I am extraordinarily picky when it comes to Romeo and Juliet. I adore the play and have what my friend Maddi calls “thoughts and feelings” about it, meaning I’m overly attached to a very strict interpretation that exists in my head of the pedestalled piece. I know it like the back of my hand, to […]
Toronto’s Red Light District is the only company that’s ever gotten me to like things I don’t like- from audience participation to Trinity Bellwoods after 9pm to German expressionism to blatant stage sex.
I never saw the original production on Broadway; in fact, the F.U.D.G.E Theatre Company production (one of the first in the New England area) is my first foray into Spring Awakening’s dynamic rhythm of awakening youths. Impressed with the company’s summer production of Carousel, I was anxious to see Joe DeMita’s creativity in the punk-rock […]
Happy Medium Theatre’s production of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley is often funny, endearing in a nerdy (and sometimes intensely angsty teenage way), and engrossing. The basic story is that in the creepy/Stepfordian suburb of an unnamed town, all the teenagers have become totally engrossed with a videogame that uses satellite photos of the […]
Verdi’s brilliant 3-act opera is given a beautiful if sometimes silly staging at The Canadian Opera Company this fall. Tenor David Lomeli was my favourite of the very capable company of singers, performing the role of the lascivious Duke with aplomb and a cold, delivering a memorable vocal performance throughout, specifically in the painfully famous […]
Sonus Stage Company’s Sondheim revue Side by Side just opened at the Walmer Center Theatre. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to enjoy excerpts from Acting Up Stage’s Both Sides Now, a revue of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell songs. Sonus’ production, a less polished restaging of a pre-existing cabaret has none of the […]
Theatre Smash’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s dystopic one act The Ugly One is a whole lot of funny and whole whack of unsettling all wrapped into a tiny 1 hour package. Director Ashlie Corcoran and designer Camellia Koo pair to stage Maja Zade’s superb translation of the excellent play in a unique and effective […]
Ranking: #2 My first tears of the 2011 Stratford Festival Season came in the Studio Theatre one afternoon as I took in a play about which I knew nothing. John Mighton’s original work The Little Years was the surprise delight of the season, a new play I loved so much that it usurped some of […]