The past few weeks in Toronto theatre featured a range of works that at their core all touched on similar themes despite their vast superficial differences. In tense, inflationary times, these four pieces examined how financial pressures can bring out the best and worst in all of us. Most explicit on this topic was […]
Interior Design (Tarragon Theatre) The first play in this week’s roundup features the most complicated exploration of the myriad ways we terrorize each other as it centers on a quartet of friends who presumably (reportedly, ultimately) do love each other. Rosa Laborde’s script about four old friends fighting (or not) to stay friends is a […]
The closing performance of Nick Green’s Dinner with the Duchess on September 28th was a major moment for Stratford’s small but mighty Here For Now Theatre. In front of an audience quietly packed with some of Canadian theatre’s biggest stars, the low-key company closed out their 2024 season with a truly superb performance of a […]
Despite the Assembly Theatre’s proscenium setup and the show’s relatively conservative (though definitely present, fair warning) use of audience participation, 13 Plays About ADHD All At the Same Time is an immersive experience. The first work in a long time from one of the city’s most interesting creative minds, 13 Plays is writer/director Alec Toller’s […]
I loved Verne Thiessen & Yvette Nolan’s adaptation of the Margaret Laurence novel The Diviners, creatively and energetically directed by Krista Jackson with Geneviève Pelletier, but the rest of the straight plays in the 2024 Stratford season left me somewhere on a sliding scale of cold. The remaining plays (meaning not Shakespeare, not musicals, […]
Co-written by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan and directed by Lauzon, and originally produced in 2022 at the Stratford Festival, this Canadian Stage remount depicts the story of a fictional residential school in Northern Ontario in 1939. An English teacher, anticipating a visit by King George VI, enlists her students in a production of All’s […]
For the past few seasons, my favourite programming at the Shaw Festival has been Outdoors at the Shaw, a somewhat informal series of concerts and variety shows the bulk out the mainstage programming. These performances would take place across the festival grounds, at the outdoor BMO stage, and, starting last season, at the fun and […]
Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque has just about the best programming strategy I’ve seen for a small company, especially one serving a remote community without a ton of access to live theatre. Managing Artistic Director Brett Christopher smartly programs all the big fun musicals you’d expect, crowd-pleasers that never fail to slap (this season has […]