Portland playwright Sue Mach's new work, directed by Gemma Whelan at 21ten Theatre, uses the bear - and other characters from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale - to fill in the 16-year gap in The Bard's story and to address some universal issues, such as the pain of losing a child, that will always resonate in the real world. In Shakespeare's play, Leontes, King of Sicilia, falsely accuses his wife, Hermione, of infidelity, even though she's a faithful partner who's nine months pregnant with his child.
And designer Tahra Zafar, an experienced creative whose CV includes Harry Potter, Marvel and Star Wars films, wants to keep it that way. "I don't want people to think about how we've done it," she says. "I just want people to love him." She does let on that the team looked at "some very innovative ways" to get Paddington moving, but says traditional puppetry was ruled out.
Noises Off is a masterfully crafted comedy that takes you on a wild ride behind the scenes of a theatre company's disastrous production of a farce called Nothing On. As the eccentric cast navigates forgotten lines, misplaced props, and personal feuds, their performances become increasingly chaotic, with doors slamming shut at the wrong moments, sardines going missing, and romantic entanglements causing tension.
At just shy of 200 years old, Henrik Ibsen feels like a writer for the moment - full of passionate intensity, yet just as fiery in his skepticism and self-critique as in his moral conviction; grand and unsparing and perverse; equipped with an internal Geiger counter for sanctimony and bullshit. And while A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler tend to come around often enough in the contemporary theater,
People in war zones hang out. They smoke; they gossip. They make up funny dances. To forget this is to deny the real people in these dire situations their humanity and to risk seeing them only through the eyes of charity-helpless, desperate, and without pride. Them, the 2019 play by Samah Sabawi, opens promisingly with a down-to-earth scene: Three young men-two with rifles-stand at a makeshift check point and shoot the shit.
Director Bill English emphasizes that the show will remain 'My Fair Lady' while offering a fresh perspective on the relationships between Eliza, Higgins, and Pickering, focusing on their equality.
