Openings We're Tracking The Week, July 16-22, 2012

Armorer

It's an odd summer. The Shake-and-Bakers (outdoor Shakespeare companies) are taking on some pretty tough material. Montreal's Repercussion and Vancouver's Bard on the Beach decided to attack Taming of the Shrew (you just mention this one to some people and their teeth are on edge) and now, this week, there is the Moor of Venice, Othello at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. Above and beyond the terrible story of a man's mad jealousy, there is the question of race (and the many, many references to it) in the work. But if you wanted the right actor for the job, you couldn't find a better one than Quincy Armorer to play the title-role. The actor/director has so much charisma that you will probably just go along for the awful ride that is a love story gone hideously wrong. (Prescott, Ontario)

Something lighter? How about the Zoofest offering, Dick Powell's In The Mood For Jazz - a quirky concert cum theatre cum delightful assault on your funny bone. More fun? It's playing at the Café Cléopatre, the last bastion of Montreal's red light district and one of the great sleaze-purveyors of the city's golden age of vice!

Lighter still? It's all in the title: An Evening of One-Act Comedies. There's Shaw's How He Lied To Her Husband, Percival Wilde's The Sequel and and David Ives' The Sure Thing. And the venue - Fort Edmonton Park - couldn't be nicer.