Schultz takes on Pinter and Mamet
STAGE NOTES
Soulpepper Theatre’s 2006 season, unveiled yesterday, contains a number of notable firsts.
It’s the company’s first yearround season and the first at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Soulpepper’s new home in the Distillery District. The company, whose mandate is classical theatre, will take its first run at such important works as Shakespeare’s King Lear ( with William Webster in the title role) and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest ( with Irish director Ben Barnes at the helm) as well as plays by Nobel Prize- winner Harold Pinter and American David Mamet. But Soulpepper has also done some successful raiding of both the Shaw and Stratford festivals. Among those making their debuts with the company next season are Shaw leading actor Ben Carlson and Stratford Festival star Jonathan Goad.
Carlson and Goad will square off as Edgar and Edmund, Gloucester’s two sons — Gloucester himself will be played by Ben’s dad Les Carlson — and will also play the brothers in Pinter’s menacing The Caretaker, with Diego Matamoros as the tramp Davies. The season will open Jan. 23 with a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, originally presented by Soulpepper in 1999. Joseph Ziegler again directs and Soulpepper artistic director Albert Schultz will play the Stage Manager.
It will be in repertory with The Government Inspector
by Nikolai Gogol, adapted and directed by Morris Panych ( also making his debut with the company). Matamoros stars in the title role.
Stuart Hughes makes his directorial debut with Mamet’s American Buffalo, which begins performances March 30. It stars Ted Dykstra, Michael Hanrahan and another talented Shaw Festival actor, Jeff Lillico. Nancy Palk is Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, which bows on June 3, followed a week later by Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, directed by Diana Leblanc and starring Megan Follows, C. David Johnson, Schultz and Lillico. Jim Warren directs Kevin Bundy, Oliver Dennis and Kristen Thomson in The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco. Performances begin June 22.
King Lear
starts up Aug. 31 and will be directed by Ziegler, while The Caretaker
begins performances Oct. 26.
POOR ALEX GETS JAZZED UP
The Poor Alex Theatre at 296 Brunswick Ave. will soon have a new lease on life — as a jazz and blues venue. The property has been bought by a group of investors including Graziano Marchese, owner of the nearby Dooney Café at 511 Bloor St. W. The Toronto Fringe Festival was negotiating to became a tenant, but those negotiations have broken down, Marchese says. The stage will be retained, however, and the Poor Alex may still be used as a theatre, says Marchese, who expects the jazz/ blues club to open in about three months.
“ I think that in the end the community will dictate what the place will be.”