Why We Tell Our Story Cabaret Marcus Nance absolutely killed it with the curation of this stirring celebration of Black voices. An inspired structure uses the work of iconic Black poets Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou rather than original writing to link together some of the most glorious songs from the musical theatre canon from […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2019 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Robert Markus singing ‘Waving Through a Window’ was on my Best of the Decade list of outstanding moments in Toronto theatre. His performance as Evan Hansen was not only vocally masterful but nuanced and thoughtful […]
Shakespeare earned the right to phone it in. It was clear that even his less daring and promising works would be feted beyond their merits – anything bearing his name would get the benefit of the doubt when the same script by a lesser or less famous playwright would be passed over. More generously, any […]
If reality TV taught us anything, it’s that there’s little easier to lampoon than the lives of the rich and famous; long before and through the television age, Noel Coward recognized and exploited this wonderfully. His wildly eccentric charm along with his inimitable talent and style made him the darling of the aristocracy whose attention […]
I remain firm in my assertion that Canada’s major artistic directors need to hire musical theatre consultants to help them pick what to produce because their knowledge base and taste level just seem off when it comes to the singing and dancing portions of their programming (just one coffee with Mitchell Marcus per year and […]
Drama is where the Stratford Festival tends to swing for the fences, doubling down on heavy hitting actors playing incredible tragedy on big stages through brutal runtimes. A sampling of the dramatic plays in the 2019 Stratford season reveals some of the festival’s greatest strengths even as the drama gets harder and harder to witness. […]
Michael Healey’s new adaptation of the much-adapted 1928 Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur newspaper farce starts with boredom. It starts with a bunch of sloppy newsmen and a single newly incorporated newswoman (Michelle Giroux, right at home) just sitting around waiting for something to happen. As a purposeful contrast to the madcap zip of the […]
The Merry Wives of Windsor is an obtrusively fat play in many senses. With about 472 disparate characters and plot threads, it’s in desperate need of trimming. It also packs in more fat jokes than a fratty comic on twitter. It’s a gruesome, empty bit of silliness redeemable only by its surprisingly wily female characters […]