Everything about this play projected simplicity. The idea: a man waiting in a train station. The set: a stack of Japanese bowls, a bench and a clothesline. The performers: a girl and her father. Theatre Replacement's Train built upon these relatively simple concepts to create a beautiful and haunting production.
Minoru Kofu Yamamoto and Maiko Bae Yamamoto (front)
Your Plank Panel with no strings attached includes: Sarah Baumann is a Toronto-based director and the co-founder and artistic director of Theatre Smash. Alison Broverman is a Toronto-based playwright and freelance arts reporter. Ann McDougall is a Toronto-based writer and storyteller.
No, not a Plank Panellist but rather Tweak from Famous Puppet Death Scenes
Given the box office breaking success of Studio 58's forty-second season, it's a shame that the fourty-third season opener does not align with the theatre's previous acclaim. Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Ash Girl is a modernization of the classic Cinderella tale, but with the seven deadly sins and the emotion of sadness tossed in for additional intrigue.
Lindsey Angell is Ashgirl in the Studio 58 production of The Ash Girl by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
As I try to describe this show, I feel like one of the old nuns in the Sound of Music that sing, "How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?" They were talking Maria; I'm talking about water and the endeavour of a group of artists to make a show all about its "extraordinary life."
A Few Little Drops, complete with rope for navigating the depths
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast is, at least in my opinion, one of the towering achievements in modern literature. He presents a fully created world that is charged with vitality and is a celebration of raw imagination.
gormenghast, Kevin Stark, Jocelyn Gauthier and Maryanne Renzetti; photo by Tim Matheson
There are few times when a piece of theatre can truly be described as “epic”. The word is often used to describe the superficial dimensions of a show, usually in the context of massive musicals or other excessive productions that are generated by a big budget but not necessarily a creative vision to match.
Scorched: Janick Hebert, Valerie Buhagiar; photo: Paul Fujimoto
Richard Nixon was famous for his intellect, bad language, viciousness, sweating and, oh, Watergate. Much to my surprise, in Peter Morgan’s Frost Nixon, we get a Nixon who doesn’t swear, doesn’t seem too vicious (except with the intensity of his avarice) and even the sweating – constantly referred to throughout – was missing as Len Cariou seemed quite dry and relaxed, mostly. As for the towering intellect, there wasn’t much of that either.
Frost Nixon: I am big. It's the theatre that got small.
