Montreal Star
This is a selection of reviews I wrote as the second-string theatre critic for the Montreal Star. Gives you a bit of a sense of what theatre was like in Montreal in early summer of 1970. The Editor of the Star saw some articles I wrote for the McGill Daily and, I suppose, wanting to encourage the next generation, hired me to cover for Zelda Heller, the highly-respected Star Theatre Critic. A couple of the reviews make interesting reading, even now. An early review of the Dora Wasserman’s Yiddish Theatre Company, a rave for the Red Army Chorus, a rave too, for The Jest Society which was the precursor of the Royal Canadian Air Farce. I once heard Roger Abbott on CBC crediting my rave Star review for helping kick-start the Air Farce . There is also an article covering the Centaur’s announcement of their first subscription season. I tried to get Montrealers to support the Centaur, imagine that! After seeing a show, I’d head to the Star building on Craig Street (now St Antoine, sic!) in Old Montreal to write my review, -average fee in those days was $25, if memory serves. To find an empty desk, I’d have to run the gauntlet past a gaggle of journalists leaning over a short-wave radio listening in on the police frequency, hungry for the latest on the FLQ bombings. At the same time, in an effort to save money for my projected trip to Europe, my “wandering apprenticeship years” as I was to call them, I was also taking crew calls around town as an IATSE stage hand, loading sets in and out, running follow-spots. (The pay, natch, was much more lucrative than writing reviews for The Star.) If you read the review of the touring production of Fiddler On The Roof at the Place Des Arts, you will note that I disparage the dilapidated state of the sets. That is because I was part of the IATSE crew that unloaded the trucks and worked the set-up. I saw the chipped paint up close. We finished the IATSE call onstage just at curtain time, and I ran out front and took my seat to review the show. Yup, those were the days.
My Montreal Star Reviews
1969-70
My Montreal Star Reviews:
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Centaur announces mixture
Centaur’s early season’s were indistinguishable from the repertory you would find in a provincial theatre in England. Maurice Pdbrey and Elsa bolem, the two founders of the Centaur were both products of the British theatre system and essentially acted as if they were bringing culture to the backwoods of Canada. A colonial attitude shared by many ex-pat Brits running theatres across the country. It was not until the sixth season, with the success of Davidfennario’s On The Job, that Maurice understood that Montrealers wanted quality Montreal theatre.
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Jest Society spoofs anything
When the summer heat and humidity have softened your bones, do you suffer from an inability to get up and face the week on Monday mornings? …
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Audience laughs, stomps to The Sages of Chelm
We are all often guilty of taking theatre so seriously, that the morose, depressed mentality with which we enter the auditorium kills a play before it has started.…
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Everyman before pews
Last night The Town of Mount Royal’s Baptist and United Church co-operated in producing “Everyman.” That this medieval morality play should …
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One struggles to keep theatre alive-not French
There are only 20,000 French Canadiens in St.Boniface and perhaps 80,000 in all of Manitoba but there is a very high percentage of theatre-goers…
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The wild west comes to the suave east
The guns explode; the arrows whizz through the air; Indians surround an isolated farmstead…
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Dauphin brilliant in 'Price'
Attempting to piece apart today’s social dilema, Arther Miller’s play, The Price, reduces the American rat race down to two fleshy versions …
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The Price; in another tongue
Is It Arthur Miller’s commercially viable name, or it’s succinct, parable-like re-duction of America today which has entices two of Montreal’s …
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Tape, slides 'played'
“I wish,” said the university professor sitting next to me, “That these avant-garde shows would have more continuity.” He coughed slightly when I informed him that …
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Red Army does it again
If you are walking in the Place de Arts area one of these nights and out of the black sky you hear thunder …
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Black farce not very funny
Entertaining Mr. Sloane is such a weak, dated, boring play that it could only have been chosen as the final production of the season for the…
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Audience enjoys touring Fiddler on the Roof
“Fiddler on the Roof? Sure I’m going to see it,” said the cab driver last night, “or at least I’ll send my wife. …
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Oh what a lovely evening at 'Lovely War'
The authorship Oh What a Lovely War presented by the graduating class of the English section of the National Theatre school …
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Vian's play difficult, but an experiment to see
BORIS VIAN remains one of the most amazing figures of the post-war Parisian existentialists circles. …