Antoine Yared, Qasim Khan, Salvatore Antonio in The Inheritance, which makes its Canadian premiere at CanStage’s Bluma Appel Theatre, March 22 to April 14.Supplied
After premiering in London, England, in 2018, The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez’s radical riff on E. M. Forster’s Howards End, won best play and best director at both London’s Olivier Awards and Broadway’s Tony Awards. How do you follow that? Canadian Stage dares to be different.
Presenting the hit play’s Canadian premiere at the Bluma Appel Theatre (Mar. 22-Apr. 14), the company stays true to the epic’s two-part, six-hour narrative, which revolves around three generations of gay men in New York.
But director Brendan Healy intends to take the play’s creative, meta storytelling techniques – characters narrate parts directly to the audience and even editorialize on what’s happening – even further.
Without giving too much away, actor Daniel MacIvor – who plays both E. M. Forster and Walter, an eccentric country-home owner – says, “Brendan has made a very bold choice about the play’s setting. It’s genius. This will be the definitive production of this play.”
Starring alongside Antoine Yared, Qasim Khan, Salvatore Antonio and others, MacIvor – an accomplished playwright and director but perhaps best known for roles in indie film and TV’s Twitch City – delivers the play’s most moving monologue about the ways in which gay men must reckon with the AIDs legacy. The beautiful passage is notorious for bringing audiences to tears.
Brendan has made a very bold choice about the play’s setting. It’s genius. This will be the definitive production of this play.
— Daniel MacIvor, actor and playwright
“It’s a gift to have the opportunity to talk about something that is so personally meaningful,” affirms MacIvor. “When those kinds of words move through you it’s like alchemy – it’s the magic of theatre. You’re not generating it; it manifests. And then everyone is breathing it together. And that’s the power of theatre.”
Meanwhile, Nightwood Theatre’s cast and crew must be having a blast preparing for its world premiere of Mad Madge, an irreverent contemporary-period mash-up, loosely based on the life of 17th-century eccentric Margaret Cavendish.
Writer and star Rose Napoli plays the fame-obsessed writer, philosopher, designer and scientist as an OG jack-of-all-trades and master of none, and a peppy cross between Jane Austin, Tina Fey and Kim Kardashian. Napoli, whose portrayal of Catherine de Medici in Soulpepper’s 2023 production of Kat Sandler’s Wildwoman was deemed “perfect” by Intermission magazine, is directed here by Nightwood artistic director and Dora Mavor Moore Award-winner Andrea Donaldson. The comedy’s other gender-bending, stereotype-smashing characters are played by Karl Ang, Wayne Burns, Izad Etemadi, Farhang Ghajar and Nancy Palk. Mad Madge is presented in association with VideoCabaret, at the Theatre Centre (Apr. 9-21).
The fun continues at Crow’s Theatre, where Bahia Watson, directed by Sabryn Rock, debuts her solo show Shaniqua in Abstraction (Apr. 9-28). The in-demand actor – you may have seen her in Star Trek: Discovery, The Handmaid’s Tale, or her raucous, self-penned 2022 hit play Mashup Pon Di Road – brings a disarming humour to shape what she calls “a kaleidoscopic explosion of experiences” to define Black womanhood (or “shaniqua,” in African-American slang).
Age is a Feeling makes its Canadian debut at SoulPepper, May 29-June 16.Supplied
A smash hit when it premiered in the U.K., in 2022, Haley McGee’s Age is a Feeling makes its Canadian debut for SoulPepper Theatre (May 29-June 16). The interactive monologue was nominated for an Olivier Award and was described by Time Out as a “prodigiously wise, beautiful contemplation of a life.” The Dora Award-winning McGee (The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale) describes the show, which changes nightly based on audience participation, as an exploration of our relationship to mortality. But that may sound a little morose since Age is A Feeling is ultimately an uplifting story about our endless chances to change course while we’re alive.
Playwright Christine Quintana’s El Terremoto is about three Mexican-Canadian sisters coping with the aftereffects of an earthquake. It opens on March 26 at the Tarragon Theatre.Supplied
A large-scale production dealing with existential dread but is mostly a comedy? Tarragon Theatre brings it on (Mar. 26- Apr. 21) by way of El Terremoto, about three Mexican-Canadian sisters coping with the aftereffects of an earthquake. Prolific Dora Award-winning playwright Christine Quintana says her play “is about what matters if nothing matters.” Featuring some of Canada’s most prominent Latinx artists – Marilo Nuñez (founder of the Alameda Theatre), Margarita Valderrama and Monica Garrido Huerta (who just starred in the theatrical hit Universal Childcare) – the nine-member cast, directed by pioneering Latinx theatre artist Guillermo Verdecchia, keeps the play solidly in dramatic comedy category. Some may note one of Quintana’s inspirations for the play, Chekhov’s tragedy comedy-colliding Three Sisters.
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