If You Liked x, Read y: World Theatre Day Edition!

It was World Theatre Day on March 27th, and we couldn’t just celebrate with new plays or a drama match-up for what ended up being the winner of this year’s Canada Reads. The truth is, we love reading drama all year round: it’s as suspenseful and intriguing as any television show or movie, with snappy, back-and-forth dialogue that forces your imagination to (enthusiastically!) fill in the rest. We’ve picked a few plays to follow up some big books from this past year to get you started.

A Little Life = The FoursomeHanya Yanagihara’s much-acclaimed novel that follows four male friends fresh out of college finds its sequel in Norm Foster’s The Foursome (Playwrights Canada Press): a golf game between four male friends in town for their 15-year college reunion. Their discussions – of addiction, Buddhism, colonoscopies, and more – mirror the lived experiences of Yanagihara’s own foursome trying to make their way in New York City. 

Fates and Furies = Someone Else The his and her perspectives on a long marriage in Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies is echoed in the struggling relationship between husband and wife Peter and Cathy in Kristen Thomson’s Someone Else (Playwrights Canada Press). Cathy, too, finds furies in her everyday – her teenaged daughter, her comedic career, Peter’s wandering eye – just like those of wife Mathilde’s in Obama’s favourite book of last year. 

All the Light We Cannot See = Mary’s WeddingAnthony Doerr’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel about an unlikely relationship forming between a French woman and a German man in occupied France during the Second World War finds its dramatic parallel in Stephen Massicotte’s latest play, Mary’s Wedding (Playwrights Canada Press). While Massicotte’s play has an earlier World War in mind, the same sense of uncertainty – and love in the face of that uncertainty – follows lead characters Mary and Charlie.