To understand what you are and where you can be, a change of scenery can help. This play proves that adage beautifully with a charming story of four women who find renewal and a mutual human connection at an Italian castle in one special month.
In 1922 Britain, a young woman named Lotty (Lori Fellner), feeling bored in the drabness of London in winter, is inspired by an advertisement about an Italian castle for rent from one Anthony Wilding (Chris Albert) to take a vacation there. Inspiring her new friend, the unhappily straightlaced Rose (Phyllis Leighton), the pair recruit two other women, the flashy entertainer …
Coming out of the closet is still often a tough thing to do, but it can be even more difficult in a culture of family clannishness and patriarchal religiosity like Italian culture. This play is a fun coming out comedic drama about identity and community where the truth can be the most painful secret of all.
In Montreal, Angelo Barbieri (Nick D’Oria) and his boyfriend, Nino Paventi (John McKenzie), are an Italian–Canadian gay couple with overbearing parents. At his sister Anna’s (Aleen Hopkins) prodding, Angelo comes out to his parents, Gino (Tim Bourgard) and Maria (Debra Chantler), and neither they or the thoroughly closeted Nino take this confession well, especially when the latter’s own mother, Lina (Tracey …
The sciences relating to munitions are fraught with moral and political ambiguities, both in concept and in the political and diplomatic implications inextricably linked to them. This play manages to capture that intriguing complexity in a fictionalized version of the fate of renegade weapons engineer, Gerald Bull, but that kind of nuance is almost lost amid some terrible acting.
Paul Jackson (Justin Peter Quesnelle), the son of an assassinated weapons engineer, Donald Jackson (Jim Schaefer), comes to CIA bureaucrat Doyle (Rod Keith) to get some help for redress for his father’s murder. What follows is a conflicting collage of accounts of Donald Jackson, an idealistic inventor determined to prove his designs for his Snowman anti-ballistic missile defense system is …
Suede vests with long fringe, head bands, psychedelic colours, bell-bottoms with bandanas tied at the knees, huge Afros, and long hair… Hair. The costumes and wigs at the Grand Theatre’s production of Hair will transport anyone old enough to recall right back to the sixties.
I can remember when long hair was considered the root of all evil: some of my male classmates in high school were kicked out because their hair touched their shoulders, and they were told they couldn’t return to class until they had gone to the barber. It now seems (as it did to many of us back then) such a silly thing to anger school principals. But the older generation’s hatred …
Shaking up a life can be a daring thing, with consequences you might not expect for friends with their own agendas. This play illustrates that with a fun story that combines superb character play with inspired comedy, with just the right touch of suspense to spice up the plot.
In the 1890s, society women Annabella (Martha Zimmerman) and Lucy (Danika Barker) find themselves in a dispiriting rut, but writer Oscar Wilde (Jason Rip) decides to help. To give them new activities to explore, Wilde arranges for Lucy to join a theatre show and hooks up the politically concerned Annabella with an ardent feminist anarchist named Vera (Sarah C.E. Stanton). For all the ladies’ initial enthusiasm …
If you love musical theatre, and you have a good sense of humour about being a musical theatre geek, you’ll enjoy The Drowsy Chaperone, now running at the Palace Theatre in London. An exceptionally good production for community theatre, this show spoofs the old genre of musicals.
An all-Canadian show, The Drowsy Chaperone has an interesting history. Originally written by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, it was performed for Bob’s wife, Janet Van de Graaff, as a wedding gift. From that …
The classic musical comedies of the early twentieth century are not known for their tight and original writing, and many of the weaker ones just use the story as a frame for the music. This Canadian Tony-winning play is a clever stylistic parody that plays with the genre’s cliches to produce an entertaining show in its own right.
In an apartment, a man plays the soundtrack album of his favourite stage musical. In doing so, he guides us through a performance of the play, giving commentary about the …
Being arrested in a totalitarian regime has got to be one of the most terrifying things that can happen to someone in this world. This play opens with that kind of action with insightful truth and dark humour, but it gets bogged down in an intolerably paced second act that goes so long that you are the one being tortured by the end of this boring dramatic morass.
In some fascist regime, Katurian (Ryan Cole), a young writer of grotesque horror short stories, and Michal (Biden Hall), his developmentally challenged brother, are arrested for the disappearance of three children. In the ensuing interrogation by Detectives Tupolski (Andrew Cannon) and Ariel (Mike Ricci), it comes to light that Katurian’s stories have something …
A century of service along the coast of Newfoundland comes to life on the stage of the Grand Theatre, by way of Cornerbrook. The production of Tempting Providence by Theatre Newfoundland Labrador is educating the rest of Canada, telling the true story of a heroine.
Nurse Myra travels from England to take on a two year contract as a nurse, providing the sole source of medical help to Newfoundlanders up and down the unforgiving coast line. She delivers babies, extracts teeth, and even prevents miscarriages. She marries Angus Bennett and stays on, continuing as a nurse, leaving Angus to manage the household and look after their baby.
When we hear about people being arraigned for atrocities, the morality involved seems so simple. However, this powerful play begs to differ with a searing story rife with profound emotional and ethical complexities that will challenge your assumptions to their core.
Michael Redhill (Stephen Trim), a frustrated playwright on the rebound after a messy divorce, is having an unsatisfactory excursion to Poland to explore his relatives’ tragic past in the Holocaust. After finding the locals derisively unreceptive to his naive inquiries, Michael meets an old man who directs him to a woman named Althea. Althea (Margot Stothers) eventually agrees to tell her story of when she guarded an indicted and apparently incoherent war criminal with a devoted daughter determined to …
