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Culture Stage

More Much Ado

Single Thread Theatre always presents fine site-specific shows, including Firebrand, a play about Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, at Mackenzie House, and The Loyalists, staged at Fort York.

The company returns to the classics with a remount of its 2011 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, presented at Spadina House and set, to match the period of the Edwardian house, at the end of the First World War. Good timing, for this year is the centenary of the conflict’s start.

The audience is divided into two groups of “apprentice servants,” one following Beatrice (the returning Helen Juvonen) and the other, Benedick (Tyler Seguin, who played Don Pedro in the earlier staging), so you get the play’s perspective from the character you shadow. The two parties come together for the play’s key scenes, which take you through the impressive house and gardens.

There’s also a new third route for one audience member that takes her or him up into the attic.

Also appearing in the show, directed by Karen Knox, are Jakob Ehman, Scott Garland, Harmonie Tower, Michael MacEachern, Paul Rivers and Thomas Gough.

Performances begin Wednesday (September 10) and run through September 27. See listing.

Rising Groundswell

Nightwood offers a week of plays in development as part of its New Groundswell Festival, which always features some exciting scripts.

Susanna Fournier’s With Individual Desire and Nicole Brooks’s Obeah Opera make up the central works in the series.

Fournier’s play looks at the relationship between American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her mother during the time Millay fled Paris with a secret. Produced by Lady Parts Theatre and directed by Kelli Fox, the show features Sarah Kitz, Steven McCarthy and Jane Spidell (September 10-14).

You may have seen an earlier version of Obeah Opera, which uses a range of black music to look at the Salem witch trials.

This time around the show, presented by Nightwood and Culchaworks Arts Collective, is directed by Weyni Mengesha, with musical direction by Andrew Craig. Its cast includes Amina Alfred, Cynthia Ashperger, Neema Bickersteth, Alana Bridgewater, Brooks, Starr Domingue, Michelle Fisk, Abena Malika, Jane Miller and Michelle Polak (September 11-14).

The week also includes readings by playwrights from across the country – Celeste Percy-Beauregard, Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa, Shelley Thompson, Audrey Dwyer, Nicole Moeller and Sally Stubbs – as well as a saloon salon series and a young innovators lab.

See listing or nightwoodtheatre.net.

Moving Richard III

Kadozuke Kollektif celebrates its 10th anniversary with a spin on one of Shakespeare’s best-known history plays. The adaptation is Richard III, The Pleasures Of Violence.

Directed by Tatiana Jennings, the multimedia production uses movement and text to look at the passion and violence in the royal York family – brothers Edward, Clarence and Richard – when the impulsive Edward IV secretly weds Elizabeth Woodville. Exploring events that usually happen offstage, Jennings focuses on the sensuality and humanity of the characters rather than a traditional look at the story’s large-scale politics.

The acting ensemble switches characters and genders to tell the story.

Presented in association with Bad New Days, the show opens Wednesday (September 10). See listing.

stage@nowtoronto.com

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