Sunday, January 19, 2014
Robert Cushman: There is a particular kind of acting that I constantly find myself railing against but for which I have yet to find a satisfactory name. Maybe I should call it explanatory ac…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:00AMSunday, January 5, 2014
Here, alphabetically, are some of the shows that stood out for me in the year just departed. I couldn’t get it down to a Top 10 so here is my Divine Dozen (with others associated)
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:00AMSunday, December 29, 2013
There are five musicals contained within The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!, and they all have the same plot
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMSunday, December 22, 2013
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has one of the most perfectly balanced opening sentences in English literature. Its words aren’t s…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:00AMSunday, December 15, 2013
A device that may work in a novel can seem like a thin literary conceit when transferred to the stage
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMMonday, December 9, 2013
There’s never a boring moment in God of Carnage, but there are few really arresting ones, either. As for Ross Petty's The Little Mermaid? It's visually beautiful and biting social sat…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 10:00AMMonday, December 2, 2013
There’s a party going on when you enter the theatre to see Once, and it’s irresistible
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:05PMSunday, December 1, 2013
One of Robert Lepage’s finest but least celebrated qualities is his humour. There are scenes in Needles and Opium that are the funniest in any Canadian play in ages
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMSaturday, November 23, 2013
I’ve lost count of the number of adaptations I’ve seen in recent years of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. After Miss Julie, by the British playwright Patrick Marber, is …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:30PMFriday, November 22, 2013
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Among other things The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble is a tale of two kitchens. Our visual clue as to which we are in at a given moment is the presence or absence of salt and pepper …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:00PMTuesday, November 12, 2013
The standout productions at Soulpepper this year have been the marathons: the two-part Angels in America and the three-part The Norman Conquests. Both, it’s announced to nobodyâ€�…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 03:45PMSaturday, November 9, 2013
A young man and woman, probably early twenties but maybe late teens, confront one another in front of what looks like a garbage dump, though it sports a sign saying that no garbage is allowe…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:00AMTuesday, November 5, 2013
The Double returns in a needlessly expanded form, while Savage in Limbo is a well-orchestrated saloon drama
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:09AMTuesday, October 29, 2013
Puppetry is an enviable skill. So is improvisational comedy. The performers of Puppet Up! Uncensored are adept at both, which puts them in a special league of accomplishment
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 09:02AMSaturday, October 26, 2013
Sarah Berthiaume’s Yukonstyle is a great improvement on her preceding play The Flood Thereafter, in which a supposed mythological overlay obscured a couple of good domestic scenes
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:00PMSunday, October 20, 2013
The Norman Conquests, now being given a smashing production by Soulpepper, is an early block in the Alan Ayckbourn building, but in itself it typifies the whole enterprise, sharp in percepti…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMMonday, October 14, 2013
The restaged version of Les Misérables that has arrived in Toronto has some individual merits, but the musical itself is as miserable as ever
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 03:10PMSunday, October 13, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
PIG is a British play being given its world premiere at Buddies in Bad Times, apparently because it was deemed too hot to handle on its home turf
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:49PMThursday, September 26, 2013
In his solo show, John Cleese offers an easygoing illustrated memoir, offhandedly and expertly delivered with the aid of a face-mic, a teleprompter, and a sense of timing that’s fast,…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 06:10PMThursday, September 12, 2013
The Invisible Woman makes Dickens himself a none-too-visible man, or at least an opaque one. It’s reasonably enjoyable, but Ralph Fiennes, in his second outing as actor-director, brin…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 04:56PMSunday, September 1, 2013
Shakespeare in the Ruff made their debut last summer with a promising but uneven Two Gentlemen of Verona. This year, they really deliver
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMSunday, August 25, 2013
This production is thoroughly compelling on its own terms; coming one night after Othello, that other racial Venetian play, it constitutes a grand slam that might be a landmark for Stratford
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMThursday, August 22, 2013
Judith Thompson’s The Thrill is a play that holds the attention while gradually forfeiting belief. It’s stronger on speeches that on scenes, and has a large structural flaw. It…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 12:29PMSaturday, August 17, 2013
The new Stratford Othello is red hot. That goes for the way it looks, sounds, feels and takes possession
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:00PMSaturday, August 10, 2013
John Murrell’s Taking Shakespeare is a modest but charming play with some barbs to it. A young man named Murph, an undergraduate faced with flunking, is sent for special coaching
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:00PMThursday, August 8, 2013
Soulpepper’s new production lights up nearly every moment of the marathon while returning the company itself to the level of acting magnificence that distinguished its earliest days
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:45PMSunday, August 4, 2013
Now, at last, the Shawfest has brought us Arcadia, the play generally regarded as Stoppard’s masterpiece, and has given it, by way of further amends, a sparkling production.
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMSunday, July 28, 2013
Great Expectations is, by Dickensian standards, a medium-sized novel, and Soulpepper's dramatization doesn’t have to skimp very much in terms of plot
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:00AMSaturday, July 20, 2013
Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane was his first play and, when staged in London in the 1960s, made him an instant celebrity
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:00PM 
