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THE WEEK IN THEATRE
Billy Bishop Goes to War
STRATFORD FEST PLEASED WITH 2009
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival yesterday reported that attendance for the 2009 season was 509,000, a drop of about 4.7 per cent from last year. Nevertheless, the festival was upbeat since sluggish advance sales earlier in the year forced it to cancel or put on hold some performances.
Sean Cullen returns to Stratford in Peter Pan
Sean Cullen is returning to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival next season as the snivelling Snee in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan .
COHL SIGNS ON TO SPIDER-MAN
First, he saved Toronto from SARS by bringing his friends the Rolling Stones to town. Now, Michael Cohl has swung into New York to rescue Spider-Man from what seemed like imminent death. The powerful Canadian concert promoter has signed on as the new lead producer on Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark , a problem-plagued musical shaping up to be the most expensive show in Broadway history. Directed by The Lion King 's Julie Taymor and with music by U2's Bono and the Edge, Spider-Man 's budget is rumoured to have ballooned to $50-million. "I want to 'turn off the dark' on all the wild speculation about the show - it's moving forward," said Cohl, who has handled tours for artists such as U2, the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand. Cohl was most recently a co-producer on Monty Python's Spamalot.
Colour this play untheatrical
Yellowman Written by Dael Orlandersmith
Shaw reports recessionary hit on 2009 box office
The global recession finally caught up to the Shaw Festival this season, taking a sizable bite out of ticket sales in what artistic director Jackie Maxwell called a "roller-coaster year."
THE WEEK IN THEATRE
An Evening with Uncle Val
All Frankie, all the time
Interest in Frankie Valli is peaking: Uptown, there's a hit musical based on the life and songs of the sixties vocal quartet the Four Seasons. Downtown, there's a concert this weekend by the head Jersey boy himself. The helium-high crooner, famous as the lead voice on Four Seasons' hits Sherry , Big Girls Don't Cry , Walk Like a Man and others, plays Massey Hall on Friday (8 p.m.). It's possible that before he leaves town he'll pop up to the Toronto Centre for the Arts to check out a Saturday matinee of Jersey Boys with Jeff Madden, the actor who portrays the iconic Valli. We're hoping for an impromptu duet to break out, the two of them gazing longingly at each other during a medley of Valli's solo hits Can't Take My Eyes Off You and My Eyes Adored You . Why, there won't be a dry eye in the house. B.W.
Theatre
For Tracy Letts, it's all in the family
The list of living playwrights who can sell a straight play on Broadway without a big-name Hollywood star these days is very short, indeed.
The Children's Republic
The Children's Republic opens in Ottawa on Thursday. In her breakout play East of Berlin , Toronto playwright Hannah Moscovitch looked at the Holocaust on an angle, dramatizing its ripples in the next generation. Now, the versatile playwright examines it head on through the story of Dr. Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish pediatrician who runs an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto and sticks by his wards until the end. The decision to cast six kids from the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama should raise the emotional stakes.
That Face overdoses on sensationalism
The Nightwood Theatre production of Polly Stenham goes for the lurid too quickly
Theatre
A snappy, sex-filled family affair
Brad Fraser's latest comedy gets its Canadian premiere at Toronto's Factory Theatre
Daryl Cloran: putting Canadian history through The Mill
Theatrefront director helms ambitious four-play project that spans 300 years
Katherine Koller's farm visit yields a dramatic harvest
A glimpse of fields sprayed silver with chemicals sparked a new play about a farm couple
Vigil is a bore, but Donuts is simply irresistible
Globe theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck hits the Big Apple and comes away with mixed feelings
Canadian plays are hits in Manchester
Canadian playwrights made a splash in Manchester, U.K., this season. Brad Fraser's True Love Lies and Judith Thompson's Palace of the End are both nominated for best new play at this year's Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards, it was announced yesterday.
Theatre
Walworth Farce: It'll sock you in the gut
An Irish play about a very creepy family combines elements of Samuel Beckett with echoes of contemporary news stories about kidnapped children
Theatre
The Drowning Girls: cold and wet, but not enough shivers
Based on the crimes of a charming English conman and serial killer, this production doesn't give us much chance to get to know the victims