Author Archives: strecker

Cara Ricketts as Maria in Twelfth Night In the lobby of the Festival Theatre, the lightly swinging jazz duo of Don Englert on alto sax and Michael Wood on vibes plays on as we are eased, with the welcome and … Continue reading →

In John Mighton’s The Little Years, Irene Poole’s performance as Kate is a haunting creation. Kate has lost the spark she once had, doesn’t say very much except for occasional terse comments spoken with blunt objectivity, and seems a frozen … Continue reading →

In one year, as a teen, about twenty years after the Great Depression’s end, I read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, saw John Ford’s film of the novel, and heard Ramblin’ Jack Elliot at a club sing Tom Joad by … Continue reading →

Director Darko Tresnjak’s set for Titus Andronicus has a boldly white marble effect with occasional highlights of striking blood red, all suggesting both a butcher’s slab and a cruel and bloodthirsty Roman culture. Four statues atop a column each depict … Continue reading →

  Something encouraging happens after a performance of director Des McAnuff’s Jesus Christ Superstar. People, young and old, and some not too old, enthusiastically discuss both the musical and its production. They do so in the Avon’s lobby, in the … Continue reading →

Director Miles Potter sees “Richard’s theatrical ancestors” as “the Vice characters of medieval plays” whose “stated mission” was to “destroy virtue wherever they found it. In order to do so, they would do anything, assume any role, in order to … Continue reading →

Geraint Wyn Davies as King Arthur in Camelot This is Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot on Stratford’s 2011 stage. The tree vines and balconies are all gold. A “bird of prey” about which we’ve been warned by a sign in the … Continue reading →

My Fair Lady opens with an aggressively active Covent Garden setting, one that feels alive and abrasive with survival in Molly Smith’s broadly realized production. Entertainers and regular folk do acrobatics and vigorously dance in this drab and dirty late … Continue reading →

Christopher Newton’s gradually unsettling production of Heartbreak House begins with strains of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, one of music’s most potent statements of primitive energy and chaos. It ends with the sound of not too distant explosions as the Shotover … Continue reading →

Lucy Peacock as Mistress Ford and Laura Condlin as Mistress Page As a theatrical presence, Geraint Wyn Davies’ Falstaff  is playfully physical yet burdened with both bodily weight and the weight of age. He is stiff and sprite at the … Continue reading →