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The Kids will Love this Treasure    This year’s Schulich Children’s Play is a new rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.  In fact, the Stratford Festival commissioned Nicolas Billon to create this adaptation of the familiar story.  Treasure Island made its recent world première at the Avon Theatre. Billon’s version is strictly for the […]

False Friends and Foes    Last year, we saw Joseph Ziegler own the stage at the Tom Patterson Theatre as Joe Keller in All My Sons, in a heart wrenching story that led to his character’s ruination.  This year, Ziegler is again commanding that same stage in Shakespearean tragedy that similarly ends in his destruction.

Feisty Juliet Commands the Stage Four years ago, the Stratford Festival opened their season with a juvenile Juliet who giggled like a child.  In contrast, this year’s Juliet is a feisty, headstrong young woman. It’s interesting to compare Stratford’s productions of Romeo and Juliet over the years.  The 2013 version stepped back in time to

A Gilbert and Sullivan Delight For fans of light opera, it can’t get much better than HMS Pinafore on stage at Stratford’s Avon Theatre. The British team of Gilbert and Sullivan produced many comic operettas in the late 1800s – and it’s always amazing how the political satire is still so appropriate.  Everything old is

Sexy After Sixty? Want a fun night out for you and your 60-plus friends?  Go to the Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia where The Birds and The Bees is now on stage.  The laughs come one right after another in this comedy that covers sex and then romance for the somewhat older crowd. I can’t reveal

Guys and Dolls and Showstopping Dance Note:  Extended to Nov. 5, 2017 About 14 years ago when I first started writing reviews, I was often asked to critique community theatre shows.  I had just returned from a trip to Broadway when I wrote about a very good community theatre production and I was quite kind

The Triumvirate of Comedy   Twelfth Night, which opens Stratford Festival’s 2017 season, is a delight.  It’s one of Shakespeare’s popular comedies, and this production has mined that humour using three of Stratford’s funniest. The sub-plot overtakes the main plot when the hilarious triumvirate of Tom Roony as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Geraint Wyn Davies as

Tom Thomson: The Art and the Mystery    I love to hear Canadian stories and Colours in the Storm is a captivating story, because it is about a fascinating figure, Tom Thomson. He is, of course, famous for his art.  His paintings of Algonquin Park are recognized as Canada’s best.  He directly influenced other painters

Joey Smallwood’s Newfoundland or Old Lost Land?     I really enjoyed the novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams when it came out in 1999.  Author Wayne Johnston tells the story of Joey Smallwood and how he gained enough power to bring Newfoundland into Canada in 1949, becoming its first premier.  The book includes the fictional

History Lesson, Laughs, and Nudity     Based on a true story dating back to World War II, Mrs Henderson Presents, now on stage at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, is a musical of irreverent fun set against the horrors of war.  This musical follows on the 2006 movie of the same name, starring the