Canadian Stage 2007-2008
It gets leaked to Ouzounian, entirely reasonably, and I agree with his title ("Something for all tastes") - well I cannot disagree, it does have something for my tastes. But how much. To start quoting:Dykstra will also direct the year's big musical, the popular spoof Little Shop of Horrors, based on Roger Corman's 1960 quickie horror flick.
Ted Dykstra will also be doing some musical called "Fire".
I can pass on both these shows.
The season will also include a revival of Bernard Pomerance's 1979 hit The Elephant Man, about the grotesquely deformed Victorian, John Merrick, who learned to find beauty in the world. Robin Phillips will direct.
What's the point? Can't I get the John Hurt DVD? Is someone going to do something better than that?
Fiona Reid will star in The Clean House, Sarah Ruhl's Pulitzer Prize-nominated play about the complex dynamic between a Brazilian housekeeper and her employers.
Fiona Reid - yes we will buy tickets for that.
Ending the season will be the strangest show of the lot: the stage adaptation of Stephen King's Misery.
Good heavens. I did not like the movie (nor have I liked a single Stephen King movie after "Carrie" and I worry that I liked it.)
Bragg admits the only reason the show is on his schedule is "to play the Nicola Cavendish card," since the popular Canadian actor will be playing the psychotic "No. 1 Fan" whose devotion to an author proves murderous.
Man this depresses me. My readers will know that he played the Nicola Cavendish card this year too, and, while I liked her, the show in question was the one that has triggered all my thinking about subscribing to next year's season.
Martin McDonagh's bleak story of childhood nightmares and totalitarian torture, The Pillowman, will begin the season in a co-production with BirdLand Theatre, with David Ferry directing.
We'll see. Might be good.
Then comes the Canadian premiere of Judith Thompson's three-part exploration of the war in Iraq, The Palace of the End, which has previously been seen at the Edinburgh Festival and in Florence.
Mind not closed but it sounds unlikely to be something we will have time for.
as is Colleen Murphy's The December Man, a chilling look back at the events of Dec. 6, 1989, when Marc Lepine massacred 14 female students in Montreal.
My immediate gut reaction was "No way" but having read some reviews of earlier productions I would say "Maybe".
"I've put together a season I believe in," Bragg says.
Now all he can do is wait and see if the theatregoers of Toronto agree.
I have a LOT of respect for the work Bragg has done over the past few years. By dint of subscribing, we have seen many plays we would not have seen that were utterly wonderful (Caryl Churchill's totally surprising 'A Number' stands out big time). My gut feel today is we will, for the first time in many years, be falling back onto single tickets. Sad in a way - as I commented to my wife today, we would not have gone to see 'Lucy' on a single ticket basis, and I still think it was pretty good. Still just too much bad feeling from the really bad shows in the last two years.
posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:52 PM
3 Comments:
I enjoyed Little Shop of Horrors when I saw it. And I liked the movie version of Stephen King's Delores Claiborne.
I think December Man has potential to be putrid...but I could be so wrong on that.
That might make a case for us getting a joint season's ticket.
I am old enough that what might seem like prejudices are no longer that - it is not as if I have not tried to watch the movie of 'Misery', and poor Bragg exposed that he was making it is his Nicola Cavendish moment. That moment, this year, through no fault of hers, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Actually, I did not like Misery. I thought Delores Claiborne had some depth. Misery was just pointless horror.
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