Shaw Festival Reviews
In 2019 I had the pleasure of writing a series of Shaw Festival performance reviews for the Niagara-on-the-Lake Local.
“Williams is simultaneously current and outdated, but the Shaw Festival’s rendition is strikingly, hauntingly beautiful. Its tragic course is a lesson in fragile, fractured heroes of an America emerging out of the Second World War that is all too willing to sacrifice those who aren’t willing to catch up, and the unseen human costs of excitable progressivism.”
“Now, to the pearl-clutching. Sex is a drama, first and foremost. There are some double entendres in the dialogue and the final act ventures into the territory of an absurdist comedy, but continuing to market the play on its controversy does a disservice to Mae West’s role as a feminist and to ‘Sex’.”
“Cyrano de Bergerac is a classic for a reason, after all. The hero is an emotional wreck, his love isn’t reciprocated and he’s a poet forced into war simply to survive. This is unconventional, of course, but there’s something relatable in it to all of us. Sure, to a degree we all relish those too-perfect heroes, but when looking back on any stories, epics, myths and legends, it’s the imperfect characters we love the most.”
Paul Sawchuk 
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