SPRING AWAKENING – REVIEW OF 2026 SOULPEPPER THEATRE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was a prolific playwright but his work is rarely produced now and the only production of his plays that I have seen was the 1986 staging of Spring Awakening at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto. In 2006 that play was turned into a highly successful musical by Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music) that has been produced around the world. It was performed at the Canon Theatre (as it was known) in Toronto in 2009.

The current staging by Soulpepper at the Young Centre is an adaptation of the play by Paolo Santalucia who also directs the production. It is not an easy play to adapt or to produce. It is a sprawling work with numerous scenes, a busload of characters and references to German education and life in the 1890’s that are incomprehensible without footnotes. Santalucia has eliminated many characters and tightened the drama and humour but it is still a sprawling play, not easy to do. There are 15 actors doing 21 roles.

The play is about the sexual awakening of teenagers in a late 19^th century German town. The adults are creepy or stupid or at the very least caught up in a morality that does not permit a 15-year old to know how children are conceived (deep love of your husband) and  how they are born (the stork brings them).

Santalucia’s adaptation opens with a Latin class where Professor Knochenbruch (Diego Matamoros), thrashing stick in hand, abuses half a dozen students in Latin. He is mean-spirited, dictatorial and sadistic. Diego Matamoros, in a fine performance, gives a frightful image of the teacher. The image of the school system and its victims gets worse, if that is possible, when we meet the Headmaster in a splendid representation of meanness, close-mindedness and arrogance by Daren A. Herbert.

Scene from Spring Awakening. Photo: Dahlia Katz 

But that is a small part of the play. The relationship among the students is the central theme of the play. At age 15 they are in the throes of hormonal growth (a bit belated, I thought). Wendla Bergman (Olivia Neary-Hatton) demands that her mother give her some information about conception and birth Her mother (Liisa Repo-Martell) gives her the then  current lies.

The boys are having wet dreams and are struggling with their attraction to sex that is occurring to them in dreams or masturbation. Melchior (Jake Bunyan) writes an essay about sex and he is attracted to Wendla. They meet and however awkwardly, perhaps not totally consensually have sex and she becomes pregnant. She is not aware of it and is refusing to admit that she is pregnant. That can only happen with your husband and love. The troubled Wendla, performed superbly by Olivia Neary-Hatton is subjected to medical abuse and finally to amateur and fatal abortion.

Melchior is sent to reformatory school for writing about sex and he finds out about Wendla’s fate when he sees her tombstone.

Moritz (Jake Cohen) is a deeply troubled youth who fails an exam and wants to leave for America. He cannot find a way out of his problems and despite the efforts of the decent Ilse (Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu) he chooses to end his life. These are highly dramatic scenes that require and get superb acting.

There are more incidents. Hansy (Noah Beemer) and Ernst (Justin Eddy) discover their homosexual attraction to each other and kiss passionately. Martha (Jasmine Case) is sexually abused by her father.

These are events in a play that the author called “a sunny image of life in every scene of which I tried to exploit an unburdened humor for all it was worth.” There is indeed humour amidst the awful events mentioned above and there is vigorous physical activity and some including fights, some sado-masochistic thrashing and running across the stage.

The set by Shannon Lea Doyle is fluid and easily changeable. It must show a classroom, a cemetery, interiors and exterior scenes and all are handled adroitly.

Santalucia deserves high marks for his adaptation of a difficult play and bringing it to us in a superb production. The numerous scenes and many characters are handled with intelligence and finesse and the result is an excellent production.
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Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind in an adaptation by Paolo Santalucia opened on September 17 and will run until October 18, 2026, at The Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca.

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto

A FINE BALANCE - REVIEW OF 2026 CROW’S THEATRE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

A Fine Balance is a dramatic, disturbing, depressing and enlightening portrayal of a part of life in India in the latter part of the twentieth century. It is based on Rohinton Mistrys’ 1995 novel that has been adapted for the stage by Anosh Irani and is now playing at Crow’s Nest Theatre in Toronto.

The play has four central characters. They are Ishvar (Anand Rajaram), his nephew Omprakash (Ben Yoganathan), Dina (Zorana Sadiq), a businesswoman (who hires the latter two as tailors) and Maneck (Siddharth Sharma), ( a “relative of Dina).

Ishvar and Omprakash are desperately poor tailors travelling by train to the big city to find work and make some money. They belong to the “untouchables” the lowest caste of Indian society which makes them barely human in the eyes of their “superiors’. Ishvar has been pummeled so much in his life that he is apologetic and obsequious, willing to strive to survive on the scraps that he can find in his social stature. Unlike his uncle, the seventeen-year-old Omprakash is cocky and resentful and wants to return to his village rather than seek opportunities in the ugly city.

Dina is the offspring of the middle class who has seen better days, but now as a widow with failing eyesight she runs a dress-making business and hires Ishvar and Omprakash as sewers in her apartment where running a business is illegal. Maneck is the son of a friend of hers and she treats him like family. He is studying to become a heating and refrigeration worker and against all social norms befriend Omprakash.

Scene from  A Fine Balance at Crow's Theatre. Photo: Dahlia Katz/

Ishvar and Omprakash meet Maneck accidentally in the train that is delayed because someone has been killed on the tracks, ( there is another such fatality near the end of the play) and coincidentally all are going to Dina’s house. The image of life in India will be illustrated by numerous incidents in the lives of these people.    

Ibrahim (Husein Madhavji), the landlord’s rent collector comes and threatens to evict Dina because she is running a business out of her apartment.  Ishvar and Omprakash are offered a free radio if they agree to a vasectomy. It is a government measure to reduce  the population explosion. Eventually they are both castrated because the doctor refuses to perform involuntary vasectomies but he can castrate them on the spurious excuse that they have testicular cancer.

Nusswan (Husein Madhavji) is Dina's businesslike brother and Shankar (Madhavji again) is the mysterious beggar who has no hands and no legs but hides some surprises for the other characters.

There are some rays of decency in the wretched lives of the main characters but not enough to redeem the bleakness of their existence or our view of that society. One may look for redemption in the end of the play but I think it is probably illusory or perhaps we may look at it as better than nothing.

As I was watching the depressing depiction of life in India, Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths and Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth kept popping into my head and a line from a documentary about Britain to the effect that the sun never set over the British Empire but for most people of London, the sun never rose.

The acting was superb but unfortunately parts of  dialogues could not be heard and we missed some of the humour.

The main set by Michael Gianfranceso consisted of Dina’s apartment but with minor changes it became a train, a train stop, a flophouse etc., efficient and well done.

Chris Abraham directs a story taken from a 700-page novel with clarity except for the few lines that were lost in the delivery.
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A Fine Balance, an adaptation for the stage of Rohinton Mistry’s novel  by Anosh Irani will run until October 25, 2026, at Crow’s Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario.  http://crowstheatre.com/

James Karas is the Culture editor of The Greek Press, Toronto

OHIO STATE MURDERS – REVIEW OF 2026 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders is playing at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre in Niagara-on-the Lake in an ably acted and very interesting production. Along with its many virtues it does have some less admirable issues. The play has a narrator, Suzanne

Alexander, who talks about her life as a student at Ohio State University in 1949-1950 and in the present as a writer. Sophia Walker plays Suzanne as a young student and a mature writer without any change in costume but with a change in tone when she was young.

The only other character on stage is Robert Hampshire, a young professor of English literature who has a relatively minor but important role compared to Walker. The program lists a recorded cast of Neil Barclay as Dean, Alana Bridgewater as Aunt Lou, Fiona Byrne as Miss Dawson, Sharry Flett as Secretary and Savion Roach as Val. They have brief comments or replies to Suzanne’s narrative. 

Suzanne has a lot tell us and she speaks for most of the 52 minutes that the play lasts without an intermission.

She switches between looking back on her life as a student and speaking as if she were back in 1949. Suzanne is well-dressed, well-spoken and self-assured in telling us her life story. She walks around the stage of the Studio Theatre and faces the audience like an experienced professor facing a class. She tells us about the racism she faced in her youth. Ohio State judged students by their race and black students stayed away from parts of the university and the city.

Sophia Walker and André Morin in Ohio State Murders. 

Photo by Michael Cooper.

Prof. Hampshire who admired her essay on Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles got her pregnant. She had twin girls. He vehemently denied it. She maintains her professional, detached tone and gives few details about important issues.  She mentions almost in passing that she visited “Bobby” in his house twice and a year and a half later one of her daughters was found dead in his neighbourhood. In the same breath she tells us how much she enjoyed discussing Victorian literature with him.

Prof. Hampshire reads some paragraphs from Thomas Hardy along with some turgid criticism and some lines from The Death of Arthur that only English majors should read when trying for a master’s degree.

Suzanne has much to tell but she jumps from past to present and through stories in a disjointed way. She gives specific information about where she walks in the Ohio State campus and jumps back and forth from the crucial story of the murder of her children to less consequential events. The narrative, however well presented, at times sounds  disjointed and crucial information is not provided.

It is a style that Adrienne Kenndy has chosen and it is convenient for maintaining a detached way of a lecture by an alumna many years after her undergraduate days. Memories of racism, unwanted pregnancy and murders are dramatic enough and Sophia Walker delivers it all with superb acting.

One of the reasons Suzanne was invited to speak at her alma mater was to talk about the violent imagery in her work. Bloodied heads, severed limbs, dead father, dead Nazis, dying Jesus. That could be violent imagery but Kennedy does not give us a single example of it. She is asked to talk about her life on campus almost as an afterthought. She talks about the latter in a matter-of-fact way that Kennedy has chosen deliberately no doubt. But there is almost nothing about her violent imagery.

That is my only real complaint about the production and I suppose the play. It is the first play by Adrienne Kenedy that I have seen and kudos go to our local director who is superb in anything he does but I give him extra credit for doing plays by black writers or about blacks.   
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OHO STATE MURDERS  by Adrienne Kennedy will run in repertory until October 3, 2026, at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre as part of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  www.shawfest.com 

James Karas is the Culture Ediitor of The Greek Press, Toronto

AMADEUS – REVIEW OF 2026 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus premiered in London in 1979 and the play has travelled around the world with no intention of slowing down. It is a marvelous story about the fictional rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, one a genius and the other a second-rate composer whose place in the sun was shattered.

The Shaw Festival has given the play a major production directed by its Artistic Director Tim Carroll in the Festival Theatre.

According to Shaffer, Antonio Salieri rose to the position of Court Composer in Emperor Joseph II’s Vienna during the second half of the 18^th century. But he wanted more: to become a great and famous composer. A devout Catholic, he prayed and made a pact with God. If God made him a great composer, he would devote his life to Him and uphold Christian virtues, including abstaining from extramarital affairs.

Mozart arrived on the scene and Salieri composed a march to welcome the already famous child prodigy and composer. Mozart displayed his genius by playing the march and finding it lacking in variety. He quickly transformed it into what will eventually become the famous aria “Non piu andrai” from The Marriage of Figaro.

Salieri developed a hatred for the gauche and vulgar Mozart and the hatred grew into a desire to destroy his competitor. He maligned him to the emperor and prevented Mozart from getting work. He manipulated things so Mozart’s operas were not produced more than a few times or not at all. In the end he watched as Mozart died and announced that he had assassinated him.

Cosette Derome, Tom Rooney, Michael Therriault, David Andrew 

Reid and Kristi Frank in Amadeus. Photo by David Cooper.

Tom Rooney gives a stellar performance as Salieri. We see Salieri at the beginning of the play as an old man 32 years after Mozart’s death in 1791. Among the noises and whispers in Vienna, we hear Salieri asking for Mozart’s forgiveness long after his assassination.  But when Salieri was a young man, he plotted to destroy him. The play rises to the ultimate irony when Salieri’s greatest achievement in evil was to convince Mozart that he was his protector, even his father and Mozart looked on him as his friend and as his father.

Mozart was composing this Requiem Mass and in the apogee of his evil plans, Salieri witnessed the end of Mozart’s life but in the moment of triumph, Salieri realized that in destroying Mozart, he destroyed himself.

The devious, mendacious and duplicitous Salieri garners little sympathy until the very end of the play. He has realized that he is no genius and is just like all of us, mediocre. He is a mediocre composer who is the patron saint of mediocrity. We are all Salieris.

Michael Therriault plays Mozart as a childish, giggling, foulmouthed, dirty-minded man who, in the end, was easily conquered and destroyed by Salieri. His arrogance and lack of social graces made it impossible for him to get work and he ended up destitute. But, as Salieri remarks, there is no need to mourn for him because he is immortal. A fine performance by Therriault.

Graeme Somerville gives us a comic and decent Emperor Joseph who has a short attention span and repeats “there it is” and we don’t know what he means.   

Mozart’s wife Costanze shares some of his crudeness but she is a faithful supporter. She goes as far as to offer her body to Salieri if he can get a job for her husband. Well done by Kristi Frank.

Julia Course and Sochi Fried portray Venticello 1 and 2. Well dressed, they appear throughout the play whispering, editorializing and passing information about what is happening and filling the gaps. It’s a tough job that they do it superbly.

The following are the aristocrats who have power but not necessarily brains in Court politics: Bonno the Court Composer (David Andrew Reid), Baron von Strack, the Royal Chamberlain (Andrew Broderick), Director of the Opera,  Orsini-Rosenberg (Allan Louis), Baron van Swieten (Savion Roach), Prefect of the Imperial Library.

The set by Judith Bowden and the lighting by Kevin Lamotte are disappointing. The stage floor is tilted to the left and there is a platform for people to stand on at the back. There is a rectangular screen above the actors that was dark and displayed bronze colours but I have no idea what it was supposed to represent. Hanging below it was a part of a music staff, the top part covered by the screen. The costumes were gorgeous but the main lighting effect was darkness.  

I have no idea why the stage was not lit more frequently. The play takes place in various locations from the palace to Mozart’s messy apartment and Salieri’s posh quarters. There is a way of representing them without breaking the budget. They chose to do none of that and left us with an unacceptable set and lighting.

Carroll deserves credit for his presentation of the play and making us think in detail about Shaffer’s stunning imagination.
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Amadeus by Peter Shaffer continues in repertory until October 4, 2026, at the Festival Theatre, 10 Queen’s Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com/

James Karas is the Culture Editor  of The Greek Press, Toronto

SATURDAY, SUNDAY, MONDAY – REVIEW OF 2026 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Saturday, Sunday, Monday is a lovely play by Eduardo De Filippo that has been adapted by Antoni Cimolino and Donato Santeramo for this year’s Stratford Festival program. It is about an extended Napolitan family preparing for a dinner on Saturday, eating and arguing on Saturday and coming to terms with some outrageous conduct on Monday.

The new English version was commissioned by the Festival and it is directed by Cimolino, the outgoing Artistic Director and it is his last directorial job nicely complemented by his task as co-adapter. He has assembled an all-star cast and Thalia, the Muse of comedy, smiled on him and the production. Dionysus may have helped but the god of the theatre was a violent sort and I prefer the gentle Thalia.

It is Saturday in Naples in 1959 and Rosa, (Rose Napoli) the matriarch of the Priore family is preparing dinner for about a dozen people on Sunday. She runs the kitchen like boot camp and when the maid Virgina (Jenna-Lee Hyde) suggests that she has peeled enough onions for the ragu, the retort comes in. Are you going to teach me how to make ragu. Virgina has a slightly unhinged brother, Michele (Liam Tobin) who has some violent tendencies and she asks for a day off to look after him. Rosa’s answer is NO!

There is palpable tension between Rosa and her husband Peppino (Graham Abbey) and it will explode on Sunday. Let’s get a sense of the family. Rosa and Peppino have three children. Roberto (Jakob Ehman) who is married to Maria Carolina (Celia Aloma), Rocco (Emilio Viera) and Giulianella (Katarina Fiallos) who is engaged to Federico (Maher Sinno).

Antonio Piscopo (Rod Beattie) is Rosa’s father and the oldest dinner guest. Peppino has a brother Raffaele (Geraint Wyn Davies) and a sister Amelia “Meme” (Seana McKenna) who in turn has a son Attlio (Josue Laboucane). 

The cast of Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Photo: David Hou

We are close to getting a complete inventory. The neighbor Luigi (Gordon S. Miller) becomes a key participant in the dinner because Peppino suspects him of having an affair with Rosa, his wife Elena (Michelle Giroux) is with him and we have short visits by the Catiello the tailor (David Collins) and Cefercola the doctor (Michael Wamara).

That is a lot of people but they add to the drama and comedy of the play and deserve to be mentioned and appreciated.

The humour, gentle, rough, aggressive, on Sunday it breaks off completely when Peppino accuses the accountant Luigi of having an affair with Rosa. There is an outburst of emotional and an outpouring of hidden pain that are simply extraordinary. There is competition among them, there are family differences and arguments but there is also love and family pride.

The play touches on social issues such as the place of women in Italian society. The self-assured and self-educated Amelia of Seana McKenna castigates her brother Peppino for his sloppy language. He writes heart without an “e” she tells him and she advises Giulianella to apply for a job as an announcer  at a television station. Frederico objects and she calls him an idiot.

Napoli and Abbey deliver superb performances as Rosa and Peppino, the warring couple. There may be many reasons for their fighting but it may be a mid-marriage crisis that boils over. De Filippo finds atonement and reconciliation for them. 

Rod Beattie shuffles across the stage with a walker that I am not sure is part of the script. His performance is steady but Walt of Wingfield Farm is capable of much more. Seana McKenna is at her usual best and the cast is superb.

The humour is like a pot of water on the stove. It gets warm and then it starts slowly to bubble until it comes to a full boil or to a comedic crescendo in the play. It boils over in the second act in an extraordinary dramatic scene. The third act is saved for accountability, atonement, reconciliation and a satisfactory exit.

Douglas Paraschuk’s sets of the kitchen, the dining room and the Priore house of a successful family in 1950’s Naples look excellent as does Michael Walton’s lighting.

Notably this is Antoni Cimolino’s first collaboration as an adapter of a play and his last job as a director on the eve of his departure as the Artistic Director of The Stratford Festival. I salute him warmly for his achievements, including 39 years at the Stratford Festival and his accomplishments around the world.

Hail and Farewell.
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Saturday, Sunday, Monday by Eduardo De Filippo, adapted by Antoni Cimolino and Donato Santeramo continues in repertory at the Stratford Festival until October 24, 2026, at the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St. Stratford, Ont. www.stratfordfestival.ca/

James Karas is the Culrure Editor of The Greek Press

THE KING JAMES BIBLE PLAY – REVIEW OF 2026 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

In 1605 King James of England and Scotland appointed 47 scholars to translate both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. They did, and in 1611 their translations were published and eventually became known as the King James Version or the King James Bible. It was the most influential translation and  its language was so powerful that Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers used it for their prose translation of the  Iliad in the late 19^th century.

Writing a play about the translation from Hebrew and Greek of ancient texts by four translators at first blush appears quixotic but Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman manages to produce an interesting play at  least in the first half. She has chosen John Bois (Gray Powell), John Perrin (Michael Spencer-Davis), George Abbot (Rylan Wilkie) and Sir Henry Savile (Cyrus Lane) as translators together with the latter’s son Willie (Steven Hao) as their scribe. Set in the 17^th century, that is the first half of the play. 

The seconds half has five women putting on a play today, involving the characters in the first half of the play.

A play about searching for the right English word to correspond to the original Hebrew or Greek, even if it involves four people, presents serious dramatic limitations. Cobreil-Coleman adds personal issues in individual lives and among the characters to create drama. Arguing over the translation of a Greek word will not a play make.

Sir Henry has issues with his son because he is not his son. His wife was pregnant when he married her. Archbishop Abbot is a stentorian orator who delivers sermons as if he were addressing a rally in a stadium. No need for a microphone even if it existed then. Bois has problems with his wife and Sir Henry counsels him to teach her how to read. Sir Henry tells us about his intimate relations with his wife. To wit, he does not like mixing his perspiration with hers! It is pathetic and funny when one imagines his intimate contact with her.

From left: Vivien Endicott-Douglas as Han, Liz Der as Roni,
Angel Lo as Anna, Sara Topham as Cath and Deborah Hay
 as Martie, The King James Bible Play. Stratford Festival 2026. 
Photo: David Hou.

Bishop Abbot has never been to the theatre (it is sinful) but he and Willie decide to enact a scene between Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary.

What about translating the Bible? Oh, yes. What about the word witch? There are references to witchcraft in the Old and New Testaments and none of them have anything positive to say about them. Kill them seems to be the message but some of the translators consider witchcraft bovine feces (my interpretation). The King is a fervent believer in witchcraft and he was responsible for the torture of hundreds of women who refused to admit that they were witches. He also likes watching women being burned at the stake and he was responsible for the execution of thousands of women. That is my addendum and it is not in the play.

The first half of the play was done well and I enjoyed it. I found inherent interest in the translation of the Bible and the personal differences among the translators to appreciate the play and the performance.

From left: Cyrus Lane as Sir Henry Savile, Gray Powell as John Bois,

Steven Hao as Willie, Rylan Wilkie as George Abbot and 

Michael Spencer-Davis as John Perrin, The King James Bible Play. 

Stratford Festival 2026. Photo: David Hou.

The second half was not as successful. The five women in the cast, Roni (Liz Der), Han (Vivien Endicott-Douglas), Martie (Deborah Hay), Anna (Angel Lo) and Cath (Sara Topham) displayed abundant and impressive acting talent. They are putting on a play about the men of the previous act. Do they represent the men or their wives? They are under extreme pressure to proceed with the production and that creates some emotional outbursts.

Deborah Hay, the founder and tough director of the theatre company, gives a superb performance. Han is her daughter (Sir Henry and Willie parallel). There are violent arguments and the women as the men of the 17^th century or their wives are clearly more emotional than the men. Topham gives an amazing emotional scene as Cath.

Sir Henry and George Abbot make appearances in the second part of the play and I am not sure why.

Nina Lee Aquino did a fine job directing the first half but was not as successful with the second half.

In the end I was left with a memorable line that goes something like this: Puritans love God with all their soul and hate people with all their heart.
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The King James Bible Play by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman opened on August 21 and will run in repertory until September 26, 2026, at the Studio Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto

THE TAO OF THE WORLD – REVIEW OF 2026 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Jovanni Sy’s play The Tao of the World is described in the Stratford Festival’s 2026 Guide as a “Restoration comedy for modern times.” It is supposed to be inspired by William Congreve’s The Way of the World. I am not sure about all that but it is irrelevant.

The play is set among the wealthy people of Singapore. The theatre-in-the-round Tom Patterson does not allow for opulent sets but we are dealing with the upper crust. Five of the leading characters are Chinese and many are British-educated. A note in the script informs us that parts of the play are performed in Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, Indonesian, Singaporean, Hokkien and Tagalog.

That’s seven languages.

The performance opens with a lively, indeed exuberant Arabella (played with zeal by  Agnes Tong)  who grabs the attention of the audience and tells us that the play is the story of how she married the love of her life, Edward Lim (Angus Yam). She is self-assured, vocally commanding and a woman who gets what she wants. Edward is a premier cricketer, a fashion star, a singer and a movie star. As Arabelle describes Edward, he struts across the stage taking poses as a cricketer, singer etc. and generating laughs from a receptive audience.

Arabella is in love with Edward and she is open to a session of shagging but there are two impediments to the event: Edward is practicing celibacy and he is in love with Arabella’s cousin Millicent (Heidi Sy Damayo). He met her on social media and has never seen her in person but he will. The very young and innocent Millicent shows up ready to get to “know” Edward and in fact she has made a reservation at a swank hotel to make sure that her acquaintance has biblical proportions. When Edward refuses to go there, she decides to go to the hotel by herself and find sexual fulfillment alone.

We have just started with the plot complications. The imperious Lady Helena (Manami Hara) must approve Millicent’s marriage to Edward, whom she hates. Dr. Wilson Wong (Michael Man), a Chinese Canadian is a much better choice if you ignore or are unaware of his sexual proclivity. Lady Helena may be more amenable if she has coitus with a monk. Who can find one? Devan (Karthik Kadam) and Jackson (Derek Kwan) have a special problem: they are homosexuals in a country where it is illegal. And what about the Englishman Trevor Flynn (Tim Campbell) who is married to Arabella?

Members of the company, The Tao of the World. 
Stratford Festival 2026. Photo: David Hou.

Arabella frequently speaks directly to the audience and one of best lines is about Eleanor (Sara- Jeanne Hosie), an English lady described as Lady Helena’s lapdog. Arabella tells us that she has had a lot of work done and her latest procedure was surgically attaching her lips to her Ladyship’s arse. 

There are many revelations to be disclosed. Why does Lady Helena hate Edward? What human failings does that gorgon have? How virginal is Millicent? Money, sex and social status are the prime concerns in this society.

Set Designer Lorenzo Savoini has limited choices in his set design. Moveable pieces of furniture are about all he can give us in the Toma Patterson Theatre. Ming Wong provides elegant costumes for the upper upper crust and less ostentatious ones for hoi polloi. The lighting design by Sophie Tang is used judiciously for different scenes including the indication of speaking directly to the audience.   

Director and author Sy sets a comic, at times farcical, at times satiric pace with quick speech and plenty of gestures that may have been a part of Restoration comedy.  

I have given a positive summary of what I saw on opening night. Unfortunately, there are some negatives. The setting of Singapore with British-educated Chinese is terra incognita, I presume, to most of the audience.  Speaking for myself, I am not sure of the context of the play. If I knew that, the geographical place would be no issue. The accents were unrecognizable and, in many instances, sounded just bad. Speaking in half a dozen languages did not help. At times parts of the dialogue were incomprehensible. Sy is a Canadian and the Stratford Festival deserves kudos for producing his plays. In this case some attention to some details may have resulted in a resounding complaints-less production.
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The Tao of the World by Jovanni Sy opened on August 20, and will run in repertory until September 26, 2026, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ont. https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto