ARCHIVE
Crow's Theatre Announes 2010/11 Season
I, Claudia goes to the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival
More Shows Added to Directors' Showcase & Exchange
Crow's Theatre Announces 09/10 Season
The National Theatre School Directors' Showcase & Exchange
Crow's Theatre presents the Premiere of Eternal Hydra
Crow's Theatre Announces 25th Anniversary Season
Crow's Theatre presents Eternal Hydra
Crow's Theatre Announce plans for 07/08
Chris Abraham Named new Artistic Director of Crow's Theatre
REVIEWS
[boxhead]
Gord McLaughlin, Eye Weekly (Toronto)
“This superb production hilights the many strengths of Darren O'Donnell's [boxhead]... this is at least the thrid production in Toronto and easily the most satisfying...
Strange and Exhilerating Theatre Performance
Bruce DeMara, Toronto Star (Toronto)
“One of the oddest but strangely exhilerating theatre experiences one is likely to encounter... [boxhead] is experimental theatre at its finest...
Ridiculous to the Sublime
David Bateman, Xtra (Toronto)
“Chris Abraham's clear and focused direction, Steve Lucas' evocative and powerful lighting, Naomi Campbell's beautifully boxy proscenium bound set and Romano Di Nillo's score compliment a brilliant cast that renders the sight of two boxes kissing an endearing and sentimental spectacle to behold...
Opening
Box of Treats
John Coulbourn, Toronto Sun (Toronto)
“ It's not the people who stick their heads in the sand that bother playwright Darren O'Donnell, one suspects, as much as the people who refuse to think outside the box. Which would explain why, almost a decade ago, O'Donnell started focusing his not inconsiderable talent, wit and charm on a delightfully bizarre little stage offering titled [boxhead]...
[boxhead]: Loving you and Loving me
Meg Walker, Plank Magazine (Vancouver)
“Actions and witty dialogue swirl around the question of whether the cloned-boxhead is himself plus another, or just himself. Two gods,present as disembodied voices, want the humans to remain dependent...
[boxhead]
Kathleen Oliver, straight.com (Vancouver)
“You’ve probably never seen anything like [boxhead]—unless you’ve done a lot of acid...
Eternal Hydra
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
“Every new play should have a first production as wonderful as the one that Crow's Theatre has given Eternal Hydra...
It's "Mine"
Catherine Kustanczy, Play Anon (Toronto)
“Anton Piatigorsky tackles the huge questions swirling around authorship, originality, voice and its relationship to identity, and what makes art ... well, art, in his play Eternal Hydra, now on in Toronto at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre....
Ghosts of authors haunt Eternal Hydra
Robert Cushman, National Post (Toronto)
“The Crow's Theatre production of Eternal Hydra is a visually impressive and finely acted staging of an interesting play...
Ontario Hydra
Johnnie Walker, Torontoist
“Crows Theatre has Toronto under siege.....
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Eternal Hydra
Chandler Levack, Eye Weekly (Toronto)
“Writing is a very small part of being an author,” admits the ghostly presence of deceased writer Gordias Carbuncle. The literary truth behind the 999-page titular tome is Eternal Hydra’s great enigma, as the play questions the meaning and responsibility of authorship...
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Powerful characters propel clever literary detective story
Kate Taylor, Globe & Mail (Toronto)
“They said the author was dead, so Anton Piatigorsky decided to investigate. The results are Eternal Hydra , a provocative literary detective story that began life as a one-act play commissioned by the Stratford Festival and unveiled in 2002. Since then Piatigorksy and director Chris Abraham have worked the play up to two acts, a version they first workshopped in 2007...
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Hydra Electric
Glenn Sumi, Now Magazine (Toronto)
“Reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia or A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Anton Piatigorsky’s Eternal Hydra takes a fictional literary mystery and unveils lots of intellectual, as well as dramatic, truths...
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Mock
Modernist (interview with Anton Piatigorsky)
David
Balzer, Eye Weekly (Toronto)
“There’s no getting around the fact
that Joyce set himself up to be a genius,” says playwright Anton
Piatigorsky, about the now--monumental places of high modernist texts
like Ulysses, Pound’s Cantos and Robert Musil’s The Man Without
Qualities in the literary canon. “It’s so interesting to me
that there’s this self-awareness, this mock-heroism and mock-genius
in modernism, yet it’s ended up being taken so seriously.”
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Eternal Hydra
Catherine Kustanczy, publicbroadcasting.ca (Toronto)
"The tales of gods and goddesses, heroes, demons, maidens and monsters still have a power, and I've found, increase in meaning as the years pass. As noted mythologian Joseph Campbell once wrote, "myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life." Anton Piatigorsky understands this..."
The Power of One
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
“This week's revival of I, Claudia, and a host of recent memorable performances underscore why the one-person show has become a Canadian art form in its own right...
I, Claudia
Wil Knoll, getdown.ca (Calgary)
“The largest compliment I can give to I, Claudia is how natural the language and stories come out. Kristen Thomson has, as most playwrights should, a wonderful ear for how people speak...
A Girl to Remember
Bob Clark, Calgary Herald (Calgary)
"There are a lot of things you could say about the solo show that opened on Friday at Alberta Theatre Projects. But there's only one possible way of summing them all up: 'Go and see it.'...
I, Claudia is 90 Magical Minutes
Louis B. Hobson, canoe.ca (Calgary)
“Crow Theatre's I, Claudia currently running at Alberta Theatre Projects practically defines must-see theatre. It's enchanting, enthralling and completely captivating. ...
Claudia getting better with age
John Coulourn, Toronto Sun
“After all these years at the Tarragon, Toronto audiences have a chance to see I, Claudia in a whole new space, if not a whole new light, as Thomson brings the show to life once more, this time under the aegis of Crow's Theatre...
I, Claudia
Kathy Morgan, Mooney on Theatre (Toronto)
“Purchase as many tickets as you can, and then force all of your friends to do the same. Then pick up random people off the street and drag them to the show along with you. Suffice it to say, this show was amazing. Unbelievable. Spectacular. Heartbreaking, hi-larious, and utterly, utterly exquisite...
Thomson Triumphant in I, Claudia
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
“Kristen Thomson's portrait of a wonderfully winsome young woman trembling on the cusp of adolescence is one of the freshest things to hit the stage in many a season...
I, Kristen
Johnnie Walker, Torontoist
“Claudia may be Canada's favourite official pre-teen. The star of Kristen Thomson's one-woman masterpiece, I, Claudia, has been delighting audiences for the better part of a decade...
Two Hot Shows Make Welcome Returns
Glenn Sumi, Now Magazine (Toronto)
“Kristen Thomson last remounted I, Claudia (pictured above) at the same intimate space where A Beautiful View is now playing. The Young Centre’s stage is bigger, but Thomson and her gallery of characters fill it effortlessly...
I, Claudia
National Post (Toronto)
“I, Claudia must rank as one of the most successful productions in Canadian in the last decade...
I, Claudia
Byron Laviolette, Eye Weekly (Toronto)
“Back for a rumored last time, Kristen Thomson’s I, Claudia still uses the same masks, the same rumpled red curtain and the same deeply engaging glimpse into four interconnected individuals to charm and captivate its audiences as it originally did in 2001 at the Tarragon...
I,
Claudia Evokes a Rare Power
Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston, Ottawa Express (Ottawa)
"I sat for I, Claudia assuming that
I would experience nothing firm enough to crack the veneer of being an
audience member. But I was wrong. When I glanced towards my companion
and saw tears on her cheeks in the stage light, I knew I wasn't alone..."
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Tour-de-Force in the Eye of I,Claudia's Storm
Denis Armstrong, The Ottawa Sun (Ottawa)
"Repo-Martell gives a tour-de-force performance, slipping effortlessly between characters with striking power and imagination."
Irrepresibly Charming
Gilda Furgiuele, The Wellington Oracle (Ottawa)
"We can all relate to the bittersweet awkwardness of puberty. The drama that ensues from the hormonal rollercoaster of being not quite a teen is the inspiration for I, Claudia, the first play in the GCTC’s 2008-09 Stages season..."
Citadel's I, Claudia is Incredible
Eva Marie Clarke, Vue Weekly (Edmonton)
"Chris Abraham’s production is exquisitely refined, focusing on extreme character development and glowing moments of theatrical magic. Like his searing frozen two seasons ago, I, Claudia is characterized by translucent human moments frozen in a dark vista as hyper-focused beams of light pierce the blackness of the Rice Theatre. It’s a fluid sensation that renders the almost ritualized character transformations—the shedding and donning of masks—natural. He is also attuned to the rhythm of a script which simultaneously attracts and repels emotion..."
Perfection Behind the Mask
Colin MacLean, The Edmonton Sun (Edmonton)
"Repo-Martell brings her to life in a manner that will immediately take you back to that time in your life. There is none of the stock stage adolescent here. Claudia seems awkward in her skin. She has long since accepted that the world considers her plain and she copes with that with humour. She's rebelling and yet, she longs for the love she once knew when she had a family..."
Little Girl Blue
Renato Pagnani, See Magazine (Edmonton)
"Claudia herself might represent one of the most accurate portrayals of an adolescent in recent memory; this show captures all the tics and inflections of a precocious 12-year-old girl so vividly that I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomson had actually hired one to write the character for her. But that’s trying to shift the credit elsewhere, and it is Thomson’s strong writing that makes I, Claudia such a touching experience..."