Dearest Diary Mamma Mia! is a blast!. A wonderful escape just when the news is so awful globally and even locally. It’s so dry here – brown grass and not a drop of rain in the forecast – and there’s a woods travel ban BUT – thank heavens! – all the outdoor theatre is still happening. But first to indoor theatre. As you know I’ve played the Mamma Mia CD […]
Festival Antigonish Summer Theatre opened its 38th season with the world premiere of For Love Nor Money, an historical drama by Antigonish writer Laura Teasdale. Its eight-day run in a FAST/Mulgrave Road Theatre co-production wrapped up Saturday, with both a matinee and evening performance. Mulgrave Road Theatre commissioned Teasdale, who co-wrote FAST’s outdoor Robin Hood with FAST’s artistic director Andrea Boyd, and developed the script with a view to staging […]
I’ve always loved Little Shop of Horrors and Neptune Theatre’s high-energy, sumptuously-lit, sci-fi extravaganza is a great opportunity to see it again and get a pure entertainment timeout from the news. The plant is amazing, the cast excellent and artistic director Jeremy Webb’s direction suitably playful for this campy, horror-comedy musical with its wonderful 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and Motown music. Fans of the songs “Skid Row (Downtown), “Somewhere […]
Controlled Damage is excellent, complex, passionate theatre about Halifax civil rights activist Viola Desmond. First staged just before the pandemic, the two-hour play by Toronto writer Andrea Scott, returns in a new co-production by Neptune Theatre and the National Arts Centre (NAC), running just to Feb. 2 in Neptune’s intimate studio theatre. While this story is sheathed in a glorious cloak of visual design and music, its power lies in […]
I’ve never liked Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he’s often an irritating, high-energy boy flitting about like Peter Pan. Enter Walter Borden, 82, in an elegant, glittering emerald coat and hat, rolling his wonderful, sonorous voice around Shakespeare’s gorgeous language, not rushing it but luxuriating in it, finding the humour, the pace, the perfect articulation. It’s a brilliant piece of casting and just one of director Jeremy Webb’s inspired […]
Two Planks and a Passion Theatre creates a magical, unforgettable experience with its fireside shows as people sit encircling actors who themselves encircle a roaring fire. The flames are the only source of light and as you look into the orange flickering shadows your imagination is lit by a timeless story. The occasional flitting bat adds to the magic. Chased by The Bear, a spellbinding musical re-telling of Shakespeare’s The […]
Shakespeare by the Sea’s vaudeville twist on Twelfth Night is a fun and funny, passionate production steeped in Nova Scotia singer-songwriter Eliza Rhinelander’s original tunes as atmospheric as foggy coasts or smoke-filled, 1920s Paris bars. Director Drew Douris-O’Hara’s remarkably clear and tight-knit adaptation of Shakespeare’s play about love and tomfoolery was inspired by his visit to the Moulin Rouge in Paris during his honeymoon. (His wife Jade Douris-O’Hara plays Olivia, […]
Shakespeare By The Sea’s 31st summer season re-opens tonight in Point Pleasant Park after COVID cases forced the company to cancel nearly a week of performances during excellent weather – “tis true, tis pity.” This season features Alice in Wonderland the Musical and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which opened triumphantly last Friday night with a huge audience. But the next day four out of the eight-member cast developed COVID symptoms and […]
Governor General’s award-winning playwright Catherine Banks’ fine adaptation of The Mountain and the Valley is set right on the land that inspired the novel. The two-hour and 20 minute play, co-produced by Halifax’s HomeFirst Theatre and Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, is a wonderful opportunity to experience Ernest Bucker’s 1952 classic with a stellar cast and within a gorgeous landscape. Buckler’s tale of a tormented, visionary, young writer and […]
The Cirque du Soleil is in Halifax this weekend with Corteo, a show of breathtaking physicality and passionate beauty with intense theatricality in music and design. If you loved Baz Luhrmann’s movie Moulin Rouge you’ll love this show; the time period is the same – around 1900. The mood is an historic European one charged with emotion and familiar design elements – baroque, Art Nouveau, Victorian costume, a nod to […]
NS reviews 