A Critical Lens on Canadian Arts.
About Galen Simmons
2025
Here For Now Theatre review: Ruby and the Reindeer is a fun, heartfelt and local holiday story
Antoni Cimolino looks ahead to his final season as artistic director of the Stratford Festival
Stratford Festival review: The Winter’s Tale mixes comedy and tragedy to perfection
Stratford Festival review: Annie wows with talented kids and a cast to back them up
Stratford Festival review: Anne of Green Gables brings the fandom on stage in hilarious production
Stratford Festival review: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels offers plenty of dirty rotten fun
2024
Stratford Festival review: Director-choreographer Donna Feore does it again with Something Rotten!
Stratford Festival review: Wendy and Peter Pan offers emotional alternative to a classic
Stratford Festival review: The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? challenges an audience’s tolerance
Stratford Festival review: Get That Hope offers a familiar family story with new context
Stratford Festival review: London Assurance serves up cartoonish hilarity
Stratford Festival review: Romeo and Juliet delivers teen angst and rash decision making
Stratford Festival review: ‘60s counterculture gives new context in McKenna’s Twelfth Night
Stratford Festival Review: Rarely produced Cymbeline brought to life on Tom Patterson Theatre stage
Stratford Festival review: The Diviners weaves past and present into a story about storytelling
Category: Stratford Festival
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By Galen Simmons There is something to be said about setting a Shakespearean comedy about a woman who disguises herself as a man to gain favour and influence in a male-dominated society in 1967. Though, admittedly, I didn’t initially understand why Seana McKenna opted to position her directorial debut, Twelfth Night,just weeks before The Summer…
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By Galen Simmons There is a lot of love and a lot to love in the Stratford Festival’s production of La Cage Aux Folles. The costumes are fabulous, the sets are extravagant and the singing and dancing talents of everyone on and off stage are more than enough to make the show fun and enjoyable.…
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By Galen Simmons Sara Topham’s performance as the titular character in the Stratford Festival’s production of Hedda Gabler is deeply disturbing – and I mean that in the best way possible. Having tied herself down to a future she dreads with Dr. Tesman (Gordon S. Miller), a man she barely likes, let alone loves, Topham’s…
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By Galen Simmons It is a rare thing to go into a Shakespeare play with zero expectations. When it comes to Shakespeare’s most popular works, most, if not all of us know the stories, the characters and the plot twists either by having read them in high school, through references in television and movies, or…
NORTHERN ARTS PERSPECTIVE 