We were working hard this Toronto Fringe, taking in a total of 16 plays ranging from dance to drag to one-man displays or neurosis. There were companies of one, companies of ten, staged readings, fully-mounted musicals, lots of laughs, a couple of tears and grades ranging from A to D. Read on for all the […]

I was raised on Rodgers and Hammerstein; in fact, I didn’t think there was any musical that I hadn’t seen by this famous musical writing team. And then I remembered Carousel. Richard Rodgers is cited as saying that it was his favorite of all his musicals, quite a compliment given that Oklahoma! preceded it by just […]

I think I’m infected, but that’s not always a bad thing. Flat Earth Theatre’s production of the problematic Bug infected me with inspiration and awe. I wasn’t a fan of the play before seeing this version. I thought that it was an actor’s journey into internalized storytelling, but Flat Earth rose to any challenges in the […]

Vagabond Theatre Group was very ambitious in their staging of The Unfortunate Cutthroats, an original play written by Zach Winston and directed by James Peter Sotis. The Unfortunate Cutthroats portrays life at sea for what else but cutthroat pirates. The production bobs like a boat out at sea and staggers under the weight of an […]

Next to Normal is one of those pieces that, no matter what you do with it, ultimately comes down to the actors. You can place it on a cool, versatile and modern set, you can dress it up with colour-coded costumes and loud rock music, you can place it in the biggest venue available. Ultimately […]

Heart and Dagger Productions presents a challenge with verve; its newest production of MilkMilkLemonade is not for the faint-hearted. Set in a fictitious town, young Emory (played by “Bad Boy of Theatre” Joey C. Pelletier) dreams of a life outside his Nanna (played excellently in drag by Mikey DiLoreto)’s farm. He is just a regular […]

Soup Can Theatre’s production of Marat/Sade is packed full of great ideas, but they’re not always perfectly realized. Sarah Thorpe’s eloquent director’s note reveals the brilliant intellectual backbones of her interpretation- how she’s modernized the text to explore the themes in ways that are both nationally historic and hauntingly current. But her setting of 1957 […]

 

We were working hard this Toronto Fringe, taking in a total of 16 plays ranging from dance to drag to one-man displays or neurosis. There were companies of one, companies of ten, staged readings, fully-mounted musicals, lots of laughs, a couple of tears and grades ranging from A to D. Read on for the skinny […]