking of the potions), eerie (the pop-up appearances of…
Bonnie Lendrum 