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THEATRE
Neptune Announces Directors for 2008-2009
Submitted by NeptuneTheatre on 07.4.08 at 8:51am.
Halifax, June 27, 2008 – While the next official Neptune Theatre opening night is more than two months away, the behind the scenes team has been busy hiring artists, actors and directors for what promises to be an exceptional season of theatre at Neptune in 2008-2009.
Although, no single compl...
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Shakespeare By the Sea's Cinderelly is Wild West wonderful
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.3.08 at 7:06pm.
Shakespeare By the Sea has kicked off its 15th season with revamped staging of its ensemble-written family show, Cinderelly.
A Wild West musical retelling of the classic fairy tale Cinderella, it’s ideal entertainment for kids and adults alike.
Jammed with broad characterizations, opportu...
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To die in your own wee, or on your own wii?
Submitted by Chocolate Court on 06.6.08 at 9:20am.
I bet Martin McDonagh never thought there'd be a Wii when he wrote that brilliant passage in A Skull in Connemara about dying in a potty of wee.
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Fewer Emergencies: Opaque & Fascinating
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.5.08 at 6:09pm.
The Halifax-based theatre company Angels And Heroes has delivered the work of yet another playwright previously unknown in Nova Scotia to the live stage. This time out it is the ferocious British absurdist writer Martin Crimp, whose three-part play Fewer Emergencies is on at the Bus Stop Theatre ...
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The Clean House: Risky stuff but it pays off marvelously
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.7.08 at 7:47pm.
It’s not often that a crucial new play debuts in New York City and manages to show up a mere two years later in Halifax.
Well, not exactly Halifax; Sarah Ruhl’s acclaimed The Clean House is actually playing at the Dartmouth Player’s theatre across the harbour until April 19th.
It’s a remark...
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Antigone: an interesting bit of a mess
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.5.07 at 8:34pm.
Angel And Hero’s production of French dramatist Jean Anouilh’s World War Two rewrite of Sophocles’ Antigone is a bit of a mess. Mind you, it’s an interesting - if exceptionally uneven - mess.
The chief problem is with Tyler Foley’s herky-jerky direction. While the storyline remains sturdy - an...
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Sci Fi Play, Doing Time, To Get Halifax World Premiere
Submitted by filmguy on 11.24.07 at 4:20pm.
Halifax will be the site of the world premiere of a new Science Fiction-themed play in the last week of November and the first day of December.
Kansas City, Missouri’s Mac Tonnies - a world-renowned author of After The Martian Apocalypse and controversial paranormalist blogger - has adapted hi...
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The Veil: A Play You Must See
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.6.07 at 8:23pm.
OneLight Theatre’s latest production, The Veil, is just about as unique a piece of theatre that you will ever see in Halifax.
Adapted from Iranian author Masoud Behnoud’s epic novel Khanoom (The Lady) by OneLight Artistic Director Shahin Sayadi, it compresses the events from the life of an 85...
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Toronto Adventures: A Trip to Theatrical Purgatory
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.2.07 at 10:36am.
Lindsay Kyte’s Toronto Adventures is typical Fringe fare. A charming but slight series of autobiographical sketches bloated up into an endless 80-minute theatrical marathon, it’s the kind of work that plays best to local and family sensibilities.
Kyte wrote and remains the main character and n...
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6 In Under Sixty rates a 6 out of 10
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.2.07 at 10:45am.
6 In Under 60 could be considered the ideal Fringe offering at this year’s Festival.
It’s six short plays by different contemporary playwrights put on by an energetic young cast of four veteran Halifax thespians under the banner of Left Foot First Productions.
Add the fact that each playle...
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All's Well Indeed At Point Pleasant
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.15.07 at 10:13am.
Shakespeare by the Sea’s third and last production for the season, All’s Well That Ends Well, sees the 14-year-old company firing on all cylinders.
A rarely-performed late comedy by the Bard that points towards his final period of romances (The Tempest, A Winter’s Tale, Pericles), All’s Well h...
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Wolfville Theatre Festival Collapses For Second Time
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.15.07 at 6:39am.
The Atlantic Theatre Festival (ATF) is closing its doors for a second and likely final time.
Artistic Director Nigel Bennett broke the news on a CBC Mainstreet Radio interview Tuesday, stating that he had given his resignation to the board the previous Sunday after they decided to shut down th...
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Theatre Arts Guild Tackles Two Pinters
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.2.07 at 10:29am.
The Theatre Arts Guild (TAG) has tackled two Harold Pinter one-act plays for its latest offering, on stage until July 7th. One, Night School, is an abject lesson in how not to stage Pinter; the second, The Lover, is a superb rendition of one of the British Nobel Prize-winning dramatist’s most int...
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DaPoPo Does The Impossible With Sunday In the Park
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.17.07 at 7:59am.
Halifax’s scrappy downtown theatre company has achieved the impossible with its staging of the acclaimed Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical, Sunday In the Park With George, playing at the St. Mary’s University Art Gallery until next weekend.
A large-cast, long (3 hours!) and complex show, i...
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Jasper Station: Norm Foster's Stellar Musical
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.14.07 at 10:44am.
Jasper Station, at the Dartmouth Players Playhouse for the next three weeks, is the third production of a Norm Foster play to be staged in Halifax so far this year.
What makes it different is the fact that it is a musical. The show retains most of what makes Foster’s work unique (direct emoti...
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Angels & Heroes' Daring 'Trestle' is Must-See Theatre
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.21.07 at 5:35am.
The flood of great June theatre continues in Halifax with a fascinating production of American playwright Naomi Wallace’s prize-winning play The Trestle At Pope Lick Creek. Staged by the maverick downtown company Angels and Heroes, it’s an uneven but essential piece of drama that rates as Must-Se...
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Late Spring Sees a Bloom of Live Theatre
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.27.07 at 5:00pm.
Late Spring is traditionally a slow month for Nova Scotia’s live drama scene. Many of the province’s bigger companies use the six weeks leading up to July to put together their summer stock programs, usually leaving a bit of a gap in the schedule for theatre fans.
Well, this year is clearly no...
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Nuts & Gum Debut: Glib and Smug
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.26.07 at 10:14am.
The first production of yet another new Halifax-based theatre company is a bit of dud, I’m afraid. One Good Marriage, penned by Toronto television writer Sean Reycraft and directed by Exodus Theatre alumnus Darcy Lindzon for Nuts And Gum Theatre at the Bus Stop space on Gottingen Street, is a plo...
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Foghorn Theatre's Precise 'Timing'
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.9.07 at 10:51pm.
Halifax’s Foghorn Theatre has returned to form with a delightful staging of contemporary New York playwright David Ive’s short play symposium All In the Timing.
The company has tackled Ives before. A few years back they delivered a sparkling version of the two-hander, Ancient History, in an up...
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Metamorphic Scores: Creatures Of the Moment
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.1.07 at 10:50am.
On Saturday I managed to catch Metamorphic Theatre’s 50-minute, original 5-person play Creatures Of the Moment at the Space on Agricola Street.
I should declare my conflicts of interests up front. I know several of the people involved in the production; one of the principals of Metamorphic The...
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Neptune's Season Announced Amidst March Theatre Flood
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.22.07 at 3:53pm.
Neptune’s 2007-2008 Season has been announced. It will consist of
William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, David Hare’s The Verticle Hour, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Dan Needles’ Wingfield’s Inferno, William Nicholson’s The Retreat From Moscow, and the big musical season-closer The Producers ...
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Theatre: Merritt Awards don’t add up to much
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.16.07 at 10:44am.
The Merritt Awards will be given out this coming Monday. That means five or six professional Nova Scotia theatre companies will give each other a bunch of awards, congratulating themselves on another stellar year in a sector that continues to struggle to reach audiences and set very basic standa...
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Daniel MacIvor's Governor General Winning Book Is A Hard Slog
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.6.07 at 4:03pm.
There’s no question that Cape Bretoner Daniel MacIvor is considered to be one of Canada’s most important theatre artists. The fact that he recently won a Governor General’s Award for his five-play collection entitled I Still Love You pretty well confirm’s the actor and writer’s near-iconic status...
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A 21st Century Marat
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.23.07 at 11:43am.
Director/Adaptor Paul Kimball and Le Theatre de Boheme have drifted sufficiently far enough away from Peter Weiss’ famous play Marat/Sade for the production - at the Church this weekend and next - to distill the title down to ‘Marat’ and drop any pretences of resembling the famous Peter Brook pro...
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Sesame Street Strindberg
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 02.7.07 at 12:00pm.
Dalhousie Theatre Productions is advertising a staging of Johan August Strindberg’s A Dream Play this week at its studio theatre this week. Audiences might have a hard time actually finding it, though.
Sure, there’s some kind of play going on deep in the bowels of the Arts Centre. Alleged adap...
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Page to Stage: Mourning Dove Plays at Neptune
Submitted by Hannah Colville on 02.2.07 at 10:32pm.
Mourning Dove is a difficult play with roots in the story of Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who killed his severely disabled daughter Tracy in 1993. It was originally written for broadcast on CBC radio’s Morningside, and will be playing at Neptune Theatre in Halifax between February 13 a...
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The Cabinet of Marat/Sade
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.29.07 at 8:20pm.
The Halifax-based theatre troupe Le Theatre de Boheme is deep in rehearsals for their latest project, a mid-February staging of the notorious Peter Weiss play Marat/Sade.
Directed by local documentarian and film producer Paul Kimball, this particular Marat/Sade tones down the strident approach...
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Norm Foster
Submitted by filmguy on 01.26.07 at 5:04pm.
Who’s Afraid Of Norm Foster?
The Canadian Theatre Establishment, that’s who.
Canada’s most prolific and produced playwright, Foster began his writing career as a sideline to his dayjob at a Fredericton commercial radio station in the 1980s where he was the morning wake up DJ. Drafted in as an a...
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The Year In Theatre
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 01.8.07 at 10:18pm.
Nova Scotia’s theatre scene had an interesting, up-and-down year in 2006.
There were some losses (actor David Renton, academic Patrick O’Neill) and some gains (actor/writer Daniel MacIvor, who moved back to the province this year). There was sub-standard work. And some that was terrific.
Th...
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Angels and Heroes' Take On The Maids Is Taut and Tight
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.1.06 at 5:48pm.
The Halifax ultra-low budget Angels and Heroes theatre company’s latest offering is a taut, slightly overdone staging of French author Jean Genet’s difficult 1949 play The Maids.
Put on within the overly bright confines of the top floor of the Khyber Club on Barrington - complete with the soun...
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Big Play Is A Big Drag
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.29.06 at 12:26pm.
To say that Dalhousie Theatre Production’s staging of June Havoc’s 1963 play Marathon ‘33 - on at the Dunn Theatre until December 2nd - is a disappointment would be something of an understatement.
The show is an unwatchable 3-hour borefest, a bloated blimp of a play that reminds you of all the...
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Big Apple Troup Takes Ibsen Around the World
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.24.06 at 5:49pm.
While it seems no-one in this province’s theatre community joined in on the world-wide celebration of the great realist playright Henrik Ibsen centenary, a Nova Scotian-named, New York-based experimental drama company took an acclaimed production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House on a world tour.
Mabo...
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Eastern Front's Play, Corvette Crossing, Misses Its Target
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.30.06 at 3:48pm.
The Eastern Front Theatre’s season-opening, Remembrance Day referencing play Corvette Crossing is an exercise in theatrical frustration.
Playing at the cavernous Alderney Gate Theatre until November 12, the play treats a worthy subject - The Battle of the Atlantic - in a shrill, unsatisfactory...
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Fall theatre shapes up to be Shockingly Interesting
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.10.06 at 8:56pm.
The Fall theatre season in Halifax is shaping up to be shockingly interesting.
The second week of October will see two major productions of contemporary North American plays, and November and December will see four more major productions hit various stages in Nova Scotia’s capital city.
Ope...
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Foghorn Theatre Does Mamet Proud
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.3.06 at 12:25pm.
One theatrical jewel buried in the frenzy that is Halifax’s Fringe Festival is Foghorn Theatre’s staging of contemporary Chicago playwright David Mamet’s pungent one-act play The Shawl.
A taut three-hander based around the manipulations of modern-day fortune-teller, his same-sex lover and a gr...
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Mary Pickford's Story Only Fitfully Successful
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.4.06 at 11:10am.
Once the most famous actress in the world, and the most powerful female producer in Hollywood in the 1920s and ‘30s, Toronto-born Mary Pickford’s story comes to the stage in a one-woman show at this year’s Fringe Festival.
Alas, Living Shadows is only fitfully successful. Actress and writer Tr...
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Antigonish is chock full of modern-day plays
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.14.06 at 9:43pm.
Festival Antigonish’s 2006 schedule is in full flight, and it’s offering an astonishingly fresh blast of contemporary English-speaking theatre, whether the plays come from New York, London, England or Toronto.
With the addition of its new second stage - a gorgeous, intimate former university c...
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Tennessee’s Waltz
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.15.06 at 2:09pm.
May 2nd saw the late American playwright Tennessee Williams get the deluxe treatment.
Warner Brothers Home Video released a six-film box of the great Southern dramatist’s most important work, loaded with some surprising and quite substantial extras.
With three A-List directors--Elia Kazan, ...
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