THE WELKIN – REVIEW OF 2025 SOULPEPPER PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The Welkin is a brilliant and complex play by Lucy Kirkwood. It premiered in London in 2020 and it deals with the fate of Sally Poppy (Bahia Watson), a young woman convicted of murdering a child in England in 1759. Her conviction takes place before the play begins and the only remaining issue is her sentence. Normally she would be hanged but she claims to be pregnant and if that is true, her death sentence would be commuted to transportation, that is, being shipped to America.

The question of her pregnancy is to be decided by a jury of twelve women from all walks of life. They meet in a dingy room adjacent to the courtroom in the presence of Mr. Coombes (Craig Lauzon), the bailiff. That is the central plot but Kirkwood adds subplots and twists not least of which is 1759, the year Halley’s Comet appeared, and a myriad of feminist issues and upheavals in eighteenth century England. The twelve jurors Sally and the bailiff are on stage throughout most of the play and Kirkwood provides some splendid opportunities for stunning acting. 

The play opens on an almost bare stage showing twelve women in 18^th century clothes by Costume Designer Michelle Tracey doing traditional housework like scrubbing floors, beating a rug, changing a baby, carrying pails of water on a yoke, making bread, mending clothes etc. These twelve women will form the jury that decides Sally’s fate.

In the cold and unpleasant jury room, there is a window and we hear the mob outside yelling and baying to witness the execution. Effective sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne. Sally is angry, uncooperative and bitchy. But there is another side to her as a tortured human being. The jurors have doubts about her claim to pregnancy and seem prepared to have her executed. All except Elizabeth Luke (Mayko Nguyen), a widowed midwife who is having an affair with the bailiff. Initially she does not want to join the jury and there are interesting facts in her background. I do not want to reveal everything for fear of spoiling some of the plot twists.

Elizabeth stands by her conviction that Sally is pregnant. One juror facing the other eleven should remind you of Twelve Angry Men, the play and the movie to which The Welkin is clearly related. The twelve jurors of this play represent twelve stories and Kirkwood relates a significant number of them. Most are interesting but I found it difficult to follow all of them. One issue in an otherwise stellar production was hearing all that was said and at times a failure to enunciate. In a play that raises so many feminist issues, the women decide that a man, a male doctor should be called to examine Sally. Dr. Willis (Cameron Lauris), a sympathetic gentleman, performs the examination. 

Bahia Watson (left) and the cast. Photo by Dahlia Katz

The leading characters are Sally and Elizabeth. Sally left  her husband and took up with her lover for four months. She returned to her husband covered in blood and told him that she was pregnant by her lover. Her lover was was convicted and executed for participating in the murder. She is convicted of brutally murdering a young girl and the play unravels her past as the jury tries to decide whether to send her to the gallows or to America. Kirkwood humanizes Sally by letting her describe her life as a servant dreaming of a lover who arrives on horseback, takes her to the fields and they make wild love. Bahia Watson gives a stellar performance.

Nguyen as Elizabeth does not want to become a juror (for good reason we find out later) but she is forced to do it and is appointed jury foreman. She is a strong character who withstands the disagreement of the eleven jurors and we follow her to a stunning but perhaps ambiguous end. A powerful and emotionally charged  performance.

Raquel Duffy as Sarah Hollis has a horrific scene describing giving birth in the woods. She is visited by a woman who helps her and Sarah thinks the woman is the She-Devil. Duffy’s description is one example of the several scenes that Kirkwood has written giving actors marvelous opportunities for superlative performances.

Mr. Coombes is a relatively minor character, but he erupts into a shocking bout of violence that is painful to watch.

The other jurors are Judith (Olunike Adeliyi), Peg (Ghazal Azarbad), Kitty (Nadine Bhabha), Mary (Brefny Caribou), Sarah Smith (Kyra Harper), Charlotte Cary (Fiona Highet), Emma (Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster), Hannah (Annie Lujan), Helen (Hallie Seline), and Ann (Natasha Mumba). Some are relatively minor roles but Fiona Highet gives a stunning performance as the would-be aristocratic and sarcastic Charlotte Cary (she is really a servant)  and other actors who have emotionally charged scenes.

The set design by Julie Fox is splendid,

Director Weyni Mengesha had to deal with sixteen actors on stage most of the time and she orchestrated their movements and emotional levels in a masterly fashion. It is not an easy play to direct and at times to follow. Kirkwood’s language is earthy, muscular and powerful. There are some old English expressions that you may not get but there is no harm done. The actors could speak in different English accents reflecting their social status and local origin in 1759 but that is probably all but impossible to achieve. If there was any attempt at that, I did not notice it.

This powerful drama is Mengesha’s last production as Artistic Director of Soulpepper. Hail and Farewell.   

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The Welkin by Lucy Kirkwood in a production by Soulpepper, Crow’s Theatre and the Howland Company, opened on September 11 and continues until October 5, 2025, at The Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca 

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

BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Pearl Cleage’s play, Blues for an Alabama Sky  premiered in Atlanta Georgia in 1995 and has been produced in theatres around the United States as well as the United Kingdom. This is its first production in Canada. The play is set in 1930 depression era Harlem, New York and covers a broad spectrum of issues touching the black community of the era.

It has five characters. There is Guy Jacobs (Stewart Adam McKensy) the exuberant, talented, gay and optimistic gown designer whose aim is to make it to Paris. He has just been fired from his job at a club. McKensy gives a delightfully stellar performance, The stunning looking Angel Allen (Virgilia Griffith) is a backup blues singer in a bar. She was having an affair with the owner, a mobster, and was fired when she realised, she was being used. She was working in the same bar as Guy and they live in the same apartment. Griffin defines Angel as a woman of beauty and ambition who is used and abused by men and must compromise so she can survive,

Delia (Mary Antonini) lives in the same building and in the Shaw Festival production they have almost adjoining apartments. She is a social worker, working in a family planning clinic. Antonini is superb as Delia, the soul of decency. When Angel is left without a job, Delia offers to teach her to become a typist and earn her daily bread.

Sam Thomas (Allan Louis) is a doctor in a Harlem hospital and like Delia, a man of humanity. Well done by Louis. Leland Cunningham (JJ Gerber) is a recent arrival from Alabama who is attracted to Angel and she accepts him as her lover because of her strained finances. He is a bigot who cannot accept Guy’s homosexuality and is literally violent against abortion. They are all black. 

l to r: Mary Antonini as Delia Patterson, JJ Gerber as 

Leland Cunningham, Virgilia Griffith as Angel Allen, 

Stewart Adam McKensy as Guy Jacobs and Allan Louis 

as Sam Thomas Blues for an Alabama Sky (Shaw Festival, 2025). 

Photo by David Cooper.

In Guy we see a a man full of life, fearlessly optimistic and dreaming of the ultimate symbol and reality of success – getting work in Paris. In the meantime, he is generous to Angel and helps her financially and wants her to go with him to Paris. Delia plans to open a family planning clinic but the building that she wanted to rent is bombed.

Angel finds out that she is pregnant with Leland’s baby but is not sure she wants the baby at all. Sam performs an abortion but she pretends that she “lost” the baby. Eventually she tells Leland the truth with disastrous consequences.

The play is more than the story of these five people in Harlem in 1930. It is a portrait of the lives of blacks who encounter prejudice, social problems, racism and at times the difficulty of survival. Cleage has crafted the play carefully and realistically without melodramatics. The characters are shown drinking excessively even in Prohibition America but they retain their humanity and their dreams.

The production is meticulously directed by Kimberley Rampersad who gives us well-defined people who love, laugh, enjoy parts of life and live in hard times with the attendant difficulties exacerbated by the color of their skin. The performances by the five actors are superb.

The sets by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart need to make the design suitable for the theatre-in-the-round Studio Theatre. She uses an open concept for the apartments of Delia and Guy with minimal props and skeletal separation among the rooms occupied by the characters.   
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Blues For An Alabama Sky  by Pearl Cleage will run in repertory until October 4,  2025, 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 Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto

FORGIVENESS - REVIEW OF 2025 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Forgiveness is a play by Hiro Kamagawa based on Mark Sakamoto’s book FORGIVENESS: A Gift from My Grandparents that was published in 2014. The play premiered in Vancouver in 2022.

The play tells the horrific stories of the treatment of Canadians of Japanese origin during World War II and later and the treatment of Canadian soldiers in Hong Kong and Japan who were prisoners of war. I refuse to hyphenate Canadians because that makes them second class citizens. A Japanese Canadian or Japanese-Canadian (or Italian-Canadian or Greek-Canadian with or without a hyphen) is somehow not as good as an unhyphenated Canadian. Never hyphenate your Canadianism. If asked or your accent makes it obvious that you were not raised in Canada, you may tell them your country of origin but never let them call you a hyphenated Canadian.

Canadians of Japanese descent had a lot more to worry about in British Columbia after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Their Canadian status and their legal rights as permanent residents or citizen were trampled on and they were put in concentration camps, their property was confiscated and they did not see justice, if you can call it that,  for decades after the war was over.

All of this was not done by Canadian bigots or small-minded people though there was no shortage of them. The decisions were made at the highest levels of government by people who knew or should have known exactly what was happening. What kind of people did we have in government in power or the civil service who ordered such barbarity and inhumane treatment of innocent people? (You can start with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King who was an antisemite.)

The racist policy against the Japanese did not end with the war but lasted until 1948. They were given a choice of moving east of the Rockies or being deported to Japan. Most of them were Canadian citizens and many had never lived in Japan. Oh, yes, Canada apologized for its inhumanity in 1988  and made some reparations. Count the years between 1942 and 1988 and bow your head in shame. 

Jeff Lillico as Ralph with Yoshie Bancroft as Mitsue 

in Forgiveness. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

There is a parallel story of the barbarity against the Japanese that the play illustrates with unerring precision. Canadian soldiers were taken prisoners of war after the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941. As Ralph (Jeff Lillico) one of the main characters in Forgiveness states he fought for two and a half weeks and was a POW for three and a half years. Ralph  lied about his age to enlist and he and his friends Deighton (Joe Perry) and Coop (Gabriel Antonaci) ended up as POWs.

There were about 2000 Canadians whose treatment in the prison and labour camps in Japan beggars the imagination. The play illustrates part of that treatment through commandant Kato (Hiro Kanagawa). Ralph is assigned as a servant to the unhinged, sadistic and alcoholic Kato but survives almost miraculously. His friends do not and Ralph has nightmares about their fate.

The leading characters that take us through the parallel stories are Ralph and Mitsue Sakamoto  (Yoshie Bancroft). The play has more than forty characters played by 13 actors and covers a period of from the late 1930’s to 1968. The action moves back and forth chronologically over forty years and it becomes difficult to follow, not to say confusing. The actors take on numerous roles making it difficult to follow some of them. Steven Hao plays eight roles!

There is a rich use of projections with original illustrations and animations by Cindy Mochizuki handled by Projection Designer Sammy Chien. The Set and Costumes by Lorenzo Savoini are marvellous but watching for details in the theatre-in-the-round Tom Patterson is difficult. And we have the sound design by Olivia Wheeler and the lighting by Kaileigh Krysztofiak and we are loaded to the gills with things to follow and hopefully absorb.

Ralph’s daughter Diane (Allison Lynch) marries Ron Sakamoto, the son of Mitsue Sakamoto. Ralph) makes his daughter promise to name her son Mark. She is not pregnant but  she does promise. Her son Mark is the author of the book and the reason for the name is Ralph’s reference to the Gospel of Mark. It is what he refers to when Deighton and Coop accuse him of not trying hard enough to save them. He reads to them from Mark: “And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father…may forgive you your trespasses.”  

The play ends on a note of grace and some humour. Ralph and his wife Phyllis (Jacklyn Francis) have dinner with the Sakamoto family. It is the ultimate symbol of reconciliation.

But looking at the treatment Canadians meted on the Japanese and the Japanese on Canadian soldiers, is forgiveness possible or desirable. There is the racism of people in power who disregarded all human decency, compassion and legal rights by ordering innocent people’s lives to be destroyed. Was there any evidence that they regretted their actions to merit forgiveness? The ruling class embraced and enforced racist laws that caused immeasurable pain. Can one who lived under those conditions forgive the perpetrators. On what basis does one forgive?

Can we judge from the comfort of our office? That’s a question of morality that may have little to do with review of a production.

In any event, Forgiveness is a major theatrical event that has the added punch of covering a hugely important part of Canadian history. One may quibble with aspects of the production (or its morality for that matter) but we owe a debt of gratitude to Kanagawa and Sakamoto for bringing it to our attention in grand theatrical fashion.
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Forgiveness by Hiro Kanagawa adapted from the memoir Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents by Mark Sakamoto contributes to September 27, 2025, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The reek Press, Toronto

DANGEROUS LIAISONS – REVIEW OF 2025 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Christopher Hampton’s exquisite play of wit, style and cruelty, Dangerous Liaisons, is back in Stratford fifteen years after its last production at the Stratford Festival. The play is based on Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses about the French nobility before the French Revolution. It makes for frightful and riveting theatre.

Two French aristocrats, Le Vicomte de Valmont (Jesse Gervais) and La Marquise de Merteuil (Jessica B. Hill) are polished, civilized and well-behaved people who happen to have a penchant for revenge and destroying lives for the fun of it. But it is all done with style, subtlety and panache. 

The Marquise and Valmont were lovers, but the relationship fell apart. Now she wants to get even with Madame de Volanges (Nadine Villasin) by having Valmont seduce her teenage daughter Cecile (Ashley Dingwel) who just left the convent. She is innocent, naïve, pretty and pure. Valmont, a man of the world with extensive experience with women, considers the task beneath his talents and rejects the proposal.

Valmont has his eye on a more difficult and desirable target. He wants to seduce Madame de Tourvel, (Celia Aloma) who is beautiful, religious, virtuous, and faithful to her husband. He wants more than a simple sexual conquest. He wants to conquer her while she keeps her virtues intact and falls in love with him and gives herself to him. In short, he wants to destroy her moral world and destroy her completely when he has sex with her and rejects her. This will require brilliant tactics, persuasive powers and fraud on a massive scale. He has the amoral and intellectual capacity to achieve total victory.

Madame Volanges has spoken ill of him and Valmont decides to seduce the hapless Cecile. He uses his usual cunning to achieve that while pretending to help her with a budding relationship with the young Chevalier Danceny.

Merteuil and Valmont have a complex relationship that he tries to rekindle but she holds him at arme’s length. She promises a night with him if he brings written proof of his conquest of Tourvel. Merteuil is crueler than Valmont, if that is possible.

From Left: Nadine Villasin as Madame de Volange, 
Jessica B. Hill as La Marquise de Merteuil and 
Seana McKenna as Madame de Rosemonde in 
Dangerous Liaisons. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou

Valmont seduces Cecile but director Esther Jun censors the scene. The directions for the scene in the text indicate that Valmont places his hand where he shouldn’t, he takes his hand away as Cecile stares in amazement. You can imagine the rest but Jun finishes the scene before we get to the climax.

The production takes us through most of the text but its success is mixed. There are some lively, dramatic scenes laced with humour. But there are also scenes where the production is flat. Some of the dialogue is not heard and that is inexcusable. The old rule that the actors should speak to the last row in the theatre is not always followed.

Hill’s Merteuil shows her metal as a liberated woman who does not take orders from men and her evil side of wanting revenge against all who cross her including Valmont. Vilasin’s  Volange is also effective as the would-be upstanding mother who has a checkered past in bedroom experiences.

Gervais as Valmont and Aloma as Tourvel lack the passion, real or pretended, that we expect. At times they appear almost flat. Did Jun simply allow that? It’s hard to go wrong with Liaisons but you can do a lot better. And the word censorship should not be heard there. If your sensibilities are that delicate, stay home.

The play is a condemnation of the French aristocracy on the eve of the revolution that was about to deservedly decimate them. Hampton calls for the appearance of the silhouette of a guillotine that should be breathtaking. In this production we get the appearance of a small guillotine that was almost invisible.  
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Dangerous Liaisons by Christopher Hampton opened on August 22 and will run until October 25, 2025, at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Prees, Toronto

MURDER-ON-THE-LAKE – REVIEW OF 2025 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

Murder-on-the-Lake is a “Spontaneous Theatre Creation by Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak” (that is how it is billed) that had its world premiere at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Some details please. An audience member is chosen and “interviewed” as a potential detective to solve the mystery of a murder. He gives us his occupation and is allowed to use that as a cover while doing his investigation into whodunnit. A different audience member is chosen for each  performance and on the date, I saw the play it was Brian.

The first scene takes place in the office of the Niagara Regional Police Department where the prospective volunteer for the stage and as detective is interviewed. His real name is Brian and that is all I will reveal. He is told that the play has thirteen characters played by eight actors because that is all they could afford. He is introduced to the idea of doubling in the theatre. He is given a detective’s badge and sent to Butler’s Island Bed and Breakfast where the murder occurred one year ago.

In a beautifully furnished room, we meet the people who were at the Bed and Breakfast a year ago and are gathered again for a memorial service for Jan, the murder victim. Brian is miked to communicate with HQ and searches for clues around the room and interviews the four guests to pinpoint the murderer. There are some clues. Jan’s ghost, unseen by anyone other than Brian, appears to help with the investigation but she recalls almost nothing. She was murdered by a fruit of a plant that makes her death look like a heart attack.

The cast of Murder-on-the-Lake (Shaw Festival, 2025). 

Photo by Michael Cooper.

There are suspects, of course, the most  obvious being her husband. They were married for a few hours when she died and he has ended up as a millionaire. Clearly a motive for snuffing her. 

Brian is the star of the show. He is on stage throughout the show while the eight actors come on and off the stage. He must adlib his role throughout and he is hilarious. The audience knows that he is an amateur thrown on the stage without any preparation and finds most of his lines hysterical. The actors must improvise around his lines and the result is highly entertaining.

The eight actors are Kristopher Bowman, Cosette Derome, Sochi Fried, Virgilia Griffith, Martin Happer, Bruce Horak, Rebecca Northan and Travis Seeto. Creator Northan also directs the show.

The actors take on different parts at random for each performance and the show is never the same because so much depends on the volunteer and the replies that he/she inspires. The actors have to be on their toes and come up with funny replies. The detective mentioned the United States and an actor said she does like the U.S. Someone lost a lot of money by investing in Tesla. The audience roared.

Much of the entertainment relies on a very friendly audience that wants to laugh and support the volunteer on the stage. They would not be that friendly without him and the show works up to uproarious applause of appreciation.

Judithe Bowden’s set shows a well-appointed room in the Bed and Breakfast. John Gzowski’s original music and sound design gives us thunder and lightning in the background and music appropriate for a murder mystery. Jeff Pybus helps with the lighting design to create the right atmosphere as we look for the murderers.

Rose Tavormina dresses the actors in primary colour outfits because they do not know what role they will be playing.   

And great fun was had by everyone.
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Murder-on-the-Lake created by Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak continues in repertory until October 4, 2025, at the Royal George Theatre, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

James Karas is the Senior Ector, Culture, of The Greek Pres, Toronto

RANSACKING TROY – REVIEW OF 2025 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed James Karas 

Ransacking Troy is a new play by Erin Shields that premiered on August 21, 2025, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, as part of the Stratford Festival. It is a brilliant play that received an outstanding production with a superb cast directed by the master director, Jackie Maxwell. That is quite a collection of superlatives, and my rave review may find a few more. If you see the production, you may come up with a few of your own.

The play is about the mythical Trojan War but with a fundamental difference. It shows the uprising of the women of Greece, the wives, children and a few others who are fed up with the ten-year struggle and decide to put an end to it. Enough of heroes like Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon fighting for glory and booty (with comfort women in their tents) while their wives take care of everything in Greece.

Led by Penelope (Maev Beaty), the wife of Odysseus, the women decide to go to Troy and put an end to the destructive lunacy that has drawn on for ten years. We get urgency, disagreement and hilarity as they find a ship and row across the Aegean Sea to Troy. They recall the abduction of Helen of Sparta irreverently with a limerick that continues with her batting her eyes like a tarta and attracting Paris to slide her smooth thighs aparta.

They recall the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra for the sake of good winds to launch a thousand ships to Troy. Agamemnon the king of kings and Achilles, the greatest warrior fight over Chryseis, a war trophy. Agamemnon is forced to give her up and takes Achilles’s prize Briseis. Hence the anger of Achilles that dominates the Trojan War.

There is drama, humour and physical activity as the women get behind the oars and make their way to Troy. They need to prepare to impersonate men. They put on beards and imitate the mannerisms of men including scratching their crotches. Hilarious.

The play has thirty-three characters played by nine actors, all women, of course. You can do your own arithmetic about how many roles each actor plays, but don’t waste your time. You will have no difficulty following the plot. I will not name all the parts that each actor plays but will give you a couple of examples. Sarah Topham plays Aegiale (the wife of King Diomedes), the Cowering Woman, King Diomedes and the gorgeous Helen of Troy, a sight to behold as she comes down the aisle through the audience in a spectacular gown.

From Left: Irene Poole as Clytemnestra and Maev Beaty
 as Penelope in Ransacking Troy. Stratford Festival 2025. 
Photo: David Hou.

Ijeoma Emesowum plays Psamathe, the hilarious goddess of sandy beaches as well as Briseis, Trojan Soldier, Antilochus, Circe and Cassandra.

The Greek women settle the war and head back to Greece but run into some problems. They encounter the Lotus Eaters, the goddess Circe who turns people into pigs, the Cyclops, the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. Yes, they are the same ones that Odysseus will encounter on his return.

The women make it back and they discuss what needs to be done. They want a radical transformation of society. Equality for women and a stop to their being slaves to the men who go to war for glory and loot. That message is not only for the women of Bronze Age Greece but for today’s people. The end is bitingly ironic as the women decide which way to proceed.

The performances by the nine actors are superb and I will name them all without enumerating all the roles that they play. Maev Beaty plays Penelope, the leader of the women, with commanding assurance and persuasive ability. She is outstanding. Irene Poole plays the powerful and bitter Clytemnestra whose husband sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia for the war. She has anger and determination and a bitterly ironic finish.

Helen Belay plays Electra and the priest Chryses who begs for the release of his daughter Chryseis. We hear the encounter of the thirteen-year-old girl after Agamenon gets possession of her.  

Sarah Dodd has six roles including Galax, the half-sister of the great warrior Ajax. She is a fighter like him.

Caitlyn MacInnes plays a decidedly working-class character, Cur, the daughter of a boat builder. Yanna McIntosh plays two powerful women, Euridice, the wife of Nestor and Hecuba, the wife of King Priam of Troy. A performance to behold.

Marissa Orjalo plays Hermione, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Helen who abandoned her for Paris when she (Hermione) was five years old.

They all perform superbly, and my few words of praise are not sufficient to express the high quality of their acting.

The set and costumes designed by Judith Bowden are perfect for the production. There are easily moveable benches that can be lined up for the women to become rowers. The simple costumes can belong to almost any age as does the theme of the play. The lighting by Michael Walton, the music by Deanna H. Choi and the sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne combine splendidly for the storms and fights.

The number of actors representing a large variety of characters in Greece, Troy and locations across the Aegean Sea in rowing like crazy calm waters and sea storms like passing through Scylla and Charybdis pose huge problems. Enter the magical solver, director Jackie Maxwell. Her dealing with all issues from the position of each character to the overall control of the humour and drama of the play is a masterpiece of directing.

Theatre at its best.

Ransacking Troy by Erin Shields opened on August 21 and will play until September 28, 2025, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.

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

THE ART OF WAR – REVIEW OF 2025 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

There is a story about the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Following the performance, an audience member inquired about the meaning of the dance. Pavlova replied that “if I could say what it meant, I would not have danced it.” This story came to mind while watching The Art of War, a new play by Yvette Nolan that premiered at the Stortford Festival’s Studio Theatre on August 20, 2025.

The Art of War does not refer to strategy and tactics to help soldiers kill people and achieve conquests. It is about painting scenes of conflicts to communicate the brutality and horrors of war on canvas. The main character is Nick, an artist from Nova Scotia, who is with the Canadian army in World War II and is an appointed army artist. He believes that he can capture and communicate the suffering and terror of war by painting it better than photographs and films.

The photographer is called simply Nick (Josue Laboucane), a simple soldier with a love of painting and the conviction that a painting can be a powerful and deeper portrait than any other form. We believe him when he says that.

His friend Newman (Jordin Hall) visits him on the otherwise empty stage of the Studio Theatre. Nick sketches a painting of Newman in a heroic pose, but his friend is shot by the enemy and dies. His death is temporary because Newman appears several times after that alive, but not remembering the past, and he is “killed” again. We are not sure about what is happening, but Nick may be imagining his friend as still alive. If there are other clues about Newman’s fate and Nick’s imagination, I did not get them.

A woman named Magda (Jenna-Lee Hyde) limps into Nick’s space. She is hungry, fearful and desperate. Nick gives her a chocolate bar and later more food. He sketches her as well and she is a perfect example of the fate of innocent civilians in times of war. She probably ends up in a concentration camp and we see a horrifying image of her in the end.    

Eva (Julie Lumsden), a singer who entertains the troops, appears. Perhaps she represents the lighter side of military life but in war it is hard to find a lighter side. 

From Left: Jordin Hall as Newman and Josue Laboucane as 
Nick in The Art of War. Stratford Festival 2025. 
Photo: David Hou.

Dennis (Rylan Wilkie), a professional photographer and film taker appears, and he defends that what he does is the best way to represent and store the images of war. Nick argues that the camera is an inadequate means of communication compared to the feeling that an artist can add to a painting.

Matthaeus, (played by Wilkie), a German deserter appears, and he adds to the horrors we imagine with the knowledge of someone on the other side. 

The play is introduced by a woman whom we see only in silhouette. She informs us that members of the Group of Seven artists painted images of war in World War I and II but their work was ignored. In the late 1960’s someone catalogued some 5400 war paintings and Canadians started paying attention to the art form. Eva (played by Lumsden) appears at the end of the play and repeats the information from her introduction. She shows war paintings by the Group of Seven and meets Nick in old age who tells us that only two of his paintings are displayed anywhere with the rest being stored somewhere.

The problem with The Art of War is that it “says” things about war paintings, and about how they helped Canada understand itself as a nation through that art. It is as if Pavlova explained her dance, “the inexplicable dance” without actually doing it. We see a few paintings from the Group of Seven quickly around the theater with no chance to appreciate what they represent and how they help us understand Canada and its contribution to the wars.

Pavlova may not have been able to describe what she did on stage, but the people who asked what it meant had seen it and formed their own opinions. We did not see anything like that in The Art of War. The descriptions by Nick are of little help and the fate of the characters in the play does not tell us anything about the effectiveness of art.

Kudos to Laboucane as a simple soldier with a passion, to Hyde as the eternal image of the innocent victim of war, to Wilkie as a photographer who believes in his profession and Hall, the faithful friend who stays in Nick’s subconscious forever. All done under the careful tutelage of director Keith Barker. But they represent people and not works of art.
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The Art of War by Yvette Nolan opened on August 20 and will run in repertory until September 27, 2025, at the Studio Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca

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