A Fly on the Curtain

Description

220 pages
$15.95
ISBN 0-7780-1142-9
DDC 792'.0971'09045

Publisher

Year

2000

Contributor

Reviewed by David E. Kemp

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Review

A Fly on the Curtain is essential reading for anyone interested in the
development of Canadian theatre in the 1950s. The author, a
distinguished university teacher who was instrumental in the
establishment of the Drama Department at Queen’s University, Kingston,
recounts in vivid detail what it was like to be a young actor/director
during one of the most exciting decades in Canadian theatre history.

Euringer writes engagingly about the early years of the Stratford
Festival, where he worked as an actor and director and where his own
play was one of the first Canadian works presented by the company; about
his experiences at Hart House Theatre in Toronto; about the development
of Crest Theatre and the Canadian Players; and about such theatrical
luminaries as Tyrone Guthrie, Michael Langham, Christopher Plummer, and
Donald Sutherland. His account of summer theatre is as hilarious as it
is accurate.

Marred only by the lack of an index and chapter headings, A Fly on the
Curtain is one of those books that is impossible to put down.

Citation

Euringer, Fred., “A Fly on the Curtain,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed December 9, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/29502.