Openings We're Tracking This Week, July 23-29

Emily Cooper's promo art for Hedda Gabler

He's a bastard. He's a misogynist. He's the boss. The film, 9 To 5, was iconic and it was a revenge fantasy every pink-collar worker in the world, those jammed under the glass ceiling, adored. Three women working for the archetypal bad boss solve the problem - but not before things get outlandishly funny. Riffing through the movie was a song by Dolly Parton and it was no surprise when Parton decided to write a musical from the movie. The bastards, the glass ceiling and the problem still exist so, there you go, the musical still speaks. (Grand Bend, Ontario)

We love him. It's that simple. We've loved him since Sound of Music. We loved him in everything up to and including The Beginners, the film which, in this last year, won him an Oscar at last. He is back at Stratford, where he belongs, doing a show - A Word or Two - which is likely to be as charming as the man himself: Christopher Plummer. He is going to talk about the books which had touched him throughout his life. And we'll listen.

Martha Henry, a name Stratfordians know well (and will know again next year when she directs the production of Measure for Measure there), is helming an iconic work that, believe it or not, is not very far removed from 9 To 5. Hedda Gabler is strangled by her life - the smallness of it, the limitations. Every woman - no! every person  - knows how Hedda feels. It is a role every actor wants to play. Moya O'Connell, at Shaw, will be filling shoes which - just in film and on TV - have been worn by Ingrid Bergman, Glenda Jackson, Susan Clark, Diana Rigg and a dozen others. No matter. It is a play that delights, shocks and enrages.