Talking lions, beavers, and fauns, oh my! Brace yourselves for an evening of spine-tingling magic, ancient prophesies, and extraordinary creatures — The Stratford Festival and director Tim Carroll’s production of C.S Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe will awaken your inner child and your imagination. Members…
Playing this season at the Stratford Festival, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music is dazzling and decadent but is short on a little, well, music — or at least, in some cases, a little musical prowess. A light-hearted romp through the romantic lives of Swedish high society at the turn of the 20th c…
Imagine if you will, racism, colonialism, sexism, imperialism…and any other “ism” you could possibly imagine being tackled in just one short hour. I give you the world premiere of The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, which presents controversial subject matter with brutal honesty and more than a litt…
“And what’s a woman worth? What’s life worth? Without self-respect!” These questions are posed in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, directed at the Shaw Festival by Eda Holmes. Sex work and feminism, two of the show’s themes, are hot-button topics in 2016—I can only imagine the taboos against them when the play was first perfo…
Caroline Coon writes: So this is it! After long days of interviewing seniors, scriptwriting, improvisation that usually ended in hysterics, and lots of dance rehearsals, we are in our final week of touring! It’s been an incredible experience, and I’ve learned so much about collaborative theatre. Not only that, but…
Have you ever seen a rabbit with a pocket watch? A singing mouse? Dancing lobsters? The Shaw Festival’s 2016 season and director Peter Hinton invites audiences to witness these and much more curiousness in a reimagining of Lewis Caroll’s classic novel Alice in Wonderland by director/adaptor Peter Hinton. Jay Turvey, Ke…
Something wicked (and wonderful) this way comes. The Stratford Festival opened its 2016 season with Macbeth last night at the Festival Theatre with a performance that satisfies cravings for the supernatural, sensual, and sanguinary from Shakespeare’s notoriously dark “Scottish Play”. Macbeth (Ian Lake) and members of t…
Sarah Bradford writes: No talk of kings and queens, nor of heroes and dastardly villains — the Shaw Festival’s 2016 production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town places a spotlight on ordinary people in an extraordinary way. Director Molly Smith strips to its essence an American classic about life, love, and death. Dr. Gibb…
St.Catharines’ annual In The Soil Arts Festival 2016 was a weekend full of brilliant Canadian talent and a resounding passion for the arts. This year ITS co-produced a one-of-a-kind theatre experience created by DopoLavoro Teatrale (DLT) entitled That Ugly Mess That Happened in St. Catharines. The 72-hour show engages…
Despite this being the DARTcritics third year covering the RHIZOMES at the In the Soil Arts Festival, trying to review such a diverse collection of interactive exhibits remains a challenge. Made up of short performances, art installments, and presentations from local artists — housed for the 2016 festival in the Maril…
