Openings We're Tracking This Week, April 16-22

Chantale Demole in Hay Fever (poster by Rosaura Guzman et al.)

Oil and Water (photo of Petrina Bromley by Peter Bromley)

We think it's funnier than Blithe Spirit and it's far more complex than Private Lives, and for all this we love Noel Coward's brilliant Hay Fever, a determined piece of froth that has an eccentric theatre family torturing friends and each other on a weekend getaway. Dawson College's current crop of students is particularly adept this year and this is right up their alley.  (Montreal)

You only have to read playwright Robert Chafe's brilliant article about the genesis of Oil and Water to want to attend this work about race, history and war. The company, Artistic Fraud from Newfoundland, is first rate as well so it all strikes us as a thrilling night at Factory Theatre. (Toronto)

You know spring has sprung and summer cometh when the Bard emotes in Stratford and when Shaw starts opining in Niagara-on-the-Lake. GBS offers us this: She's bored, despite her money, and a plane crashes into her conservatory - as they do - and...well guess the rest and don't forget the liberal sprinkling of Shavian chatter and a Misalliance or two. Also previewing at the Fudge Capital of the World, Ragtime!