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Paul's stage roles

2011

Music Box Theater, New York

Private Lives - Noel Coward

Role: Elyot
Run: 17th November to 31 December 2011
Director: Richard Eyre

Reviews

An Enduring Marriage of Wit and Lust - New York Times

Evergreen 1930 comedy - Hollywood Reporter

2000

The Stratford Festival of Canada

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Role: Hamlet
Run: 3rd May to 5th November

Director - Joseph Ziegler
Designer - Christina Poddubiuk
Composer - Laura Burton
Lighting Designer - Louise Guinand

Laertes - Graham Abbey
Gertrude - Domini Blythe
Rosencrantz - Evan Buliung
Claudius - Benedict Campbell
Ghost/Player King/Gravedigger - Juan Chioran
Ophelia - Marion Day
Polonius - Jerry Franken
Hamlet - Paul Gross
Horatio - David Keeley
Guildenstern - David Kirby

1988 - 1989

Centrestage Co, Toronto

Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme - Frank McGuinness

Role: Young Kenneth Pyper
Run: 18th February to 12th March 1988

Review from The Globe and Mail:

"One thing in the production does have freshness and authority, however, and that is Paul Gross's remarkable performance as Kenneth Pyper. This is a young aristocratic artist who senses the slaughterhouse absurdity of the upcoming battle of the Somme. His peculiar gallows humor and flaunting of effeminacy provoke his fellow soldiers, but nobody can get through the smoke and mirrors with which he surrounds his essential self. He alone goes any distance to escaping the tribalism of Irish culture, but it finally ensnares him.

... George (Wayne Best) and Nat (Victor Ertmanis) [are] a pair of Belfast thugs who announce their arrival by grabbing and assaulting a young soldier because he smells to them like a Catholic. Pyper immediately provokes them by a homosexual display; when they turn on him, he abruptly wallops and nearly cripples one of them."

Manitoba Theatre Centre, Winnipeg

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

Role: Brick
Run: 23rd November to 16th December 1989

'As [Maggie's] hard-drinking husband, Brick, Paul Gross has the hardest job. Through the first act, he's little more than a bland sounding board for Maggie. An early feeling that Gross was taking that booze-fueled blandness rather too close to heart was obliterated presently; his gradual animation and unpeeling of the character is something that should be videotaped for drama classes.' - Randal McIlroy, Winnipeg Free Press, November 1989

1984

Centaur Theatre, Montréal, Quebec

Successful Strangers

Paul Gross as Dorante
Martha Burns as La Comtesse
Run: 12th March to 7th April

Toronto Free Theatre, Toronto, Ontario

A Dream in High Park - Romeo and Juliet

Paul Gross as Romeo
Kate Trotter as Juliet
Run: 13th July to 11th August

"Paul Gross . . . is so good-looking that some women sitting near to me on opening night would forcibly argue that the only thing he could do wrong would be to go home alone afterward. He spoke his lines with bright-eyed charm and mischievous body language." - Ray Conologue, Globe and Mail

1982 - 1983

Theatre Calgary

Unseen Hand

Mrs. Warren's Profession

Farther West - John Murrell

National Arts Centre, Ottawa

Walsh

Paul Gross as Clarence Underhill
Martha Burns as Mary/Tahcaska
Run: 10th May to 28th May

Festival Lennoxville

The Kite - W O Mitchell

Role: Motherwell
Run: 1st July to 1st August

Take Me Where the Water is Warm - Jim Defelice

In the Jungle of Cities - Bertolt Brecht

Role: George Gaga
Run: 1st November to 18th December

"Gross looks like a young Errol Flynn; his athletic style and extravagant manner keep the show from sinking into significance." - Gina Mallet, Toronto Star, 1st December 1983

1980 - 1981

Northern Light Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Role: Lysander
Run: 24th July to 30th August in repertory

"Brian Deedrick, today the artistic director of Edmonton Opera, was a young actor when NLT "got all this money to do the Shakespeare festival" in the 75th anniversary of Alberta.

Deedrick was one of the fresh-out-of-university-kids hired that summer, along with Paul Gross - of Due South and Men with Brooms fame. Both were on hand for the "famous night of the storm" during a dress rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"The whole tent was open and this massive storm sprang up. Along with members of the audience, you had people in fairy costumes struggling to close the tent from the rain."

After the storm, the show resumed - sans costumes.

"Actors that were supposed to have these great wingspans for the fairies came out with the dowelling in their hands because their robes had been taken away. The audience just screamed with applause. That to me is one of the great participant theatrical experiences of my life," laughed Deedrick." - Erik Floren, Edmonton Sun, 4th March 2006

As You Like It

Role: Sylvius
Run: 31st July to 29th August in repertory St Joan

By Russell Roberts:

"In the summer of 1981, I was in an eight-person production of Shaw's Saint Joan for Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton. We performed in a tent with the audience sitting on a grassy hill. We all played numerous characters and our basic costumes were modern three-piece grey wool suits.

One stifling hot afternoon, in one of the longer soporific exposition passages with Christopher Gaze waxing eloquent on the problem of "Joan", we were experiencing one of those times when actors sometimes go on automatic. Chris just went on . . . and on. That is until one explosive outburst, when the plate of his front teeth flew out of his mouth! We watched with stunned rapture as they arced, like slow motion, tumbling, twisting, falling until, with lizard-like deftness, he scooped them up and dropped them into his pocket!

All was still; the audience poised, actors resolutely not looking at each other for fear of what might happen if we did, biting lips and flaring our nostrils. A universal giggle was mounting, but we mastered it, reined it in, and subdued it. Then, when he was finished with his speech, with a flourish, Chris plonked his plate of chompers back in his mouth!

Paul Gross was the first to go. Then feeling Ric Read's shoulder shaking next to mine, I followed, as did Alan Lysell, Michael Murdoch and the audience. A happy, inclusive giggle ensued between audience and actors, quite decorous and accepted." - Standing Naked in the Wings, compiled and edited by Lynda Mason Green and Tedde Moore (granddaughter of Dora Mavor Moore)

With thanks to Sheila Boyd and Canada on Stage 1980-1988