The world financial crisis of 2008 has an almost unlimited number of commentators. Honestly, pretty much anyone who was breathing and older than a teenager in 2008 has an opinion on the subject. You might think Dambisa Moyo’s How The West Was Lost would be one of the most technical of the analyses, coming from an Oxford-trained economist. But instead.
Maybe the most newsworthy and unfortunate thing to happen to the local theatre community is the announcement this past fall that the Gladstone Theatre, that lovely plaster-white building near Preston and Gladstone, is being put up for sale. Perhaps it was too much to hope that, after the success of the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Irving Greenberg Theatre out in Hintonburg, Ottawa could afford to support another local professional performance venue. READ MORE
As a whole, though, and to put it as gently as possible, Nativity is confused. The two main stories were thrown into a pot together and the mix never really gelled. The play is written in alternating rhyming couplets, which can feel archaic to modern ears even if you appreciate its historical origins, especially when the rhyme is sometimes forced. READ MORE
The first thing you will notice about the GCTC/NAC co-production of Vimy is that it looks amazing. The costumes are wonderfully detailed and, thankfully, not stylized: The greens and browns of military garb are real, the heft and clank of the props show they’re real equipment. The set and scenery are all evocative of trenches, dirty wood and burnt trees. A lot of love and care have gone into the look of this play, and it pays huge dividends in drawing you in through the senses. READ MORE
As appeared in Saturday’s Globe and Mail (Nov 07. 2010)
In the academic world, Leo (Lev Nikolaevich) Tolstoy is a colossus. He’s talked about, read, discussed, dissected and forms a pillar of studies of the novel itself. So how did the written memoirs of Tolstoy’s indomitable wife, Sofia Tolstaya (the Russian feminine version of Tolstoy), one of the most important and anticipated works in modern Tolstoy scholarship, land at a university press in Canada’s capital city? READ MORE
Taking up the burden of a classic with the stature of Romeo and Juliet is a huge task. It’s even ballsier to try to reformulate it to say something new. There’s an enormous inertia to Shakespeare plays: Like a rolling rock, they simply resist a push in any other direction. This production is classical in nature – a spectacle on a thrust stage full of light, shadow, merriment, festival, death and duels. In entertaining, little is restrained. READ MORE