Ontario’s two big destination festivals, the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival are aiming to lure back audiences en masse with packed playbills for 2023, and Globe and Mail theatre critics turn their eye to the fests’ productions over the summer. Their reviews are published over the course of the summer months, so return back here if a play you’re curious about hasn’t been reviewed yet.
Stratford Festival Reviews
First held in 1953, the Stratford Festival features 13 productions – the most since 2017 – across four venues. Get tickets and show schedules here.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Critic’s Pick
Director Peter Pasyk’s fast-paced, intermissionless production of Love’s Labour’s Lost ensures audiences get to savour each moment as if they’re watching some guilty pleasure dating reality show. Which, in a way, they are. Think Too Hot to Handle meets Shakespeare in Love, writes Glenn Sumi.
Runs to Oct. 1
From left: Irene Poole as Thérèse Dubuc, Shannon Taylor as Marie-Ange Brouillette, Lucy Peacock as Germaine Lauzon, Jennifer Villaverde as Lisette de Courval, Seana McKenna as Rose Ouimet and Jane Luk as Gabrielle Jodoin in Les Belles-Soeurs. Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou.David Hou/Stratford Festival
Les Belles-Soeurs
Michel Tremblay’s 1968 play Les Belles-Soeurs gets a “lively, crowd-pleasing production by director Esther Jun featuring what must surely be the most diverse cast the script has ever had.”
Runs to Oct. 28
Women of the Fur Trade
Under the direction of Yvette Nolan, all the performances in Women of the Fur Trade are strong but Kathleen MacLean’s self-absorbed Marie-Angelique and Keith Barker’s Riel, who reaches almost Trump-like levels of delusion in his final scenes, are particularly delightful. The juxtaposition of the historical figures and the contemporary colloquialisms is repeatedly amusing as is the ironic metaphor of the women’s vacuity as an explanation for their historical insignificance.
To July 30, 2023
Wedding Band
Directed by Sam White, Wedding Band “does not always do justice to the play’s depths, but it does successfully champion a tricky script.”
Runs to Oct. 1, 2023
From left – Robert Markus as Mark Cohen, Nestor Lozano Jr. as Angel Dumott Schunard and Lee Siegel as Tom Collins in Rent at Stratford Festival 2023.David Hou/Stratford Festival
Rent
Critic’s Pick
Runs to Oct. 28, 2023
Richard II
This year’s theme of Duty vs. Desire at the Stratford Festival was illustrated most effectively by Jillian Keiley’s Richard II, a “bold, brash, yet not-quite-fully realized” production.
Runs to Sep. 28
A Wrinkle in Time
This new stage adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time will leave kids wanting more - which is not a complaint
Runs to Oct. 29
From left: Allison Edwards-Crewe as Hero, Austin Eckert as Claudio, Patrick McManus as Leonato and Akosua Amo-Adem as Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing.Supplied
Much Ado About Nothing
Critic’s Pick
Director Chris Abraham’s new period production of Much Ado About Nothing is really something else. The “exceedingly high quality of its performances, direction and design” has some folks “already talking about it as a shoo-in for future lists of all-time greatest Stratford shows.”
Runs to Oct. 27
Grand Magic
Grand Magic, a hard-to-pigeonhole play directed by Antoni Cimolino is “a convincing production ... centred on a stunner of a performance by Gordon S. Miller.”
Runs to Sept. 29
Casey and Diana
Critic’s Pick
Casey and Diana – deftly directed by Andrew Kushnir – “is an emotionally powerful, next-generation look back at an era where fear made end of life for people with AIDS harder than it should have been.”
Runs to June 17, 2023
Spamalot
Spamalot, “which is getting a perfectly serviceable production directed by Lezlie Wade but is material impossible to really reinvent, is in its own words “lovingly ripped off” from 1975′s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Runs to Oct. 28
Paul Gross (front) as King Lear with Anthony Santiago (left) as Earl of Gloucester and John Kirkpatrick as Curan in King Lear.David Hou/Stratford Festival
King Lear
Critic’s Pick
“Paul Gross keeps you on your toes with his Lear” in King Lear. He had theatre critic Kelly Nestruck “hungry for each of his entrances – wondering what the title character was doing to do next or, rather, what he was going to do next with the character.”
Runs to Oct. 29
Allan Louis as Jocko and Kevin McLachlan as Georgie with cast members of Gypsy: A Musical Fable.David Cooper
Shaw Festival Reviews
Put on in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Shaw Festival has 10 indoor shows this summer, augmented by two more staged in a new spiegeltent and a variety of other outdoor programming. Get ticket and scheduling information here.
André Morin as John Derwent and Katherine Gauthier as Kate Derwent in The Shadow of a Doubt.Shaw Festival
The Shadow of a Doubt
Peter Hinton-Davis’ production of Edith Wharton’s highly unusual play, The Shadow of a Doubt, is a world premiere of a forgotten drama. A Broadway producer abandoned the production in 1901 and it had not been staged until now, perhaps because it explores the taboo topic of euthanasia, or its unconventional ending. Peter Hinton-Davis’s solution is a highly mannered production, with the help of set and costume designer Gillian Gallow, video designer Haui and fine performances from the cast.
Runs to Oct. 15
Alana Bridgewater as Odessa and Andrew Broderick as David in The Amen CornerDavid Cooper/Shaw Festival/Supplied
The Amen Corner
James Baldwin’s 1953 play, The Amen Corner tells the story of a female Pentecostal preacher in Harlem fighting to keep her congregation after they discover she was married to an alcoholic jazz musician. The play is about the promise of transcendence, be it in a theatre or a church. In this big production, the theatrical instincts of director Kimberley Rampersad sometimes seem at odds with Baldwin’s kitchen-sink realism.
Runs to Oct. 8
Martin Happer and Deborah Hay as Ensemble in The Game of Love and Chance.Emily Cooper/Shaw Festival
The Game of Love and Chance
Staged in the round in the festival’s charming spiegeltent, director Tim Carroll’s The Game of Love and Chance follows Pierre de Marivaux’s plot, but the script is entirely improvised by the actors. Their roles are assigned more or less at random, with some of them determined by rolls of the dice at the start of the evening. The ensuing performance had high spirits and hilarious results.
Runs to Oct. 8
Blithe Spirit
The costume design feels like Blithe Spirit’s cleverest gesture, “but as it stands Mike Payette’s direction lacks a clear mission.”
Runs to Oct. 8
Village Wooing; Mother, Daughter
In the productions by visiting director Selma Dimitrijevic, each performance’s casts are planned in advance and kept secret from ticket-buyers. In Village Wooing, “The general atmosphere, however, was of decent performers still feeling each other out during a rehearsal run,” writes theatre critic Kelly Nestruck. As for Mother, Daughter, it was “like a small steeped cup of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again by Michel Tremblay without milk or sugar.”
Village Wooing and Mother, Daughter both run to Oct. 7
The Playboy of the Western World
J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World is “rich in language and exhibits a Gaelic gallows humour that’s all the more shocking for being from more than a century ago.”
Runs to Oct. 7
Tom Rooney as King Magnus with the cast members of The Apple Cart at Shaw Festival, 2023.David Cooper/Supplied
The Apple Cart
Critic’s Pick
In The Apple Cart, Tom Rooney gives an “appropriately magnetic performance as King Magnus – supported by a rock-solid ensemble of festival veterans and newcomers alike.”
Runs to Oct. 7
Mike Nadajewski as Weinberl and Kristi Frank as Christopher in On the Razzle at Shaw Festival, 2023.Emily Cooper
On the Razzle
“Prepare to be amazed, overwhelmed or slightly stunned by the non-stop outpouring of puns and malapropisms, mistaken entendres and double identities” playwright Tom Stoddard jammed into On The Razzle.
Runs to Oct. 8
Prince Caspian
Based on the novel by, C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian is “adapted with eloquence by playwright Damien Atkins, and staged with vigour by Molly Atkinson … Up to a point, anyway.”
Runs to Oct. 8
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Critic’s Pick
Based on the book written by Arthur Laurents, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, is “a gorgeously acted, fun but deeply felt production.”
Runs to Oct. 7
More reading:
- All the movies, theatre, music and museums to look forward to in summer 2023
- The Stratford Festival ritual of opening week is finally back
- What to see at Stratford Festival and Shaw 2023
- Not dead yet: Four Shaw Festival directors on how to get contemporary chuckles out of classic comedies
- The king returns: After two decades away, Paul Gross is back in Stratford to play Lear
- Canadian summer theatre dominated by the Bard and the no-holds-barred
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