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Rabbittown Theatre Company began performances of its New World Theatre Project on Saturday (June 19) in Cupids NL with two shows, The Tiring House by Chris Driedzic and  Caesar, adapted from William Shakespeare by Brad Hodder.

The New World’s inaugural season is part of the “Cupids 400” celebrations, which recognize the founding of Cupids in 1610 as the first English settlement in Canada.

In addition to The Tiring House and Caesar, the company will stage three other plays: Kerri MacDonald’s Feast of the Sword, “an historical re-imaging of” Cupids founder John Guy’s “journey to the New World”; Benn Pittman’s Colony of the Heart, which links the lives of early settlers in Cupids and present day Newfoundlanders who move to Alberta for work; and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Andy Jones as Bottom. Read more…

Anyone purchasing tickets to the 2010 spring season of the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons theatre based on what they saw in the COC’s winter offerings might have felt they’d stumbled into the wrong theatre, confused at the difference.  The COC’s stolid and conservative February offerings (Verdi’s Otello and Bizet’s Carmen) bear little resemblance to the bolder approaches favoured in each of the three recent productions, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and Mozart’s Idomeneo. Read more…

OPERA ATELIER Marriage of Figaro
Reviewed by Leslie Barcza

After a fastidious quarter-century of Opera Atelier their biggest triumph may now be in abandoning some of their trademark purism.  Elgin Theatre was the site of OA’s new production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. The intimate venue has never seemed a better fit for this company of youthful singers & dancers, supported by the gentle strains of Tafelmusik Orchestra. Every aspect shows a new maturity, a greater degree of ease, whether in the musical preparation & performance, the design or the dramaturgy. Read more…

The Madonna Painter
By Michel Marc Bouchard, translated by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Eda Holmes

Until Dec. 13 at The Factory Theatre, Toronto

The English language premiere of The Madonna Painter opened recently at Toronto’s Factory Theatre. It is the second play in the theatre’s 40th Anniversary Season of new Canadian work. Read more…

The two operas presented by the Canadian Opera Company this autumn at the Four Seasons Theatre –The Nightingale and Other Short Fables by Stravinsky, and Madama Butterfly by Puccini—appear to be a perfect pair. Both evenings of opera (including short Stravinsky works not usually understood as “opera”) were written in the 20^th century. Both take their title from a non-human avian creature. Both rely heavily upon a single female star for their impact. Both are oriental in focus, even if their music is European. And although the East is sometimes red, both works have been box office gold for the COC. Read more…