Daniel Brooks RIP

Always sad news when a member of the Canadian theatre family passes, particularly at such a relatively young age (64).

I wouldn't say this makes me rethink my decision to skip his staging of The Seagull over at Soulpepper, as I just had seen quite a bit of Chekhov this past season (Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya) and don't care for The Seagull all that much.*  I suppose it is bittersweet that he went out on a high note (with raves all around for this production), and of course I wish, more for his sake than mine, that he could have put on yet another production a bit more to my taste.

I don't think I saw any of the things he did with Daniel MacIvor.  (I haven't even seen that many things by MacIvor, though I did see Cake and Dirt at Tarragon and enjoyed that, but this was directed by someone else.  And then during COVID (I'm speaking as if it was actually over!) I saw a digital production of House.)  The only production of Brooks I know I saw was Soulpepper's Waiting for Godot back in 2017.  (I have to chuckle a bit, since my notes are that this was a decent production but only the third best I've seen...)  

If I can track down evidence I've seen more of his work, I'll go ahead and update this post.

* Also back in 2017, I saw a production of Aaron Posner's Stupid F*cking Bird here in Toronto, which is partly a reboot of The Seagull and partly a full-on parody.  Anyway, I thought it was great, and I would much rather watch this again than another straight-up production of The Seagull.  It seems like a lot of theatre companies are on the same wavelength!  Stupid F*cking Bird is being staged in Milwaukee in Sept., here in Ontario at Brock in late Oct., in Chicago** and San Francisco in Nov., in Victoria, BC in Dec., and in Ithaca, NY in March, 2024.  I'm almost certainly going to go see it at Brock (though hopefully not in a way that will conflict with Spirited Away), but I think one more time is probably enough!

** Another FOMO moment.  The Chicago company doing Posner also did Bulgakov's Zoyka's Apartment at the Athenaeum in 2016, and I would very much have wanted to go see this had I known about it.  Probably just as well that I don't scour the Chicago theatre listings on a regular basis!