After seeing a total of seven productions at this years SummerWorks theatre festival in Toronto, I decided to grade my reactions on an ascending scale. This began with two shows that somehow either went over my head or never really near it at all: Show and Tell Alexander Bell and Entitlement in Part 1, followed […]
Both of CanStage’s current productions are contemporary one-act contemplations of female power as attained through sexuality (to put it as simplistically as I possibly could). In The Flood Thereafter, the mythological sirens are represented in the figure of Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster as a brash and modern young woman paid to unceremoniously remove her clothes once […]
Last week, two excellent productions opened in Toronto that each told the story of a fascinating musical theatre artist through songs they composed themselves. The first was On the Rocks, a limited engagement cabaret-style showcase of Canadian musical theatre great Louise Pitre. Accompanied by the superb Diane Leah at the piano, Pitre took to […]
With the crazy summer theatre season finally coming to a close, many of Toronto’s smaller companies are taking the lull in big-ticket fare to kick off their seasons with intimate, impactful dramas. The first two plays I saw this week were two-act studies of modern life at polarized ends of the socio-economic scale, both written […]
Onwards and upwards I go along the string of shows I encountered at this year’s SummerWorks theatre festival in Toronto. I’m now in the middle section of my crescendo of impressions on the seven different shows I witnessed. I certainly didn’t soft-pedal my thoughts about the plays that impressed the least, as featured in Part […]
How to Disappear Completely was the second best thing I saw at SummerWorks this year (after Wild Dogs on the Moscow Trains). I loved it. It was everything I wished some of the other shows had been- personal, truthful, and funny without losing its sense of tragedy. Itai Erdal is the rare theatre creator able […]
It comes as a relief to know that there is careful curation behind SummerWorks’ programming. Aside from modest ticket prices, it is even more encouraging to feel as though you’re in good hands. There is always something gambled when attending either Luminato or Fringe: your money with the former and your time with latter. Each […]
Be sure to read about my pick for the Must-See production of SummerWorks ’13 as well as Part 1 of everything else. I was warned that Murderers Confess At Christmastime is incredibly disturbing. And it is. But it’s far more accessible than I was expecting. Generally with boundary-pushing theatre I find that you can […]