Alon Nashman in Hirsch (photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann)
It is bombastic, it is gentle, it is beautiful, it is funny...it is all that AND 76 Trombones. It is, of course, The Music Man. A con artist arrives in a small town, meets, falls in love with and sings of Marian the Librarian and ends up curing a kid of a lisp and pulling an otherwise staid little place out of its doldrums. It's one of those musicals that just makes you happy there are such things as musicals! (Vancouver)
Anyone who ever saw his productions will tell you that John Hirsch was perhaps the greatest stage director in the country...ever. (A production of his of Three Sisters at Stratford in 1976 was life-changing). But Hirsch, who died of complications of AIDS in 1989, was not without his demons. A survivor of the Holocaust, a Gay man when it was not even vaguely acceptable, Hirsch nevertheless went from one theatre to another creating masterpieces. Hirsch should not leave you indifferent. (Stratford)
Start a discussion about which of Michel Tremblay's plays is his greatest and you will get a half-dozen answers: Les belles soeurs; À toi pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou; Albertine en cinq temps... But you will also get his graceful, hilarious ode to his mother For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. An adult Tremblay meets with the woman who died young but who haunts his entire oeuvre and they have a fine time. It is magnificent theatre. (Milford, Ontario)
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