Theatre is alive at host venue Factory Theatre as patrons showed little fear, braving the cold winds at the outdoor ticket booth – huddling closely but with great anticipation of the shows on the inside. Both shows I viewed my first night at the festival were relatable in that they dealt with relationships and loss, […]
Potted Potter (Starvox Entertainment/Potted Productions) In the second international tour of this two-man 70-minute reverential romp, creator/performers Dan & Jeff (Clarkson & Turner) are replaced by Ben & James (Stratton & Percy), who are essentially playing Dan & Jeff but are wisely called Ben & James. The new guys are plenty loveable and plenty enthusiastic […]
Burgeoning Stratford hotshot Tyrone Savage tread a tricky path very strategically in getting his vision of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to the Storefront stage (where it’s currently playing until December 21st). Edward Albee’s blackly comic domestic drama is famous in name but rarely produced on stage, the shadows of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton […]
Purists will hate this Macbeth. The theatrically skeptical will find it heady and ridiculous but, mostly, it’s the purists who will hate it. Director Sophie Ann Rooney takes huge, ambitious leaps of interpretation and some of her key cast members don’t have a clue how to speak the verse. They absolutely have a point, the […]
In tiny spaces just off Queen West last week, two tiny plays took my breath away. One in the more metaphorical sense that it left me speechless and contemplative and moved but uncomfortable with said moving. The other in the literal sense that I was crying so hard I had trouble catching my breath. Playwright […]
\Theatre Passe Muraille’s latest 90-minute mainstage offering tells a long life story in the short moments that precede death. A reverential bio-play about a man of both god and science, playwright Adam Seybold’s The De Chardin Project tells a fascinating story but makes its subject far less fascinating than the world he observes and changes. […]
Studio 180 is a great company that consistently produces interesting, well-executed work. It’s therefore extremely unfortunate that no one seems to see their shows. The new Theatre Centre is rarely full but there have been performances of NSFW where it’s been nearly empty and, if it weren’t for a stray mid-run Facebook post, I wouldn’t […]