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 […]
Based on the book by Melly Magrath, Not a Cult: The Musical explores the various ways we can get sucked into culty behaviour without even realizing it. This Small but Mighty production brings us into the world of Joy (Bebe Brunjes) and her adult camp that purports to be about ‘fun’ but slowly reveals the […]
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 […]
Conceived, adapted, and directed by Daryl Cloran originally for Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, this joyful and zany adaptation of As You Like It uses the Beatles’ sprawling songbook to sculpt Shakespeare’s “play with music” into a full tilt musical. Currently onstage at the Grand Theatre in London, the imperfect but polished production 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 […]
Coming off the exceptional one-two punch of August’s Mary’s Wedding/Murder for Two, I was excited to return to Gananoque’s Thousand Islands Playhouse for a second set of shows as they close out their 2024 season. Unfortunately the combination of Jesus Christ Superstar and Arun Lakra’s Sequence proved less of a slam dunk than what I’ve […]
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 […]
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 […]