CPC's Picture of the Week, May 24, 2012

Scott Munn's exceptional photo of Susan Leblanc Crawford in The Debacle, opening at FTA. The use of light (and of objects not fully visible) provides mystery and draws the eye to the actor's face.

Read an interview with creator Ann-Marie Kerr.

Shaw/Stratford Preview

Julie Martell in Ragtime (photo credit: Emily Cooper)

Two Guys, Five Days, Five Plays

by Stuart Munro

Starting this Friday, fellow CharPo contributor Dave Ross and myself will be heading into the heart of Ontario’s theatre world and installing ourselves at the Shaw and Stratford Festivals. Two Guys, Five Days, Five Plays will have us in Niagara-on-the-Lake for the opening nights of Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance, and Ahren and Flaherty’s Ragtime. We’ll be taking Sunday off (for Jesus) before heading to Stratford and the openings of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Dubin and Warren’s 42nd Street, and Gesner’s You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

News Roundup, May 23, 2012

O'Sullivan

TORONTO: Performances continue tonight of Lost in Yonkers presented by the Harold Greenberg Jewish Theatre and starring Happy Days mom, Marion Ross. Performances were put on hold so that actor  Linda Kash could be with her family following the sudden death of her husband, actor Paul O'Sullivan, in a car crash last Friday. Kash will not be returning to the show and has been replaced by Finnerty Steeves, who recently played Kash's role in an off-Broadway revival of the Neil Simon play. Kash is known as the angel in the Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercials. O'Sullivan was a television actor and member of Toronto's Second City troupe. Kash and O'Sullivan have three daughters.

VANCOUVER: Nominations for the Jessie Richardson Awards have been announced. Among contenders in Large Theatre, Small Theatre and Young Audience categories are, of course, the now defunct Vancouver Playhouse as well as Art House, Rumble, Green Thumb and Shakespeare by the Sea. Awards will be presented June 25. (See full list of nominees at the Awards website)

NEW YORK: The New Yorker has reported that the GM of the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Gelb, will allow Opera News (published by the company's Guild) to review Met productions after pressure was put on them to stop when they published a negative review of Robert Lepage's Götterdammerung (the last opera of Lepage's Ring Cycle). The move by Gelb follows a huge outcry from aficionados worldwide online and in print. (Read the New Yorker piece)

CPC's Video of the Week, May 23, 2012

Looks like you'll cry...

Ragtime at Shaw Fest

Audience reactions and some

pretty stirring moments from the musical.

After Dark, May 22, 2012

Dog's Life

Sometimes, when the dust has settled, it is nice to go back

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I was walking my dog a few days ago when off in the distance, coming toward me, was a man and his dog. In a few seconds a profound malaise came over me. A critic's nightmare: you are about to run into someone to whom you gave a negative review. The someone coming toward me was Andrew Shaver, director of Haunted Hillbilly now playing at Centaur. 

Now Andrew probably does not remember this but before I started the whole CharPo business I had run into him at a depanneur - I was recovering from a very long illness - and he said, "When are you coming back." So he is, to some extent, responsible for the existence of The Charlebois Post. Since then our meetings on the street have had more to do with our two crazy dogs. His is big, mine is small and they both have a chip on their shoulder. It culminated with my dog attacking his and me getting so pissed at my idiot animal that I did a César Milan trick: I lifted my Jack Russell up by the scruff of the neck and presented his gonads to Andrew's dog. When I put my dog down, he got on his hind legs, put his front paws on the shoulders of Andrew's dog and they kissed. Good times.

Openings We're Tracking This Week, May 21-27, 2012

Marla McLean in A Man and Some Women (photo credit: David Cooper)

The Sunday Read: Joel Ivany on Turn of The Screw

Killing Curiousity

Staging Britten's brilliantly dark piece

by Joel Ivany

It is a curious story.

Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera, The Turn of the Screw, opened in 1954 at Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

Against the Grain Theatre will be producing the eerie tale from May 24-27 at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, on U of T campus.

It’s quite an exciting theatrical piece to be preparing.  Described primarily as a ghost story, it can also be interpreted, though rarely is, as a love story.