Stratford Festival

The Stratford archives warehouse “What’s in the Stratford Festival archives? Do we even really know what archives are? Are we going to be looking at dusty photographs the whole time?” … These were all questions swirling around in our heads as we discussed our upcoming archives tour. We, Caroline and Sarah, were spendin…

What do you get when you mix the tale of Romeo and Juliet with a touch of Twelfth Night’s Viola, and then the story of Shakespeare himself? A smorgasbord of laughs, tears, and exploding ovaries. Directed by Declan Donnellan, Stratford Festival’s North American premiere of Shakespeare in Love is a witty, and surprisingl…

Dayna Tietzen as Cassie. Photography by David Hou. A five, six, seven, eight! As a musical theatre buff, I brought high expectations to this show, and it fan-kicked them all the way into the balcony. A Chorus Line was one of the first musicals I fell in love with in high school, and I spent hours pirouetting (badly) ar…

While viewing the Stratford Festival’s production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller, at one moment I found myself on the edge of my seat, the next on the brink of sleep. Though the script is chock-full of gripping tension, shocking deceit, and skeletons in the closet, the structure of the show is like that of a ping-pong…

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…

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…

Murder and madness should be the political playwright’s playground. Unfortunately, the world premiere of Michael Healey’s Canadian adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists at the Stratford Festival fails to excavate the rich material at its disposal to its fullest potential. Originally written following the…

Chris Abraham returns to Stratford’s Festival Theatre with another unique take on one of Shakespeare’s classics. After witnessing cross-gender casting and queer romances in Chris’ interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream last year, I phoned him up to get the 411 on his new production of The Taming of the Shrew. Mean…

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew presents a delicate decision for directors of our time to make: either condone the inherent sexism and celebration of male-dominance in the text or condemn it. This season at Stratford’s Festival Theatre, director Chris Abraham has taken a third option; he has chosen to ignore it.…