Category: Stratford Festival
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By Galen Simmons It’s not about where you’re going, but who you are when you get there. In the world premiere of playwright Erin Shields’ Ransacking Troy, as directed by Jackie Maxwell for the 2025 Stratford Festival, the classic Greek epics Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey are reimagined with nine Greek women at their core,…
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By Galen Simmons While photographs and historical accounts of war may tell us what happened, the emotions – the fear and anxiety of being attacked, the boredom of waiting for something to happen, the adrenalin-pumping excitement of action, and the crushing sadness of losing friends – can best be relayed to those of us who…
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By Galen Simmons For the entirety of what will be his 40-year career at the Stratford Festival, and even before that as a young actor who chose to dedicate his life to the stage, Antoni Cimolino has been enraptured by the magic of theatre. Looking ahead to the 2026 season – Cimolino’s last as artistic…
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By Galen Simmons Part tragedy, part comedy, part tragic comedy, part comic tragedy. Whatever one might identify Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as, the Stratford Festival and director Antoni Cimolino’s 2025 production of one of the Bard’s stranger plays certainly fits the description. The play is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride with one half…
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By Galen Simmons When I first heard director Robert Lepage was going to stage a production of Macbeth set in the brutal and hierarchical world of motorcycle gangs, I had one word in mind – ambitious. Would the prospect of bringing motorcycles and guns to the stage in a realistic way that stays true to…
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By Galen Simmons Do the protagonists in Forgiveness, a play adapted by actor and playwright Hiro Kanagawa from author Mark Sakamoto’s 2014 book, Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, actually find forgiveness in their hearts for the people and countries that did them wrong? That’s the question I found myself asking at the end of…
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By Galen Simmons In Kate Hamill’s adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, Sense and Sensibility, for the 2025 Stratford Festival stage, gossip is more than a plot driver and social regulator, it is a force of nature. Though gossip plays several key roles in Austen’s book – advancing the story with half truths and…
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By Galen Simmons When my partner, Julia, and I sat down in the Avon Theatre on opening day of director Kat Sandler’s new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables – the classic Canadian story by Lucy Maud Montgomery told countless times before – I wasn’t sure what to expect. Unlike Julia, who first watched the…
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By Galen Simmons Sophistication and class versus lowbrow simplicity. There are many ways to trick someone out of their money, as long as you remember one rule: give them what they want. The cast and crew of director Tracey Flye’s 2025 Stratford Festival production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels did just that, delivering a fast-paced, highly…
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By Galen Simmons What more could one ask for in a musical than a group of talented kids, a stellar cast to back them up and a very well-trained dog? (He’s a good boy! Yes, he is!) With all these elements and so much more, director-choreographer Donna Feore has everything she needs for yet another…