Hand to God is a really fucking weird play. Excuse the language but there’s really no other way to fully get the point across. This is some weird shit. Playwright Robert Askins has crafted a pastel-coloured Southern Gothic puppet show about demonic possession and religious hypocrisy that’s also a pointed mental health allegory and a […]
The Father by Florian Zeller, directed by Ted Dykstra and Oyin Oladejo, is a brave close look at aging, specifically with Alzheimer’s Disease. The title character, known as André (Eric Peterson), demonstrates with great accuracy several key characteristic of living with dementia. Further, Peterson’s interpretation of the progression of some of these characteristics is carefully […]
The opening night of Coal Mine Theatre’s improv holiday show, The Wonder Pageant, was a hit, a WONDER-ful success. All performers demonstrated comedic accomplishment, unlike your author, and were fully able to get a somewhat stilted audience to laugh and sing along to their new and inspired songs. While the whole cast thrived as an […]
Theatre can be a gamble so sometimes it’s nice to see something you’re relatively sure about going in. On stage now in Toronto there are three such shows- one a critical favourite (Second City), one from a never-fail company (Coal Mine), and one with the sort of dependable source material that’s impactful no matter what […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Most people know Noah Reid as a screen actor. He scored his first film credit in 1996 and has shown up in pretty much every major Canadian television show in the last two decades (and a […]
Poison, currently on at The Coal Mine Theatre, is a story about two people. Actually, it’s a story about three people. We open on a man (Ted Dykstra) waiting in a lobby. Eventually, a woman (Fiona Highet) enters. There is immediate tension. What follows is a simple but heartbreaking story about grief. Originally written by […]
Spoiler-free Review Annie Baker is one of America’s greatest living playwrights, a master of naturalistic contemporary storytelling rife with mysterious spirituality and painfully honest but sugarless emotion. You should run to the Coal Mine just for the privilege of seeing her work, let alone seeing her work thoughtfully presented by a fantastic trio of […]
Coal Mine Theatre is drawn to disturbing programming about mankind’s darkest truths. Their productions are often visceral, unpleasant, gritty, caked in blood, laced with profanity and only sometimes ultimately uplifting. Orphans is all of those things except the last one. Though funny and at times even sweet, it might be the darkest display of humanity […]