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 […]
I’d heard so many great things about Melody A. Johnson’s one-woman show Miss Caledonia that my expectations were sky-high. There’s something just so incredibly charming about a woman who grows up and ends up spending much of her writing and performing career paying tribute to her country-girl mother and the much-smaller dreams that led to […]
Ross Petty’s annual holiday pantomime is an important tradition to keep alive in Toronto. There’s a depressing dearth of smartly produced kid-friendly theatre in this city and, at its best, Petty’s goofy fractured fairytale can be the clever centerpiece of a kid’s cultural year. They get to dress up, go to one of the city’s […]
As we approach the December 19th launch of a new artistic initiative in Toronto, we thought we’d give you a quick preview of why we think it’s important and how some of the artists we love have gotten involved. City Voices– launching this Wednesday at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre- is a collection of this […]