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.
May 12, 2009
Opera Atelier’s latest offering at the Elgin Theatre is Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’incoronazione di Poppea (or The Coronation of Poppea), one of the first operas to take its subject from actual historical personages, albeit with a few twists. Read more…
April 29, 2009
“King Arthur” is the latest presentation from Toronto Masque Theatre (TMT), a group whose mission is “to bring the centuries-old art form of the masque alive for contemporary audiences.” Their mandate is remarkable in its scope, encompassing Renaissance and Baroque performances, as well as modern creations within the broad understanding of masque. “King Arthur” is the culmination of TMT’s five-year Purcell cycle commemorating the 350th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Read more…