Stratford Festival Reviews

"Rice Boy is fuelled more by the desire to tell a good yarn than to undertake a deep analysis of colliding cultures. The talented cast, led by Majumdar and Mengesha, is strong, while director Guillermo Verdecchia handles proceedings calmly and unemphatically."

While the story of 12-year-old Indian-Canadian Tommy (Araya Mengesha), his mathematician father (Raoul Bhaneja) and their extended family in India has become subtler and stronger in many ways, it is still overstuffed –and feels cramped on Stratford's small studio stage.

The production features fine ensemble work that polishes the play’s patina of sorrow with rich humour...  What Rice Boy is really about is love—the joy of finding it, the comfort of possessing it and, most poignantly, the pain of losing it.

Praise for the actors, Araya Mengesha is singled out, but despite the performances in this "major re-write, they [playwright Sunil Kuruvilla and director Guillermo Verdecchia] seem to have drastically cut the Canadian portion of the story, essentially turning CanCon into bookends and concentrating instead on the part of the story set ...

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