The SpongeBob SquarePants Musical, presented by TO Live at Meridian Hall, was a breakout Broadway success in 2017/2018 garnering 12 Tony Award nominations and is the first in what TO Live is hoping to be an ongoing Broadway series. It is a production that will delight the children in the audience and entertain their adult […]
It’s Christmastime, which means that many people are either celebrating beloved family traditions or searching for some moderately pleasant activity the whole family can agree on. The solution Toronto’s commercial theatre producers are offering up is musical theatre. And not just any musical theatre- big, shiny, happy, mostly stupid but very nice Musical Theatre. The […]
I’m going for a big metaphorical stretch here guys so I just need you to bear with me- seeing Cats live is like going to church. Inside the theatre you’ll find deep skeptics and true devotees sitting side by side with people who are only there because it means a lot to their mother. There’s music, chants, […]
A captivating pairing of co-productions has taken over the east end Streetcar Crowsnest venue this fall with a world-renowned but perfectly grounded everyman epic in the mainspace and an understated but otherworldly one-act song cycle in the studio. The studio piece, Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet, is a Crows collaboration with Eclipse Theatre Company and it […]
Set in Duluth, Minnesota in winter 1934, Girl from the North Country is not a typical musical. Understated and thoughtful, this Depression-era drama does not conform to what people might expect from a West End and soon to be Broadway hit. Instead of attempting to blow you away, the production quietly pulls at your heart […]
Both the best and worst thing about theatre, and indie theatre especially, is its ephemerality. Productions close so fast that you never have the time you need to tell every person you’ve ever met, and some you haven’t, that they have to see the show you just saw. And in the Toronto independent theatre landscape, […]
David Yazbek & Itamar Moses’ slinky musical adaptation of the 2007 Israeli film The Band’s Visit is one of those artistic oddities that wins incredible acclaim and most people still have never heard of it. Its 2017 Broadway premiere earned 10 Tony Awards, including all the big ones, including Best Musical, but it hasn’t captured […]
I was so excited to find myself in Vancouver during the Fringe Festival this fall (it’s crazy that there are still Fringe Festivals happening once it’s officially “fall”). Having covered the Toronto leg of the epic Canadian indie theatre circuit for years, I was curious to see how things compared out on the west coast. […]