Results tagged “shakespeare”

FILM: As the summer continues, so do Toronto's weekly outdoor movies. Tonight, the Harbourfront Centre is screening 1998 Tom Tykwer thriller Run Lola Run in German with English subtitles. Just three subway stops away, 1987 Rob Reiner fantasy The Princess Bride is showing at Yonge-Dundas Square. Both films begin at 9 p.m., and both are FREE.

There are those of us whose parents started bringing us to the Dream in High Park when we were six, who have probably seen A Midsummer Night's Dream a half dozen times, studied it in school on a regular basis since grade five, and can probably recite Helena's "O, spite! O, Hell!" monologue from memory. We will not have any trouble understanding the RSC's production of Dream currently playing at Luminato. But for those of you who haven't brushed up on your Shakespeare, you might find the production a bit of a challenge—unless you're fluent in Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit, that is. The multilingual production is a real treat for the initiated, but with only about fifty percent of the text spoken in the original English it's hard to know how easy it will be for the layfolk to understand.

Far be it from us to conflate professional sports with Bill Shakespeare—but the Toronto Maple Leafs’ actions before, during and after Tuesday's NHL trade deadline recall Macbeth’s famous words: full of sound and fury, yet ultimately signifying nothing. Charges of heresy will be duly acknowledged.

The history of Michael Hollingsworth's "epic play-cycle" The History of the Village of the Small Huts is almost as storied (and confusing) as the events they represent. Many are familiar with the plays only since 2000, when VideoCabaret's residency began in the back room at the Cameron House. Since then, they have produced a new Hollingsworth play every year (with the exception of 2004), making the currently-running Laurier the eighth play in the cycle. However, the original play-cycle began all the way back in 1985 with the play New France, and ended in 1999 with The Life & Times of Brian Mulroney (the only Small Huts show to be co-written with other VideoCabaret playwright-in-residence Deanne Taylor). There was even a Laurier show back in 1991. Since the Cameron House residency began, the shows have been re-imagined and re-written, and some entirely new shows have been inserted to more fully flesh out the nation's history. So, while this Laurier is the eighth in the cycle, the original was only the fifth.

Soulpepper, that scrappy little theatre company from The Distillery, just released their 2008 schedule. If you haven't seen a Soulpepper play before, you've been missing out on some of the best theatre this city has to offer. This past season was one of Soulpepper’s greatest. Among other fantastic shows, the company put on an astounding rendition of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera and a hilarious staging of William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life. They also...

Words, words, words! Tongues get tied and language pulls a muscle in Terminating, a work by Tony Kushner (Angels in America), mounted in Toronto for the first time by Jordan Pettle. Inspired by Shakespeare's "Sonnet 75," this 30-minute play is classic Kushner in its robust tirades against everything from human ambivalence and existential paradoxes to window curtains and the smell of anal sex.

For those readers who do not happen to be massive Shakespeare geeks, it is worth noting that his high comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream finishes with a brief monologue delivered by the mischievous fairy Puck, which begins, "If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear." It is from this quotation that the SummerWorks play Offensive Shadows derives its titled. The play is a sort of sequel to Shakespeare's comedy, set five years after the events of Dream, though the setting, the dialogue, and the references are uniformly modern.

Much like the budding romance between Hero and Claudio in the play itself, Wednesday night's open-air premiere of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing was threatened by the malevolent influence of outside elements, in this case a light drizzle that foreshadowed an impending downpour.

Veteran stage actor William Hutt, famous for his many seasons playing all the great Shakespearean roles at Stratford, died today of leukemia at Stratford General Hospital at the age of 87. As a founding member of the Stratford Festival, Hutt acted and directed in 130 productions.

This week, the already-awesome Dufferin Grove Park is absolutely ablaze with awesomeness, with tendrils of wicked cool billowing through its leafy canopies and filling the lungs and hearts of theatre aficionados everywhere. The Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, which runs from June 20-24, is a presentation of five short plays, accompanied by a spectacular organic meal and infused with a spirit of collaboration and comraderie from start to finish.

In this piece in yesterday's Globe, Ivor Tossell waxes intellectual on the cultural wasteland that is Wikipedia. He explains "wikigroaning," the phenomenon experienced by self-righteous smartypantses like himself upon finding that one topic, "useless to everyone but a small coterie of fans," has a longer Wikipedia entry than another topic of "genuine historical relevance." His first example: that Lost character John Locke has a longer entry than the philosopher John Locke. And it’s all the fault of those pesky "crowdsourcing enthusiasts who tell us that in the 21st century, everything is better written by amateurs or crowds."

Sam the Record Man is closing its Yonge Street store on June 30. Remember when Sam's was the only place you could get a cassette of The Lowest of the Low's Shakespeare My Butt? Remember cassettes?

It was only inevitable; indeed, they would say we asked for it. The Secret, the latest in a long line of mega-selling self-help phenomena, is on its way to Toronto. Several "teachers" featured in the original film and the subsequent book will be holding forth on April 14th and 15th at the Westin Harbour Castle. The promotional literature is distinguished by its modest proposal: "The Secret to everything—the secret to life filled with joy, good health, financial freedom, loving relationships, abundant energy, youth: everything you ever wanted." Profundity and provocation are sure to be the order of the day.

For the first time ever, blogs were invited to come to the announcement of the Stratford Festival's new season, and Torontoist was there, chillin' like a villain. The press conference was held at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art for some reason, upstairs where the swanky new Jamie Kennedy restaurant is (free breakfast for bloggers!). The press release for the event issued the following warning: "Needless to say, in addition to announcing the 2007 playbill and honoring Richard Monette, their departing artistic director, a major announcement will be made." Apparently, however, this was all a ruse as the only thing announced were the plays that will make up the 2007 theatrical season and the long-known departure of incumbent artistic director Monette. What was the "major announcement" meant to be? Read on.

The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. is still in turmoil. The Corp. has been without a board chair since the summer. What's worse, Queen's Park, Ottawa and the City couldn't decide who should be appointed to the chair. What's worse Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been meddling in the affairs of the TWRC.

Shakespeare in the Rough's production of Antony & Cleopatra (directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones) is taking place in Withrow Park from Saturday August 5 to Labour Day, Monday, September 4. But if you can't wait for your dose of the Bard, you can catch a preview tormorrow and Friday evenings at 7pm.

Sure New York based writer Jonathan Ames looks like a badass in this photo, with his fists up in the air like he's ready to deck Torontoist. But after reading his collection of essays I Love You More Than You Know we know that Ames, can be a big softie (he dedicates the book to his great-aunt and the title of the book is inspired by something she said to him). Heck, Ames even describes himself as "Kerouacish on the outside, but somewhat Woody Allenish on the inside."

Torontoist was walking past This Ain't The Rosedale Library (obviously not pictured here) and noticed that it had been tapped by Canadian ex-pat Jeremy Mercer in the Guardian (the best paper in the English speaking world, sorry NYT) as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world. TATRL clocked in at eighth place and had some truly mindboggling competition.

Sketch comedy troupe Better than Shakespeare may not really be superior to our man Shakes, but they are damn funny. This Montreal-based quintet rocked the Tim Sims Playhouse this fall and now they're back again Friday and Saturday at the Poor Alex. Torontoist e-mailed ringleader Dan Beirne (who used to write the Waiting for Nathan column at tangmonkey) to ask a few pertinent questions about the dark, dry stylings of BTS.

As Norrie Epstein has written, Shakespeare’s romances are tragedies played in reversed. "The Winter’s Tale opens," she notes, "with a husband’s jealousy and a dead wife, and it ends with their reunion, as if Shakespeare had decided to write an Othello in which Desdemona wakes up unharmed." Hmm… Maybe it’s more of an Easter play, now, come to think of it.