Ideas of family and good old Sigmund Freud filled my thoughts as I readied myself for a new production of Canadian playwright Judith Thompson’s famous, widely praised drama White Biting Dog. The 1984 Governor General’s Award–winning drama is a poetic, symbolic and powerful play. It is being presented by Soulpepper at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District from Aug. 13 to Oct. 1 (www.soulpepper.ca).
When you hear that Thompson’s White Biting Dog is about a suicidal lawyer who plans to throw himself off the famous Bloor Street Viaduct until a white dog tells him that he has an important mission to save his father from death, don’t be put off.
There are good reasons to seek out this mystical, strange and moving piece of theatre that has the city of Toronto, and the Rosedale neighbourhood specifically, as one of its main characters. The black comedy is the Toronto playwright’s second play.
Directed by Nancy Palk and starring some of the pillars of Canadian theatre (Joseph Ziegler, Fiona Reid, Mike Ross), with this play, I cannot guarantee an evening of laughs, but you will experience one of the most revered plays of that explosive time in our country’s young playwriting renaissance.
Shaw Festival’s sure things for summer
Here we are, nearly halfway through the summer, and I’ve had the opportunity to get to one of our international “summer theatres,” at Niagara-on-the-Lake. I come back with a number of recommendations.
I can certainly recommend a handsome production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams, running until Oct. 23, which you may be familiar with from when Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor played the major roles. It’s a solid production, with near-perfect acting, and much of the playwright’s poetry comes through, but upon seeing it onstage several times, my belief grows that his autobiographical Glass Menagerie (yes, Soulpepper is doing that now, until Sept. 10) is his greatest play by far.
My Fair Lady, running until Oct. 31, is arguably one of the two or three most inspired musicals of all time. It is not injured by the fact that nearly two-thirds of the dialogue is taken straight from Shaw’s uproarious Pygmalion. It is given a visually stunning production at Shaw’s gorgeous mainstage with spot-on performances by Deborah Hay, Benedict Campbell, Neil Barclay and Patrick Galligan in the main roles.
But most satisfying is the less-well-known early Shaw comedy Candida, directed by the brilliant Tadeusz Bradecki and starring the talented Claire Jullien, Nigel Shawn Williams and Wade Bogert-O’Brian. It is incredibly funny yet also manages to be quite touching — Shaw and the Shaw Festival at their best. You’ve got ’til Oct. 30, so don’t miss it (www.shawfest.com).
