“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…
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…
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…
April 28, 2016 Maria Evers and Michael Fusillo write: We two were granted one last opportunity to visit our friends involved with Mrs. Warren’s Profession. The cast and crew were not called for any work in the Royal George Theatre on that particular day, so the ensemble made use of their Festival Theatre rehearsal spac…
This review has been written in the context of the 2015-2016 Brock University Department of Dramatic Arts’ Theatre Criticism course. You can read another point of view on this production here. Peter Hinton’s 2015 Shaw Festival production of Pygmalion casts a new light on a classic script by festival namesake George Be…
The Shaw Festival is coming into the last few months of its season, but it is not too late to experience the energetic and captivating ensemble work of the casts of both The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide To Capitalism and Socialism and the Key To the Scriptures (my review of which you can read here) and The Divine: A…
What happens when the uncertain future does not comply with our ideal way of living? Eda Holmes, director of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures at the Shaw Festival this season, tackles this and other questions in Tony Kushner’s four-hour epic. IHO is a riveting…
Not just for Sarah, for everyone; The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt is misleading in its title, but moving in its story. Written by Michel Marc Bouchard and developed by Jackie Maxwell for the Shaw Festival, Linda Gaboriau’s English translation of The Divine premieres this season at the Royal George Theatre. Set i…
Director Peter Hinton knows how to walk the walk when it comes to revitalizing George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion for modern audiences, and his stellar ensemble knows how to talk the talk. Eliza Dolittle (Harveen Sandu) displays her lower social class standing with terrible pronunciation and articulation that Henry Higgin…
Lady from The Sea by Henrik Ibsen plays at the Shaw Festival this season, reminding audiences of a type of love that is all consuming, just like the open ocean. As the titular character, Moya O’Connell captures the very essence of that once familiar feeling of lovers gone by. Jenny Hval and Susanna’s “I Have Walked Thi…
