Warning.  Both this show and this review are heavily experiential. I was just thinking the other day how much I miss those long gone days of university productions that were staged professionally, but with the much-needed energy and liveliness that fresh and ambitious minds can bring to live theatre.  I’ve been a bit bored lately, […]

 

First Act Productions is a young company full of energy, abandon, and a surprising number of strong voices, perfectly suited to a production of Hair with all of its go-for-broke exuberance and and ensemble focus. In fact, for a relatively small startup company featuring mostly students and recent grads, it’s actually remarkable how excellent an […]

 

Say you’ve just started dating this really fun new person. You like them, you want them to think you’re fun and interesting and connected to all the cool things there are to do in the greatest city in the world- Toronto, obviously- but you’ve already taken them to Snakes & Lattes and now you’re out […]

 

Mirvish’s Wizard of Oz is exactly what all of us mildly jaded theatre-saturated critics thought it was going to be- commercial nonsense. I’m a pretty populist theatre patron- I don’t need everything to be high art (in fact I don’t want it to be); I appreciate comforting, entertaining and linear shows that don’t hurt your […]

This show has led me to realize that “falling” in love is a rather ominous term.  It appears that relationships are doomed from the beginning, especially ones that have started off as a coup de feu: too intense to really survive their original spark.  It seems like this is the case between Anabel (Julia Lederer) […]

Hannah Moscovitch is such a solid playwright. Her works is so consistently good it’s beginning to border on predictable. It’s rare that I’m completely enraptured by a Moscovitch piece but I’m always impressed and effected. She chooses hard subjects and captures them vividly with sharp, realistic dialogue and rich characterizations. A Moscovitch play is the […]

Documentary-style theatre creation often has a tendency of being too dry, too filmic or too wordy for the stage which requires extended use of body and voice – and, these days, other mediums – to keep audience members engaged.  This is not the case with Awake, a multidisciplinary production by Expect Theatre as part of […]

 

I read the original version of Without You when it was first released in 2006. It was a lovely book, full of emotional memories and revealing frankness nestled among the awkward prose and insider-y Renthead bait. I, like almost every theatre-loving girl of my generation, have a very special place in my heart for Rent […]