Welcome to the inaugural episode of the DARTcritics Presents: Two Peas in a Podcast! This podcast explores topics, themes, trends, conventions, and tropes in theatre and performance through the context of specific productions. In this first episode, hosts Mae and Andria – theatre critics and Brock University Dramatic A…

Emma McCormick and Kristina Ojaperv write, A technical rehearsal for a show with no lighting design is definitely not your typical tech. Our next rehearsal visit is during the series of technical and dress rehearsals, in the final days before This Will Be Excellent’s first performance. These rehearsals, however, operat…

Emma McCormick and Kristina Ojaperv write… While a vision may look good in theory, it is how the cast and creative team build a show in rehearsal which gives that vision substance. On January 25th and 31st, we attended rehearsals of This Will be Excellent after meeting with director Erin Brubacher. Rehearsals take plac…

Emma McCormick and Kristina Ojaperv write, As our journey into the evolving form of embedded criticism begins, we feel the title of Jordi Mand’s new work sums up our first impressions – This Will Be Excellent. Embedded criticism provides an inside look at the process of a show’s creation, through discussing the initial…

For their final review of the term, the DARTcritics class take on The National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, playing at Mirvish’s Princess of Wales Theatre. The acclaimed production may have won both Olivier and Tony Awards, but our critics have more mixed reviews: Abigail B…

Essential Collective Theatre (ECT) is a St Catharines staple. Their latest production, The Welland Canal Play, takes another local icon as its subject matter, tracing the complex and contentious history of the Welland Canal’s construction. Here, critics Sumer Seth and Kristina Ojaperv share their thoughts: Sumer Seth w…

In October, the DARTcritics class of 2017/18 saw the Shaw Festival’s production of Alan Bennett’s 1994 historical dramedy The Madness of George III. Cue an impassioned discussion about madness and metatheatricality:  Colin Williams writes, As I enter the auditorium of the Royal George Theatre, I am immediately whisked…

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…