Where to Spend your Drama Dollar over The Next Few Weeks

The Wild Party, Into the Woods & True Nature

It may prove difficult to decide where to spend your drama dollar over the next few weeks. Here is just a sample of what Montreal theatres have to offer.

William S. Burroughs, the seminal writer of the early Beat era, singled out Joseph Moncure March’s The Wild Party as “the book that made me want to be a writer.” Considered a lost classic, it was perhaps brought back to life by the highly successful Broadway musical, based on the narrative poem, starring Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin and Eartha Kitt. The show garnered several Tony Award nominations, with a win for Collette. The March poem had been banned when it first came out. It was too bawdy for its time. But Broadway was ready for it in 2000, and Montreal is ready for it now as In Your Face Entertainment brings it to the Mainline Theatre space next month.

Into the Woods has always been a favourite with Broadway musical fans. It’s Stephen Sondheim’s almost Freudian take on classic fairy tales from Cinderella to Rapunzel to Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and others.

It is a cleverly fun and oddly moving exploration into the deepest part of ourselves through the characters that peopled our childhoods, and seem to have stuck around through much of adulthood as well. It’s not an easy play to produce; Sondheim’s music can be tough to sing. But Music Theatre Montreal seems to have figured it out. Their production takes to the stage this weekend and next at Concordia University’s D.B. Clarke theatre. The play was supposed to have been staged at McGill University, but was moved due to an ongoing support staff strike.

Award-winning Montreal playwright Colleen Curran has a world premiere under her belt with her new play True Nature, currently running at the Centaur Theatre.

Love of discovery brings two women’s lives together, one an academic, and the other the paleontologist she considers a hero, real life fossil hunter Mary Anning. Curran mined her own past for aspects of the story, which features romance, comedy, and talk of dinosaurs.

The cast, which has earned favourable reviews from audiences so far, features several actors Montreal theatre-goers might consider veterans, from Felicia Shulman to Michel Perron and Bruce Dinsmore. True Nature runs at The Centaur through to November 6.