You've read my oh-so-definitive end-of-year ramblings about Canadian theatre in 2009. (No? Try here and here.) But what did the rest of Canada's critical corps have to say about the last 12 months on the stage? First up in this review of the reviewers's years in review: Toronto and Montreal.
TORONTO
Toronto Star critic Richard Ouzounian's top ten included West Side Story and The Importance of Being Earnest at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Born Yesterday at the Shaw Festival, two Robert Lepage joints - Lipsynch (Luminato) and The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (COC) - and Soulpepper's productions of Parfumerie and Billy Bishop Goes to War. More surprising selections from "the Ooze" include Rebecca Northan's Blind Date (coming soon to a High Performance Rodeo near you), the Toronto production of Jersey Boys and Stratford's Caesar and Cleopatra. If those last two feel a bit deja vu, it's because they were both on Ouzounian's best-of-2008 list, too. (They're re-included because JB got a new Canadian cast in January and C&C was released as a film.)
On to the National Post's Robert Cushman, the critic who casts the longest shadow in Toronto theatre (because he's about six foot six). In his round-up of the year's best, he highlights Birdland's remount of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Stratford's Three Sisters and The Importance of Being Earnest, Lepage's Lipsynch and The Nightingale, and two other shows at Soulpepper: Travesties and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A not unwelcome surprise pick from him: The Canadian Stage/Theatre Calgary revival of 7 Stories. In another article, Cushie praises the best performances of the year from the dearly departed Goldie Semple to Eric Peterson to - glad he was mentioned somewhere - Tim Campbell in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
In the Toronto Sun, John "Doesn't Have a Nickname" Coulbourn declares it the year of Eric Peterson and heaps more praise on Stratford's West Side Story and The Importance of Being Earnest and Shaw's Born Yesterday. His surprise highlights of '09 are Shirley Valentine at Canadian Stage and two Shaw productions not universally acclaimed: Moon for the Misbegotten and In Good King Charles' Golden Days. (I gave the latter a whopping one star.)
On to the weeklies. In Now, Jon Kaplan and Glenn Sumi bring Crow's Theatre's Eternal Hydra, Electic Company's No Exit and the Mirvish-presented touring production of Spring Awakening into the conversation. Kaplan also provides a list of his top 10 theatre artists of the year; they include playwright Nicolas Billon, actor Claire Calnan, company Mackenziero and - how could he not be mentioned? - Eric Peterson.
In Eye, Christopher Hoile praises many of the usual suspects, but also has end-of-year love for a couple of visiting productions: Druid Theatre's The Walworth Farce (which almost made my top ten list) and the Electric Company's No Exit (which, dagnabbit, I missed in Toronto, but our fellow out west named one of his top of 2008 ). Hoile also declares Jean-Rock Gaudreault's Une maison face au nord (staged in Toronto by the Theatre francais de Toronto) the best Canadian play of oh-nine.
Both Now and Eye decide to include "worst of" lists, too. But while Kaplan and Sumi bash the big boys who can take it (Necessary Angel, which had a rare off year, and Canadian Stage, which was, er, on form), Hoile mean-spiritedly goes after indie experimentalists Small Wooden Shoe and their worthwhile DYI science show Dedicated to the Revolutions. (While he's at it, Hoile off-handedly seems to suggest that hairdressers are idiots and that Shakespeare cannot be understood by the hoi polloi, so, really, who comes out looking bad here?)
Though the Gazette's Arthur Kaptainis is a) based in Montreal and b) a classical music critic, I thought I'd include a line from his end-of-year assessment: he calls The Nightingale and Other Fables "a ludicrously overrated Stravinsky show by Robert Lepage for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto." (I'm glad somebody said it!)
MONTREAL
La Presse's Sylvie St-Jacques (theatre critic until August) and Alexandre Vigneault (theatre critic since August) split up the end-of-year duties. St-Jacques hails the Quebecois adaptation of David Harrower's Blackbird that played at Théâtre Prospero, as well Denis Bernard's production of Le Pillowman by Martin McDonagh at La Licorne. She does not, however, hail Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon (which was one of my top picks of the year). Vigneault has kind words for the many 2009 travails of director Alice Ronfard, as well as Lorraine Pintal's production of La charge de l'orignal épormyable de Claude Gauvreau at the Theatre du Nouveau Monde. Both praise actor/playwright Emmaneuel Schwartz, who St-Jacques says was a "rock star" at the Festival d'Avignon performing in the 11-hour, all-night presentation of Wajdi Mouawad's trilogy of Littoral (Tideline), Incendies (Scorched) and Forêts.
Over at Voir, Christian Saint-Pierre has buildings on his mind: he lauds the superb new Theatre de Quat'Sous and the renovations at the Theatre Denise-Pelletier at Place des Arts. His favourite productions of the year were Christian Lapointe's Anky ou la fuite; Théâtre PàP's Rouge Gueule; Brigitte Haentjens's reinvention of Woyzeck; Denis Marleau's Le Complexe de Thenardier; and Eric Jean's Chambre(s) at the Quat'sous (which, incidentally, La Presse's Vigneault found terribly boring and picked as his "déception amère" of the year.)
Online, Saint-Pierre's colleague Philippe Couture provides his own top ten, topped by Le Pillowman and bottomed by Sexy béton I and II (a documentary piece by Annabel Soutar about the collapse of the Concorde overpass) with Chambre(s) and Woyzeck somewhere in the middle.
Across the linguistic divide at the Montreal Gazette, Pat Donnelly looks, as she must, primarily at the city's anglo theatre. She praises the newly refurbished Segal centre and particularly Diana Leblanc's production of Karoline Leach's Tryst there. (I just popped into the Segal to buy tickets for Leblanc's upcoming production of Harvey for my mom; the renos look great.)
Hard to believe there are two English weeklies, but now only one French one in Montreal. (RIP Ici, 1997-2009.) In the Montreal Mirror, Neil Boyce has more praise for the Segal, saying that it has "[taken]over as the major professional English-language theatre in Montreal." (Them's fighting word to Roy Surette and the Centaur Theatre, traditionally tops in anglo theatre.) Nonetheless, for Boyce, the event of the year was an indie Infinitheatre show: Amy Lee Lavoie's Rabbit Rabbit, "carried by gutsy direction from artistic director Guy Sprung".
Finally, over at the Hour, Brett Hooton bids farewell to his readers and gives some end-of-tenure kudos to Bruce M Smith's Blessed Are They and two Centaur shows: Doubt and Bryden MacDonald's With Bated Breath.