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 20th 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…
The Kingdom of Monsters and The Woman in Black are two seasonal shows that work to please their respective audiences by drawing heavily on established genres.
Rock and Roll at Canadian Stage. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann
At Canadian Stage until October 24
At The Citadel Theatre November 7-29
Reviewed by Rob Ormsby
Rocking The Cradle. Photo by Justin Hall.
Rocking The Cradle
By Des Walsh, Directed by Richard Rose
At The Reid Theatre in St. John’s until October 18
At the Tarragon Main Space from November 4 to December 13
The play, “freely adapted from” Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 Spanish drama Yerma, has a relatively simple narrative: Joan’s (Ruth Lawrence) unfulfilled desire for a child leads to her mental instability and the destruction of her marriage to Vince (Darryl Avalon Hopkins). Walsh transfers the action of Yerma from rural Spain to a Newfoundland outport in the 1960s. The characters speak with recognizably Newfoundland accents (though they are close to what you can hear in contemporary St. John’s) and employ recognizably Newfoundland turns of phrase (conjugating “I know” as “I knows,” punctuating sentences with “biy,” “girl”). They speak of moving to Toronto for work and allude to the historical closing of isolated fishing communities and resettlement in larger towns during the 1950s and 1960s.