Rant about Globe theatre critic

[melted_snowball]

There's an article in last Saturday's Globe about Drayton Entertainment.

Drayton is a mid-sized theatre company that has a bunch of theatres in cottage country around SW Ontario, plus two in St. Jacobs and a brand new one in downtown Cambridge. Basically, they do summer stock: a bunch of crowd-pleaser musicals and revues.

The critic for the Globe went to one of the latter, and comments about how it was cheesy, and that Toronto audiences don't want to see that sort of thing.

I call bullshit on two counts.

First, it's not all they do. Over the past several years, we've seen "Brigadoon", "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", "How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying", "The Man of La Mancha", "Annie", and probably a couple others I'm not remembering. We'll see "Oliver", "Spamalot" and "Godspell" this year. They do good productions. Not brilliant, but certainly good. I'm pretty sure I was earwormed by every single one of those productions; I've now given 17 talks (about rap music, but still) that have included the lyrics from "Come to me, bend to me", from "Brigadoon", because I couldn't stop thinking about the song after I saw the show.

And second, there's cheese in Toronto, too. In the past few years, we saw "Lion King", "Billy Elliott", "Book of Mormon", and other Mirvish cheese. Yes, it's better cheese. But it also was 2-5 times as expensive cheese. And actually, thte Drayton production of "Forum" was, I thought, better than the one at Stratford that was (I think?) the previous year. Not all theatre in Toronto is Acting Up Stage. (I might wish it were, but it's not.)

Kelly Nestruck goes all over North America, and even to Germany, to see productions. He could come see "Oliver" here. Or "Godspell". He might even have a good time. Sheesh.

[I am annoyed enough that I kind of wish I did the Twitter, since I can't find an email for the guy to save my life. Instead, I guess we'll have a rare public post.]

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's an annoying, in-the-box kind of review.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I just wish he'd go to something he might have enjoyed. That's not too much to ask; he didn't do a starred review (and indeed, he could; it does satisfy the requirements for a starred review in the Globe, since the actors are Equity members), but instead walked out of a bad revue. It's the 2nd-largest theatre company in the province, and they're doing a ton of shows this year.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Whenever you post about local theatre, I imagine you going to see shows at the company in the Slings & Arrows television series.