A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s oft performed comedy of love, magic, and misunderstanding, was written more than 400 years ago and adapted by English composer Benjamin Britten in the 1960’s as an opera, which will be the format by which Opera McGill performs the story in their upcoming main stage[Read More…]
Theatre
Behind green eyes
In his early 17th century play Othello, Shakespeare coined the phrase “green-eyed monster.” The phrase, used to describe jealousy, enjoys popular use to this day, and refers to one of humankind’s most irrational, yet common, emotions. Similarly, theatre companies remount Othello year after year, attempting to refresh and rejuvenate the[Read More…]
Heaven on earth?
The director’s note uses the words “oppression” and “repression” to describe the McGill English Drama & Theatre Program’s play Cloud 9, and those two words couldn’t have summed up the production more accurately. Cloud 9 explores these main themes within two separate but thematically connected spheres; the first act takes[Read More…]
If Shakespeare had written Lost…
The Tempest, the latest production by McGill’s Players’ Theatre, is the third installment in a season where the mission is “to juxtapose reality with what is magical and imaginative.” This play, believed to be the last written work of William Shakespeare, certainly does just that. Director Juliet Paperny blurs the[Read More…]
NTS graduate Colm Feore graces local stage once again
It’s no secret that there is a healthy amount of tension between Anglophone and Francophone cultures in Montreal, but one place the two co-exist beautifully is at NTS, a school that fosters the acting, writing, and directing talents of young people of both languages. Canadian actor Colm Feore graduated from[Read More…]
Oral tradition: Montreal edition
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Canada’s annual Spoken Word Festival, and the first time the festival has graced a Montreal stage. Since its inception in Ottawa in 2004, the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word has grown from six teams of poets to 20, with a constantly growing audience[Read More…]
Great vengeance and furious anger
The history of racial relations in North America has certainly been a topic of interest among filmmakers and playwrights in recent years—one which audiences have been happy to engage in. One need look no further than the recent successes of Django Unchained, Fruitvale Station, or the buzz around 12 Years[Read More…]
tick, tick…BOOM! is no bust
It’s a musical where “everybody we know wants to be something else.” With a cast of three actors and a live four-piece band, Tuesday Night Cafe (TNC) presents tick, tick..BOOM!, by Jonathan Larson, best known for bohemian rock musical Rent. Choosing love, success, or passion as life’s top priority is[Read More…]
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
It always disturbs me when I hear one of my female peers say something to the tune of, “Don’t worry—I’m not a feminist or anything,” as if it’s something to be embarrassed or even worried about. Thankfully, Imago Theatre’s production of If We Were Birds screams feminism, highlighting the strength[Read More…]
An affair to remember
David Sherman’s Joe Louis: An American Romance is the perfect event to kick-off Black History Month. Thematically and visually complex, the play explores the life of Joe Louis—the African-American heavyweight boxing champion of the world—through flashbacks, fictional scenes, and historical footage, to comment on the racial prejudice that still resonates[Read More…]
