Review: Sandra Oh bites savagely into The Misanthrope
Plus the return of House + Body’s sizzling Measure for Measure, and a hilarious Second City show for kids
It’s nice to see Sandra Oh return to the stage. The Nepean-born Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve star trained at Montreal’s National Theatre School, where her classmates included Kristen Thomson, Patrick Gallagher, Kari Matchett and Waneta Storms.
She did some theatre before leaving Canada for Hollywood, including a now-famous production of Oleanna at London’s Grand Theatre, and a few years later Inquest at the Factory Theatre.
Recently, she starred Off-Broadway in the American premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin and played Twelfth Night’s Olivia for the Public at the Delacorte. And this past summer in London, England, she headlined a new gender-switched contemporary production of Moliere’s The Misanthrope (Rating: ✭✭✭), which is being broadcast to movie theatres this week as part of the National Theatre Live series.
Oh plays Alice, a cantankerous, Booker Prize-winning novelist who’s currently under fire and in danger of being cancelled for some recently unearthed quotes from her past. She hates most people, except for her gay playwright friend John (Paul Chahidi, wonderful as ever) and her handsome younger lover, Stefan (Tom Mison).
She particularly loathes the company that Stefan — who’s an actor — keeps, including his abrasive agent Claire (Abigail Cruttenden) and PR maven Indira (Rina Fatania), who along with assistant Allen (Freddie MacBruce) are trying to do damage control to Stefan’s career as he prepares to film a role in Romania.