Theatre: Curtain Calls

Aside from Mounties and maple leaves, Canada, it must be conceded, has a bad name. But not in the world of literature. Giants such as Alice Munro, Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood stalk the land. Cinematically speaking, the country is positively awash with talent like Denys Arcand, Thom Fitzgerald... and Robert Lepage. The last of these straddles the divide between cinema and his first love, theatre.

There are theatre companies across Britain who would give anything for his budgets yet his work is neither profligate nor extravagant. He marshals enormous resources but uses them on a human scale. The emotional resonances of his vast, visionary theatre pieces can genuinely be summed up as once seen, never forgotten. The final version of The Seven Streams of River Ota took place across an entire day but the cumulative effect was magnificent.

His last production, Elsinore (above)- a solo meditation on Hamlet - was a technological marvel with a completely architectural use of space. So it's perfectly fitting he should follow it up with The Geometry of Miracles based on ideas surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright. It has just opened in Glasgow but anyone with the slightest interest in the genuinely, consummately theatrical should book tickets for its National Theatre run now.

Glasgow Tramway (0141-287 3900) tonight; National Theatre (0171-452 3000) 14-24 Apr